It’s Okay to Be Messy

“Augh,” I muttered as snow wedged itself around my ankle inside my sneakers. “Shoulda worn my muck boots for this.”

It was for this very reason I’d held off so long on taking the first woods walk of the season. I knew full well there would still be snowy patches in the deep woods. But Tuesday afternoon was mild and lovely, and I was eager to get my new trail cams up in the conservation acreage—so there I was, wading through calf-high snow in an open glade while Beebe bounced across the open ground under the trees, completely skirting the deep stuff.

Once I dipped back under the canopy on the other side of the glade, the trail was clear and the going was easy. The ground was still wet with snowmelt and spongy underfoot, but not muddy. Beebe and I followed the trail down to the wetland habitat in the back corner of the property, and as I side-stepped another pile of deer scat, I noted wryly that this trail was a proverbial deer highway.

In This Post:

🗳Weekly Poll
☝️ICYMI
🦌“Oh! The things you will see!”
👩‍🌾This Week on the Farm
👀Sneak Peek at Next Week’s Projects
🤷‍♀️It’s Okay to be Messy

🗳Weekly Poll

LAST WEEK’S POLL RESULTS

➡️Julia Childs won by 64% in last week’s polling. Feedback via notes confirms our winners are: Julia Childs, Prairie Dawn and Lady Elaine Fairchild.

☝️ICYMI

➡️This week’s how-to article is free for everyone:

➡️Homesteading by Necessity: Read-Aloud – Bringing back the podcast so you can now listen, watch or read my weekly updates from the farm.

➡️April’s AgStacker Round Table – where we discuss real food and food access at length.

🦌“Oh! The things you will see!”

Ducking off the main trail, I followed the deer path down into the cedar grove and the low-lying land where the creek runs through. It’s wet and swampy here, and the cedars like it. My maples live back here too—their remoteness is the very reason I haven’t been able to tap them or produce maple syrup. I’d need a snowmobile to reach them at that time of year.🪾

I surveyed the area—the available trees for mounting the trail cam, the way the deer trail ran down toward the water—and decided I wanted the camera on the tree across the stream. From there I could face it toward the deer trail as it came down the knoll, and hopefully catch a good view of any approaching wildlife. A tree had fallen across the creek at just the right angle, and I imagined some satisfying footage of my woodland neighbors crossing that log in front of the camera.

🥾Again wishing I’d planned this excursion a little better—or at all—I looked for a way across. It’s a small stream, not more than four feet wide in this section, maybe two feet deep all swollen with snowmelt and recent rain. But I had no interest in soaking my sneakers in icy water and having them be wet for the next three days.

Working my way upstream, I found a mossy log crossing and used a six-foot stick to steady myself across. I picked my way over the spongy tussocks, backtracked to my chosen tree, and pulled the trail cam from my hoodie’s front pouch.

📷This was a moment I’d been waiting for since I bought the property in 2018—eight years of this back corner of my own land remaining a mystery while I was too busy keeping the whole operation from falling apart to do anything as indulgent as watching for deer.

I talked to the tree as I wrapped the strap around its trunk, giddy as a schoolgirl.

“Oh! The things you will see, my friend! Big deer… little deer… I bet you see some foxes… some bunny rabbits…”🐇

Eight years. It took a breakup to change that. Grief, it turns out, makes a strange shopping companion—the kind that shows up at midnight in your Amazon cart with no apologies. Two trail cams, zero regrets.

I picked my way back over the mossy log and headed toward the field. The afternoon light was going golden through the trees. BraeTek had dinner going back at the farmhouse, and I was hungry.🤤

👩‍🌾This Week on the Farm

AGSTACKER ROUND TABLE
🚜On Sunday I participated in the monthly AgStacker Round Table with and crew: , from Son of the Soil, , and . The question of the day was: how do you make real food easier to access without expecting farmers to carry the whole system? We went round and round on that one.

I hope you’ll take the time to watch our conversation—maybe have it playing while you’re doing the dishes or cooking dinner—because these are important topics that affect every single one of us, regardless of walk of life.

Just sayin’.

GARDEN FENCE PROJECT
🪛My sister was here doing her laundry Sunday afternoon and volunteered to help when she saw me heading outside to make a start on the garden fence project. Together we installed six t-posts along the back side of the garden and got all of the extenders in place to increase the fence height.

I hit a snag when it came time to secure the extenders with the screws that came with them—they seemed too large for the holes, but it turns out I was just missing the right tool for the job. I’ve lined up a nut driver, and by Saturday afternoon I should have those extenders bolted to the t-posts. After that it’s insulators and wire, then a grounding system before I can hook everything up to the electric fence charger. And I still need to build a new front gate…

BED PREP & GARDEN RECLAMATION BEGINS
🥕Now that the fruit tree pruning is done (there’s still work to do on other parts of the property, but the fruit trees are done and that’s the important part), I’m turning my attention to reclaiming my poor neglected garden. I’m embarrassed by the state of it and I can’t stand it any longer—which is exactly how I ended up taking a chainsaw to the stand of sunflower stalks that had consumed an entire plot.

