First year farming

I was weeding our garden area yesterday.  (How do weeds grow faster than any other foliage?? Our trees barely have buds and the garden is full-on green with dandelions!) As I saw onions and lettuce and asparagus and rhubarb and raspberries coming back to life, I couldn't help but think back to last year at this time.  I know we planted our garden, but I felt like we were a little distracted and not as connected to it as we normally are.  So I asked Todd what was different about this year, how it is that we're starting on time and sort of ready for it; and he reminded me of why we didn't devote as much energy to it last year.  It's sort of interesting to think back on what he's been doing since December 2016 when we moved to our little 4-acre hobby dream farm.  It makes me feel a little better about the weeds and the unattended-to-piles and unfinished projects we live with when I look back and remember what else he's been doing.  Isn't it good for us to see where we've been instead of seeing where we haven't been? :) Here's what he's been busy with the past year and five months.

--recarpeted the whole house (ripped it all up and moved all the furniture to save us maybe $140, good grief)

--new trim in all upstairs rooms

--refenced our pasture

--got a new kitchen (which we also ripped out, probably saved us nothing, it was probably part of the estimate; but it forced me to face my fear of what's behind old stuff)

--while we hired out the tile and cabinets and counters, he did all the backsplash bead board and brick work

--replaced every appliance in our kitchen one by one as they died

--put in two new kitchen windows (took him a day each)

--trimmed the whole kitchen and entry way

--replaced entry way doors and kitchen doors (easier than it sounds, but this house is old and not square any more)

--we drove two hours each way to get cows last May

--unsuccessfully tried AI-ing them after buying a cow chute

--raised chickens (from eggs), ducks, and quail

--put down one dog and did surgery on another

--got a puppy two weeks after we moved in and we cleaned up accident after accident after accident (it was the winter of -20 and she didn't like going outside I guess... AND we've never been real good at being pet-owners)

--cabinets in the laundry room

--painted every room in the house (except C's and the 2 bathrooms we're going to demolish next winter, good grief)

--put in hardwood floor and re-did our stairs (ps it took him a week to scrape out the subfloor--worst job EVER)

—drove to Minnesota and brought home a trailer of wood for flooring

—had friends arrange for power and gas to the shop (so we've had trenches and loose dirt surrounding our house)

--is having a truck load of dirt for the 8 garden boxes he just built (yay for more dirt!)

--is having the road re-done this week (also contributing to our dust issue)

--plowed an area for pumpkins and corn in our back pasture with the tractor

--taught Callum how to drive a stick in the pasture

--picked chokecherries that grow naturally on our land and he made juice and jam

--did his bees, spun the honey

—mopped up our mini-flood of sewer water and spent the good part of a day contending with it

—graded our road
--planted 10 fruit trees
--planted grapes

--built a wood shed with his dad and split enough wood to nearly fill it

--butchered nearly 20 roosters

--drove to get trailer loads of hay several times

--built a chicken run onto the coop

--did the garden, replanted raspberries and made jam from them all

--built shelves in the mechanical room for our storage

Whew! So fun to remember! What I like best about a list like this is EVERYONE can make one! If we all took stock of what we've been doing, whether care-taking or reading or crafting or working or building or traveling or writing or visiting, we’d all feel better about where we're at.  I wrote this list because Todd feels like he's spinning his wheels, frustrated that he never gets anything done; all he sees is the messy garage, the piles in the shop, the untrimmed door and window frames, all the things that keep getting broken, just all the stuff that still needs attention.  He is always telling me how he wishes he had more time, more daylight, more days off, more than one of him, a work crew!

But I think we're all like that. I think we tend to look at what we haven’t done, the messes, the unfinished business, the defeats, the issues that still need our attention. It’s just sort of fun to itemize some accomplishments because it creates momentum and reminds us that by small and simply things great things come to pass.  That day by day we really are making headway.