My blog has helped raise a lot of money for people in need, especially through crowdsourcing, a new and very democratic way for people to decide for themselves who they wish to help and who they don’t wish to help.

Today, our neighbor Jenna Woginrich of Cold Antler Farm, another creative and independent outcast who abandoned conventional and corporate life for the country, has launched an Indiegogo campaign to raise $3,500 to fend off the looming foreclosure of her farm and bring her what she calls a “cushion of liveability.”

She says the letters from the bank are threatening foreclosure. Jenna gets a lot of warning letters.

I donated $50 to Jenna’s campaign, and I wanted to share the project with you so that you can decide for yourself if you wish to contribute. My miraculous blog, as I call it, has raised more than $120,000 for various people in the past year (including me once, a gofundme project helped me to buy photographic equipment.)

I am very careful about the gofundme projects I share, if I share them I feel some responsibility for them, so while I hope Jenna gets her “liveability cushion”, and I am happy to try to help.  I also need to be honest and share the complexity of the decision for me.

To me, it is important.

My blog and my ability to help other people works on trust, and trust is built on honesty.

Jenna and I have an emotional connection. She calls me a mentor and I have tried to help her when she asks and it is possible. I’ve helped her find a literary agent, given her a computer, sometimes taken photos of her farm, sometimes promoted her many workshops on the blog.

We used to visit with one another and have lunch, sometimes dinner, but I have not actually spoken to Jenna, other than to wave to her as she passes in her truck, for a couple of years now. Our friendship didn’t really work, although we both have good will for the other.

My sense is I made her uncomfortable, I like to talk about things – especially struggle and drama  and decisions involving friends –  and she doesn’t, at least not with me. People seek advice from mentors, and Jenna is not interested in advice from me. I have worried about her a lot – she asks for help a lot – and that is not a healthy basis for a friendship either. When a friend tells me they are in trouble and may lose their home, it is hard for me to chit-chat or play cards.

My disease, says Maria.

And Jenna knows a lot of ways to ask for help.

Jenna’s troubles are a backdrop of life here.

Jenna’s farm has been a spectacular and wrenching soap opera since the beginning, she is always in trouble, always sounding the alarm, always chasing her sheep up and down the road, rushing to fix fences, shooting raccoons, picking up body parts, repairing busted heaters, cracking a tooth, fixing a truck,  sleeping on the floor downstairs to save on heating bills,  and always coming out the other end.

In our time, and with a farm and scores of animals, and no job or outside income, an amazing achievement.

In a sense, that is a great part of her appeal.  People are drawn to struggle and rebellion, especially these days. And Jenna thumbs her nose at the system and to the very idea of a conventional life.  As afraid as Jenna often says she is – and I believe her – she has a lot more than nine lives, and access to many more. I shudder to think of all of the disasters she has survived at Cold Antler Farm.

Stability and predictability are not very exciting. Drama works.

Jenna has been in struggle and drama for almost every day of the six years she has lived on her farm. She has survived numerous personal, God-made, animal and financial disasters. And many decisions, good and bad. And she has always asked for help, the mark of a survivor.

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In many ways, as some of you will guess, we are talking about decisions.

Decisions are critical things, they are the foundation of life.

I have worked very hard to learn how to make good and better decisions for my self.  And I am proud of the decisions I make now, I love making good decisions, just as I once loved making bad ones.

I also had a lot of animals, also used to buy old farm trucks with character until I was broke and counted up the repair bills and bought a Toyota SUV instead. And got rid of many animals.  That decision has saved me thousands of dollars I did not have to spend on hay, farriers, vet bills, grain and fences. I believe our farm is now secure and stable. I could not always say that.

I often thought of what I wanted, not what I could afford.

Jenna is much younger than I am, I’m not sure good and wise decisions are for the young. The world would be a boring and stale place if there were no young people in it. We each own our own decisions.

But there is a moral issue for me. I am okay asking for help in buying a camera and sharing my photos – that is worth a lot of money over the years – but I am not comfortable asking anyone to pay for my bad decisions. You can support my photography and art, but not my life.

That is my boundary, and it might just be another rationale. But it feels right to me, solid.

Supporting Jenna’s mortgage is a different kind of decision. In the case of Joshua Rockwood, I felt very clear about asking for help for him. He was unjustly accused of something he didn’t do and his life and farm were on the line. I had no ambivalence about supporting him.

