30 days

I'm an introvert who is blessed beyond measure yet still manage sometimes to struggle with both the intensity of anxiety and the quiet fog of apathy. Weird extremes. I love to create, but dislike self-promotion (which makes being a success in music a bit tricky). But talk to me about something I love, and you're doomed to listen to me ramble about it. Things that stress me out, I tend to internalize. I recharge in solitude and am happy to sit and involve my mind in the way the dew on a spiderweb catches the sun's early rays, or watch the consistency of the sauce I'm making thicken into yummy smoothness. Problem is, those things will distract me from getting much-needed things done.

But then I signed up for '30 Days of Hustle' by Jon Acuff, a writer who's made me laugh AND think deeply over the years. The project: spend the next 30 days working toward a goal. So that's what I'm doing. Today's goal was to define the WHAT of the goal. So here goes.

Day 1: in the next 30 days, we will shortlist the plans for our farm this year.

With many options and only so much time and money, the short list needs to be workable. It requires research into cost, benefits, impact on our current farming, permits, and all that stuff. This will be the challenge for me. 

I enjoy learning about the how of farming. What's the best housing for bees? Where should the hive go, and what precautions should we make? Can that old set of discs in the barn be retrofitted for out current tractor, since the hitches are different? What's the best housing for turkeys? The best alignment for a greenhouse? I'm finding that I love low-tech solutions and learning the old wisdom of farmers.

Where I bog down, zone out, and run away looking for something pretty and shiny, is in the legislated side of things. We are producing food, first for our family, but with the goal of producing extra to sell. And once you're selling food products, you enter the area of government regulations. Reading these makes me dizzy. Remember how the adults always talked in the Charlie Brown TV specials? That's how my mind reads legalese.

So: next 30 days? Research enough to make that shortlist. Not every item on the list will happen. My dream for a small orchard will likely be stymied by the house needing work on the roof this year. That costs money, and so do apple trees. But the list will be there on paper, research and groundwork done, so that before the ground thaws and we start to do something, we've already got our feet pointed in the right direction.