Grow Where You are Planted

I don't have to tell you that 2020 has already been one heck of a year.  We are all adjusting to new guidelines, new ways of doing everyday life and a lot of changes and change is never easy.

Here at the farm there have been a lot of changes as well. The biggest change for us came at end of March. My farmer man's job of 25 years came to a sudden, very unexpected end. At first we were in total shock and it felt like we had been punched in the gut. Over the course of several weeks, we slowly started to realize that if this had to happen it really couldn't have happened at a better time.  Because of Covid 19 there was additional assistance for those who had lost their jobs.  This was a light in the darkness for us while we tried to decide what was next.

We, first and foremost, wanted to do our best to keep everyone here at the farm and keep the farm itself by any means possible so we started brainstorming.  My farmer man would continue to build his resume, and start looking for jobs and putting his resume out there while I focused on the upcoming hatching season.

We were blessed that we had added a new breed of chicken to the farm, Lavender Orpingtons. This new breed, along with our new chicken breed addition for 2019, Jubilee Orpingtons and our ever popular Guineas 2020 was shaping up to be possibly our biggest hatching year yet.

 We moved through April and May still waiting for direction as to what my farmer man was supposed to do while hatching season was now in full swing and looking very promising.

 

My farmer man is a very gifted and talented carpenter.  He built our beautiful home, our awesome barn and all the enclosures that safely house all of our animals. He enjoys working with his hands and the thought of returning to an office job started to look more and more unappealing. Thanks to some dear friends, they reached out to us asking if Scott would help them with small building projects since he was currently unemployed.  These small projects were a God send!  These projects gave him something to focus on that was constructive and positive and during that time he began to wonder if this may be what direction he should be going.

 Hatching season was HUGE this year. By June we had two difference kinds of chicks available as well as guinea keets and most weeks we sold out before the next hatch. It was amazing to see God at work and I prayed that we would continue to have a good hatching season and we would be given direction about a job and income.

As I was taking the daily pasture clean up of alpaca and llama beans to the compost pile, I noticed a large vine growing in the pile that had been left to compost and rest.  I was thrilled to discover that we had not one, but several volunteer pumpkin vines growing the compost pile and they were already producing pumpkins! 

As I looked the this beautiful vine, healthy, thriving and blooming, I was reminded of the phrase, "Grow Where You are Planted".  This vine had grown out of a rotten pumpkin that we had tossed into the compost pile because it was no longer good for decoration or for a treat for our animals. This pumpkin took advantage of where it had been placed. It had been thrown away, into a pile of poo and spent hay and straw and the seeds of the this discarded fruit did what they were supposed to do. They grew.

I literally stood there and felt the words. This pumpkin took advantage of the changes that were forced upon it and it is now flourishing! It is producing fruit. It did what The Creator made it to do.

This really touched my heart. None of us like change. We like to be comfortable. We like to know how things are going to go and where we will land....but change is necessary for growth and sometimes we have to be forced into situations where change is necessary. That pumpkin had to break down and rot to allow the seeds to sprout. All the while providing the nutrients for those seeds to grow.

That pumpkin is the epitome of 2020. Things change, things rot and stink sometimes, but through this change there can be growth if we just choose to embrace it. It may not be the plan or the way we think things should go, but if  we remember that the good Lord has our best interest at heart and He sees the whole picture, not just our current circumstances, we can step out in faith.

I continued to watch the pumpkin patch grow and each day I went to the compost pile it was a reminder that I needed to grow where I have been planted.

June turned into July and July into August and we were starting to wind down for our hatching season.  It had been our busiest and biggest hatching season!  We are blessed to meet the most wonderful, caring people who come to purchase our chicks, keets, and ducklings.  Many folks shared their stories of job losses, sickness and financial problems, often because of Covid 19, and we shared our story as well, offering words of kindness, understanding and prayers. Several times we were blessed with offers of prayers for our situation too. I am so thankful for the kind, thoughtful people God sends our way!

During this time, my farmer man had been blessed with more offers for him to help friends and neighbors with small projects.  I kept praying there would be clarity as to the job situation as we moved month to month and the Lord did not disappoint.

My farmer man has decided that he will be starting his own handyman business!  He thoroughly enjoys working with his hands, he is very gifted and talented, he is so very conscious about doing quality work, and he enjoys helping people complete projects they do not have to do themselves or are unable to do. He takes pride in a job well done and I fully believe this is what he is supposed to be doing. Our 2020 pumpkin is about to produce fruit!

In the meantime, I am working with our Etsy store, continuing to provide quality products that we use right here on our farm.  I am processing the fiber from sheep, alpaca, llama and angora rabbits and hope to have beautiful, home grown, hand spun yarn available very soon as well as some new fiber products too.

The Lord laid it on my heart, quite sometime ago, that I need to write. Being the stubborn child that I can be, I have been putting it off....until today.  I am listening to My Father and allowing the fruit of my 2020 pumpkin to grow.

