By ‘kids’, I mean our son who will be 4 in August and the little girl I have taken in for daycare for the last two years.  She just turned three.

Above: John and Shea feeding bottle lambs

Two toddlers combined with my opinions about mixing parenting and farming was not a recipe for getting work done.  In times gone by the ‘tie the kid to the fence while you drive the tractor’ parenting theory was quite prevalent.  We’re not into that here.

Despite John’s frustration that I’ve been unavailable to help him for the past three and a half years, I firmly stuck to what I consider common sense.

Forcing two-yearolds in snow suits to walk up and down a huge hill back and forth to the barn with no help mom’s carrying buckets of grain, for example.  Or leaving them screaming while you feed hay because the kiddies – 25  lbs – are scared of the sheep – 150 lbs – when mom’s not carrying them.  These things don’t take a lot of deliberation to figure out.

Now that they’re bigger, though, and more comfortable in the barn, I’m going to take advantage of my new ability to get things done – and to let the kids get things done.

There is nothing small people like better than to feel they’re getting to contribute and be a part of what you’re doing.  It applies in the barn just as well as in the kitchen.

So, with that said, here are a few tricks I’ve figured out and picked up from other farm moms for helping kids enjoy chore time:

• Hay is always fun.  If you think you don’t have a need to have loose hay around, think again.  A safe spot – like that empty pen – is a great place for a climbing, burying roll in the hay, kid style.
• If you have an extra pen, why not put a slide or some sand in with some sand toys?  Or wood shavings.  The extra pen is a blessing.
• Trampoline with enclosure a.k.a. huge playpen.  I met a sheep farmer whose children – 3 years and 18 months – would spend all chore time playing on the trampoline with special ‘barn’ stuffed animals and soft balls.
• Give them their own, kid sized tools.  Our son has a pitchfork with a 36 inch long handle.  We taught him how to use it without injuring anyone and he loves it.  Visiting children get excited to take a turn really feeding the sheep.
• Make sure they can get up high.  Kids are eye level with sheep and a good head shorter than even a young calf.  Let them get out of range of licking, nibbling and loud baaaa-ing when they need to.

And, finally:

• Don’t wear out your welcome.  Be prepared to pack it in within a few minutes if the kids get tired.  I don’t mean jump the second someone make a peep.  Make a judgment call.  Have you been focusing on your work to the exclusion of the kids for too long?  A little independent time is important, but once they’re done, you need to be done too.

Growing up on a farm is something I always knew I wanted for my kids.  I don’t want to farm first, parent second, though.  But I also don’t want to parent first and farm not at all.  That would be cheating them of all the great things kids can learn and do on the farm.

So, as ‘my’ kids get more independent and confident, I will let them see me – and help me – work more.  With a little forethought, it can be good for all involved.

If you have any tricks to share when it comes to combining farm and kids, please tell.  Even if you have the most incredible ‘tie them to the fence’ farm parenting story.  I’m up for a good laugh.  (Funny, mostly because it’s a thing of the past, for the most part.  Thankfully!)

Our most recent visiting volunteers left just over a week ago and the next one isn’t scheduled to arrive for another two weeks. While it is nice to have a break and enjoy the house to ourselves for a spell, to be honest, it’s a little eerie, all this quiet.

(As I typed that, our three year old sent a stack of blocks cascading onto the floor next to me. Quiet, like so many things, is relative.)

Since our membership as WWOOF hosts started in January of this year we have had something like 25 weeks of help between all our visitors.

We’ve had two people from Korea, two from Japan, two from the US and one from England. Our next guest will be from the US.

For my part, I’m taking some of this down time to reflect on how we’ve done as hosts so far. There is a responsibility to create an enjoyable environment for people who are volunteering on your farm, after all.

How could we improve the accommodations, the work environment?  How well have we managed the energy of our home where the pressures of farming, working full time, parenting and relationships can cause tension?

How well have we balanced getting all the farm work done with showing our visitors what a great part of the country we live in?  Because, that is a big part of why a lot of people join the WWOOF program in the first place.  It is a great way to travel without a lot of expense.

So, with thanks for all the help and company we’ve had; and with appreciation for getting to travel vicariously to the places our guests have been, I am reveling in the quiet and knowing I’ll be happy when it’s back to a crowed mealtime.  And making notes about what worked so I can do more of it.

What is (or was) your biggest roadblock to starting a farm?

This was my first poll question of choice for you readers.

