In this weekly segment, I'll be posting about something I'm thankful or especially grateful for each week. My New Years Resolution this year was to Practice Gratitude and just to try to be more positive and appreciative of all the good things I have going for me in life! I hope you'll find something in these weekly posts that you can connect to as well!
The past few weeks have been pretty cold and snowy up here in north-central Montana. If you've been following my blog, then you know that last week we even had some early-outs, delayed starts and a full day off from school due to snow and poor driving conditions! Monday's commute to school was the first I had been out on the roads since the previous week, when they were completely snow-logged and in some cases, pretty difficult to drive on.
Last week on Tuesday and Wednesday in particular, the roads were pretty bad. Snowplows hadn't caught up with the weather yet and really, our not-often-traveled county roads aren't the top priority. I'm pretty sure the gravel roads that I live on and travel most frequently are pretty near the bottom of the county's priority. That's fine and understandable-- the focus really should be on Highway 2 first.
All that being said, the contrast between the roadways from last week compared to how they are this week is night and day! So that leads me to my Thankful Thursday topic this week: I am sooooooooo grateful for snowplows! Thanks to everyone who plows our roads, in city and country, on paved highways or gravel roads. When we are so dependent on travel by car, it is essential to have clear, safe roads to get where we need to go. It was so nice to drive to work this week and have the roadways cleared. Even our gravel country roads had a plow over (some of) them, which was fantastic! I haven't been worried about getting stuck, like I was last week.
Jeff even got busy in our yard and moved a whole bunch of snow around over the weekend with the tractor. Again, so awesome to be able to walk from the house to the shop (where I park my car in cold weather) without walking through knee-deep snow!!! Kudos to Jeff!
Just for kicks, I did an internet image search of "snow plow jokes" and most of them were at the expense of snowplows. It was kind of tricky to find one that was actually positive...Seems like a lot of people would rather complain about snow plows being in their way than be thankful for plows keeping their roadways safe! Anyway. Here's one image that I kind of liked:
I also liked this one:
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| Minnesota...Montana... whatever! |
Anyway, since it's Thankful Thursday, I also wanted to share this excerpt from an email from my friends at Shepherd's Way Farms, thanking people for contributing to their kickstarter. This email embodies the spirit of Thankful Thursday and also makes me think a little. Read on:
Yesterday one of the supporting tweets called out for a miracle, to bring the Kickstarter to the funding goal. And amazingly, pledges rolled in, backers increased their original amount and by end of day we'd surged forward.
Would I call that a miracle? I thought about it, looked up "miracle" while the Kickstarter page was again refreshing and this is what it says:
Miracle: * A surprising and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore considered to be the work of a divine agency. * A highly improbable or extraordinary event, development, or accomplishment that brings very welcome consequences.
Well then, yes indeed, I have seen a miracle! In fact, I experience miracles every day here.
Of course, a sweet new lamb is the epitome of the miracle of life. Milk changing into cheese may be explainable by scientific laws yet it feels pretty miraculous. The small but lovely miracles I may often take for granted, like a planted seed sprouting or fresh water pumping out even on a subzero day. Once I start looking, these miracles are all around.
But of all the miracles I may not recognize or appreciate, the extraordinary development that I hadn't quite expected is the miracle of community. Over all the years we have been farming, persisting, working to adapt & grow, we are continually bolstered and lifted up by our food & farming friends. We really wouldn't be here without you.
This Kickstarter is a bright reminder of that community and its commitment to what we do. Thank you to everyone!
What a great way to think about community- as a miracle! It truly takes everyone working together to make a city or town or country neighborhood feel like more than a collection of buildings and houses, but a community of people who care about one another and care about making their little corner of the world a better place to be. I'm pretty grateful for the awesome communities I am part of here and also for the broader communities I am part of. Communities that are not linked by geographical proximity but by friendship.
As an update, the Shepherd's Way Farms Kickstarter campaign ended this afternoon and they not only made their goal, they smashed it out of the ballpark! They ended up seven thousand dollars over their goal!! Thanks to any of my readers who decided to contribute. I don't know about you, but I CAN'T WAIT for my cheese samples to come in!!! There *may* be a wine and cheese tasting event in my near future!! :)
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| Photo by Nichole Ray Diggins, from www.shepherdswayfarms.com |
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