The only things that come by themselves are the weeds…
Do you sometimes feel like the days should have more hours? That you don’t have the time to do everything even if you worked a full, 24 hour day? I think many can feel that from time to time.
Here on the blog, there are many types of readers: both farmers, people dreaming of farms, and a lot of others. Like I've mentioned before, there are many people who tell me how nice they think our farm is and that makes me happy, of course. But most people don’t see everything that’s behind this facade... All the work and all the hours and money invested in it all. I feel that no matter how hard we work, there are always things we should've done. Like now, the old, red log house at the farm needs to change a rotten pillar at the bottom. We have to lift the whole house and make a new bottom. It will probably cost about 100,000 kr. Not so cool to spend your savings on, but necessary. Taking care of a whole farm with all its buildings is totally different than living in a little apartment. Even though my parents left us the farm in very good condition, it’s a continuous process.
I've always worked a lot, but farm life is a lifestyle. And lately, there's been a little munchkin that has added to the lifestyle... and her name is Liv. She's the energetic little girl that runs with the speed of light and climbs absolutely everything in the blink of an eye. I need to herd her like a sheep but she's wilder than male goats! Therefore, my timetable has shifted from work full-speed mode, to "herd the goat" mode. And that takes its toll on my veggie garden- it looks sooo bad. 'Cause let me tell you – one thing that surely “does itself” around here are the weeds!! Know the feeling?? Yepp, I planted the vegetable garden in May and I've weeded it nicely twice. But it looks like I decided to grow weeds instead! He he he… But I'd rather that Liv has memories of us having a good time instead of a perfect garden because she is the top of my priority list. I know other moms out there get that!
I had a chat with Mommo about all this because let's face it – we live in such easy conditions nowadays with washing machines, freezers, and the ability to head to the store whenever we feel like it. They had sooo much more work than us with getting food, conserving it, and doing all kinds of things. Mommo explained to me that her mother's generation wasn't all that bad because they had so many people helping out. Mommo explained it was normal to have a “stable girl,” “ kitchen girl,” “babysitter” and many men both in the forest and helping out on the fields. It was in Mommo's generation that the women took jobs outside the home, but they were still expected to have everything done like when they had 4-5 people sharing the job--crazy! Mommo admitted that she actually didn’t realise herself how they managed to do it all. Sewing clothes for the whole family, gathering and conserving food, holding the house together and getting food on the table for a constant stream of guests and field works, keeping the garden and having perfect tablecloths at all times... Wow!
This was in the time where it was a “shame” if these things weren't all ship shape. The village would “talk”, and you would be a “bad Farmgirl". I can't understand how they did it.
One thing I've come to understand is that you just have to put your perfectionism aside and try to have balance in your life. I definitely still need to work on that, but I don’t lay up at night thinking about my weeding. My messy basement is not running away, and I'd rather have it that way than taking time from what’s really important. And I'd rather have to really look for the carrots beween the weeds than Liv not remembering us being together in her childhood.
My strategy to cope with the weeds is to take one row each day when she is sleeping. And I'll admit that I´m happy that she's starting kindergarten 3 days a week this fall :)
LOOK! It's a carrot! :)
PS- The reason weeds are bad is that they take water, sunlight, nutrition and space away from the plant that could've had that. If the plant has "free space" around it, it will grow faster and bigger. Worst case, the plant will die from lack of the above if it's too "crowded" by the weeds.
