Challenges and Opportunities
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Good Day Friends!
This winter has been a challenging one for us here at Friends Farm. It seems like every week when we are scheduled to be open and the kitchen girls are planning to cook up a storm, something major happens to prevent that. We have had snow, ice and wind; we have had pipes bursting and flooding the building; we have had sickness and surgeries. Many unexpected expenses and repairs during this slower season add stress and worry.
This past Saturday, during market a kind customer remarked that if I am still smiling after all this winter has brought us, it gives her hope too. Immediately I was 15 years old again, hearing my dad’s deep voice commenting on the latest farm project gone bad. “Challenges and Opportunities” he said with hint of sarcasm and plenty of smile.
That long-ago summer we had somehow come into possession of several secondhand billboard tarps. We used one large section to cover the newly designed and constructed hoop structure for chickens. The bold, blue words that ended up across the top and center of the hoop were “Challenges and Opportunities”. I don’t remember what the billboard was selling, or what company it was for, but I can still remember seeing those words every day all summer and fall as the chicken pen moved across the farm, sheltering the meat chicks as they grew up to be tasty dinners. “Challenges and opportunities” became the byword of the season as Pop seemed to think it perfectly summed up everything and every situation. Anytime we started to complain or find a reason to give up, he would be there to remind us “Challenges and Opportunities, you know!”
Early that summer there was a terrific thunderstorm and mini tornado that came tearing across the farm one sultry afternoon. When the worst was over, we saw that chicken hoop had flipped over and broken and left the young birds without shelter from the torrential rain. Some died, the rest were rounded up and returned to the patched and repaired hoop coop. The tarp still held strong. “See?” Pop said, “Challenges and Opportunities. Now we know that it needs staked down in heavy wind storms, that’s an opportunity to make a better chicken pen next time.” I thought it was just a lot of work that needed done over again.
Later that year, the second batch of chickens were growing nicely in the same “Challenges and Opportunity Coop” when my parents left for a few days at the beach. Pop’s parting words as they drove out the lane? “Don’t forget! the chickens need lots of water when it is this hot!” “Yeah, yeah, I got this”, I thought with a eye roll. Or maybe not. On a particularly hot and sweaty day when we went swimming at the lake all afternoon, nearly half of the chickens died for lack of water. We had forgotten to remove the caps on the automatic waterers. With a sick heart I picked up 3 wheelbarrow loads of ready-to-process chickens and buried them in the compost pile. Now the challenge was that I had to fess up to my stupid mistake and plead for forgiveness from my dad when he came home. I will never forget the long, long look he gave me, or what he said. “I guess you will always remember to check the waterers after this, won’t you?” I always have. What a hard lesson to learn. Challenges and Opportunities.
That old junk chicken coop was dismantled at some point and the tarp repurposed to cover something else, but not before the message it bore was embedded in my brain forever. Problems can be an excuse to complain, point fingers, and quit trying, or problems can be challenges and give us new opportunities to do better, to think differently, and to try again.
This winter has been full of challenges, true. But we have also been given opportunities. To know our neighbors better as we build relationships in our community, to see the changes that need made to continue growing this farm, to trust our instincts, to do the hard things even when we don’t want to, and even to learn to accept help when we need it most. I am thankful God gives us the opportunity to grow and learn through our challenges. And I am so very grateful for all the help, concern and prayers this winter! We are looking forward to many more wonderful years!
Come visit us at the farm this spring and see what new things are in store for 2025. We are planting a greater variety of you-pick crops and planning several events to share our farm with our community. More info to come on the website and facebook. Thanks for coming along with us!
