Are you homesteading and have landed on difficult times? Do you ever find yourself daydreaming of what it would be like if you were ignorant to all of our systems inadequacies? How easy would it be to buy ready-made meals, spray your weeds with glyphosate and trust that the new pill the doctors prescribed would take care of everything? As homesteaders, we carry a huge weight on our shoulders. Sometimes this homesteading life can be too difficult, and we think about throwing in the towel. I’m here to walk you back from the ledge. Most of the time, we just need a few tweaks to our routine, a little time to ourselves, or some perspective to take back that strong independent womanhood we are known for.

The first step when things are getting a girl down is to Name What is Important. This is going to change depending not only what physical season your climate is in, but what season of LIFE you are in. This season is the season of Difficult times, Kelley! Okay, okay, but for example, maybe you just had a new baby and it’s time to plant the garden and you are so exhausted you don’t know how it’s going to happen. What matters, NOW, in this season is that BABY and nurturing and growing them as best you can with what you have. You are their most important resource and if YOU are sleep deprived, cranky, and maybe even a little dirty from days without showers and constant spit up, how can you expect yourself to grow a garden?

Name the season of life you are in. What matters at this moment? Sometimes we have our idea of what matters but get so far off track that we are no longer aligned with it. These situations might be stressful because it no longer aligns with our vision and instead of feeling happy and excited about it, we feel dread and anxiety. My example is when I decided to purchase two Jersey heifers. We already own a rare heritage breed of cow that is great for meat and milk, but in my excitement to be like all the homesteaders I see milking pretty deerlike Jerseys, I put the cart before the horse. We spent money, bred and birthed two beautiful healthy calves and yet I was not ready for milking. Not only did I not have the infrastructure in place yet, neither had I prepped the cows to get used to being milked.

I was so stressed out about it, we ended up selling them to a nearby dairy. I am not sad about this because I really don’t want to be strapped to a milking routine and I would rather be in my garden anyway. Had I Named What’s Important earlier, I could have saved time and money and moved the needle on my gardening.

Ingratitude List. Yes, I know this seems to go against the basic principles of Manifestation. But the point of Manifesting is not to gaslight yourself into believing things are hunky dory when they actually suck. Neither is it good to pretend you are happy with a situation when you aren’t.

After I manifested our farm, I became deeply unhappy. We found out that the chipping house paint contained lead all while I was overwhelmed by the new responsibilities of a farm and caring for young kids and a new baby. There were a million other problems I could not ignore or escape from. Telling myself at that time that my life was amazing and how lucky I was, wouldn’t be helpful. Instead, I named the things that bothered me.

This gave me power to change them. I now had the ability to focus on what I needed to do to make my life better. I was not feeling grateful for my house, massive loads of laundry and the enormous loads of dirt that worked its way into said house. Those days we spent a lot of time outside. I would make our yard a little haven of fun (where it is okay to make messes!) and ignore the housework if only for a couple hours. Then we would go to the playground or visit their dad on his lunchbreak. I also gave the kids a space in the garden and let them help get the eggs from the chicken coup.

We were not idle on our problems however. We saved money and scheduled weekends when their grandmother would take the kids while Mike and I did indoor lead abatement. I also took time while the kids played on the playground to move my garden far away from the house. I could have and could still wallow in the sorrows of my life. Instead I noticed what was causing my dissatisfaction and actively changed it.

Your problem could feel huge (like abating lead in an entire house) or they could be smaller, like say how your older kids are completely dependent on you for everything. You feel like every moment of your day is running around serving little people and you have no time to sit and put your feet up or enjoy just playing with your children. In this case what you are ungrateful for is lack of time to yourself. You can make snacks easily available. Teach them to make simple snacks for when they are hungry and you are “done” like taking crackers and dipping them in the peanut butter jar. give them some of the tasks that you would do that are appropriate for their age like having a 5 year old put away wash clothes, or having them pick out their clothes for the following day. Show them how to get to a solution on their own and raise resilient kids all while getting more and more time for you. Teach them how to homestead during difficult times by taking responsibility and also resting.

Simplify. Decluttering is one of the major ways I like to manifest dreams into my life. In my 5 Steps to Manifest Your Homestead, Decluttering is one. Don’t just throw out the baby with the bathwater though. I like the Marie Kondo Method of taking an item and deciding if it brings you joy, if not, toss. However, Homesteading comes with seasons, and you may find some items bring you joy for a season and then need to be put away to bring joy later on. Homesteading is a learning journey and since we cannot become experts at everything all at once, it won’t behoove you to sell the sewing machine because your first homemade skirt looked more like something you wipe up a kitchen spill with. Some skills take time.

