Happy New Year!

I love the New Year! The fresh start is always exciting. A healthy reset. New goals to be made. Reflection on the growth from the past year.

If you’ve been on this journey with us all along the way, then you have seen how much growth and change our family and farm has seen in the last year. We moved from our comfy home in Chapel Hill to a 12.7 acre farm with a 600 sqft house. Our family of four (plus two dogs and a cat) have been living in this one bedroom home for over a year now. Jeff and I sleep on a pull out couch bed, as we gave the bedroom to our daughters. You don’t know what a sore body feels like until you’ve farmed all day and then slept on a pull out couch bed, hahaha. The deal was to build a new home and keep the current house for all kinds of projects: commercial kitchen, guest house, venue space, food storage, etc. Our new home should be finished up in the new few weeks, which is beyond exciting to think that we’ll get to reunite with our bed again!

I took a weedy horse pasture and turned it into vegetable production! I started summer of 2019 with about 1/4 an acre of growing space. By Fall, we put in 100 blueberry plants. This winter of 2020, we will put up our first lines of season extension with a 100 ft high tunnel. For the summer of 2020, I’m clearing out more land and we’ll have about a 1/2 acre in production!

Things I’ve learned over the past year:

  • Living in 600 sqft with the majority of our stuff in storage: you don’t need much to get by. I think we will end up donate/selling a lot of what we’ve been paying to be in storage. Go figure.

  • I have a lot of energy. I sleep so much better now that I’m farming. I love going to be tired.

  • Our family really gets along well. Living in small quarters hasn’t destroyed us! It has been an annoying blessing at times, but it is a blessing.

  • Farming projects that should take an hour will take at least 3 hours.

  • Weeds kicked my butt in 2019, but I’m going to have better systems in place for 2020.

  • Nature has always made me cry, always will. God is beautiful in every detail of nature.

  • Saying, “I don’t know” is a great place to start. Great things come from that.

I have big plans for Heart Song Farm. I don’t think the farm could have a better name. Only God could put a song in my heart to farm, and follow through so big. The last 4 years, I like to assign a word to the year. For a couple years, it was “Peace”, but more specifically, God’s perfect peace. I decided it was time to rest in His will and plans to allow peace into my life. He brought it! Then came “Humbly Bow”. I felt so compelled to be humble in the sight of the Lord. To bow down, physically and mentally. But to be humble in all walks of life. It was a time of life I was to be quiet, listen, watch, build up, praise. This year, it’s VERY different. And oh so appropriate. The word for the year is ROAR! I have listened and waited. Prayed for wisdom and guidance. And now is the time to go for it! Be mighty and courageous! There is a swirling in my stomach, an excitement that is new. It’s this feeling of a lion roaring to get going, lets’s do this! It’s always been clear to me, that when I’m in alignment with God’s purpose, great and magical things happen. So here I am, a roar in my belly and a song in my heart! I’m ready for 2020!