How to get enough money to start

Lack of farming know-how

The time it takes when you’re still working an off-farm job

Other answer…

Those were the options I provided for your polling pleasure.

I know that many of you saw the poll in our sidebar because, so far, 63 of you answered it.  And, of those 63, 57% said that how to get enough money to start their farm was the biggest issue.

So, now I have a question about poll etiquette.  Because, really, is it bad form to ask about someone’s challenges without at least a bit of knowledge that might help them over the hurdle??

How to get enough money to do anything is a sticking point for a lot of people and farming has a lot more ‘junk’ surrounding it than most businesses.

For one thing, there is a whole societal belief that food is cheap.  And, yes, crappy food is cheap – at the initial outlay.  The true cost of crappy food, or pseudo-food, as I like to call it, comes when you look at the health care bills it causes and the environmental damage it does.  When you’re producing good food, naturally the cost is going to be higher.

So, I guess step one to getting enough money to start a farm is to clear society of some old, mistaken beliefs about food and install some new ones.

If that’s step one, it kinda sounds like there might be a lot of steps before you get to the money part, doesn’t it?

But wait, there’s more than just cheap food ‘junk’ that makes it difficult to make a living farming.  As a fascinated observer of humanity, I have noticed that it isn’t only long time farmers who have the ‘Life is hard,  please notice me struggling’ mindset.

It seems that a lot of new farmers getting into sustainable agriculture have that same mindset and, honestly, it’s a killer.  This is the ‘Poor Dirt Farmer Junk’.

(John used to say that he was a poor dirt farmer.  But he has learned that to say this is to invoke the wrath of the wife.)

If you want to repel abundance, this is the way to do it.  Don’t get me wrong, farming is not Easy Street financially.  Yes, we struggle too.  But if you’re into farming because your identity is about struggle, well, a bucket of cash could fall on you and you’d still figure out how to make it hard.

So, do I have any new useful answers for those who are in the ‘not enough money’ category?  I’ll do my best, but it might not be what you’re expecting.

Three Financial Thoughts For Planning Your Farm:

1. Do it yourself:  Do what yourself, you ask?  All of it.
   Yes, the goal is to pay yourself a reasonable wage; $15 or $20 per hour, say.  But start where you are.  If you have little financial capital, make it up in hourly capital.
2. Sell first, then produce:  A lot of farmers (especially conventional farmers) have gotten into the habit of producing something and then trying to sell it.  Don’t do it!  Sell it – or, at very least, market it – first so you know you can sell it.If you don’t know how a C.S.A. (Community Supported Agriculture) program starts yet, find out now.
3. Know yourself:  (and your spouse/partner/family)
   Make no mistake, you will be short of cash and/or time – likely both.  Unless you save A LOT of money before starting your farm, you will have a farmer’s lifestyle for some years.

   Know what need motivates you to farm and be able to tell when enough is enough, for you and for your family.  Because, yes,  everyone can survive with nothing but second hand clothes, old cars, “No, we can’t rent a movie”, “No, you can’t play hockey”, “No, we can’t have a vacation”, without cable TV and “No, Daddy won’t be home to tuck you in”.

   But, can they thrive in the conditions you’re planning on foisting on them?

I know, number 3 doesn’t sound like a financial thought but it applies directly.  If you’re going to make hard financial choices for your family, make sure the individual personalities you’re dealing with can thrive despite them.

Even better would be to make the financial choices that help your family thrive.  But don’t ask me exactly how to do that.  When I figure it out, I’ll let you know.

In the meantime, here is an unofficial number 4:  Starting a farm is like having kids.  You’re never really going to be ready or have enough money but that shouldn’t stop you.  Follow numbers 1 through 3, then jump in.

Your options are sink or swim and, in the case of farming, neither one is likely to kill you.

Normally, that type of thought might bring more ‘missing luxury’ if you believe The Secret. But I must have thought it in a more positive light. Here’s a pictorial of my reasoning:

This is a beautiful vest that my sister sent me from Vancouver. Thanks Sis!

Here we have my Christmas present from DH and DS. That’s a number 8 jar!! And original, or so we’re told. I await my buckets of milk with baited breath.

Not so much a picture of the actual luxury in question but of the location of said beacon of quasi-modern technology. This was the joy of chores this morning… Wait for it… We, here at J. & C. Nyman Farms, now have… running water IN the BARN!!

