when hours pass like seconds

It's been a little too long since I wrote a proper post, the last few nights I had every intention of actually writing one but Rolling Rock, reggae and relaxing got the best of me. We are happy and tired again tonight, the result of one of our most productive weeks and Saturdays yet. I am so grateful that I have been given the chance to try and realize a dream, both God and my wife share the credit for making it possible. I still feel like I am a kid playing farmer, a mix of glee and guilt as I wave goodbye to April when she leaves weekday mornings. Happy that I can stack cinder blocks into a raised bed, build stuff with power tools and tend to animals and plants instead of sales calls. Guilty that I have been unemployed for the longest stretch since I was 13 and still in no hurry to go back to selling myself or my time. My dad always told me that, "it's better to think than to stink" meaning I should try and get a job using my brain so I wouldn't have to sweat to earn my pay. He had a point, but I have been so much happier stinking lately that it will tough to ever put a suit and tie back on. This isn't a point of view that is well understood in a bad economy with many people suffering. Money makes the world go round, but as we read in the Book of Luke today, "Man does not live by bread alone." Time and happiness are just as valuable commodities and maybe harder to find enough of. I am blessed that my wife is so talented and skilled that I have the chance to try to make a go of farming, blessed that she will work a hard week and then plant raised beds, install grapevines and build a chicken tractor with me on her weekend. I usually talk about all the stuff we got done and post the pictures to prove it, so this introspective wallowing probably is not gonna fly with everyone reading this. I will get back to the usual stuff. After trying to rent a wood chipper this morning and discovering someone had beat us to it by 15 minutes, we came back home and finished planting our first raised bed. We added onions, cucumbers, spinach, greens, lettuce, carrots and parsley root to the strawberries and herbs we had planted last week. I will need to make 2 or 3 more trips out to the horse farm in Catawba this week to fill up the new raised bed I built on Thursday. I have it down to a science now. It takes a full pallet of 90 cinder blocks, which means 2 trips in the Chevy so I don't bust my suspension, I pound the ground flat with the blocks as I lay them and use scrap wood to even out any depressions or bumps. This bed came out much tighter and straighter than our first try which was satisfying to see how even our worst mistakes bring wisdom for the next time.

second raised bed, ready to be filled

The chicks are all still alive and healthy and double the size they were last week. They are flying almost high enough to get out of the feed trough they live in, so I have laid bird netting over the top to keep them inside. I am thinking about moving them out this week depending on the weather, now that the chicken tractor is complete I'd like to give them a few play sessions under the sun before I move them to the coop for good. The blackberries, raspberries and grapevines are all planted, mulched and trellised. The peach and cherry trees are all budded out and some flowering like pink and white explosions.

springing back to life after a long, cold winter

While taking our lunch break today, I had asked April what time it was. 2 she says, so we sat down to eat some chicken caesar salad and plot out the rest of the afternoon. In what seemed like maybe 10 minutes, the dogs were done licking our plates clean and we were on our way back outside. But the clock said 3 now. It's great how time flies when you're having fun and getting things done. I just hope it slows down enough so we don't wake up 60 years old tomorrow.