It's Real

So it happened - we did our first social media blitz and came out of the closet, so to speak.  Now it's out there.  People know.  Pressing the "share" button was scary, but exciting.  We are now a real winery, with cases bottled, barrels everywhere, labeling and bottling stations all over and people coming for tastings.

Saturday was the day we decided to introduce the world to Urban Tractor Winery because it was the last day of the Harvest Boxes.  Our customers received a complimentary wine tasting with their box and it was fun.  We even sold a few bottles so that was exciting seeing our first bottle ever sold!

The official launch is unofficially October 16.  That's when we'll host a bigger celebration where people will buy tickets and there will be a meal, a jazz band, tastings, and a big bonfire.  It'll be a fun event where we truly get to celebrate and introduce the wines to the world.

One of our garden customers introduced us to a local sommelier and yesterday she and her husband popped in for a tasting.  She's going to be a great contact to help us get our wine label out there.  One interesting thing she said was, "Write a book".  Hmmmmm.....maybe?  I've been writing for so long and have kept this blog all through the journey, so we will see if maybe one day it'll make it into print.  Perhaps a joint husband and wife book that we write together?

As we sat around as a family the other night discussing and brainstorming our launch party, it was almost as if our kids finally understood what we were doing.  "Hey, we should start a winery!"  Uh, we did.  "Hey, we should sell our wine!"  Uh, we are.  So, a little slow, but they're catching on to the vision and starting to see this is their inheritance, so they need to keep buying into it.  

As RM sets things up in the winery side of our shop, more and more of my house furniture is disappearing including my kitchen table, so that's made meal time interesting....

Well, the day has started.....it's going to be a very busy grape week I think as the harvesting process is just beginning...

Bible Quizzing is Back and Saying No to a Critical Spirit

Yesterday was exciting as Bible Quizzing started up again and with a vengeance.  The last couple of years have not been so good.  I can never understand that.  I see the value of memorizing God's Word as so critical, but for some reason not everyone else does so we don't get a good turn out no matter how many families I invite, but this year was different.  So many people showed up!  We have at least 15 junior quizzers and more senior quizzers than we've ever had.  It was sooooo encouraging.  

My younger boys had spent the last two weeks memorizing and were doing really well and then in the last few days, I swear, a demon from hell had been sent to them just to make them see it as pointless and stressful.  I really can't explain their sudden change in behaviour except that they were seen as a threat to the kingdom of darkness so they went from "I'm memorizing!" to "I'm dropping out" in one day.  I told them to keep at it and so they did, but not without constant bugging from me.

Then yesterday, they were the ones getting all the jumps and quoting all the correct answers.  It all made sense to them and myself as we reflected on the practice after everyone left.  They were so excited again and they were keen to keep memorizing.  What had happened earlier on in the week was clearly a spiritual battle to discourage them and attempt to keep them from memorizing.  There isn't a week when some kind of battle takes place.

This week I found myself unknowingly being the one who was critical or snippy.  The irony is I'm mentoring these younger moms and yet I was falling into the very trap I was discouraging them to avoid particularly with their husbands.  Seeing how that was not what I wanted to keep doing, I was suddenly keenly aware of every word that came out of my mouth.  I often say this to the kids as my mom used to say to me, "If you can't say anything nice then don't say anything at all", but had I ever really thought about EVERY word?  

This week that's what I have found myself doing.  I have literally thought through EVERY word.  Knowing I can cause tremendous discouragement and how criticism is never received well, I just quit cold turkey.  If a thought comes into my mind that is critical, then I just don't talk.  I catch myself and turn it around into something I'm grateful for.  If I find myself worrying, I realize how I discuss my concerns can then turn into a form of disrespect as I end up questioning RM on what decisions he's making or what he's doing, so now I just stop.  I try to discuss it very carefully as I'm uber aware now of how it makes him feel.  I've never  had this level of sensitivity before, but as we talked through a few things this week, he made it very clear how the criticism is hard for him and so I just stopped.  I don't plan on adding it back into my life!  Even though I've worked on this before and have seen major differences in our marriage, I realize I can still grow, still improve and why not, I plan on being married a lot longer, so I'd like to make it go the distance!

Well, I'm off to drive a son to school and start another day.....

Just in Chapter 1

Every week so much life happens.  I still regret not writing more during the summer.  We picked up my "blog book" last night.  The kids absolutely love reading little snippets of our life and who knew I'd been writing for over 7 years.  We read about my son's 8th birthday last night.  That 8 year old is now 15.  He's so big now.  I didn't write about what we did for his 8th birthday, but I did reflect on his 5th in the post.  The night of his 5th the cows we bought arrived.  Ten years later we used all the manure from those cows to grow our garden.  It was an amazing reflection to see how those cows would be used in our life without us knowing at that time.  For his 15th birthday, no cows, just a day of trampolining and flipping with a couple friends.  I'm in awe of his bizarre talent!

