Homestead Revival

So I troll for blogs on a fairly regular basis, as a means of relieving boredom at work. My current interests lie in making a home for Les and I (and our hopeful children, or animals, or whatever crosses the threshold)...somewhere, where I can actually have people over. We haven't been able to entertain at the apartment for literally years; it's a smoky cave of a place piled high with boxes and the detritus of 13 years of packratting in the same space (and it's barely 800 square feet). So I dream of renting a house, where Les will smoke outside (he's agreed to this, thank goodness...I hate reeking of smoke when I'm not the smoker), and decorating it a bit, and finally indulging in the small touches of light and warmth, from real curtains to preserving food to keeping plants and animals, so many things that go into making a home. I finally understand why my pal R said she swore by Martha Stewart when she first got married. I turned my nose up at that snobby perfectionist (Martha, not R) at the time, but I totally get it now, because I've been scouring the web for homemaking blogs for a while now, and from Martha to Pioneer Woman and all the rest, there's some amazing ideas out there, very bright, mostly women who have worked hard to recognize and practice what goes into making a home.

The roadblock I'm stepping over frequently though, is that many of the homemaking blogs out there are by women who have been saved, devout Christians who aren't afraid at all of pushing their religion out into the world, while simultaneously living according to an anti-feminist, overtly modest, and Titus-referencing mindset. It's confusing, and more than a little off-putting to this admitted pagan, and with the exception of a rare few that in spite of their heavy Christian overtones, are beautifully written and so graphically pleasing that I can't help loving them (in particular, Eyes of Wonder and Rosie's Ramblings, something about that family has me hooked), I find myself dropping them and wandering yet again.

Then I happened upon Homestead Revival this week, and I'm once again completely smitten. As you read into the archives, you're once again struck by the Christian faith aspect, but it's more lightly done, and the mission tenets of the Homestead Revival, while possibly unintentional, are written to appeal to any faith.

The Homestead Revival™ Mission:

• Return to the basics
• Live closer to the land
• Strengthen the family through homemaking
• Embrace being a keeper of the home
• Encourage the next generation in homesteading skills
• Build community through sharing

Sure, that fourth one is probably meant for women to follow the Titus path by being homemakers ONLY (and no, I'm not minimizing it, just noting the rule they—literal Old Testament readers—have that says that women shouldn't work outside of the home), but I'm in a marriage where that's possibly never going to be realistic, plus I definitely have a feminist streak. Does that mean I can't apply these concepts to my own life? Of course not! The blog is a goldmine of recipes, ideas, and how-to's, and there's a pile of other bloggers she's noted who are also making it work by living off the land. I wish I had the weekend to troll the archives, but we're going to SC, where computer time is scarce. Whatever, I can't wait to read more!

The Ole Hands in the Dirt Itch

Summertime is sitting out on the back porch with a glass of sweet tea. It's watching for fireflies and smelling good things growing around you.

As summer crests its hill here in FL, I find myself itching to get my hands in the dirt once again. I find myself wanting to invest in two cheap plastic chairs for the back porch, even though we barely have room out there for people. If I consolidate my planting stuff and the cooker stays in a corner, we'd have room to sit out there. Just takes a smidge of elbow grease. It won't happen this weekend, because we're going up to SC, but I want it to happen before summer slides into fall...

I remember how markedly pungent citronella is...we bought two plants of that when we were landscaping the backyard of the house pre-sale. It's a brilliant plant to put out in a grove, IMO, since it keeps the area from being too bogged down with skeeters. Wouldn't mind one on the porch, to keep us from being eaten alive.

I'm hitting that point where stuff is packed and I wish I knew where it was. I'm itching to reacquiant myself with Starhawk and T. Thorn Coyle, and damned if I can tell which box those books are in. Next weekend, I'll start cataloging/labeling boxes for the move, and assessing what boxes may need to be replaced. Also hoping a spare $10 can go toward larger boxes...we've been operating with mainly book size so far, and we're hitting the point of needing more mediums and larges.

I have a trip planned to Charlotte the first weekend in August thru the 10th. Wanted to get a couple of days there to explore and visit a) staffing agencies, and b) real estate offices/property management companies. I've been checking out house rentals on Rentals.com, but until I have a letter of intent from someplace, it's moot. Since I have gotten zero nibbles from real job applications, I'm researching staffing agencies, expanding my search. Looking at paralegal ops that don't require certification, or admin asst positions that fit my experience. May not pay as much as we need initially, but it'll get us up there, and I'm still planning to work remotely as well (not that that's a money maker at all nowadays, but it's something). And if the injections continue to help Husby, hopefully he'll be able to grab something part-time once we're settled too.

This post really belongs in the Moving blog, but as I write these things down, I'm always with my eye on the bigger picture, that of getting us up there, so we can start refining our credit further and get in the market to buy a house with a little land. It's doable, especially as the economy continues to crawl...I pray we can find ourselves in a position to still take advantage of the shitty economy/soft housing market a year or so from now. I still think about meat and laying chickens, 3 sheep, a dog or two, a decent garden. It'll take money and serious hard work, but the benefits will far outweigh the effort required.

