Your life will descend into chaos.

One thing they don't tell you about farming/homesteading -- your life will descend into total chaos.  It is completely unavoidable, at least at this stage of the game, and this Type-A, left-brained, organizer finds it hard to handle sometimes.

Here are a few examples:

1. The garage is a mess, we'll clean/organize it once we move the chicken tractor out. Chicken tractor moved out. The garage is a mess, we'll clean/organize it once the rain barrels are all put together and moved out. Garage is still a mess and housing the rain barrels.

2. Rain barrels need to be put together so we can harvest the rain to water our crops.  But, wait, if we don't plant our crops now it's going to be too late. But, wait, it's raining, and the barrels are overflowing with no over flow spout. But wait….the seeds!

3. The ground is frozen, but we need to start seedlings. No problem, do it in the basement and get soil/water all over the floor. It's ok that there's soil/water on the floor because it is already covered with wood scraps. It's ok that the floor is covered with wood scraps because we're raising 20 baby birds in the basement and there are pine shavings all over the place too….and it smells like poultry poop.

4. New special needs duckling needs a home?  No problem, we have a guest bedroom for that.  What? Guests are coming?  No problem, clean out the shavings and cover up the poultry smell (thanks, incense), and move the baby into your bedroom. Again, with the pine shavings.

5. Piles and piles of cardboard and newspaper for sheet mulching (again, with the disastrous garage) are  just lying around -- but this is useful stuff, people!  We can't recycle it in any way other than putting it on the ground.  As soon as we harvest truck load after truck load of seaweed from our river, then we'll do the sheet mulching.  But wait, we need to sheet mulch to plant the seedlings in our expanded beds. But wait, we need to plant the seedlings really soon!

6. High tunnel construction -- this is an entire blog post or two in itself.  Let's get it done in the fall so we can use the tunnel all winter and have early spring crops.  What?  The ground froze?  Crap.  So, the high tunnel stands incomplete like someone flipping me the bird every time I look at it.  But now it's spring, and we can finish construction so we can plant our seedlings in the tunnel!  It's raining?  Crap.  Well, at least the rain barrels are….crap.

You get the idea.  I'm not complaining -- I'm merely pointing out our reality.  Rest assured, this is just the tip of the iceberg.  I didn't even begin to touch on the things that need to be done in our house -- screens on the windows, vacuuming/mopping up the mess made by 3 dogs during mud season/spring shedding, actually cleaning something instead of just wiping it down, and I don't know, actually dusting for once in our lives.

And we don't even have kids!

I should end this post by saying that I do love our life, and I feel extremely fortunate to be able to live this way.  Sometimes, I just can't handle the piles of crap and disorganization.  I know it will get better over time as we figure things out and develop efficient/organized systems, but for now, I'm just going to do my best to breathe through it. :)

Also -- I'm making a concerted effort to post more.  So, there may be some posts sans pictures, but I'll do my best to put them as frequently as possible.