Building A Farm and Raising Two Daughters

We have a four year old and a two year old that we love dearly, but we all know how toddlers. They can be a handful at times. Building a farm from scratch isn’t easy either. As I stand in an empty field on our land, I see the monumental task ahead, excited and terrified at the same time.

Of course, we never planned building a farm and raise two daughters, but life and opportunities rarely fit our idea of perfect timing. You have to go where the road takes you, when it takes you.

Like most people, my husband and I also have jobs to add into this precarious juggling act.

Prior to having our first daughter, I worked full-time as an Immigration Paralegal. After her birth I went back full-time, but felt the ache and pull to be with her, despite having my parents to care for her. With the support of my husband, we made the decision that I would leave my job. Once I felt I had a better balance in my life, I ended up going back to that same job, but on a part-time basis. I’m so grateful that I work with an attorney that would allow me the flexibility I needed for my children and still allowing me to work in a field I’m passionate about. I love meeting, connecting and helping people from all over the world (I’ve worked with clients from 6 continents and 60+ countries).

My husband works full-time at our local hospital as the Purchasing Manager. He’s worked in the medical field in a myriad of ways from an Army Medic, a medical sales representative and in a couple different roles in hospital administration. While he’s always enjoyed the medical field, he’s always been an avid outdoorsman, spending a lot of his youth on his family farm.

We still maintain those jobs, while building the farm. Add a worldwide pandemic, which has a serious impact on the hours my husband puts in at work, and we’re stretched pretty thin.

In our modern world, it seems like there’s a constant struggle between work and family, and I have to be realistic in my expectations. Some times I feel like I’m failing miserably to devote enough time to get things up and running at the farm, while simultaneously not spending enough time with our children.

Each day I have to remind myself that family is the most important, and I need to schedule the rest of my activities around that as best I can. For me this means, targeting specific time blocks to work on anything with Acadie Farm. On the days that I’m at the office full-time, I get some time in if the girls are still asleep from nap time. If not, I’ll wait until they are in bed and work a couple hours. On the weekdays that I do not go to the office, I’ll try to work a few hours in the morning, and then again in the afternoon during the girl’s nap time. I’ll put them to sleep and go work on the computer, if I don’t fall asleep with them (happens more often than I want to admit).

However, I do not work on “farm things” Friday and Saturday nights after the girls go to sleep, as that’s time my husband and I will hang out and enjoy a glass of wine. I’ll spend a couple of hours if I need to on a Saturday on the computer, and then if we have physical tasks at the farm will try to get them in on Saturday. Sundays we keep free for church and spending time with the girls. I’ll grab a couple hours Sunday night after the girls are asleep, if necessary.

Sometimes this schedule is interrupted and that’s okay. I heard someone once say that if you were to chop down a tree with an ax, you wouldn’t expect it to fall with one strike, but many precise strikes. Work of any type can be the same. I may not get as much time as I would like to spend, but even thirty minutes here and there can make a difference. The most important thing is to be consistent and keep working at it. It’s also equally important to not get frustrated by road blocks or natural interruptions. They’re bound to happen, and how we handle them can be the difference in whether we give up or succeed.

Building a farm and raising two daughters isn’t for the faint of heart, but what in life really is?