25. A Lot To Be Thankful For

It’s a gray and rainy Monday morning. I have fed and watered the geese and chickens, chased a bunch of roosters out of the garage (idiots!), and taken care of Carl and Lenny, our newly neutered barn cats who were all about cuddling in the rain today, and I am looking forward to the first snow of the year, predicted for later today. Presently, I am sitting by the fire, thinking about this time of year, and the ubiquitous gratefulness posts people will be sharing on social media, as though it’s a competition to see who can be the most thankful.

I didn’t eat a giant meal with my family, and that’s okay—neither the Hubs nor I are big celebration types of people—but in this season of thanks, I have been pleasantly surprised by moments of reflection that culminate in my feeling warm, happy, and totally content. The thought that “everything will be okay” has been noticeably absent for the last couple of months. I don’t know if I’d been feeling down about the farm’s lack of productivity in this first year, or just adjusting to a totally new way of life with the shiny newness worn off, but these days, I’m really, REALLY happy that I have the skill to embark on this new adventure, the healthy body to manage the physical work, the passion to improve and move toward success over the long haul, and the ability to foster community through food.

I was even able to join a new winter market that meets once per month, allowing me to sell all of my eggs, no matter how many I have (and praise the god of egg production, I have A LOT).

No complaints in that department! And now we’re entering my favorite phase of farming: off-season planning. There is so much hope and possibility in these planning stages, and I am like some kind of planting pervo hunched over my seed catalog porn in front of the fire, circling new varieties I want to try, and making sketches of what I want the farm to look like in the coming year.

The house is finally beginning to feel like we’ve made some legitimate progress (rather than slapping a coat of paint on something and calling it a day), and once school is out for the semester, I’ll be able to really buckle down and get some of the small projects completed, like painting the bathroom and office/guest room, removing more wall paper, pulling out floor staples (side-note: there really should be a better tool invented for this task that is really just the worst), and clearing/cleaning out the garage, so it can begin to be used for what it was built for, rather than a storage unit for our furniture, which, most likely, is now repurposed into luxury condos for the mice and rats that scuttle around in there, leaving piles of their poo in corners.

Since I was able to FINALLY talk to a real person at the IRS, I tracked down our stimulus checks, and we’re expecting them in the next couple of weeks. Then, we can afford to finish the floor in the family room, replacing the half that was water-damaged by a hole in the roof with some matching(ish) planks. I was able to find a mill that would ship the small amount of our type of wood that was pretty hard to track down, in the size that is rarely created. Old flooring is so cool and easy to source and replace!

Check out the brilliant update the Hubs completed on the fireplace, walls, and ceiling! I am so pleased with the way it turned out. Below is a before and after.

Here is the realtor’s photo from the listing when we bought it. Note the strategic placement of the garland (hiding a crack in the crossbeam), the rug (hiding the rotten hole in the floor beneath it), and the beadboard (hiding the sickeningly soft and black hole in the ceiling above it).

My babe is amazing! Now to install and finish the floor, paint the walls, install the ceiling fans, and add the trim and quarter round. No problem!

When it comes down to it, I’m a happy, healthy lady with a great husband, a brilliant menagerie of animals, and a house that is slowly becoming ours. I wouldn’t be more grateful if I tried. Now if I could just get rid of one of these other off-farm jobs…

Oh yeah, and in this season of perpetuating a fabrication that pushes a white-washed narrative of our bloody history, check out this link that lets you know the Native American land that you’re living on: just put in your address and behold! I live on the land of the peoples of the Osage, Shawandasse Tula, Myamia, Adena, and Hopewell.