Our compost patch pumpkins have done amazingly well....

What changes have 2020 brought into your life? What pumpkins have been placed into your compost pile? What are you doing with the seeds of your pumpkins? Are you encouraging them to grow? Are your pumpkins producing fruit?

Change is inevitable. How we react to that change and what we do with the opportunities is totally us to us.

I encourage you to embrace the change, look for opportunities for growth, support each other and remember.....be kind....you never know what kind of "compost" others are dealing with.

The Perfect Storm

Stress + Feeling Overwhelmed + That One More Thing = The Perfect Storm

Definitions:     

Stress – “A state of mental or emotional strain or tension resulting from adverse or

               very demanding circumstance.”

                         

Overwhelmed – “bury or drown beneath a huge mass, defeat completely, give too much of a thing to (someone); inundate.”

                        

 That One More Thing aka Fuel – “A material from which atomic energy can be liberated especially in a reactor.”

                         

 A Perfect Storm –“ An unusual combination of events or things that produce an unusually bad or powerful result.”

It wasn’t perfect, because Lord knows, I am not perfect, but it was the definition of my Perfect Storm.

I am not proud of it. I am ashamed, disappointed, saddened and very remorseful for my actions. It was not how I act normally. Not a loving response, not a patient response, not a Godly response, but total, atomic explosion with potential, catastrophic, devastating results.

I am sharing this to hopefully help others who are experiencing stress, anxiety, feeling overwhelmed or who also have had their share of Perfect Storms in hopes that somehow something good comes out of my experience. I believe there are a lot of us out there feeling this way and maybe if just one other person is helped by my sharing it is why I felt compelled to write this morning.

Stress, we all have it if we are still breathing and still on this earth. It is part of this crazy, wonderful life.  How we deal with it will make a difference how we live our lives.  I haven’t been doing really well in the area lately.

We have a farm. Just a small farm in the scale of mega farming these days, but still a farm. We still have the same concerns and stresses as a larger farm. We have animals to care for, land to take care of, finances to support the farm, expenses to run the farm and hopes that, somehow, we can maybe make this little farm something that will make some income or at least pay for itself. At this point, are a hobby farm. Is it why we started a farm? No, we started the farm because we both love animals, both love being outside, both love designing and working together.

We work off the farm. My farmer man works over 40 hours a week as Systems Engineer/IT Manager/Logistics Manager for a local company and he is the Fire Chief for our local volunteer fire department. Both of his jobs are high stress, putting out fires, figuratively as well as literally, and dealing with people daily, jobs. I have the Etsy store and am the Secretary/Treasurer for our local fire department. Both of my jobs are flexible and that makes it possible for me to work off the farm as well as take care of the farm.

We work on the farm. My farmer man aka “Manuel” is the manual labor….his joke not mine. He does all the really heavy stuff. The building designing and building, the fencing, you know, the infrastructure stuff of the farm. He helps with the monthly herd checks with the animals and any other time I need assistance. For the most part, I am the Farm Operations Manager. Big title, huh? It just means I take care of the day to day care of the farm and the farm animals. I have no employees to manage… maybe one day!  I just try to manage my time so I can take care of the animals, land/pasture, our garden and farm house. I make and sell items from our farm to help defray expenses.

Sounds perfect, huh?  Two people who love each other, working together toward a common goal, spending time together building a beautiful farm and beautiful life together. What could ever go wrong?

First, we are not perfect people. We are two imperfect people. Two selfish human beings who sometimes forget to put the other person first. We forget that we both have stress outside the farm. We both have ideas of how things should be done. We both have our own timelines of when and where we should do things. We both have our baggage from our past….past hurts and hang ups. We both have expectations.

This week, I let the stress of our crazy, wonderful life overwhelm me. The “One More Thing” was a comment made by my farmer man. It was not rude, it was not blaming, it was not anything, except a statement about something we needed to change about the daily farm routine. Let me explain….

My farmer man was helping me put the poultry up into their secure pens so we could leave to attend a fire department function. Something that is usually fairly easy for me to do by myself, but with all the rain lately and the flock not getting free range time daily, they are reluctant to go up before dark. I can’t blame them! They just want to roam around, eat bugs and lounge in the sun, but this day I needed them to go up so they would be safe and secure since we would not be back until after dark.

I was stressed. Stressed about the prepping for the function, stressed about getting it all done on time, stressed about getting all the farm chores done before we went so we wouldn’t have to come home at dark thirty and do chores, stressed about getting myself ready and presentable, stressed about many other things too….too stressed.

Then he made the comment, ok, I agree. Not a problem. In the meantime, five guineas decide they are not going up. Stupid birds. They can be so smart, so great at letting you know if there is an intruder or threat and then be so stupid that they fly into the backyard and spend two hours running up and down the fence, frantic because they cannot get back to their flock. Anyhow, five guineas, two of us and a time crunch….not a good thing. We continued working together, trying to get these frustrating birds herded into their pen….and he mentions the issue again….and I say, very rudely and sarcastically, "Yes, Dear". Not a proud moment. No excuse to speak to the man I love that way. He responded as I would have had he spoken to me that way.

