When I was a little girl, I remember the day before Christmas as one of the longest days in my life. We celebrated Christmas at my beloved maternal grandparents house every year on Christmas Eve and that day took FOREVER to finally be evening and for all the rest of the family to arrive for food & presents!
Well, life has sped up considerably and the last 5 months have zipped by like an express train!
April 8th found us driving about 2 hours to the hospital to wait for our very first grandbaby to be born! We loved him on sight and have only become more besotted & smitten as the days have gone by! I gained my grandma name (GrammyPammy) and gave a huge part of my heart away!
In between visits with that special little guy, life on the farm does go on, lol! I found an elk antler in our field on a walk in April....We picked gobs of cherries from our Montmorency Pie Cherry tree this year.
Between our patch and my sweet neighbor Jean's patch, we got a bazillion delicious strawberries for fresh eating & winter jams & jellies!
Our daughter and her little family are about a 2 1/2 hour drive away and we have kept the roads well traveled both ways as we get to know our sweet baby boy!
We haven't neglected our favorite Spring & Summer activities, however, and have been to the beach several times. Washaway Beach in Grayland Washington is still our favorite, and we always stop there to see how much more land the winter storms took away....and we recently bought our almost 30 pounds of fresh albacore tuna and canned it for our shelves. We've been doing that for quite a few years - one of the big benefits of living so close to the edge of the continent is enjoying the fresh seafood & beautiful ocean beaches. When I was a baby, my mom & her family used to camp on the beach that no longer exists where the ocean has taken over,
We've made several day trips already this year and it only takes us about an hour & a half to get to Grayland Beach State Park where we like to camp in our trailer, too.
As I write this, we are just back from a day trip once again, this time to enjoy the Westport Washington Art Festival. Quite a few vendors of art & foods along the main street. We had fun wandering & visiting, ate lunch at our favorite Bennett's Fish Shack, of course and then stopped for a 'sissy' coffee (as my hubby calls it) on the way home.
This diftwood art lion and longhorn cow below were on display at the Tokeland Hotel festival a couple weeks ago - also at the beach. (I told you we go there a lot!)
There were also chain saw artists & local musicians and a pottery vendor. We each came home with a new handmade coffee mug!
We've lived on our farm for over 20 years. Starting from scratch, we built our shop and then lived in it while we built our house. We moved in on an exciting April Fool's Day and have been through many days, months & years of life here. We started here with my hubby & I, my mom and our three kids, ages 8, 12 & 15. That was a lot of life ago.
When this sweet little guy arrived, it just cemented the idea that, for our family at least, we should live close enough to go through the rest of this life together! Our plan is to sell the farm and move near the kids and be a blessing & help to them (and them to us!) in the years ahead!
It's a hard thing to think about, for sure. We love this farm and living so far from the world...but not living so far from the rest of the family! So, in the months ahead we will be sorting, cleaning, & repairing a bazillion things around here in preparation for a new adventure!
Lord willing, we will still live on a few acres as we're planning to keep up the gardening & animals and Grampa Dave has to have his bees & tractor!
In the meantime, we're still doing all the harvest stuff, too! We just made some really yummy jelly from our Hollywood plums and canned that. The tuna and chicken broth we canned last week just went down to the cellar and on Monday we're canning the pie cherries that we picked and stored in the freezer. We just put our wildcrafted mint away for our Winter tea and also braided all our garlic and put our onions in their baskets.
Life is full and happy, the Lord has blessed us greatly and we fully believe that every good and perfect gift comes from Him! Until next time (and hopefully not such a LONG time!) Serve the Lord with gladness!
