Today is a new beginning. The first day....

I was a young woman when we moved to Wisconsin. We had three young children and alittle money to buy a farm. (Looking back we should have waited, saved more first, but this is about what is, not what might have been.)   :) We wanted so much to be independent, to be on the land, free to raise our kids there and to be together. Well we are still living on the farm and our kids are growing up. Free? Independent? Debt has destroyed any feeling of being free, and the same goes for feeling independent. We are still married...together...30 years in a few days!!!!! God has blessed that which we have done right. 

But, the part that we did not do right is just pulling us down. We need to make changes but that is scary. And as a wife I can not make those decisions. It is not my place to decide where we go from here.

Farming has been hard on me, maybe I should say on us.....Doug and I. We started out with the best of intentions.We set things up the way we thought could work best. Maybe all the nay sayers got to us or the lack of ready cash was too hard. It was not too long before our bank talked us into a government backed loan to lower our payments. We took the bait. This was our first big mistake. It looked good at the time. And if I remember right we felt sure it would all be fine then.(I sound like Eve remembering the early days in the garden! Hmmm.........)

We have tried so hard to do things the way 'they' have suggested. It has not gone so well. The ideas for farming itself that we first had are not even in sight with a telescope! The government and its policies have exhausted my patience...they have made life so hard. That first mistake, allowing our farm loan to be taken over by that FSA guaranteed loan..... it's has been all down hill from there.

Anyhow, what comes next?