BABY BEARS & BUSINESS TRIPS

Happy Friday friends!

As I type I’m currently sipping some nitro cold brew and keeping watch through the window over our goats Gilbert, Geoffrey, George and Gus as they mow down some weeds in the front pasture. (I feel like I should be in some sort of hipster farmer magazine right now)

The extra caffeine (I usually keep it to one cup a day) is very much needed as I’m recovering from a whirlwind business trip to Tennessee this week. One of my awesome clients (HopeHouse International) is redesigning their website so I’m helping them map out that project. As handy as working remotely is, there are limits to technology, and multiple day meetings with 6 people are one of them, so I drove down to Ooltewah Tuesday and got back into town late Thursday night.

While I was away, Tim got to experience first hand how rascally the goats can be if left to their own devices. (My raspberry and blackberry bushes are now very well pruned) And he got to experience the cuteness of bear cubs in person as a momma bear and three cubs (THREE!) paid our farm a visit yesterday, see below.

For me, life is settling back into a familiar routine today. Here’s a sample of what a regular day looks like for me:

6-7am – Woken up by Laurie the Rooster, Tim usually gets up first and brings me coffee with frothed almond milk, ginger and cinnamon and collagen peptides. Yes, he’s the best.

If it’s a M W F, Tim leaves for the office, if it’s T-TH he heads up to his home office upstairs.

8-9am – I head outside for morning chores, which consists of letting the chickens out of their coop, and refilling their food and water. I then head over to the goats. I position their ties wherever I want them to weed for the morning, and clip them in. I get a few cuddles in and head back inside. I enjoy my coffee as I catch up on emails and start on my design projects for the day.

10:30am – I usually have to check on the goats at about this point and untangle them if needed. I also may start a load a laundry or straighten up the living room.

12pm – I usually break my intermittent fast at this point, I start my fast at 8pm the night before, so the goal is to have 16 hours of dietary rest. I’ll share more about this in another post, but for now, I’m loving how I feel! After I eat I go unclip the goats and let them back in their paddock for a water break and a nap.

2pm – the goats get clipped back out to mow some more weeds, and I do some outdoor chores, clean the pool, weed, sweep the deck, walk down to get the mail.

4pm – time to start dinner prep, and I make another inside sweep, straightening rooms, doing dishes, and a quick clean of the bathrooms or kitchen.

6pm – time for the goats to go back up, a handful of grain coaxes them back into their paddock. The chickens get their nesting boxes cleaned and their food and water set up for the night. Tim gets home and we try to relax on the deck with a drink and catch up on each others day. Dinner is either grilled out, or cooked indoors, and shared together on the couch with a backdrop of a netflix or hulu show.

8pm – the chickens’ coop gets shut which sometimes involves depositing Laurie back inside as he”s recently taken to sleeping on the roof, who knows. But I love scooping up this big ball of feathers when he’s so sleepy and docile.

10-11pm – bed.

For some, this routine will sound a little dreary and repetitive, but after a year of upheaval, I’m finding joy in the small consistencies, the daily to-dos.

For those of you who’ve voiced concern over our stink bug situation, I am happy to report that the little buggers have mercifully called a truce and retreated. I still see a remaining scout or two running reconnaissance from time to time. One such scout ambushed me yesterday as I walked out on the deck. A straight dive bomb right into my face, after frantically trying to swat him away, I swore I saw him flit back to the bushes and high five his little buggy comrades. To be continued my friend.

Our projects have slowed considerably this week what with deadlines and business trips, but I did want to share an update on Tim’s office. We still have pictures to hang, lamps to position and books to unpack. But here it is!

We agreed that his office was all his domain so Tim choose the paint colors. We brightened the ceiling from a dull yellow to Chantilly lace white, and Tim choose two shades of green for the walls and panelling. (the panelling is slightly lighter, kind of hard to see in the photo). I also wanted to talk about our bookcases, and how I got one for free! 🙂

We really wanted solid wood bookcases (no flimsy backs or anything) So I found one on Overstock, for a little more than we’d usually spend, but decided to splurge. When it arrived we saw that annoyingly, one of the front facia pieces was broken. It was not a critical piece, so we thought they could just send a replacement board and we’d be good. Their customer service was great, and sent a whole new bookcase and credited me back $50 for the inconvenience. Tim has a LOT of books, so now we should almost have enough storage. 🙂

This week I’ll try to tackle painting both the upstairs and downstairs bathrooms. I can’t wait to freshen them up with some fun colors. (side note, fun colors = almost anything other than the soft yellow which was everywhere)

Fun fact. The downstairs bathroom will be getting a coat of a “mistake color”! The story is that I asked for “Sea Salt” which both Benjamin Moore and Sherwin Williams have a version of. (I mean, come on guys, couldn’t you have a chat about this first, “Oh you already have a Sea Salt…Okay cool” Not that difficult right? Anyway. I wanted the softer green for the upstairs bath but upon seeing the more neutral greige shade from BM that they tinted first, I decided to keep them both using the “mistake” greige downstairs! What do you think? Which one do you like more?

So maybe that’s the takeaway from this week. Maybe a “mistake” is not a mistake, but a happy little accident that we can shape into something new (Bob Ross anyone?) And if that’s not cheesy enough for you, how’s this: Wednesday night I was able to grab a quick dinner with my sister and her family after my meetings. My fortune cookie after our meal was just what I needed to hear for where we are in our new farm life.

We have SO many plans, so many hopes and dreams, (As people like to remind us) And it can be overwhelming. But when I look back to where we were at this point last year, Tim was busily applying for jobs with no guarantee of an offer, and now he has a tenure track position at an esteemed university. We had no real hope of owning a home let alone 34 acres where we were in Colorado, and we both had too much stress in our lives.

We haven’t been here long, but we are so excited to see how God uses us and this place in the years to come.

Till next week friends.