Whew, can anyone tell me where the heck 2018 has gone?! I cannot believe that I blinked and it is the middle of the year!
Tonight is the New Strawberry Moon (the beginning of a phase of three supermoons in a row) and mid-summer is just a little over a week away – a perfect time to evaluate how things have been going this year and to set new intentions, reestablish current ones, and discard any that haven’t been working.
When I set my intentions for 2018 and wrapped up our first two years at Emerald Moon in my January post, I mentioned A LOT of tasks and goals that I had set for myself. Funny thing is, I had to return to my office job the next day, after a week and a half long winter break. After about a month I realized how unrealistic some of those goals were, but also figured out how to focus on those that are most important to me.
I gave my in-home massage practice idea a shot for a couple of months. I realized that between my 25 mile commute (each way), working in the city 40 hours a week, tending to horses (Bella was sick for nearly 3 months and required several medications), planting and caring for the garden, keeping the house in order, and eating/sleeping/spending time with family and friends, that I didn’t WANT to add anything else to my plate. It is a dream to be able to quit my full-time job and focus more on homesteading, but right now I am fortunate to have a stable job that I like, a boss and team that I adore, and a salary that helps provide for the life Matt and I want to live right now, and It funds our activities, travel, and homestead projects. I didn’t see a single client and have since sold my table and supplies to someone who can utilize them. I did, however, decide to focus on deepening my herbalism studies by taking the Intermediate Herbal Course through The Herbal Academy. By focusing on my herbal learning I am able to combine nature, our garden, holistic wellness (something I can share with Matt since he is also very interested in herbal healing and food as medicine), and spirituality. Win-win (and win-win).
After bringing our new horse, Bella, home I spent a lot of time working with her and Rio. (She was sick for several months and we won’t even go into how much fun administering medication rectally twice a day to a 1000lb animal is.) This took up most of my time in the Spring, along with getting the garden ready and planted, so my herbal studies and other “indoor” tasks were put on the back burner for a bit. Now that the temps are in the high 90s and into the 100s I have not been riding or working the horses much and can turn my attention to other activities. (I have realized that I have definite cycles in my life, just like Mother Earth.) I am excited to learn more from my herbalism course, and am even more excited to step out of my comfort zone by attending the Lady Farmer Slow Living Conference in Maryland this fall! Lady Farmer is a new company that is focusing on slow fashion and I adore their designs. (I was so happy to win a pair of their overalls and funded their Kickstarter – I can’t wait for my tunic to arrive in the next month or so!) I hope to glean info from like-minded women about homesteading, slow living, and slow food/fashion during the conference.
We were able to get the garden weeded and planted at the end of March and are excited to be reaping the harvest now – the tomatoes and jalapenos are overflowing and everything is surviving the crazy heat (so far). We also planted loblolly seedlings along with some pecan trees and a little red bud tree to various places on the property. I learned a lesson on how important the bed prep is for my food forest because, since I did not properly prep the area, it has basically become grass again. *Sigh* At this point permaculture/the food forest is on hold until later in the year so we can continue to focus on the garden and plan better for the orchard area.
Working with the cycles of the seasons on the homestead continues to teach me valuable lessons: it is beneficial to sit back periodically and look at your goals and how they are fitting with your reality. Sharing with you is helpful for me because I am able to look back and evaluate what is working, what isn’t, and what may have been too lofty in the first place (read: did I really need to add more work on top of the office and the homestead? – probably not). It’s ok to change your goals, or to scratch one off the list if it isn’t working for you at the moment. Dream big, but be gentle with yourself. If it doesn’t happen immediately, or this season, or even this year, it doesn’t mean you failed – you should not be embarrassed. I prefer to prioritize what is most important to me and what works best for my family, rather than force myself to stay within a rigid list of goal items that should have been treated as a brainstorm instead of a “must-do”.
At this point, my goals are to continue diving deeper into herbalism, step out of my comfort zone and make new friends at the conference this fall, focus on increased sustainability/slower living, and to preserve/devour the harvest from the garden. 🙂 This fall/winter we can evaluate permaculture/food forest beds and brainstorm our family’s goals for the future.
How do you manage your goals? Do you vision board? Use Pinterest? Journal/blog? How do you deal when things just don’t work out the way you had planned?