Four women from around the globe: homesteading, homeschooling and faith.
Two weeks ago, with temps just above freezing and a foot of snow on the ground, we had:
Ours was one of few houses *not* to flood, in a note of irony. (We’ve been fighting basement water for years.) Now I hear Minnesota’s been getting hit too, and there’s more coming. Jane, how are you?
It’s been the coldest winter in years, here. We’ve had regular drops to -40 (which is -40, no matter which scale you use). Even this past Friday morning. -37C. With the windchill, it was -46C. And Jackie’s tilling! Augh!
I am beginning to wonder whether the next Ice Age has chosen this historic moment of global warming hyper-awareness to ambush us. Has it been a weird year for anyone else?
Truth be told, Jackie, I’m not blogging either. I mean, a bit, but I think I lost my groove.
Likewise, I’ve moved on from a lot of my original homesteading ideas. In the beginning, it was sheer necessity. Like in the pioneer days, we needed to garden and can and mend and raise our own meat to survive. Dave’s job has since come to pay much better–and take much, much more time.
Other things have changed us too. Home isn’t a haven to me, it’s my work. It’s a job that gives no vacations unless I take them elsewhere. It’s also a massive network of unending renovations. It’s no haven to Dave in that sense. We were able to acquire the sailboat, and that takes us away in the summer whenever we can manage it.
I don’t miss the garden. I only feel like I should.
I’m out in space-time these days, rediscovering my drive to write speculative fiction that really examines the world and the way we think. It’s a refuge and a place of freedom. To me, it’s also a link to the past–to the sweeping dreams of the first part of the 20th century, to minds like Heinlein and Asimov and the questions they demanded of society. From their own perspectives, they saw things that were wrong and absurd, and they used fantastical situations to question their cultural ethic.
But here in my corner of Earth, the first snow is falling–we expect ten centimeters and already have an inch. (That’s the luxury of Canada, mixing measurement systems so flippantly.) I have regrets outdoors. I have hope indoors. I have stories begging to be told. I have questions.
What course of action will have the most impact on the world around me for God? How do I live with myself if I let some things go? Will I regret what I do keep? There’s not enough time for all the joyful things God made in this life.
Y’know, Jackie, I’m trying to remember that all the fun comes later. We have heaven and a whole eternity full of wonderful things. Here and now is the work season. But sometimes I struggle with how wonderful life is and how little I seem to catch as it goes by.
I finally feel as though I’ve made it through the fog weeks – and we’re coming out the other end, into sunshine and warmth and eggs and vegetables and a renewed hope and motivation to blog! There is so much happening around this little piece of New Zealand acreage right now, and we’ve had so many changes in the last few weeks, starting with my husband Robin’s new job with the government. I realize how lazy I had become having had him at home for the last three years. It was a wonderful lifestyle and one I knew that couldn’t last forever, and it didn’t, and here we are back in a 9-5 or 7-5.30 (if you add in travel time), and I’m at home alone with the children and drinking bad coffee again.
But Spring has arrived and summer is coming on quickly and I’m enjoying being outdoors more and watching the new trees we planted last year grow their blossom and beautiful green leaves and some have even put on a little growth already. I’m also busy getting the vegetable garden going. Our new 6 hens, Betsy Trotwood, Dora, Peggotty, Mrs. McCawber, Little Em’ly and Agnes are producing 6 eggs a day, and we just started the last school term for the year. 9 weeks and we’ll be into the long stretch of Christmas and summer holidays and a new baby due in the middle of that. My favourite time of the year. Yay!
I thought you’d like to see some Spring-ish photos from Down Under, and a little test to see if my first post works.
Plum Blossom
My new clothesline
Kids cooling off on a hot Saturday afternoon.
So – I’m just not blogging.
In the pre-dawn darkness (but it will probably get finished later, in the light, if at all) I decide to come here, and imagine for a minute, that cat, jane and rachel are around my kitchen table, and we each have a steaming mug of typhoo tea and we’re waiting for daylight and to go down to the barn together.(In reality, Neil just had to leave mega early, the girls are getting dressed and tidying their rooms, while we wait for enough light to turn out the ponies.)
And I’m sipping on my tea and saying … you know, I’m just not blogging. It’s not happening at the moment, and what worries me is, since I’m not a great scapbook maker or journaller or even Flikr addict, that was my record – those were my precious memories of my children’s childhood. And I’m just letting them slip by.
I kind of feel like I have outgrown the person who started the chestnuts blog – apart from anything else we moved house, and although we still rent the land that was ‘chestnuts’, it’s now just home to a couple of dozen sheep, and I seldom go there. Except last week when they escaped 350 tmes and I had to keep going and getting them in.
I was in a phase, when I began it, where a lot of my friends have been, and some still are, where I was fascinated by plain living, by the amish and mennonites, read Scott Savage, kept meaning to read Wendell Berry and didn’t (!) celebrated each new day with some harder less technical way of doing everything. I had flatirons so I used them. Even though I don’t usually iron anything ! I wore long shapeless pinafore dresses and a head square. I’m not knocking anyone who is convicted of headcovering – but I wasn’t, I was playing. Confronting that caused some pain.
Those days are gone. I mourn them in many ways – I wish I still had hopes of seeing both my children in home made plain dresses day in and day out. I wish I spent silent evenings quilting by lamplight. But it’s gone. If I want to do those things, I can do them, but I have to engage with them in the era into which I was actually born. I could improve my sewing and make skirts we would wear. I could machine piece quilts – then maybe one day I’d have time to actually make one, instead of just dreaming!
Anyway here I am now – I started a couple of other blogs, one time and another, and I kind of like them, but I don;’t have the habit, you know? I’m not telling anyone. I’m not telling anyone that H has a new pony – he’s on loan from some people Neil works for – or how school is going -we’re getting there, with a total change of style and approach – or about guides, or about the successes and failures of the harvest. I’m not even telling anyone about an exciting new chance to expand our goat herd into a viable business.
I joined Weightwatchers Online (again) and I’m trying to start over, you know how you do. With church once again causing ripples of concern, and autumn bringing on that reflective, slightly sorrowful, turn of year contemplation, I just want to air my life out of an upstairs window one last time, in the smoky September air, before I batten down the hatches for winter. But I’m just not blogging. I’m not telling anyone.
What do you reckon girls? What shall I do? Oh, and help yourselves to flapjack.
Well, gals, we’re beginning fall cleaning today. We’ve been away for a lot of the summer, camping and sailing.
Anytime we’ve come home, it’s pretty much been to dump a bunch of stuff all over and take off again. Not a recipe for a useful, pleasant home environment. So, homeschooling is being postponed at least a week while we straighten out this chaos. There are a lot of cobwebs, a lot of dust and a lot of misplaced items to get through.
What amazes me is how the kids pitch in and think it’s fun, as long as I’m doing stuff. I went to scrub down the cupboards (ew, greasy fingerprint layers, food splatters from my little cooks). Next thing I know, the girls want to help because it’s what mom’s doing.
Excellent. I think I’m going to use their gullibility for nefarious housekeeping purposes.
Here’s our place (not an autumn shot, obviously). Anybody else want to give an idea of what their corner of the world looks like?
Okay, I think I have the picture thing now. Here are our two daughers on our first day of school this year. Bookworm (14) and Ladybug (11). At this writing, we have now finished our 3rd day and all is well – we are all loving school this year. Our curriculum is very Bible centered and it’s all so fun.
Praising God for Another Day to Learn of Him!
Blessings, Jane
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