We were supposed to have a snowstorm last weekend, and while we did get some ice, we got barely any snow. That is not the case one weekend later. We need to go out and measure, but I would guess we've had close to 8 inches of snow? Here's what it looked like this morning after snowing for about 12 hours:
And here is a video of our sheep. We rarely do hay, but the snow forced our hand on this one.
It's official! Our lamb is in the store. (This is a farm store of some friends of our's across town.) They are including our lamb!
We usually have lambs sometime in December of January. We'd love to have them when it is warmer, but we have a very hands-off approach here on the farm and like to let the sheep go when they go.
So they went in December and January and then SURPRISE! We have three sets of new twins out there.
We did some calculations. This means that some of our ladies got pregnant one month after they had just delivered babies.
No idea if more are coming or not. But for now -- we are enjoying seeing these warm deliveries and twice as much profit for us too!
I really think April into May may be my very favorite time on our farm. Our roses start blooming like crazy! And the grass is getting so green.
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| You can really see what happens after the sheep are done eating. See the areas all around them? They've already eaten down those paddocks and now they are in a new one! |
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| And check out those big clumps of grass in the paddock. Those are where the egg-mobile has previously been. Look at what all that fertilizer does for the farm!!! |
This video really shows the development of our land with the animals' help! I love it:
John posted this picture on Facebook and wrote:
"Moved the sheep to a new paddock, and Wendi thought this was a perfect place to call a friend. I can't disagree."
This adorable little boy lamb was born the the other day to one of our black mamas. He is such a cutie pie!! Our first-time Mamas usually lamb later than the veterans so they are getting a run of it right now. I just love little lambs. I wish I could look as young as he does.
Spring is coming.
Spring is coming in the seasons. And Spring is also coming in my heart.
After a year of pain beyond my wildest imagination, after a year laying on the floor of my bedroom day after day with gaping wounds that left me barely able to function ...
my heart
has healed.
Or, should I say it is healing. I suppose it will always be healing. But at least now, the wounds have healed to a degree that the pain is not cutting me with every breath.
And with that healing comes peace beyond my wildest imagination.
Shalom.
I am now beginning, for the first time in my life, to experience ... peace.
Shalom.
In the Bible, Shalom extends beyond the definition of the word peace.
It stretches beyond the absence of conflict and encompasses wholeness, well-being, and completeness.
And while peace has now begun to surround the internal part of my being, this external farm I live on is part of my internal Shalom.
The other day I packed a bag with my journal and a bottle of water and a few other incidentals and hiked to one of my favorite places on the farm.
Who am I kidding? I have so many favorite spots on our farm. But this one is by a fence line, neighboring Billy's farm under some trees with breeze and shade and a view of every single place in the pasture.
Our farm is my favorite.
The joy it evokes in me is a combination of peace and faith and love and future and past all combined into the beauty that is my life.
I picture that life 27 years ago ... me walking down the aisle to marry my high school sweetheart, and I wish I could tell my younger self how much of a dream come true she was about to begin.
(I wish I could go back to many versions of my younger selves and tell her a lot of things.)
John and I were city people. Suburban at the very least. Not rural. And definitely not country.
And yet, here I am now.
Our decision to purchase this 96-acres was a negotiation and a dance and a bit of mental chess between my renaissance-man-of-a-best-friend and his absolutely-not-a-country-girl-wife.
He wanted rural.
I didn't.
(Or, of course, I thought, I didn't.)
I would be lonely. And the dark would be scary. And I wouldn't have neighbors. And I didn't know anything about animals or farm land or woods.
Woods?!
Weren't there bears in the woods? And maybe wolves (or something like that?)
But somehow, in the course of two decades together, he managed to move me deeper ... to wiggle me further and further into something I never dreamed of ... dreaming of.
The peace on this farm winds itself down into the recesses of my heart. It moves into the tiniest crevices of my soul and leaves me smiling from the inside out.
Today I met a new baby lamb, and then, while I sat by the fence writing in my journal, another one was born, a black little beauty with white across his head.
The mother cleans him. Or her. Too soon to know. But can you get any more peaceful that a newborn baby lamb on a perfectly temperatured Spring day?
My second boy breathes nature just like his Dad, and as I pass him on the way to one of my favorite spots, I find him taking apart an old chicken tractor. His redneck is glistening with sweat. He arms are just tanning up with April looming around the corner.
