Five Short Years

I was thinking last night as Sable and I made our late evening walk around the farmstead what has happened here in five short years.

Here is the list I came up with:

In five short years, we have:

Moved to this farm
Repaired the drain tile
Painted all the buildings and bins
Repaved and gravelled all the driveways
Remodeled the house
Installed a Vermont Defiant woodstove and a Countryside corn burner
Improved the landscape with new bushes and plants and plant beds
Started a vegetable garden
Rewired and remodeled the grain system and part of the house and all the barns
Planted 9 crops(we are cover cropping double-croppers)
Restored the old remaining barn
Survived a tornado which destroyed the garage and damaged every buiding on the farm.
Survived severe ice storms that took down trees and gutters.
Survived an inland hurricane which destroyed some of the farmstead
Replaced or repaired all of the barn doors

Whew, that is a lot in five short years!

The best part is we have been blessed to thoroughly enjoy the company of six children, four grandchildren, and numerous neighbors and friends from across the country on this place in those five short years!

The only thing I would have done differently is considered more strongly the razing of the old barn and putting a new shop in its place. I could have built a heated and insulated, modern shop that looks like the old barn in its place.

I just couldn't stand the thought of tearing down the old structure and now we have a building with lots of investment that could have been better used in a new structure. I guess I just wasn't ready to do it and now we have enough invested in a beautiful old barn that would make us more money if it were a modern shop.

Repairs are big ticket items in an operation like ours but I never dreamed our acreage would have expanded so much in five short years, either.

Hindsight is 20-20 and I couldn't see it coming in my "retirement years." I guess I wasn't ready to "retire" but do what I actually wanted to do all my life and that is to farm. I just didn't see it turning out this way.

Of course if I looked back only ten years ago I wouldn't have seen any of this coming!

Isn't life amazing?

Ed