We have just come back from a beautiful week away. As always it was a mammoth effort to get everything organised before we left. To make sure the animals are all in good pasture and freshly moved.
Henry and Elsie on their first flight. Elsie was not a fan of the descent....
Upon leaving I was a little frustrated with the basicness of our life here. I was sick to the bone with feeling like I was cooking and cleaning all the time.
But after a week away of easy living, I came back to the rawness of our life and felt renewed. Our funny little round home, managery of farm animals and baby goats jumping all over the place. The cacophony of bird song in the morning and the trickle of the creek.
Sometimes we just need a change of scenery to fully appreciate the blessings that exist in our own lives.
It was wonderful to go away and see friends and family. We had a good rest living in a town in an actual proper house. With grandparents on hand to help lighten the load of caring for the children. It was a much-needed break.
But it was good to come home. There is something in the rawness of this place that's seeped into my bones. Yes, it can be hard and frustrating but also we are more deeply connected to nature and the world around us. Life is slow here on the farm, genuinely slow. Our days do not race past us, instead, we live at a natural human pace. Feeding animals, pulling a few weeds, cooking a meal, stopping to have a cuppa and a chat. Sure some days are flat out, we have four children and a certain level of work is inevitable, but many are not.
In a world that seems obsessed with being busy, of having things on every moment of every day, it seems to be a somewhat unusual existence. I often hear people complaining about how busy they are, and yes there are days and seasons in which busyness can't be avoided. For many families having two working parents is an absolute necessity. (it has been for us at various points in our marriage) But that still leaves days off and time after work. But there are the same amount of hours in the day as there have always been.
Other times busy is a choice we make. It is a parent's choice to enrol their children in lots of extracurricular activities or to attend a different group each day with their toddlers. We live in a time where undertaking the necessary tasks of homemaking is easier than ever. We have appliances to help us prepare food more quickly, pre-made short-cuts like packet pastry. We have washing machines, dryers and vacuum cleaners. All of these things should be leading us to have more pleasure time. Time to spend with friends and family, to garden, to go on picnics, to read, write and pursue various hobbies. Instead, we seem to fill it with noise. With shopping for fun, going places to be entertained, with screens and rushing about. There seems to be a mentality that children need to go places to attend enrichment activities or they will fall behind.
But throughout history, these things have not been available as the norm and were provided within the home or through family and friendship connections. Funnily enough, people managed just fine. In fact, I suspect we had stronger communities and significantly less social disconnection and loneliness than we do now.
It is easy to fall into the trap of wanting to "catch up" before we choose to visit a friend or take a holiday. That we need to wait until we have free time before we put aside the time to visit. But time is never really free. We can always fill it with something, and the fact is we are never really caught up. A house will always need maintenance, there will always be more work to do. The trick is recognising this and consciously putting our work down to invest in our real-life relationships with the gift of time. For they are the thing that gives us the greatest comfort, enjoyment and security in life.
The rest is just fluff.
We have had five baby goats born this spring, and all are strong and healthy. There are three girls and two boys so far. There are more to come but I suspect they are still a little way off.
We had a set of twins born about a week ago, they were small and not all that sturdy. The bigger and stronger boy was born first and the smaller weaker girl came along second. It was a cold morning and the little girl was lacking energy. I watched her for an hour to see if she would pick up as the mother was quite caring to them both. But then I found her lying flat on her side and I decided to bundle her up and bring her inside. It was clear she wasn't going to pick up on her own. While William cuddled her to help her warm up, I milked the mother goat for her colostrum. Over the next hour and a half, I syringe-fed colostrum to the little goat. The combination of warmth and the colostrum gave her much-needed energy and I was soon able to return her to her mother. Thankfully the mother accepted her back and it has been onward and upwards for them both since.
This is the benefit of having one person predominantly at home in our situation. It means I can monitor the animals and help any that find themselves unwell or tangled in fencing.
It's wonderful to see so much life around the place. The fresian poddy claves are fully weaned now and are growing into big strong healthy girls. The steers are fattening up nicely on the tender spring grass, and the chooks are happy scratching about, though we risk growing sick of eating chicken soon.
I hope this finds you well.
Much love,
Emma
xx
