And just like that, summer is gone. Gone by in a blur, leaving us wondering where it went. We didn’t get all the things done that we hoped, and we didn’t go swimming even once.

It was a short summer in some ways, but in other ways a long one. A summer of changes happening that we weren’t that excited about, and changes that we were excited about kept falling through. We learned more about trusting God and waiting for Him to move, (sometimes that is your only option.)

Some of you know that we put our farm on the market this summer. Many have had questions, and no wonder. We have some ourselves. The biggest one we get is this: “Why? Didn’t you always want to raise your children on a farm?”

Well yes, we did. And we still do. But sometimes what we want, and what we believe God wants, turn out to be two different things. Which is hard to explain because when we bought the farm, we felt led in this direction. And for a while it worked fine. The turkeys were my dream, and the cows were Corys dream, and we were young and full of energy and had nothing better to do. So we worked. And worked and worked. We invested so much time and effort into our two dreams, sometimes working together, sometimes separately, but always in support of each other.

Then the babies came along. One baby was doable. Two was also pretty doable. No big deal, stick them both in strollers and let them watch Mama and Papa running power washers or hauling bedding from their little safe corner. They loved it. We loved it.

Three babies… still doable, but not as much so. There’s more food to make now, as everyone is growing bigger, and more laundry to do. We blinked and baby #1 was suddenly a 5 year old, and needed to start school. Add that to the already long list, and baby #4 on the way, you can imagine that things are a little overwhelming here at times.

I do want to recognize a huge blessing that came along almost at the same time as baby number 3. An on-site babysitter. Two of our good friends got married and moved into the trailer on our farm, and they have been a life saver for us. I don’t know how many hours of babysitting she has put in, but it’s been a lot. Not only that, she has made meals for us on busy days and helped us out with big jobs, sometimes with her own baby on her back.

But even though this is a huge blessing, it bothers both of us that instead of farming with our children, we are shipping them off to a sitter and doing a lot of our farming without them. Some of the jobs we need to do involve entire days on tractors and skid loaders, and even if it were safe to take them along, they very quickly grow sad and tired, and then what? Off to the babysitter.

Long story short , we have gotten to a place where we have so much to do, we feel we can’t do any of it very well. We need to scale down our responsibilities, (and as much as I dislike the term “weaker vessel” -guess whose back gave out on them while doing chores last year?)

Naturally we chose to lessen my responsibility, to give me more time for our children, so I can be a better mommy, and a better support to Cory in his ventures. Thus, the farm went on the market after much prayer on both our parts, and much pride swallowing on mine.

There you have it. That’s why we are attempting to sell the farm. And why we felt led to scale down, but now the farm won’t sell? That is an answer we are still waiting on God to show us. He has never failed us yet, so we are trusting Him to carry us through whatever He has planned. And if I’m still turkey farming when our children are grown, then I guess we just misunderstood His will. We don’t know what the Plan is, but we know it’s a good one, and we’re along for the ride.

I mentioned changes that we weren’t excited about. “Not excited” may be an understatement for what we felt one day about 8 weeks ago, when Cory got the call that his beloved, doted-on cattle were dying. In a matter of hours, 24 of them dropped dead, and we still don’t know why. We did some testing, but nothing showed up.

It was a rough couple of days, processing the financial loss, and trying to figure out what God would have us to learn, but He is faithful. The dear generous community we live in, showed up again. Donations rolled in that completely compensated the loss, and then some. We are humbled and so blessed by the sharing and caring that so apparently surrounds us.

While losing a nice percentage of your cattle herd is no fun, our loss was nothing compared to that of the families who have recently lost loved ones. We’re grateful and blessed- our little humans are well and happy.

Miss Anna Grace is 5 and working on first grade at home. She loves to learn, so teaching her is a joy. She is naturally a little “mama,” so she’s been working on potty training her little sister. I’m not complaining. 🙂

Oliver is 3 and very proud of the fact that he “can ride a big boy bike with no training wheels.” He’s fascinated by the idea of school, so I try to do some pre K stuff with him, but his attention span is pretty short.

He can be very shy and introverted when we go away, but he’s a normal noisy boy at home. Loves to pester his sisters. If things are quiet in the house it’s probably because he carried his little skid loader outside and is happily scooping gravels in the driveway. He spends literal hours pretending he’s Papa in the skid loader.

And our baby just turned 2! She is a chubby little ray of sunshine, waddling around singing and just being adorable. She talks in complete sentences, which is so much fun. I took some 2 year pictures of her but I can’t decide which one I like best, so I’m going to have to post several. 🙂

Next time I post an update, I’ll hopefully be introducing a new little Dexter. My due date is less than two weeks away now, so no one knows the day or the hour, but we appear to be getting there. We are excited to meet this new one, and see if Oliver gets a brother, or if the girls are taking over… stay tuned ! 🙂

I’ll add a few bonus pictures from this summer/ fall :

Happy fall everyone! ❤️