Spring seems to be turning into summer faster than I can keep up with.  Life is changing even faster as my pregnant belly bumps into chicken coop doorways and attracts unwanted attention from elderly strangers at the grocery store. But what has remained constant over the past few extremely busy months is that it seems that at least once a week I find myself thinking, ‘this has been the happiest day of my life.’
More than a fortnight ago Hubby Dearest built me a cross fence for our little homestead by the house.  True to form we waited until the weekend that we were getting the lambs to start putting posts in the ground.  Family came out for days of beer, laughter, sweat and fence building as they put together the sexiest fence I have ever seen.  Minutes after the gate was hung I rounded up the husband loaded the kid and we were off to pick up the lambs.  Hubby unloaded the lambs into the field and as I brought dinner into the lawn I found my sweet toddler Q hugging Hubby so tightly and talking to him about the sheep.  The heat of the day started to wane, our bellies were full, and as we watched tiny lambs frolic I couldn’t help but think that it was the happiest day of my life.

A week ago I had a surge of pure happiness as we welcomed the long-awaited first calf born at Melville Farms.  I watched in a hushed awe as she labored, toddler Q even spoke in whispers as she perched on my hip. Hubby Dearest kept bringing out the heifer Molly so she’d settle down and stop trying to mount poor Mable during contractions. I scuttled off to get more grain to distract the excited heifer and in the 5 minutes I was away the calf dropped as a healthy baby bull.
We watched the first wobbly steps, the bonding between cow and calf, and welcomed friends and neighbors as they took peeks at the new addition to the neighborhood.  Eventually the calf worked it’s way onto the fence by the road so even those who weren’t gathered to welcome the calf were able to take a good look.  The sun set as our little bull Norman nursed for the first time and I had never felt more thrilled or happy with our family farm. 

Yesterday the toddler refused to sleep, Hubby had a miserable day at work, a dozen meat birds escaped their chicken tractor and were meandering around in sticker bushes.  I was alerted by excited squawks and thundering paws as helpful dog Ted attempted to play with them, chasing them deeper into 8 ft high blackberries.  I brought a screaming crying Q out to watch as I gently removed the chickens and brought them back into the tractor to find that our laying hen Hotlips was INSIDE the meat chicken tractor gorging herself on the meat birds high-protein grain. It started to rain, my cuts from the blackberries started to bleed, Q began throwing herself to the ground in a tantrum into many piles of poultry, livestock, and dog poop. But later that night when the family sat around the table and laughed at the adventures of the day and we all could see and feel the baby boy growing in my belly roll around in around attempt to join the moment I felt my heart swell, tears pop unbidden into my eyes and I swore it was the happiest day of my life.

So many days are hard, stressful, seemingly impossible. Kids scream, laundry doesn’t get done, clutter becomes part of household decor, animals escape, budgets get tight, toddlers rub horrifying mixtures of poop and mud on their face while you’re not looking. I consider myself incredibly lucky for the brief pauses between the hullabaloo that I can slow down and notice my healthy, happy growing family in those moments of simple joy.