Category : Blogs

Sub Category : LifeStyle

When you live on a farm, there’s no such thing as a day off. There are animals to be fed and a never ending list of things to do. We’re in the middle of cutting down trees to build a bigger pasture. Our miniature donkey’s stall needs to be mucked out (his name is Caspian by the way). Harlow, our big black and white paint horse needs to rotate pastures and there’s a plethora of wood that needs to be cut, organized, and stacked for seasoning. My poor little house looks like a tornado hit it and my yard is overflowing with clean up and projects to be done. Don’t even get me started on my need to pull and stack hay bails out of the back of my SUV (yes, I really do haul hay in my SUV) or how my flower boxes need to be cleaned out and my spring bulbs planted (can you believe I haven’t done that yet?!). There is no shortage of work here. However, when we’re deep into winter and the weather suddenly turns into stunning 65-70 degree days... you put aside the to-do list and you take time in between errands to go hiking (and/or fishing) instead. When the animals have full bellies and everyone is cozy, theres no better way to spend a gorgeous afternoon. The work load can wait- or at least that’s MY opinion. My husband on the other hand gets grumpy over the lack of productivity. We have moments where we flip-flop on this and I’m the one pushing to get our massive to-do list done. Did I mention that we homeschool as well? It’s definitely a lot. Still, we put it all aside today and we found a hiking path that we hadn’t done before. The clouds rolled in but we managed to loose ourselves in nature before we were caught in another downpour. We discovered a vine we could sit and swing on, an incredible group of trees that held onto their yellow leaves through spring, and a secret entrance to a gold mine. We learned about hidden underground tunnels during the gold rush as well! It’s amazing how even though most of the forest lost their leaves and went dormant for winter... green things still managed to thrive. The forest is not as sleepy as I had once imagined it to be. We got in about an hour of hiking between picking up a new load of hay. I managed to keep my calories low today and even had enough for my favorite home-made chai tea. It’s dark now, my son is diving into school work and the temperatures are dropping tonight. I still need to slip on my shoes and brave the chilly wet weather for the last farm feeding of the night. Tomorrow I’ll be spending the day getting caught up on everything that was put off yesterday and today. Still... I think it was time well spent.