A Day in the Life

I thought my moments were full before.  I thought that my days were planned for me before.  Not like this.  My latest morning routine is a little over the top.  I wake up - early - I go downstairs to our scary gym and force myself to work out.  I then go back upstairs, have a coffee (best part of my day), read, pray (beg God for help daily), catch up on world events, maybe blog, and then get my warmest clothes on and go off to the vines to prune the concord grapes.  I hang out down there with the birds chirping (it is so beautiful, I have to say) for an hour or two, depending on how cold and wet I get, and then come back to wake up the family.  It's not even 8:30 by this point.  Some are awake, but most are asleep.

We then attempt our "regular" day with chores, school, eating, etc.  By noon, I'm wiped, so I may lay down if I get a chance for a few minutes.  Then I hear the plants calling.  My little greenhouse is ALIVE. I was getting a little worried because my plants were getting "leggy".  From what we had read we didn't have enough light even though I had them in a south facing room with lots of light.  It wasn't enough.  I didn't know what we were going to do as lights are quite expensive, but yay to RM for doing some research.  He found some grow lights form a cannibas operation (haha) for a really decent price and they are PERFECT.  They light up the room like it is 12 noon all day and they are warm, too - 1200 watts of light.  Crazy.  The plants are super happy now and after transplanting some of them they are now growing really well.  So that's what I do for the next few minutes - I go through the "greenhouse" assessing which ones need water, which ones have sprouted, which ones need to be transplanted, etc....it's kind of fun to see how much they grow each day.  As I walk by the laundry to the plants, I throw in a load, take out a load, fold a load, call a child to help, and end back up in the kitchen.  I look at the clock and realize - yikes, I better start dinner!

More kids are called and somehow we get dinner on the table - who knows how, but it always end up almost exactly at 5.  If I'm later than 5 kids' stomachs start growling at me.  It means they always want food later, but that's fine, 5 it is.  The evening can be more plant stuff, or imagine this, sitting down for a few minutes.....I've started doing more garden research during this time as I have a lot of questions myself.  Needless to say, my bed is screaming for me by 9.  Last night I was in bed, probably fully asleep by 9:30.

So a full day, every day.  It makes me wonder - What did I do with my time before this garden????

Meanwhile, my son is back at it starting to study full time again for his second round of taking the MCAT.  He was feeling so discouraged about having to take it twice, but it turns out the stat is that most people take it 2 or 3 times!  We're already starting to see a huge change in his attitude and his approach to studying and I think he'll do great.  This past week I had a follow up appointment with the surgeon to see how I was healing up.  I had no questions at all about the surgery, I just wanted the appointment to be over so I could talk to him about med school.  He had a med student with him in the room, too, so once the appointment was over, I asked if I could ask him about the best approach to med school, taking the MCAT twice, which schools to apply to, etc.  The surgeon was happy to talk and then the med student, you could tell, was dying to talk to me, too.  As soon as he started to talk, everything he said sounded awfully familiar.  He had mentioned he had a youtube channel on how to get into med school, how to study, etc.  I asked, "Are you out of Mac?"  "Yes....?"  I said, "I think my son follows you on youtube..."  Sure enough, I called my son just to see if it was the same guy - it was.  I had just met a very famous "youtuber"!  My son LOVES this guy and does everything he says.  He couldn't believe I had met him - hilarious - the world of social media is so weird!  But this young med student had told me to tell my son to reach out to him.  They are now in contact and have a funny little rapport.  He's been very helpful and to my son it was just the encouragement he needed.  Kind of what I wrote before about God speaking to us in our language.  It meant nothing to me as I'm not a social media person, but everything to my son, who is.

The funnier thing is - I now am a social media person.  I'm hardly good at it, but now have the crazy instagram and facebook pages for our farm.  Very funny.  My kids laugh at me as I try to learn to navigate it.  