And I said I don’t have a luxurious life. Ha…

Here’s hoping that everyone has a little bit of whatever they consider luxury this holiday season.

Cheers!

For some comedic relief to start and to show that I don’t only read about farms, check out this great daily comic.  Today’s strip is about ear wax.  How does that entice ya? 

Here’s meat – or rather the veggies – of my reading, though.  And oh!  The inspiration to be had in the gardening department!

Click here for Winter Planting Plans on the Observer Organic Allotment Blog

• Check out the beautiful produce pictures at one of my favourite blogs, Throwback at Trapper Creek.
• If you’re interested in extended season gardening specifically, click on the winter garden plan picture to read about this piece of useful art.

• For those of you who get a little overwhelmed with the task of gardening to sustain a family,  (we’re just starting to attempt to grow enough to avoid the grocery store), I found this great resource.  It’s a gardening calendar specifically for hardiness zone 5b but I’ve got to think there are more helpful bloggers out there in other zones.  (Potential future post: compilation of gardening calendars?)

On the livestock front, I had the pleasure of reading about a shockingly smooth pig loading session at Tylerfarm Homestead’s blog.  Yes, it is that time of year.  The cold weather meat producing animals have reached full size.  The freezer will be full soon.

Our pigs are not yet ready for the freezer as they are on the slow, mainly grass-fed plan. Here John is enticing them back to the barn after a successful attempt to escape. Our three year old sounded the alarm while I was cooking lunch: "Mom! The pigs are on the road!"

My pig loading experience stems from long ago and was not that smooth.  When my sister and I were small, our family lived on a small farm near on Blue Mountain.  My mother has been known to tell the story of one loading day when a somewhat coarse talking neighbour came over to help out.  I would have been 3 or 4 years old with my sister a couple of years older.

I guess my sister, Gena, and I sat on the edge of the log enclosure the pigs lived in and observed the proceedings.  Later in the day, the weather had turned and we went in to play in our living room while mom worked down the hall in the kitchen.

As she tells it, her ‘mom-sense’ went off and she started listening more closely to us playing.  Finally, certain that she was hearing our attempts at some of the worst language you can think of, she came in to ask us what we were doing.  My sister, always bold and sure of her right to do as she pleased piped up:

“We’re playing ‘load the pigs’, Mom!”

Neighbours.  You take the good with the bad.

On the topic of pigs, click on this lovely Large Black to visit the site of a great little farm that I have recently

Click on the photo to check out Upper Canada Heritage Meat.

discovered not too far from us.  I have yet to approach them about it but I’m dreaming of some of these beauties for our farm next year.

For anyone yearning to hold onto summer just a bit longer, here is the one and only flower on our new hydrangea bush from this year.  It took all summer to brew.

I took this picture two days ago and it is still sitting there, though slightly less fresh.

On a final note of what has been, for me, a leisurely, random post, our co-op student, Kenley, was here on Saturday for what was her last full day.  We did some puttering around in the garden, shelling dry beans, taking down the pea trellis, bundling the last of the herbs for drying and generally enjoying the beautiful day. 

We have enjoyed having her here and are thrilled that our local highschool has seen fit to run an agricultural co-op program that actually give the students the chance to learn from experience.  What a novel concept!

Kenley’s last few hours will be spent next Saturday, preparing our meat CSA packages for delivery.  After that, we’ll be back on our own and richer for having had her with us.

Now, I can cross ‘Sanity saving’ off my to-do list and move on to the marketing. Happily, that is a task that I enjoy, not only because I know that a small farm like ours would never fly if someone didn’t SELL IT!

I write my experiences and thoughts about the realities of starting a farm, no holds barred, no rose coloured glasses, and people find me.  In startling numbers.  These days, one of my ‘How to Start a Farm’ series can usually be found on page one or two of Google.  (You can buy a $90 e-book on how to get yourself on the first pages of a Google search!)

I’m so encouraged that such numbers of you want to start farms!  I can’t tell you what that would do for our communities, our health and our economies if you all actually did it!

(Come on! You can do it!)

So, give me a moment of your time, and tell me what it is about farming that interests you.  I’m including some questions to get you started.  But don’t feel you need to answer them.  Just take a minute to tell me where you’re at with your farm dream and where you want to be.

If you’re not among the ‘dreaming about farming’ group but have already reached your farm dream, in whole or in part, put your two cents in!  I’m looking to get some serious farm-start-up momentum going over the next little while!

