2022: Looking Back and Planning Ahead

Well if 2020 was a dumpster fire, I don’t even know what to call 2021, but it was both less and more crazy then 2020. As we all know, Covid still rages on with the newest variant of Omicron being even worse then the original in many ways. Let’s look back and reflect a bit on 2021 and maybe make some goals for 2022. 

Just curious, did you think the pandemic was still going to be going on for nearly two years?! I’ll be honest and say that although I was hopeful, I was pretty practical and didn’t think this pandemic would go away for quite some time, even from the very beginning.

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Looking Back at 2021:

What I couldn’t believe about this year was the craziness of the weather and fury of our mother earth. Maybe for me it just hit closer to home and therefore felt almost overwhelming but to have the blistering hot summer start with a bang with 40 degree days at the end of June was just a precursor for the rest of the year.

Actually it started before that as we actually had wildfires in our area in the middle of April! (Living with a firefighter, you get to know the normal fire season 😉

Nearly the whole summer was a haze of smoke as the wildfires in B.C raged on and on. Thankfully, we didn’t see any wildfires close to where our little homestead is but again, living with a firefighter, it is constantly on your mind. 

This fall there were record rainfalls, a tornado(?!?!) near Vancouver International airport, and then monumental flooding which destroyed farms and cities, decimated all major highways and the trucking routes from the major port of Vancouver to the B.C interior and just ruined hundreds of lives. I won’t even get started on the “supply chain” issues. 

If you are curious about the flooding, here is a great video explaining why it is such a disaster: [embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6ktS3Ex4TU[/embedyt]

Overall, I can’t say we were personally affected all that much (besides the constant worry of fires, floods, supplies and family affected) but it has made me so very thankful and grateful for what we have.  

I told Pat, I think it was in November, that I am so sick and tired of hearing the word “unprecedented”. If there is one word that explains the last two years, it would be unprecedented, wouldn’t you agree? 

But let’s move on, shall we?

Some highlights of 2021 for our family include:

There were some highlights of 2021 for us including:

• buying a family travel trailer and camping more this year than we have in the last five years combined. We had a ton of fun exploring our area and you can read about some of our adventures on the new travel section of this site at travels.justdabblingalong.com
• Reconnecting with each other as a family. Reconnecting as a couple. Pat and I were able to get away a few times just the two of us and it was so nice to just spend time as a couple.
• Our middle daughter turned 16 and received her learners drivers license and has turned into quite a good driver. This was a big step and a new frontier of parenting for us. Why is it the older your kids get, the busier you are?!? I thought when they got more independent that things would slow down a bit. I guess I was wrong.
• Our eldest daughter survived and came back from her first year going to university.
• Our son got his first real summer job. Actually, this was the first summer all five of us were working which was interesting juggling schedules.

Reflections on blogging in 2021.

Blogging in 2021 was interesting. I continued to learn a lot. I took a couple of great courses this year both regular blogging stuff and travel blogging as I plan to do more of that as the world (hopefully!) opens up more and more again after this pandemic. I did the Blogging Blastoff and The Travel Blogging Blastoff and learned so much from Carolyn and Pete. 

Blogging certainly had its ups and downs this year for me. I am really excited that I took the chance to make a new site focused on all our travel info. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I used to share travel content on Just Dabbling Along as well but felt that there was just to broad of a range in interests with these two niches that it would be better to keep them separate. If you want to check out the travel content, you can check it out at Just Traveling Along.

I continue to enjoy this little blogging adventure of mine and hope you enjoy the information I share with you. I realize this past year has been a lot of recipes, I started this whole homestead adventure on the basis of growing good healthy cheap food for our family and so far it’s been going well. I love sharing recipes with all of you both to use up the homestead harvest and because I just love food and want to share it with you all. Please let me know if you have any questions or requests of what kind of articles you would like to see more of in 2022.

My most popular blog posts from 2021 were:

• How to Start Your Emergency Long-Term Food Storage
• Easy One Skillet Pork Tenderloin with Honey Dijon Applesauce
• What Seeds we are Planting for 2021
• 7 Practical Tips to Make Gardening Easier
• A Beginners Guide to Composting in Your Backyard

Some Goals For 2022:

Oh my goodness, is it just me or is it hard to think of goals when the last 2 years have been so crazy that no one could predict what would happen.

I must say, one of the major things that has kept me calm(ish) during all the crazy is knowing we have a pantry and freezers and fridges full of food as I continue to keep up with our food storage as much as possible. So therefore, one of my goals is to step up our food storage efforts and work on learning more food preservation skills.

Another goal will be to really really work on keeping up with the garden. Our garden was pretty much a failure this year, mostly because I unfortunately fell lax on watering during the major hot spell in June and then the weeds just sort of took over. 

Continue to build my two blogs 🙂

Hopefully travel more!

Homestead more! I’d like to get back into working on getting animals back on the homestead.

How about yourself? What are some of your goals for 2022? It can only get better than 2021, I hope!