Category — Green Living

On Sunday morning the family set out on a hike with our friend/neighbor and her son, along with another family they knew. We didn’t know our destination until we arrived to pick them up, and when she told me Gans Creek trails, at the end of Bearfield Road, I thought, how ironic! You see, we had just been checking out a rental on a road walking distance to this trail the day before (we are still in the process of checking it out, btw). The location was completely unknown to us until this point — seems like the stars were aligning a bit, but who knows?

The hike was lovely. The air was crispy and cool as we set out onto the trail; 5 adults and 5 children noisily bustling ahead. Close in we discover the remains of a crumbled foundation and set out to explore. We balance beam our way along the rocky establishment, mapping out the floor plan and speculating about the era it was built. We find a connected root cellar underground.

I wandered about with my camera, pointing and shooting where it willed. Through the lens I see an old rusty horseshoe, stuck up on a limb of a tree. After some maneuvering with a fallen branch, Chris managed to retrieve my prize and I was totally enamored with this corroded treasure and the stories it told me. My lucky horseshoe.

Nearby I discovered an old electric pole, with little metal house numbers (possibly?) nailed on. I didn’t take the numbers. (But I wanted to.)

The rest of the hike was beautiful. We ended on an expanse of deciduous trees whose turf was rich and mulchy with deer droppings and fallen leaves.

The kids found fairy homes and an all natural jungle gym.

And we found Verity a future husband:

All in all, I’d say it was one very successful outing.

It’s been a while since I have shared pictures in this space. We have a bit of catching up to do!

To begin with,… Ethan turned 6 a few weeks ago!

::Here are some other Summer highlights::

The Summer nature table. (I need felted a sun and sun fairies with wool and hung them with a kool-aid dyed piece of silk.)

A contraptions set of wooden planks sent for Ethans birthday from his Nana is a daily example of how many things can be made for marbles with this relatively simple little boards!

Blocks cut and sanded from scrap poplar lumber is a much enjoyed birthday gift from Paw Paw and Maw Maw Su

one of our favorite spots at the park downtown. I sit and read and kids play under this huge pine tree or down by the creek for hours. We spot rabbits, squirrels, birds, bugs, and if you get there early enough, a wild bantam rooster walks around crowing!

Chris and kids explore the creek on Ethans birthday

Ethan on a trail walk this morning

a turtle discovered on our trail walks

huge water spider found at the creek!

fantastic beetle discovered on a nature walk

My summer seed collection on display by my desk

Verity continues to grow into a beautiful toddler, with golden locks, dark eyes, and olive skin...

Ethan tells himself a story about Blue and Yellow while doing some wet-on-wet watercoloring

What to do with old wet-on-wet watercolor projects? Make cards, of course!

Making sun prints in the backyard

Finished sun prints on display

Ver ready for the market with her mama-made knitted sun hat and a handmade dress passed down from our dear friend Misty in Portland

One of my favorite snacks lately: a fresh pizza dip for left over sourdough bread. Simply heat olive oil, garlic cloves, chopped tomatoes, and a jalepeno on a skillet with nitrate-free pepperoni or a spicy local sausage.. Add cayenne, chili powder, achioti, and sea salt to taste. Add fresh basil and cilantro, top with shredded raw chedder cheese. Yum!

Delicious oat groat cereal has been a morning ritual lately. Soaked overnight, the oat groats are cooked in the morning and then raw milk, raw eggs yolks, maple syrup/rawhoney, lavender buds, vanilla extract, and a pinch of sea salt are added to the pot (off heat). Ladel into a pretty teacup, and top with blueberries, blanched almonds, and ground flax seeds. Mmm...

Gladiolas in the sunlight

“Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.” — Henry David Thoreau

It is Sunday morning, a morning I’ve held space for church attendance for many, many years. However, this morning, as has been the case for several months now, I crave to go “down to the river” as the ol’ spiritual song says — to seek out the Father in the baptismal flow of a stream and the worshipful song of the birds and fellowship with the trees. There are a good many labels for this and a good many folks I knew in my conservative, fundamentalist circles would catch themselves saying a prayer for my salvation right now (nature worship?! hell bound, for sure!). Oh well. I can only go back to what I know. I and everyone I know was born from this dust, whether you believe this happened over millions of years or 6 thousand. We are made for the Garden and it for us. Why can’t we can do as the legend of Adam and Eve, walking through the trees and communing with God? Or as Jesus, retreating to the wild places and the gardens to contemplate and pray? Perhaps if our churches looked more like a greenspace, modern religions wouldn’t be so disconnected from nature as a place of worship and from the earth as a place for peace…

More on these thoughts…

We have been ingenious in this century finding ways to hide from nature, and in the process we have let enchantment recede piece by piece. Then we wonder why we now have a religious and spiritual crisis. We blame each other for not having the moral fortitude to maintain traditional values and sustain church commitments, but we don’t complain about the commercial obliteration of nature by the great screen of advertising that lines every American town and city road, or by the ever-present noise and light of an insensitive culture that keeps nature’s presence blissfully blocked out.

The only explanation for our acceptance of these commercial insensitivities is that we have forgotten that nature is the prime source of the spiritual life. Block it out, and we obliterate the source of the spirit that our souls thrive on. Erect another billboard, another neon sign, another rack of halogen lights, and we push spirituality farther into repression.

On the other hand, build a real market, invite the neighboring farmers into the city, keep animal nearby and cared for, let the songs of birds and insects penetrate the sounds of machinery, let the darkness descend at night to gently envelop every business and every home, and you will see the spiritual life begin to rise and glow, and you might hear the voices of those spirits, nymphs, little people, and ghosts that were heard generations ago, that fed the quotidian imagination and excited a spirituality not yet divorced from good creation.

…Give nature a place, and you introduce egoless and unambitious spirituality, a spirituality that serves well as the starting point and base for other forms. There need not be any conflict between this natural spirituality and more evolved forms of theology and church, and if there appears to be such a conflict, it may be a sign that the spirit has lofted too high above the earth, has forgotten the goodness of creation, and is serving human ambition more than the community of beings that inhabit the cosmos.

… Spending time by a river teaches us many things, one of them the flow of life, and its constant movement, and it’s clear that the enchanted life demands an appreciation of this flow. As soon as we try to stop it, problems arise, and the psyche of a person or a community begins immediately to show signs of rigidity and dryness.

…If anything, we have lost the one thing that would sustain our intimacy with nature — a religious sensitivity to the sacredness of all forms in nature. The oceans are not only a bountiful source of fish, transportation, and recreation; they are also one of the supreme sources on the planet for contemplation and other aspects of the spiritual life, but we could know this only if we were deeply schooled in the necessary virtue of reverence.”

– Thomas Moore, The Re-enchantment of Everyday Life

In an interview I’ve been watching with Joseph Campbell called The Power of Myth, journalist Bill Moyers questions him about similar concepts:

CAMPBELL: ‘We have today to learn to get back into accord with the wisdom of nature and realize again our brotherhood with the animals and with the water and the sea. To say that the divinity informs the world and all things is condemned as pantheism. But pantheism is a misleading word. It suggests that a personal god is supposed to inhabit the world, but that is not the idea at all. The idea is trans-theological. It is of an undefinable, inconceivable mystery, thought of as a power, that is the source and end and supporting ground of all life and being.’