This week we are prepping for our the grape harvest.  This will be way more intense than last year as this year we actually managed to save the grapes with netting, so we have 5 acres to bring in BY HAND.  Needless to say we'll be calling all the contacts we've ever had to help.

We also spent the entire weekend prepping all the bins for the actual grapes to be pressed in as well as moving barrels around, cleaning and prepping the machinery and also getting everything ready for bottling.  We are also bottling we hope any day now.  We are waiting on one more approval on the red wine and then we order the labels and we will be selling wine.  That'll be a big day when we sell the first case.  Seven years ago when I was writing, I definitely did not see this day coming.

When we moved in to this place, we were still running an engineering business.  We had so much stuff from all RM's contracts that we didn't take the time to go through it, so it all came into what we call "the shop".  We've since gotten rid of so much stuff as he shut down his business and started at the college, but not everything was dealt with.  Over the last few weekends, we have, or I should say, the older boys have, taken EVERYTHING out of the shop and moved it into the bottom of the barn, then swept up all the mess and remarkably mopped the floors over and over until it looks brand new.  We are now moving in the vehicles that need to be fixed (yes, that's plural) and then the idea is we hope to actually fix them!  They've been sitting around for months because you can't jack them up and work on them while they are on a gravel surface.  Once they're in the shop, it'll be way easier to work on.  None of them have anything serious.  They are all "quick fixes", if that's possible with cars.  This might not seem like a big deal, but it's a huge answer to prayer for me.  When you have dumpy cars all over your property sitting there, you start to look like a junk yard.  How I hate that.  Getting things like this out of the way and cleaned up is a big deal.  I always want things done fast and when I want, but what I've learned is to be patient and trust and hope.  When you have as much going on as we do, you have to learn to wait.  And as a Psalm says that I read recently, you have to wait - in silence - that means no complaining, no nagging.  RM knows that I don't like the junky look.  He hates it, too, but one man can only do so much, so I have waited and things are slowly, but surely getting better.

We have friends who have an amazing home and garden renovation business.  The homes they renovate pretty much always end up in national decorating magazines, literally.  If we get brave enough, we're considering asking them to come by our place and give us a master plan for our place.  We could never hire them to coordinate the whole thing....we just want a plan that we could then do in phases.  Those phases might just take another 25 years to complete, but you never know, maybe just a 5 year plan!  Anyway, we'll see if we get our courage up to call them.  Every minute on the phone is like talking to a lawyer, you get charged!  So....don't know, can't say, want to hope.....ugh, I want them to come today!

I'm reading in Ruth right now.  In just the first  5 verses, 3 men died.  Three women were left with heartache.  The book itself is only 4 chapters long.  My niece's boyfriend broke up with her this week and she was left broken hearted.  As I read those 5 verses I could almost feel the heartache of Naomi, Ruth and Orpah and it made me feel my niece's heartache.  But as I kept thinking about it, I knew I wasn't really that sad because I knew the book ended on a happy note.  Ruth meets Boaz and ends up being in the line of Christ.  It was an amazing love story.  So I made a video to my niece explaining to her how "she's just in chapter one" of her life, actually she's just in the first 5 verses of her life.  There are 4 more chapters of her life to go!  There will be a "Boaz" one day.  Ruth didn't know who, how or when.  None of us do.  I am in maybe chapter 2 or 3 of my life.  I've met my Boaz, thank the Lord.  I still have lots of questions though as to how my life will go.  But, I need to give myself the advice I gave my niece - trust God to write the chapters of your life.  I don't need to worry or dread.  I can be excited about what He's going to do in her life and what He'll do in mine.  He wrote my love story and my life story.  I'm excited to see what will happen next, for my niece and for myself and our family.

My Life Should Be a Documentary

 After months of going off-line, I'm happy to be writing again.  I didn't intend to stop.  I just knew it was one more thing I couldn't add to my already-too-full plate.  Plus, I needed the sleep.  This whole market garden thing was exhausting.  But, do I ever regret not writing all the stories that came out of this summer.  

One of my last posts was right after our first harvest box pick up.  We are now less than 2 weeks away form our final box and all the way through our boxes have been full with AT LEAST 12 different kinds of vegetables each week.  Hard to believe.  I am in complete awe that the garden grew and produced so many different kinds of vegetables.

One of the few things I learned over the summer was not to fear, as I've stated so many times before.  One example was not being afraid of the weeds.  That might sound funny, but weeds really stressed me out and made me feel like a bad gardener.  I would go out each day and see how fast the weeds were growing, and of course, always faster than the vegetables, particularly in our mesclun mix bed.  We overseeded several mesclun mix beds and the weeds just freaked out.  But knowing I wasn't supposed to be afraid of anything, I just stopped worrying.  I knew I would get to them eventually and if I didn't what was the worst thing that could happen?  A weedy lettuce bed?  Who cares?!  The irony is that in a very strange way, the weeds protected the lettuce that was growing.  The weeds helped slow down the growth of the lettuce, allowing it to grow at the speed I could handle.  Without the weeds, the lettuce would have grown too quickly.  It made it possible to have lettuce in our harvest boxes longer than I anticipated.  It was another amazing example of how learning not to fear and seeing how even thanking God for weeds could be turned into a bizarre blessing!

