Proving Up Life

We listened to an audiobook about homesteading in the 20's.  I was struck by how much homesteading and working for three years to prove up on a claim is similar to what we go through every year here in our area.  Some years you nail it.  Some years, your mantra becomes, it will be better next year.

This year, we nailed it (so far) but last year, with 75% of our trees dying, we just had to cling to the hope of next year.  Farmers crops freeze out some years and sometimes they freeze out in consecutive years and you just have to have hope that it will be better next year and make certain, absolutely certain that you cherish every good time, every sweet moment so that you're not bogged down in the mire of working for next year.

We still have two years before we (hopefully) have a small crop, so in a way, we're still working for next years.  All the more reason to enjoy the sunshine, the children, the family life and smile at everything good.  Someone said that human beings have a tendency to not say much when things are going good, we're so good at complaining when things are bad that we might sometimes forget to sit back and say, "If this isn't nice, what is?"

Life is nice.