… Campbell later reads a famous letter from Chief Seattle in 1854:

“The President in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land. But how can you buy or sell the sky? the land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?

Every part of the earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every meadow, every humming insect. All are holy in the memory and experience of my people.

We know the sap which courses through the trees as we know the blood that courses through our veins. We are part of the earth and it is part of us. The perfumed flowers are our sisters. The bear, the deer, the great eagle, these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the dew in the meadow, the body heat of the pony, and man all belong to the same family.

The shining water that moves in the streams and rivers is not just water, but the blood of our ancestors. If we sell you our land, you must remember that it is sacred. Each glossy reflection in the clear waters of the lakes tells of events and memories in the life of my people. The water’s murmur is the voice of my father’s father.

The rivers are our brothers. They quench our thirst. They carry our canoes and feed our children. So you must give the rivers the kindness that you would give any brother.

If we sell you our land, remember that the air is precious to us, that the air shares its spirit with all the life that it supports. The wind that gave our grandfather his first breath also received his last sigh. The wind also gives our children the spirit of life. So if we sell our land, you must keep it apart and sacred, as a place where man can go to taste the wind that is sweetened by the meadow flowers.

Will you teach your children what we have taught our children? That the earth is our mother? What befalls the earth befalls all the sons of the earth.

This we know: the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.

One thing we know: our God is also your God. The earth is precious to him and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its creator.

Your destiny is a mystery to us. What will happen when the buffalo are all slaughtered? The wild horses tamed? What will happen when the secret corners of the forest are heavy with the scent of many men and the view of the ripe hills is blotted with talking wires? Where will the thicket be? Gone! Where will the eagle be? Gone! And what is to say goodbye to the swift pony and then hunt? The end of living and the beginning of survival.

When the last red man has vanished with this wilderness, and his memory is only the shadow of a cloud moving across the prairie, will these shores and forests still be here? Will there be any of the spirit of my people left?

We love this earth as a newborn loves its mother’s heartbeat. So, if we sell you our land, love it as we have loved it. Care for it, as we have cared for it. Hold in your mind the memory of the land as it is when you receive it. Preserve the land for all children, and love it, as God loves us.

As we are part of the land, you too are part of the land. This earth is precious to us. It is also precious to you.
One thing we know – there is only one God. No man, be he Red man or White man, can be apart. We ARE all brothers after all.”

“The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible; but all natural objects make a kindred impression, when the mind is open to their influence. Nature never wears a mean appearance. Neither does the wisest man extort her secret, and lose his curiosity by finding out all her perfection. Nature never became a toy to a wise spirit. The flowers, the animals, the mountains, reflected the wisdom of his best hour, as much as they had delighted the simplicity of his childhood.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

“I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in.” –George Washington Carver

“I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it…. People think pleasing God is all God care about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.” —- Alice Walker, The Color Purple

“There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more.”
– George Gordon, Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage

“Some keep the Sabbath going to Church,
I keep it staying at Home -
With a bobolink for a Chorister,
And an Orchard, for a Dome.”
– Emily Dickinson

“God writes the Gospel not in the Bible alone, but also on trees, and in the flowers and clouds and stars.” — Martin Luther

“What is necessary to keep providing good care to nature has completely fallen into ignorance during the materialism era.” — Rudolf Steiner

I posted recently about our local AHF (A.ccess H.ealthy F.oods) program which selects qualified families who would benefit from an extension on their SNAPS (formerly called food stamps) benefits on edible purchases at the Farmer’s Market. This morning I used just $40 in SNAPS and was able, with the AHF program, to get all of the following (which was quite a site as I made two trips back to the car with armfuls of market bags, and had the sleeping toddler on my back as well!):

MEAT, DAIRY, HONEY
2 whole free range chickens (8-10 pounds of chicken total)
8 .25 lb lean free range ground beef (hamburger) patties
1.5 pounds of local raw wildflower honey
2 pounds hand-crafted olive oil pasta (1 speghetti, 1 rottini)
1 half pound fresh goat cheese
2 dozen free range eggs

PRODUCE (all were purchased from organic, local booths):
1 green onion bunch
2 pounds assorted summer squash and zuchinni
1 pound of beets
2 pounds red potatoes
2 pounds heirloom tomatoes
1 small red cabbage
6 corn on the cob
1 head of lettuce
__________________________
TOTAL: an $80 value

I can officially call our fridge full

These next 3 days Chris is off work, as most of the Uprise/RagTag/9th St Video employees head off on a 3 day retreat/float trip. With many pressing financial things to think about, we weren’t able to swing the trip this year, but we are going to make the best of our “stay-cation” anyway. In the plans are a free folk band concert tomorrow, a state park day with a grill-out of hamburgers and corn cobs, and a blueberry picking excursion to a no-spray u-pick blueberry farm where blueberries are just $2/pound!

How are you all spending your Summer vacations? Any other stay-cationer’s have ideas on how to make the most of your retreat-at-home?

So this weekend I got seriously fortunate from a somewhat chance encounter with some one who works with a local organization that seeks out families who meet certain criteria who would benefit from having their food stamps extended when making edible purchases at the local farmer’s market. I had heard of this local program before but hadn’t figured out if I was eligible (the program is new this year), but thanks to a friend of a friend who got me connected, my family got signed up. Let me tell you- this was exciting!

(quick aside- I have mixed feelings about being on food stamps, and there’s something even more off-putting about sharing this info about us via the WWW, but for now my family needs it and we are doing what we can to be self-sufficient without government aid. But I do believe there is value in sharing our journey with others, so that the barriers of shame will not limit folks who are desiring a more integrated, ethical, “simple living” lifestyle. So – let’s just put a pin in that for a moment and let me get back to my joy about this program’s benefits!)

Okay, so basically I go purchase “tokens” with my EBT card (like a debit card for food stamps (technically now called SNAPS benefits), if you’re not familiar) at the market booth on Saturday morning, and whatever I use ($20 bucks, let’s say) is DOUBLED in value (I am given $40 in tokens, only using up the $20 of my allotted food stamps). This is already quite a Wow, awesome! But it wasn’t until I actually went grocery shopping Saturday that it hit me just how phenomenal this is. Another way to think about it is everything I get there is now 50% less!