The reason I go off to the vines each morning is because I want to make the trees and vine balls again.  The funny thing is I thought I would be making them for Christmas, but I'm getting orders for vines balls for garden decorating!  I love this!  I have to prune like a crazy person because the vines are starting to bud, so there is pressure!

Ok, off I go......

Miracles in My Language

So I think we really did sell all the hay this time...someone came in and looked at what was left and purchased the whole deal - I'll be shocked if it multiplies again, but I swear it did this past month.

Another thing that keeps multiplying is my little seedling room.  More than one miracle has gone on there.  First of all that we even have the space - it was supposed to be for my son, but it turns out he has created a whole little aquarium/science world upstairs, so he isn't even wanting it at this point, so I moved my little plants in there.  The way it is laid out, however, was just getting too squishy.  I only had one table and that got filled up right away with flats of veggie seedlings.  Then I found some boards and crates and made more space, but that also got filled up right away.  I knew I was going to need to buy shelving or something to go vertical as I had no more flat space.  That was when I decided to bring in a microgreen shelf with all the lights.  I had taken it apart weeks earlier and had set all the pieces downstairs. I put the  little clips that went with it in a different location knowing I didn't want to forget them or lose them somehow.  When I went to go put them together, the clips were gone - nowhere to be seen.  I searched the whole house turning everything upside down.  This was Satan's way of putting me under a cloud.  I was already feeling overwhelmed.  I was already feeling fearful that I wasn't going to sell anything.  I was always fighting every form of fear.  So I stopped.  I knew what was going on and I just prayed - By faith I said, "Thank you.  Thank you that I can't find the clips."

I told RM what had happened and he said we'd buy more shelving.  We had to anyway.  I stopped worrying about it.  I gave it up.  A couple days went by.  I knew I would be either dreaming about plants or kept up at night about something garden-y and sure enough, on Friday night, I was woken up with an idea. I suddenly remembered we had more unused shelving in the storage room in the barn - two sets of shelves that would be perfect for the seedling room.  We could buy lights for them and they would make more room for all the additional trays.  I woke up the next morning and had one of the boys go get them for me.  I re-organized the whole seedling room once again so that the plants went against the walls and so that I could walk in the middle of them to water them all.  Then, as I was sorting stuff out, I was near the place where I knew I had looked 100 times for the shelving clips, and out of the corner of my eye I saw the container they were in.  It couldn't be - I had looked so many times.  But I walked over anyway and picked it up and there they were.  My husband always tells me the German expression that says the devil hid it with his tail.  That's what happened I'm sure.  Somehow they were made invisible in order to make me upset, but I hadn't succumbed.  That morning that I found them I had been once again been feeling a little worried, not about the clips, I had surrendered them, but it came back to the garden - Was I in over my head?  Finding the clips that morning, having my eyes opened to the new space yet again for the seedling room, realizing I had shelving on site that I didn't have to go buy....these were all mini messages from the Lord for me that day.  On top of it all my phone was resurrected - that it another true miracle.  It looked like it had been shot, but the phone clinic at the mall somehow managed to get it working again and I didn't lose any data.  Anyone else would see things like that and just move on with their day without acknowledging a miracle had happened.  I feel like God speaks to me very specifically - in my language - even in the middle of the night.

I even have help for the garden.  So many people are in lockdown, but you can work on farms with proper guidelines followed.  I will definitely be needing teams of people soon in order to prep the beds and plant the plants.  The kids have friends who are so desperate to get out of their houses that they have agreed to help - I pay in vegetables!  I'm so excited.  I've also surrendered my garden many times now.  When the worry comes, I realize that it's because I grabbed the garden back.  If nothing grows, I have learned so much about transplanting, about each vegetable, what each one needs to germinate...it is so amazing to learn about each plant!  So even if nothing sells, I'm excited about how much I am learning anyway.

Hay miracles, seedling room miracles, shelf miracles, phone miracles.....I don't know why I ever worry when God is so clearly in all that I am doing and when He is so clearly talking to me all the time, in "my language".

