As The New Year Rolls Around

In the last days of  2015 and as the new year began, we were walking around in pure bliss. We can hardly wait to have both of them home again with their families!

 I remember when Eric and I first started our little family, I always loved each stage we found ourselves in and felt that nothing was sweeter than raising your own children. Watching them as newborn babes. Listening to them as they began to learn to communicate.  Celebrating their birthdays each year with friends and family surrounding them marking that milestone.  All the time, each season we walk through with them, is the best season. OK.. so some of those seasons were NOT so great. Those teenage years were a challenge to both us and our son's I am sure.  But we survived it!

While they were here, we had three additional pairs of hard working hands to help get trees cut down, and fence preparations done.  

Making Changes

Goals.

Each January comes with a fresh new start for the upcoming 365 days.  With that comes either a list of resolutions of things you will and will not do. Perhaps a list of goals with steps on how to attain the finish line for each of them.  During the first of the year we did some goal setting and it was fantastic!   My favorite oldest daughter, Renee, was recording everyone's spoken words in her planner as we all gathered around and discussed our dreams and goals for the upcoming year.

Seven days ago I, along with Renee, started WHOLE30.    We pretty much just jumped in with both feet and we haven't looked back.   We are already pretty clean eaters, not perfect - but pretty clean.  I have really been enjoying this exciting journey of clean eating this past week and look forward to the upcoming weeks.

The past few days I have had burst of energy and things are getting cleaned around here!  These books were all on a shelf alone in a dark dusty corner in my pantry.  After I pulled them off to relocate them, I couldn't put each one down as I went through the stack. So.. I piled them back up in a neat pile and this is a portion of my books to read this year. Some I have read already, some I have read a portion of and some I have wanted to read for some time now.

Getting things in order is so freeing.  Take a moment each day of this week and purge one room in your house.  I bet you have some things in that one room that you choose to purge that either needs to be thrown in the trash, given to someone who can use them or maybe even sell some of the items on a local for sale list.  Tomorrow I tackle the buffet in the dining area!

All in a Hard Day's Work

 We had both of our boys and their beautiful wives here through the Christmas holiday as well as some time after - so yes, I was given the best gift ever!  Since all four of our kids were home for the holiday we made sure to book a photographer and get some great family portraits done to mark this time in our families timeline!

Our year has started off with a bang!  You know those old wives tales , you know the ones:  The Farmer’s Almanac had a delightful list of these to help all of us get off to a great start in 2016:

•  One of the more popular beliefs is that kissing your beloved at the stroke of midnight ensures twelve months of continuing affection. Failing to do so is said to produce the opposite effect.
• Never begin the New Year with unpaid debts.
•  Empty cupboards at the turn of the year foretell a year of poverty.
• The first person to enter your home after midnight foretells the kind of luck you’ll have in the coming year. A tall, dark, handsome male bearing small gifts is said to bring the best luck. According to this same tradition, no one should leave the house until someone first enters from outside, and nothing should be removed from the house on New Year’s Day.
•  Opening all doors and windows at midnight lets the old year escape.
•  Babies born on New Year’s Day are said to have the best luck throughout their lives.

I am not sure which of these things were done or not done in our busy household this year, but I recall another one that my mom always said.... make sure you are not working hard on New Years Day or it will foretell how your coming year will be. HARD WORK. Truth be told, I am not really afraid of hard work (nor is my mother). I have found on most days when I have done hard work, whether here or elsewhere - I am pretty fulfilled.  We have actually had a mild winter thus far, making for ideal working weather!  

So, all of that to say...all the Sanders clan have all been hard at work on our family farm.   We are so grateful to have had both of the boys and their wives here for a few weeks, their help was immeasurable to us in so many ways.  I cannot imagine a better way to end a year and begin a new one!

 This is happening all over the property. Fences. Gates. Divisions.

This is happening every day, all day. 

Our hens have gone from fully pastured and free ranged to having to be contained in a large area due to our youngest dane having hunting instincts, but just today a new fantastic change came about for these hens and their two master roosters!  More on that later!

Moo-ving into the New Year!

Fiona is our newest addition to the farm, and she will be calving sometime in May!

Our pigs that I last posted about ( in FEBRUARY of LAST year) were finished out and have been made into some of the best tasting sausage ever!

