Keeping the Faith

 

Home-shopping is hard.

One place has a nice home on it, and the yard is too small. One place has a great yard, but the home is in poor condition. Another place is a lovely mini-farm, but the home has foundation issues. Expensive ones. This other place looks promising… until we drive to it and realize it is waaayyy far away from civilization. This seller wants too much. The bank won’t finance this one. sigh

Nice Barn! 

When things get tough, the tough keep the faith. When I feel like God isn’t listening or doesn’t care about our situation, I think about myself and my daughters. I love them deeply. And I want only the best for them.

Jesus said, “If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!” NKJV Matthew 7:11

God knows what we need before we need it. He knows what will happen to us before it does. It is our job to keep the faith, believing in His providence, power, and good.

My Temporary Homestead

 

We are temporarily living in a singlewide mobile home near my family. It’s small, but it’s close to world-class babysitters, and my kitchen window overlooks the pond. I love to sip my coffee and watch the birds play in the water. Yesterday, I watched a huge catfish skim the surface. YUM. Ben needs to fish for me!

Even though I am technically home-stead-less, I cannot stop planting and growing. It’s like an addiction, folks.

FarmGirl Forever!

So here’s my flowerpot garden.

Petunias, Basil seeds, lavender rootings, and German Chamomile.

My bolting red lettuce is on the shelf to the right. I am eagerly awaiting those seeds. I’ve never seen such a bright red lettuce.

My new homestead, wherever it may be, will have red lettuce seeds growing on it this fall.

A Farm Girl Without A Farm

 

For the past three years, my family has lived in rentals. At first, it was a motor home 5 minutes from Ben’s job. Then, it was an efficiency apartment close to the beach. After that, we lived in a small house near the beach. At least the little house had a yard. It was there that I finally began my FarmGirl Evolution.

My first garden was a 4 foot by 8 foot raised bed made from reclaimed fencing. And a plastic storage box that I called my “Box O’ Lettuce.” When I ran out of room, I started putting things in whatever I could find- clay pots, 5-gallon buckets, bags of soil, and even a reclaimed kitchen sink. Some things grew (lettuce); some things didn’t (corn. tomatoes. basil). But I was hooked.

The next year, we expanded the yard by fencing in part of the front yard. In that crowded and busy neighborhood, a fence was a necessity. For some reason, transients flock to the beach. Then, of course, they wander around the neighborhoods. So we doubled the size of the fenced yard and I increased my garden size with another raised bed.

Then I hung some flowerpots on the fence,

made a compost pile, and started my own seedlings.

Arugula was a huge hit. It was growing like weeds in the yard. My 3 year old helped me plant. :)

That summer, I finally got the chickens I’d been dreaming about: three gorgeous pullets. A Rhode Island Red and two Americaunas. Oh, how I love my girls. I practiced the deep bedding method in their run, and those three had made a perfectly grass-free, scratched and composted garden plot for me. So we moved the chicken coop and planted potatoes. Then we moved the chicken coop again and planted sunflowers.

But we’ve moved. I thought, at the time, that I may not be around to see my sunflowers bloom. But I planted anyway. That’s what FarmGirls do. We plant, we nurture, we grow; even when we’re not around to reap the harvest.