Saying Goodbye

The blog here has been quiet lately, mostly due to my beginning a new job and not having the time or energy to keep up with it as well as my freelance gigs. Things have been churning here at the Semi-Farm, and we've been busy nearly every day and relishing our downtime as soon as we are afforded it.
It all started with a casual hunt for a new career during my leave in betweeen times of weeding the garden. I was fortunate enough in this rough economy to impress someone with my resume and personality and was offered a job with a local bank where I'd work hours similar to my husband and, for the first time in my adult life, no evenings or weekends. The pay is much less than I made at my last job, but the trade-offs in scheduling and vacation benefits are well worth the little belt tightening we will have to endure. I just couldn't say no, so I turned in my notice and have been in training ever since, learning a whole new system and various policies and government regulations I never before thought I'd ever need to know. It's been invigorating, exhausting and stressful but fun.
In between commuting to Sandusky and Norwalk, each over an hour from home, for a month, we've managed to finish painting the chicken coop and now it only needs a shelf with some nest boxes, a perch and a chicken door and we are ready to go. We have decided to wait until spring to bring our girls home, as we can take our time with fencing and building a covered area for them to run in for the winter months. So our poultry adventures are stalled for the moment as the days grow shorter, cooler and, at the moment, more moist than we'd really like.
Yesterday we said our final farewell to our first garden which, for weeks now, we'd slowly been retiring to the compost bin as the last of our peppers and eggplants were harvested. I've learned a lot from that patch of land this year, including having  patience for the earth and myself and the ability to see mistakes as opportunities rather than failures. The earth is a grand teacher is we're observant enough to hear her over the hustle and bustle of our crowded and chaotic lives. When I feel like imploring, it's most often because I haven't made the time to spend outside, breathing in clean air and with the grass beneath my feet. Especially inside the shady woods, all my problems seem to drift away on the wind, hastened along by the soft rustling of leaves, whether overhead or underfoot. I'm reminded by the grace of the seasons that some times my greatest efforts are too much pushing and too forceful and if I step back and let go, magic will certainly follow. This is evidenced in last year's spontaneous tomatoes grown from playtime creativity and this year by the fully formed butternut squash that emerged from the brush that grew over last year's compost. When I try to hard and rush things, my impatience stunts my eventual progress. This is a lesson my over-caffienated life needs repeated, often and loudly.
Otherwise, life carries on here at a slower pace now that training is over and the garden laid to rest. I am knitting my first sock very slowly and deliberately and am enjoying the calm before the winter sets in, meeting new faces and adjusting to an autumn of ease and reflection.
As winter's cold chill threatens a forced rest indoors in a few short weeks, I'll be outside enjoying the leaves and the crisp fall air and remembering that,like careers and seasons, soon everything eventually changes.

A Song for Your Sunday

video from here

Coop De Grace

Perfectly Flawed

The days are getting shorter and cooler. The garden is dwindling but still blessing us with a few tomatoes and beans. Thoughts of future weekends spent digging potatoes are dancing through my head like sugarplums and I am happy, content here on my little bit of land where we farm the half-assed way only we can around our health issues and full time jobs. I am at peace with our perfect imperfections and wouldn't have this any other way.

After a little paint and a few finishing touches like chicken doors it will be finished. My chicken coop, one year in the making, will finally be done.

All I can say is that it has been a blessing to spend this much time united for a common goal with my parents and even though there was a lot of swearing involved and he swears it isn't up to par, I have loved spending this time with my dad.

Pictures will be coming soon when I bundle up to go back outside. It's not exactly level or perfect but I love it even more for all it's flaws.

Hope you and your family are enjoying this preview of fall together as much as I'm enjoying mine.

Changing Seasons, Changing Roles

Here at the SemiFarm, autumn is changing leaves already and changing lives. Only a week into September, we are already gearing up toward colder weather, shorter days and the end of the growing season. This next weekend I plan to harvest the rest of the chard and put in some broccoli and start some lettuce in a few pots now that it won't bolt. It's time to rotate the guard, so to speak, and get some cooler weather crops in yet if we can.

