Our year in review

Our year in review...

Our life here on the farm gives us the ability to do pretty much whatever we want. This year we attempted to farm... We planted 900 fruit trees, bought 9 cows, 12 sheep, and 180 chickens, Bought a acreage size older tractor, sprouted and planted out $120 worth of seeds. The spring was very busy indeed... Now as fall is upon us, and as this year comes to an end its good to take stock... We now have 1 cow (three went to auction and 5 died, needless to say don't buy day old calves from a commercial dairy), 8 sheep(there were a few casualties), and we have 0 chickens (absolutely our fault... we were totally unprepared) of those 900 trees NONE survived after being plowed into the ground by our tractor that has only run twice... I was able to preserve 5 jars of pickles and 2 of tomato sauce from our garden this year. The previous year I had a much better haul.

This year has been plagued with failure and has been very very hard on our marriage. Superman, Nate Dog, and Ms. Proper were baptized in August and we have been going to church ever since. This has brought about many changes in our home both good and sometimes hard. I am obviously delighted that they chose to be baptized, it has however been trying on our marriage to watch so many couples in the church be so organized and together and able to survive on nothing, when we scrape by on a very good salary and never see each other. Its obviously the way we budget and the things we spend our money on but it gets spend none the less... Money is a big bone of contention. The other large "bone" is the churches view that the father leads the home.. This is obviously true but in applying this to our home it has made things worse... How can anyone manage a business if they are never there? How can anyone follow the rules set forth by such a manager when they just don't work? He sets a gas budget and we can barely get to church and the mail once a week on it... i digress... Its not about blame its about change...

Now let me just say.. I am very angry.... be it hormonal or not I am one seriously angry lady... I need change in our life. I NEED to not be this person anymore.. I NEED to improve our marriage... I CAN NOT through another winter in this province. I CAN however be a good mother and take care of my children. I CAN school them and tend to our home without a problem . I CAN take charge and get them to help me more.

Change

... I choose not to speak of my husband anymore. Whenever i speak of him it turns into negativity and I need no more of that...

.... I will not set forth to do things i expect to fail at.... This will be hard because honestly i expect to fail at everything. I think for me this will mean making a realistic plan, pricing it out, being honest with myself about the amount of work it includes and the amount of help i will need, and THEN deciding if there is a likely rate of success before taking anything else on.

... I will get my home and children under control. We lack structure, routine, time management. We need to get a schedule that is both realistic and doable by all involved. It is MY job to RUN our home and that is something i seriously need to work on.

... I will STOP dwelling on all the stupid decisions that we have made up to this point and start making GOOD decisions, well thought out both parties on board decisions. No more... Well You made that decision NOT me.

... I will only take on today... I carry the whole world on my shoulders i worry about college, retirement, our next home, the end of the world, funeral costs... I need to work on today and that's it.


to be continued.... duty calls....