A quick back-story of sorts: Most of you know that our family strives to eat nourishing, local, organic foods (weston price/ traditional foods – based). We try to eat mainly local, pastured meats and dairy products, and local, no-spray produce. (If we do eat grains and legumes, they tend to be used in moderation and purchased as dry bulk goods, then properly soaked and prepared to make them more of a usable food by the human body. If you’re lost by now, don’t worry – I’ll try to circle back around to that topic some other time, or you can read a bit about it yourself — try here or here…)

At first glance, this may seem like quite a luxury for folks on food stamps, right? Well, we don’t do this by going to a store like Whole Foods and leaving with bags and bags of expensive prepared and imported foods (though, in the interest of full disclosure — been there, done that. We all start somewhere!). Instead, I get most of the above items from the farmer’s market, a bulk food order we place each month from Azure Standard for things like peanut butter, etc, our backyard laying hens, and a local dairy farm delivery. (Aside – I do garden at home but at this point raising/growing our own food hasn’t been as much of an option as we hope it will one day be, since we have been renting inside city limits and moving often through all our homesteading adventures).

We do limit prepared foods, canned or boxed items are only utilized in a real “pinch”, so it goes without saying that I cook most everything from scratch, at home. If you aren’t in this habit and think that is impossible, this gets more effortless over time, with practice, I promise. Perhaps start with one meal per week, gradually getting more comfortable and organized. Even now, a few years into it, I manage only about 3 main-course-type dinners this way each week, the other days it’s quick veggie roasts or leftovers or (fill in the blank/ free-for-all). I think as the kids get older and require slightly less attention (this DOES happen, right?! and without utilizing any media or a babysitter?!), I will be able to work more on having a home cooked meal every day, 3 times a day. *crosses fingers* (one can have goals…leave me to my delusions, will ya?)

Eggs: Our backyard chickens give us 2 free-range eggs each day but it isn’t enough (we currently have 2 laying hens and 4 hens that should start giving another egg per day in a couple of months – at that point the half-dozen a day will be closer to our actual needs!). We supplement right now with 18 additional eggs for $3.75 each week from a local farm run by 2 boys who began their business as a 4-H project. We support them, bring them back their egg crates, and get lots of affordable “perfect food” protein, which we use in many ways (traditional breakfast dishes, hard-boiled eggs for snacks, baking, homemade custards, egg yolk in smoothies, etc — you name it, we probably throw an egg in it!). This allows us to get the essential fats and cholesterol we need without having prime meat cuttings at every meal.

Milk: (This isn’t part of the program I’ve mentioned, but it falls into this category of how we eat farm-fresh foods so I’ll tell you a bit about our milk too). Our milk man literally leaves farm fresh raw milk on our porch every Monday, in beautiful glowing glass jars (okay, maybe I took some liberties with the beautiful, glowing bit!) But seriously, it’s awesome. His cows are raised on pasture (meaning they roam fresh soil and grass/weeds/meadow, raise their calves, etc), never given meds or hormones, and visits to his farm are welcome. His price is awesome too – $3.80 per gallon. We are currently doing 2 gallons a week of whole, raw milk, straight from the teet . Since we literally feel ill if we drink pasteurized dairy (organic or not – it is heat processed and void of the essential enzymes and bacteria needed to digest it properly) and we avoid highly-processed “fake” dairy (rice, soy, etc), this is a real huge part of our sustenance. (Raw milk is perfect and delicious, but don’t let me stay on my soap box for too long!) In our state, raw milk is legal so long as it is purchased directly from the farm. We turn this milk into kefir regularly for smoothies, and sometimes make cheeses, custards, etc, depending on what kind of free time I can find in my week!

Chicken Meat and Broth: The farmer’s market here is really great for local pastured meats. There is a booth that sells fryer chickens (I buy the whole chicken, organs and all – which have a lot of additional nutrients, and cook slow over low temps to render lots of nourishing meat and bone broth which typically extends for 3 separate dinners). The whole frozen chicken is $10 bucks, for about a 4 lb bird that is, again, raised on pasture (not simply “cage free” – the birds literally have the life and diet of a farm chicken, which makes for healthy, tasty, nutritional meat). We typically try to do a chicken (remember, 3 “meals” come out of one purchase) every other week (2 per month), to keep our food bill low.

Fish Meat and Broth: the market also has a booth that sells fresh caught wild trout, which I bake in tinfoil with celtic sea salt and DEVOUR (this coastal girl really craves fresh seafood living here in the Midwest!). I believe the price was about $6 a fish, some where about that. 2 fish is divided up between our family of 4 and then I use the bones, heads, tails, etc to make broth for another meal. Being on a budget, we aim to get this once a month as it is not the cheapest meat option for us.

Beef Meat and Broth: I found a great way to get pastured beef in our diet on a dime, by getting “stew bones” from the local pastured meat stand. These bones have meat around them still and sell for $2.00 a pound. About 4 bones makes for a delicious stew and then I can cut the meat off and add it back for stew meat.

Other meats: For ground meats, the cheapest I have found is a local goat farm, which sells ground goat meat for about $3.75. Sometimes beef is cheaper, but I like to have some variety and goat meat makes really great meatballs for gyros, etc. Sometimes I get local pastured ground turkey or pork as well, as it makes good sausage (and is cheaper than buying sausage already seasoned and linked).

Of course, there are times funds are slightly higher and we splurge on bacon or something, but this is a list of our basic meat and dairy “staples”. I find that most people assume eating this way MUST cost us an arm and a leg; that abiding by our local/pasture-raised ethical and nutritional choice is an oxymoron for low-income families. This simply isn’t the case, and people on a budget do not have to eat fast food and cheap corn-syrup and processed soy-laden grocery store products and factory-farmed meat products. But it does take forethought, and commitment, and an attempt to look beyond the total “price” at the end of the bill, into food politics and all the various sectors (and living creatures, people groups included) that are hurting in our nation and in our world because of the way we eat (malnourishment, diseases, exploitation of workers, widespread loss of fertile farm lands, etc etc). This isn’t just about being posh, green, or any other catchy buzz word – it’s about caring about our health and the health of our planet in real, actionable ways.

Though we are new to this area, the basic methods and means of getting these staples into our diet have been the same where ever we’ve been, minus the learning curve required to find local sources (esp if the farmer’s market was mainly crocheted hats and cut flowers – hey, it happens!) and meal planning and preparation with these methods. We’re getting there… those things take time.

So let me go back now to the start of this post: all the meats I have listed above I, for now, can get 50% cheaper! A whole, pastured fryer chicken – FIVE DOLLARS. Stew bones with meat – ONE DOLLAR per pound. Freshly caught trout: $3 dollars. You get the idea. And this isn’t even factoring in produce at the moment, which is often (local, no-spray) somewhere about an average of #2-3 dollars per pound, so it’s now half that price.

So you’ll forgive me if I just can’t contain my enthusiasm about this blessing! This means a lot to our family and our health right now, and I applaud organizations like this who are seeking to help those who need food assistance to make healthier choices (and not just cramming USDA propaganda down their throats at sign up time and turning them away to go buy gum/chips/breakfast-cereal/cookies/soda with their food stamps! But I digress – that’s another post for another day…).

I won’t always need the help, but I am darn grateful at the moment that I can extend our food budget via this aid, towards hard-working, ethical, quality local farms and in turn our family can eat more abundantly of the nourishing foods they have to offer! Just makes me wanna jump up and do a little jig… oh wait, I’ll have the move the laptop off my lap…

I woke up this morning to hard rains and thunder; stretched and smiled before opening my eyes. I like the rain. A lot.

