2014-The Year of Crazy

As the hardest year of my life comes to a close, and I sift through the photos on the SD card of my camera (a random hodgepodge of memories I happened to capture), the flood of emotions is complex and diverse. Overwhelmingly, the feeling that pervades all the others is gratitude. I truly wake up every morning surprised and delighted to find myself living the life I'm living now. I never would have seen any of this coming even one year ago, and the changes and transitions my family and I have undergone in just one year are pretty all-encompassing. We went from a family of four to a family of five, and then our family of five sold our 1100 sq. ft. townhouse in the suburbs and bought a big old farmhouse on 1.5 acres in the country. Our minivan suddenly finds itself in a new role it probably didn't see coming, either. From short little trips to Costco, Target, and various parks nearby in which it acquired a thin interior crusting of Larabars, sippy cups, Annie's Organic Bunny Crackers, and playground wood chips to hauling ducks, wood chippers, firewood, muddy boots, fence posts, and goats, this little minivan is experiencing a bit of an identity crisis that (if I'm honest) pretty closely parallels my own!

Since I constantly find myself doing things that would utterly shock my younger self, and wondering how I ended up with this life, I've decided to chronicle my adventures in transitioning to country living. I'm constantly marveling at the things I see around me (Frogs! Deer! Mountains! Owls! Coyotes! So many bugs!), constantly learning new skills (building a fire, pruning, putting in field fencing, caring for chickens, ducks, and goats, and so much more), and acquiring new vocabulary specific to country living (I actually use phrases like "go into town" and "Do you need anything at the feed store?" and "I dunno...It's not an International..."). Most of these things are things my husband takes for granted from growing up in a small town and spending time on his family's farm. He's constantly surprised by the useful things I don't know, but through his patient explanations, I'm becoming handier by the day, and I'm getting so tough I can even kill some of my own spiders instead of outsourcing that job to my five-year-old.

Ergo, this won't really be a blog about how to homestead or how to DIY or anything like that, although I expect there will end up being quite a bit about what not to do. Mostly it will be where I chronicle our escapades, triumphs, and failures for the amusement of friends and family. I'm hoping one day it will be a fun way to look back and see how far we've come. In the meantime, I'm grateful to be living a slower life, learning, growing, getting muddy, and waking up to the most beautiful sunrises I've ever seen.