Today I am pretty excited about the books I toted home for my winter break reading. Garden Gate will be closed until mid-January so I’ve got the full-time kiddo gig back again for the month. I am excited! We have St. Lucia celebrations tomorrow and a Winter Spiral at Garden Gate. I plan to do lots of crafting, lots of baking, and lots (LOTS) of singing.

Having already established a good stack of book’s for the kids this winter, (including three new favs: The Christmas Story Book, Fireside Stories; Tales for a Winter’s Eve, and Jan Brett’s new one, Home for Christmas), today was about mom (that’d be me).

Without further delay, I bring you my winter reading:

Seasons of Celebration; Meditations on the Cycle of Liturgical Feasts, — THOMAS MERTON (Okay, I named my bunny after this guy – I’m giddy about finding this one!)

A Simple Christmas; Celebrating the Old-Fashioned Way in a Post-Modern World — LORI SALKIN & ROB SPERRY

Holy Holidays; The Catholic Origins of Celebration — GREG TOBIN

Tis the Season Holiday Cookbook – MARY ENGELBREIT

Less is More; Embracing simplicity for a healthy planet, a caring economy, and lasting happiness — CECILE ANDREWS & WANDA URBANSKA

Be Thrifty (… Not Cheap) ; How to Live Better with Less – PIA CATTON AND CALIFIA SUNTREE

Organizing Plain & Simple — DONNA SMALLIN

The Candida Albicans Yeast-Free Cookbook; How Good Nutrition Can Help Fight the Epidemic of Yeast-Related Diseases — PAT CONNOLLY

The Everyday Low-Carb Slow Cooker; Recipes That Cook Themselves — KITTY BROIHIER and KIMBERLY MAYONE

They were out of the two books I wanted most: Rhythm of the Family; Discovering a Sense of Wonder Through the Seasons (Amanda Soule) and Simpler Living: A Back to Basics Guide to Cleaning, Furnishing, Storing, Decluttering, Streamlining, Organizing, and More. (But these two are also on my Christmas wish list… hint hint Mr. Ortecho )

So that’s where my nose is stuck — now, what are YOU reading this winter???

Has been a busy Summer in ways, not really so much with a packed schedule but in terms of keeping up with everyday life. My garden turned in for the season after battling draught and heat waves and chicken nibblings, so there’s been little to no harvesting this year save 6 small jars of blueberry plum jam. Ah well, that’s okay.

The highlights of the last few weeks have mainly centered around the ending of Summer and beginning of Ethan being enrolled in the 3-morning/week Waldorf kindergarten here. Lots to do before school starts, and when they say it will require community involvement they mean it! From parent work days (painting, polishing, scrubbing, you name it) of the school house and gardens, to home visits (yep – the teachers care enough to visit the children’s homes before the school year starts), as well as a (voluntary, of course) parent/teacher workshop this past weekend. Up this week is a “kindergarten evening” and a “family potluck” School for him begins next Wednesday. Agh!

Suffice it to say, I’m a bit immersed in this world right now. It is difficult for me to articulate just how much inner transformation has happened for me since I moved here, and especially this Summer. Having the TV/movies off the majority of the Summer has been incredible, and has created so much more time for meaningful books and yoga and a prayer life and time outdoors. I have really strengthened my will, my resolve, to tackle things in my lifestyle to reflect a more mindful and conscious approach to every day life. Rather than lofty goals and dreams for each day, I may simply get my bed made, make meals for the kids and I, read a book, knit for ten minutes, keep up the dishes, etc. These tasks in discipline are often more than enough to keep me busy as well as balanced, and leave me more open to observation of the kids and the needs of the family around me. I think the task of a homemaker really is one of balance and harmony, which is so hard when in my selfishness I would rather spend the day doing things I enjoy as an individual and just sort of treat myself to whatever I fancy doing. The kids bring me back to reality: boy, I really want to sit down and paint for an hour — oh, yeah, I need to wipe Verity’s butt. I’m learning, (really, I am!), to accept this and appreciate it for all of the wonderful lessons such a life brings me. I know the mothering of little ones is not forever, and at this time my highest calling is to be present to this home – most importantly its inhabitants- by creating a soulful, flexible, unhurried, creative, nurturing space for us to flourish. Not easy, but so worth the effort. And so much comes not in technique or knowledge or talents, but in simply doing the “inner work”; growing into the person whose light and love permeates whatever is around them. A lifetime’s journey!

