Thoughts on Blogging

I feel like I should say a few things about blogging tonight, because I have been thinking a lot about it.

Mostly, I blog to keep a record of things that are happening here around our home, so that we can remember things better.  I have some family and friends that keep in touch this way, and other readers come and go.  Sometimes I open up blogs and find two or three hundred followers, and am starstruck for a while, but the fact is, I mostly blog to keep a diary. 

I love reading other people's blogs.  I love to read the blogs of those who are doing all the things that I feel I SHOULD be doing... canning, preserving, cooking great meals, decorating, sewing (if I could).... but I read them to get ideas that may or may not be put into use.

I read horse blogs because I miss riding so much, and miss the smell of a horse and the sounds of a horse.  It was why we had Beau, the palomino pony... he was a remembrance of things past, and a wonderful old boy.

I read travel blogs because I have lived in Kansas my entire life except for ten weeks in Texas and a year and a half in Illinois.  That's it.  I have traveled very, very little, and have never seen the ocean. 

I can read and feel like I am riding the Penines in Great Britain and read Cotswold Peeps and feel like I am exploring ancient churches.  I look at blogs from other countries because I know I am unlikely to go there at this point in life.  I'm happy at home, though, and always glad to be here at the end of the day, and there are few who can truly say that. 

I have been worrying over doing too many chicken posts and too many garden posts, but the fact is, it's that time of year.  We are under the dome of heat with the other 33 states that are currently suffering, and it is an almost-full-time job to keep everyone going. 

Tonight we are freezing into chunks of ice 12 gallon jugs of water out in our chest freezer to put in the llama trough during the day, and in the water fortexes so the chickens have cool water daily if we can't get home.  We'll hide some frozen water bottles in the shade where they can rest up against them, the way we used to do for our bunnies when we had them.  If it weren't for a suggestion from friend Jill, I would never have remembered it.  This will ease our minds in case Keith is unable to stop at mid-day to check on everyone, as he has been doing.  As I said, it is hard to work full time and take care of everything/one too.

Before I married again so late in life, I had been a single mom for 34 years.  (Yes, I was a child bride.)  I had a five acre place of my own, where I kept chickens, took care of someone else's horses, and had too many dogs and cats than were good for me.  But to keep this enterprise going, it took two jobs, and sometimes, three.  I would rise early, feed and water, go to work, go to work, and come home late and do chores again.  It was wearing, I gotta tell you.

It's still wearing, and I'm down to one job!

I admire all of you who are doing so much on your little farms, while still holding down a full time job and all the other responsiblities that go with that.   I admire the fact that you take time to show your lives to us, and share all the happiness and sadness with your friends and readers, us, the people like you.  I admire those of you who are crusading for causes, and those of you who are making sure your families are fed well, and preserving for the future.  I know Keith and I could feed ourselves if it came right down to it, and it's a good feeling.

Mostly, I am glad that I share the same kind of feelings with so many other people around the nation and the globe... to those of you who are reading this blog in Russia, in Slovenia, in all the countries of southeast Asia where you have stopped to read about tiny Tonganoxie, thank you.  I truly mean that from the bottom of my Kansas heart.