Ten Years

Quite by accident I realized that yesterday was the ten year anniversary of the Paradigm Farms blog. A quick scan through ten years of blog post titles – 1,451 posts to be exact – reminded me of how much has changed in the last ten years. We purchased a new farm and built it from scratch. It was fun to reread the farm building posts, especially the one where we hit the massive rock when we were running water lines, after having hit zero rocks after setting a few thousand fence posts. After we built the farm we moved all of the horses. Of course the most epic resident to move was Sparky the donkey, who will ever forget that drama?! We have said a lot of goodbyes to many residents over the last ten years, but we have also said a lot of hellos. Jason has graciously shared some of his deep wealth of large animal nutrition. We seem to have had more than our share of water leaks over the last ten years. We shared a lot of stories about the World’s Cutest Fainting Goats. I shared some of my personal struggles with the death of my father in 2012. We shared our joy with all of you when Carter joined our family.

My favorite posts are the “meet the residents” posts which are a labor of love between me and the owners of the horses featured. I’ve written a few posts about my observations of herd dynamics. I was reminded of the time Jason accidentally knocked me out for a few seconds with a flying feedbag. I remembered the time the SWAT team came to practice at my parent’s farm one morning and no one told me that was happening. It would be an understatement that I was stunned to see men heavily armed in full SWAT gear running around the farm. There are periods when the blog is quite boring and periods where the blog is far too entertaining given that all of this is real life for Jason and Melissa at Paradigm Farms. We’ve shared more than 16,000 pictures of the farm and the residents. As I scanned through ten years of Paradigm Farms life it was a profound reminder that nothing stays the same. It was quite a trip down memory lane!

Thanks for coming along with us for the last ten years.

Taco