HOw To LIKE RIPPLES IN A POND

We've wanted this farm for so long (years and years) and we finally got it, last April, not even a year ago.  So much has happened, and there is still so much to do.  But lately, the harsh realities of time and finances and priorities caused us to pause, take a breath, and step back.  We want the garden of our dreams, but looking at the calendar, I realize I'm rapidly running out of time to create it.  The inside of the house doesn't even have all of its furniture yet.  We don't have mattresses for the beds.  We have two storage units full of stuff from my parents to go through and bring out.  We still need the outside of the house painted and get new exterior doors.  Heck I don't even have the flowerbeds around the outside of the house done.  Then I started worrying about trying to get a large garden put together and planted with only a month or so to go.

It just seems there are times in life when plans for what we want to do, clash with what we are able to do...and this weekend we had to come to that realization...

Friday night, we made a list of ALL the projects and things we'd like to do and it was pretty daunting.  It doesn't mean by any means that we won't do them of course, it just means we needed to take a step back and prioritize.


So, we decided to think about our farm like ripples on a pond.  Just like in the picture above, the house is in the center, and the property around it is the pond.  We need to start focusing on the house, and the immediate area around it, then work our way outward, toward the rest of the property.

This doesn't mean I can't do projects around the property, au contraire, but the garden is such a big huge project for us (40' x 48') and realistically, it would be hard to maintain a large garden while focusing on all of the other things that still need to be done.

Fear not though, I WILL have a vegetable garden this year.  We have several small raised beds in our backyard in the city.  I neglected them this past Spring with getting the farmhouse ready for inspection, going through the closing, then starting repairs, etc.  We have 3 that are built, ready and waiting to be cleaned up and prepped for Spring.  That's a much more realistic plan and an easier way to get a garden going sooner rather than later...and that makes me happy.

I still felt slightly disappointed, but only because I wanted a large garden so badly, I can see it finished in my head.  But then I realized that there are also still plenty of gardening related projects out there just waiting to be done:


We have 10 fruit trees and a few berry bushes to plant.
I need to work on the party/picnic tree area.
Then there are the flowerbeds around the exterior of the house that still need to be planted with bushes and flowers and beauty, and the cobblestone paths that will connect them all.


See, I told you we were plenty of projects!


Perhaps later this Spring/Summer, when all that stuff is done, I can begin work on the garden area...who knows, we might even be able to get it ready for a Fall garden.  SO...we'll have some veggie and herb gardening in our backyard city beds, just not as much as I had hoped for, but that's OK.

The purpose of this blog was always just what it says at the top...to document our journey from city living to country living and it's a journey that we realized this weekend we needed to slow down so we could enjoy the scenery along the way...

UPDATE:  Thank you all for your kind comments and support, it's pretty awesome!  It means so much to us!