Thursday, March 15, 2012

50 Days of Self Reflection: Day 18

What are three things you hope to accomplish this year, and why, and how?

I have such a long list of things to do. I have to remind myself to take the year as it comes and not let myself get wrapped up in projects that belong to the future. I’ll try to keep it realistic here.

1. Create the poetry-photo compilation my husband and I have been planning for a while. I’m really excited about the project, I love my husband’s photography and I think they would make a fantastic pairing. It just takes time, which I’m generally short on, and discipline, which I’ve never had much of.

2. Get goats. I want regular access to good, raw milk. I want to make goat cheese. Besides, goats a a nice, easy way to ease further into a full-fledged homestead, and I have fantastic names all ready for them! I’m hoping to start with two or three and build from there to a little herd of five or six over the next few years. What will I do with all the extra milk? “Drink what I feel like and throw the rest to hell,” as E.B. White’s neighbor did, living alone with two milk cows all to himself, or share it with friends, or make yogurt and cheese and then share that with friends, I suppose.

3. Have truly successful gardens this summer. Big ones. Enough to can the abundance and eat enthusiastically each day in season. Cleaning out the chicken coop this week,I realized I’ve got a decent amount of our own manure aging in the snow-covered garden right now, and with some work, some pest (read that - Luba and the chickens) control, and the hopeful early start I’m looking for this year, I have high hopes our gardens this year will give way more than I could ever hope to use!

3 comments:

  1. You'll almost certainly find someone to take that extra fresh goats' milk. I never turn it down when my goat-keeping family offers it to me. :) Oh, and the cheese is the BEST.

    Three things:

    1) Get my A.D. novel well on the way to publication. Edit the second, and publish the novella. And write another novel, I think, though picking which one is not going to be easy. I may have to work on two at once.

    2) Get the gardens under control, including creating another raised bed behind the deck, pruning the old cherry tree, and getting rid of the weeds.

    (I almost said "some serious weed" for effect, and then realized that would mean something entirely different than I intended. :P)

    3. Replace some of my wardrobe. It has been waaayy too long since I bought either summer or winter shirts, and what I have is fading both in dye and style.

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  2. Maybe you need some guineas! The farmer I work for has flocks of them that just run around loose and eat all the bad bugs and ticks and things. They are really funny birds, and make crazy noises at dusk, when they all roost high in the trees.

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  3. "serious weed" :) such a different image of your garden!

    guineas would be fun, Luba would go crazy with the noise!

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