When Life Throws You a Curve Ball

It’s crazy. Just when I have plotted out my life for the next umpteen months and settled back to work the plan, Life throws me a curve ball. It shouldn’t surprise me.

Enough seasons have passed through my earth-bound existence that I should know better than to think any long-term plan will play out exactly as I have envisioned it. It must be the optimist in me, for I keep planning.

Or maybe it’s my insanity. You know the old definition of lunacy: doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting a different outcome.

However, my recent roadblocks are just that–little obstacles. The unanticipated hiccups don’t really change my plans. My destination is still the same: write books. Now, I will have a few detours through unfamiliar neighborhoods. That can be a good thing, right? It adds color, dimensions, flavor to my collection of life experience.

I’ll stop rambling and be more concrete.

I make my living by farming. I make hay, cut wood, and grow vegetables for selling. This year I planned to add the sale of landscaping stone to my product line. Due to another hiccup in my life plan, my way of making a living was to be more important than ever in 2013. But. . . .

Karma has other plans. I have torn my rotator cuff. I am scheduled for surgery soon and will be convalescing for six months afterward. No farming this season. No farming means no income.

Thankfully, there is nothing wrong with my brain. So I have to ask myself, is the Universe clearing a path for me to write?

My Summer Job

Not too long ago I told you about my summer job. It’s the work I do that let’s me keep writing. I’m farming on a very small scale.

I sold memberships in my vegetable garden. This week I make my first client deliveries. My customers will receive asparagus, Bibb lettuce, radishes, Swiss Chard, rhubarb and two dozen brown eggs from my darling henny penny girls. Next week is  unclear, though I think it will be mixed salad greens, spinach, radishes, peppermint, oregano, Swiss Chard and more eggs. My customers get whatever is ripe in the garden.

Over the past couple of weeks, I have planted 10 varieties of heirloom tomatoes — 40 plants in all! Somebody, besides me, is going to be preserving lots of red, yellow and purple fruits — tomato sauce, ketchup, jam, pickles and any other concoction one can dream up for tomatoes.

And don’t get me started on the varieties of peppers (capsicums for my Aussie friends) . . . .

Furthermore, I make hay on small fields — two to seven acres. Today I stacked 70 bales of mixed grass horse hay. Since I have three horses, I put up my own hay first. Then I will sell whatever I have left over. I use about 300 bales per year. That’s girly sized square bales about 30 lbs. apiece. Big ol’ burly man bales can weigh 50 pounds. If I pitched those, I’d need should surgery for a torn rotator cuff.

So if I happen to skip a day here or there writing on the blog, you’ll know where I am.