Dreams do come true.

Dreams do come true a second time, and more.

I had dreams . . . vivid but hazey around the edges. (That’s because I was young and wasn’t sure what they meant.) They weren’t sleep dreams, or day dreams but a longing in my heart driving me to act on things that sustained my dream. I was hungry for a life I had no idea how to achieve.

My dream came true in intervals and I almost lost it several times. Life can cut deep. It takes time to heal. And in healing there’s Hope.

Watching a story about giving up one dream to achieve another I remembered the ache.

Building dreams takes time

I grew up in a city, but lucky for me it was the “edge” of town. Our neighborhood of tract houses was surrounded by citrus groves and cotton fields. Every waking minute was spent there creating fantasies of farms and critter sanctuaries. I lived and breathed the farm life . . . in my imagination.

College days were spent in a small rural community. Living by myself for a brief time allowed me to carve out a little piece of heaven on a rented lot. My uncle gave me my first flock of chickens and I bought one dairy goat. I had no mentors nor helping hands to create my dream, just determination.

An elderly neighbor watched my struggle, and in true farm fashion- he let me fail, just to the point of near exhaustion, then showed up with his tool belt and straightened my lopsided coop. I turned shovel after shovel of hard desert soil and looked up to see him coming down the dirt drive with his disc-harrow to plow my small garden plot.

It gave me the gift of gratitude that he cared about my dream too.

Baby Steps

After marriage there were always small gardens, some successful and some-not so much. The desert is a hard task master, but juicy sweet tomatoes create a call that won’t let a person give up. Who doesn’t love seeing their children savoring fresh peas instead of candy, or hiding in the cornstalks like a fortress?

Finally those children became my helping hands and purpose for adding livestock to our place. I would teach them about life and death, taste and nourishment, hard work and reward. Birthing lambs, hatching baby chicks, and becoming the neighborhood drop off for unwanted chickens became a good lesson in stewardship.

A time to lay fallow

The loss of a precious loved one, caring for an aging parent, and employment in the city all taught me to let the dream go for a time. I had to let my land and my dream lay fallow. A body can only move in so many directions or it becomes weak and illness creeps in.

Caring for dreams is a lifelong process and rest allows for them to become even more fertile. Research in that resting time gave me HOPE.

It just feels right

There’s a sense of  peace and contentment when you’re doing the things you’re wired for. Homesteading is that thing for me. As I wrote before HERE, it’s not instant gratification. My home feels complete with animals to care for and the food they provide. Using my own two hands, however slow they may be growing, to cook, sew, create the things we use and enjoy is that ongoing pull at my heart to dream.

May you never lose sight of your dreams, and someday live them.

Always hopeful,

julie