Vines, Homeless Kids, and College

My husband is up early on his day off.  Where is he?  Watering the vines.  But we are excited.  The tiny little sticks that had no leaves on them are now growing little buds.  It's hard to imagine that a little bud can get you so excited, but it does.

We have some neat mentors in this whole process, one of whom is our neighbour who grows around 30 acres across and down the road.  She's a single mom/farmer who somehow does this all on her own.  I admire her so much.  She has taken a liking to us and shakes her head everytime we do something new and crazy.  How can some city folk take on a huge project like a new vineyard?  Yet we do, so instead of balking at our craziness, she offers her assistance.  We actually caught her in the vineyard the other night checking out our soil and plants to see how they were doing, very funny.

But we've had some naysayers, too.  One of our pruners heard my husband talk about the vineyard he was planning on planting.  He immediately discouraged him.  "Don't do it.  Stick with your day job.  Farming is hard work."  My husband's response was, "I know it is hard work, but I still want to try."  I'm very proud that he pushed back all the negativity and went ahead.  This has made him come alive again as his day job is just that, his day job.  We are so grateful for the work and the income, but it is not an easy environment to work in.  His skill levels are not challenged the way he would like and that can leave him bored and prone to depression.  But then he comes home and jumps on a tractor and voila - new person!  So, I'm so grateful for the farm.  He absolutely loves it.  He said to me recently if he could go back and pick a different career he would have been a farmer.  Wow.

The other thing he loves about farming in this day and age is that it's all precision farming.  The vines were put in with a gps.  Each vine has gps coordinates making them exactly parallel to the road.  Being an engineer and studying this precision farming at the college, he loved it and appreciated it more than even maybe the old school farmers.  Not the farming my great-grandparents did, yet it makes me appreciate what they did without all the high-tech gear. 

So we had a funny change in our home yet again - two more homeless kids.  My oldest son, 19, kicked out the two little boys out of his room.  That was it.  Enough was enough.  There they were just like they were the last time, a couple of years ago, when my oldest daughter said the same thing, "Enough is enough.  I need my own space."  So, for the second time in a row, they had to pack all their belongings and move into the hallway with a pillow in one hand, a blanket in the other, and all their worldly possessions (i.e. bird nests, rock collections, fossils, etc.) on their backs.  What was I to do with them?  Last time we had them sleep on either side of our bed for a few months on the floor.  But that was when they were little, now they were big.  Wasn't an option.

My oldest son had been mentioning this for a while.  But I just couldn't think of anything.  I couldn't just build an addition.  I couldn't put them in the hall.  But I knew he truly needed the study space.  I could see that his mental health was at stake as he was truly feeling overwhelmed by all their stuff, the noise, the fact he had no place to put all his textbooks.  He had been a real champ at sharing a room with these little guys for so long.  How many 19 year old young men say that they share a room with a 6 and 8 year old brother?  I actually think it has created a special bond with the boys.  But I could see he was starting to struggle as he has been planning all his courses for next year, needing a quiet place to go to, talking to academic advisors, etc.  So when he came to me, I was weeding my (pathetic) garden (that's another story).  But this time, I didn't dismiss him, I prayed.  I stood on my hoe, closed my eyes and said, "Lord, what can I do?  What do you want me to do?  Is there a way to help my overwhelmed son?  Is there a way to give him his own space and still give my little boys a place to sleep and play?"  And then, suddenly, it came to me.  The loft.  I can move them all to the loft.  My other son, 17, is up there with my 11 year old.  But if I move the 17 year old into the 19 year old's room, I can then move the two little boys up to the loft with the 11 year old.  They are small enough for all 3 boys to fit up there.  The only reason we hadn't done that before was because they were too young to navigate the stairs in the middle of the night.  I was always so afraid they would fall down the spiral staircase to their death!  But they aren't babies anymore, they are 6 and 8! 

I told the 19 year old and he loved it.  He got the 17 year old and within minutes they had dismantled the whole bunkbed that had been taking up all the space.  He spent the rest of the day cleaning the room and getting rid of all the boys stuff (into the hallway!) and just like that they were homeless. 

I then approached the homeless children and told them my idea of moving them to the loft.  They loved it!  They took their belongings in 2 whole trips and moved in within minutes.  The 11 year old was not as excited to sleep with these little rascals.  He now sleeps on a couch!  We just don't have enough beds or space!  But who cares, it's working for now.  I'm working my hardest on getting my older ones to eventually move out, so it is a short-term solution.  The 17 year old also still sleeps on a different couch because we don't have a single bed for him yet, but again, short term and he doesn't mind.  So my house is one funny place.

Last night my 6 year old told me, "You are ALMOST the best mom in the world!"  "Almost?!" I said with raised eyebrows.  "Ok, no, you are the BEST mom in the world!"  What had I done to deserve the "Almost Best Mom" award?  I took them fishing.  I cannot believe that I did not know there was a fishing lake 20 minutes from my house.  I only found out last night at 6:30 pm from a gas station attendant while we were getting gas and worms.  I asked him if he knew of any good fishing places near here and he told me of a conservation area nearby.  We had been planning on going somewhere else.  This place was closer and way bigger (though it required a small fee).  My kids nearly lost their minds with excitement.  I actually did, too!  It was so beautiful and so quiet, no one around, but tons of little fish.  They caught somewhere close to 15 fish!  They had to release them all, but it didn't matter, they had so much fun.  So that is why I'm the "Almost Best Mom".  I felt like it was a gift from God to find out about this place.  Now, I'm thinking season's pass.....

One other funny change.  Our 17 and 14 year old son and daughter still have some school to finish from this past year.  They quit school a little early in May to go work at a greenhouse.  They made good money, but didn't get all their school work done.  We tried to work in the evening, but this didn't always happen.  Then the greenhouse stopped needing them so much, so we took advantage of this slow time.  I, again, was praying how to best guide them, how to best get them to get their work done, how to do everything best!  This time, the genius idea came to my husband.  He decided he would take them to work at the college!  Perfect!  They could work together in the library and literally be there working the same amount of time he was at work.  That way there would be no problem getting their work done.  At first they weren't too excited, but after we explained the logic of concentrated time, no distractions by these younger 4 running around, they bought into it and started to amazingly get excited.  It's been only 2 days, but they are getting more done than they ever did here.  That's another huge benefit of working at the college.  When he was taken away from the home full-time a couple of years ago, I was so sad.  He had less time with the kids, less time monitoring their lives, less time to disciple them.  We started to see the impact, but now, we're seeing the college as such a blessing with these older ones.  If he can't be at home with the kids, take the kids with him!  "There's more than one way to skin a cat," he said.  He gets to meet with them for breakfast, coffee, breaks, lunch.....he drives with them the 30 minutes, talking the whole way there and back about what they plan on accomplishing and then talks with them to whole way home to see what they got done.  I love it.  Another HUGE answer to prayer for me.

Today we water vines, pick up 250 bales of hay, pick up a new tractor (well, new to us) to go between the vines (our other one was too big) and maybe even go fishing again....always trying to be the "Almost Best Mom" ever.......