So after a quick stop by Uprise for a cup-o-joe, and a morning of cuddling and reading at the library while the thunderstorms passed, we headed back home for an overcast evening of gardening in the freshly wetted soil.

I’ve been making the preparations for weeks, waiting for a day with some time, some shade, some breeze, …some motivation… to really hit the backyard with all I got. Boy, did I!

Mama (tha’d be me) got out the saw, cut the lumber, made a new, double-height raised bed for our Fall/Winter garden. I dug deep, adding the compost, manure, coffee grounds, and a bag of peat moss I have collected these last few weeks. I laid down a system of pipes to get oxygen deep into the soil/compost, and fixed PVC hoops over the top to create a mini green house during cold months. The kids enjoyed digging and mixing, shoveling compost from the hen run into the bed. They also spent some time shredding lots of scrap paper I had been collected, then worked it into the soil and wet everything up real good. Then of course, they helped me add in a jar of red worms and watched them dive into their new home!

We have a weekend of muggy heat ahead, so I covered this new raised bed (currently a compost bed until Fall) with the now emptied plastic bags of manure, placed some bricks on top, and now that sucker is ready to heat up. I’m determined to have a productive Fall/Winter garden this year, maintaining home grown greens year round.

The Summer garden, meanwhile, did not have this kind of a head-start, so was off to a late and resource-less start. Besides a small harvest of strawberries from the strawberry patch, I am growing some sugar snap peas, lots of onions, about 5 tomato plants, as many peppers, and a smattering of squash and cucumbers. Mixed into these beds are some chives, marigolds, sunflowers, etc. Those beds are full of compost from the city, with some homemade compost and peat moss mixed in, but they are shallow and the ground underneath them was pretty much clay, so I can see already the result is slow growth, which may not produce much yield now that July/August (aka Drought Season) will be soon upon me.

Not that I’m giving up on my summer garden. On the contrary, I’m giving it as much as I can. Today I added some fresh compost and covered with the white confetti of mulch from the shredded paper (deflects the intense sun, and so pretty too!). I also added the tomato trellis and built a sort of A-frame of spare wood slanting down the other side which I can use to grow the cucumber/squash plants up. I guess only time will tell (bugs, heat, poor soil conditions – I’m not super hopeful but doing my best!)

Each year the adversity I have found in my gardening endeavors has taught me a lot. Your garden is only as good as the work you put into it, especially around this part of the country, and especially if doing it all organic and with very (very very) little cost. I think that I am at last understanding the importance of healthy soil, and that the real work of the gardener is cultivating soil (the plant then more or less takes care of itself!). Maintaining that balance of microbes and nutrients, water retention and good drainage, attracting the right critters and repelling the wrong ones (and keeping your harvest from being eaten by little bunnies, birds, etc) –

- Ahhhh, it can be overwhelming! And a lot of work (oh yeah, I’ll be veeeerrrrrrry sore tomorrow from all the sawing, hammering, screwing, climbing, bending, shoveling, stomping of today’s gardening adventure). And if you’re like me, having not been brought up learning about growing your food and are set off into the world with a major brown thumb, it also takes a lot of planning and thoughtfulness. And reading of books.

Little by little, season by season, I learn more and get better connected with the earth and its food growing capabilities. For one thing, I’ll never again mistake a squash bug for anything but my archenemy and promptly … bludgeon them on sight.

We continue to bend around the slightly new way of life here in Columbia, as various things in our lives are coming under the scrutiny of our will to evolve and grow without cumbersome bad habits holding us back. Sometimes these ruts in life get started, and things are so strained and stretched that merely surviving is about the highest level of functioning that seems available. The entire year we spent in Fayetteville seemed like that, combined with long hours for Chris at work, and my catching illness after illness. Thank God, truly, for how different things have been in our short time since moving; my health has been stellar (haven’t even had allergy symptoms, and I’m beginning to tolerate gluten again!) – which has afforded me with a little stamina to make some little adjustments; little internal (or external at times) push on the train tracks – ever so slightly array – so that a new course is set.

Today we altered our family course by handing over some checks – solidifying our decision to sacrifice some funds to the enrollment fee to get Ethan in with the waldorf co-op here in town, both for a 2 week summer camp as well as the 3 mornings per week “kindergarten” (ages 4-7) next year. I also went to my second “book discussion” group with the waldorf community (teachers, parents, etc) today – we are reading through Eugene Schwartz “The Millennial Child” – good stuff! (I’m embarrassingly fascinated by the history of educational pedagogies and parenting philosophies – this is my version of GEEKING OUT!)

Today marks day number 10 of our “zero screen time” policy for Ethan. It’s been wonderful, even though at times (like when it is cold and raining outside and BOY that PBS kids could come in handy with my wired and whiney 5 year old!) I have had to really dig in deep to establish this new rhythm and live in a new way with my children – where there is no alternative to living together, playing together, cooking together, gardening together; to set myself (and Chris) as the authority in this way and to respectfully deny Ethan access to ANY screen time (nothing that makes electronic noise – though I have caved to a little music now and then – I don’t think I’ll ever give up listening to the classical music and programming on NPR on the radio during the day!) I’ll go into this facet of our lives more in another post, as I continue to analyze and test this decision for myself (it is not without great theorizing – I am a Mass Communications major, after all!). For now, the TV lies helplessly in the corner of the living room with two big, lovely play silks hung over it – a fluid work of art rather than a black box of digitized entertainment. Of course, Chris and I have no such rules and will on occasion catch up on a show or two, or watch a film together, after bedtime hours.

Ver just insists on hanging by herself on the monkey bars – remember when it was that easy?!

Another post for another time will be my thoughts on how to merge waldorf and unschooling – two driving (for me) and seemingly opposing ways of not just schooling, or even homeschooling, but indeed of family life as well! I am sort of in observation mode at the moment – reading a biography on Rudolf Steiner while reading How Children Learn (Holt) and trying to find the nuggets that build the bridge between the apparent tensions in the two approaches. Also, I have the fortunate opportunity now to be in this book discussion group I mentioned, where one of the leaders is a veteran of “waldorf” and “unschooling” simultaneously with her own three children, all of whom are grown. Such a wealth of wisdom I think all of us younger moms feel when we can “sit at her feet”, if you will, and see how she creatively and by all accounts, successfully, merged these two methods that appealed so much to her (as they do to me). But as I said, that’s for another time. I’m still gathering my thoughts there.

Verity recently celebrated her 2 year birthday, a sweet moment where she shyly hid in my skirt while we sang “Happy Birthday”. Her cake was a gluten-free vanilla cake with cream cheese mango icing, decorated with violets from the yard and two little beeswax candles. Happy Birthday, angel!

