week 36: bring it on

this week on the little dream farm

For those of you who were here with us last week and knew that having the hay baled and loading into the barn was up in the air for Sunday or Monday, it very much turned out that the hay was baled on Sunday and thus, yours truly spent her Sunday afternoon and early evening loading 275 square bales of hay into the Big Barn all by myself!

John and Charlie had a million other chores on their list. Our neighbors were at their camp site for the holiday weekend. Chris was out of town until the following day and my sister had to cancel her trip to town. We’d had unexpected rain in the forecast two nights prior, and I didn’t want us to have gone to all the trouble of John and Charlie getting the hay done in exactly the right weather for it not to get loaded when it was all nice and dry. So, there was no other option but to get to work!

It took me about 4.5 hours to get it all done with lots of little breaks for rest and hydrating (and dancing in the barn to some great tunes!).

It was hard. It was dirty. It was hot. It was sweaty. It is backbreaking work. Those bales weigh between 40-60 pounds each and throwing them down from the wagon, then the wagon to the barn, then shuttling them from the barn to their spot, then stacking them was quite the job. But, with a good attitude, some even better tunes, and a few hours of daylight, I was able to get it all done.

Three things from one of the hardest farm chores I’ve done to date:

• We’re built for hard stuff. I knew physically that I could do it and even though it was going to be hard I gave myself little breaks and kept a good head about it.

• I was really proud when I was done! The sense of fulfillment from doing something really difficult felt so good!

• The following day (and the day after that) my mid-back, forearms, shoulders, and legs were sore, and I took a super long afternoon nap and then went to bed early that next night, too! After a day off it was back to the gym—gotta keep our farm bods ready for days like Sunday!

Chris got home safe and sound very late Sunday night and we spent the Labor Day holiday relaxing on the farm before heading into one of the hottest week’s we’ve had all summer with temps in the high 80s into 90 most of the week.

Finally a severe thunderstorm rolled in Thursday night to cool things down and now the temps get lower by the day as we move through the final days of summer and into autumn.

I hate wishing time away but I’m truly glad for this season to be through. In a future post I’ll talk about all the successes, failures, lessons learned, and notes for next season, but I’m most looking forward to being able to get back out into the garden without all the bugs and beating sun and sweat in order to enjoy the final days of this growing season and begin to get things buttoned up for the winter.

I mentioned in a previous Farm Note that I’d share with you the list of projects we have on tap for closing up shop for the season and now that we’ve had some time to sit down, go over that list, sync it with our schedules (Chris is traveling a ton this fall!), and get everything in order, I figured I’d share with you the framework plan for what we’ll be working on starting next month into early December.

We started this checklist format in the Notes app on our phones back in the Spring. They’re easy to make while I’m sitting thinking about what needs to get done, I can edit and change it easily as I think of things, Chris and I both have access to the list and we can see our progress as we go by checking things off one by one. What’s not to love?!

I broke these tasks down into areas: the Cut Flower Patch, the Big Garden, the (new!) Peony Patch, the Donkey Area, and General Yard/Farm tasks.

It might look like a ton of work and a lot of moving parts but this is really just an organization tool for us so things get done efficiently outside of our work and travel schedules and so that we have plenty of time to get off the farm and enjoy fall foliage in the area—we’ve both already scheduled a bunch of days off in October so we can make the most of the season and get out and see this region in its full glory!

We’ll execute this list and then keep it handy for next year to add and change as needed, the same way we’ll pull back out the Spring checklist when the time comes so we can get things rolling in an efficient way then, too.

Chris and I love strategy, planning, and process improvement and it pays off in such big ways on a farm. Chris keeps nudging me to start a consulting firm for area farmers to help them create systems for their farm operations, business, and marketing, and I told him I’d do it only if he decided to be my partner in crime! 😝

So! Here are the task lists below. Enjoy perusing them and feel free to ask questions in the comment section if you have any!

Check it out! We’ve got ONE thing checked off the list so far! Haha! This checklist helps to settle my mind now because there’s a lot to check off through the fall but because we know what we’ve got on tap I can enjoy the last of the season now—the time will come for us to get to work and then the time will come for us to rest, but in the in between is enjoying all the glorious days of the rest of the 2023 growing season and soaking in the best weather, sunrises, sunshine, and temps of the year, all while the leaves begin to change, the days get a little shorter by the day, and we soak up all these autumn dreams!