There is a farm
honoring this moment of the story
Since last July (2025), a dream seed has been nourished into its first roots and stretch into sky. Yet, the seed didn’t form itself only a year ago. Its been waiting and listening and nudging and wanting for many years and lifetimes.
To honor this seed and this small moment of its emergence, I share here a story of Button Snail Farm. It’s the story I can see and tell now. I trust this will shift over time, along with the aliveness of the farm. Although the webpage for the farm will be revised over time, along with the story that lives there, I want to preserve the version of the story that’s alive now.
Thank you, button. Thank you, snail. Thank you, story.
It begins with a button | Early years
I was born into this lifetime in Fergus Falls, Minnesota. The button was already here. The strawberries on my bedspread told me. The elves I played with under the table told me. The small cast iron stove at my grandparents’ house told me. The button remembered me and I remembered the button.
My early life was transient, distant, and temporary. I lived in a world rich in the aliveness of every small thing. I learned to call it daydream. I learned to call it pretend. I learned to keep the truth of what’s real in a tucked away pocket deep inside myself.
I am grateful that the button stayed with me. I am grateful that I never forgot how to be a child.
Teaching and learning with children | Early career
It’s not surprising that I became a Kindergarten teacher. Young children know how to listen and play with the aliveness of everything. I didn’t have to hide who I was, and I let them be all of who they are.
For 23 years, I worked in public school classrooms, teaching and learning with children as we explored small, ordinary things—buttons, rocks, shells, numbers, shapes, letters, words, worms, beetles, snails, shadows, sounds, whispers, and dreams. From children, I learned how to be a teacher, how to slow down and notice, how to linger in wonder, how to listen with an open heart, and how to trust in the everywhere of magic.
Unknowing in the watery depths | Mid-life revisions
I loved being a classroom teacher and spending my days with children. I didn’t want to leave, and I also knew that I needed to leave. We must die in order to live intensely; this phrase looped within me, reminding me of something I knew but couldn’t name. By miracle, I followed the nudge to step away from one path and into an unknown landscape.
Thus began a seven-year journey of excavation and letting go. I continued to work with educators, schools, children, and families, but from a different aperture and location. People asked: What new job do you want? Will you start a school? I knew to say no and I don’t know and it’s not clear yet. I knew to stay outside of one system, to grow work in the edges and the pockets. I knew to tend the soils within myself and stretch into realms of energetics, astrology, and spiritual practice. Again, by miracle, I followed the nudge to step beyond what I could see and into a re-membering and return to the button.
Amidst the murky, imaginal goo of this phase, my dreamscape grew more luminous and my soul-listening found its truth. I saw the land before I knew I was searching for land. I heard the word-beings of delight, pretend, enchant, currency, parallel, and story before I knew they were the curriculum. I felt the dharma of a farm before I knew that I am a farmer, too.
Dream seed | July 2025
It came as a dream in deep sleep. There is a farm. Its name is Button Snail Farm. You are the one to tend it. There’s no more waiting for an invitation or another sign or a better time or someone else. You are ready. The time is now. Listen to this seed. You are the weaver of its song.
A nearby dream (maybe a day later) told me to create Seed Weaver Song. I did. It’s now a self-guided creativity course with beautiful initiatory energy. What delight that this energy formed a vessel of support for others as it simultaneously nourished the seed of Button Snail Farm.
A daydream glimpse (maybe a month later) led me to create Button Snail Hum. What delight that my forming of this free resource archive through 40 weeks of devoted attention, also grew my commitment and clarity for Button Snail Farm.
A shift and an opening | 2025 into 2026
It happened in a dream meditation. A button holds me as I am small. The button rocks me, sings to me, and bathes me in pourings of water. The button shows me that my holding of the button requires allowing the button to hold me.
There are other dreams and glimpses, too. Karmic threads are cut. Minnesota paths that felt one-way, now open in many directions. I say aloud, “We’re moving to Minnesota” and from this pulse of words, things tumble and take form. I know this way of knowing. I trust this guidance. I say yes.
Things feel different. Less tight. Less tentative. There are bridges where before there was abyss.
I don’t know how to do what I’m being called to do. In moments, there is fear, impossibility, and doubt. There is also the button who holds me and reminds me that my right-relationship is to be small in service of the larger vision. That my most important work is to tend to the hum. The farm lives in the hum.
Finding a place to root | July 2026
The message is clear: Button Snail Farm needs a place to root, a geography of soil and sky, a connection point for pollination.
Our collective learning of small and slow, unlearning of school, remembering of who we are and what we know requires a network of roots. Yes, our curriculum is to tend the soils within ourselves. And… we must place our bare feet in soil and place our gaze in sky. We need a place to place ourselves. We need a location to hold us as we learn to let go and allow ourselves to be held.
Here we are: Listening to Minnesota land. Wondering if perhaps there is a place of soil and sky who wants to partner with, and root, Button Snail Farm. Trusting that whatever emerges is an essential part of the story.
As delight, Melissa
Thank you, button. Thank you, snail. Thank you, torus. Thank you, love.
