I hope everyone have remained warm this winter. We have had lots going on in our home with every member of the family coming under some sort of sickness but the days of spring are just ahead and soon we’ll be frolicking about making plans for food to be grown, buildings to be raised and fence to put up.

Today I am reminded of the calm that is winter. While some days are filled with business, days like today provide time to reflect. That is the dichotomy of life. Winter season is both harsh and rewarding. It is a time when life appears dead and yet the time for rest has been provided.

So many times I find myself rushing to get that “big farm” I had imagined when I first dreamed the dream that I miss the calling for the lot I have been given. These are the thoughts that race back and forth in my mind; to sell this place or not to sell. These are thoughts of my own mortality and age progression yet the calling is not clear and the path is unknown.  It feels like a crossroad in my life and if I choose one direction I will go one way, yet if I go the other direction it will have great consequences and thus a stark contrast to the first option.

There are many “micro farming” things I could do at this location and potentially be profitable. I am beginning to see a larger picture for buildings and acquired skills and their relationship to one another.  I don’t have to begin right away with my team of horses or 40 acres plus, I can produce on 4 acres. The issue is am I ready to make it such for another 26 years or more? That’s how long it will take me to pay this land off. The kids will be grown and my time to raise them on a “Farm” will have passed. Is this place capable of being that “Farm” to which I want them to learn the values of hard work, grounding to the earth, and the reality of sowing and reaping?

With the days becoming longer I am finding myself with a little more daylight at night after I return home from work; time to think outdoors where my thinking is able to present me with all the options. Sometimes these options overwhelm me to the fact that this is a choice that is not easy. I can think of countless ideas to provide income here and I can think of countless reasons to leave. It’s come down to the fact that I have the same number of pros as cons and I am locked for a choice.  Ten years I have lived here and all the while I go back and forth wondering, “Is this the year I sell or not?” and “why did I move here in the first place?”

I had announced a while back we made the decision to sell and somehow the closer we come to the actual event of putting it on the market, the more I find reasons not to. Thus my dilemma, do I stick to my word and attempt to sell the almost established mini farm to remove doubt as to if I should or shouldn’t or do I choose to make a life here and raise my children to adults and change my production plans to that of a “Micro Farming” enterprise?

Well to move on, I cut down the really large tree behind the barn that I should have cut down when I built the barn but I didn’t thinking it would be better not too. But over the months of limbs falling on the roof I decided it was only a matter of time until a really large limb fell through damaging the roof. This tree also was in the way of expanding the barn out the back.

I received several 20 foot long light poles from my work, enough to build a 40×32 Building on the back of my barn. The idea was if I decided to stay, I would add on to the barn and the additional space would be the Honey Business that would contain a Certified Kitchen to extract honey and I would then be able to sell honey retail. The other areas would be for bringing in the honey for extraction because you need a large space for staging to keep the bees and other insects out of the honey. I also thought of adding a portion divided off for my blacksmithing so I could produce my blacksmithing products indoors out of the rain and cold. It would also allow me to work after my day job because I would have lights. This is a big deciding factor to whether I sell or not.

But an equally big deciding factor is the issue of our house. It has always been my goal to build my own house. I want a Timber frame home and I want to build it myself to take pride in every step! But now our county has building codes and requires building permits and many regulations to which I know nothing of nor have the time to investigate. I know how to build, I know how to plumb, I know how to wire up, I know how to do every step (for the most part) but I do not know what sort of “Got ya’s” are in the codes! This drives me to want to sell and move to the adjacent county that has no building codes.

So Pros - 1, Cons -1 where back to where we started, story of my life. I think the only way to decide this is to place it on the market for an allotted amount of time and if it sells, it’s meant to be, if it doesn’t sell, its meant to be.

The Orchard is now at 3 years old, I have hoped that I would be able to expand it so that I could produce more.  This February I plan to do some major trimming to begin to shape the trees now that they have had time to establish roots. I have two very large piles of compost that I have bought and built over the years. I plan to spread this compost in the spring over the entire area to provide a nutrient rich bed for the roots due to the fact our soil is a mix of clay rock and sand with about an inch of topsoil. Over the years I have added small amounts around the bases of the trees but this year I will expand that base to prepare for the growth spurt I am hoping for.

We have a couple changes in plans for the gardens this year. We are going small again to make other work we are doing easier. We have two main plots and had a plot where we grew green beans. I am changing how I grow them. I will be going from a woven wire fence method to an arched hog panel method. In this way the bean vines can grow up and over the arch allow us to reach up from underneath and pick the beans.

I have been doing more blacksmithing lately and at my day job a friend of mine and I are putting together a little group or organization if you want to call it, for blacksmithing in our area. It’s called www.boogercountyblacksmiths.com and we have discovered there is an interested in the group which is another reason for the addition to the barn to hold “hammer-in’s ” inside which facilitates the mission of the this farm.

All these things and more have been transpiring but I must leave you at this before I write a book.

Happy farming to all of you.