Another angle

If the earlier post of 'Growing a Farm' tells you what we've been doing, then Steph's post of 'Farming 101' tells you how we've been doing it. I promise, there is some strategic planning going on, and everything is done with thought behind it. But the truth also is, we're all novices. We've got a great collection of books (Thanks, Storey Publishing), some amazing neighbors to give hands on support and lessons, a fabulous array of knowledge and advice-by-telephone from The Mothers, and a pretty amazing church family that has jumped in on several occasions in minor to major ways. We've also built a small but impressive collection of power tools.

But really, after you read Steph's post and get over the laughter (it actually is rather accurate and is not dramatized for the sake of blog-reading friends), there truly are only a few conclusions one can draw:

1. We've got a whole lot of motivation and sense of adventure to be doing this, if I do say so myself
2. We're learning a spectacular amount through hands-on trial and error- trying to focus on the learning aspect and staying positive enough to see the comedy of the errors
3. We're learning a lot that isn't "just the way it's done", mostly because when we find something that works, it's because we stumbled across it out of ignorance while trying to mend an earlier mistake
4. We're getting a lot done for a first-year farm, because we didn't know how much work several things would take and so loaded up early. I mean really, as a strategic move, opting for baby animals of assorted species and home-grown seedlings is great. As a point of reality, it's only the the sense of wonder of watching them grow and the personal investment of helping them along that prevents the sense of being a bit overwhelmed from completely overwhelming me.

But finally, the most blatant and most important conclusion one would draw from all this is:
We are fully in God's hands and He is showering down His blessings

There really is no other way to explain how we've got an (economical but sturdy) barn (and sunroom) full of very healthy animals, several of which were simply given to us, flats full of very vibrant seedlings (an aside- I kill everything that is green. yes, everything. My gardening friend calls me the mass murderer of plants.), and several ideas on how to work with these resources to support ourselves as well as lend some support back in to the community.

HE didn't exactly weed out all the soldiers who were scared, married within the last year, or who drink from a lake with cupped hands in order to take on an army of thousands, but He's done enough that is beyond our own abilities to prove to us (and those around us), every day, how very not-alone we are.

To God alone be the glory...