Every animal, every vehicle, every fence repair or new tree on my farm is a decision, and Maria and I must sustain it, especially after our bankruptcy last year. This crisis was not caused by our overspending, but by getting caught in the collapsing real estate market, but it made us even more sensitive to the impact of every thing we did, purchased or wanted. To  me, that is the essence of being responsible. We both agreed that if we could not sustain the farm, we would leave it.

We made a lot of painful and hard decisions, we got to a much better place.

Is that a fine line, a self-serving rationale? Maybe, but it is where I draw the line. Jenna, who I admire in many ways, is free to draw her own. And you out there reading this are free to make your own decisions about it, that is the beauty and refreshing thing about crowdsourcing.

You can help or not, it is really as simple as that. And it is nobody else’s concern.

Jenna is an articulate spokesperson for the sustainable life, for  homesteading and rural pioneering. I looked up the meaning of “sustainable,” and the dictionary says it means being able to maintain something at a certain level, as in sustainable economic growth, or to be able to uphold and defend a property or a life.

She has to decide for herself if her farm is sustainable. She seems to work like a demon to keep it, offering workshops, lessons, visits, graphics and sketches, pigs and chickens, rides, talks, lessons of every kind, including private visits. Her blog is festooned with ads and donation buttons. Only she and the bank knows if a “liveability cushion” will give her the security and sustainability she wants.

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Why is this complicated  for me?

Jenna and I have an emotional connection, at least on my end.

Some of our relationship speaks to the best parts of us – we are creative, strong, determined to live our own lives, outside of the corporate web of alleged security and stability. We both love animals and are both writers. I know that  some of the connection, as Maria has sometimes pointed out to me, is unhealthy.

I know well what it feels like to be alone to be afraid, to sometimes live in delusion. And I have a sorry history of falling into co-dependent traps, where I give great chunks of myself away to people in trouble, or people who are users. I’m not precisely sure where my issues end and hers begin.

I know the boundary. I don’t rush over to Jenna’s farm to help when there’s trouble, I don’t do things for her that she can do for herself. I am not into her stuff. It feels like drama to me very often. In my own life, I am wary or projecting fear and drama into my own life and blog, it can be a manipulative way of getting people with little or less money than me to send me some of theirs. That is a big moral issue for me, even when I ask for help in buying a camera. It’s not something I want to do regularly.

The best help I ever got was from a therapist, not from people sending me money. My therapist helped me to make good decisions.

So I am protective of the people who read my books and blog and contribute to the funding campaigns I present. They helped Joshua Rockwood, they helped Ken Norman, they helped Scott Carrino, they helped George Forss. They have done a lot of good.

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There is a lot of drama here.

In our time, trouble and drama do not turn people off, trouble and drama draw people like flies. Living on a farm is a fantasy for many people, and Jenna strongly urges everyone in the world to drop everything and do it, whether they can afford it or survive it or not. It is a new and different way of looking at the world, and I do not presume to tell other people whether they should embrace it or not. In a way, she is as much an argument against the sustainable life as she is in favor of it, but I don’t think she is aware of that.

I do not believe a farm is a panacea for everyone, I think it is actually a terrible idea for many people, who seek a more secure and balanced existence, closer to the conveniences of the modern world and a more diverse and secure social setting. It’s been a good thing for me, and Jenna is fighting very hard to keep hers.

I wish her the best luck. I hope she survives at Cold Antler Farm. She has made a lot of great noise out there. I hope this helps her.

If I can’t live on my farm, I can’t keep my farm, and the decisions Maria and I are making have been good ones, we are standing on much firmer ground. I know I can’t buy the $2,000 lens I want. I’m not asking for any more help with my equipment, that would just be a bad decision for me right now. I found a good used lens for $800 and that, I think, is a good decision.

I do not presume to suggest that I make better decisions than Jenna, and none of this is offered as a reason not to support her funding campaign, or to support it. She is living her life, as I am living mine.  I know what it’s like to fear foreclosure, and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy, and Jenna is someone I care about and consider a friend.

I think Maria is concerned that my interest in helping Jenna is neurotic and perhaps not grounded – she has no qualms about sending a contribution, she is worried that these troubles tap into my own. It’s a good caution, and I am taking it seriously. That’s why I spent a couple of hours thinking and writing about it. I have learned to take Maria very seriously, she knows me far better than I yet know myself.

I just want you to know what’s in my head, so you can make your own decision. So it’s up to you. Here’s the link. I will be curious to see what you decide.  I look forward to her hitting the $3,500 mark, my guess is when all is said and done, Jenna will be one of the last people standing.

I hope so.