Boundaries

My husband and I went to an insightful workshop this weekend put on by Elizabeth Gilbert who wrote the book Eat, Pray Love.  She had us write letters to ourselves on six topics and one of them was persistence.  After she explained that our letter should focus on everything we have accomplished to show that we are persistent and not a quitter, she explained that sometimes having persistence is knowing when you should quit and knowing when you should say “No”.  She explained that we each have limited energy and we should conserve some for ourselves.
 
That really hit home with me this Tuesday.  I was tired, had no energy, and the day had not even begun.  I started to think about how can I get myself out of burnout mode?   The busy season hasn’t even started yet.  If I’m this fried now, how will I manage in July and August?  I was trying to figure out how to get more energy when I realized I needed to figure out how did I get here in the first place.  

My family and I live on the farm.  The water lines to the barn froze last winter.  To avoid the possibility of more broken water lines, we shut off the water in December and started using the bathroom and mudroom in my house for farm operations.  We also moved the farm’s office from the barn to my kitchen table.  Did I mention the house is the second smallest structure on the farm, only the chicken coop is smaller?  Over 70 people work at the farm each week.  Folks use our bathroom and laundry sink to wash eggs seven days a week.  I can’t sit in my living room in my pajamas and our dogs bark every time someone enters. 
​ 
On top of that my personal cell phone number is the farm phone number so I get farm calls all day, every day, on weekends and evenings.  No wonder I can’t stop thinking about the farm.  I need a sanctuary!

So I decided to set some boundaries:

• I changed my voice mail to explain our business hours, Monday-Friday 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM.  I mentioned that I would return calls the next business day (not in the evenings, not on the weekends).
• We are getting the water lines hooked up again in a week so washing eggs, going to the bathroom, office meetings, and the farm’s computer and printer will move back out to the barn. 
• When I have to work on a weekend, I WILL schedule time off during the week.
• My husband and I will be moving his office and my office off of the kitchen table to a separate space.
• I will try to figure out how to keep the barn usable all year.  More insulation?  Larger heaters?  I don’t know, but my sanity requires an answer.

---

Recommended Viewing:  All our working share members are wonderful people.  We ambushed lots of them and asked them to step outside their boundaries and dance for us.  Of course we provided no music, we just put them on the spot, as soon as they got here, and asked them to dance.  Man, they put up with a lot from us! 

Did You Know that many farms have acreage that is in 40 acre increments? Why 40 acre parcels?  According to the U.S Geologocal Survey  “The Public Land Survey System (PLSS) is a way of subdividing and describing land in the United States… The PLSS typically divides land into 6-mile-square townships”.  The 6-mile square township equals 640 acres. “Townships are subdivided into 36 one-mile- square sections. Sections can be further subdivided into quarter sections, quarter-quarter sections”. So a quarter-quarter section equals 40 acres. “Originally proposed by Thomas Jefferson, the PLSS began shortly after the Revolutionary War”.  Stone Coop Farm in located in Green Oak Township in Section 19.