The Hay Miracle

I swear our hay is multiplying.  We keep selling it and RM will say, "Well, that clears us out...." and then after the truck leaves or someone else comes by to pick up a different load, he'll go back in the barn and say, "Huh, seems like there's a few more bales in there!"  "How many?" I'll ask.  "Oh, about 200 or so, maybe another load."  Then last night, another load left, 300 bales worth, and he came back in and said, "Hmmm...it seems like there's another load still there."  "How many?"  "Maybe another 300?"  "Uh, isn't that what you said last time?"  He has said this at least 3 or 4 times.  It seems like our barn won't empty.  It really seems like it is multiplying.  AND last year, during the lockdown, we couldn't sell trailer loads of hay - the borders were closed.  This year, by God's grace, we are able to sell it to the US again which is literally a miracle of loaves and fishes proportions!  It's amazing! 

Also, though I did NOT sell out, I did get my first official order for a CSA box - this tells me I'm going to have to do some leg work.  Even so, someone was crazy enough to trust me to grow vegetables for them.  They paid us in advance which is also crazy.  I'm excited to grow vegetables for these people!  I have two more unofficial orders, i.e. they haven't paid, but verbally agreed to pay, so that's good, too.  Our next step is to make flyers that I deliver door to door.  I'm not discouraged.  The boxes will sell.  If God can multiply hay He can multiply orders of boxes and grow the vegetables.

Alpacas, Seeds and Taking on Feelings

My 14 year old is trying to save his money for two things - a new camera and a new trampoline (even though we already have 4).  He can't do the tricks he wants to do on the current trampolines as only one has a net and he needs the net.  I don't love this but I love how this is encouraging him to be creative and resourceful to make some cash as he can't have a job at this age and we don't pay well on the farm. This is also been the most amazing physical release for him as he heads out day after day for a "sesh", as he calls it.  He hasn't lifted a single weight in his life and I cannot believe the muscles on him - that is the main side benefit to his trampline hobby.... So we've told him to sell anything he can think of that is lying around and he's already made quite a bit of money doing that.  He also sold his silkie chickens that were born on the farm last summer.  That made him super happy.  And we told him to pray.  God hears the prayers of 14 year olds!

Yesterday has to be the funniest answer to prayer yet.  My oldest son has gotten to know one of his professors at school as he takes most of her classes and he has also delivered hay to her alpaca farm.  What a small funny world we live in.  She really seems to like my son because he's super keen in her class and gets high marks.  So out of the blue last week she asked him if he would like to earn some extra cash by helping out on her farm on alpaca shearing day!  Sure!  And she wanted him to bring a brother if possible.  My next oldest son couldn't go so he took the 14 year old.  I love how she didn't even question his age or abilities - a brother of my oldest?  He must have a similar work ethic and, it turns out, he did.

They came home after a whole day of alpaca shearing, 14 of them, and had had a great time.  And, unlike us, she paid really well!  So both of them made some good cash.  They were complimented for how hard they worked and how quickly they caught on.  I was so happy.  I just love how God answers our prayers and in ways that we could never have imagined and, as I always like to say to the kids, "in kid form".  

What I didn't know was that the alpaca professor is married to another biology professor and my son also took his classes.  This professor was the one my son had a small creation/evolution conversation with a couple of years ago where he actually took the time to challenge him at the end of the semester about an evolutionary slide he used in one of his classes that has been proven false years ago.  That same professor also saw that my son was reading a book at the time on creation and how it debunks evolution.  Of all the places to be yesterday he was in the barn of that same professor and his wife.  My prayer is that they were great witnesses yesterday to that couple.  Only God could coordinate that strange arrangement.

My seeds did come yesterday.  I don't know what a panic attack feels like, but when I saw them, at first I was elated, but then I felt terror.  I've been reading so much on fear and taking possession of the land that I half-expected the fear to come and it did.  I spent a lot of the night reading about each vegetable, what it requires, which ones need to be transplanted at what date, which ones are direct seed....whatever happened to just putting seeds in the garden on the May long weekend?!  I had to take a lot of deep breaths.  Then, I posted about the garden on social media and took more deep breaths....

