Ummm… hello? It’s March. How did that happen? I was going over the calendar planningwhat I was going to post on the blog in the coming weeks. All of a sudden I realized that March was imminent and it was the THIRD ANNIVERSARY OF WHEN WE BOUGHT THE FARM!!!

Sorry for shouting, but holy cow. We’ve been here for three years!

The farm has been pretty momentous for me. I love who I am here. I love the lifestyle that Matt and I have. I love the atmosphere I’m surrounded with every day. If I could spend all of my time here on the farm with Matt, Baxter and Ralph, I would be quite content… Not that I’m not happy already. It’s just the dang day job that pays for the farm keeps dragging me away from it.

But anyways… as Matt would say, “I digest.”

(Translation, “digress” … just in case you didn’t get it).

Anyways…

In celebration of the day I found myself, also known as the day the farm became ours, I like to look back at the past year and reflect a little bit.

My word for this year is “progress.”

Thanks to my Home Goals and a relatively strict monthly schedule, we made some significant progress on transforming the house into more of the home we want it to be.

We spent some time in the basement, which hadn’t received a lot of attention since year 1. We redid the doors, patched the foundation and finished off the last remaining untouched space: the laundry room.

I loved participating in the One Room Challenge for the first time. It pushed me to think about all the details in the room and bring it all together in a limited amount of time. The result–a beautiful, fully-decorated, completely made-over laundry room–still thrills me.

Also thrilling was the progress we made upstairs on the main floor. I took a baby step into making over my office by setting up a little command centre in a previously awkward nook. You’ve also seen recently that we’ve started on a master bedroom makeover.

The space that saw the most progress over the past year was definitely the living room. This room basically got a complete makeover with fresh paint on all the walls and trim, remade bookshelves, additional furniture, a growing family photo display, some really special art and, of course, our beautiful fieldstone fireplace. It is so amazing to have the fireplace working finally. It’s a total show piece for the room–heck, for the whole main floor.

Outside, we were not quite as progressive–as usual. We’re three years in, and I’m still learning that landscaping the farm is a mammoth task. The area that saw the most progress this year is the one where I can claim no responsibility–the fields, which produced our first crop of soybeans.

The landscaping will continue to be a theme for years to come, I expect. Probably an infinite theme.

Another theme for my annual reflections is animals. We’ve had our usual sightings and hearings of birds, deer, coyotes, turkeys–and as much as they’re usual, they’re still novel. Like last year, we also experienced a few more losses. The robins, Harold and just last week the owl. Death is a part of life, a fact that is made even more real here at the farm.

On a more positive note, Ralph and Baxter continue to thrive. The best word to describe Ralph is constant. She presides over her barn and keeps everybody in line. You know that saying, “dogs have owners and cats have staff”? Ralph has hired all of us onto her crew–including Baxter.

Baxter, the most easy-going guy ever, takes life as it comes. We had an extra focus on training this year through classes with a really great trainer, a hiking group and ThatMutt’s #ActiveMutts challenges. As much as I can’t imagine my life without the farm, I also can’t imagine life without Baxter.

This year we branched out beyond the farm too, participating the #ALSIceBucketChallenge and weighing in on #Farm365.

Time is flying. As much as I can’t believe it’s already March, and already our third anniversary, I also have the feeling that we’ve always been here. Thanks for coming with me on this wonderful journey.