Taking back the land...

This past weekend was filled to the brim with farm work….with the occasional soccer games, swim practices and church thrown in.  It was even carried over to Monday afternoon having my husband take a half day off of work just to work on a few things.

We are taking back the land.  Ain't no beans about it.

For starters, we mowed, and mowed, and mowed and then mowed some more.  I promise you I have never seen grass so tall and so thick.  Of course, it hasn't helped that we have had our share and then some of rain.

My oldest son mowed for a really long time until Dad came and rescued him.  Notice how bad it is under the apple trees.  Every tree in the yard was like that.

Next my husband mowed….and mowed…..and mowed some more.

Of course, he had some help from time to time.

 

Next, it was tree work.  After you mow for hours on end and whack your head continuously on the low lying branches, you come to a conclusion…..every tree needs to be cut up about six feet.  Every single tree.

Of course, cutting back the branches is the easy part.  The hard part is loading branch by branch onto a tarp and then drag that pile to the burn pile.  Which I might add is ridiculously far away from wherever we were working on the farm.  It's six acres.  Six…..long…..acres.   As I dug my feet in and dragged those trees pile after pile, I thought of two things….

One.  We need a horse in a BAD way.  (It's not on the docket to get one, but it would come in very handy in a time like this)

And two.  I am losing weight at the speed of light doing this.  Yeehaw!  It's like the ultimate fitness bootcamp when you buy and maintain a farm.  Who needs a gym membership?  Just spend a weekend cutting, pulling, and sawing and you will lose weight.  You will do unlimited amounts of squats, bends and arm lifts.  Not to mention that I surpass my "fitbit" 10,000 steps marker all the time now.  Let me hear you say….Yeah!

On the flip side…..I drag, crawl, limp my way to bed every night after farm work.  My muscles are screaming at me.  "What crazy 44 year old woman begins the last half of her life with this much hard labor.  Don't you believe in retirement?"

Then I look out at this.  And realize why...

This is our farm.  The forever place.  No one will take better care of it than us.  It's one of those weird farmer kind of things I finally "get".