The whole time I was doing all the reading on vegetables, my husband was doing lab/wine testing in the kitchen as the wine has to pass all sorts of tests before it can be sold.  We have a lot going on!  

My husband and I recognize that we are in over our heads, but in a good way.  We recognize that one of our patterns, in both of us, that I believe God is trying to take out of us, is the pattern of being run by our feelings.  Instead of feeling fear, I need to say what I heard in the homeschool conference session I was listening to today, "Christ dwells in me - ALL His joy, ALL His peace, ALL His power."  The difference is that I don't have to let feelings run me, including the feeling of fear.  If I were to boil it down to what I fear - it's a seed?  I'm afraid of a few seeds?  Not growing?  Or I'm afraid of a bug?  or rain? or sun?  These are all things I can handle.  

We had a good talk about it as we read Deuteronomy 3 yesterday.  This is the third or 4th time I've read it in the last few weeks and rereading it last night with the family was another good reminder - as the Israelites "turned" in a new direction, the king of Sihon came out against them - all his army - but right away God said, "Do not fear....."  So, as I turn in this new direction of the garden and my enemy of the seeds, the weather, the soil, the pestilence, comes out against me, I'm not going to fear.  God gave them into the hands of the Israelites and He will help me in my battle, too.  

No Fear, No Panic, No Dread - Take 2

Saturday was the next step in my gardening journey.  I put in yet another order of seeds - the numbers are astronomically alarming how many seeds are coming.  The first set of seeds, which are yet to arrive, hopefully today, were for the transplants.  Because there was no sign of them, thanks to covid delays in shipping, I ran out and bought what I could at the nearest store and began some of the key transplants, such as tomatoes and peppers, indoors.  They were the most critical as they require 2 months at least before being put outside in May and June.  The next order I made on Saturday were for the direct seeds, such as lettuce, radish, beans, etc.  Those can go right in the ground and will pop up all on their own.

What was overwhelming was the reality that now I'm committed....or....I'll be growing enough for 50 families for no reason!  That's a lot of lettuce and you can't freeze lettuce, so I better sell a lot of lettuce now.  The other thing that hit me was how critical the garden prep is going to be now.  We can't just hope that the garden is going to get raked and that's it.  No....we are about to start the back breaking work of garden bed prep on a level we've never done.  We will be adding soil amendments, making new beds, buying row cover, mulch, compost, etc.  I understand why organic food of any kind that you buy locally costs more - we've already invested a lot of money and that's not including the labour costs.  I'm going to be ok when people see what the prices will be - I'm not doing all this for free.

Many years ago I read in Deuteronomy 20, "Do no fear or panic or be in dread....let not your heart faint....."  I have to admit, those feelings come up regularly around here, but I'm learning to recognize them and I fight against them all the time.  It also says, "Is there any man who is fearful and fainthearted?  Let him go back to his house, lest he make the heart of his fellows melt like his own."  What a great verse!  I can definitely be fearful and fainthearted, but when I'm around my kids, I sound super brave.  I have to!  If I sound fearful and fainthearted, then they are as well.  I admit to them that I do not have it all together and that I can be afraid, but I mostly try to sound like a cheerleader.  I try to get them all excited about the summer, even about the work.  I am excited about the work, mostly!

RM and I talk about financial freedom all the time.  We could have it tomorrow if we just sold the farm.  We could easily move into a smaller place without land, be debt-free, and then.......and then, what?  Sit around wishing we had a farm?  We know, in a way, we've chosen the harder life, but I'm ok with that.  We have 9-10 more years of child-rearing.  It is going so fast.  We have basically finished with the older 4.  They are starting their own lives, finishing school, moving on to relationships, work, etc.  We had the farm for a lot of their lives and we are quite convinced it helped make them who they are, so we are willing to invest another ten years, with a hard work farming lifestyle for the next four and we are trusting the Lord for health and the ability to manage that.

