Happy New Year 2020!
We wish all of our readers (and critters) a very Safe, Happy, and Productive 2020 on the cattle farm!
A lot has happened in our lives over the last decade.
August 2010 – We got married in a beautiful field in Montana.
May 2012 – Found out we were expecting baby #1. Still living and working in Montana.
Early-August 2012 – Jer got his dream job in Northern Maine, where he grew up. We bought our farm. Starting packing up our lives in Montana and saying “see you later” to all of our family and friends in Montana. Found out baby #1 was a boy.
Late-September 2012 – It is a very odd feeling driving away from a home that you know you will never come back to again. The home where you started your married life, where you got married in the fields behind it, where you found out that you were going to become a family of three, where you made so many memories, where you LIVED. I can still remember that September morning in 2012. We had spent the last month packing up our lives and clearing out our house. The morning had finally come. THE MORNING. The truck and U-Haul trailers were packed. The car was packed. The house was cleaned-out and cleaned. We took some last photos, walked around the house that had become a home for us and then, we walked out the door and closed the chapter on that part of our lives. Jer got in the truck. I got into the car, with our dog Cooper (our sweet boy passed away almost exactly 6 years later). I was around 6 months pregnant at the time. We were moving to Maine. We were driving across the country to Maine. Oh my goodness. I still can’t believe we did it. It was emotional – driving away, honking the horn, and saying thanks for all the memories.
Onward to Northern Maine and the life waiting for us.
Onward to the next chapter in our story – OUR LIVES.
It took us 4 1/2 days to reach our final destination. The journey across the country was filled with ups and downs but we made it intact. Thank the Lord. Seriously.
February 2013 – Our handsome baby boy came screaming into the world and straight into our hearts!
June 2013 – Our very first herd – our foundation herd – of 10 beef cows took their first steps off the trailer and onto our farm.
March 2014 – Cattle Starter was born!
April 2014 – Our very first calving season. As with many things in our lives, it sure started with a BANG!
July 2014 – More beef cows joined the farm, growing our herd.
February 2015 – Our sweet boy turned 2 years old, AND we let him know he would soon be a big brother. He didn’t really really get what that meant, of course. haha
November 2015 – Little brother came screaming into the world, letting everyone know that he was HERE. Life got even busier with two little boys and a farm of cows and calves, but oh so GOOD! So much JOY. So much to still learn – on the farm and in the home!
And life kept marching forward. More cows, more calves, then downsizing the herd, then building the herd back up and on and on and on…..
You know the whole saying, “The days go slow but the years go fast”?
This is true 100 times over. Where have the years gone? Our firstborn will turn 7 years old in a few weeks and our baby – BABY!! – is 4 years old and will join his big brother at school in September. That is a hard one for this mama.
September 2020 will be eight years since we drove away from our home in Montana. On that morning, I drove my car, following my husband far, far away from everything I knew and everyone I knew. That’s what you have to do sometimes, though, when you are following your dreams. Life is a crazy, wonderful journey, that will take us down all kinds of roads – roads that for many, will lead away from what and who you know. All these years later, and Jer and I have gone down many roads together. We stumbled a bit, we questioned a bit and we prayed a lot. We have learned the power that comes with being true partners – both with the cattle farm and with our personal lives (hard to separate the two sometimes!). It hasn’t always been an easy road and it won’t always be easy, but the good – and there is SO much good – is that much richer for it.
And as the great Theodore Roosevelt said…
“Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty… I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.”
The year 2020 brings us hope and optimism that we will achieve another one of our dreams. Our dream to add more land to our farm and thus, be able to start building up our herd size to match the goal in our minds. Hopefully, we will have more on that to blog about later in the year!
Many thanks to all of our readers. We appreciate each and every one of you!
May the year 2020 be the year that you finally catch that dream you have been chasing! 🙂
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