abby « Robin Writes

Most days, we get up with the sun and drink coffee until our brains start to function. We take care of the dog and cat, of course, and I pick up all the miscellaneous stuff from the night before, put away dishes, make the bed, all the mundane things that most people do every day.

Of course, I get to do some of that from the deck while the sun rises . . .

I do my PT and make breakfast and check on the herbs and seedlings, burn trash, and again, all those boring things everyone has to do.

And I work on business-y stuff.

After that, we have a project. Or ten.

Yesterday, I put on my shiny new red boots—which aren’t so shiny anymore—and tromped out to our newly plowed garden.

Damn, it’s big.

And before anyone mentions that it’s TOO big, let me tell you that it does take quite a lot of rows to feed two people. And trade with neighbors. Or even sell some at a local market if it comes to that.

We’re not using it all this year. We’ve doubled the size from last year, particularly since we’re here fulltime now. Of course, this year we’ll actually have more of a return, thanks to the FUD fence.

I’ll leave it to your imagination to interpret that.

Yesterday was the start of the FUD fence: twenty-some short posts in the ground, topped with 10-foot-tall poles, surrounding about 330 linear feet of garden.

Later today, the poly-something fencing arrives; we’ll attach it to the poles and be ready to roll.

In a manner of speaking. It’s not quite that simple and, I’m sure like most things, will take 2-3 times as long as we estimate. But this year, NO DAMN DEER will eat my green beans!

In other news, the peach trees we planted last fall are fully leafed out and the apple trees are budding; and I think—going out on a limb here—I’m going to have more than five blueberries this year! We’re also cultivating a wild raspberry patch. Have a ton of them out here, but these are all grouped together right by the fruit trees. And yes, we’re fencing those in too.

Once the FUD fence is finished and the garden planted, we’ll move on to the next project: more fencing. Our perimeter fence has a couple gaps on one side, some missing hogwire on another, and is completely non-existent on a third side.

Then, of course, there’s the dock and shelter by the pond, the kitchen shelter and barbeque at the campsite, the barn itself, the pasture fence, clearing, burning, and a few other things . . .

So we made the big move out to the middle of nowhere. Okay, there’s a “town” of about 200 or so within a few miles, and another of 5000 about 15 miles away. But here in the middle of our 35 acres, it sure SEEMS like that!

The moving went, well, like moving goes: long and exhausting. Even though we did move a lot of stuff over the last few months, the final push still meant finding space for everything in the house.

Turns out, I’m very thankful for the dungeon. Er, lean-to. Once we cleaned it out and started tiling the floor, it looks much better, enough so that I can store some things down there. Like extra liquor. Not sure how we accumulated all that…

Now that I’m mostly unpacked, I can tell you that moving to a homestead isn’t all about a gorgeous sunrise on the deck with your coffee, and hiking through the woods soaking up the warm weather. Or planning a garden, or measuring for your pasture fence.

Well, okay, it is, but likely while you’re gulping down coffee you’re also keeping an eagle eye on the dog so an, um, eagle or something doesn’t swoop down and grab her. And then you’re dodging boxes while trying to decide where to put what. And find stuff.

You know you have to get seeds started, and the garden plowed, and the pasture seeded—you’ve already scheduled that for Tuesday, based on the forecast, but who knows?

And then you realize that your office will actually be able to be worked in if you just stop for a moment and put together that new file cabinet you bought.

This includes an eight-pound bag of “hardware” and a part labelled C4. You realize what that part’s for when you open the directions book—not booklet, book—and decide maybe you’ll just leave your mess on the living room floor and go into the office, file cabinet be damned.

After going over your to-do list, all 124 items, you decide to just tool around on Amazon for a while…

It’ll still be nice out tomorrow, right?

See, that’s the thing—you just don’t know what tomorrow will bring. It could be snow—God forbid—or a storm or too much wind for seeding. Maybe you pull a muscle today and can barely walk tomorrow. On a homestead or farm, things need to be done NOW. You can’t just tell yourself that you’ll “do it later,” you don’t get to take breaks all day long whenever the urge strikes.

Alright, you can cut yourself a little slack, especially at first, because sometimes you’ll wonder when you’re ever going to have time for fun stuff.

You DO need to make time for all that, to do things you enjoy. But you better enjoy the farming or homestead life, or you won’t last long. Me, I can’t wait to start planting, but it’s also (near) the first of the month and the end of the first quarter, so I have work to do. The point is that it’s the PLANTING that I like to do—among other things.

Entertainment, too, can come unexpectedly. For instance, I’ll sure enough be entertained when my husband gets back from the barn and sees the mess of file cabinet pieces I left there…