2020—What a Year!

Several colorful adjectives are used to describe 2020 and the events which have shone a light on divisions in our country, imposed personal restrictions, and caused sorrow for too many families,

Still, 2020 has also produced opportunities for creativity and personal growth. Every one of us has had the chance to do some very simple things to protect and care for those we love and all of humanity.

In the spirit of Auld Lang Syne, we often look back at the end of each year before moving on to the new one. 2020 gave us an unusually rich opportunity while isolated for noting lessons learned and blessings to treasure. 2021 is a great time to adapt the creativity we developed to meet 2020’s shortages as we plan for success in the new year.

On an individual note, my husband, Joe, and I are in our third year of a new life. (See Our Story for reference.) We are a little behind our original, unrealistic schedule, but 2020 was a culmination of many the things we planned to do coming to fruition at once. As I list the new things we learned this year—I realize we have been blessed even more than I noticed while it was happening.

Here’s a rundown of the amazing new things we learned (and it conveniently serves as a table of contents for future blog posts). Almost every new skill we tackled built on a prior experience, and just as in my original dream of owning a goat farm, it all began with baby goats. If we ever have another year like 2020, I recommend you get some goats. Besides teaching you a hundred things you didn’t know, goats will definitely keep you humble.

1) How to assist in goat births even though the internet basically advises that it is horrible and terrifying and everything will go wrong.

2) How to milk a goat even when you don’t have a clue.

3) How to make a goat milking machine because it costs around $500 to buy one and your goats are giving less than 1 gallon a day.

4) How to make 4 kinds of goat cheese….because one is just not enough.

5) How to make goat milk ice cream. No reason necessary.

6) How to make goat milk caramel sauce—because you really need it for the ice cream.

7) How to make goat milk soap, because we all need soap and even a gallon a day is a lot of goat milk.

8) How to remove a chicken snake from the hen house with a snow shovel.

9) How to encourage chickens that stopped laying eggs to start laying eggs again.

10) How to use what you have to make what you need because you don’t want to go out in public or spend money.

11) An experiment with nine recipes from a cookbook published in 1950.

12) How to start seeds. . . because your good friend gave you a ton of seeds and you don’t want to waste Anything. At. All.

13) How to grow a really big garden, because you got a ton of free seeds, and now you’re in pretty deep.

14) How to grow a ton of flowers—because you got free vegetable seeds and your budget can be spent on flower seeds!

15) How to start a farm stand because now you have all these flowers and vegetables.

16) The failures.

17) How to change a mindset….because we all need a mindset change sometimes. I sure did.

18) How to build a website—because I had to and I welcome all those who wish to suffer through it with me.

19) How to write a blog. Dance like no one is watching and write like no one is reading.

What a year! Sometimes you feel as though you are languishing along, but that is when all the learning is happening and you are actually preparing for much bigger and better things.

The ancients must have had many great reasons to measure time. Several of those reasons are quite apparent when you begin to grow plants and work with animals. In modern days, the end of the year is a time to reflect on challenges and accomplishments and find ways to push ourselves to do better and to do even more worthwhile things in the year to come.

Check our future posts to see what we learned in 2018 and 2019. Spoiler alert—it is all about remodeling the house, beginning to raise chickens, and how not to raise goats. There’s a couple of pigs, some peafowl, and a turkey in there somewhere, too. Join us in 2021 to see what the future brings.

Leave a comment to let us know how your 2020 went, and tell us some new things you learned.