The spring was horribly muddy, mud as we'd never experienced before. I didn't care, though. I could finally run around in the pasture with sneakers instead of my heavy hiking boots, and with only a single pair of jeans. It felt so light to be freed of all that, and even the bare earth and pebbles looked beautiful to me. I pranced around happily, kicking the patches of snow that hadn't melted yet into bits. The nights were still cold, but at last, we could get out of the house.

Someone gave us some chickens, and we put them in some rabbit cages at first. It was funny, because when Sonny saw them, he ran right up to the cage and stood frozen, pointing at them, as perfect as any photograph of a working bird dog. We had found out that he was afraid of loud noises and gunshots in particular.

Most of my spare time was spent in the first garden I'd ever had. I dug the ground for it myself, used some split cedar rails we had laying around to make a fence around it. The entire garden was tiny, about the size of a small bathroom. I planted kohlrabi, peas, radishes, jersalem artichokes, beans, and others. We had no source of water, so I used the buckets of wash water that I had to empty everyday anyway. Raphah made a garden, too. He planted swiss chard and pumpkins. We insulted one another's gardens and bragged about our own, as we did with everything the other did, but secretly, I admired his garden. He was doing a really good job with the swiss chard. There was always a lot of rivalry between he and I, but behind it was a grudging respect, and the proof of this was that we were constantly trying to outdo one another.

Every seedling that came up was like a miracle. I spent a lot of time memorizing the appearance of the seedlings of each kind of plant. Some of them, like radishes and broccoli, looked a lot alike. I pulled out cards from magazines for free seed catalogs, and before long, I was spending hours reading them. What was even better was that companies I hadn't contacted seemed to find out somehow that I wanted gardening catalogs, and pretty soon I had a good sized stack of them! I began planning what kind of a farm I would have someday; what animals I'd have, what trees, and so on. Of course, everything on my farm would be done the old fashioned way, with horses instead of tractors. I wouldn't own a car or a truck or have electricity, but I would be better set up for living this way than our family was. I'd have a well with a hand pump. Or, I'd have the barrels set up on a platform outside the kitchen and bathroom, and have the hoses threaded through the walls and into the the sink so that I wouldn't have to bring the barrels indoors. I drew a lot of diagrams and lists and ideas. Everyone else laughed at me, but I just tuned them out.

I also spent a lot of time thinking about what kind of husband I wanted. After a lot of deliberation, I decided that he should be gentle, kind, patient, and have a good sense of humor. It would be nice if he were tall, because I didn't want my kids to be as short as I was. He should have blue eyes, and possibly blond hair. He should like animals, have similar interests, and would probably be Scandanavian. I prayed every day for Yahweh to send my husband to me soon, and to prepare me to be a good wife for him.