Celebrating 10 years! and looking forward ...

Yesterday marked the tenth anniversary of this little blog! If you're wondering how it all started, here is that rather pathetic little post. I wrote about Katherine and me taking a vacation and lamented the fact that when you live on a farm, it's tough for the whole family to take a vacation together. Unfortunately, we were never able to take a vacation together as a family ever again as the children were growing up. I'm still holding out hope that at some point, we'll have a trusted farm sitter, and even though our children are all grown up now, we will be able to take a family vacation at some point. But I digress ...

My blog is ten years old! Wow! Like any long-term commitment, it's had its ups and down. Some years have been better than others. I'm really proud of my 244 posts in 2009. I blogged two out of three days that year! On the other hand, I really am disappointed in myself for only posting 24 times last year. The thing is -- I love blogging on here! But once I started writing books, the blog fell on the back burner, even though it should not have.

I started blogging almost four years into our homesteading journey because a lot of friends kept telling me that I should write a book about my experiences. Problem was ... I knew that a book had to be more than just a bunch of charming little stories. A book has to have conflict and drama and a narrative arc, and it all has to be told in a unique voice. So, I started this blog to "find my voice." How was my writing uniquely me?

I guess that's the thing I loved about writing on here. I could be me. I didn't have a professor or editor telling me that I couldn't start a sentence with "and" or that I shouldn't use a cliche or that I wasn't being formal enough. This is where I really learned how to write in a conversational tone.

But is there a story here? That was the other reason I started blogging. I thought that by writing about some of the things that happen to us, I might find a story that had a beginning, a middle, and an end. We are not talking about the end of someone's life here. But the story has to have a satisfying end point. The funny thing about that is that I've found several possible end points. Will I ever write a memoir? Possibly.

In the meantime, we're busier than ever on the farm. Once our children left, we realized that either we had to cut back drastically -- or turn this into a real business. Because I'd feel selfish if I had my own private 32-acre park -- land that could be used to feed people organic food -- we opted for turning this into a real business.

So, I hope to continue blogging on here for many years to come!