Category — Simple Pleasures

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.

Oh, the joys of coming home with an armful of borrowed books. The Daniel Boone Regional Library is incredible, from its amazing selection of music to its old classic children’s books, it’s large section of things I love, like homesteading and knitting books — but add to that no limits and no late fees, and you got DBRL. I heart them.

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???

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

I think I sweat more in the last 2 days than I have in my whole life. Fortunately, we found some solace from King Sun in the cool creek water at Rock Bridge and the shady canopy of blueberry bushes at Missouri Highland Blueberry Farm.

And rather than go into the details of:

A. what it was like to run out of gas at the farm, completely alone (even the farm purchases are run on the honor system – there was seriously not another person there but us!), with the nearest gas station 10 miles away, or how miraculously the car started again once we got on level ground and actually made it to the gas station! or

B. what it was like to get a flat tire on the highway not 5 minutes after getting gas, and then not being able to get the tire changed because the wrench/bolt remover thing was stripped, and then miraculously a home-based auto repair shop was the first stop on the next exit, who of course had all the necessary tools and got us back on the road to home,

which is why

C. we were concerned about going on the float trip (2.5 hours away) in the first place! (providence!)

I’ll just leave you with a few pictures I snapped from our adventures

Independence Day’s local weather foretold thunderstorms as we peeled ourselves out of bed to start the day. Lucky for us, the claim proved false.

Instead we enjoyed a day spent almost entirely outdoors, soaking up a mild Summer sun and the comforts of nature, family, and food.

This morning we packed up a small picnic brunch and headed around the corner to Shelter Gardens (go check out the link and come back). We recently discovered this public garden space nearly right in our own backyard, and it is fast becoming an important resource for us. It provides a space to sit among beautiful botany and mindful landscaping, with several water features, a couy pond with waterfalls, windchimes, bird feeders, an herb garden, rose garden, zen garden, etc. It also has a One Room School house replica complete with old desks and chalkboards and a wood stove. It’s totally Little-House-esque. I can’t wait to utilize the space for our daily walks and to do lessons here as well, since it is the nearest space to my home that offers a natural landscape and a little peaceful solitude (I live on a busy urban street with the fire department close by – the noise is constant!)

We took our time at the gardens, I did a bit of yoga in the grass and found some neat collections. The kids played tag and climbed trees, Ethan got a great skinned knee (the markings of a childhood well-spent!), and we ended with a story time around a big tree (readings from Tales Told Again).

Later we insisted on naps for the kids, were pleasantly surprised when they both (even the almost-6 year old) succumbed to Mr. Sandman (give me a dream…). When they awoke, we headed out to drop off today’s milk delivery to a few people in our milk co-op (and found some old metal vanity chairs on the side of the road that I can’t wait to repurpose into totally chic children’s chairs! you can see those in the final picture, as they came in very handy later in the day ) and then finally we were onward to Lake Stephens.

Lake Stephens. I don’t know what I would do without. Here I find a place that is the closest nearby element of that crucial element WATER. Maybe it’s because I am a Pisces. Maybe it’s because I grew up on the Florida Gulf Coast and probably spent more time in the water than in any other play as a kid. But my soul needs water – the liquid, fluid, dreamy element that nourishes me and brings peace to my active mind. Inside city limits in the Midwest, I find some solace in Lake Stephens. A man made lake, slightly funky water (if you’re used to the ocean or fresh water springs), a faux-beach… who cares? I lay out my blanket, take out a book, slip down my straw hat low on my forehead, and let the sun work is magic on me. We go all.the.time.

Today Chris and I brought our suits (vintage finds at the Salvation Army, .50 and $1, respectively!), and SUBMERGED. We played Marco Polo. We dug underwater pits. We collected pebbles from the bottom. Oh yes, we are grown-ass-adults, and we totally did. In such play, children and adults alike connect with so many soul enriching elements at once – the water, the earth of sand and clay at the lake bottom, the fiery King Sun gently toasting your shoulders, and the warm breeze of air giving any part of you out of the water the shivers! It is truly amazing how life giving it can be, how sensuous an experience, to spend time outdoors and get dirty!

There is also a water feature of sprinklers right behind the man-made beach, which the kids have fun with. Ver adores stepping on them and squirting the water in all directions. This apparently NEVER gets old.

After several hours, we began to get hungry of course. We brought some hot dogs and buns, and a small bag of charcoal, so we headed up the hill at the park in search of a free grill. We were fortunate to find an entire pavillion right next to a smaller playground that was reserved until 11pm, but the reserved party was dispersing as we walked up so we got the whole place to ourselves. We let the kids play, cooked up some franks, and had a race down a HUGE hill. My, how much better hot dogs taste after you’ve played and gotten yourself good and hungry!

Dinner eaten, we took to the streets and found an empty parking lot to let the kids do some Party Poppers.

Later, we headed to the top of the parking garage by Chris’ work and set up camp. Rag Tag theater (connected to Uprise where he works) was open, so we walked down, had a potty break, got some beers and popcorn, refilled water canteens, and came back up just in time for the show to begin (the show went off a mile south at the stadium – a very crowded event happens there so we joined the much smaller crowd on the garage rooftops downtown). As fate would have it, my camera was drained by this point so I have no pictures of the fireworks. But let’s be honest, you’re kinda relieved about that, aren’t you?

The tired kids slugged into their beds around 10pm …

I leave you with a snippet from Care of the Soul, by Thomas Moore (rocking. my. world. — love love love!… more on that another time) that I think is appropriate as we celebrate our nation’s independence:

“America has a great longing to be the New World of opportunity and a moral beacon for the world. It longs to fulfill these narcissistic images of itself. At the same time it is painful to realize the distance between reality and that image. America’s narcissism is strong. It is paraded before the world. If we were to put the nation on the couch, we might discover that narcissism is its most obvious symptom. And yet that narcissism holds the promise that this all-important myth can find its way into life. In otherwords, America’s narcissism is its unrefined puer spirit of genuine new vision. The trick is to find a way to that water of transformation [like Narcissus' pool] where hard self-absorption turns into loving dialogue with the world.”

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…

The life season I am in is uncharted territory. I like it. But its strange at the same time.

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.

As our family prepares for our move 5 hours north to Columbia, Missouri next weekend, many things have been discussed via our lifestyle once in our “tiny home”.

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

I’ve been drawn to winter trees lately, if you couldn’t tell from the blogs current redesign. Something about their skyline tops contrast against a crimson and violet sunset, their naked branches reaching outward and upward to grab the sun with all their little paths, and paths of paths, that are hidden in high summer. Now exposed, they showcase the most intricate designs, unique at each intrigued gaze, new distance and fresh perspective. I can’t stop pointing my camera at them, hoping to spot a bird or two, who are usually far too quick for my slow trigger finger.

Enjoy this set from an early evening family walk in the park yesterday…

“The wet dawn inks are doing their blue dissolve.
On their blotter of fog the trees
Seem a botanical drawing –
Memories growing, ring on ring,
A series of weddings.

Knowing neither abortions nor bitchery,
Truer than women,
They seed so effortlessly!
Tasting the winds, that are footless,
Waist-deep in history –

Full of wings, otherworldliness.
In this, they are Ledas.
O mother of leaves and sweetness
Who are these pietàs?
The shadows of ringdoves chanting, but chasing nothing.”

-Sylvia Plath