Buckets, baby. Buckets.

So much of life seems to be full of stuff that it is usually full of. Eating, sleeping, driving places, going to work, watching TV, feeding children, – collectively, these things might be known as the daily grind, or the mundane, or the not so special things.

But every once in a while, maybe every few weeks or months, there is a special thing, a blip on the otherwise empty radar screen.

For me, part of the daily grind includes “chores” to take care of the animals. Carry hay to their stalls. Haul the buckets of water. Empty the buckets of water at night before they freeze solid. Scour the ads for the cheapest hay prices. Think. Plan. Vision. Pick up buckets of food waste for the pigs and drop off the empty buckets to be refilled. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Jessica here – I will have to say…there are mornings, because of Dave teaching English to kids in China, these “later, rinse, repeating” are actually done by yours truly and the children. Soooo….he can’t take ALL of the credit. Most of it, though, and I’m so very thankful for that! 🙂  

All of these mundane, everyday, regular, routine tasks really boil down to one purpose- keeping the dream alive, (in our case, this has both literal and figurative meaning). If the dream can merely stay alive long enough through the repetition of the regular, then the opportunities for the special have a chance.

After almost 5 years of effort in this pursuit of this homestead utopia, our 9-year old daughter provided one of the special things- upon entering our nearly full shed which has turned into a beautiful menagerie of potential, she said, “This actually looks like a real farm!”

We are getting there, and I hope that you are, too.  Keep that dream alive!