I’ve gone through the family farm situation while growing up and I’m deeply embroiled in creating and re-creating a farm now.  Creating a farm has so many facets.  It can get beyond overwhelming.  Tell me where your overwhelm is.  I’ve been to enough of the valleys and peaks that small farm start up can take you to.

There is a reason things get repeated enough times to become cliche.  Usually, they get said a lot because they’re true.

So here’s mine:  If I can help just one person succeed at a new farm, I’ll be happy.

I’m fascinated to know what draws different people to farming.  And, I love writing about the process we’re going though on our farm.  Give some good thoughts and I’ll have writing fodder for the upcoming winter writing season!

Here are those questions (should you want them):

1. If you’re looking into what it takes to start a farm (or turn your farm into your job), do you truly think you might do it some day?
2. If you already have started your own farm, is it working out the way you imagined it would?
3. What part of starting your farm (or expanding from hobby farm to income farm) has got you stumped?
4. In your wildest dreams, what does your farm look like?

Note the capsized wheelbarrow.  That is about halfway down the garden.  The wheelbarrow is mired in leafy, green, food-free plants.  Native plants, as my sister insist.  Weeds.

In the forefront, though, we have Detroit red beets, basil, a few late planted carrots, the spot where the onions were, the corner of a tripod for the peas (now drying for seed collection), yellow beets, parsley and some dried poppies which blew over from the flower bed.  I didn’t have the heart to treat them as weeds and they were quite a lovely addition to the garden.

Past the wheel barrow, you can see the dying squash and zucchini vines.  We have a gazillion squash.  If you’re a member of our CSA or live near here, contact me about squash.  Make me an offer.  I’m dealing acorns and butternut.

(Notice the unmowed lawn?  Come on.  We do have priorities.)

This pic shows that I was panicing during bean planting time.  ‘Will I have enough time before I go away in late May to get all the beans in that I want to plant?!  Plant them all RIGHT NOW, just in case!!‘

As a result, I spent a few weeks harvesting my body weight in beans everyday.  Sure hope we want to eat frozen, pickled and canned beans come winter.  (In this pic, I have already gone through and pulled a bunch of bean plants to feed the pigs.  Pigs love beans.)

To the rigth of the beans are a few random basil plants and the parsley etc from the previous pic.  There is also a little stone wall full of weeds.  As I mentioned, this is a new garden plot.  You never can tell how many rocks there will be until you turn the soil.  Here, there are a lot.  To the left of the beans there is a whole large square of a rare crop known as foxtail.  Very useful for… looking a bit like a fox’s tail and… tickling toddlers’ necks… umm… covering up A LOT of rocks that didn’t get picked.  In fact, I was afraid there would be a huge hole in the Earth if I picked all those rocks.  I will tackle that spot next year.

Finally, behind the beans/foxtail we have 7 messy tomato plants that are doing wonderfully despite my hatred for the removal of tomato horn worms.  I did most of the extermination with much squirming and ‘Oh Gross!’ comments.  Once I caved and begged Johnny to do it for me.  And he did.  What are husbands for?

(Just a note:  I’m ordinarily not a wimp.  Maggots and tomato horn worms do it to me.  And, I am able to handle them.  Or rather deal with them.  But to see me do it, you’d think they were actually in my underwear.  What a thought!)

For the last picture, you get a better shot of the foxtail along with a shot of the carrots (front right) that I planted where ever there was sand from the hydro trench.  On the very left, there is a lot of rhubarb (that I think I planted too close together), followed by invisible asparagus and sunflowers.  (There are turnips hiding under the sunflowers.  They did remarkably well for being smothered.)

The reason I included this picture is because the sunflowers deserve special mention.  When I told our three year old sun that he could help plant them and then enter one in the fall fair, I could not have guessed that they’d grow large enough to swallow him whole.  I felt a little silly saying that he was entering these giants in the grains category of the Picton Fall Fair when he couldn’t even carry one!

And, of course, he won.  Does that make me kind of like the mom who does her kid’s science project?  Oh, please.  Not that.  For next year, is there such thing as a miniature sunflower?

Farming can look really good from a middle income drudgery job that has you bored out of your mind for 40 hours a week. You and whoever you share your life with might even head to your favourite wing joint once a week to mull over how and when to make your farming dreams come true.

Maybe you imagine a nice house in the country with an old red barn or a rustic market garden plot while you browse the garden centre, coffee in hand, picking out terracotta pots for your balcony herb garden.

