Imagining Retirement

I don't know anyone who plans work into retirement, but for a long time now I've been dreaming about what I would do in retirment if I had some money stashed away. Travel? Spoil the grandkids? Play bocce in Palm Springs?

Not me. I would buy a farm, a bunch of kids (the goat kind), and then set up shop making the best artisan goat cheese and best artisan bread to go with it. I'd have to resolve myself, of course, for being a little fatter in my older years, what with all the extra saturated fat in my diet. Preceeding that would be a one-year sabbatical in France learning the fine art of cheese- and bread-making. I think it would be sheer bliss.

On our most recent trip to France this year we stopped off at a grocery store in Metz (it might have been my favorite supermarché Auchan) to pick up some goodies for the ride home. I picked up deux baguettes, huit tranches du fromage, un Port Salut, une bouteille de vin et d'yaourt. The cheese was a multipack of goat cheese flavored au poivre (black pepper), au paprika, aux noix (nuts) et aux cives (chives). It was the best cheese I had ever had...so smooth and creamy spread across that loaf of bread. I had died and gone to heaven driving back to our hotel in our Audi A4, all through the gorgeous countryside of France. In an effort to capture a bit of that heaven on earth, I thought, if I could just make that myself, I'd already be there! Chevrion is my favorite imported goat cheese from France. We can't get much else here in the gourmet-food-barren-US. We eat Cheetos and Pringles and crumb-topped muffins until we're walking marshmallows, but God forbid we produce fine wine, bread and cheese.

Anyways, someone who knew something about farming told me that goats are insanely difficult to raise because they're prone to worms and infection. Ah, the dream gets messy. They also destroy grazing land b/c unlike cows who cut off grass with their teeth, goats pull up grasses from their roots. If I hand't just watched an hour-long presentation on the History Channel about the dustbowl I doubt that would have given me much pause. But in an age where land-dwellers are attempting to making farming and pastoral decisions that are more harmonious with the natural environment, I fear my uneducated and under-researched dream could already be plotting the ecological collapse of wherever we decide to plant this operation. God save me, I think on this too much! Anyways, as I get closer to retirement (30-ish years from now), I hope that there are some better resources in place to protect my dream and help it become a beautiful reality.