Happy New Year

As we await our fate, still not knowing anything at all about our tenancies, I am sitting with a fat black cat on my lap, the girls are out riding their hairy grey ponies in sunshine and showers. A cohort of small busy bantams has been moved to the polytunnel on a clearance exercise, and the first seeds (Leaf: Coriander and Spinach) were planted today.

What evr happens will be for the best. 2012 is going to be a good year.

Happy New Year, everyone.

A new year?

Right before Christmas, we received a letter from the Crown Estate, or at least their agents, giving notice of the end of our Farm Business Tenancy on the land - a notice to quit. Or not. There is a paragraph which says, it may be up for renegotiation (trans: a rent hike) - it isn't clear to us whether that paragraph is standard or bespoke - in other words, we don't know if they want us off, or just want to take more money off us.
We had a beautiful, quiet Christmas, with much joy and laughter, prayer and gratitude.
Yesterday, we took the dogs and walked up on the high downs, went to visit our rams, and generally wondered ...
We can't know anything more until the proposed meeting on 5th January.
Should we fight for it? We've had it nearly seven years. We have a year's notice. When we look at it, although once it held a lot of promise - I ran the box scheme from there for two years - it is now pretty unkempt and provides some sheep grazing, and a LOT of hay. The hard truth is, we haven't done what we intended to do with it.
A harder still truth is that we have knowingly or not, offended, upset, and generally peed off a lot of people in the last decade, living here or hereabouts.
The psycho nutcase who got Neil chucked out of his last farm job down in the village, and threatened to rip his head off if he showed it around the farm again (because I did not run Brownies the way his wife liked!) is only the part of it. We started life at the school, Neil was a governor. We left the school and homeschooled our children for six years. That went over not so well.
We started life in the village CofE church, again, Neil was a church warden. Then we realised things were wrong, moved churches, found God, and received the greatest gift of all. It did not come with local approval.
The people over the road don't like us. Because our cockerel crows.
The family Neil used to work for who, when he was friends with the psycho nutcase, he was hoodwinked (by the p-n) into leaving without notice - they're not over fond of us.
The guy in the village who made an official complaint because I told his Brownie daughter to 'shut up' (in jest, we say 'shut up' all the time in our house! apparently, she had never, ever been told to 'shut up' in her entire life (which was actually self evident) and it destroyed her self esteem totally) whereas, I had no redress for the fact that she blasphemed almost continually, and I was pretty offended by that.

Is this really the place for us to try (yet again) to launch a community project?! Is this not maybe time to move on?

I have just begun with my Diploma in Applied Permaculture Design - and as part of the process, the Learning Pathway, I am going to have to figure out where I am going. Where we are going. Are we staying here? Or moving onto new horizons? What do you reckon?

For those who are standing in the shadows with me.

So this is how it goes.
You have a vision. A very real commission in this life.
And you try a little. Just a very little. To make it happen.
Then the problem is, all the people you know don't GET your vision, and in fact, they think other things matter a lot more. You begin to feel you're worth nothing. Because you don't tick their boxes. No well paying job. No this. No that.
So you wander away from the vision and you try to get a this or a that or two, and you get a job ...

... then the job makes you sick. And you are lame, and full of tears.

In the end, you remember. You had a vision.

Today, I am in a quiet, dark but peaceful place. Afraid, I will admit, hiding from the people who see only failure. Wanting so much to step out into the sunlight of my own success. Too scared to do that.

Just needing to take baby, baby steps towards doing just what I am meant to do. Needing to draw the map, sketch in the compass, and take a step or two down the first path. Again.

This place was a gift from God - how we came to be here not much short of a miracle - and now I need to seal the deal - I need to turn it into the precious teaching learning living breathing fabulous resource it can be.

Takes deep breath, makes vast mug of tea, and sets bread to rise. Here we go then.

But...

I went out to the new job today, to get the hang of it - it's ok. It's a nice quiet little yard, straightforward work, nice horses.
I am really, truly fortunate. I'm not going to earn as much money ... but we're back to home made sourdough bread, with thick slices of home made garlic and herb raw goats cheese. And I got some knitting done!
And I'm looking forward to Christmas again.

God is good!

I have been quiet awhile, while struggling with the learning, qualifying, and beginning of a new job. I hated it with such a passion it made me ill. My head ached, my back hurt, I got rsi in one arm - this is what happens when you sit at a computer for four hours a day doing something you loathe.

On Tuesday, I decided to go and look in the feedstore for ads, and found someone advertising a job I'd applied for before, and not got - feeding, rugging, turning out and mucking out four or five horses five days a week. I gave her a ring and she's offered me the job - tomorrow I'm off to see her and on Monday, I'll start.

The relief is unbelievable. I gave up the hours on the phone immediately. What's better is that it allows me to take the goats back, which means Neil doesn't have to do them before an already too long working day. And I can do the sheep as well.

Never was a person so overjoyed to be stepping out into the heaving rain and cold. And then someone's facebook status this morning assured me there'd be snow by Saturday! Never mind! It could be worse. I could be back on the phones.

If winter comes

I was saddened beyond words to say goodbye to sara at farmama . It seems as if bloggers come and go in great waves of loveliness and intentionality, and in the end, lap onto the beach and are gone.
Sometimes, we are just not here because LIFE takes over.
Our world right now is totally different than anything we have ever done before, and I don't quite know how I got here.
Neil drives endless, sorry hours in a taxi. I sit at a desk and take phonecalls.
Outside, the garden fills with weeds, the goats amuse each other and love life but miss their human firends, the ponies stand hairily in the field - ridden at the weekend, but merely cared for in the short days of the week.
The children are at school - a sentence which still does not sit quite right with me - and hard, economic facts of life have at last invaded the idyll which was our God-given gift of a life.
Each day, I try to do one small thing - I even created a blog for it -but even if I get time for the small thing, I don't get time to blog it.
We dream that in the spring, we will try again.
I walk the dog for his diminishing minutes before the work day begins, and I believe that one day, I will be setting out in this rain dashed wind to work once again on the land, among the animals. Many is the morning, the tears dry on my face in the head wind on the way home.
Sometimes I see my playful goats, and their growing babies, but mainly, that is Neil's job, before the taxi shift. Rarely, I see the jacob sheep, and I dream of spinning and knitting their wool less now, as it becomes a distant hope. I can still throw corn to the bantams, and my big daft dog still sits at my feet.
If I feel like a fight, I can find carrots and kale to eat in the garden, and the garage is wealthy with potatoes, and onions and garlic.
On a good day, I believe spring will come.

A small thing every day

Here is my new little corner of websville:

My Daily Half Hour of Change

and I'd love for lots of you to join in.

If you're taking tiny steps towards a new you, post a link to your latest mini achievment.