Summer on the Farm

Every year I go into spring with a ton of energy and a ton of projects, and I’m always convinced that energy and motivation will last the entire summer… until sometime in July when it gets hot and buggy out, and we’re past planting time in the garden/vineyard/orchard, and then my body and brain just kind of shut down and the best I can do is lie in my hammock until sometime in early fall when I start panicking about getting ready for winter.

And literally every year when this happens it comes as a surprise. I go through a whole mental checklist of things that might be wrong with me because I’ve all the sudden become a lazy-ass. Am I sick? Do I have allergies? Am I sleeping enough? Am I depressed? What is happening?!

I mean, objectively I suspect what is happening is that starting in February I put new counters in the kitchen, then built a chicken run (and lost a lot of Nugs which really took an emotional toll), gardened, weeded, got new bees, did a makeover on my mom’s room, finished two rows of trellis out in the vineyard and planted a dozen new vines, got new chicks, finished the arbor to the garden, created two new flower beds, oh, and I cleaned out my downstairs tool room and turned it into a home gym…

(More on that in a later post.)

And then I climbed a mountain.

Oh, and also, my mom and I almost bought a lake house. Spoiler alert: We did not buy a lake house (yet) but even for a person who randomly bought a farm online while sitting at a bar once–ahem– there’s still a fair amount of mental and emotional energy that goes into planning for and potentially buying a new property.

So, it really shouldn’t be surprising that I’m not super motivated right now to build the cabinets for the laundry room, or get the floor in the upstairs bath, or, you know, finish the kitchen. Still, I miss the rush of inspiration and energy that comes from starting a new project (specifically from wanting to start a new project) and when I’m not building or creating or starting something new, I tend to be pretty hard on myself. (The phrase, “What the hell is wrong with you that you haven’t had a working bathroom upstairs for 3 years?” has been running through my head on repeat for the last month.)

I have a huge backlog of half-written posts from before my trip to Idaho, but since I’ve been back I think the biggest thing I’ve managed to do (outside of general farm maintenance) is put the mower on the tractor, and harvest a ton of zucchini.

Instead of rebuilding my greenhouse or fixing the garden fence or working on the laundry room, I’ve been spending a lot of time on my kayak, exploring the local rivers and lakes.

When I sit down to write I find myself without the right words (or the desire to find them), and I think part of that is because my real motivation to write is in telling an authentic story, and it’s difficult to write about things I did months ago without feeling guilty (because I’m not currently working on big projects) and/or inauthentic (because I don’t currently feel motivated or inspired or exited to talk about those projects like I did when I was working on them.)

This, by the way, is 100% why I’ve never turned this blog into a full-time job. You can’t be authentic and consistent and still be an actual human who has ups, downs, and general fluctuations in their energy/motivation throughout the year.

It’s also why you’re reading this particular post and not the one I’ve been working on about all the things that have happened in the vineyard this year, or the one about the home gym that I built, or the one about my new plans for the mudroom and all the new shelving/storage I built in early spring.

I’m going to tell those stories eventually, but first, I think, I just needed to be honest about where I’m at. I’m a little tired, I’m enjoying summer, I’m planning new adventures with my brother, I’m reading books, I’m making time for my friends, and I’m storing up all that energy I’ll need come September when I need to start prepping for winter (and finishing all of these projects I started in spring.)

As always, there’s more to come… just not right now. Right now I need to take a nap.

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