It was the spark that ignited My Perfect Storm. I lost my temper. I lost my composure. I lost my grace and loving way I speak to the man I love. I lost me.

The hateful, hurtful words that came out of my mouth, directed to the most important man on this earth to me, I cannot repeat. Those types of words are not me. Not my heart, not my beliefs, not who I am. It hurts me so much that I said such hateful, hurtful words and I cannot take them back.

He did nothing wrong. He was just stating a fact. I allowed that to be an excuse to unload, explode, all the stress, hurt, anger and frustration I was feeling. It wasn’t his fault. It was mine. My fault for allowing the stress to build up, my fault for not asking for help, my fault for not accepting help when he offered it, my fault for not carefully and lovingly communicating my needs to him.

It was all my fault and I felt terrible. Terrible for the nasty, cutting, hurtful words I hurled at my husband as he stood there completely shocked, terrible that those kind of words would ever come out of my mouth, terrible that he would ever witness that kind of hate, meanness, and frustration from me, and terrible that, as a child of The One True King, I had allowed my issues become bigger than my God.

At that moment and every moment since then I have been sorry. Sorry I let, the stress of this crazy, wonderful life turn me away from my faith, my God and my core of who I am in Christ. The very things I usually turn to when I am stressed and feeling overwhelmed. I am sorry I ever spoke those words to the man who loves me more than anything in this world. I am so sorry.

I have asked for forgiveness from my heavenly Father. I have been a brat of a kid. I threw a temper tantrum because I thought my way was better. I thought I was in control. I thought I could handle it all.   I thought I had to do it all. Guess what? I do not know what is best, I do not have it all under control and I cannot handle it all…..none of us can….and we aren’t supposed to.

And you know what else, Our Heavenly Father forgives if we ask…and I know this in my heart, but my heart still hurts that I acted that way.  I am so ashamed. I was not acting like the child of The One True King. I do not deserve His forgiveness, but still He forgives.

It hurts, because when I asked my farmer man to forgive me, he said, “It is ok” and hugged me. He said we will get through this. WE.

It is not ok. It is not ok how I acted, it is not ok that I said such hateful words, it is not ok that you are willing to hug this terrible person who was so hateful to you just a short time before. It is not ok. I don’t deserve his forgiveness, but he freely gives it anyway.

I don’t EVER want the stress of this life to be an excuse for me to EVER act that way again….EVER.

I don’t know what stress you are under or what your circumstances are, but I felt lead to share this today.  We are not supposed to do this life alone. God wants us to come to Him with our stress and concerns BEFORE it becomes a huge issue. He wants us to talk with him daily about everything. The good, the bad and especially the ugly. He wants us to trust that He is in control and He has our best interest at heart.

I have not been talking (praying) with My Father on a regular basis. I have not been refueling my soul with worship (attending church or reading His word). I have not been reminding my heart of all I have to be grateful for (listing my blessings). I have not been speaking in love (sharing His love). I have not been doing what I know is right, what I know I need and it shows. That all stops today.

I know what, who, I need. The Father who knows our needs before we do. The Father who loves us more than anyone on this earth. I need to talk with Him daily. I need to refill my soul. I need to be thankful daily for the, oh so, many blessings I have been given. I need to share that love.

Today is a new day and the Lord gives us new mercies every day…even when we are the most unloving, hateful, ungrateful kid. Our Father still loves us and still wants us to come to Him. How awesome is that?

I am so blessed with a loving, patient husband. Sometimes we take those who love us most for granted…I think I have been. Not anymore. I realized just how blessed I am this week. I have a husband who still loves me…. hateful, sinful, hurtful, impatient, premenopausal, and emotional messy me. A husband who is willing to forgive, without hesitation, and is willing to “Do whatever we need to……We are in this together.” Besides God, my husband is the most important man in my life…..and I intend to make sure he knows that every day.

I pray that if you are struggling with any part of your own “Perfect Storm” that somehow my sharing this messy, ugly part of my life will encourage you. You are NOT alone. We all struggle with stress, anxiety, and feeling overwhelmed. We have a Heavenly Father who wants to help us. Who wants us to know that we aren’t supposed to do this life alone. Reach out to Him. Reach out to a friend you can talk with. Reach out to a counselor, therapist or pastor and talk with them. There is help for each of us, but we have to be willing to take that, sometimes scary, step to get the help we need.

P.S. I asked my farmer man to read this before I posted. It is personal, honest and ugly, but it is me.  This is his beautiful response I found waiting on the computer when I returned from church.....

"Nicely written….I love you sexy, no matter what  <3" 

And THIS is why I feel so bad for my terrible attitude and actions. This is him, his heart, and how he loves and supports me. He's definitely a keeper. <3