Turning the Page: The Sun Sets on the Farm

Hi everyone! I realize that it’s been some time since I’ve gotten around to posting anything. Truth be told it hasn’t been for the lack of endless projects in our neck of the woods but rather, hunkering down and finding the words …and willpower… to write this particular post.

How do you say goodbye? Correction: How do you say goodbye without feeling the need to write a sad journal entry (I suppose checkmark #1 actually…) over a glass of wine and wallow as though in the grips of an early 90’s breakup letter?

You don’t.

I’ve come to realize that reaching the end of a chapter in the novel of your life is not the same as finishing your story. Instead it is having the courage to turn the page and see what life has in store for you next, what challenge it will present so that you can rise to meet it.

Let me start by saying that while it may have been brief time in our lives within the grand scheme of things, though there were days I went to bed with flecks of mud and bits of hay stuck in my hair, and even still when we had those days we were convinced the entire house would call out, ‘Uncle!’, and simply implode on itself, I harbor absolutely no regrets for what our little farm taught us about ourselves and about life.

As both myself and the Mr work full-time jobs, often finding ourselves pushing into the overtime odometer on the regular, and held a lengthy commute we tackled day after day, it began to wear on us, little by little. Getting home at night meant cutting the engine and walking up our creaky little stairwell inside only long enough to let the dogs out with us and pull on our muck boots. After that, it was prepping hay bags, portioning out grain and supplements, turning horses out on the pasture, mucking stalls, and scrubbing down water troughs. All while trying to find a moment to spend together, continue the laundry list of repairs needed on our lovable fixer upper and trying to grow an extra three hands to get dinner made and on the table.

After nearly two years we sat down on our porch and looked across the acreage, simply taking the moment to enjoy watching how the horses grazed lazily as the dogs chased at moths and the like in our yard. That was the moment we realized that we were expending so much of our time in maintenance of the grounds, restoring the grounds, renovating the horse facilities, feeding, cleaning, commuting, you name it…just everything really except for taking time to enjoy what we’d bled, sweat, and scraped together on a hope and a prayer.

A small horse farm was our dream and we had it. But it took some time, a lot of hard work day in and day out to realize that our dream was a touch too big for us, at this point in our lives. Though we’ll always look back on our years there fondly, we realized it was a time in our lives to enjoy the moment and be patient for our dream to become wholly realized. We still plan to buy land a little ways out when we get to retiring and move our horses over. But for the time being, we’ve given over our lil’ slice of paradise to another family to create memories while we have relocated in town.

I’ll confess, it is MIGHTY nice driving to the barn where we currently board our horses and only spending time loving on our boys. No more maintenance, at least, not for the time being, only focusing on those moments.

We’ve turned the page, another chapter concluded…and yet, what the next may have in store is what keeps me smiling.

My next post will be about our conversion to city living and the absolute bugger of a time we’ve had trying to find our next home. Stay tuned loves. Cheers! ~Christy