2020 for most people has been a struggle. For others it has been a nightmare. My family found ourselves without an income whatsoever. We operate our own construction business and it tanked for several reasons. First of all there was the fear of this new virus. We not only were unsure about being in and out of other peoples homes, they felt the same way. Secondly the price of material tripled and in some cases quadrupled, so clients couldn’t afford those projects. Lastly, they simply didn’t have the money. In my area most people were home, laid off or simply lost work altogether on a large scale. Money was tight for a lot of families.

We knew this was going to be an issue early in, so like most Americans we signed up for unemployment  benefits. It took six months to get our first check, one we honestly thought we would never see period. There was little communication from the other side, and sooooo many other families trying to do the same thing… looking for that light at the end of the tunnel. The system was flawed and severely overrun, to say the least.

So what do you do? We had little to no income and stood facing a global pandemic with uncertainly of our futures. Our business and way to provide for ourselves completely vanished before our eyes within a matter of a few weeks. We had little time to prepare before we were thrown into financial chaos.

We did what so many before us have done before. We put plow to land and knew that if we were going to make it through these hard times we were going to have to fend and provide for ourselves!!! If we were going to eat, we were going to have to raise it… so we plowed up our entire yard. We erected a makeshift green house and started everything we planted from seed, because we couldn’t afford to even go to a nursery to buy plants.

We spent weeks prepping the soil and then months cultivating it. It was a lot of work… but it was so rewarding. When we couldn’t afford to go to the grocery store we were giving away bags of cucumbers, tomatoes, greens and squash to our neighbors and friends or whomever would take it. What stemmed from loss and lack became so much more. We ate good this year and so did the many we could help because of the amount of stuff we had planted. We ate fresh produce almost daily, combined with eggs from our barn yard flock of chickens. We never went hungry nor missed a meal.

I say all of this, to say this- sometimes we have to take our own fate into our hands. If we hadn’t had the foreknowledge to buy seeds ahead of time, know how to garden (we always have something in the ground, just never on this massive scale) we would have been hurting. But we made it through these hard days because we put in the work and made sure that we did. We couldn’t depend on anything else. And going forward we are so much more aware of that now because of what we endured throughout the year of 2020.

This year has made us stop. We took inventory of our lives. We figured out what was important and what we truly needed. At the end of the day… it wasn’t much. We slowed down… enjoyed a meal on the front porch swing that we raised 100% by ourselves. And you know what? There is this huge sense of accomplishment knowing that when everything is falling apart around you… it’s all going to be alright.

2020 and all it’s hardships has taught me that