I can't say that moving to the simpler life has been easy.
Moving to a small town where people are honest, caring and real definitely has some great advantages, but deciding to try become self sufficient farm for our livelihood is NOT easy.
We have poured our energy and money into this in droves, and yet we have had disappointments in builders work, unfinished structures, extra money on all sorts of things that were not done right and then failure after failure in crops!
That last one is the one that is breaking our hearts.
We have toiled and sweated to get the land ready, have toiled and sweated to keep it right and then cared for the vegetables like they were children!
Honestly we even spoke to them!
Lessons were learned during the failures. Don't plant certain crops in certain seasons....their growth is affected to the point where you can't sell the crops.
Trying to keep things organic is just not worth it. The bugs kick our butt's (and its lots of work keeping them away) and people just don't want to pay for the additional effort.
Argh!
Then today!
5000 cabbages had to be ploughed into the ground because they had been beset by white/black rot.
This was tough people. We really needed the income from them. That's about R50000 that I literally threw into the ground as fertiliser.
Perhaps raised beds would have stopped this from happening. They say it helps.
But learning this lesson is not making my heart any happier.
This life is not easy or cheap....I'm happy here generally, and now I understand why having a farming heritage passed down to you is the way to go.
That way the lessons have been learned for the most part. Their lessons can be passed on.
Trying to stay positive
If this is to be my children's heritage, then that is what I will hold to.
These are lessons I can pass on hopefully when or if they decide to do this too.
But for now, our heart is broken.
[Image credit is farmlifelove.com, pinterest]