Let’s see… last weekend, we hit the farmer’s market, potted some herbs in pots from the thrift store, made more stock, hit a few garage sales (found myself a fishing pole – I am beyond excited to go fishing soon!), and weathered a strangely cold and wet May weekend. I, however, got a mama’s day out on Sunday, and spent a glorious afternoon at Uprise working, to be followed by a free movie at RagTag Cinema (a perk of being married to an Uprise employee!) where I enjoyed (immensely!) the film Jane Eyre (SO good!) alone with a $2.75 glass of red wine on a cozy little swivel chair. Have I mentioned how very much I love that Chris works there?! What a treat! (I envision more of these rare and invigorating afternoons in my future!)

our bog…

In other news, we dug a rain garden in a moist area of a backyard to channel the overflow of our rain away from saturating all of the ground into a slippery clay during rains. Er… it is more like a bog at this point. I am awaiting some rain and some toads and tadpoles and dragonflies (hopefully very hungry ones who will happily devour the inevitable mosquito larvae the standing water will attract!). I want it to be more like a wildlife habitat/pond with some native shade loving plants in and around it and a small amount of water to support a healthy little ecosystem. I envision the day when I see butterflies, bees, water beetles, dragonflies, toads, birds, and whatever other critters will find a little tiny spot of nature in my urban backyard. Sigh. Patience!

showing off our backyard clay creations

Ethan has been busy shoveling soil – er, clay – and finding the BAZILLIONS of cicadas hiding a few inches below the surface – our chickens are downright gorging themselves on this steady helping of delicious bugs for several hours a day. Our backyard is an all-you-can-eat buffet for my hefty gals. The four pre-teen hens we got last month are already full of adult feathers and are learning to scratch around the run and eat grass and leftovers. So far, no crowing – a good sign we have all girls, and therefore will soon have 6 hens giving us at least a half dozen of free range eggs a day! To say I have chicken-raising fever would be an understatement. Ignoring the raised eyebrows of our family members several years ago, I set out to raise backyard chickens and have loved every minute of it. So easy, so rewarding, so fun. Every one should have themselves a pair of hens.

I needle felted the kids this caterpillar – I just love these little wool creatures and how “alive” they feel. A satisfyingly quick project for an evening with hubby away at ping pong night with some co-workers (dad’s night out!).

Tomorrow we have plans to visit Rock Bridge State Park to play in some creeks and have a picnic lunch with a family we met a few weeks ago (at their garage sale). The homeschooling mom of FIVE boys graciously called to invite us out – I know Ethan will have a blast. Oh – she is also passing on her huge blackboard to us, how cool is that? Surely a feature in the next “Simple Pleasures” series of gifted, bartered, thrifted, etc etc…

This weekend we head to Fayetteville, AR! Can’t wait to see my dear friends and family I have been sorely missing.

Well, here’s where I wrap up my ramblings and save the rest for another day. Until then…

There has been some tough financial struggles lately (not uncommon for us, I know) but it has more than any other time in our lives enabled me to dig in deep with the feeling of discontent, impatience, inconvenience, and so on that arise when funds allow only for the most basic of household needs.

{{Before I go on, let me take a moment to apologize for the wordy length of this post. Sorry. Also, you will be rewarded with pictures at the end. But don’t skip ahead just because I told you that, because the content explains the pictures. (gotcha!) }}

I began reading some really excellent financial books that have given me some valuable ideas and resources, but most importantly the validation that living a life of frugality is indeed a freeing and valid choice (however un-American it feels at first!). The topic is exhaustive so I won’t go into all the details, but some resources for me have been primarily Radical Homemakers (my go-to!), Your Money or Your Life, and recently The Scavenger’s Manifesto, Made from Scratch and the Tightwad Gazette (check these out at your library!). There is so much about it that fascinates me as a subject matter and lifestyle choice, as it takes a certain amount of confidence to transcend the idea that voluntary simplicity (and foraging/scavenging/bartering/waiting/and often going without) is a deprived, resource-less, bohemian (though this word might actually be appropriate) life of poverty (or worse – laziness).

I can acutely feel the pressure, on many fronts, to just forget this whole business of living simply and just get a job job, put Ethan in public school, and force myself onto that hamster wheel because what I’m faced with if I do not do so seems too exhausting, lonely, challenging, and doomed-from-the-start. But I have never been one to unquestionably accept the status quot solution without at least researching and utilizing some alternatives that don’t compromise my heart’s values and desires.

To view the lifestyle instead as a challenge in resourcefulness and ingenuity and invention (the daughter of necessity?), a call to radically reject the consumer cycle (as the Scavenger Manifesto calls it, the “Want-Get” mentality) of materialism and waste and the myth of “choices”, and to capitalize on the lack of excess as a catalyst for gaining increased self-sufficiency and experience.

It’s been heavy at times, as I sit with the reality of compulsive choices I have made, the “treats” I wanted to “deserve” over the years and the financial pressures we have incurred both from our own choices or those of the “down economy”. While I have never had what I would have called affluence, often forgoing large things like extra vehicles or a house with more space than I need or vacations or store-bought clothes, I had to recognize that we had made choices with where what little money we had fell between the cracks (where did it go?!) on silly things like convenience food (i.e. “oh, we are going to the library, we’ll stop and grab bagels first”), expensive cheeses (next I need to learn how to be a foodie on a budget!), library fines, shipping fees, so on.

Our plan to move to Columbia and for Chris to take this flexible, enjoyable, sustainably-minded, locally-owned job was a calculated risk and I am in no way making it work without flaws just 4 weeks into this venture… *yet*. For our entire marriage I have worked (I’ve held a job since I was 14, for that matter), I financed over 90% of my private-education undergrad degree with grants/scholarships and work credits, and since having children I have been the main earner generating income from my own at-home business. Yet, for a variety of reasons I have shared in the past on this blog, we have been taking steps to switch these roles for sometime now, as continuing down that path left me stressed, strapped, unorganized, unhappy, and unable to homeschool. So I knew there would be sacrifices, but the idea that I could creatively figure this out was incredibly motivating for me and continues to be as I think of new ways to live and think about the choices we can make to realize this “dream” of living simply, learning more, feeling more enriched and fulfilled by a life of time and resources to live generously — while making as a household income less than we have EVER earned before, even while in college.

So rather than recount the unexpected bills and financial upsets to our last 4 weeks (though there have indeed been those too!), I want to move on to the fun stuff, the things that I am finding just slap-knee exciting about learning to be a tight-wad!

First of all, I think being frugal is a lot easier if you live amongst other frugals; in community with swappers, food growers, barterers, pickers, foragers, forgoers, and coupon-clippers. It kinda validates the lifestyle, which is definitely counter-cultural otherwise. I think these folks exist just about everywhere, you just gotta find them — and be willing to be their equal.

