Wild Hope Homestead

Here we are at the end of the year. It is summer here in New Zealand and the weather has become rather hot. Christmas is over, which is sad, because I love the Christmas season, but it is also freeing. This Christmas became busier than usual because of a nasty sickness earlier in December and the fact that school and kindy finished close to Christmas: six days before Christmas and two days before Christmas! There was a lot of running around in the car and I prefer to hunker down at home; making nice food, getting things tidied up, getting the summer veggie garden sorted and reflecting on the real meaning of Christmas. I’m looking forward to having more flexibility with timing next year for certain reasons.

The veggie gardens provided us with plenty of food throughout the year, including our best broccoli and cauliflower year yet thanks to me being onto it with good timing and a fairly mild winter. We still have numerous bags of tomatoes in the freezer to use even though I grew less plants than the year before. One of my favourite crops was the ‘Blue Lake’ green beans. They gave us a plentiful harvest (there are still several dinner servings in the freezer) and I really like the flavour of them. I haven’t bean a huge green bean fan in the past but there’s something about these beans that tastes so good with just some salt, pepper and garlic powder. I still cannot eat peas. What didn’t do so well were the perennial onions (Egyptian walking and potato), which got rust. They didn’t grow very big, went soggy and had to come out early. Overall, the veggie garden was booming because I put a good effort into it and determined to fill it with plants.

Breeding of my Australorp chickens turned an unexpected corner this year. I hatched a grand load of chickens last year, using three roosters and multiple hens, and had some lovely young ones developing when I discovered a colour issue. Multiple young chickens had faint white barring on one or more feathers. Chickens from different parents. To the untrained eye it may not be noticeable or of concern but it it signaled a colour flaw in my genetics that is probably not fixable. I decided to abandon breeding them. It has actually turned out to be a relief as I needed to stop breeding them in order to focus on other things and prepare for moving without the added pressure of more animals to look after and juggle and all the butchering of extra chickens. Instead I have been downsizing the flock and trying to figure out a good number for our egg supply going forward. We currently have 11 chickens: 10 hens and our rooster, Trevor. Trevor is the son of Basil and is the most easy-going, quiet rooster we’ve had. He doesn’t wake me at unearthly hours of the night, he’s friendly and he does a good job of looking out for danger for his hens. I have questions about his fertility because he’s so laid back but I like having him around.

This year has really been a whirlwind. It started off with a good amount of momentum on the path towards moving properties. Things were getting done bit by bit. I got the bathroom painted and we were able to buy a trailer! But it became stressful as an overseas trip became imminent. I was juggling plans and small steps towards moving with plans for my first ever overseas trip. I felt like I was being pulled in two different directions. I thought this year was the year we were going to move. I knew it was over my capacity to do both of those things in one year and I allowed the stress of that to get to me. But God knew we couldn’t handle both, and here we are, still here.

Our trip to Malaysia for a family reunion and holiday wasn’t exactly encouraging. The quick summary is: we all got sick (starting on my 40th birthday), Miss Scarlet had a scary fall off some stairs (and was miraculously caught by Steve), I injured my foot and we recovered just in time for two nice outings before the intensely long plane trips back here from stinkin’ hot weather to winter again. The emotional and physical recovery took a while and summer seed-starting was delayed or missed.

I didn’t really feel like starting a summer veggie garden as I was feeling downtrodden and still didn’t know when we were going to be moving. But I knew I would regret it if I didn’t do something. So, I sowed tomato seeds. Everything is in the garden now except for kumara (sweet potato) and a few things I had to re-start. Most things are behind where they could be but I’m really glad I did something and got momentum back again.

It is good to be home and to have the pressure of the year’s events and responsibilities behind us. Now I can focus on the huge mountain of tasks to be done here: house painting, tidying up the garden and outdoor areas, finishing tidying the garage, finishing waterblasting, more decluttering and so on. There are so many unknowns and impossibilities in this journey but I have to keep coming back to God’s feet and laying down my burdens. All of them. It is hard not to pick them up again sometimes, but God knows exactly what he’s doing and he does everything better than I do.

Next year is going to include an interesting change in the form of The Little Fulla being homeschooled. Getting the intense application done was another thing I was doing at the end of the year and we’re still waiting to hear back as the processing time is quite lengthy. That was something God got the ball rolling on at that particular time, although I have been thinking about homeschooling since before The Little Fulla started school. I am so excited to have him home and for us to do learning together and weave that into our homesteading way of life. It is also daunting because it is a big responsibility, it’s new and it will mean figuring out new routines around here.

When I look back on this past year, what it has really taught me is deep determination, deep hope and deep trust in God. This journey towards moving is not an easy one for us. It’s not happening in our ‘ideal’ timing and we still don’t know exactly what we’re doing or how it’s going to happen. In the moments when I come to the end of myself and feel like it’s not going to happen I choose hope. Hope isn’t just a nice, happy feeling; hope is choosing to pick yourself up from the dirt even if you have to claw your way out of a hole, fingers raw and weary body covered in mud. Hope is choosing to believe the promises of God before they happen, even if it seems impossible. So, who knows what next year will bring?

Merry Christmas and happy New Year to you all!