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Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Our Hillbilly Home - Final Thoughts

Our House
This story is about how we got started with our farm several years ago...I was chatting with a friend one day and talking about how we got our house, and she wanted to see some photos so I decided to write the story for my blog and share photos instead of trying to e-mail a bunch to her. If you missed the first part of this story, you can find the links to all the parts on my links page.
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God has blessed us over the years, and our farm is the 2nd biggest blessing we have had, in my opinion. (I count DH as my biggest blessing.) Yes we could survive in town...we did it for several years. But our happiest years are those we have spent on the farm...either the one we rented when we first got married or this one we have now.

I've never felt more "led" by God, than when we were getting the farm...and then the house. It's truly been an amazing experience, and an exciting time in my life! The fact that we didn't want more than 30-40 acres, but ended up with 100 actually turned out to be providential because that gave us some land to sell, which in turn got our debt drastically reduced, so now we have a farm AND home, which if all goes well, should be paid for in just a few more years. That's not something we thought of, when we first bought the place...but God knew and I'm sure he planned it.

Truthfully, we don't have to live HERE, we would be happy somewhere else, as long as it was on a farm. DH actually mentioned moving a couple years ago...I was totally against the idea, as I love my home, but if God ever wants us to move, and leads us to a new home (hopefully in the country)...I will be right there beside my DH and we will do our best to listen and pack up our animals & hoards of junk and move.

I have to admit, I've come to the realization, that it really WOULD be nice, to be closer to my parents, so we can help them out more as they get older...but I'm happy here, if this is where God wants us.

I am blessed with having a man who thinks like I do, in that we both prefer to make do with what we are given, than to keep up with the "Jones" of the world. My Grandpa gave me some advice once, that I've taken to heart (although truthfully I tried to follow it before that).

In a conversation with him and my Grandma when I was working on a story about their life for their 60th anniversary, he said "I don't worry to much about what people think of what I do. I just do what I want to do. You've just got to be bull headed and do what you want to do." My Grandma agreed and added "The heck with how everybody else feels about it." Grandpa continued saying "You can either do what you want to, or you can try to do what everybody else wants you to do, whichever you feel best about. If you decide you want to do it, then you better quit worrying about what everybody else thinks about it."

I have long since gotten past worrying about what others think of our "hillbilly" farm. I've never been to worried about what others thought of me anyway, but after talking with my Grandparents while I was working on their story, I realized that as long as we do our best to follow God, it just doesn't matter what others think of us, we can't please everyone anyway so should work on pleasing God and ourselves.

Trying to get out of debt, not further into it, DH has scrounged old buildings that people wanted torn down, and used the parts to build our outbuildings. This ticks a few neighbors off around us (mostly DH's brother) because they just don't "look" real nice, but they work for the animals, and keep us working towards being debt free, instead of going further into debt, and that's what is the most important thing to us.

Course DH had PLANNED on painting the buildings, to make them look better, but after finding out how mad someone was with how they looked, I'm thinking it's going to be a LONG time before I "find" the money for paint. Thankfully DH is in agreement on that matter to. *giggle* Course being....ummmm....not a nice person, I did suggest painting the barn, and putting a big wal-mart smiley face on the road side of it, with a hand with the middle finger up beside it. DH laughed at that idea, be we haven't actually done it...yet. *snicker*

Daisy on the drive

We always wanted to name our farm, but never could really settle on a name. However, when someone (we can only guess at who since they were to afraid to do it to our face) sent in several of those cards you find in magazines with our address on them and we started receiving mail addressed to Hillbilly Hill Farm, we both jumped on that name, cause we loved it! It was SO US! *giggle* I guess that person's plan kinda backfired, (we are only guessing, but we think they wanted to shame us) but we have to thank whoever it was, cause not only has it given us some laughs...it gave us a name!! So thanks, to "whoever" thought it up, I love it!! :)

We both now consider this farm...Hillbilly Hill Farm. I just hope if we ever did move, we would be able to move to a farm, with at least one hill...so we could keep the name! LOL

Hopefully in the years ahead, we can become more self sufficient. We both would like to learn to garden better, so we can provide more of our own food, as well as raise most of the meat we eat. I don't know how well that will work, since gardening isn't something we are good at, but with God's help, we will learn. I never thought I would enjoy canning as much as I do, so as the years go by, hopefully I will learn to do more and more of it, even if it does take up most of my time, when it's canning season.

It's not all been rosy since we started living our dream life here on the farm, there are always trials in life, and it seems that living on a farm, with animals has more than its fair share from time to time. Living here however, makes the bad times a little more bearable, whether it be the loss of an animal...family problems...or just life in general.

God willing, I will be able to continue sharing our journey here on my blog. Whatever happens, I'm so thankful to God for the time we have had here on this Hillbilly farm in Nebraska. It's taught us a lot already...we will see what the years ahead bring us in learning and experiences.

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Thanks for reading our farm's story! I hope you enjoyed it, at least a little.
For more of our farm stories, don't forget my DH's blog, he is better with words, and is good at writing funny little stories about the animals from time to time.



2 comments:

  1. Deb, you just put it all in place as good as it can be said!

    Farming's all about - purpose. If it was meant to be all pretty - all the animals would have work schedules for doing tricks under the Big Tent that would be erected in the middle of the big pasture!

    The price of gas is going back up. By now - it should be no surprise to some of us - all those "pretty" farms prolly maxxed out credit cards with a bunch of new toys over the past year.

    I'd say y'all are gonna seem really good lookin' to a LOT of folks - very shortly!

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  2. I love the name "Hillbilly Hills"! It's great! ... And who cares if things don't "look nice". It's more important not to be in debt. ... Besides, from what I've seen in the pictures, it looks like you have a nice place to me! :)

    http://scrapgrrl.com/

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