Secondly, there are a lot of hidden perks to being frugal that, if you can let go of the concept of “Want-Get” mentality, are pretty rad. Clothing swaps with stylishly-dressed donators are fun and easy. Garage sales and “free bins” amaze me. Bartering goods and services is highly effective. Learning a new skill so you don’t have to pay some one to do it for you is way more satisfying. Paying only a quarter of your previous monthly vehicle gasoline budget when every one on the news is lamenting the climbing gas prices is reassuring. Having even just a few bucks left over at the end of the week, rather than going into more debt, is rewarding. Learning to wait for something you would have just ran out to get as soon as you “needed” it, like a washer/bike/freezer/radio/whatever until you have saved for it and found the right deal (hopefully free!) fosters a feeling of contentment and relaxation, a mindfulness about accumulating goods. Keeping track of receipts, organizing bills, and forgoing “treats” is, well, it’s growing up, (and it also reducing a BUTTLOAD of anxiety at the end of a pay cycle! who knew? )

I will be posting again a weekly series I call Simple Pleasures – a record of things that were bartered, gifted, thrifted, made, grown, saved for, or given away that brought pleasure to my life each week:

Things like…

A family walk to the public library (which boasts NO limits and NO late fees!), where we forage for edible dandelions and violets, sight a groundhog, and work off belly fat – who needs a gym membership when you have legs?!). Our ten dollar weekly budget that gets us 2 gallons of raw milk and 2 pints of raw cream (homemade cream cheese!) every Monday on our neighbor’s doorstep. The bags FULL of amazing books, music and documentaries we bring back from the library. The free use of internet around town. The free movies we rent for family movie night at 9th Street Video because Chris works at Uprise. The free (local) coffee both Chris and I get from Uprise while renting the free movies at 9th street, on our way to getting the free books from the library. The knitted gifts to trade for babysitting. The free movie tickets on our date night and the $5 (total) we spent for the organic wine and beer we enjoyed while watching the movie. The outings of packed lunches at the park and nature trails just outside the city. The Easter baskets filled with sprouted wheat grass (seeds a gift from a friend) and sales on the organic bulk bin candy which filled saved egg shells from breakfast. The downright gourmet meals that can be made with a friends’ surplus garden grub and bulk natural foods from Azure Standard. The upcoming “Columbia’s Really Really Free Market” and the free backyard chicken processing workshop I will attend in the coming weeks (bringing home the bird for dinner!). The fishing I will take up this summer to catch a good supply of trout and the harvest I will reap and keep from my garden beds, whose compost was generously gifted to us in exchange for a half dozen of our chicken eggs and the tomato and pepper starts donated to us from the local urban farms surplus, (thank you Luke!)

… you get the idea. SIMPLE pleasures that offset some of the difficulties we have faced, and brought meaning and blessing to my life in often surprising ways.

It’s really quite fun to get even crazier!

This little home economics notebook from 1917 that I found at a thrift store was really inspiring. I’m fascinated with homemakers of the bygone era, who made due with as little as 1,200 yearly salary. Had to take a picture (but not buy! lol)

A virtually free (did have to spend a little money on the sweets), hand-made Easter tradition…

Easter brunch of whatever is on hand – quail eggs (a gift from sweet friend Natalie), fruit, plain yogurt with raw honey…

A simple park outing can be entertaining, fun, and even a bit of a break… at no cost at all!

Who needs a mall playground (without actually intending it, we haven’t stepped foot in a shopping mall in over 2 years and counting!) when you have nature trails, dandelions to blow, rocks to throw in a creek, and bridges to run across?!

I typically walk out of the library with armloads of books, as there are no limits, no late fees, and a great selection. This week’s focus was homeschooling resources…

Free meals during his shift, Chris enjoys free freshly made artisan sandwiches with locally raised meat sources, along with a glass of organic beer, 5-6 times per week. I have been impressed with how this has reduced the amount of groceries we go through each week! (gosh, his job sure sounds terrible, doesn’t it? )

Family dance jams are a nice way to pass the time…

Foraged edibles from the front yard – violets, dandelion flowers and leaves – beautiful, free nourishment

Diggin in dirt rarely gets old… finding worms, black beetles, grubs and cicada’s is just too fun!

“new” used books from the library used book sale

Tire swings from the tires just replaced on the car – endless hours of entertainment (I’ve lovingly nicknamed this swing Jenna the Babysitter)

This old suitcase ($1) and milk glass saucer (.25) from the end of a garage sale now serves as my undergarment storage and homemade salad dressing dispenser (respectively)

Big pile of great Spring sweaters (free from a clothing swap)

$1 garage sale vintage lamp base that just whispers my name…

Doll clothes found in a “free” basket!

A frugal “pantry” of bulk foods, collected eggs, and home brews…

A vintage typewriter for my prose (free in exchange for me learning to tinker with it and get a new ribbon)

So often in life, the things I thought were downright rotten no good luck, indeed clouds of curse following me around my days, turned out to be – as if by some Great Planner – small redirections that probably kept me from worse blunders ahead.

I won’t share the whole fiasco today involving my car and a moment of OHMYGOD-it’s-dead, followed by my OH-DUH-I’m-just-out-of-gas realization after I had dramatized the situation and shed some tears and all that embarrassing stuff. We’ll just leave it at that.

Suffice it to say, I seem to be hitting the same road signs again and again lately (wait, am I going in circles?!), and most of them go something like, “CHILL OUT. TRUST ME. I HAVE A PLAN!”

But I digress.

In other news, we welcomed 4 new members (1 is hiding in the other corner in the photo below) to our urban homestead today, and I can’t say enough about how cute, cute, CUTE these little gals (hopefully!) are! Ethan summed it best when he said, “Oh my gosh, I don’t know but every time I look at them it’s like I’m going to cry because they are just so cute!”

Meet…

Stormy, the barred rock chick, smallest of the quartet, who is spunky, loud and dodges being held like the plague. Her eggs will be brown, similar to our current laying hens, Magic and Daffodil (a Rhode Island Red and Gold-Sex Link, respectively).

Nutmeg, who narrowly escaped the hatchery box to head home with our lot when Chris chimed in that this was his favorite and we kicked out a cute little copper-colored one to make room for this little speckled Americauna. All I can say after careful observation is that Nutmeg is a good eater. I’m not surprised her and Chris felt a connection.

Lulla, another Americauna whose coloring looks slightly like Nutmeg, but with unmistakable chipmunk-like markings rather than speckles (at least thus far, on her chick down – the eventual adult feathers could be quite different!). Ethan named her Lullaby, which we shortened to Lulla. She is robust and docile and seems to mind her own business.

And lastly, my personal fav, is Celeste, a little fluffy angelic cream-colored Americauna with nice green hues to her legs (a sign of good “easter egg” blueish/green eggs which are the signature of Americauna’s, like Nutmeg and Lulla as well). She happens to be the biggest (or just fluffiest) of the bunch and is quiet, sleepy, and seems to not mind being held in the least. She falls asleep in your palm almost immediately. I’ve seen her prance around and eat her fill, but her general demeanor is calm and chill.

I just love chick-raising time of year. This is the 3rd time we’ve brooded chicks and it’s beginning to feel like an annual rite of passage in April. I love watching them, so little for such a very short amount of time, as they provide endless entertainment. Soon they’ll be sprouting larger, darker feathers and looking all gaggly like awkward teenagers and attempting to fly out of their brooding box.

I am crossing my fingers that this group continues down an all-female path (roosters are a no-go in city limits). And I can’t wait, CANNOT WAIT I TELL YOU, for the day that I reach into the nest box and pull out a colorful selection of brown and easter-blue eggs!

