Friends, hello! Happy New Year to you! I am coming up for some serious air from a rabbit hole of my own making, a rabbit hole of my own words in fact, trying to get my house in order on this blog. I made a Farm Journal Entry earlier this week and had to verify the date twice after typing it. Only the fourtheenth of January? Are we sure? It feels like many weeks have passed since our litte NYE shin dig with friends. So much has happened.
The weather shifted from weirdly mild to bitter cold but dry and then to a Narnia-like snowy paradise, followed again by sundrenched, early spring vibes. All in two weeks. At this writing we are just a couple of days away from another Arctic front, potentially a wet one, which is not great. So there is some work to do to prepare the farm for that.
We give thanks constantly for fat, healthy animals, more grain and hay than we need, abundant water, and a warm house full of groceries. I do worry sometimes about the horses in this cold, but we have made it through seventeen years of extreme weather so far. I feel like worrying is not the right move.
The Commish has entered a new era this week, and if you know you know, this is huge news. I get chills thinking about the momentum that Handsome will now be free to build, all the progress and grit and joy he will now have the bandwidth to generate.
Sorry for saying bandwidth. I know that expression has run its course.
It took me every bit of two weeks to remove every little speck of our Christmas decor, including spent paperwhites. It was a gorgeous, sparkling season that lasted for over two months, and it just felt so cozy and cheerful. I gave myself permission to dismantle it all in stages, so the house did not suddenly feel bare and sterile.
Well, sterile, ha! As sterile as an actual farmhouse can possibley feel.
I don’t really have the bandwidth to keep this house sterile.
LOL
So sorry. I cannot help myself.
So the house is just cozy and wintry now, with a tiny dose of Valentine pink and red here and there. And we are enjoying it very much. The older I get, the more I find myself deeply relishing each season and all kinds of weather. The only thing that really bothers me about winter is how it can hurt the animals. Personally, I feel well adapted. I walk outside as much as possible all day long, and my eyes have grown so accustomed to the browns and sepias of the landscpape, plus the glittery white snow when it falls, that when I happened upon a photo of the garden from last June it was truly startling. All that emerald green grass! All that saturated color in the flowers! It was almost too much. It felt to my eyes the way too much icing on a bakery cake feels to my teeth. That’s crazy, how thoroughly we can adapt to anything, even dormancy and slowness. Even cold, mostly.
Speaking of adaptation, my body is no longer in marathon shape, ha! I felt incredible for the race on October 27. It was a day I will remember forever. My brother and I walked a few miles the very next day. Then I took it easy and I mean super easy for the following four weeks or so. For one of those weeks, for the first time in ten years, I only walked a tiny bit, zero running, while in Los Angeles getting acquainted with my baby nephew. Since Thanksgiving my daily activity has increased gradually, but it is literally hilarious to me at this moment to think of getting up to run hard workouts of 10 to 14 miles on a weekday before working outside until dusk. Ha! The adaptations that got me to that start line healthy and strong happened pretty quickly, and the deconditioning has happened even more quickly. Human bodies are miraculous and humbling.
One of the projects on my heart for this new year is to complete and nicely polish a manuscript and book proposal for The Lazy W Farmily, a collection of children’s stories to document all of our beloved animals and their antics over the years. I have been chipping away at individual characters’ stories, but now I feel strongly that they all need to be synthesized into one book, like maybe a longer chapter book for reading aloud. I have tried doing a little DIY market research to learn what age group I want to target and whether it should, in fact, be a thick chapter book or, instead, a set of slim volumes; but I feel a little lost, to be honest. At least the stories flow onto paper well. We have enjoyed so many magical relationships with animals in the seventeen years here on these nine acres. I am overjoyed at the thought of documenting it all.
Today, January 16th, 2025, is Jessica and Alejandro’s fourth wedding anniversary! We feel so priviledged and happy to be on the front row, watching their little universe grow and expand and solidify. They are very generous with their time as newlyweds, so we get to see them lots. Holidays and brthdays, of course, but all the other times in between, too, in dozens of casual, meaningful, fun and important ways. They are one of the most compatible, effervescent pairings I have ever seen. And gosh we just love them and their pups so much.
I did a quick tally of all the hosting we did here in 2024. The statisctics surprised us! The year passed in such a blur of energy and effort, so much color, you know? And overlapping heat waves of activity? That by New Year’s Day we were a bit numb from it all. It felt good to put a few numbers to why we landed on January first so tired, ha! More on this soon. But let me just say that we did not exactly set out last January with a clear cut plan to open the farm thirty-nine times or to dog sit for eight cumulative weeks; that’s just precisely what we felt called to do, gradually, and it was also just exactly what our souls needed.
Happy middle of January, friends! Thank you so much for checking in. As I contimue to clean house on this blog, I am open to suggestions, topic requests, and more. And if you have some insight for me on the children’s book, please track me down. I woudl appreciate a bit of guidance. Stay cozy and safe. Keep on choosing JOY!
“We are living out the stories we tell.”
XOXOXO
