It started with a hay shed....

After moving to my new farm I had some instant work to do.  I needed shelters for the horses and goats, somewhere to keep the animal feed and I was quickly realizing that going from 6 acres of pasture to 3 acres of some trees meant I was going to need to feed more hay.  A lot more hay.   So clearly I needed a dedicated hay shed, but I didn't want the cookie cutter one they sell at the big box hardware stores or to pay my builder to make me one.  I knew I had some skills in building (I had built a tree house and chicken coop on my old farm) and a desire to start proving sooner rather than later that I could do things alone.  So I did some research and talked with some locals and started hearing about these pallet buildings, pallets are typically free and made of very strong wood and they are all the same size so they stack together well.

It took me some time but I was able to assemble this pile of 40 pallets from my local feed store for free.  I read blogs like crazy, made measurements and many trips to Home Depot for ideas and parts but at the end of the day I was able to make this hay shed that holds more bales than I actually need, looks cool on my property and gives me so much joy know I made it with my two hands, a little help and about $600 in material (roofing, siding, posts, etc.)

It worked so well and was so easy to make such a strong structure I recreated the idea for my goats home! 

Such useful things these pallets!! 

Ella and Claira enjoy their new home, its perfect for goats.  They never liked the stalls in my old barn so this open format it awesome and it is big enough for all four of them to pack in together.  It's important to keep your heard happy as well as yourself!!

These little buildings are not the fanciest things around but their strong and steady and they remind me daily what I am capable of.  These were the first of many projects on the new farm, I really enjoyed putting them together and creating my own little world where I can control what comes here and make sure it pleases me.  That is a power like none other, to look around the place you live and just be so pleased with it all.  It is not perfect and may never be but the progress feels so good the imperfections don't seem to matter as much.  Their just part of the process:) 

It makes me SO happy:)

Happiness is a word constantly tossed around and I'm not sure a lot of us really stop and think.."am I happy with this life?".  There can be lots of reasons why we humans don't stop and ask the question and an even bigger array of potential answers...but for me asking that question was a daily, if not hourly occurrence for so many years.  My ex-husband would yell and belittle me, my job and list of comments was overwhelming and I often felt like I was all alone in a household of 4 people and at the end of each day I would think "am I happy with this life?".  The answer was always no.  But I think just the simple fact I continued to ask myself that, to put happiness as a potential option in my life continued to keep me focused on what could be.  How, what and when was totally up for grab but I knew there was a change coming.  I knew there was a time I was going to create my own happiness.

I did't know it would take the loss of my father, the betrayal of my husband and 18 years of my life to get there.  Those events and dozens of others along the years finally let up to the day when I just knew I needed to be happy, that my life was not long enough to wait until I was 60 to get there and that I needed out.  I left my marriage, sold my business and moved to an entirely different part of the state where I knew no one.  I didn't know where anything was, I didn't have a job and I had hauled my mother, 2 horses, 4 goats, 3 dogs and 3 cats with me.  It was adventure time:)

This is the story of how I create my happiness.  The things I learn, do, grow and make...the process of happiness, in my world.  May you create your own as well.  Understanding that with all good there must be bad, the age old yen and yang I am finding more and more that as I create and nurture my world it is doing the same back and the bad is becoming more tolerable and less painful to me.  I am simply creating my own balance.

Balance in my life includes gardening organically, growing as much of my own food as possible.  Building and creating things on my little farm here in the pacific north west, having land of my own to do as I please is amazing and I am endlessly thankful for how blessed I am to live here.  Being on the ocean, as the Mary Oliver quote says The cure for anything is salt.  Sweat, tears and the sea."  Never being one for tears I opt for the other two!  Caring for my animals, I have a pack of old goats and some equally aged horses in addition to my dogs and cats.  Animals are so special to me and I strive to give them all the best life possible.  Yoga.  Daily.  Yoga is so important for my mind, body and soul....one of the first rooms I set up in my new home was my yoga room.  It's small, special and every single item inside brings me immense happiness.  Where it all goes from here is part of the adventure, the amazing, beautiful, cunning and blessed journey of this life.

Namaste.

(This is Lola Bean, my 10 year old Boston Terrier.  She is my constant sidekick and most loyal companion.)