If you've been following along with the latest adventures at Lucky Dog Farm, you may have noticed that I've been a little preoccupied with the barn lately.
And by “a little preoccupied,” I mean that it has consumed an astonishing amount of my time, energy, brain space, and probably several years off my life.
The project started with what seemed like a perfectly reasonable idea: rehab the sheep shelters and create a better setup for a growing flock.
Easy enough, right?
Ha.
The first step was emptying everything out of the shelters. Then connecting the shelters with new tubes. Then rebuilding the insides. Then enlarging the barnyard. Then adding a new cover. Then setting up lambing jugs. (And Dolly lambed somewhere during this process.)
And then there were approximately 4,372 other little things that apparently also needed to be done.
Okay, I didn't actually count them.
But it felt like it.
Every time I thought, All right! We're getting there! another job appeared. Something needed to be moved. Something needed to be adjusted. Something didn't fit quite the way I thought it would. We needed another piece of something. The original plan needed to be changed.
In other words: pivot.
And then pivot again.
Meanwhile, the rest of my life stubbornly refused to stop while I worked on this project.
I still have an off-farm job. The sheep still expect to be fed every day. The dogs remain “deeply committed” to their regular schedules. There are fences to check, water to deal with, chores to do, meals to make, and all the other everyday things that somehow continue happening whether or not you're in the middle of a major barn project.
Funny how that works.
Every day when I would come home from work, since our return from Ireland in mid-September, I would pull on my chore clothes, and head right back outside to tackle the next thing on the list.
Except the list never seemed to get shorter.
I would cross one thing off and somehow three more things would magically appear.
At times, it was exhausting. And David, who is ALWAYS there to help with the heavy projects….couldn’t help with this. He had some major projects of his own to handle, and I couldn’t help him. So there we were, ships passing. But full disclosure too—I WANTED to do this myself.
And there were definitely moments when I struggled to remember why I had decided this was such a good idea in the first place.
When you're standing in the middle of a construction zone, surrounded by tools, panels, tubes, bedding, and Things That Still Need To Be Done, the vision can get a little fuzzy.
For a while, it felt endless.
But that's the funny thing about a big farm project. You often have to make things look worse before they can look better.
You empty things out. You tear things apart. You move everything around. You discover things that need fixing that you had no idea needed fixing.
And sometimes, the plan you started with simply isn't the plan that ends up working.
That's where the pivoting comes in.
I've had to remind myself that changing the plan isn't the same thing as giving up on the plan. Sometimes you learn something once you get into a project that you simply couldn't see from the beginning.
So you rethink it.
You adjust.
You figure out another way.
And then you keep going.
That's the persistence part.
The patience part, admittedly, is harder.
I'm not naturally inclined to enjoy projects that take forever. I like checking things off the list. I like visible progress. I like that wonderful moment when you can stand back and say, “There. Done.”
This project offered very little of that for quite a while.
But slowly—very slowly—the pieces started coming together.
The shelters began to look like shelters again instead of construction zones. The spaces connected. The new cover went on. The lambing jugs took shape. The barnyard got bigger.
And finally, I could start to see why I'd put myself through all of this.
It's about creating a better, more functional setup for the sheep—and for me.
My flock is growing. My pastures are improving. I need more space and a system that lets me work more efficiently, especially during lambing season. I need facilities that can grow with the farm instead of making every new step more difficult.
I'm building for the flock I have now. And for the flock I’ll have in the future.
Of course, that's easy to remember now.
It was a little harder to remember after a full day of off-farm work when I was heading outside to tackle one more job and wondering why there always seemed to be one more job.
Or five.
But that's farming, isn't it?
Nothing is ever really finished. There's always another fence to fix, another gate to move, another improvement to make, another idea that seems perfectly reasonable until you actually start doing it.
And somehow, despite the exhaustion and the occasional moments of What on earth was I thinking?, you keep going.
One job at a time.
One problem at a time.
One pivot at a time.
So that's where I've been lately: practicing patience, persistence, and pivoting.
And learning—once again—that progress doesn't always look like progress while you're in the middle of it.
Sometimes it looks like a bigger mess.
Sometimes it feels endless.
But eventually, if you're patient enough, persistent enough, and willing to change direction when necessary, you look around and realize:
Hey. I think we're actually getting somewhere.
And that feels pretty darn good. And full disclosure: that’s part of what I really love about my farm. Knowing that things can always be improved, knowing that this shepherd really is making her flock.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I should probably go check the list.
I'm sure something has added itself to it while I've been sitting here.
Farmer Judith, Lucky Dog Farm