Our garden this year isn't the only thing that is changing. In less than a week I'll be starting a new job, my daughter will have a new sitter (one of the neighbor kids), and my whole life will have to settle into a new, hopefully easier routine without the swing shifts of retail. I'll be working a normal 9-5 (really 8-4ish) for the first time in my adult life. Makes me a little nervous, really, but I think it will be great for this writer and aspiring farmer to find some routine amongst the chaos. I'm sure it is there, somewhere, just waiting for me, the ease of a regular job with people and new responsibilities. Like my watermelons are hiding among the weeds, good things are just lurking where I can't see them clearly yet is all, but very soon we will see the sun again and all the craziness will ebb as we adjust to our new routines.
We've all been busy growing and planning to get in our new roles and finish up old projects like the coop, which is nearly done. This weekend if the weather holds I plan to paint the door and build some nest boxes for the inside unless my dad plans on finishing the exterior. Then maybe we can get some fencingng in. Hubs brought home a rabbit hutch for free from  a co-worker that needs a little love too and then we will have rabbits and chickens here on the SemiFarm.
Stay tuned for more updates as we establish our little flock this fall.

I'll Get Back to You Someday Soon You Will See

Thanks for this Fleet Foxes...thanks. That is all.

Helplessness Blues
I was raised up believing I was somehow unique
Like a snowflake distinct among snowflakes, unique in each way you can see
And now after some thinking, I'd say I'd rather be
A functioning cog in some great machinery serving something beyond me

But I don't, I don't know what that will be
I'll get back to you someday soon you will see

What's my name, what's my station, oh, just tell me what I should do
I don't need to be kind to the armies of night that would do such injustice to you
Or bow down and be grateful and say "sure, take all that you see"
To the men who move only in dimly-lit halls and determine my future for me

And I don't, I don't know who to believe
I'll get back to you someday soon you will see

If I know only one thing, it's that everything that I see
Of the world outside is so inconceivable often I barely can speak
Yeah I'm tongue-tied and dizzy and I can't keep it to myself
What good is it to sing helplessness blues, why should I wait for anyone else?

And I know, I know you will keep me on the shelf
I'll come back to you someday soon myself

If I had an orchard, I'd work till I'm raw
If I had an orchard, I'd work till I'm sore
And you would wait tables and soon run the store

Gold hair in the sunlight, my light in the dawn
If I had an orchard, I'd work till I'm sore
If I had an orchard, I'd work till I'm sore
Someday I'll be like the man on the screen

My Happiness Project

I don't know what I am getting into. I haven't even cracked the cover of the book and here I am committing to following a plan with a friend I know nothing about. Sounds and feels kind of crazy, but it also feels necessary, like breathing or water or even waking up each day. I'm not really sure how things will pan out, but, you know, that's been a theme for me lately so I guess I will go with my flight of fancy and see where it ends up.
One thing that attracted me to this crazy notion was the list at the beginning I had heard about in another book I read, a list that includes the caveat that if you don't make mistakes you aren't trying enough. I tend to focus so much on being perfect that it's stressed me out and landed me here, so what have I got to lose?

As soon as her copy comes in at the library, a friend of mine and I are launching our own mini book club with our own once-a-month standing discussion date based on The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun by Gretchen Rubin. My friend has just been tremendous and, though I have known her for years and years, we had drifted apart until recently, busy with our lives and such. I am so happy she came back into my life and she's been more of a support to me the last month than she probably knows and more inspiration than I think I could ever tell her. I think we both need this~ a dedicated shared effort towards being happy. Maybe we can help each other reach it like she's helped me get used to the idea that I don't have to be perfect to be liked and that it's okay to make mistakes. It'll will also be good for me to have a friend who holds me accountable for having fun, which is something I forget to make time for with everything that needs done around this place.

I can use a little more happiness and a little more gratitude. I think we all can and I am super excited! If you want to join our happiness project, you are more than welcome to~ just grab a copy of the book and I will let you know when we get started...just let me know in the comments what your email address is and that you want to play. Are you ready for a total surprise? I am!