I need to figure out a way to keep my young laying hens from getting out of their run. I have been racking my brains and each solution I come up with has a problem;too expensive, too heavy, too difficult to build. I am feeling frustrated because I worry when we leave for the day. I don't want them to fly out and be unable to get back in, cut off from water and safety. I am presently using clothes pins to secure sheets to their wire enclosure to prevent breakouts, but in high winds it's a mess. In a thunderstorm it blew over and they all escaped en masse to the grape arbor and thankfully we found them before they found the garden.
My apricot tree behind the barn is dying, the yard needs fenced in such a way that keeps the driveway accessible and also gated with the barn inside the fence but easy to access, and I am running out of organic methods to control black squash beetle. Sometimes I just can't figure it out.
I like problem solving, it's partly why I enjoy homesteading, there's always conundrums to keep your brain challenged. But what do I do when the unsolved situations outnumber the resolved?
Different seasons of life tend to contain an ebb and flow of the "unsolvable problem", when the kids were little there were many days I faced a conflict of needs, tasks, money, and time. As I engage with nature, weather and livestock, it's much like wrangling toddlers; the needs outstrip the supply of just about everything I have especially creative solutions.
I am not naturally a gracious person. Grace is not my go to response for myself or for others, yet I find the call for grace to be undeniable in the Bible. Jesus modeled grace without limits while still honoring boundaries and limitations. So I am able to choose grace for others generally but not so much for myself and that leads to a lot of angst. When I just can't figure it out, I feel like (surprise!) a failure and that can be a downward spiral any day of the week.
The whole farming thing is forcing me to face the truths that I am not sufficient, I need help, I will fall short, and "What did I expect anyway?!" If this is the case then I need to be undeterred by gnarly uncooperative problems, they are part of this life no matter what I do. And I can go on, chipping away at small issues and reaching out for help for the big issues, knowing I may not like the solution, but there are solutions to be found.