We watched a homeschool conference this past week and watched one speaker in particular say that whatever you plan, whatever you dream, just hold it out with an open hand - do not demand that it has to go a certain way.  So that is what we do.  We have a lot of plans and dreams, with the garden, the farm, the next ten years, but......we hold on to it very loosely.  We offer it all up to the Lord and say, "Lord willing....." and if He wants to change our plans, our directions, so be it.  It's the only way to live.

So, Lord willing, the seeds will come today, then I will be ordering trays and cells for more transplants.  Then I will plant those seeds and then we will start the garden prep and the ordering for all that.  I hope to make the big announcement that we are doing all of this on social media this week which will then start the beginning of customers.  Actually I have 2 customers already just because I've been talking about it with whoever will listen to me, so that's exciting!

No fear, no panic, no dread - just like it was for me years ago, who knows what I was dreading then, I will still work on keeping the fear, panic and dread at bay with the Lord's help.

I'm Just the Gardner's Assistant

I've been stuck in Deuteronomy now for weeks, in a good way.  Because it has been impacting me so profoundly we decided as a family to read it verse by verse every night until we get through the book.  Yesterday is was Deuteronomy 1 as a family, but chapter 11 for me just in my personal study.  What jumped out at me was a verse I've used more than once as a "New Year's" verse, but reading it yesterday - in context - (isn't that so critical?) made me realize it might actually be an "Agricultural New Year's" verse!  Here's the context:

"The land you are entering to take over is not like the land of Egypt, from which you have come, where you planted your seed and irrigated it by foot as in a vegetable garden. 11 But the land you are crossing the Jordan to take possession of is a land of mountains and valleys that drinks rain from heaven. 12 It is a land the Lord your God cares for; the eyes of the Lord your God are continually on it from the beginning of the year to its end...then I will send rain on your land in its season, both autumn and spring rains, so that you may gather in your grain, new wine and olive oil. 15 I will provide grass in the fields for your cattle, and you will eat and be satisfied."

This passage was such an encouragement to me.  It speaks of everything I'm concerned about, the very issues I bring up with my husband all the time - what about irrigation?  how will we irrigate our garden, as that was one of our failures over the last few garden attempts.  Yet, again, the Lord is so specific in His care for the Israelites.  He even assures them about their irrigation.  In Egypt they "irrigated it by foot", which I'm assuming meant they had to come up with a manual way of doing it as they couldn't rely on the rain.  This past week I read that very thing in a gardening book.  It said that if you rely on rain, your garden will suffer as climate change has made rain unreliable now.  In other words, you have to establish some form of  "irrigation by foot" - i.e., sprinklers or drip watering systems.  Yikes.  Do you know how much work that is or how much expense that is?  You would have to be an engineer or have some kind of unlimited budget to figure out a system of watering a large amount of space.....my head can barely get around it.  But then, God, in such a practical way reassures the Israelites EVEN IN THEIR WATERING, that He will care for them, "But the land you are crossing the Jordan to take possession of (crossing that river again) is a land of mountains and valleys THAT DRINKS RAIN FROM HEAVEN.  I couldn't believe it when I read it.  He cares about the irrigation of my garden.  He bothers to include one of their concerns.  Does this mean I don't set up a sprinkler system?  To be honest, we were planning on it, but what this verse tells me, is to stop worrying about all the things I worry about, even watering the garden.  He will help us even in the irrigation of it!  And, as the epic Gardener, of all gardeners, He even includes phrases like, "I will send rain on your land in its season, both autumn and spring rains, so that you may gather in your grain, new wine and olive oil".  Crazy.  I've been purchasing seeds that say "early growth" and "later growth".  Both types of seeds will need the spring rain and the autumn rain.  God knows there are different times rain will be more needed because He designed the seeds!  He knows how to garden better than I do.  

