But I was anxious about this deployment. The last time Husband deployed, The Toddler (who will now be known as Bo) was just a newborn, Preschooler (who starts Kindergarten in the fall, eek!) was just a toddler, and I was bored as all get-out. We went to Walmart nearly every day - sometimes not even buying anything, just to get out of the house. We went to the neighbor kids' basketball and volleyball games like we had kids playing (I'm sure the other fans weren't as appreciative of my squirming, crying kids). I know, most women aren't bored with small children in the house, but housewife stuff bores me to tears. It wasn't like we had people over all the time so the condition of the house wasn't a real priority. My priority was surviving. I did what I had to do to get through the day. I wallowed in self-pity through the winter. I got up, fed the kids, fed the chickens and the dog, and then went back inside to obsess over my Farmville game.
When spring came and things started to warm up, Bo was big enough that we could go outside more and I wasn't hammered down to 2 hr feedings around the clock. I had researched getting into dairy goats all winter. I pestered Husband enough about it through email and Skype. Finally one day he said, "Babe, if you want to get a couple of goats, go for it, if that's what's going to make you happy."
So March 19th I went and bought three does, an Oberhasli named Moonpie, a Nubian/Toggenburg cross named Coco, and her 2 week old doe kid, Belle. I came home and fired off an email to Husband complete with pictures of my new prizes. I was SO excited I was giddy. Moonpie was supposedly bred and should have kidded in about a month (turns out she wasn't) and I had my first milking goat!
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| Moonpie |
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| Bo, MIL, and Kindergartener (when they were 5 mos and 2 1/2) with Belle |
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| Coco |
The first thing that Husband wrote back was, "So I see you called my bluff."
But he TOLD me that I could get goats. He said - go get you some goats if it'll make you happy. Well, that's what I heard in my head anyway, but he's learned not to bluff so much if it's something that he really doesn't want to do because I WILL call him out on it.
(I've never been good at poker, I can never remember all the rules - but I do have a pretty good poker face when I want to.)
The rest of that deployment was a mess. There was way more hardship than one person should have to deal with, but my critters and my family kept me distracted enough to make it bearable. I became much closer to God that year and I know that He is the one who carried me through it all.
So this go-'round I was anxious. I liken it to when you go into labor with your 2nd child. That first contraction hits and all of the sudden all of the pain and agony comes rushing back to you and you think to yourself; "This, is gonna suck." Only this time, I have three small children ages 5 and under; the house is at least twice the size of our old one; we have 7 acres with (currently) 7 goats, 18 chickens, a beehive, and a 40'X90' garden; plus anywhere from 10-20 dry (cows that aren't making milk right now) on the place. I knew boredom wasn't going to be a problem and so far it definitely hasn't.
But now I was worried that I wouldn't be able to handle all of it. So far, I think I'm doing an OK job by myself. What I wasn't expecting was how much Help I would need.
Help is a four-letter word (duuuhhh...) in my book. I'm one of those who is more than willing to lend a hand to anyone who needs it. I'll jump up, load up the kids, and go load hay bales at a moment's notice before I'll ask someone to do the same for me. It's a pride issue and I have to work at getting over it. Thankfully, my church family, relatives, and neighbors know what's better for me than I do.
Like this spring, a neighbor came over with his small tractor and tilling attachment and tilled up my garden SO nicely! I didn't even have to ask him, he was doing his and another friend's and just did ours while he was at it. That was a life-saver because after cleaning out the goat barn and throwing it all on the garden, my little gas-powered tiller wasn't going to cut it (it took me an hour just to try to make one pass!).
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| The boys were SO excited that they got to drive! |
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| Bo helping me plant a row of carrots (barefoot, of course!), the garden looked so nice then . . . |
Then, Miss E decided that she didn't like the wallpaper in the dining room and started peeling it off the wall. . . I figured I might as well do the whole room then. I realized that the hole in the wall (that we knew about) where an old stovepipe went was bigger than I first thought. It was even bigger than my second guess was too. Luckily, another neighbor and good buddy, Tim is a carpenter and was looking for work at the time so he was home playing Mr. Mom. He brought his kids over (the same ages as Kindergartener and Bo) and got it patched up (and all the other holes we found in the 100 year old plaster) like it was new over the next couple of weeks. Which was very good, because I think Husband would have killed me if he came home to the mess I had started!
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| Before (you can see 2 of the three layers of wallpaper that was on the walls. . .) |
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| After - I tried to pic a paint color close to the original paint color that was put on around the beginning of the 20th century. |
And then there's times like yesterday when Tim's wife, Leah sent me a text saying she was coming over to help pull weeds in my garden.(On TOP of spending several days this year so far picking nearly 70 lbs of berries and making jams. . .) Which was lucky since that was what I was already doing at the time. Not too many people volunteer to come weed, but Leah's a good ol' girl like me and she's never been afraid of work or dirt. My garden had gotten away from me since I had been so busy and for a time was under a doctor's orders not to do any heavy lifting and no aerobic exercise (yea, THAT went over well. . .). But I'm in the clear now and the garden has been my concentration.
It's great neighbors and friends like that that make farms work. It's the same way on the Big Farm too - FIL borrows equipment from other farm neighbors, and he also helps others (mostly us!) when they need it. No one can do it "alone", whether you live in the middle of a big city or you live someplace similar to out here.
Sometimes I think I'm alone working in the garden, but it doesn't take long for Mother Nature to make me realize that even if there are no other humans around, God has sent little beings to help make my work Work.
I'm sure it's part of being American that we like to think that we can do it all ourselves. That we can achieve our dreams with our own blood, sweat, and tears. Don't get me wrong - it takes all of that, but we don't realized that we can spend all the blood, sweat, and tears 'till we're bone dry and it won't do any good if we don't have God. He is the one who makes our efforts fruitful, He is the one who can take it all away too.
When you've got God in your life, you're never going it alone.
