I am in my era of what my husband and I refer to as the Bless the Broken Road Era of our lives. If you don’t know the song, it’s by Rascal Flatts and it is definitely worth a listen. In a nut shell, we both traveled long not so happy (for the most part) roads before finally finding each other. We raised kids, became grandparents, and learned a ton about life before we met. We have a lot of life together to catch up on, and what we are finding, is that starting a homestead, which is a series of multiple major manual labor projects, at the ages of 60 and 52, is dang difficult.

The last month has been chaos to say the least. We have just over 10 acres in East Texas, with 10 acres, our county allows deer hunting. I was able to prove my shooting a shotgun ability on our Halloween pumpkin, not once but twice filling it with dead aim buckshot and not falling down from the kick. But when it comes to shooting an actual deer, I opt to stay inside with our dog while the actual killing happens. Don’t get me wrong, I can watch the processing of the animal, I can cook it, and happily eat it, but the only way I can bring myself to kill a deer is if grocery stores all close up, and hunting is our way of protein procurement.

Anyway, hunting has been a new part of my normal. Our freezer is almost at capacity (time to buy a deep freezer for the garage), where the Hell am I going to keep Popsicles?? The pond is still a work in progress,  but happy to report that after the rain last week, we know that it does in fact hold water! WooHoo! No need to pay for a liner!

Now that Thanksgiving has come to a close and we begin the task of deciding how to put 1700 sq ft of Christmas decorations into a 43′ 5th wheel, I focus on the big picture window that looks out into our beautiful woods and over the under construction pond. I will continue to remind us that this time just 1 year ago, we were still hopeful that the VA would approve our purchase of our dream property.  We need to take it 1 project at a time, rest at the end of each day, breath in the sweet smell of fallen leaves and fresh wooded air. Life has taught us both that the light at the end of the tunnel is in fact a cozy campfire with the one you love.