Confidence Required
A week of cold, grit and remembering what I'm capable of doing
Winter came in hot — well, freezing — and decided to test my commitment to this whole “farm life” thing. Turns out self‑trust isn’t a journal prompt; it’s what gets you out the door when everything in you wants to stay inside and pretend you live in a condo. This is what confidence looks like when it’s not cute.
“I carved a path by shuffling forward — that’s how most confidence is built anyway. Some seasons don’t ask for your confidence — they demand it.”
The arctic blast we’ve been living through has made farm life a whole new level of ridiculous. Ice on everything, drifts up to nine inches, and our tractor barely making a dent. We had to get real precise about the bare minimum required just to walk, let alone keep up with the rhythm of the farm.
The animals weren’t having it after day one. Once the snow stopped and the cold settled in, nobody was coming out of the barn. I can’t blame them. It takes confidence to step into the unknown. The horses, the chickens, even the dogs stared at the cold white stuff glued to the ground like it was an alien invasion. The chickens took one look and said, “Nope,” and stayed in their coop all day.
I love the routine—the nuzzles in the barn, the twice‑daily feedings, the scratches, the familiar cackle from the chickens when I show up with mealworms and cracked corn. It’s mutual. They count on me, and I count on them.
But the cold doesn’t care about routine. Feeding doesn’t stop, and with no grass, they need even more nourishment. With ice covering everything, I had to get strategic. Double layers of clothes, boots that barely fit over giant socks, vests, hats, gloves. It took determination. I had to focus. I had to step out onto the ice with water to carry, grain to mix and wet, stalls to muck, abscesses to tend, hay to deliver.
Damn. This shit isn’t fun anymore. But no one else is signing up for this job. They’ll say, “You’re the one who wanted to be a farmer.” So I can’t stop.
That morning, after the snow finally eased—hard in some places, collapsing under me in others—I took a deep breath and waded in. Shuffle by shuffle, I carved a path to the barn, the coop, the water. I still walk it twice a day.
“Sometimes confidence looks like crying in the snow and still showing up.”
I cried a few times. When the poultry waterer burst after hitting a wooden edge because the cold made it brittle. When my hands were wet and the cold seeped in. When my arthritic thumbs refused to open the frozen carabiner holding the water bucket. In those moments, an apartment in the city looked better and better.
This week reminded me that self‑trust isn’t built in the easy moments. It’s built in the cold, in the slog, in the tiny decisions to keep going when no one’s watching. Confidence required, yes — but confidence earned, too.