I have a special affinity for easter eggers (Americauna’s or Araucana’s). Last month I purchased a dozen eggs at the co-op from a local farm, that upon opening I was enthralled to find every single one a various shade of creamy blue and green hues! I waited a week before cracking them because they were so beautiful. And the yolk is always extra yellow, making scrambled eggs look sort of neon! Even after eating them, I saved a few shells to make some dear friends some beeswax egg candles:

Other than bringing home baby chicks today, I’m happy to report that we got our bazillion loads of laundry done at the laundry mat yesterday (no more fights with the drying lines – for now), and we spent a few hard-working hours in the sun yesterday putting up the chicken run. We clipped the hens wings (they’re rockin’ flyers, but they need to stay lower and confined to their run, for our neighboring yard is full of dogs) and made an area for the compost heap and hanging feeder, as well as a new nesting box made of a storage tote with a hole cut out of the lid (non-wood means less worry about mites). We also recycled one of our used tires as a dusting box for the hens (nice size and the “lip” on the top helps them bathe without kicking up too much dust into their face). They were flippin’ out to have a sunny day to throw a new bag of sand around and scratch up a newly forming pile of winter leaves and rotting kitchen scraps. Seriously, who needs TV when you have these critters to watch?!

Ethan is ever enjoying his new mama-made hoola hoop:

Ver sporting her mama-knitted “spring” cap:

And enjoying the tree swing immensely:

Spring has sprung in our yard with a lone yellow tulip:

Ethan finding himself a bright palette of Springtime colors in his watercoloring:

I snagged the best swing jumping photo ever, of Luke and Natalie our Columbia friendies, at our picnic last Sunday at Lake Stephens Park:

Pots of coffee are now brewed in this old stainless steel percolator that I snatched up for 20 bucks at a resale store several years ago and just recently decided to put to good use. Still works great! (and check out the lovely jar of raw cream from a local pastured dairy farm – just $1.75!)

Another highlight this week was a rare seafood dinner (seafood is a little pricey when you are landlocked as we are here); I scored some wild caught salmon (frozen, but beggers can’t be choosers, eh?) on major sale, so this evening the kids and I feasted on blood oranges and rosemary salmon fillets with amaranth and steamed edamame to compliment.

So that’s the newsy news. I am going back to my books and raw milk maple steamer, while listening to the sound of wittle bitty chirps float through the air…

Home-bound (our car recently failed the safety inspection necessary to register it in our new state, leaving us, for the time being, car-free once again) and unplugged (as noted in recent posts, I am without internet at the house unless Chris is home from work with his cell phone hotspot), I have become truly mesmerized with over a dozen books to pass the time (when there is time to pass, that is), most of which I checked out by the basketfuls from our local library (which boasts no limits and no late fees!).

I have come to value, with increasing measure, the few hours of solitude each week that this new life schedule leaves me. When kiddos have fallen asleep, and Chris can’t be expected home from work for a few hours, I become an enchanted version of myself: the kitchen gets wiped up with a hum on my lips, and then I make myself a raw milk steamer or pour a glass of red and snuggle on the couch with a wool blanket, candles and incense lit, subtle music on in the background (I so rarely enjoy listening to the things I – and only I – like!), and like clockwork, a book is opened on my lap. Oh, despite my talkativeness, Lord knows I am truly an introvert through and through!

I have been blessed by many of the books I chose from the shelves on a whim – few have been disappointments and I have poured over at least 5 at a time (this is how I read books) with notebook and pen at the ready, scribbling down phrases and thoughts the author has bravely passed on in print.

The subject matter varies only a little: homesteading, gardening, cooking, knitting, parenting, poetry, and regional nature guides. (In my mind, such topics obviously belong together like butter and bread.)

In my moments alone, soaking in the knowledge and experiences found in each book’s library-conditioned pages, a single common denominator, a running stitch, has emerged to the forefront of my thoughts: domesticity.

I have had a love-hate relationship with that word, that ideal, all my relatively short life. As the daughter of a single father, in a household devoid of sisters and womanly charm, my artistic endeavors carried me to the door of the gentle arts, i.e. domesticity, many times. I was thrilled when I learned to make eggs, pancakes, and spaghetti reasonably well in junior high, but even more so when the opportunity arose to cook for friends, (playing hostess was always fun for me). The fantasy of adult dinner parties lured me, as did cleverly placed art on a wall or harmonious colors in home décor, and images of motherly nurturing women who embodied ferocious strength and gentle patience were some of my most treasured icons. Still, I was limited in my lack of confidence and much of what I knew came from TLC programming rather than a real life experience and first-hand witness to domestic skills. So acute was my feeling of tom-boyishness that I vividly remember pouring out tears of anguish to my youth pastor and his wife in high school, plagued with the idea that marriage, family, and household management would be impossible for someone as UN-domestic as I was!

Ironic, perhaps, that I married my now husband at the tender age of 18, and began the crash course in cooking, cleaning, and domestic duties immediately. Of course, it would be some time before I found real joy or meaning in such things, (at least beyond that strange and shallow competitiveness that fought for perfection at every turn to fill my gaping holes of insecurity). Eventually I would move to a city of DIY, budget-limited eccentric environmentalists (Portland) and begin to recognize the creative flow of asymmetry, brilliant imperfection, and true domesticity; Domesticity with purpose, fueled by deeply felt values, and the inspired project it takes on with beginner’s ambition.

I have heard since then many women tell me, often with a sense of lament and guilt, that they are simply not domestic. I wish I knew the best way to define that word, but something tells me that no matter what it is, we all have the sense of it being an unreachable, perhaps even anti-feminist, trait reserved for television housewives in the 50’s and 60’s. But I believe we’ve heaped enough coal on the image of domestic arts and homemaking and chastised ourselves too readily for not having attained some level of experience and enjoyment of these pieces of ourselves (however untapped).

GETTING STARTED

Getting started is always rough and full of blunder, let’s just get that fact out of the way, shall we? The first time I ever made a big pot of chili, I didn’t even know that the sour cream and cheese was to garnish the top of a served bowl: I mixed the final ingredients right on in with that luscious red soup and the result was rather thick and creamy – which didn’t look very appetizing. And the first 6 months or so that I tried to master knitting was colored with four-letter words while unraveling 2-3 hours of simple 2-needle stockinet and garter projects and starting all over when my pride had recovered.

More recently, (as in TODAY), I attempted to wash my first load of clothes by hand, out of sheer necessity and romanticized notions of the “washing days” in the warm months ahead. The first phase went pretty good – I got the tub full of hot soapy water and shook around the dirty clothes a bit. Then I wrung them by hand (I do plan to get a wringer, in case you’re worried about my sanity), emptied the dirty water, refilled with cool water and let sit to rinse. It was later, tired from other chores and now alone with both kids, that I had to wring the cool water out (again by hand) that I began to tucker out and find the wrist pain pretty uncomfortable. Still, I did it, and hauled the heavy wet clothes in a tote to the backyard so I could get them hung on some wooden drying lines that were set up in the backyard before we arrived.

