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The Barn Build & Thanksgiving
As homesteaders, we are always up to our ears in projects and to-do lists. The three biggest challenges on our farm are fencing, drainage/flooding, and shelter.One of those projects is entering the final phases, and I could not be more thrilled. It took two years to build the barn. Years of paperwork, planning, lots of dirt, a false start and having to go back to the drawing board mere days before construction began, etc. The barn finally went up this spring, and has been an awesome addition to the farm, mostly to give humans and animals a place to dry their feet during the five month monsoon season we had this year. However, the barn was still only a shell with a couple of small rooms.
This past month, my husband started putting up plywood in the tack room, and then tackled the biggest remaining barn project – stalls. The original plan had been to install modular stalls, but, as you may have noticed, the price of building materials has skyrocketed, and it just didn’t make sense. Instead, my not-a-handyman husband drew up a plan, got some lumber, and recruited his uncle and brother to put together four of our eventual eight stalls. They came out beautifully!
While I underestimated how many bags of shavings I would need (oops), the mini horses have been happily going in at night to eat. This gives us the ability to feed animals separately, give them their species-appropriate supplements (you would not believe how much the donkeys love stealing pig food!), rest the pasture a little bit (since fencing issues severely limit our rotation, for now), work on some manners in a confined space (looking at you, Lightsong), among other things.
What an amazing blessing. We have so much to give thanks for on this Thanksgiving. Today, we took a break from working on projects to cook up a turkey and leg of lamb (the ram was farm-grown right here), and visit with kin. Our kiddos had a blast playing with their cousins, and we got to catch up with folks that we certainly don’t get to see every day. Even the horses got extra carrots tonight.
I hope your Thanksgiving was similarly blessed.
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On Waiting Gracefully
Waiting for the farm has been inexpressibly long. Not simply as a lifetime dream, though it is that, but as an active search constantly derailed. By some truly wild stuff, including an epic category 5 hurricane that literally blew my town to bits, five days before closing on one farm.
I cannot claim that I’ve always waited with grace. I’ve grown impatient, complained, and tasted despair. I’ve seen in my own life the proof that suffering produces perseverance, and all that follows. Trials are part of life, we certainly haven’t reached the end of them, but the farm is finally part of the picture.
A beautiful part, full of intense amounts of work, and full also of hope.
Almost there. Hopefully the next post will be after we move in.
Let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due time we will reap if we do not give up.
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