winterville wildling: hi. how is it june already?

It has been a little crazy here on the farm the last few months. My absence here on the blog was mostly me staring at this blank page wondering, “Where exactly do I start?”

When I realize so much has happened since I was here last, I tend to get overwhelmed, write, and then ‘select all’, delete, essentially abandoning ship…

It’s been a pretty serious dry spell here, and in the country that tends to bring out the alarmists. Everywhere you turn people are talking about hay shortages, drought conditions, burn bans, and worst-case scenarios. I’ll admit, I was starting to worry too.

I found myself teetering between gratitude and concern. On one hand, I had a barn full of hay. On the other, I was doing the math. How long would it last if I had to keep feeding through summer? And if there was a shortage, would I even be able to replace it in the fall? Should I try to buy up what I can get now? Jeez. Eventually I just let it go, handed it over to the universe, and under my breath said ‘I will be fine’.

I always try to find the silver lining in potentially scary situations, so I did enjoy one unexpected benefit: not having to mow as much.

When we aren’t in a drought and it isn’t raining, I usually spend one to two hours a day tending this place. Keeping the wilderness from reclaiming it. During the dry spell, everything just stopped growing. The ground was crunchy. The pastures were tired. The mowers got a break.

About a month into it, we started getting the occasional shower. Not enough to really change anything, but enough to give me hope that the grass wasn’t completely giving up. Then the weather seemed to flip overnight and we got nearly two straight weeks of rain.

Now everything is green again.

Lush. Overgrown. Alive.

As grateful as I am for that burst of life, it has also meant I have been back on my toes. Between dodging rain showers, waiting for the grass to dry enough to mow, and trying to stay ahead of everything, life has been busy lately.

But busy in the best ways.

This farmhouse. This land. This little patch of Georgia. After my ex moved out, I realized something strange. All that time I’d lived here with him, I never once had visions of what the future might look like. Not once. I wasn’t thinking about how Future Me might be living. What she might be doing. What adventures she might have ahead of her.

I think being in an emotional survival mode for so long trained my brain to focus only on what was directly in front of me. Get through today. Handle the next problem. Put out the next fire.

When you’re surviving, there isn’t much room left for dreaming.

And that realization made me sad because I’ve always been a dreamer.

Over the last year, though, I’ve started imagining a future again.

One thing I’ve realized is that I probably don’t want to be managing this much physical labor ten years from now. For now, it keeps me fit. Healthy. Depending on where life and the housing market take me, I may eventually sell this place. Or maybe I’ll stay and simply pay someone else to do the work.

Who knows? But for now, the work is still therapeutic. Sometimes overwhelming, sure. But I think I’d be a little lost without it.

Case in point - yesterday morning a giant limb fell on my barn, barely missing my car.

Not a branch. A limb. The thing is roughly fourteen inches in diameter and twenty to twenty-five feet long. Basically an entire tree.

It crushed part of the barn roof and landed directly on one of my beloved mowers.

Naturally, I spent a good portion of yesterday evening mowing because the sun was out and it was somehow seventy degrees and breezy in Georgia in June.

Then I moved on to rescue operations.

I do love an excuse to use my chainsaw.

After about an hour of sawing, axing, sweating, and strategically jacking up the heaviest section that was pinning down one of the tires, I managed to free her.

She’s battered. She’s broken. She currently refuses to run, BUT (!!!) she sounds like she wants to…

A few wires got knocked loose, and it’s possible I didn’t connect everything correctly.

So we shall see in time if I can brig her back to life. I’ve already decided if she makes it, she will be named ‘Tank’.

In happier news, all of my houseplants officially turned one year old.

I did it.

I committed to keeping indoor plants alive and it was a success for the first time in my whole life.

One casualty early on, but the rest are thriving. so am I.

The grass is growing again. The farm is demanding my attention again. Trees are falling from the sky. The zoros are small but everywhere already. There were so many in the fallen tree.

I still need to cut up the tree enough to be able to get a ladder in there so I can tarp the barn. And I’m swamped with work the next several days. But I’ll figure it out. I always do.

And somehow, I’m still happy.

Genuinely happy. And currently making a healthy dinner for myself which has also been something else I’ve committed to and stuck with over the last year.