It didn’t take much time to get the (still) dripping wet clothes slung up on the lines and I was feeling pretty proud of myself for making lemons with lemonade. Birds were chirping and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and I thought, this is the life. This is good stuff. One more garment to go and I can head in to start dinner. Well, no sooner did I pin that last item to the lines did I hear a SNAP and in a blink I was on the ground, knocked down by the gnarly wooden posts that had conceded to their loading capacity. I lay there only a moment, feeling a sharp pain in my shoulder where the splintery edges of the post had scraped down my body (unprotected in a tube top dress – you know, since they make such practical laundry clothing). I made myself get up, remembered the unconscious sh*t I had whispered on the way down, and then got pink-in-the-cheeks angry that my hearty attempt to do my laundry by hand failed epically on the final wrung of the battle. I brushed aside a few angry tears and hobbled towards the house, where the kids were putting on shoes to come outside, curious over the commotion of mama getting into a knock-down-drag-out-fight with the drying lines. At this very minute, several hours later, I am doing just fine, but those clothes out there are still laying in the dirt helplessly – I need a little space from the laundry for the rest of the day!

My point is, learning new stuff is rarely easy, often wrought with failure and fluorescent language of frustration, at least in my experience (so please, PLEASE, scrap any image you may have in your head of mama-earthy Vivian, dancing around in vintage aprons and whipping out gluten-free baked goods!) Reality is SO much more adventurous than that.

And now, in closing, I leave with you some of the inspiring and challenging truisms of my current reading materials:

“ ‘Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing is like shoveling the walk before it stops snowing.’ – Phyllis Diller (quoted in From a House to a Home by Jamima Mills)

***

“The gentle art of domesticity is the felicitous application of practical skills to the spaces in which we live. It requires a desire to make instead of consume, a triumph of activity over passivity and a return to using our hands and imaginations rather than a reliance on screens and technology…
Why on earth would anyone prefer to hand-stitch a quilt when you can buy a perfectly good one in a shop? Why knit a pair of socks when they are so easy and cheap to buy these days? Why bake a cake when the store shelves are groaning with ready-made treats? THE ANSWER lies in the not-so-revolutionary idea of seizing the means of production. It’s as simple and as complex as that. A modicum of practicality in the domestic space empowers us to make our own choices about what we create and eat, rather than handing over control of our homemaking to profit-making companies. It may sound surprisingly radical, and it is. Embedded in the gentle arts is a slyly subversive streak that encourages free-thought, individuality, creative self-expression, imaginative thought processes and not a little self-determinism. All this, and a great deal of pleasure, too.”

“It is so easy to lose touch… we can live in a bubble of emptiness [in lives with technology, cars, etc] and not even recognize that we are suffering from sensory deprivation. The problem is made worse by the current perception that many domestic activities are unpleasant. We no longer want to scrub with hard bristle brushes, instead we wipe with smooth, fresh-scented cleaning fluids and soft cloths. We buy nonstick pans to avoid using grating, metallic pads. We buy machine-washable everything and rarely plunge our hands in hot, soapy water. We tumble-dry clothes instead of dealing with wet washing in sun, wind and rain. We buy premade meals and keep sharp knives and grainy chopping boards for display purposes only. .. If we stop feeling our way through life, stop handling materials, we become passive and dependent on the ready-made and textureless. In doing so, we give up an element of independence, control, skill and autonomy. If we can no longer bake a loaf of bread, test a cake for doneness, plant a bulb, knit a simple garment, sew a quilt, we are quite helpless.”
-The Gentle Art of Domesticity; Stitching, Baking, Nature, Art, and the Comforts of Home, Jane Brocket

***

“Come dream with me this morning in my garden, next to our farmhouse on the road to Valley Forge. The sundial says it’s early still, though shadows can only guess at human time. From his roost in the chicken coop down by the barn, the rooster declares another day coming on, but he can wait.
I built the coop myself, of lumber scraps, and old door, and roofing I scavenged… rising early each day to hammer away before heading back to Philadelphia to earn my wage as a newspaperman. Today, half a hundred hens have the run of [the small farm]. They peck in the pasture and swale, along the pond and amid the stone ruins of the springhouse, though it’s the manure pile they love most, digging deep for the treasures within.”
-Home to Roost; A Backyard Farmer Chases Chickens through the Ages, Bob Sheasley

***

“At dusk, when I returned home, I spent more quality time with [my chickens]. Right before dark is when they’re the most active and fun to watch, so I’d go out with my fiddle and play to the crowd. I wasn’t very good at first, but they never complained during those early squeaks and squawks… Some nights in July, the farm was an absolute paradise. The cool Idaho summer night had me wrapped in a warm fleece jacket while hens hopped around the backyard. Mountain music wafted from my beginner fiddle as the tree frogs and crickets started their backup tracks. The honeybees hummed as they headed home to the hive from the garden, which was rich with fresh vegetables and bright sunflowers. The sun set behind the Selkirk Mountains in a pink-and-purple western sky. On those nights, it felt like everyone and everything was in its proper order, living together in my own peaceable kingdom.”

“Finally, after months of snow, thaw, and mud, the soil by the barn was ready for the wrath of my hoe. I pounded in the ground and roped of my two hundred square feet to freedom. It looked like nothing, no sweat. Not even as big as a standard swimming pool. I steadied my footing, raised my hoe in the air, and started hacking away.

Let me tell you something. Hoeing is really hard.

After about two hours in the April sun, which wasn’t even hot to begin with, I was panting like an ex-racing greyhound trying to sprint around the track after four months on a futon. My carelessly ungloved hands were blistered and splintered, my back ached, and all I had prepared was a small rectangle. It was about five feet by three feet. I had barely made any progress. I was about ready to throw up. Let’s hear it for me.
…

Sod breaking went like this. First I had to pierce the sod with a shovel and then pick it out with a hoe. This required muscle and several attempts of beating it into submission before it gave in. When I finally broke through, I had to keep hacking away at the topsoil till I hit clay, rocks, roots, and bugs be damned. When I wasn’t hoeing, I was chucking stones and yanking roots. I’m far from a delicate lady, so I was fine for the first twenty minutes. But then I started to ache. Little pains started to creep into my arms. My shoulders started to gossip with my back and half an hour later they both resented me. I kept trying with all my might to dislodge the roots that had shot back to life every Spring since The Wonder Years first aired, but they were tough customers and I was a girl who planted window boxes. I called the sod some pretty horrible things.

After two hours of this, I couldn’t imagine being able to take any more that day without dislocating something or ripping my hands open. So I stopped, gave the rest of the area I had plotted a good long look up and down, and promptly gave up. I had been defeated in honorable combat…

And that, my friends, is how I ended up with three small raised-bed gardens… Just between you and me, I still think m original plans were solid (if only I had been able to find a team of Amish kids and a rototiller).”
-Made from Scratch; Discovering the Pleasures of a Handmade Life, Jenna Woginrich