Another fear I had all summer was would the garden provide enough vegetables for the boxes week after week?  I knew I had enough for week one, but what about week 14?  We were super ambitious in promising so many weeks of vegetables.  What were we thinking?!  But, without being an expert gardener, I just relaxed and trusted God week by week and day by day.  Those first few weeks were just basically greens, such as lettuce, microgreens, kale, swiss chard, spinach and radishes, but just when people were kind of getting sick of those, another vegetable would appear, like zucchini or turnip or cucumber or some other amazing surprise.  I always, literally every week, had a new vegetable to introduce to the boxes - you would almost think I planned it, but I never did.  I ended up having enough for extra boxes to sell and I always had extra food to give away to friends.  Even in the final weeks, when I thought "Oh no, the garden is slowing down, I won't have enough", a new vegetable would appear like tomatoes, potatoes or carrots and beets.  I know that even when the CSA is done, I'll still have vegetables for ourselves for the winter and I can't believe it.  In fact, my freezer is quite full already and I've managed to can quite a bit.

It was a hard summer as we worked a lot, yet it was a good summer.  My "middle" kids were the most helpful.  My younger ones mostly ran away from me whenever weeding was necessary.  My older ones were busy a lot of the time, but I had regular help from the middle guys and it was super fun hanging out with them listening to worship music and just always talking, talking, talking.  That'll be a great memory for me.

I loved the connections made with customers and as I've talked with them, most of them want to do it again - oh no.  On weekends when they couldn't make it, they would send neighbours to pick up their boxes, this in turm made more customers for me next summer!  Oh no. 

In May, June and even part of July, my kids would say, "Why can't you just be normal?  Why do we have to do this dumb garden?  We are NOT doing this next summer?"  But then, by August, we were already talking about next year's garden......and so were my customers.  They are expecting it!  Oh no.

But then, July 9, our daughter got engaged.  Oh my goodness, so many blog posts missed on that one.  She'll be getting married in June next year.  Right in the middle of gardening season.  Oh no.  We have a problem.  But, not going to worry.  If it's meant to be, it'll somehow work out.  I'm barely done this one.

If you were to see my garden now, it is covered in weeds.  I had to let it go due to school starting, but the vegetables are still there, just have to hunt a little.  I'm still in shock that my little garden business succeeded.  We spent so much money on an irrigation system.  I think I turned it on twice.  Every time I was about to, it would rain and always just enough so that the garden would get what it needed.  That was amazing.

While I was busy in the garden, RM was in the vines, designing equipment for the winery, doing his actual full-time job, or farming hay.  He was on one side of the farm and I was literally on the other.  I would walk past him carrying a load of vegetables and he would walk past me carrying equipment for the winery.  It should have been a documetary.  Our life was hilarious.  All the while, kids, chickens, cats, a dog and two rogue horses were running around in between us.  Our children will never be able to say their life was boring or that their parents were boring.  

Then, at night, many nights, RM and I would sit and say, "What have we done?" or "Forget it, let's just sell the farm" and we would look online for fun to see what was out there, but after our short mid-life crises, and there were many, we realized time and time again, that yes, our life was a little nuts, actually very over-the-top nuts, but it was exactly the life we wanted and the farm we live on is exactly where we want to live.

Because of what we took on, on purpose, all entirely self-inflicted, once again, our house was ignored for another season.  It continues to get more and more worn down.  I used to just long for cosmetic changes, but now I'm the one hoping for a new roof, a new septic system, new eavestroughs....what's happened to me?  Our vehicles are barely alive and we have little things that need fixing literally all through our house.  The list is so long it's laughable, if it weren't so serious.  This summer, as I saw this list getting longer and longer, I struggled, so as our anniversary approached, I once again attempted a type of fast where I prayed specifically for contentment.  What came out of that was a reminder to wait and to be silent.  These are all things God knows about.  

While I was fasting for contentment, RM was fasting "laziness".  He is hardly lazy, one of the most diligent men I know, yet he knew he could do even more in this area of surrender.  And though our anniversary has come and gone (that's when we stop the fast), he has continued to amaze me.  Instead of buying a whole new roof, he went up a put a few shingles on where they had blown off.  Instead of buying a brand new truck, which he wanted to badly, he fixed the wheel bearing himself and found a set of used tires for a fraction of the price.  The septic bed got another year of life by getting it pumped out last week.  I keep cleaning the house though it is unfinished in so many ways.  I try to overlook all the broken things and wait in silence until RM can get to them.  Winter is coming, the farm will go to sleep for at least a few weeks, though the wine will still demand his attention, and then maybe we'll get to that long list.  But, even if he doesn't, it'll be ok.  We have a roof over our heads and food in our stomach and a freezer full of even more food.  

Every day is full.  I will have no shortage of things to write this year.