25# a Day?!

I think about getting a milk cow for our little patch of land. Apparently, I'm quite talking out of my ass still. This is why it's good that the dream is still so far off...I've got some serious researching to do.

Throwback to Trapper Creek says she's feeding her 9-month (aka nowhere near fully grown) milk calf a regimen of milk replacer, daily pasturing, and then 25 pounds of hay at night with some grain. That's like, half a small bale! That tells me that for just one milk cow, I would need to grow a field of hay on top of buying from outside, just to keep the cow in feed. That expands my acreage needs and increases the whole package. I'm also betting that if I were to try like, 3 goats or sheep instead of 1 cow, I'd easily be talking about the same or more in feed. So I definitely have to research more and put some reins on my initial dreams.

Update

I know in my bones, that it won't be logical to try and find a house that's zoned for livestock when we first move up there. I have too much of Dad in me to even bother with the notion. This could be disappointing if I think about it too much, but really it's just pragmatic...it's going to be hard enough just getting up there. Our credit may not be up to snuff. We will run out of money too soon, no matter how much we save....because once we get up there, there's going to be some big initial expenses: washer/dryer, lawnmower, and couch for starters. So wondering whether or not we're allowed to have a couple of chickens, just isn't worth stressing over yet.

Start with a puppy, work our way up...that's what I'm hoping. Once we're settled into a place, I'd love to get a puppy. Figaro would probably disown us, but I know I want more animals, and I'd love the challenge of a dog. I've been reading more about them recently, training, temperments, breeds, and of course, once we find our little patch of land, dogs will enter into the equation to help with our tiny batch of livestock. But it's in the "we'll see" category, of course...if we're enjoying a small human at the same time that we're settling in, we'll certainly have to shuffle the dreams around some.

My goals for the rest of this year will revolve around getting us up to Charlotte. But I definitely want to start making lists here as well, for what I'm looking for on my little patch of land. These don't have to be there either; of course, I expect to do some building ourselves, but it would certainly help.

Example:

1. A barn
2. At least one outbuilding
3. A sheep/goat shelter
4. A chicken coop
5. At least 2 acres? of fields

Goats, you ask? Well, I found a farm blog recently that had Nigerian Dwarves in stock. They're frickin' adorable and good for milk, so they peaked my interest. Lord knows, if you invest in goats, you need patience, good fences, and patience; but I'm thinking about them anyway.

Been reading the writings/blog of Jon Katz at Bedlam Farm. It's stirring my soul the way Jenna at Cold Antler does, because he's another one who realized he HAD to live this way and jumped into it before he knew exactly HOW to live this way. So there's plenty of mistakes and calamities documented for us poor city folk who're dealing with Barnheart and looking for our own cures.

Mental meanderings

Images from here and here, respectively.

Enough of those heavy thoughts! If something is meant to happen, it will. We can only do so much in this life; some things are out of our control.

My Tumblr wanderings have produced some nice dreams...about what I want in a kitchen, about living somewhere with actual seasons, about having enough bookshelves to hold all our tomes...good stuff.

I will make the move happen next year. In the meantime, dreams aren't a bad thing.

Heavy thoughts

We talk about having children. Between Husby's head condition and depressed libido thanks to the meds he's on, the attempts to pull this off have been few and far between this year; and I ain't getting any younger, turned 41 this month. I could write a whole ugly, deeply private post about how my libido natually skyrockets when his is in the basement, but this ain't about that.

I've been thinking lately about the responsibilities of having animals on a farm, from the first dog to the flock of sheep.

My very first pet was Jordan, a cat I adopted back in 1997. We didn't have any pets growing up, so I never got to witness the work or money that goes into them. He was 2 years old at the time, and a fairly happy critter, such a sweetie...even Dad liked him, called him aloof. Around age 10, he started having a depressed appetite, and the vet visits showed nothing out of the ordinary, so we just nursed him best we could, feeding him a diet of mainly canned chicken. I still don't know why his blood sugar issues weren't caught earlier by the vets. By the time we realized he'd gone diabetic, it was too late...the neuropathy had killed his back legs, and nursing him back to health through veterinary means would've cost at least $1K (and still may not have worked), which we naturally didn't have laying around under the mattress. We made the very hard, terribly pragmatic decision to euthanize him at age 12. It was only 6 months after I'd lost Dad, and the guilt and sadness were quite hard. (I'd like to thank Timbaland for putting out his single "It's Too Late to Apologize" around the same time...bastard.)

So I vowed to myself that I wouldn't own any more animals until I was certain we could afford them financially. It's a tough thing to pull off sometimes, when we can barely keep cat food in the bowl or tires on the car, but luckily our current cat Figaro is healthy and completely an indoor cat, thus not susceptible to a lot of the conditions that plague your average feline.

So when I think about the farm and make my lists and project budgets, it's with this in mind. But I've still been pushing, pushing, pushing toward us having a child with no real thought to how desperately important it is to have that same mindset. We live on cunning and love basically, and as much as I ache with the thought of not bringing a small one into this world, I also need to recognize how incredibly, desperately hard it would be to keep us in clean clothes and food, never mind the animals (they don't need clothes, but you know what I mean), if a child were in the picture. Certainly there are plenty of factors to consider...I won't always have this job, I could be making better money down the road, Husby's sitch could improve enough for him to take part-time work...but banking on those scenarios is irresponsible.