These are just couple of brief mental images – possible normal, everyday scenarios – that I ask anyone thinking about starting a farm to scrutinize closely. How much of what you consider ‘normal, everyday’ could you stand to forgo?

This is important because, unless you’re bringing a small fortune into the farming venture with you (read: a cool million, no exaggeration), some of what you consider incidental will become luxury.

Farming as a small business (as opposed to a large business that you create with your million dollar investment) is not very financially profitable. Sure, there is a great return on investment if you’re counting health, peace of mind and other soul-salve type personal rewards. But, it is generally accepted that actual profit above and beyond a somewhat meager wage for your labour is hard to come by, to say the least.

I’m not saying it will never happen. I’m saying it takes a long time and requires that you ‘keep your pencil sharp’ as John’s Opa and weathered dairy farmer would say.

Let me lay out what ‘keeping your pencil sharp’ might entail using the two scenarios from above.

Start with the wing night dream session after a torturous week in a cubicle.

First things first, weekly wing night is out. Unless there is at least one substantial off-farm income, that weekly restaurant trip will turn into a biannual event.

How’s that working for you so far? Remember that you’re trading some of it for other rewards like starry skies, letting kids run out the door unchecked, getting your hands dirty and feeling connected to the natural cycles of the Earth.

Let’s talk about your forty hour work week. Feel long, does it? Well, you’re in luck. It’s history. Juggling an off farm job or a veggie CSA means 7 days a week from sunrise to sunset, or longer for part of the year, at least.

How about the vehicle that got you to the restaurant. Can you drive something cheaper? More versatile? Rustier? Something that is full of little bits of hay and smells suspiciously like livestock? Our Ford Focus is my farm truck, hay and all.

How about the dream farm scenario number two? I’m sure you can see where I’m going with the coffee and nice terracotta pots.

Sure, you won’t be confined to your balcony but your plants will be in whatever pots you can get at Giant Tiger for $3.99 or the cracked ones the old farmer left in your newly acquired, dilapidated drive shed. The coffee is something you’ll stop for on your way to wing nights – on your new schedule, in your new farm truck/’92 Ford Taurus wagon.

(Guilty conscience here: We currently drive a 2005 Ford Focus wagon, fully loaded with leather seats. We got it on lease and have been kicking ourselves – hard – and wearing the exact same clothes to wing night every since.)

Your nice house will be a wonderful home, if you make it so. But if you’re used to calling the repair folks whenever your tap is dripping, you’ll likely need to think again. A lot of minor things can be overlooked if you have to trade your dinner to get them fixed.

The big red barn, while an icon of simpler, nostalgic times, will be dark and damp and not that great for raising animals in. When the roof leaks, it will have to be fixed before the house gets any attention and will cost significantly more than you can fathom being able to afford. Here is where the line of credit becomes your friend and your foe. If you had any space left on it after planting crops, it’s full now. Better not schedule any more emergencies till after harvest time.

Have I got you kissing your computer terminal with it’s regular, tidy summed paycheque yet?

This is the reality of starting up a farm. The money will be tighter than most people can ever see themselves coping with. Handling money stress is a job requirement. But, if you’re up for it, if you can let financial uncertainty and the need for new shoes slide off your back like water off a duck, the rewards are worth it. And, if you keep your pencil sharp, you’ll see a sustainable farm income in time.

I get a lot of people landing on our blog because they’re interested in starting a farm. While I think this is wonderful – mostly because it means that we’re not the only crazy people on the planet! – I wonder how much these would-be farmers actually know about farming.

There is still (perhaps more now than in the past?) a glamorization of farming that is totally false. More people hop on the ‘eat local/save the environment/chemicals are bad’ bandwagon everyday and, at first blush, farming can look like an idyllic way of getting in on it all.

Don’t get me wrong. We’re on that bandwagon too. It’s a good place to be for the physical and mental healthy of our family and for the environment. I just think that there is a misconception about the life of a farmer that needs to be cleared up.

More people getting into farming is good for everyone. I want those who choose to farm to succeed. Starting a business you’re not prepared for is a sure-fire way of not doing that. Hence this series of posts about The Real Farm Life. So, here we go:

The Real Farm Life Fact #1: Farming Let’s You Get In Touch With Nature

You thought I was going to start by trying to scare you off farming, didn’t you? I might yet. But I want people to get into farming because it adds to the greater good and is a great way of life for you and your family. If it really is for you, that is.