Yes, I have multiple plots. And each plot has several beds. Remember my neighborhood companion planting system? These plots are my “blocks,” and they make crop rotation a breeze.

I hauled out the 20×100-foot piece of black plastic and rolled it out across three long beds near the front of the garden that had increasingly gotten away from me for three years running. Every year the weed pressure got worse. Time to take them back.

Another block had already been smothered under plastic from a previous season, and I peeled it back to admire the bare beds beneath. This was the block where I’d experimented with wool as a mulch. The jury’s still out on that one.

PEAS PLANTED!
🫛I put a good chunk of time into fully prepping one of the trellis beds so I could get snap peas in the ground ahead of the rain we were expecting Thursday. That meant raking dead weeds off the bed, pulling the roots of invading crabgrass, and forking the soil to aerate before seeding.

I’ll do a second sowing as soon as possible for the farmstand, but I wanted to get a round in right away for BraeTek and I. Snap peas do well here and they’re prolific producers—easy to blanch and freeze, too. I’m planning to use a vacuum sealer to keep them at their best.

FIRST BLUEBIRD OF THE SEASON
🐦With so much to do, I hadn’t finished putting up the birdhouses yet. So when I spotted the first bluebird of the season, I took it as my cue to stop dragging my feet and Thursday afternoon I put up two more. Now I have four new birdhouses scattered around the farm—three of them in a line across the field.

These little projects for wildlife feel like a confirmation of my conservation mission and I can’t help taking some pride in that.

RAINY DAY BREAD LIVE
🍞My poor aching body was grateful for a rainy day on Thursday, still adjusting to the increased physical demands of the season after a more sedentary winter. I baked six loaves of multigrain bread and tucked them away in the freezer. With planting season nearly upon me, I know I’ll want that reserve.

I’ve also been experimenting with video this week—short daily farm vlogs with a quick download of the day’s events. It’s a work in progress, but I’m becoming more comfortable with it. I’ve made my peace with the fact that it doesn’t have to be all posh and polished. People want to see the mess. That’s how you know it’s real.

On impulse, since I couldn’t go far while the bread was baking, I decided to do a live stream on Substack and read last week’s farm update out loud — hoping to reach people who don’t always have time to sit down with a long-form essay. I think I can help more people if I meet them where they are.

😬So I’m taking my own advice and doing it even though it scares me. Hard things don’t get easier if we don’t do them. Follow the Maine Homestead Life on your favorite podcast platform, catch the daily farm vlogs on YouTube for a glimpse into life here, and expect more video content ahead—practical, honest, and aimed at helping you build more self-reliance in your own life.

👀Sneak Peek at Next Week’s Projects

• Substack Growth Sessions with David McIlroy!

• Final farm marketing class with

• Bringing the garden fence online

• Putting out the irrigation lines for the season

• Ongoing reclaiming of the garden, bed prep for another round of peas

• Seeding fast-growing flowers: zinnias, cosmos, etc.

• Put out the second trail cam in the Tamarack Grove

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🤷‍♀️It’s Okay to be Messy

Making my way back to the farm truck parked at the edge of the field, I heard the peepers for the first time this season. My heart did that thing it always does when it hears Spring frog-song, gratitude and joy filling me up until tears pricked my eyes. How I love it so.

🖼There’s a version of this life that looks good in photos. The tidy pantry, the perfectly manicured raised beds, the golden-hour barn shot.

That is not my life.

My life is messy—with failed relationships, a garden lost to weeds two years running, bills that need paying, and a list of projects still waiting eight years into this endeavor. Runamuk’s story is raw and unfiltered because I believe in transparency. I want people to know what they’re signing up for so they can make an informed decision about whether any part of this life is right for them.

For a long time I’ve largely avoided video. Homesteading and farming content on YouTube seemed primarily dominated by men. Instagram and TikTok by the carefully curated homesteading aesthetic and the Barbie-doll trad-wife.

Both left me feeling like I didn’t belong.

I am no supermodel—just an average woman with an average body trying to live this farmish life to the best of her ability. I can’t afford nice clothes. I don’t always like to brush my hair, I work hard and sometimes I’m downright messy and unkempt. I’m always juggling bills, and I’ve had to bootstrap my way along to gain any ground at all.

But I’ve realized the mess is part of the message. That you CAN do this. No matter where you are.

Do what you can with what you have. — Theodore Roosevelt

It’s okay to be messy. To make mistakes. To lose your way—especially when a bearded fellow with broad shoulders charms you into forgetting yourself for a moment.🤦‍♀️

It’s okay to be lost sometimes.

☝️But there is always something you can do right now, no matter how small. And those small actions compound over time, gaining momentum, until one day you look up and realize you’ve become the person you always wanted to be.

From now on I’ll be sharing more video-content. It won’t be perfectly polished. But it will be REAL.

Until next week, farm friends.

Sending love and good juju to you and yours.

Your friendly neighborhood farmer,

—Sam

PS — Follow me on YouTube or Instagram to catch my Daily Farm-Vlogs! These are short 5-minute glimpses into the day-to-day happenings on this small Maine farm and you’re invited!

Other ways to support Runamuk:

1. Subscribe or upgrade to help me grow this small Maine farm!

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