The cattle pens were full on Easter Sunday.
While the girls and I went off to church that morning, The Rancher stayed behind to work cattle because it needed to be done. Cattle needed to be processed and sorted so they could be shipped.
Our plates are full. When you live this homesteading/ranching lifestyle there is ALWAYS something that needs to be done. It doesn’t always work out to have everything fall into place, like this past Easter Sunday. We had to divide and conquer in the morning. But were able to enjoy a nice family get together in the afternoon all together.
How do we keep it all straight when we’re choosing to live this lifestyle? Two ways….
Flexibility and Boundaries.
You must be flexible. There are no set hours. There are no set wages. You do the best you can with what you have handed at you in the moment and if you fail you learn from it.
I am not perfect at this, but I have learned and grown a lot in our 10 years of marriage.
For example, when you have a birthday party at 3pm and a heifer decides to calve at 2:45 you have a choice. Go to the party alone with the kids and The Rancher meets you there. Or you wait, and you all arrive together as a family late. Being flexible.
If there is one thing God has taught me through this lifestyle it’s not to sweat the small stuff and to go with the flow. You see, I am a very orderly prompt person. It has never suited me well to be disorganized or late. While this is all still very true in a lot of areas of my life, I have learned to be flexible with the unknown and to be flexible when plans don’t work out quite how I planned.
What about boundaries?
Boundaries are something that I constantly struggle with. A boundary will help you to stay in the middle and hold what you value the most in its rightful place.
How to balance the every day life on the homestead with homeschooling my 3 girls, a husband, garden, all kinds of animals, cooking from scratch and just the overall household work? It’s a real struggle and there are days I want to throw in the towel.
And if I really evaluate those days when I want to throw in the towel, it is the times when I don’t have firm boundaries in place.
Two ways I set boundaries and how I try to keep them… prayer and lists. Lots and lots of lists!
First thing I try and do is pray before I say yes. This has been something I have really had to work on. I want to do it all and say yes to it all but what I have found is I can’t do it all and do it all well. So, I wait. And I pray. And I wait some more until I am sure I can fit it into my schedule and do everything else well too. There are some things that are time sensitive and need an answer right away but for the most part I use this process as a rule of thumb.
As I have mentioned before I use a day planner as my every day assistant. It sits on my counter and each day I have a to do list on it. Without these lists I would get absolutely nothing done.
Every Sunday I write out my week. I plug in the must dos for each day and then add in what I can of the extras. To help me to not say yes right away to everything I try not to take my planner with me when we leave the house. If something comes up while we are out and we are asked to join something my response is, “I’ll check my calendar when we get home.” This gives me time to think, pray, and evaluate if it will work into our schedule for that week. This is keeping a solid boundary.
One area that I have struggled with in the past and I am sensitive to now, is saying yes to so much fun stuff and as a result we are always on the go. I can manage to do the on the go well, but at home I fall apart as a mom and wife. I don’t like the person I am when I do this, so I needed to set a clear boundary to avoid this.
When you choose to live this lifestyle, you must be able to juggle a lot, sacrifice, and roll with the punches, but most of all you need to have clear boundaries. Last week I wrote about your why behind choosing to live this healthier homesteading lifestyle. After you find your why, set your boundaries.
Without them you will take on too much and end up throwing in the towel because its too overwhelming.
Believe you can do it, be flexible when it doesn’t work out exactly the way you planned, set solid boundaries, and start small and then grow with it. I believe this is a good solid recipe for success!
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