The weather here in Columbia has improved quite a bit, with a few days of sweet reprieve here and there where highs are in the 70’s and 80’s (instead of 100’s). I have enjoyed the transitional phase into Autumn and look forward to Fall — HOWEVER, I feel this year that I have no sense of restless anticipation coupled with discontent and fatigue over the previous season. Rather, I feel I lived deeply into this Summer. I did a lot of hiking and lazy days at the park in the creek and ponds; I caught a lot of bugs (vicariously through Ethan!), ate a lot of Summer fruit, really let it all sink in and be experienced with gratitude. I felt myself submerged in water, felt hot sand and rocks on my feet, got a great tan on my shoulders, and wore out my flipflops. After the Sensory Delight of Summer I feel satisfied and calmly ready for the seasons change around the corner.

We head to Fayetteville for Labor Day weekend – we can’t wait to drive up that long gravel driveway to my aunts house and sleep in the dark, absolute quiet of her country house (so opposite our inner city house, with the constant cars, fire engines, and dogs barking, lol). Will be so good to visit with sweet friends and family before returning home to officially begin the school year.

Sorry no pictures in a while – it is so easy to leave the camera behind when trying to conscientiously live in the moment with two young children. I’m sure I’ll find a muse someday soon and pick up the ol’ Nikon again

I plan to be back this week with some insights from the parent/teacher conference last weekend – if I can even mentally and emotionally unpack it enough to share here. We’ll see…

Until next time, enjoy your Summer ending- live it to the fullest!

After the flat and all that earlier this week, we got “new” used tires on Friday and then on Saturday the same one was flat again. Me thinks the rim is bent. Ouch.

And of course, like the wonderfully zen mama that I am, I got all bent out of shape about my second flat tire for the week and through a nice little inner fit. My mind went everywhere – including the ever present question, “should we just sell the car and go back to Portland?!”

I came home, still having an internal fit, which of course is all too apparent to the kids, and in a huff sat down on the couch and opened “The Imitation of Christ” (Thomas a Kempis) which I picked up for a whopping .25 cents at the Salvation Army a few days ago.

Curiously, there was a bookmark already in it, so I flipped to that page. The chapter it opened to was called, “Of the Consideration of Human Misery”. Awesome, I thought in my self-induced pity party. How apropos.

And then I got a nice kick in the pants from Mr. a Kempis. Here’s what I wrote down in my journal, as I laughed at myself for the incredible immaturity I had been displaying over a flippin’ automobile (and bank account balance):

“Why are you so troubled when things do not go as you wish or desire? Who is there that has all things according to his will? Neither I, nor you, nor any man upon the earth.

There is no man in the world without some trouble or affliction, be he King or Pope.

… you see that all these temporary things are nothing; in fact they are most uncertain, and rather a heavy burden…

Man’s happiness is not the having of temporal goods in abundance; but a moderate portion is sufficient for him.

… for there are some who cling [to this perishable life] so closely (though even by laboring or by begging they hardly have bare necessities)… oh senseless people! and unbelieving heart, to lie buried so deep in earthly things…

Oh how great is human frailty, which is ever prone to vice!

… now you purpose to be on your gaurd, and an hour after you are acting as if you had made no resolution.

Justly then may we humble ourselves, and never think anything great of ourselves, since we are so unstable.

And even what we have at last just acquired through grace and with great labour, may soon be lost through negligence.” [um, like a new tire gone flat again... doh!]

