This is a picture of our house from about 5 ½ years ago. We had a pretty strong start on building it, but as the farm grew and needed more attention, the house languished. Building occurred in spurts when we had either time or money to push ahead. It has been a long haul. Neither one of us are builders by trade, so we have been learning construction by trial and error, mostly error. There are only two of us, both middle-aged and broken from working or playing too hard. We aren’t the strong young 20 year olds we once were, or 30 or 40 for that matter.

Through the years of building, I have set expectations in my head for completion dates. By Christmas of 2021, fall of 2022, maybe May of 2023, July of 2024, surely by December 2024…..

As each time mark came and went, my frustration grew. I want to LIVE in the beautiful home I designed. I see it in my head daily, most of the finishes I purchased years ago and have waited a long time to see installed.

Don’t get me wrong, for two middle-aged, broken people with full-time jobs and a working farm, we have come a long way. But the anticipation of being in a beautiful comfortable home along with the time stamp expectations began to ruin the experience for me. I am ready to be done building so we can get out and have adventures!

I found myself thinking a lot about death right around the time of Samhain, which also marks the anniversary of losing Angus. I am not afraid to die, and I am not planning to anytime soon. My thoughts centered on living before death. Our life has been on hold for nearly seven years while every extra moment or scrap of physical energy goes to some building task. The last time we did anything adventurous together we went to Iceland in 2018.

Then it occurred to me….maybe building the house IS the adventure for this space and time. Maybe the more I fret about getting done and when it will be done so that we can start living – the longer it takes. Could this be the lesson from the Universe? For around 30 years, I have consulted the I Ching, the Chinese Book of Changes. The underlying themes within the lessons are patience, acceptance, and non-action in the face of difficulty. Applying that concept to my frustration over the house construction – I realized setting time expectations creates stress. It doesn’t need to.

I shifted my thoughts to letting go of expectations and anticipation, accepting that the house will be completed when it is meant to be – enjoying the ride instead of trying to rush through it…..

I don’t need to wait until it is done to live. Building it really is an integral part of our life now, and the life we are creating for the future. So I need to just relax and take it as it comes. Enjoy the projects we work on together. Maybe taking some time here and there to do something unrelated to building and not mentally beating myself up for all the other things we SHOULD have been doing. That’s my strategy going forward. Life is way to short to be on hold for anything.

A long strange trip really is the only way to describe our fence journey. To quote the Big Lebowski – ‘lots of ins, lots of outs, lots of what-have-yous’.

We did A LOT of research about fencing before we decided on what kind would be appropriate for our sheep. The horses were pretty easy – we had lots of experience keeping horses contained (until Calypso the escape artist arrived). Sheep – no idea! After much research and conversations with experienced shepherds, we decided on New Zealand predator-proof fencing. Sounds great, right? Basically this fencing consists of many (7-9) strands of electrified smooth wire spaced at particular distances. We painstakingly built our fence during the hottest, driest time of year to prepare for the arrival of our starter flock.

In addition to fencing, we installed water lines and an adorable barn that could be split into two sections to house the ewes separate from the ram and wether. We felt so confident that we were ready for our flock!

The day had finally arrived! We drove to Whidbey Island, picked up our adorable lambs, and after a long day of driving we got home. We decided to leave the sheep in the horse trailer for the night since it was dark when we got home. As it turns out that was a very smart decision.

The next morning, eager to begin our sheep journey, we gleefully opened the horse trailer and let the lambs out into their pasture. A few things we hadn’t accounted for occurred in very quick succession. The sheep panicked, the extremely dry ground wasn’t conducting electricity, and they sheep went through our carefully built fence like it wasn’t even there. Four little black lambs loose on literally thousands of acres of farmland and forest. No fence to contain them and they RAN. Into the horse pasture they went, our lead mare tried to stomp them, they ran for their lives, I ran to put myself between them and her, chaos literally erupted.

Several hours of chasing them later, they were exhausted and overheated as were we. I decided to phone a friend and called in some backup in the form our neighbor shepherd. He arrived with some net fence and we managed to corral and convince the exhausted little lambs back into the horse trailer. I was devastated. What to do?

Once the mares and foals were settled in and happy, we started to focus on what our farm would eventually look like. We attended a course hosted by the University of Idaho extension and Rural Roots called ‘Starting a sustainable farm in Idaho’. This was a series of six Saturday sessions where instructors guided us through developing a whole farm plan.

The whole farm plan was a comprehensive description of all the parts of the farm. The plan is meant to be a living document updated regularly and we have done that. Through this process, farmers draw up a site plan with infrastructure, set goals, and decide what products the farm will grow/raise. There are financial assessments, asset and need descriptions, and long, short and medium term goals.

For our main product, we chose sheep. There were several reasons for this choice. With sheep, you get multiple products from a single animal – wool, meat, breeding stock, dairy, horn. But the main reason we chose sheep was because of a spinning wheel.

I have been a knitter for many years. My husband bought me a spinning wheel for my birthday in 2015 or 2016. A Schacht ladybug which is the wheel that I still use. I really wanted to have my own fiber from my own sheep to spin into wool and then turn into clothes. From sheep to sweaters so to speak.

Being a lover of rare breeds and black animals, I began to research sheep breeds. I found Black Welsh Mountain sheep and fell in love. More than that – they were a good fit for our homestead. Small, sturdy, hardy, easy lambers, good mothers, multi-purpose sheep. They are also elegant, kind, smart, silly, and endearing.

I found a lovely flock with lambs for sale in Washington state and bought my starter flock of two ewes, a ram and a wether. Now we needed to build a sheep barn!

After losing my entire website earlier this year and not having time to fix it – we are finally back online. Stay tuned for the rebuild of previous blog posts and new ones!