get what you need

I look forward to Saturday morning all week: to collecting the eggs from the chicken coop with Abe, driving to the farmer's market for juicy "Local Toms," and drinking coffee with the neighbors.

Right now I'm craving summer weekends and routine. I know exactly what to expect on a Saturday morning in August: hot and sticky humidity, coffee and a breakfast burrito, sleepy kitties and at least two loads of laundry.

Lately I've had to make some tough decisions and it feels like everything is changing. (A post on that is coming soon.) I've noticed this: As a kid I had no trouble identifying the things I wanted, but I wasn't in tune with my needs. As an adult, I easily identify my needs, but I have a harder and harder time knowing what I want.


Wonderful choices are easier on Tuesdays.

Monday was hard.  All day at work I had clients with terrible problems and terrible attitudes.  I rushed home to wash dishes and start on my (million item) to-do list.

I took this picture out my car window at a stop light just off my exit, because the wildness and the flowers pleased me. When I got home, I spent some time wandering around the yard checking on the Growing Things - the fig tree gaining tiny, hard green fruit, the dried, gnarly grape vine advancing tiny florescent leaves. It was peaceful and nourishing, and then I went inside, freaked out about my messy kitchen, and yelled at my husband.

The world is a beautiful place, and I am in it. Somehow, I have to learn to turn off the frantic inside me and just take in the wonderful.

chard for all

Between the greenhouse and weather we've had this spring (downright hot), the seeds we started a month ago are already producing more than we can eat.  Today I brought a grocery bag of swiss chard to share with my coworkers.

It's nice to have something to share so early in the season.  Soon I hope we'll have a handle on how much our garden and greenhouse can produce beyond what we need.  At that point, we'll either try a micro C.S.A. or set up shop at the Charlotte Regional Farmer's Market.  Til then, chard for all!

sleeping with the windows open

I felt overwhelming excitement when we first bought our house and I woke up to bird sounds outside. Those songs and these chilly spring mornings are still two of my favorite things about our tiny urban farm.

Stop and reconnect.

What else could I do when I saw this sign on my way to work? 

I love this picture - it captures my spring fever and reminds me to take the time to enjoy it.

Homesteading is about so much more than transplanting seedlings and cleaning out the chicken coop. To me, it's about a life focused on meeting our natural needs and infused with meaning by its connectedness with the natural world.

It's human nature to need shelter, sustenance, nourishment, fulfillment. The other things we worry about - getting a promotion, buying a nice car, having stylish clothing - are just that: things.  I choose time to spend producing the stuff that I need over time spent earning a wage to pay for things I could make.

These days when people talk about "connectivity," they're usually talking about the internet.  I'm working toward an urban homestead because I want to plug back in to something real: the breathing, growing, beautiful world.

To do:

Lately I've felt overwhelmed. The past year has been full of changes - we bought a house, raised a puppy, lost a kitten, left behind full time jobs with benefits and started a handful of part-time endeavors. I've struggled with knowing what I want to do with my life and with all there is to do just to keep up.
I lose perspective and can't figure out where to start - with the day-to-day stuff like laundry, dishes and paying bills, the creative stuff like coming up with crafts to hussle for health insurance, the work stuff (like always having to be there...), and the long-term homestead goals.

I came across this the other day, and it reminded me that sometimes things are less complicated than I think they are.  This is what I should do.

This is what you should do:
Love the earth and sun and animals,
despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks,
stand up for the stupid and crazy,
devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants,
argue not concerning God,
have patience and indulgence toward the people…
reexamine all you have been told in school or church or in any book,
dismiss what insults your very soul,
and your flesh shall become a great poem.
- Walt Whitman, excerpt from the preface to Leaves of Grass

Living Simply :: A Lesson By Roaches

Before you judge me, I can honestly say I've only ever seen one small roach in our house. It was summer time and we live in the South, so it was no cause for concern. Additionally in my defense, neighbors have told us that the previous owner of our home was a much worse housekeeper than even I am.  He moved to Conneticut, so let's blame him.

Anyway.  This story is about our dishwasher. Some of the buttons only worked some of the time until one day, when some of of the buttons were broken all of the time. Abe took apart the control panel to see what he could see.

If you think about it, a dishwasher is like paradise for roaches. The disgusting old food delivered to a dishwasher free and several times a day is just right for their disgusting appetites.  I believe that our dishwasher was in fact Roach Heaven, which is why all of the roaches we found in the space behind the control panel were dead.  Although this begs the question of the worthiness of roaches to enjoy eternal paradise (which is a matter that we leave to philosophers who hate cockroaches as much we do), it allows me to point out that I did not, do not, and will not have a colony of live roaches for housemates.

Being a sissy, I can hardly even tell this story, so luckily for me, Abe is much braver and he cleaned them out.  But they left dead roach scum, so we're not sure if we'll be able to repair the dishwasher.
At this juncture, feel free to squirm, gag, admit that you have no idea what might be living in your dishwasher control panel, and go to get a bottle of water,* since you probably no longer want to touch any of the glassware that was cleaned in your infested dishwasher.  We're moving along to the moral!

Washing dishes by hand is not my favorite housework.  But the other day I was doing it anyway and I was thinking.  Looking at parts to repair our old dishwasher had prompted a look at new dishwashers.  Like everything, they cost more than I expected.  (And no roach-inspection certificates are included, which you should probably address with your senator or congressman if they aren't too busy ruining the internet.) It would take me about a week of work to pay for a new dishwasher, and unfortunately, all of my weeks are already busy working.  Technically we have the savings to go to Lowes if we have to, but do we have to?

I love the time I get to spend at home, and I would like to have more of it.  I'd rather spend my time doing housework than at work earning money for a stupid kitchen appliance that will end up as free roach housing (hopefully not before washing all of our dirty pots and spoons for a good 10-12 years).

Abe and I have been talking about living simply.  I've realized that the more we have, the more we want is not just true, it's true in my life.  I have a cupboard full of dishes.  So now I want an appliance to help me wash them.  Then I want all new appliances to match my new dishwasher.  Then I want to renovate my kitchen.  If I didn't have so much, I wouldn't be worried about matching appliances or earning more money to afford a kitchen update.  I'm not saying that Abe and I won't ever repair or replace our dishwasher - just that living without one has taught me that a satisfied, simple life means realizing the difference between what we want and what we need.

*not that I condone drinking bottled water.

In which Wendell Berry says it better than me

My cell phone stopped working about six months ago. Since then I've been using my cell from college, which suffers from a broken speaker, explaining why the last time I called was around Easter.  Finally, our contract is up, so I've been researching phone plans and mobile devices and pay-as-you-go options and wondering why, when you ask for "basic" phones, the salespeople take you to the cells-for-seniors section.  On Sunday, Abe and I went to AT&T, Verizon, Best Buy, Sprint and WalMart (shudder). In four hours, we made as much progress toward peace in the Middle East as we did toward getting phones.

When did cell phones - and everything - get so complicated? I don't need for the internet to fit in my pocket, and I sure don't want the monthly bill for it. I don't need another touch-screen piece of junk that will break after a year. I just want it to be simple.

Oh yeah, and I want an iphone.

I find myself torn between these two lives - the one where I crave convenience and compliments on my shoes, and the one where I delibrately choose simplicity.  There's a part of me that wants to redo the kitchen, add on a front porch, upgrade our appliances. And another part of me can't wait to move out of our conventional house and into something tiny and sustainable.

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion - put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn't go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

Wendell Berry