Here is the verse I normally use for a new year, "...it is a land the Lord your God cares for, the eyes of the Lord your God are continually on it from beginning of the year to its end." Of course it could be referring to January - the way we view our calendar, but the fact it talks about the autumn and spring rains makes me think He is referring to the agricultural year - from the planting to the harvesting and then even to the time when the garden rests throughout the winter.  He is watching over the gardens of the Israelites ALL YEAR LONG.  That is so cool!

I am just so amazed at how God continues to take every single thing I have a concern about and He just keeps saying, "No, I've got that under control, and that, and that, and that....."  Anything I can think of that I'm afraid of or worried about He reminds me of His abilities to control everything - including the rain and how my garden will be irrigated.

I'm running out of the things to worry about so I guess I better just be quiet and watch the Gardener work all things out.  Turns out I'm just His assistant.

Two Weeks Later

I'm nearly two weeks from post-surgery.  Turns out I had to have two surgeries back to back.  What was supposed to be routine surgery, where a "lipoma" was removed, ended up becoming a hematoma surgery as I guess they missed cauterizing a blood vessel after the first surgery.  I had no idea what was going on.  All I knew was I woke up from surgery one and was asked by the nurse what my pain levels were. "Four," I said.  Then suddenly, I said, "No.....seven, eight....?"  She quickly went and looked at my back and called the doctor.  I guess the broken blood vessel was creating quite the mess under my skin, blood was pooling and raising into something not good.  This is where I'm just so grateful.  Somehow the doctor and the whole surgical team was still there.  Somehow they managed to organize everything quickly and I, unbelievably, went back into surgery to fix the hematoma.  What if I had been at home?  So grateful I wasn't.  So all went well and I slept the day away.  I ended up with a 5 inch incision and bruising all over, but not even two weeks later and I'm pretty much back to normal.  I think I have a health angel.

Now that that is, literally, behind me, I'm back at garden planting.  I have lots of transplants going and am waiting anxiously for the seeds we ordered a while ago.  Hopefully they come soon.

RM is in the vines pruning.  I will go in today, tying up what he pruned.  All the kids have been asked to give 2-4 hours a day starting this week.  This will be a whole family affair otherwise we won't get in done in time.  Then, I start in the concords and I'll begin my vine crafts again.  

This will probably be the week I start selling CSA boxes.  I've written the blurb explaining what it is and am excited to see what comes of it.  I have yet to post it though.  If I post it, then people will actually respond or will they?  or won't they?  See, I'm still kind of freaking out in my mind.  I still can't believe this could actually happen.  I still think we're half nuts or maybe entirely nuts, but every time I think or say that, I'll read another verse on fear or my husband will stop me and remind me about my lack of faith, so I plow ahead....haha, get it?  Plow?  So many great farming phrases....how hard can it be to grow a garden, really.....

Easter was a lovely day, beautiful sun and warmer than it had been, but it has become so awful to not connect with family.  How long can this go on?

We know we are entering potentially the last season of being 10 people.  Older kids are getting more serious in their relationships and we know life is going to change soon, so we are trying to enjoy and embrace these final days and months just the ten of us.  I'm praying that I will live in the moment these days, not looking too far ahead, or wishing for this or that to happen, or even dreading or worrying about the future.  I recognize each day is a gift and I want to try to appreciate each moment.

I will say the pandemic has allowed me to let go of certain things that used to stress me out, like a messy house.  I still long for order, but this past week when the lockdown was extended, my 10 year old wanted to move all the toys out of the toy room under the stairs so he could have a little "nook"/bedroom.  "Sure!  Why not?" I said.  This means all my toy crates are all over the place now as they really have no home otherwise, but who cares?  No one is coming over anyway.  And so that is a great example of letting stuff go that would normally make me crazy.  And now, the funny thing is, he's moved in there and has slept in there for days.  

What a funny house we have.  Entering the final stage of school before the summer....man, time flies....