Anyway, this is my great insight for the day… nothing new, I know, but a good reminder. This world and its things are uncertain, and a heavy burden — would that I could do without them completely! — but even when what I have and/or think I need faulters, the reality is that my hope should be fixed on something far bigger, more eternal, more stable, with no burden but an easy and light yoke.

Practically speaking, I don’t know what we’ll do about this car. It’s far more money to fix a rim than a tire, so we’ll have to see how it goes. I’m going to look into the bus system here better and see if we might be able to do without a car, but I worry about cold winter months spent at the bus stop in the morning to get Ethan to kindergarten…

Two things I know – far worse things could happen (and are happening in the lives of people I love every day). AND… God is still good.

(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…

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.

{{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)

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…

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

I am living in a city not far from where I originally planned on going to college, (as a teen still living in Florida, I had Missouri on my mind, and visited this area twice, even stayed a weekend only 30 minutes away in Moberly,) and finding myself here again is strangely like putting on an old shoe and realizing that not only does it still fit, it’s also conveniently back in style.

I am also not working. Now, I laugh at that statement because anyone who cares for children full-time knows that it is possibly more work than any other job on the face of the earth. But I’m not working-from-home AND parenting/homeschooling/homemaking and this is a first for me. It takes some getting used to, the lack of anxiety about deadlines and getting back to people, the replaced anxiety about budgeting and bills (which, to be honest, was there whether I was bringing home the bacon or not).

I have this memory: I was sitting in duplex in Portland 3 years ago, working a 12 hour day, and dreaming. Something struck me as I looked out over the lush backyard, full with lilies and tulips and cherry blossoms and apple trees and raspberries… and I was inside, on the laptop, working, while my son watched PBS next to me. This notion came into my head: I wish I could just be a farmer! While I don’t desire the actual life of being a farmer (not yet, anyway), what I was recognizing then was that there was something in me that knew how unhealthy this lifestyle was for me, that itched to get out in that yard as often as possible, and to learn skills that would increase my self-sufficiency and decrease my need for ever increasing amounts of income. It seemed such a crazy hack-kneed thought back then, even as I shared it with my husband we laughed at the absurdity, the out-of-reachness, of such an idea. Yet things did sorta begin to change, slowly my intention was towards increasing self-sufficiency and living on less. Then around a year ago, I remember breaking down into sobs, (many times), lamenting that I will never be able to JUST be a mom, JUST care for my home and focus on my children, especially while they are so young and need my attention so much.

Today I suppose I am just so grateful. It seems like Someone heard my cries, wiped my tears, and worked consistently in the background to orchestrate a situation in which I find myself exactly where I wanted to be, even when I didn’t want to let go, when I wouldn’t willfully walk towards the way life is now (Chris working at a local service job, me not working at all, etc). I would have never been able to paint the picture before me; I lack the imagination and sheer unearthly genius that the Creator has. But here I am, partially from an imposed trajectory of purpose and goals, but mainly due to the gracious hand of a loving Father who knows how to care for His children.

Today Chris went to his first day of work at the bakery. He rode his bike, he comped a yummy local meal and beer, and he thoroughly enjoyed himself. He came home from his shift by 3pm, invigorated with plenty of energy left for the second half of his day. It has been a looooooong time since he has been in a job that is agreeable to him on so many levels. Seeing him this way made my heart glad. Glad that I trusted his instinct to leave Fayetteville for Columbia despite my fears of how it would work, and glad that I embraced the challenge of yet another move for the sake of much needed changes in our family’s lifestyle.

My verdict thus far on my home is very positive. It’s tight, tidy, clean, and well laid out. I find pleasure in nesting into its corners and decorating it with special items I’ve collected over the years that mean something to me. It’s what I would call a “Vivian-sized house”: petite, yet strong. And so quick to clean! In addition, the city is so sweet – just enough of the crunch of a good ol’ granola-y college town, mixed with some of that “weird” eclectic, youthful vibe we enjoyed about Portland. It has lots of nearby farms/local food movement, very bikable, a good amount of mom-n-pops (locally owned shops, cafes, etc), and a relatively nice climate as well.

