Last night we were looking through RM's phone at all his pictures. Sometimes pictures are taken and you don't realize the significance of them until much later. He had a picture of our "winery" from a year ago and it was amazing to see the difference from last year to this year. Last year he had a barrel or two, a bin or two, a small fruit press we used by hand to press all the grapes, a couple of cars, a milling machine, all his shelving, all shoved into that one little space - what a mess it was! What a difference a year makes. Now it has grown to 21 barrels, many bins, a huge 80, 000 tons of pressure/press that he designed by himself, all the shelving and junk is gone (moved to the bottom of the barn out of sight), the cars are out (still need fixing, but that's another matter), the milling machine is moved....the floors are even clean. I cannot believe the difference. Yet, when you don't look back, all you see is the mess you're in. You just can't look back one day, one week, or even a month. You really have to step back at least a year to see how far you've come. And, RM heard this week, don't compare yourself to others. Instead, compare yourself to yourself, from a year ago - how far have you come? We have definitely changed from one year to another and each year we accomplish new things. Yet, we forget and we feel down or discouraged because we compare ourselves to others and it doesn't seem like we're getting anything done. But we are! That short little look back was so helpful!
We also held a mini "tasting" over the weekend as the weather was so bad and we couldn't harvest. We had one friend in particular come by that we hadn't seen in a long time. She's known us as long as we've lived here and has followed our story. I always tend to apologize for how things look, the mess, the lack of having things all together, etc., etc., but she said, "But you're doing it! You aren't waiting to have it all together! Look where you've come from!" I always pray that RM will feel some form of encouragement, but that day I was the one who was encouraged. To hear her say those things was great, just what we needed to hear.
Another very unexpected visitor was a friend RM used to know from 40 years ago from Winnipeg! She and her husband farm 2500 acres in Manitoba and their harvest also hadn't gone well due to weather so they decided to take their new corvette for a road trip. What a beautiful car! Out they came to Ontario and stopped in for a tasting as they had heard through Facebook that we had something going on. In his mind, we were living the dream that he wanted - to retire in Niagara on a winery and farm grapes, not wheat. He was ready to buy our farm. His wife said he was all talk, so not gonna happen, but it still made me reflect that even though it isn't picture perfect, it is wonderful living here, wonderful to farm, wonderful to experience the ups and downs of farming, to see how it all comes together, to work alongside the kids, friends, grandparents, to have so many conversations all day long, to work through the hardships of stuck equipment, to figuring out how to bring in the harvest.....we are learning so much! Our kids are learning so much!
I read my "verse of the day" that comes in my phone each day and it was perfect, "Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, For I will yet praise him, my Saviour and my God." Psalm 42:11 So, though we have days where we are downcast and disturbed, I feel like we have so many reasons to praise God and we are constantly reminded to put our hope in God.
This week we'll have many reasons to keep trusting Him as we have two more blocks of grapes that have to come in and we're running out of time with the weather. We have a very stuck skid steer in the vines and no way to get it out with the weather we're having, but we must keep trusting.
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