Save the Black Trash Bag Energy for useless tools like an automatic wine bottle opener. Sorry if you own one of those. Keep tools that have multiple uses. KitchenAid has tons of attachments and I use it all the time. I love getting big blocks of cheese and shredding it with my KitchenAid shredder. I get way more cheese for a fraction of the cost of pre-shredded cheese. This one tool can replace several other tools I kept in the kitchen.

I simplified our livestock one year as well. I found that the goats made better pets than livestock (in that season of life). I found great homes for my small herd and focused that energy into meat chickens and our heritage cows which were already bringing in income. If goats are your livestock of choice, then check out my post on Making Money with Goats.

Not only can you simplify your physical space, but you can simplify your time. Prioritize your to do list by going back to Naming What is Important. We’ve all heard the analogy of fitting the big rocks in the container first, then adding the smaller rocks and then the sand to fill in the gaps. If you added the sand first and big rocks last, chances are you wouldn’t fit the big rocks in. Same with what matters in the season of your life. Maybe needed community and connection is really important to you right now. We all need to get off the farm more often, y’all. In that case you should have a revolving date with some good girlfriends or make time to join yoga at the town hall.

Take a look at your calendar. If something isn’t necessary to the livelihood of you or your family and doesn’t give you a resounding YES in your body, think about if it might be something that can be taken off the list. This past St. Patrick’s Day there were big parades in several nearby towns. Now we have a couple great local parades that we attend and actually join with the kids throughout the year already, so my children aren’t deprived of the “parade” experience. We were going to go but I looked at Mike and said, “do we really want to pack food, fight for parking, find a place where it’s not impossible to see the floats, manage sugar high kids and go home feeling run through?” We stayed home and played mancala, made corned beef (from scratch) and Mike worked on his 79 Ford with our 8-year-old. No regrets.

It can be difficult to accept or even SEE the help that is offered during a trying time on the homestead. Sometimes all we can do is go into survival mode in which we can only see the task in front of us at any moment. The bigger picture scenario is very far away, and we can only manage the “one day at a time” approach. Make breakfast, care for kids, feed animals, do laundry, make lunch, fix fences, fix tractors, sign school papers, make dinner, collapse, and rinse and repeat the next day. Sometimes the bandwidth to handle the enormity of what we are faced with is only acquired through receiving help of some kind. This is often in the form of accepting a babysitter for an hour in order to take a walk. Maybe you have a trusted aunt that wants to meet the new baby but you feel like YOU are the ONLY person to be able to care for this child. Receiving that help and love will only give you the capacity and energy to be able to give more love-and possibly make a dent in that laundry while you catch up on the latest episode of Heartland.

An example of this is when it came time to sell our beef for the first time. I was honestly terrified to accept money for my product although I knew it was special heritage grass fed beef, and we sold our first 400 lbs. at rock bottom prices. We literally made no money for our efforts. We weren’t sure if we wanted to continue raising cows although we had sunk enormous amounts of capital into acquiring and caring for our herd. After working on my money mindset, I realized it was okay and safe for me to receive. I was worthy of earning money and not everything I received had to be earned. I was born worthy just like everyone else. The following market season we doubled our prices and sold all of our beef. We even had a list of people asking for more after we’d run out!

This extra money allowed us to reinvest in our homestead to make our lives easier and to get through some other trying times…like abating lead from our old farmhouse!

“This too shall pass.” We’ve all heard the quote reflecting the transient nature of life. Our lives are just a blip on the timeline of this earth. And each trying time, and they will come, are just blips on our timelines. When I was going through a particularly difficult time with my middle son, I used to tell myself “It’s just a stage” like a mantra whenever he refused to sleep or take a nap. Mike and I were desperate for sleep when he reached 3 years old and I was pregnant with our third baby. Although I don’t think I handled every day with grace, I would repeat my mantra until the day he actually started sleeping well. It feels like a lifetime ago when my hollow eye sockets stared back at me in the mirror after another sleepless night. Now that same son is my best sleeper. I’ve also found ways to help him get to sleep that I used for his little sister as well. I turned a difficult time into a strength and carry these lessons with me as I grow as a mother.

Next time you find yourself homesteading in difficult times, feeling the pressure, stress and hardships, remember that it is only a blip in time. Know that from it you will cultivate these lessons that will help make life simpler and easier very soon. It might not be okay right now, but it will be soon.

This too shall pass

5 Steps to Manifesting the Homestead of Your Dreams

Making Money with Goats

With Love

Kelley