Keep Smiling, It Suits You

I believe in faking a smile. I think positivity breeds positivity. Negativity begets nastiness. Of course, these are all nice platitudes until you are doing some heavy lifting in life and you hit the wall of “I don’t know if I want to keep doing this.” Then all the tea in this big cup is not going to make a difference in my attitude. But you know what does?

Giving up. At least for a few minutes, or a few hours, or a day. Leave whatever is pushing back (as long as no one is going to die if you do).

Get a good nights’ sleep. (a trick I use if thoughts creep in is to tell myself “I’ll think about that later” rather than try to STOP thinking ,which works about as well as the word “diet”)

Listen to the ocean.

Spending some time with small children or really old people.

Get my hands in the dirt.

Bake and give it all away.

If after all this, the push of the struggle is still there and the pull isn’t, let it go. Kick it to the curb. Adjust my expectations. “Is it expected of you or are you expecting it of yourself?” Here, my friends, is where I struggle: the expectations on myself are much, much more heavy than anyone else’s.

So what’s a girl to do ? She keeps farming.

Farm and Garden Update

Vet visits for the horses were this week so off we went to Dr. Allison at South Shore Vet, Bridgewater for checkups, teeth floating(ridges filed down) and vaccines. Everyone is in great health, thankfully. Kali,our thoroughbred/Appalossa cross mare, is 10 this year, April is 6 and Amber is 4, and they are our miniature paint horses.

I run the Horse project for 4H and the kids and I were having a great conversation about large animal emergencies, and what to do. You cannot think of everything, but horse people are great at thinking up all kinds of things that could go wrong. And if you can’t think it up, you can find it on Facebook (heh heh).

Meat hens and turkeys are expected this week. And we finished the garden fences just in time. NO CHICKENS or TURKEYS allowed. or HORSES. I have caught just about everything in there before we fixed my fences ( I have to say “we” because Trevor, my husband, put a fair amount of cursing into pounding posts. I am giving my neighbors extra eggs this week.)

Last years meat turkeys ….handsome dudes

Manure tea is being soaked. Sounds yummy, eh? The plants love it. Humans not so much. I put a burlap bag full of composted manure in a bucket then add water. After about a week of soaking, I drain it and add it to all my plants for water. I will repeat that in a month. Gotta love animal poop, it’s full of great stuff.

Picture of the month

This picture of my grandson Owen cuddling a coon hound puppy is my picture crush. sigh….aren’t they adorable?? As Cape Islanders say, couldn’t be any cuter unless there were two of them.

Speaking of crushes…..

The Prairie Homestead French Bread recipe is currently my bread crush. I love the idea of artisan breads but gold for us is good white sandwich bread. Instead of rolling into french bread logs, I form 2 large balls and place in a bread pan to rise. I used to have such trouble with bread so I am super pumped to have found this recipe. I am hoarding it right now however I am baking loads to share this week. Promise.