The realization that I don't want to have animals if we can't afford them, but that I have no problem bringing a child into the world in our situation...it's painfully backwards. No matter how much love you splash onto a child, there's so much more that goes into raising one. How can I be responsible about my decisions regarding raising animals, and not take the same thoughts into consideration about raising a small human?

My friend D posed the question recently about whether it's worth it to have a child when you have to work full-time to support it, because your time with said child is so depleted...I didn't understand the question, because I think the opportunity to bring any child into the world is this amazing gift that surpasses all arguments. Still do, and I don't buy her posit. But I find I'm having trouble justifying the argument of "of course, we'll just make it happen, whatever it takes," because it's solely based on the fact that we've gotten by so far...because when you have a child, you have to do so very much more than just "get by."

I ache hard with this realization. It's an ache of the time we've lost, and the time that's so quickly slipping away...I could be making good money 2 years from now and have my ovaries quit, or I could be making less money and get pregnant...either way, we'd make it work. But I'm recognizing finally that I need to step back, concentrate on getting healthy and getting us the hell out of Florida and up to the Carolinas, so we can stop living like friggin' hobbits. If the gods want us to have a child, it will happen; but it's also time to be more responsible about the whole decision and quit trying so hard. It only makes me feel frustrated, makes Husby feel inadequate, and we damn sure can't afford another mouth to feed right now anyway.

I think I'm giving this decision to the gods for a while. May they help determine what's best for our little family, while I work hard to shape this dream.

Thinkingthinkingthinking...

It's not about scaling down your dreams. It's about researching and realizing/recognizing what you can handle. Here's what I know...

1. I don't want to live too far off the beaten path. I'd like decent access to locally farmed food, but I'm no longer a small town person. We drive through small towns every time we venture north to visit the inlaws, and I'm reasonably certain that if I had to live in one of them, where it's a half-hour drive just to get to the nearest gas station, never mind Starbucks...well, as much as I dream of land like we had in Warren (CT), I know deep down that living that far out would make me batty(er). Les agrees, so I can just tell we won't be going too rural when the time comes. Besides, gas prices will help dictate that, since at least one of us will still be commuting to a regular job.
    
2. I want to start very small. I think I'd like to try my hand at chickens for eggs and meat, but I also think I'd like a processing facility nearby. Jenna's bout of campylobacter was eye-opening, and I don't want to be processing my own birds until we're absolutely certain we have all the necessary equipment and all the proper precautions are taken.
    
3. I think I'd like sheep to raise for wool, but I'd want to limit the flock to 3 to 5. And that definitely wouldn't come until I've had a season of raising the chickens first.
    
4. I want a garden. I suck royally at growing things in containers (without adequate space or conditions), and while I'm pretty sure I can blame a lot of that on the western exposure of my porch, the fact remains that you can't beat cultivating the earth. When I have more space (in our first house), I'll start container herbs and work my way up.
    
5. I'm not afraid of a fixer-upper house, but our financial sitch will certainly dictate just how much of a fixer-upper it is.
    
6. I wouldn't mind the following pets: dogs, rabbits, geese, cats.
    
7. I'm pretty sure I'm talking out of my ass, when I talk about having a milk cow.

Hearing that Soulemama and her lovely brood have the keys in hand for their not-so-little patch of land, that they're spending their days there now, making it liveable and getting excited about what it means for their family...it's stirred something inside of me. Maybe because we're coming into autumn, my favorite season of all, maybe the idea of marching toward apples and pumpkins, and cinnamon brooms and cider, and hot chocolate and soups and stews involving fresh vegetables...lord, these things speak to my soul! It's helping me see past the dream stage, into actual planning...even though it's still a couple of years away.

• First Step: Move out of Jacksonville in October 2011.
• Second Step: Establish residence for a year where my employment takes us.
• Third Step: Start search for a house and land that matches our dreams and budget.

Such a simple thing, writing it down like that. Naturally there are sub-headings on top of sub-headings to go underneath each step, as I plot and scrimp and budget our way there. But I'm a Virgo, and even for a lapsed anal retentive such as myself, dreams start with to-do lists. I'm finally hitting the point where I'm tired of talking about it and ready to do something toward it. I'm so jealous of Meara right now, because as unhappy as she is (finding friends slowly, figuring out what she wants in a job), we keep saying at least she's up there...the hardest part is done, getting the hell out of FL, and now it's that much easier to travel around and find her niche up there. It'll be the same way for us; once we've moved out of FL, we'll be able to sit back and say, OK, what's next? But as long as we're stuck down here, figuring out what's next is elusive. Traveling up there to figure it out takes time and money we don't have yet, but which I'll be saving toward for next year. In the meantime, getting lists started, getting a budget started, and trimming our frivolous spending will go a long way toward getting us there. And purging the apartment, and chucking some furniture, and...

So if you need me, I'll be writing a list.