A Spot of Pretty

I don't consider myself much of an "old lace" type of person. But when I saw this image on Tumblr today, my first thought was "farmhouse kitchen window".

Just thought you should know.

This dream ain't going noplace.

Image from here.

What Home Means

Getting the brass tacks from the fertility doc yesterday...my gods, it opened my eyes.

I want a house. I want more room and a place to sink my hands into the soil. I want a yard. I want to live further north, but I'm willing to continue to compromise, if it gets us closer to having a child.

What I do not want, is to start a family, have a child, in that apartment.

That means continuing to put the creation of said child on the back burner. It means saving to move and getting the hell out of our apartment. It means finding work where we want to live, and then finding other means of payment beyond that. I know freelancers don't make dick in this economy, so for me, it means selling my book. Editing it first and then sending it out.

It means learning to save. Stopping all frivolous spending. Downsizing our lives. Working our asses off.

I'm ready.

The New Year

Got to see a chicken up close on New Year's Eve. One of my knitting friends has a small flock. A bunch of us met for coffee and..., and she had to come straight from the avian vet, because one of her ladies is under the weather. We hung out, knitting and chatting, in a zen garden (in the middle of scary Springfield, of all places) with a chicken, a bunny, and a 5 year old darting amidst our feet. Good times. I was in awe of all three of those critters.

Another neat encounter over the holidays: went for a long walk around the inlaws' neighborhood with my niece. She stopped at a corner lot to look for the family's dog, because she knows every frickin' animal within a 2-mile radius, it appears. I looked further into their backyard and discovered that at the far end, they had a shed with a bunch of feathered ladies scratching around. Nice setup, clean looking. The old gentleman heard the dog barking, came out, chatted us up, and we went home with 2 fresh-from-the-backyard eggs, one brown shell, one blue. I was hooked; if I hadn't had K with me, I probably would have asked the guy politely if I could go back and check out his setup.

I'm finally ready to fill my brain with the information necessary to get my farm dreams started. I made it a New Year's resolution. It covers everything from simpler living skills to making things by hand to training dogs and livestock husbandry. This will be a year of buying books, creating a reference library to operate my homestead.

An interesting sidenote is that even though I just got a Kindle Fire for Christmas, I have no desire to download those books to it. I'm using it mainly for leisure and scholarly reading - the classics and fluff. For my farm, I want hardcover and softcover books that I can open and peruse. I just know I'll operate better with that style.

I'm reading what I have before I start buying. That will keep me busy for a while, as I own a fat Eliot Coleman that I found at Chamblin's and haven't cracked the cover of yet. Also, got one of Ashley English's books for xmas, and devoured Barnheart as soon as I unwrapped it. Reading that has me wanting to reread Jenna's other two, which I already own, so I'm set on material for a pinch. But I have my eye on the other 3 books by Ashley, some more Eliot Coleman, and will be researching good books regarding owning and training medium size dog breeds, owning and caring for sheep, and country living/homesteading. The Backyard Homestead and its accompanying Farm Animals guide look great too.

Finally FINALLY feels within my grasp...

Image from here.

Taking Stock

That's Sal from Jenna's farm, courtesy of 468 Photography. Doesn't he look chilled?

Today's Taking Stock is here, because I definitely have the farm on my mind. There's all kinds of thoughts tickling on my brain today.

The ink is barely dry on the new lease, and I'm angry. Angry at how very stuck we are, and how much that stuck-ness is of our own making. Yes, it's that much harder to save when you're only dealing with 1 income for 2 people, but telling myself that moving forward isn't realistic until we've done A, B, and C...when I haven't researched yet whether we need to do all three (in theory) in order to move forward....doesn't serve our futures any better either.

The real estate market is unbelievably soft right now. I spent time this morning torturing/educating myself by looking at homes for sale in western NC. The only real criteria I threw in the search was less than $150K. I was BLOWN AWAY by the selection. Sure, there's fixer-uppers and a ton of research to be done (I had to laugh at some of the fine print..."no septic of note"....yea, even a greenhorn like me can decipher that one) before we can really start looking, but if we don't start now, we're going to be sitting here 14 months from now, signing another GD lease. I can't do that.

These thoughts were also prodded by the inspection we just had. The lenders for our apartment complex did a full walk-through with no other explanation given. I've lived in apartments for 17 years now, and have never had that happen. It spooked me; and while I'm sure it was routine, it got my wheels turning. Sure, they'd have to give us plenty of notice if something drastic came down the pike (like buying us out of our leases if the lenders decided to shut down the place), but it also really brought home how dug into that place we are. Not just physically, but the concern that we'd have real trouble finding other housing because my credit ain't the greatest. Much as we like to talk about how our reliable rental history will work in our favor, it's hard for it to compete when it's going up against a credit score in the low 600s.

Thoughts like that certainly help with the mindset of: "you must maintain stability, because your options are limited." You read about people moving back home in an interim situation, but that's completely not an issue for us. My mom downsized to a 1-bedroom apartment, and his folks' house is busting at the seams (6 people living in a 1500-sq-ft split level). That's fine, we're grownups, I have had no trouble keeping a roof over our heads. I guess the fear comes from the thought that by wanting to disrupt everything to move out of state, you're no longer keeping the wolf at the door...you're opening the door and inviting the damn thing in.

I want a yard for a garden. I want a house. I want to live north of Florida. Those are the big 3......what the hell's stopping us? If we save X amount with each check with a total saved goal in mind, while continuing to improve the credit and research the move, it doesn't make a damn bit of difference when it happens. I don't have to stay in web editing, not even sure I want to, and I'm willing to work my arse off if it means getting us the hell out of Florida. I'm through being pissed because we're not there yet. Our time is now.

Outside: too pleasant right now (mid-70s)...but it's dropping Friday and we're due for our first freeze already on Friday night/Saturday morning...

Inside: meh.

Wearing: jeans, black flats, two shirts, wild hair ponied

Reading: Animal Dreams and whatever credit repair/first-time homebuyer advice websites I can get my mouse on...immense gratitude to Jenna for being the initial bug in my ear with this post.

Creating: lists

Going: OT Saturday

Hoping.....see above.

Keepers...Motivation

This is going to be a planning weekend. No more screwing around.

All images have been referenced before on Ember Madrone.

Thoughts Thanks to Irene

Seeing the different preparedness lists that come out online and elsewhere before and after a decent storm...it brings to mind how very screwed we'd be if we lost power for more than a day. I hate being that dependent on electric, and I hate how unprepared we are for the stuff of life that happens. For gods sake, we still don't even have renter's insurance! If the place burned down...

It's a combination of city living and ignorance that has us this unprepared. I'm determined to do something about that this weekend. We barely have two pennies to rub together right now, but I'll be damned if I'll let this lack of knowledge continue.

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!