When I moved to our 5 acre home almost twelve years ago, I was single and thinking of going to live and teach abroad in Thailand. I had mailed off my applications and credentials and essays about why I love learning...and then Life sent a big huge curve ball.
The mister.
We met at the dump when I had taken a load of garbage from my first home to begin the long process of claiming a little of Me in this new place. A year later, he proposed. Another year after that, newly married, we welcomed our first child. Yet one more year, we moved into our home we built. Fast forward several years, we have a trio of kids and a menagerie of beasts, with more on the way. We have created our space, our sanctuary from new gardens to a pond to a barn and coop and more.
It has been a lot of work. A lot. Life has thrown us some pretty heavy curve balls...health issues that keep us on our toes every single day, to legal woes with neighbours (how could we know the previous owners, sixty years ago, built our house eleven inches over the property line?).
Yet here we are, with a little faith, clearing more land to get ready for our goats. Goats!!! I will be a milking maid this time next year...who would have thunk it?
Today we hired three teenage boys to come help dig our fencepost holes. Josh was supposed to have been at work, but he was let go at noon so he found all of us down in the new pigpen/goat area hauling rocks and digging deep. Feeling good.
So he joined us.
And those boys? Wow! They worked hard and happily, without many complaints. They laughed with my kids who hung off their every word. And their words were respectful and honest and caring. My nine year old joined in and made a little money, too. After four hours, all the posts were dug and much of the area cleared for new critters.
With a little faith, I should have known these teens would prove to be the best darn farmhands I could have wished for.
A goat park made by the mister...apparently goats like to play! And so do my own kids...
Yes, in twelve years so much has been created and nourished and rooted. I feel so very very blessed by this life we live.
