It wouldn’t be spring without a visit to meet our new neighbors! Every spring, the kids and I look forward to visiting the new baby goats at our neighbors farm! This year there were 13 of them! The goats seemed to be totally fine with us waiving the social distancing requirement to pay them a visit and just like “kids,” they ran around in excitement and loved the attention. The same thing happens every year- my kids pick out their favorite little goat and want to bring it home with them. Although we left empty handed, this season I am actually entertaining the idea a little more seriously. We had planned to do a lot more traveling this year and gave away our ducks and our last chicken (had a rough winter and lost the others to a fox and Weasle). I was planning to downsize the garden, since we wouldn’t be around to maintain it. Who would have known that a pandemic would spread through our world and change everything! Now, instead of planning some great adventures away from home this year, we have decided to create some new adventures at home and it’s been quite exciting!
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.
-Marcel Proust
Mike and his chainsaw have been working hard at clearing some more land to make a bigger garden and the kids are trying hard to persuade us to fix up the chicken coop and build a small barn for some goats! I’m on board with the garden, but dragging my legs to take on any more responsibilities. We’re fortunate to have our neighbor bring us a weekly delivery of fresh farm eggs and to have access to local milk, but I do love goat cheese, which makes those baby goats even harder to resist!
Between baking fresh bread every other day, making all our meals from scratch, stocking up on bulk dried goods, prepping the garden, homeschooling and having to social distance, it’s starting to feel more and more like the little house on the prairie around here! It’s truly amazing to see your family and neighbors become more self sufficient. My neighbor across the street is off from work and decided to build a mill for sawing wood. Mike has been bringing the trees he’s cutting down over there to be milled so he can use the planks later to build a new shed and furniture! My neighbor’s 10 year old daughter is sewing masks for people who need them. My other neighbor just attended an online conference on fermentation… my girls are working on patterns to sew their own summer tops and skirts, my son is collecting worms to go fish for our dinner! I keep saying to the kids, “out of extraordinary times, comes extraordinary people!”
In a funny way, it seems the baby goats aren’t our only “new” neighbor’s. I think all of us are changing in some way or another as we adapt to our new normal and in some ways redefining ourselves, our families and our lives! Maybe we’re actually exploring parts of ourselves that we’ve always wanted to be, but life just got in the way of allowing us to see them.
So, I encourage each of you, if your inspired (and in a safe and healthy environment) to look at yourselves and the current situation we’re in with a new vision and maybe you’ll make some new discoveries about yourself and the person you want to be and maybe you too, will be inspired by your new neighbors!
“The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.”
-Lao Tzu
Be The Route 