Some years don't go as planned.
I have a friend who says she barely holds it together through the odd number years but all good things happen in the evens.
Some years might be punctuated with illness, or just pass in a blur of tiredness, and you might not really recollect them at all.
Some years change you. Adam and I spent a year (two, in the end) living in Bethnal Green in the East End of London. I worked in London at a job I adored and took the summer off to go and work on the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
Then there was that one year I wore a wedding dress down an aisle, turned thirty and got pregnant.
This twelve months? It'd be all PR spin if I didn't say it'd been a stretch. But it was just one year ago that we started the Buena Vista Farm idea. That we might one day have more than twenty chickens and maybe sell our pigs for their delicious pork and how about we make biscuits and sell them at local produce markets?
One year, and we're still in business. Still building, still planning, still growing.
One big year.
Today as I rolled out hundreds of biscuits for delivery over the next two days, I felt incredibly grateful that I am baking for a living. It might not be everyone's dream but I can't imagine why not. How totally great it is to walk into a big clean commercial kitchen and chop butter and weigh flour and pipe hot caramel and twirl Ginger Twirlys.
Plus, to add to the feeling of celebration, our first lot of Spring broilers arrived today. Fluffy little delights. These birds will be free-ranging, as opposed to being in pastured pens.
The fact that I even have half a clue about these things is a year-long miracle.
Are you in a big year? Or a quiet year?
And would you like some Ginger Twirlys?!
Leave a comment on this post and I'll random-number a winner next week, and yes I'll post overseas! (The gingers last and travel well.)
Thanks for sharing this year with me, you lovely folk.
xxx