My trusty sidekick, Arabelle, goes to give him some love, and I think, What would Elijah do without this farm? Who would he be without the space that is his home?
Without the space that is my home.
What would we all do without this land and the grass and the woods and the dogs and the animals and the nature that brings rest to my life?
I turn and see my thirteen-year-old daughter, camera strapped to her chest, meandering near the chickens. The egg basket is nearby. She's scooping out feed for the laying chickens and simultaneously stopping to take photos of the most random things.
Abigail takes photos of everything and sometimes I can't even see what she's taking a picture of ...
I want to thank my husband. I want to thank the God that made him with a love of all things nature in his heart. I want to thank my Savior for knowing what I would need before I even could contemplate needing them.
I want to thank him for Shalom.
We long for Shalom don't we? Peace, harmony, and delight between ...
me and myself.
me and other people.
me and the Creator.
But also?
me and the Earth.
And I say that knowing that years ago I would have thought that saying those words made me some sort of tree-hugging yoga person. And now I know that it isn't that at all.
To have fullness of life, we need integration.
We need shalom.
We were created for this, and while many of us strive for this, I believe we are missing one of the key areas that we were meant to be integrated upon.
The Earth.
Nature.
Peace.
Shalom.
We strive in our journeys toward mental health for the connection with ourselves, with God, and with our fellow man.
But what we also need is what I am getting sitting under the tree, chatting with my nephew and his fiancee. She lays on a blanket petting my dog. Gabe tells me about his thoughts regarding mustaches and chewing tobacco and honeymoon locations.
The breeze is blowing. There is sheep poop on his future wife's shirt from the little lamb she just had to hold in the field. And it feels like we have all the time in the world. We talk of church. We talk of relationships. We talk of our own personal health.
But we also feel what we need to feel. We feel the Earth. We feel the grass. We feel the sunshine. We feel the breeze.
We feel Shalom.
This is what happens when you leave the water running overnight on the farm and it is near freezing. Beautiful. But a big waste of water. (This one was my fault.)
Sometimes nature just doesn't work out. JB was coming off of three nights so Sunday meant, get home at 7a and sleep until he wakes up. I was to take the kiddos to church. I headed out to tend to the chickens and sheep, asking Isaac to do the ducks.
As soon as I got out to the sheep, I could sense something amiss. One Mama hung back by herself. That is never a good sign. (Or, it is a good sign! Baby?) And yes, that was the case. Twins in the field. One was up and nursing well. The other was not getting up. You could tell Mama wanted to be with the herd but didn't want to leave baby lying in the grass. But baby wasn't getting up.
She was mighty cute and spotted but pretty little. I decided to grab some hay, make her a warm spot, and take off for church and see how she was after church. The good news was, after church she was standing. But the Mama was nowhere to be found. The weather was nasty. Cold and incredibly windy. She was already shaking so I knew chances of survival without food in her was low. (You can feel a baby lamb's stomach and feel pretty confident about whether they are eating or not.) If the weather had been better, I might have tried to find Mama and do a test, but I just didn't have it in me, and it was obvious baby didn't either.
So, I called my friend Julia. She takes our "abandoned" babies. This is her second this year. I was worried how little lass would do, but Julia said she has seemed to perk up quite a bit after a good meal and a nap. (Something we should all try when the day is going hard!)
Here is a picture of me with the cutie pie before Julia picked her up:
Getting out the door to church wasn't easy either. All this was taking up a lot of time. In addition, Sidge was having pants issues. He only has two "good" pairs of pants, and they had both gotten pretty dirty at the Winter Retreat they had attended with FCC on Friday evening. I had washed his jeans twice, and they were still muddy. I opted to give his cargo pants a quick wash and get those dry in time.
So I ended up sending Isaac in one car with the girls. Sidge and I followed behind. (I did leave the sheep water running while I was gone. Not ideal, but well, you can't get everything perfect.)
After church, Sidge took the boys car and hung out a bit in town until it was time for his meeting for his mission trip. He is going to Colombia this summer with some of the youth at his church! I drove home with the girls and Isaac.
Now, we are getting ready for Monday co-op which is always a BIG day for us. Jam-packed and full are our Mondays. John has Monday off (although he does have to come up to town as he teaches a biology class fourth hour). However, on Tuesday, he teaches at Milligan College. (He is an adjunct professor there and teaches in their ER department for their medical students.) Then on Wednesday he's back in for a three-day run.
