A new adventure?

So you have this basket. It is a fine basket. It is the grand idea of what you want your life to be. And then you start adding eggs to the basket. Each egg is a piece of your dream, perhaps something you worked hard for and achieved or is simply a hope that has not happened yet but you can see it just there on the horizon. You diligently add to this basket, occasionally taking out an egg that doesn't fit quite right but mostly building an impressive pile.

Then you are told you have to hand this basket to someone else. Share your basket. Allow another to carry it for a while. In turn you carry someone else's basket and take care not to damage their eggs.

And then your basket is dropped. No one's fault. The road was rough, uneven terrain with many challenging hills, stones, potholes. Someone was bound to trip and fall. The eggs are broken.

We have lived on our farm for 12 years. It has been a massive undertaking right from the start. The land was bare and the house was... not great. We built everything ourselves: the hay shed plus four other sheds for tractor, garden supplies, tack and feed. We dug swails to drain water. Built fences, took down fences. Built three horse shelters, dug water lines. Built an above-ground pool, deck and sun room addition. Gutted and remodelled kitchen, bedroom and two bathrooms. We bought old machinery to make our own hay and then struggled with constantly fixing said old machinery. We have moved mountains of hay and mountains of snow. We 'split' our tractor ourselves. It was terrifying--I didn't think we would ever get it to fit back together but we fixed it with the help of Youtube and some tractor expert guy from Newfoundland that helped us over the phone.

All the while my husband has hated it. Baling hay was only really fun for him that first time a bale came out of the baler and then he was pretty much over it. Winters here are brutal, made worse by our exposed location. Snow just blows in and leaves us buried. Every piece of machinery breaks, all the time.

So it is time. Time for filling a new basket.

It is shocking, heartbreaking, yet I am excited to see what will come of it. I am humbled that my partner put in so many years of hard labour into my dreams and look forward to now returning the favour.