I told my 8 year old a joke last night and the punchline was “woa and giddy up”. He looked at me confused…what does that mean? I thought back to my childhood that was filled with thoughts books and dreams of horses. My childish written stories were about horses, my bedcovers, my pencil case and eventually my naive dream came true and I had the chance to ride and look after my own (of sorts) horse-on-loan. It was short lived over a couple of years because a: I was 13 and the commitment was just too much and b: all the books in the world could not have prepared me for the reality of owning a horse. I fed the horse too much sugar beet, didn’t ride her enough, felt confused by her wildness (from the former errors!) and when said horse one day escaped and ran down the main road, only to be accosted by a local vet, the horse era abruptly ended. I don’t want a horse anymore, but I look back now and see it put grit in me. Maybe it’s the reason I don’t like cosy comfort for too long, but rather want to be in the rain building a wood store. Or why I prefer sitting upright at the kitchen table rather lying on the sofa. Whatever it is, I’m grateful for that time. Yet when my son had no reference for ‘woa’ or ‘giddy up’, I remembered again why I want to build a homestead amidst a dying farm landscape. I live amidst the remnants of a disused farm. At one time, there were dairy cows here, pigs, sheep and hens. Pigs would break free from their pen when we were on holiday and dig up our garden, rabbit hutch demolished, rabbit hiding in a bush; an orphan lamb was once handed to us to bring up, which we kept in our garden and played with, letting it chase us around the garden and all around the house. Hens were always a permanent fixture and the delight of finding a warm egg will never leave me. In my heart, I want to recreate all of this again, but have no idea how to do it with purpose, momentum and longevity. I feel for the last 5 years, I have played with the idea of it on a small scale. We kept lots of hens, bred chicks naturally and in incubators. We culled and ate. Learning and growing. We bought in small turkeys to fatten and eat. I took a beekeeping course and had several colonies of bees. I learnt to garden and grew a years worth of garlic, onions and tomatoes. Yet suddenly, it has all been laid down to enable this move into a more rural landscape, where the idea was here there is more potential to do more. This was meant to unfold. Yet I feel further away from that dream now, than ever. I walk around a 2 acre field most days and wonder how to progress. I would like my own field. I pray, I think, I try to work out a way forward. Then I wait, and come back into my big noisy family, with all its busyness, drama and dog hair. The dream is drowned out and goes to sleep. I wonder if it simply isn’t time for the dream to awake and I wait again for something else to occur, to create vision, movement and forward motion.