John continues to love his job but it does take quite a toll on him. It is very busy and, of course, the losses are hard.
Yes folks that is a feather stuck to the bottom of my drink. I suppose it wandered in from the chickens with me somehow. What a life I live!
JB and Elijah "Sidge" when to Nashville for a fun conference with Safari Club International. It's perfect timing because it's, like HORRIFICALLY FREEZING here.
We do not get HORRIFICALLY FREEZING often here in Tennessee. And folks, I lived in Minnesota so I know the difference. But we do get anywhere from 7-24 days of brutal cold each year. Some years the cold is just a sprinkling here and there. However, anytime we get days strung upon days of HORRIFICALLY FREEZING, I really begin to second-guess the life we have chosen.
There is not a hose on the farm that will run. Not a single faucet that will turn on. Not even the supposedly freeze-proof faucets. So, I'm back in the house, filling up buckets at my kitchen sink. The last time it got brutally cold like this was in December of 2022. John was working a ton, but Sidge was my right-hand man for dealing with brutal cold combined with HORRIFIC wind. I have this video of trying to prepare the farm the puppies for the outdoors. (We ultimately had to bring the puppies in because it was way too cold.) And I have this video of preparing the sheep for the brutal cold and birthing babies.
Another really cold run was in January of 2019.
And you can link back to our 2018 winter which I believe has been the second worst one we've ever had (after the 2022 -20 debacle!)
We are constantly ending up with clothing items here on our farm, and I can't figure out who they belong to! Here's another shirt that showed up, randomly. And I have no idea whose it is!? I have contacted everyone I know. Ugh!
I often laugh that I worried about being lonely on this farm. I'm never lonely. We live way out of town. And yet people show up here all the time. Rarely does a day go by that someone isn't here to visit.
It's wonderful.
I just wish they wouldn't leave clothes behind.
We now have a family "text message chain." John and I try to regularly send things to the kids on this chain so that they don't say to us later, "You are always asking ME to empty the dishwasher." No, sorry, I'm regularly rotating my asking.
Pomegranate doesn't have a phone, of course, and Abigail's phone is just a "kid phone" that only works on wi-fi, but nonetheless, this is the main way we communicate.
John uses it to communicate farm needs. We send sheep paddock maps and a list of farm things that have to be done. Especially considering that he has to work shift work where we don't see him much during the daylight for days at a time, this is really helpful.
Well, we went from the 70's this week -- truly where we have been for months now, we dropped into the 30's and 40's suddenly. This means it is time for the wood stove to kick on. Believe it or not, this tiny little stove heats our entire house. (Our house is actually not incredibly big, but it is a three bedroom on two floors.)
However, JB gets mighty frustrated when the tiny wood (kindling) is used as firewood. It's very easy to understand. You use tiny wood to get a fire started. You use big wood to keep it going.
And so, John texted us this photo. Don't forget these things!
This picture was from the sunrise this morning. How beautiful is this?
We also found THIS picture on google earlier today. Look how bare the property was before we moved in (or maybe this was shortly after we moved in?)
This picture above makes me realize how much we HAVE accomplished!!! Sometimes, it feels so hard because we get so little done, but maybe we are getting more done than we think.
A very big topic of conversation around the country (and the world) is the rising egg prices. Suddenly, our $5 a dozen eggs aren't too expensive now are they? My friend Aliceson Bales wrote a Blogpost discussing WHY these stinkin' eggs have gone up so much.
I have STRONG opinions about the food and eggs and dairy we eat. It's hard for me to understand that other people don't. But, I have to remember, that eight years ago, I was living in suburbia and certainly wasn't having trouble buying chicken from the grocery store. Something has flipped in me. I don't want to be a food snob. But I just can't help thinking about what I am getting when I eat "cheap chicken" or "cheap eggs."
We are now at $7 a dozen for our eggs. Rising food for the chickens are the biggest issue for us. We are also considering incubating more of our eggs as so many people are asking for chickens right now. I am simply in LOVE with our eggs. I was eating some boiled eggs at our homeschool co-op the other day and one of the mothers said, "Looking at you showing off luxury food." Who would have ever thought eggs would be a luxury?
