Putting It All into Perspective for 2008

I woke up this morning very much aware that 2008 is upon us. As I drank my coffee and welcomed in the New Year, I could not help but reflect on the past year and all the changes that occurred in our lives in 2007. Naturally, the biggest and most welcome change was moving to our homestead.

I remember spending weekends here and yearning to live on our homestead full time. I also remember the day my dear husband announced he was ready to quit his job in the city and finally make our dream of living on our homestead a reality. I was terrified. Cutting our income in half and taking the plunge of realizing that dream was suddenly very scary to me. But we did it. And we've not regretted it or looked back.

When we spent weekends here, we would look out over the yard and envision fences, goat pens, chicken pens, outbuildings, and a huge vegetable garden. In my mind it seemed all we had to do was finally get here full time, and then *poof*, our little homestead would be transformed into land filled with all these things and I would be feeding goats and chickens, collecting eggs, milking goats, and gathering vegetables from our garden. We'd have buildings to park vehicles in and sheds that would house my gardening tools.

As I sit here on the first day of 2008 and look out the windows, I don't see any of those things. The *poof* didn't happen. It's been more like a *pfffffttt*. Bernie has about half the fence posts up and while we are planning where we'll locate buildings, pens, and gardens, they are all some distance in the future right now. It all takes time and labor and I somehow didn't really factor that into the equation. At least not as much of it as it really takes.

It's cold here and we are supposed to get some nasty winter weather. We've decided to start painting the inside of the house today - yet another project I envisioned being finished within the first week of moving out here. Naturally, I want to believe we can have the whole house painted by the end of the day. In reality, it will be weeks before this job is complete.

I'm really not dissappointed in the slow progress we are making. Every day brings us a little closer. I just want it all NOW! Certainly this has all been a lesson in patience. And patience has never really come naturally for me.

So in reality I guess I'd have to say that 2007 was the beginning of realizing our dream to homestead, and we have a lot of work ahead of us. I'm learning to be more realistic in setting goals and accomplishments. So stick around and I'll continue to step you through how we get there. As they say, Rome wasn't built in a day. I'm sure it took at least a week.....

Happy New Year!

Bee Free,
Penny