Our budget is blowing my mind a bit, too. I was fairly unsure about how it would all work, taking a job for less pay, etc. But then we got this great little rental for $500 a month with a nice sized yard for my chickens and gardens, and only blocks from the farmer’s market. As I blogged about last week, we don’t need to pay for internet anymore. So far, this has worked out nicely. I blog offline and hop on only to quickly communicate with friends/family. Chris’ smart phone works as a wifi spot we can use to hop on, and for bigger things we can go to the library or his work. Plus, Chris’ job has perks that ease the tightness of a small income, like good tips, free video rentals and movie tickets from 9th St Video and Rag Tag Cinema, free day old artisan breads from the bakery, and half off on bottles of wine. It amazes me how much we “needed” to “live” just 4 years ago compared to today. These days it seems like so long as we have God, each other, fresh food, interesting books, and plenty of yarn, I’m a very happy camper

In other news, the kids have been fighting a stomach bug since Saturday, which has kept us quarantined a bit this week since landing in Columbia on Saturday. This is probably a good thing, however. It’s forced us to move slowly, get to know our home, and spend less money going out and about. The kids seem to be finally on the mend and now I’m just crossing my fingers and taking my vitamins and praying I’m not next!

I guess I don’t know what else to share. I just feel like… a weight has been lifted, some prayers have been answered, and a calm has come over our family. I can sense the release as I learn to live on less income, no longer feeling the extreme pressure of needing to work, and seeing how a family can have everything it needs – heck, to even “afford” luxuries like time to garden, write, knit, read, etc – to be a Radical Homemaker, a Thrifter, a Scavenger’s Manifesto, a semi-Freegan… to continue the journey of simplifying and living well with less.

For those of you who are yet to be informed, I’ll try to backtrack quickly and sum things up: back in January we took a trip up there at the leading of some sweet friends whose family we know from church here in Fayetteville. A fun, flexible full-time job for Chris opened up in the coming weeks at a bakery downtown that focuses on sustainable and local ingredients. We went back up a couple of weeks ago to look for rentals and found an older, small (750 sq ft I believe), 2/1 house (but to be fair, also has a basement, shed, fenced backyard, and hardwood floors) in our price range (to my knowledge, the lowest rent I have ever lived in, even as a child), located just over 2 miles from his work (so he can bike most days and I can have the car for me and the kids again, woo hoo!), just under 2 miles from the main library and the waldorf preschool, and 2 blocks from the farmer’s market. Oh, and we can have 6 urban backyard hens – enlarging our flock

So we are preparing not only via packing, cleaning etc, but also by going over some possible challenges and adjustments we’d like to take this opportunity to make.

For one thing, our current house this passed year is the first single family dwelling we’ve ever had (previously duplexes and co-housing were our residence), and it is also the most square feet we have ever lived in (a 3rd bedroom). It hasn’t been all that great, to be honest. It’s a lot to clean and most of it goes unused. I couldn’t help but feeling like, so long as I wasn’t needing the extra space for childcare income, it really wasn’t part of our “living simple” plan. The old Less is More, thing. I have, as you may know from reading this blog any amount of time, been attracted to the “tiny house” movement and peruse my copy of “Little House on a Small Planet” often dreaming of the day we can move into a yurt in the pacific NW or a derelict cottage in rural France SO – while one perspective might be that I’m moving into a drafty tiny house in mid-Missouri, I’m looking at the upside; a cozy space with less to clean and more in line with our values of living small and treading light on the planet. In addition, it meets our requirement for affordability, which allows us to find work that doesn’t compromise those values. (Aside: like the Radical Homemaker 4 tenets: community, family, social justice and ecology – any job outside the home must honor these, which is a lot of the reason we felt we should take the slight paycut for Chris to take a job at the bakery close to home, rather than his current job in AR which is 40 minutes away in a cubicle in the logistics industry.)

Okay, so we are all caught up now and I’ll try to get back to my point.

