There to Here

Today we hosted my family for a mother's day brunch complete with my sister's hand made (and hand-hunted) feral hog breakfast sausage, savory and sweet crepes, and assorted adult beverages.  Each savory crepe was topped with a bright fried egg, most from my own hens. 

Flowers and herbs grown right outside the front door were centerpieces, and a walk to the garden ended the afternoon. 

Someone mentioned the luck we have here- a sentiment I will never deny.  A lot of what we have and where we are has to do with luck.  But there's a little more to it than that.

The garden alone is the best representation of what this was before we grabbed our pitchforks and dug in, almost four years ago.  Somewhere at the bottom of a box filled with notebooks, house plans, and cheese-making books is a folded up paper with our scribbled plans for the placement of gardens, goat pens, and a house.  We've both got weaker backs (but stronger arms) for all the sweat put into this place.  Jeremy spent the better part of Year 1 removing mesquite thorns from tractor tires. 

There's a garden now in the spot where mesquite and cactus seemed impenetrable, where I broke down and cried more than a few times about our stupidity for sinking savings into what seemed like a hopeless pit of dry dirt, old glass, and rattlesnakes. 

Now, there's a house standing on the very hill we were told was ridiculous to build upon. 

Luck's a good theory to hope for and believe in, but it doesn't clear mesquite, and it doesn't calm those fears that wake you in the wee hours of a dark morning.  For better or worse, stubborn determination got us this far - the beginning of a resurrection of land that lay dormant for the better part of a century.  I hold clusters of new tomatoes in my palm and dig my hand deep into the dirt beneath them.  It's dirt Jeremy put there himself, dug out of piles of composted manure and hay.  We don't know what's next for this sprout of a homestead but, like most things, it'll take more than luck to get there.