My Quarantine Week, April 26-May 2

People have often told me that they would love to live “the simple life”. The implication is always… “I’d love to live the simple life, like you do”. At least that’s what I’ve always inferred.

My reply was usually to smile and nod while a flurry of thoughts ran through my brain:

• “If you only knew what it was really like.”
• “You have no idea how hard ‘the simple life’ is!”
• “I want to live the simple life too!”
• “If you saw my to-do list, you might change your mind.”

I’m glad our visitors have those nostalgic feelings. I had them too, before I started farming 12 years ago.

The quarantine has made me realize that I’ve made my life unnecessarily complicated. It’s no one else’s fault that my life is not simple. I made all the decisions that left me overwhelmed and stressed.

That all changed in the last few weeks, and this past week I feel like I’ve reaped the rewards of cutting back – of simplifying.

Home Improvements

On Friday, Brett told me that he was going to Duncan Lumber to purchase an outlet to fix the broken one in the pasture. (Side note: you can watch a video about our goats getting out of the pasture as a result of the faulty outlet here.)

For the first time in I-don’t-know-how-long, I didn’t wake up feeling like I had 20 things on my to-do list that desperately needed my attention. So… I made a spur of the moment decision to go to Duncan Lumber with Brett and purchase paneling for a couple home improvement projects.

We stopped at one of the food trucks in town for lunch on the way home. It almost felt like a date!

Then we spent the rest of the afternoon cutting and installing the paneling to enclose the ugly brick chimney in the living room and my workspace (office/craft room). We still need to make a mantle, paint, and do the trim work.

I can’t tell you how good it felt to not be obsessing about all the other things I needed to do while we were working on this project.

Brett has been working on some other projects, too, like fixing the hole in the wall next to our front door and installing trim.

Goat Kids

We discovered on Thursday, April 23, that six of our goat kids had been stolen out of the pasture. You can read more about that in last week’s post. Sadly, we’ve had no leads and they are still missing.

Ivan, our bottle baby is still thriving. The other day, I milked 2 of our goats who lost their babies to supplement the milk I’ve been buying for him.

It’s not worth my time to milk our cashmere goats because they don’t produce a lot of milk like dairy goats do. However, I needed to get them on the stand to give them some medicine so I took the opportunity to milk them. Out of 2 goats, I got about 1.75 quarts.

Click here to binge watch our short goat kid Facebook videos.

The Store is Open!

We reopened our store on Saturday, and will be open Saturdays, 10am-4pm, and by appointment.

We are keeping our Saturday morning Stitch & Spin, 10am-noon. If you do any yarn crafts, this is a time for you to bring whatever you are working on and enjoy the company of other yarnies. It’s free.

I was a little nervous about opening the store. Not for my own safety, but because of what people might think. I ultimately decided that I would open and those who felt safe would come out and those who don’t won’t – and that’s fine. We all have to make decisions based on what is right for ourselves, and I respect that.

I am thankful for the customers who came out on Saturday and I am looking forward to seeing more in the coming weeks. It was wonderful to connect IRL (in real life)!

Final Thoughts

I think my biggest challenge will be to guard my time so that I don’t become overwhelmed again.

As life begins to return to normal, I want my normal to be much less hectic than it used to be!

And I encourage you to consider what you want your new normal to look like, and then take steps to achieve it!