I am so excited about writing here on my little blog and invite all of you to follow along, comment and interact as often as you would like!  Happy New Year!

~paying with a goat!

It is a strange feeling when you have raised children for 20 plus years, to not have any children to actively be raising or to be responsible for.  It leaves you with a feeling of "whats next".  I know it is not just me, we have all heard talk of the empty next syndrome.  As the younger generation say, "THE STRUGGLE IS REAL".  It really is.  But I am no more defined by my position as a mother raising children, than my husband is by a position he no longer has after a long military career.  Our relationships with our sons and now daughters have moved on to a different place. Are we still there as parents, of course, we always will be. If they ever want our input, opinions or advice we are happy to be engaged in their lives and speak whatever wisdom we have gained through the years that it might be of some help to them.

We are people with a purpose and when one mission is over, rest assure there is another one lined up.  After having lived in the suburbs of  North Carolina, we bought a beautiful heavily wooded farm property when we moved here nearly 5 years ago.  The busy but laid back farm life suits us well and having this property to work on together causes my beloved and I to be a great team for a joint effort.  From keeping quite a few hives of honey bees, to the trial and error of our own wine, to gardening, raising livestock and everything in between!

I cannot tell you how stinking excited I am for our next addition to the farm.  Speaking of stinking...                                                                                                                                                                    

We are adding two adorable little piglets to the farm, for a short life - sigh.  These little piglets will be raised as holistically as we possibly can, for some good clean tasty meat for the freezer. EEK.  I am not sure if I can envision savory bacon as I look at these two little sweet hearts!  All I see is two adorable little sucklings.  Look at those curly-q tails!  These girls arrive in a week or so. Were paying for these two cuties with one of our little goatlings! I love bartering.

~Lynnie

~a little peek into our recent past

Do you have a time in your life when things were/are normal.  You know, a regular schedule, when you pretty much know what to expect? There was a time in my life like that and I don't think it will ever be that way again. I am good with that (it's a good thing huh).  We started raising children very soon into our marriage, so until just a year ago, we have not know life any differently.  We are no longer raising children. Yep, were empty nesters.  Did we miss our boys when they both took flight? Terribly.

I cannot explain the pain we felt during those first moments of having dropped our youngest son off at the Air Force Recruiter, to be driven to MEPS and his next destination there on.  It was a very difficult, beautiful time.  My husband - goodness.  He was, how do I say it, "a hot mess".  I think my love and admiration for him grew a gazillion times on that day and the ones that followed shortly there after.   This was another opportunity for me and my beloved to draw close, so very close again.  These such opportunities never really feel that opportune, they feel rather a misfortune more than anything else. But after it is all said and done, I can always look back and see how such a time has ushered in a more intimate and closer relationship with my beloved.  It sort of reminds me of the scripture, found in James 1:2-6.  I am not always good at counting it all as joy, but I have had enough such opportunities over the years, I am getting a little better at it.  

WHEW.  All of that to say, life for us is no longer a neat little thing that sits in compartments that we know what time, when or where it will take place.  Of course, EVERYTHING wasn't planned to each second or moment of each day, however while raising our boys we did have a schedule that was a routine that helped map out our days in advance to a large degree.  

My beloved served this great (yes I am still calling it great) country in the armed forces for 28 years long.  He retired a year ago.  Some time passed between the transition of having been a part of that culture to "what's next".  Applying and testing for a job on the outside, in the civilian sector was daunting to say the least. My beloved had served in a job that took him away from his family, in harms way on the missions he was a part of and unfortunately the job he is trained to carry out is not something he desires to do any longer.  Working for a contractor and deploying, being in harms way, etc... was not an option.  So after many many months of seeking employment my beloved took a job with a landscaping company.  He went to work, was grateful for the opening and employment, gave it his all. In giving his all, nothing was left at the end of each day. NO KIDDING.  After working there for a little over a year, we made the decision for him to quit.  There are other parts of this story that I will share with you as time passes.  

But for now... we are having a blast!  We do miss our boys so very much, but we raised them to be active, responsible citizens and providers and husbands!  Both of our boys are married and we feel so very blessed because both of them have chosen young women who are more than we could have dreamed of for each of them! 

~Lynnie