I really like to keep this blog filled with tips, tricks, and ideas to help you better your homestead, or to help you move further along in your homesteading dreams, but today I thought I would share with you the big step that our family has taken to do just that.
My life has often felt like I am playing a giant game of Tetris, trying to fit in a planting schedule that coincides with good weather, my work schedule, and the readiness of our plants. Another game when its harvest and processing time. Another game everytime I try to make bread or bagels, timing the feeding of my sourdough starter with the window that I have for all of the rise time and then for baking.
It taught me great time management and I was able to really get all of my timing down on those tasks, but it was not easy, and there were misses. There were days when we needed bread made, and it wasn’t ready, there were tomatoes that had to go into the freezer rather than being processed into salsa (although, HOT TIP: freezing tomatoes with a small “x” cut into the bottom of them, does make them easier to peel), and there were vegetables that just didn’t get processed at all and went straight to the compost pile.
While I was managing to get most of my tasks done on top of my 40+++ hour a week job, I was not happy, my husband had to take on more responsibility with the children even when I was home, and I can’t tell you the last time I really took on a hefty amount of household chores. It was time for a change.
I’ve been in the Food & Beverage/Hospitality industry for 20 years. In that time I have worked hard to get where I am now, and I had often put my work ethic over my family. In the last year I have finally learned to set boundaries, to say “no”, and to put my family first.
In just a few days I am taking the biggest step in putting my family first and leaving the industry. I have worked my last Mother’s Day, my last Father’s Day, my last 4th of July, my last Easter, my last Thanksgiving, my last Christmas, and my last New Year’s morning. I’ve answered my last phone call on a day off that pulls me into work, worked my last 14 hour day into another 14 hour day…
When I write all of that out its seems absolutely bonkers that I did it for as long as I did, but now I know, I owe my children and my husband more than that life. They did nothing to deserve a mom that could never give them her full attention, that went MIA for days at a time, coming home during their sleeping hours to shower and sleep, only to leave again before they woke up, and then to be absolutely drained on my days off with them, while still fielding phone calls that produced major stress points.
Michael (my husband and partner) has been an absolute rockstar by my side all these years and it is time for us to have a more normal life as a family and to continue to expand our homestead together.
It took some great timing and a few outside pushes, but here we are, on the precipice of a new adventure.
I am taking a significant pay cut, but the life payout stands to be even more exponential. Experience is the best teacher and I have learned a lot over the last 20 years. I can’t wait to learn more on our homestead and to have more time to share that with all of you!
Hug your babies tight, be there for them, show them your love. It took me awhile to realise that no career and no dollar amount is worth sacrificing your home values and time with your family, but I’ve turned a corner and I couldn’t be happier!
Have you made any giant life changes to get your homestead going?
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