Another snowy and windy day at our farm. Most of my family recovering from another illness. Lamb season produced 7 new babies over night. As for me, let's chat about this. Grab your coffee!
When you have a pile of thoughts, piling up; it only takes a single piece of straw to break the camels back. I do not share much of my personal life, for a reason. What I can say, you can love someone with your whole heart and still want to string them up! In my experience, love does not fix everything, it tends to make situations more difficult. If it were ANYONE else, you'd have their head on a platter for poor behavior. You'd have fired them if they were an employee. Rather than arguing continuously, you tend to let more slide than you probably should.
Some times, those thoughts end up flying out of your mouth before you really have thought it through. Then you have a cluster of thoughts out in the open without context. You don't have the conversations you need to have because the jumbled thoughts were not put into a perspective that the other person can understand. I'm guilty of this, a lot! I let a lot slide - from hurtful remarks, to disrespect, to allowing negative energy affect me, to feeling that a lot more needs to be said or spotlighted.
Many of you know, I like to help people. It makes my heart happy and full when I can. I do know my limits, and I know those that have abused it. However, I'm not sure I could be selfish if I tried! I have spent most of my life putting other people before myself. I attempt to think things through before just popping off at the head. I do not burn bridges unless it's absolutely necessary. I give so many chances to people, I end up with tears, more times than I care to count. Sadly, it's never strangers that push me to that point. Which I believe is a deeper hurt.
When something weighs on my mind, I NEED to talk through it. Writing helped for a while, but it's not so much anymore. I need conversations, even if I end up talking in circles for a bit. I don't usually need solutions, I just need the thoughts out of my head so I can find those solutions. I don't expect anyone to help me, I'm more than capable on my own. I truly believe that being independent, capable and not needing anyone is a good thing; it tends to push people away that are dependent on others. It's the "I don't need you, but I do want you" in my life scenario. Weaker minded people typically don't stick around.
As life goes, things get sticky. Water gets muddy. It happens. Life is messy but it is also meant to be lived to the fullest. While I am grateful everyday for the blessings in my life, I am not capable of putting on a show or wearing rose colored glasses either. It is what it is.
As I start feeling better, there are a lot of things that need done. Aside from some serious conversations, deep cleaning, seed starting, never ending projects, constant animal chores, and other stresses...I know there are changes to be made. I always have a to-do list longer than Santa's list! One thing I can say, some changes this year, including making time to relax will happen. I have a beautiful fire pit that has been used a handful of times in 2 years...it will be used this year!
I'm looking at adding several new garden areas this year. One large one will be simply for flowers. While flowers are beautiful, they are a necessity for pollinating my gardens. We have seen a huge decrease in bees, and I want to change that. I'm adding some trees to my orchard, and more berries. I'm going to add some raised beds to help reserve the big garden for other vegetables. While we have grown as much as possible until we can get more land purchased, I need to push for as much self-reliability as possible. Between the price increases and the supply chain issues...I can not let my family go without. Having issues with severe allergies, means doing things a lot different than normal people can. My kids and I struggle with store bought pork, milk, and a lot of other things. Finding dirt raised pigs, A2/A2 raw milk; are just a couple of the major areas I need to fix, if possible. We can't drink store bought milk at all. Whenever we do, we are sick and fighting stomach troubles. Fresh, raw milk is the only thing that does not cause that. Pork from a store is the same thing. Sadly, this is not a new issue, I've dealt with this for year, and especially since my kids were born. So, I learned early to watch what we ate. Until 2016, we did good with it. We were able to get raw milk, we had pigs, we had cows, and of course the chickens and eggs. We went 2 years away from that, and now the kids and I are back on regular allergy meds. It sucks. The illness in our home has increasingly picked up. It's time to make the changes again, as we did when we moved to our farm in 2011.
It became so easy to purchase food at a store, and cook it. Buying the junk food I didn't have to make. Well, that has not worked out so well. So, I'm getting back to what I know worked, food from scratch/raw. I'm looking at hopefully this year, getting a miniature milk cow. Getting enough feeder pigs to feed out for our family for a year. As soon as we can get our steers to a butcher...we will have that taken care of too. We already have the eggs and chickens...but I will be adding a few more this year. I am going to back to doing what so many gave me crap for several years ago...but we will be more self-sufficient AND healthier! I'm tired of feeling like crap. A lot of things are coming to an end, and a few things are beginning. It means more work for me, but the only thing being added truly new, will be the milk cow. It just means rearranging things to work for me.
I hope you all will continue to follow my journey. There never seems to be a dull moment.
No comments:
Post a Comment