This time of year is tough. The stagnant nature of the winter season is often overwhelming. It’s near impossible to wake up every morning with the flood of enthusiasm that the warmer months usually bring. At best, right now, that enthusiasm comes at a slow drip. It’s cold, it’s dark. Rural life brings many beautiful things, but it often comes at a cost – and that isolation can be heavy and omnipresent.
There is no lack of work or projects to be done, but most tasks are on a forced hold until the earth thaws. I have so many plans and projects for the year ahead, but each of them requires patience – a virtue I am painfully unfamiliar with.
I think everyone is feeling uninspired right now – and the irony is that I actually find inspiration in that collective sense of discouragement. It’s a source of comfort to know I’m not alone, and I’m trying to remind myself that these days will pass.
I’m also trying to not push these quiet days away too quickly – a delicate balance that proves arduous to pursue. When things feel dormant, and all I can think about are the goals for the year I want to accomplish, I have to stop and remind myself of the invaluable time with my family I am being gifted with. In the end, I know I will look back on this slower time in my life and feel grateful.
Before long, the days will get longer – the sun’s presence will idle a few precious moments longer in the sky. The morning choir of birds will return. Dream-building will resume.
Until then, I will live inside the reverie of the days ahead. I will seek motivation in the anticipation of all the amazing things we have planned for our homestead. The chicken coop build that we will finish. The broken barn boards that we will repair. The vegetables that will grow in the gardens we plant. The chicks that will hatch from the dozens we incubate. The bountiful collection of fresh eggs our hens will provide. The highland cattle that will one day roam and graze our land. The dreams we will see come to fruition.
That slow drip of optimism will build. Before long, it will become a gentle stream – a beacon of hope for the brighter days ahead.
Guest blog written by Laurel Ysebaert of Ysebaert Acres (Courtright, Canada).
“I am a mother, wife and registered veterinary technician working on turning my family’s third-generation 50-acre farm into a sustainable farmstead. We have free-range laying hens who provide us with amazing, nutritious eggs to sell locally, and we will be starting a fold of Scottish Highland cattle later this year.”
Find Laurel on Instagram