Runaway Train

You know when something is right when it takes off like a freight train.  This is something that I heard at a friend's wedding this past weekend, and reflecting back to everything in my life that has been good and healthy and "right", this has held true.  My mother has always said not to try to fit a square peg in a round hole.  How many times in our lives do we think we know what is right and try so hard to force it, when in the end it turns out to have been wrong all along?

Hope Grows Community Farm Program has taken off this week with the force of a runaway freight train.  I'm going to take this as the first sign that we are creating something "right".  It fits.  There is a place for this dream within our community and the excitement over it has been contagious.

I had my first meeting this week at a high school to discuss our program.  I left with more ideas than I came with as well as with the urgency to start something as soon as possible.  While we aren't quite prepared to run a full program in the dead of winter, I am finding it difficult to say 'no' to anyone.  There are children out there starving for an opportunity that we have the ability to provide them with.  After my meeting at the school, a counselor with two of her middle-level students accompanied me out to the farm for a tour.  They pulled in right along side of me and I looked over right in time to see these two boys high-five each other in the back of the car.  While they only had time for a quick tour, they got to tour the property, meet all of the rescue horses, and observe a round-penning session with one of the two-year-olds and Erika.  In the bitter freezing cold, those two boys (without hats or gloves on) could have stayed there all day long watching that horse run around the round pen.  Now they are hooked.  I received a call from their counselor asking if there was any work for the boys to do during their half-day off of school tomorrow as they can't stop talking about the farm.

With the phone ringing off the hook this week with inquiries for private therapy sessions, work programs, after-school programs, internships and mentoring, my head is spinning and I now realize that we can't possibly hold off until spring.  We will create a program to run through the winter to meet as many of these needs as we possibly can, given our limited resources.  

On a separate note, Erika and I (plus all 3 of our kids, and one very little puppy) took the trailer down to pick-up two beautiful mares today for our program.  These two mares were donated by a woman who rescued them from the New Holland auction last spring and nursed them back to health.  Thank you Kima for your profound generosity!  We are so thrilled to welcome Dakota and Cheyenne to the farm.    Pictures to follow!

Where love is spread, hope will grow

Tracy

The Girls - Cheyenne and Dakota