Take getting in touch with nature as an example. What do you think of when you read that? Are you thinking sunny walks through tree lined pastures while you check your hay crops?

Yep. That’s farming.

How about the sun setting over the roof of your barn with the sounds of your laying hens settling onto their roost for the night?

That’s farming too.

And feeling your muscles burn just enough to know that you and your kids are not couch potatoes.

Farming does that.

Okay, how about raccoons taking down half an acre of sweet corn just before harvest to the tune of $250 of heirloom seed and countless (and penniless) hours of labour?

You got it. Farming.

Worse yet. Getting up 3 times through the night to feed a tube down the throat of a newborn lamb in minus 30 Celsius weather trying in the hope of getting it warm and nourished enough to survive only to find it cold and still come morning?

Farming.

These things are just as much a part of farming. Don’t get me wrong, often enough, you find a revived, tail-wagging bundle of energy come morning to reward your sleepless night. If not, it wouldn’t be worth doing, would it?

And it is worth doing. Again: If it’s for you.

Everyone likes the idea of farm life. But if you’re going to take it on, you’d better like actually doing it. And you need to be able to handle the parts you don’t like.

Getting in touch with nature through farming means nurturing life, coaxing it and coddling it with your own dirty hands but it also means holding death in those same hands. You have to be able to watch death, to touch it, run the shovel and go back to the coddling and coaxing with vigor. Can you do it?

(For the record, I spill more tears at lambing time than I would otherwise cry in a whole year).

Well, farming – and starting a farm, in particular (due to the ‘two-full-time-job factor) – is just like anything else in the world. It has it’s ups and downs. There are busy times and quieter times. You get to watch crops flourish where you’ve spread your best compost and you have to shovel the crap out of the chicken house to get that good stuff to spread.

Okay, so we don’t have a chicken house, but we will in the winter and I’m purposely not thinking about spring clean out.

Point being that, just like with anything else, you can revel in the high times and keep your head above water in the dips. Or you can drown. And, when you’re drowning, it’s hard to remember that, whatever problem is big enough to sink you, there is an answer out there.

Here at J. & C. Nyman Farms, we’ve been feeling a little like we’re drowning despite business going so well. Why does that happen? To challenge us? Isn’t farming enough of a challenge??

Anyway, it happens and, like I said, the answers are ‘out there’. I’ve always been pretty good at seeking the ones that someone has written down. (Aren’t books great?) Lately, though, I’ve gotten better at harvesting answers from what I consider the collective consciousness. Sounds a little hokey maybe, but it’s been working for me.

For example, I called this post ‘Attitude is Everything’ because that’s what John and I have both been struggling with. The ‘Why does this have to be so hard/This shouldn’t be this way’ attitude. We might as well have been wearing cement shoes. So, I absolutely went to my list of favourite quotes, my bookshelf and my trusted friends in search of solutions.

More importantly, I listened for answers that came to me unbidden. Like my neighbour, a gentleman past retirement age, lets say, who said: “Boy, I hope your son knows how lucky he is to have this life, Colleen.”

Some might have taken offense to this and I don’t necessarily think that our 2.5 year old needs to feel ‘lucky to have this life’. But, I realized that John and I had been looking upon our life too negatively for sometime.

From a two year old’s perspective, the fact that the lawn was knee high might even be a plus, not a reason to think ‘this shouldn’t be this hard’. To a growing mind and spirit, the fact that sleep is traded for the opportunity to green chop feed, haul it to the barn yard and hand bomb off the hay wagon to our sheep, probably sounds like a super deal. (I know it does, in fact. That’s why bedtime has been going so poorly lately). When the fencing catches up to the season and the sheep are on pasture all the time, I’m sure he will feel like something is lost, not gained.

And, what would be wrong with looking at things this way? Currently reality can’t be changed so why not enjoy it for what it is. Or at least know that, despite how hard it is, it is still fun, rewarding and, dare I say it? A wonderful life. (He! He! clichés make me laugh!)

Hmm… as I reread what I have written, I realize it’s all no brainer stuff – when I’m not actively drowning.  So, I guess I can just count myself one of the many who have written down the answer to a challenge so they won’t forget it. If anyone hears me sounding like I’m drowning in bad attitude, please refer me back here. And feel free to refer yourself if you ever need it. 

More specifically farm related stuff to come in the next post…