🌾 Hope on Wobbly Legs

Some years don’t break you all at once  they just keep pressing down until you start to wonder what’s holding you up. This was one of those years.

It was a brutal summer hot dry and dusty, so dry even the weeds wouldn’t grow after months of drought and still we planted seeds without a sight of hope, The rain finally came carried in by a tropical storm from far away. It rolled over the mesa like forgiveness, soaking the dust that had baked itself into the earth. The corrals turned to boot-sucking mud, and for the first time in months, the air smelled alive again, wet soil, manure, and sweet grass.

The last few mornings have been nothing but rain on the tin roof, the soft tick of the milker in the parlor, and the sound of the cows happily munching their alfalfa as they wait their turn. No phone. No obligations. Just peace.

It’s a rare kind of quiet that I long for so often when my days are packed to the brim with milking, hoof trims, errands, and chores. The rain slows it all down. It gives me a reason to breathe, even if just for a few hours.

The ground is too slick to trim horses this week, and for that, I’m strangely grateful. Resisting the uge to schedule anyone this week and push through wet wether. This mud bought me the one thing I never seem to have enough of time. Time to sit, to write, to catch my breath, and to share a little of this life with those who’ve followed along from the start.

I’d hoped to try my hand at vlogging this year, to bring a glimpse of Rocky Ridge to your screens, but most days there simply weren’t enough hours left to think, let alone record. Maybe this rain was heaven’s way of slowing me down enough to finally speak.

Jeremy has been working out of town since last fall, and the silence of his absence settles in deeper than the weather. The feeding, milking ,errands, filling waters, managing dogs and then still trimming horses,  it all lands on my shoulders. His paycheck helps, but not enough to hire help. Every dollar that passes through my hands goes right back out in hay, feed, or bills or repairs.

Thankfully, My stepson, Colten, has been a godsent and helps when he can. After a 10 or 12 hour day at his own job, he’ll still pull into the drive with headlights cutting through the twilight. He hops out, smells like sawdust and steel, and unloads hay bales and before I can even thank him, he heads our to the fields to move irrigiation . When he leaves again, his taillights disappear down the road.  just as the coyotes start to sing. That quiet reliability means more than he’ll ever know. I hope one day I can grow this farm to provide for his family and several others who find the grace in this place.

The days move like that, work stacked on work ,until sometimes I forget that this place has a pulse of its own. The farm keeps its own rhythm, steady and stubborn, even when I’m bone-tired then Somewhere between the exhaustion and the small mercies, it still finds a way to surprise me.

I noticed a strange sound in the pig pen one cool morning after milking cows a couple of weeks ago. A strange squeeking, I hadn’t expected anything; the sows and boar had been together for over a year without a single sign of pregnancy. I’d half given up on them, assuming the timing was off, the boar was steril or my sows were.

But that morning, I found them a litter of piglets scattered in the hay nest the pig had made. One was wandering aimlessly, crying. A few others lay crushed and half-eaten by the boar and sows. Three more curled up cold and hungry on the edge of the nest. Four pigets total two girls, two boys.

When I picked up the lost one, it screamed  that sharp, wild squeal that would normally summon a whole sounder to attack. Manglistas are a rather wild breed close to the Russian wild boar. Thankfully The mother didn’t move, but the boar did. I could feel his eyes lock on me as he started to pace and snap his jaws in warning.

I quickly set the piglet down with the others and went and grabbed a bucket  of grain to distract them, praying it would be enough. Then I made my move, I dumped the bucket of grain on the far side of the corral and quickly ran over grabbing the four survivors, cold and trembling, and running for the gate before the boar decided I looked like fair game.

Inside the house, I thawed a bag of golden cow colostrum, that lifesaving first milk we keep frozen for emergencies. I bottle fed each of the little piglets till their bellies were filled.

Now they live in a repurposed galvanized water tank beside the pellet stove tucked under a little nest of straw, snoring softly and squeeking. They’re, Swallow Belly Mangalitsa, piglets the last of one of the originally imported bloodlines in the U.S. Every time I hear them grunt, I’m reminded that sometimes survival comes down to a few brave choices and a little luck.

That same stubborn grace showed up again in the shape of two old trucks and one good mechanic.

Our old blue Duramax had been parked in his yard for nearly two years, the tires gone flat, dust thick on the dash. We already knew what was wrong: one bad piston. But fixing it wasn’t simple.

Every other shop told us it would need a whole new motor  $15,000 we didn’t have and couldn’t possibly save with everything else pulling at us. But this mechanic was different. He said he’d try to replace just the bad piston. It would take up one of his bays for weeks, maybe longer time that could have gone to quicker, easier jobs. It wasn’t a small favor. It was an act of faith.

On top of that, the land his shop sat on was in limbo. The owner couldn’t decide whether to sell or stay, and a half-torn-apart truck mid-repair would have been a liability. Still, one morning he called and said, “I got her in the shop. I’ll be in touch soon we’ll have her running again.”

That phone call felt like hope cracking through a long stretch of hard years

A few weeks later, she coughed, rattled, and roared back to life  diesel smoke rolling into air like a victory flag. He even let us make payments. For the first time in a long while, something went right.

and then,  because this is farming , our new Ford F-150, the delivery truck I’d bought to make sure we could make deliveries relialble lost all oil pressure and the engine blew on the way home from milk deliverys

We’d done everything right: oil changes, records the extended warranty that was supposed to protect us. But when it failed, the company found its loopholes and walked away. Now we owe a pretty penny on a truck that doesn’t run and will need a full motor swap too. There’s a particular kind of heartbreak in doing everything right and still losing.

Still, when the rain clears and the sun slides back across the fields, the world redeems itself a little. The Maximilian sunflowers along the porch line catch the light first  tall, defiant, the last of the bees curled up in the blooms. The horses roll in the slick grass, tails flicking water into the air. The cows stretch out in the warmth, chewing their cud, unbothered by any of it.

Those small, golden moments save me. They feel like the world whispering, Keep going. It’s still worth it.

Its just like Every spring, when lambing season comes, I see that same message all over again  hope on wobbly legs.

I spend cold mornings crouched in the hay, rubbing new lambs dry while their mothers nuzzle and hum softly over them making mommy noises. Within hours they’re up and teetering after her, learning where to find milk and warmth.

By the second week, they’ve found their legs  the lamby races begin. They chase each other in circles at sunset, kicking and leaping through the light like joy itself. Those evenings are pure medicine. They remind me that all this work the feed bills, the long nights, the breakdowns is for something still innocent enough to run for the sheer pleasure of it.

We’re weaning those same lambs now, and as always, I’m weighing hay against hope deciding how many we can keep through winter. It breaks me a little each time I have to send some to auction, knowing they’re bound for feedlots instead of open pasture.

I dream of the day every lamb can stay here until they reach the family they’re meant to feed living their whole life on grass, in peace, under this same sky.

Those lambs are the hope for next year. Everyone we get to keep carries a little more of that light forward.

And though I don’t say it often, it’s your quiet support, the steady orders, the kind words, the families who come back year after year, that keeps this place alive.

If you’d like to help us carry that hope forward, you can invest now in a lamb for next year’s harvest , an investment in your family’s health, in this land, in the animals, and in us. Each share helps keep more life here on pasture, raised right, fed well, and treated with the same care you’ve read about here. It’s not just food; it’s a partnership in rebuilding something sacred and real.

Here’s to gentler weather, fuller rains, trucks that hold together, and the kind of grace that shows up right when it’s most needed.

With love, grit, and gratitude,

Your Farmer

Hannah