farming on a treadmill

I tell ya. There are just so many little things that pop up everyday, that it's hard to move forward. Monday, I tried to haul home a used, portable livestock shelter. It didn't work out but that didn't keep me from wasting the whole evening trying. Tuesday, the cattle got out into a different pasture. We have a cow that likes to jump over the fence and I think she missed this time because the fence had broke (can you say cull cow). That alone didn't take all evening but by the time we got them in, gave them a new paddock and did chores, the evening was all but over. Tonight we have our childbirth class which will take up all of Wednesday evening. With both of us working full-time it doesn't take much to quickly eat up what little time we have left to move the farm forward. And by moving the farm forward, I mean putting up new fences, building shelters, fixing this, building that... It's good for improving time management but at some point, there's no time left to manage. Not to mention the lack of resources to use with the little time that is available.

If there's one ray of sunshine in this overcast post, it's that next year will be a little easier. And the year after that, even more so. Every fence post we put in, every shelter that we build will hopefully be one less that we will need to worry about moving forward (at least until it needs repaired). That won't always be the case but I try really hard to take future plans into consideration when I am working on projects around the farm. Although that is another time consuming activity, sometimes known as paralysis by analysis. I like to take down as many birds with as a few a stones as possible but there are so many "birds" that you can go crazy trying to take them all into consideration. Who knew starting a farm meant so much time throwing rocks at birds! (as opposed to the game Angry Birds, where you throw birds at rocks...)