As the snow melted in that first spring in 2015, Brad, Alexander and I realized that we may have bitten off more than we could chew……
Sometimes it is truly possible to be in both shock and awe simultaneously, and at the farm, this feeling became quite familiar after a while. You’ve heard the adage before; for every up there’s a down, the glass is full/empty, good/bad, yin-yang….you know what I mean. That balance between woohoo and boohoo was literally around every corner, behind every door, and under every melted snow pile. We truly never knew what to expect when ever we approached anything at the farm.
And in that spring of 2015, when the snow melted, we had a bit of a sinking feeling. I’ll admit, I probably cried, and anyone that knows me, knows that is my go-to response for a variety of emotions, so crying doesn’t necessarily mean that I am sad. In this case, I was.
It’s a sloppin’ soggy mess around here.
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We knew that we were getting ourselves into a big job when we took on this property, but we never really knew how much of a job it would be. So we put on our rubber boots, and we dove in to explore our surroundings. Here’s an idea of what we were diving in to….
Every single nook and cranny was jam packed with stuff; old margarine containers, chicken feed bags, hamster cages, ginger ale bottles and cans. We had a barn full of 40 year old hay that had become a snake and mouse haven. We had buildings that we knew we wouldn’t even be able to consider entering for years, and we didn’t. There were tires everywhere. I saw so many mouse carcasses that it got to the point where I didn’t even scream anymore. Oh, who am I kidding? I still screamed. They’re gross. And we didn’t have running water at the time. So we would get full of mud and dirt and poop and grime and grease and who knows what else and have to boil up water to have a sponge bath. If we went to town to pick something up at a store, I would go to the washroom and embarrassingly watch the water turn a grayish-brown as I rinsed my hands, and this AFTER I thought that I had washed. Yuck.
But honestly, I would not change any of it for a second. Because as I said, out of this chaos, many beautiful things have emerged. It definitely helped to build our relationship, as communication became of utmost importance. We quickly learned what each other’s limits were, and developed a respect for each other’s unique approach in dealing with these kinds of situations.
Even after a long, cold day of work outside in the rain, we were still smiling, most of the time! haha
We had the opportunity to introduce Alexander to a new experience, and show him that following a dream takes a lot of hard work. And we met a fantastic dog named Rocky, who we referred to as “buddy” for the longest time. (I’ll talk more about Rocky later on down the line in another blog.)
Our new-to-us buddy!
Soggy but fun!
But the best, best part that makes all of this so amazingly worthwhile is the big sky, and the big fields, and the beautiful rocky cliffs, and trickling streams, and wild flowers, and massive trees, and the wildlife that comes with it.
Yes, most of this was intertwined with garbage and scrap metal, wood and vehicle parts, but it was just a matter of time (a whole heck of a lot of time) before we resurrected a lot of the land back to it’s natural self. There’s that balance that makes it all worthwhile. So, we trudged along, warming up in “The Love Shack” and wondering what our next surprise would be.
The Love Shack with it’s fancy “click-clack” couch; a step up from the air mattress! I think.
In the next blog, I’ll share with you all of the upgrades we did in the summer of 2015 to the farm house so we could get out of the Love Shack!
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