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I often feel my writing should have a moral, significance, and purpose. So I lag, waiting for the message to strike. Meanwhile, ranch happenings pile up, but the pressure to write something poignant keeps me twiddling my thumbs over getting started!

There are countless times I think I know what I will type up and send out, and often the newsletter morphs as I write. It may be just an email, but these usually take hours of my stolen time as I select and edit photos, upload, and scrutinize each sentence until it is sculpted into something that I hope is worth reading!

Quality over quantity has always been my nature, but balance in all things is just as important.

We’ve focused on raising animals for meat but are now emphasizing growing veg too. Our greenhouse is done. The rollercoaster forecast has delayed spring planting. A few days of cold and freezing nights followed by a couple of days of sunshine and mild nights have been repeated. A brisk edge is always in the wind.

Our huge apple tree blossomed and then was hit by a frosty May night. Many of the blooms damaged. A smaller wave of flowers has emerged. Will they be hit too? The lilacs are still just buds. What are they waiting for? It is now June. I fear the buds will waste and never bloom.

The more we pay attention, the more we learn, and the more questions pile up.

I’ve always grown up on acreage but was never the caretaker in my youth. This is our 5th year at Big Rock as the caretaker. I am invested in a way with land that I have never been before.

‘BC’ (before Clancy), we had our nose to the grindstone here. We revitalized the house, barn, arena, ditches, and more. We used our sweat, tears, and lungs to breathe new life into this land. We lived rough, worked hard, and spent our sunsets on top of Big Rock, looking down onto the new grasses growing in the parched, neglected pastures.

I pushed myself through immense health challenges, ignoring debilitating autoimmune symptoms because of the potential that buzzed around us. It was electric and incredibly motivating. Of course, everything we tried did not work out, but we had so much momentum it was easy to keep going through failures and personal misery.

A desperate look up at the 2-300 ft rock face was like a fresh new gale filling battered sails in those moments. I don’t know why, but I knew that rock would heal me and be the reason we persevered. I always feel it watching over us.

As we settled in and became more comfortable with our progress on the ranch, we both looked outward from the ranch at what we would do individually. This was when Nathaniel built the shell of the tiny home that his sister now cozily lives in on the ranch and when I buckled down to the Nutritional Therapy Practitioner Program.

Then, the directions we took were the floor to the foundation we solidified in our first two years of founding Big Rock Ranch. Big Rock Woodcraft and how we eat and live were natural formations drawn out by living under the rock and nurtured by the ranch’s environment.

That was BC… before Clancy. Parenthood has brought the most significant gear shift in our momentum at Big Rock. The excitement of the ranch was easy to get caught up in when it was just the two of us. It was easy to put in more and go just a little faster. Perspective could easily be lost in the efficiency.

Prioritizing the love and needs of Clancy ground our gears. It wasn’t negative or without frustration. It has been all-consuming and ever-evolving, as natural as it is to see to his needs. The overall pace of progress has significantly altered and slowed. Learning to live life at a slower pace, accomplish anything in erratic stolen spurts, and accept a toddler’s help is beyond challenging. It is counter to the ‘norm’ we created at our ranch centered around hard work that made tangible progress daily. Sounds a lot like the cultural norm these days, huh?

Oh, the details we missed over the last five years!

When do lilacs even bloom? What month do the geese arrive? Were the frogs always that loud day and night in April? Has Indian Paintbrush bloomed on the backside of the rock before?

Why don’t I know these things? Why haven’t I felt it essential to record! I am from and of this land; shouldn’t I know it as I would a friend, my mother, or my lover?

Many of these little details that mark the passage of time, the sun's revolution, went underappreciated as we focused on slaying projects and sunsets atop Big Rock. Of course, both things are sacred and not to be diminished, but neither is the ‘quieter’, slower macro day-to-day we experience now as parents.

I feel like I am only standing on the threshold, peering out at the land around me. Blinking into the bright sun as I rise out of the busy digital womb, I let society spin me in. Humans are born observers; we allow that skill to grow rusty as our hands and feet make us capable of bending and creating (I could also say manipulating) the natural world to suit our vision. It closes us into ourselves.

Clancy has reminded me of observing. It inspired me to practice observing before exhibiting control. Now I witness Clancy as he becomes more capable and able to control his surroundings, and I hope that I can inspire him never to forget the power that comes in observing and remembering.

There is always a balance to strike as with everything, indeed everything. We waiver between achieving the progress laid on our hearts, respecting the land we get to enjoy for as long as it is meant to be ours, observing and understanding the natural world that we are from, and savoring each changing day as a family. There is nothing like being a parent that drives home how fleeting time truly is.

I will attempt shorter weekly newsletters that will feel more like a journal. I hope that I can offer more detail about how we live and manage the land and animals. Someday, they may even amount to a memoir of our anything but simple, simple life as a family at Big Rock.