I love the ingenuity and creativity shown by my farming neighbours down at the end of the road. Check out what they are busy doing with old soup cans!
Recycling at its best!
Functional shingles that look great, too! What’s your favourite repurposing of something that’s usually tossed away? My favourite raw materials are pallets and binder twine, which can be rearranged into rudimentary animal shelters, sorting chutes and pens, gates, compost bins, ramps, and more. Actually, if I’m right, I believe this shed uses pallets for framing… I’ll have to go back down and have another look.
Most days, the lower hog pen is a pretty ordinary place. But yesterday, the sun was at a very particular angle and the place was transformed.
At one point, a strange illusion made it seem as if there were two suns and the world was ablaze.
By the time I returned a short time later after feeding the chickens and sheep, everything had returned to boring normal. Nothing to see here, folks – move along.
Which brought to mind the question, “If a tree falls in the forest and there is nobody to hear, does it make a sound?” How many extraordinary moments do we miss because we hurry on by, arrive a few minutes late, or take off before the best part of the show?
Which seemed like a bit of a sad question to end with… until I considered that every moment contains the potential to be extraordinary if we slow down enough to see what’s in front of our noses, even down in the most boring corner of the hog pen.
All day long I’ve been dithering… there is stuff going on at the farm (there is always stuff going on at the farm) and this is technically a farm blog so I’m sure I could come up with a suitably farm-y topic. But I’ve also been having a lot of fun playing with some of those photos I took up in Kelowna (which is definitely not on the farm).
But neither was taken here… and really, they are as much about fooling around with some basic photo editing techniques I don’t generally bother with as they are about any particular topic…
So, my question is this: Does it matter? Does a blog with the name “Dark Creek Farm” always have to be about the farm? Should I start a different blog for stuff like this? (I see lots of people who seem to maintain multiple blogs… to me, this seems like some kind of insanity, but if people get annoyed because they come here expecting to see frozen water buckets, I don’t want to be too irritating…) Should I force my creative powers to somehow relate creepy red skies and frosty winter scenes from my travels to relate back to my life here at the homestead? (I was, technically, digesting a home-grown turkey while I was out on that photo walk…) What is the protocol? Or are we inventing protocol as we go along?
Given this is the first day of a brand spanking new year, I’m a bit loathe to merrily set off on the wrong foot, but given that these photos took up my designated blogging creative time, I’m afraid that’s all I’ve got! Maybe this is the perfect spot to insert a quickie poll.
2013 is on the way out the door and I find myself in an odd restless state of waiting. Waiting… for something. The lengthening days make me eager for days long and warm enough to start planting. A change of the calendar page makes me want to start re-organizing, re-thinking the farm. (A break of a few days was a not-so-subtle reminder that every second of every day does not necessarily have to be spent working…) On a very practical level, we are waiting for visitors to arrive and travelling family members to return home.
After the short break over Christmas, it’s time to think about getting back to work on the newest book project (about trees – I am very excited! Expect some tree photos to pepper posts over the next while…). Though, when I think about work, I feel like I should move my desk out of my bedroom. Feng shui experts would be horrified to see me working away in my calm/resting space. There is a great spot, underutilized at the moment, in my new living room/dining nook where I could get set up. There are huge windows right in front of where I’d put my desk so I could look outside and keep an eye on the hens.
There are projects galore awaiting my attention, but the only way to make real headway is to stop. Take stock. Consider. Plan. And then move forward. See how things are going until the next stopping point comes along. Repeat.
See you all next year!!
[For anyone keeping NaBloPoMo score… I DID IT!! I can’t quite believe that somehow through all the chaos of this month I managed to spew something every day! Even better than the spewing, though, was the reading and friendship-forming while I was exploring all those other blogs! It has been a lot of fun to discover so many bloggers doing so many interesting things in far-flung corners of the globe. Thanks so much for visiting – I’m looking forward to continuing our conversations in 2014!]
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