January’s Two Colors

Jan 1, 2016 | People

[title subtitle=”words and image: Jessica Sowards”][/title]

At first glance, there is very little wonderment on a farm in January.

 

Come in March and you will fall madly in love with the place. Even the air is pregnant in March. The garden will be freshly tilled, ready to receive hundreds of seeds and transplants. Raised garden beds will turn out bowls of sweet peas, rhubarb, and cool weather greens. The air will smell of honeysuckle and spring rain. There will be chicks by the dozens—peeping little fluffs. Oh, and the goats! Have you ever seen a baby goat play? Google it. Thank me later.

 

Come in July and you will not want to leave. The goat milk will flow like it’s on tap, turning into cheese and yogurt in the cool, tiled kitchen. The spring chicks will hit maturity and begin to lay. The egg baskets will come in with so much bounty, your arms will tire from carrying them. We will live off watermelon and Caprese salads, every bit of it from our little piece of the earth. July on a farm is a glorious time.

 

October rivals it, though. Come in October and the soup pot will be bubbling with root vegetables and farm-raised chicken. The boys will do homeschool in the morning and climb trees in the afternoon. We will have the spoils of our first honey harvest. Bushels of apples and pears from friends’ trees will pour into the kitchen. Subsequently, the pantry shelves will welcome full mason jars, lined in rows, stacked to capacity.

 

It is easy to love the fruitful months. Even a person with no desire for homesteading could come and feel wonder when there are bouncing baby goats and pounds and pounds of provision hanging on the vine. But in January, there is none of that. The pantry shelves are dwindling. The milk has gone dry. The hens, in protest of the short daylight hours, rarely lay. Even the greenhouse greens have stopped their giving. The jug that usually holds wildflowers from the side of the road has been stored in the top of the pantry. There are no flowers for now.

 

The truth is, there is a part of me that starts wishing for spring as soon as the artificial Christmas tree disappears up the attic stairs. That wandering side of my heart shirks the waiting of the cold months and gets overwhelmed at the colorless, muddiness that is a farm in winter. That part of me has a hard time getting out of bed on the twenty-degree mornings and dreads buying grocery store produce.  It’s not the best part of me, though. It’s the impatient part. It’s the part that certainly cannot take credit for the lovely things in my life.

 

Then there is the other side of me, the part that writes pretty words and finds beauty in January. On this side of my heart dwells the optimist. To be honest, she’s hard to wake up sometimes. But when I let her determine my mindsets and rule my thinking, even January becomes a terribly romantic time to be a homesteader.

 

Most mornings, before the sun is even thinking of shining on Arkansas, my husband Jeremiah turns off his alarm and dresses in the camouflage clothes that are laid out next to the bed. He kisses my head, even though I don’t usually stir. He retrieves his bow from the closet and heads to the woods, but stops before he reaches the door and lights the stack of logs in the fireplace so we might wake to the warmth of it. I think most days he lets the deer walk. Between him and the boys, the freezer is already full of deer burgers and sausage, all the venison we could need for the year. But he has left one of his deer tags unfilled. Either he’s waiting for “The Big One” or just unwilling to finalize the season and give up that morning time with God in the deer stand. Either way, it is part of January.

 

The daylight is the alarm for Toby and Ezra, ages two and three. As soon as it floods in their window, their eyes pop open. Within a few minutes of daybreak they will be bouncing on my bed with their impossible energy, shouting, “It’s wake-up time!”  So I rouse, and Ben, the baby, does too. I dress us all in sweatshirts over our thermal pajamas. I put slippers over socked feet. Our old house is cold, even when the heat is on.

 

As I turn on the burner underneath the cast iron skillet and the kettle, I hear Noah, age sixteen, close the back door. In a few moments I’ll hear the roosters crow as he opens the coop doors and the chicken flock spills out onto the freezing yard. He will fill their waterers with scalding water that will be frozen by noon, top off feeders and throw corn. He’ll feed the goats and check the rabbits.

 

Meanwhile, I fry eggs, make hot tea with honey and cream, and coerce Jackson and Asher, ages eight and ten, out of bed with promises of bacon. By the time Noah and Jeremiah are back from their morning routines, we are around the table with breakfast and Bibles. Thus start the days of January.

 

Homeschool happens in front of the fireplace. Jackson speeds through math while Asher puts it off until last and prefers his language arts assignments. I stoke the fire anytime it threatens to weaken and tap away on my MacBook about God and chickens and things like January, stopping to answer questions about the capital of Australia and how to solve an equation for Y.

 

Sounds of worship music and power tools whir out of the garage shop where Jeremiah, by the warmth of an oil heater, builds small chicken coops we will sell with spring chicks in a few months. Noah has stripped off the multiple layers of Carhartt® and is back in sweatpants, focused on his homeschool assignments on the computer. Mikela, Jeremiah’s twenty-one-year-old sister, is upstairs with the youngest boys, playing games about numbers and colors. She works on baking goods to put in our food baskets, as our ministry of gifting food boxes to church leadership and those in need is limited in the less productive months.

 

No, at first glance, this farm isn’t much to behold during January. But when you look a little harder, past the molting chickens and the dormant gardens, you’ll see incredible beauty in this family of mine. We are all a little stir-crazy, we are all a little tired of grocery store produce and going out three times a day to thaw the chicken waterers, but we are well aware of what is coming.

 

In the approaching seasons, I’ll be traveling more, speaking at conferences for ministry, staying in hotels with no chickens or small boys to bounce on the bed at daybreak. When at home, I’ll jump between homeschool and writing and the endless list of work spring will bring. As soon as the weather allows, Noah and Jeremiah will set their minds to building and planting. Jackson and Asher’s chores will grow with the rest of ours in spring. And Toby, almost four, will join in.

 

So, as the optimist, I will say this: January may not look like much, but it is a season of rest. It’s a season of growth for each of us. And while I may get a little over-excited at every seed catalog and hatchery order form that comes through the mail, and while my composition book of farm plans is chock full of sketches and lists and dreams for spring, I’m OK with January.

 

I’m OK to stay here in front of the fireplace for the time God has me here. Soon there will be bounty, but as for now, I will enjoy this abundant gift of family I am blessed with. At first glance, I may not feel awe at January, but when I wake up the optimist, I realize this may be one of the most beautiful months of all.

 

Follow Jessica on her blog @thehodgepodgedarling.blogspot.com

Do South Magazine

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