This transition is in some ways another phase of our journey towards sustainable, simple, intentional living, and with that step we are considering our lifestyle choices, and how we use our time and money is one of the main concerns. With a small single-earner income, no health insurance, all credit cards closed (our plastic-free 3 year anniversary is almost here!), every little bit counts.

One decision we’ve made is to not have internet when we move. Our average bill for highspeed internet is currently around $70 a month, which will be about 6% of our spendable income. Since I currently plan to not work from home any substantial part of my day, we no longer NEED high speed internet for my business, and the only thing we do use it for beyond that is watching shows on Hulu after the kids go to bed, or streaming movies on Netflix (we don’t have cable). Basically, for entertainment, mixed with a little educational documentaries here and there, (as well as my favorite internet uses: browsing recipe sites, blogs I like, and checking my email and facebook, all of which I can do quickly with routine visits through wifi cafes or the library with my i-touch).

I must admit, I’m not sure how it will work (!). I won’t see the finale of the few shows I watch until they are available next season to rent on Netflix (I know, I know, boo hoo – but ya know, its an adjustment!) And if I have a sick day, snow day, rainy day, etc in which movies becomes my only aid in entertaining the kids, we won’t have the internet (which we currently hook up to via HDMI to our tv as a second monitor) at our fingertips. Hmmm… am I talking myself out of this? lol

No. I know it will be good for us, and what’s more, we are reallocating a portion of that money towards something more valuable – a family membership to the ARC (columbia’s recreation and activity center) that is conveniently located 2 blocks from our house. With the remaining 20 bucks we’ll put towards an outing once a month (like the Missouri Botanical Gardens, zoo, museums, etc).

I know this will be a challenge for our family, and we are not big TV viewers as it is, but having it for a few hours a week is one of the few “luxuries” we can afford and I’m wondering how we will adjust to being without it, particularly Ethan who is majorly into on-screen entertainment and games.

But as I was saying, we’ll have the ARC – the classes and indoor track and pool will be great escapes that are much healthier for us than a few hours of tv a week! Next, I’m sure we’ll get even more into our weekly library visit where we haul 50 or so books out at each trip. And finally, I think we’ll have more time to spend in our hobbies and crafts, gardening, reading, as well as keeping up with chores. When I think about the money AND time we will be saving, I admit I get pretty excited!

And this brings me to some broader reflections I’ve had of late. One of the things about trying to live more simply that I’ve enjoyed over the last, oh, 4 years or so, is the challenge of my personal comforts and the sense of accomplishment over realizing I can do without things I once couldn’t have imagined. Choosing to be without a car (when we have access to PDX mass transit), or sharing 1 (living in a small city as we do now), or learning to cook from scratch, or figuring out how to allocate money from eating out/entertainment towards whole foods and self-made fun, or learn skills we would have needed other people to do for us in the past. We’ve had to get creative with buying from furniture, clothes, and decor from thrift stores and craigslist so we could avoid cheap products at the cost of unethical labor at Big Box stores. I’ve taken on coordinating the local natural food bulk buying drop so I would have access to warehouse direct prices on “real food”. I have been more committed to the tenets of attached parenting and home learning because I have to take a closer look at why I feel like “giving up” when things get tough and increasing my knowledge and network so I don’t burn out.

But briefly, in the interest of full disclosure and lest I mislead with some ideological and euphoric description of what I have experienced thus far: sometimes this journey SUCKS. Somethings work and somethings don’t, and working through the stress of being financially strapped (not always by choice! -and losing a job/clients is never fun, btw) or the piles of wet clothes in the living room or the whiny kids on a rainy day with no escape from the house, or missing out on things I would have liked to do because of no vehicle, or worrying about how to the funds to get my kid’s cavity filled – oh yeah, its not always “simple” and definitely not always a breezy summer day of homemade bread and sippin tea!

But somethings are simple, and more importantly, everything is meaningful. I’m learning a lot, I feel more equipped, and I am looking forward to the next phase… the unplugged (internet-less) tiny house in Columbia