With each ending comes a new beginning. A marriage ended, raising babies ended, and our 100-year-old family dairy business ended.
What’s next? Where to go from here? What new beginning lies ahead?
I knew I wasn’t the first 50-year-old to start over. That didn’t make it any less scary, especially now that I had to do it alone, but it had to be done. It had to be figured out. After all, there were still people depending on me.
With my two youngest children still in college and nothing to milk, I needed to make some money. But mostly, I needed to have people around. I wondered if that old barn in my back yard could be used for boarding horses and if anyone would come if I opened it up. It didn’t take long to find the answer. I soon started construction on a second barn, and then, a few years later, the third.
A man can spend his life questioning a lot of things. I know I have. But the one thing I have never questioned– the one thing I have always been certain of– even from my earliest days, is how blessed I am and how little I deserve it.
It was with those blessings in mind that this farm business to expanded into horse boarding. Miles of trails throughout this 1,000-acre property has allowed me to share in those blessings. An occasional benefit ride for a kid with cancer or someone who has fallen on hard times because of death or circumstances beyond their control, has lessened the guilt of being wealthy. Not the type of wealth that comes from having a full bank account. (This is a farm–that ain’t happening.) But the kind of wealth that allows you to live like you want to, in a place that you love, making new friends as someone tacks up here for the first time and says, “Wow, this is a nice place!”–and you wonder what you did to deserve it.
Randy Bearden, of Shel-Clair Farms, first published on Facebook