Lack of...Something

Like most the country, it's been down right cold here. The picture is kind of pathetic but I was trying to show how little snow we got here. Not even enough to cover the field stubble. It flurried constantly for 3 days with no accumulations but the first night. The overcast and bitter cold days are pretty depressing. Gee, just what I need, right? Today, it's sunny and the reflection off the pitiful amount of snow we have is blinding. It's a glorious 7 degrees. Even with me going out and checking for eggs every 2 hours, I'm still finding frozen ones. the chickens have almost quit laying completely and i don't blame them. Way too cold! I've also kept them caught up in the barn where they can burrow in the hay if they choose to so they aren't getting their normal dose of sunlight. It's light in there during the day(skylights) but just not the same as being out in the sunlight. I can't have them with frozen feet. Just 2 more days of below freezing temps and then we're right back up to the 40s. That's a relief for me, it's awful cold over in the storage house right now. Had to let the power company shut the electric off so no heater anymore. The monthly customer charge was more than the power we used every month but we just don't have the money. Thankfully there's no water lines to freeze or I'd be in sorry shape.

It's hard to think about spring and starting seeds when it's so cold out but the time to get going is really just a few weeks away. I have resisted the urge to spread all my seed bags out on the kitchen table. If I get them out, I'll want to start some and I know it will be an exercise in futility with it being so cold and drafty in here. I'm struggling with the self control. Getting the seeds started is like a fresh start for me. Planting is always so full of hope and expectation, dreams of the harvest to come.

I found a good source of quality milk to start making cheese again. Of course, it's going to cost me so I'll have to wait for the hubby to become employed. It's looking like sometime this coming week. I've heard that so many times, I'm not making plans just yet. I'll have to pay the mortgage first thing since we're so close to defaulting before I go buy any milk to make cheese. I'm also trying to figure out what's left to go to the resale shop for fuel money. I'm about out of things to sell. To top it all off, I've developed a bad tooth over the past few days. I would imagine it's due to stress. the tooth has pushed up almost half way out, it's very loose and is preventing me from eating even with topical pain reliever. It'r right in front on the bottom and it's out far enough, it's pushing on the roof of my mouth. In a couple of days if it keeps going like it has, i should be able to pull it myself. Boy is that going to hurt. I don't have much choice tho, sooner or later, I'm going to have to eat. It's hard cooking and baking every day and not being able to eat the results. Well, at least the family has plenty to eat!

I think about this whole very bad year as a growing experience. I think about our acestors who lived like this all the time, struggling to pay their debts to the bank, desperately trying to keep enough food on the table to feed their families, all the hard work to keep their livestock alive thru the winter. I know by the grace of God, we'll make it thru this. So, if you have a spare moment, say a little prayer for us please.

Self Sustained-Growing a Little Food

I grow food for myself. I talk about it all the time. What I get away from and forget to talk about is why I do it. So, why do I grow my own food? Hehehehe actually for several reasons. The first and foremost is quality. The food you buy from the grocery store is nothing compared to what you grow, pick and eat from your own garden. Those store bought tomatoes with the thick skin and very little taste, those aren't what tomatoes are supposed to taste like. The spagetti sauce with hydrogenated oils, soy fillers and MSG etc in them, that's not good food. Cataloupes that cost you $4 and they taste like watery cardboard. Strawberries that cost you $5 and they spoil in just a day or 2. Why would anyone want to buy "fresh" vegetables that have a coat of wax on them? Onions that mold, potatoes with black spots and squishy spots, that's not good eating.

The next thing is availability and cost together. People have this idea that they shouldn't bother to take the time to grow food for themselves when it's so easy or convenient for them to just go buy it. Well, what if the whole world thought like that and quit growing food? What is entire countries discouraged their farmers from producing because they think they can just buy food from other countries? What if they stop growing food and develop all the land so none can be used to grow food? Who will feed all those people? Read this article from the UK Telegraph, you'll really be surprised. A government Minister has to have a symposium on growing more food. Well duh............

The 3rd and for me the most important reason why I grow my own food is- chemicals. I don't want to eat food that is grown with chemicals. The fertilizers, pesticides and growth hormones in commercial food is poisoning our entire population and we still keep buying it. Our meat has more antibiotics in it than the walmart pharmacy, we still keep buying it. It's infused with ammonia and we still keep buying it. Our bread is made with flour from GMO(genetically modified organism) wheat and we still keep buying it. Our eggs, milk, cheese and butter are overflowing with growth hormone and steroids and we still keep buying it. Why do we do that when we can grow safe and chemical free food for ourselves?

This coming season I am going to grow several items in containers so everyone can see how easy it is to have good food right at your fingertips.

Pioneer Living

Have you ever thought about how our grandparents or our great grandparents lived without all the modern conveniences we take for granted?

You don't have to live like the Amish to be a pioneer or to live a rural, self sustaining lifestyle. It takes work, lots of it. It's not a lifestyle to be taken on by the weak of heart. There's plenty of small things you can do to become more like the pioneers that founded our country. Simple things like reducing what you buy and consume by producing those things for yourself.

Examples of this lifestyle are as such-
-cooking for yourself not only with a gas or electric stove, but outside, with wood.
-doing tasks such as grinding your coffee and processing your foods without electric gadgets. 
-growing at least some of the food you consume
-recycling/reusing items for other things instead of throwing them away

These are just a few small things you can do and aren't at all difficult.

Choosing a more simple lifestyle is a good start toward a smaller eco-foot print kind of life.  We've been conditioned over the years to be consumers instead of producers.  We rely on outside supplies for everything in our lives.  Then, out of the blue, some sort of disaster hits us.  Anything from a natural disaster to who knows what kind of man made trouble and we find ourselves without all those things we take for granted every day.  Electricity, running water, a grocery store full of food.  Gas stations and convenience stores just waiting for us to spend, spend, spend.  What if it all disappeared?  Could you feed yourself?  Could you stay warm and dry during a horrible, frozen winter?  Our ancestors did all those things for themselves.  Fed themselves from nothing.  Kept themselves warm and dry when the snow was 5' deep and town was 20 miles away in a horse drawn wagon.  No electric, no internet and no texting!

Suddenly, learning some pioneer style skills doesn't seem like such a bad idea, eh?  Maybe it's time to find a few minutes to learn some of those old world, basic skills that helped us get to where we are now.......
 

Pioneer living. What does that mean? For a few years now, it seems to be something people are really interested in. For me, that's not very surprising. I'm in the trenches tho, struggling every day to keep ahead of my bills. LOL, I hardly have any and I can't keep em paid! Utilities and a small mortgage, no loans or credit cards and I'm struggling. Life is much harder now that 10 years ago. Is it really or does it just seem like it is? I think it is. With commodity prices as high as they are, I wonder how others around me make it.

I kicked off the “normal” several years back. I chose to stop being a full time consumer for several reasons. Mostly, my decision was due to what I consider to be the horrible state of food in our country. Eh, my opinion of the grocery store with it's shelves of boxes and plastic bags, piles of meat for sale that comes from some factory farm only God knows where... eh, you get the picture. A rant for another day. Anyway, I had health problems and I was determined to fix those problems by eating healthier, natural foods. How do I get those foods? I could have chosen to find a better grocery store and pay crazy, high prices for what I wanted to eat or... I could grow them for myself. At the time, I was planning on feeding a family of 4. No sense in me eating healthier and the hubby and kids eating what I considered to be junk food. Huge undertaking that was with a steep learning curve! And, of course, I took plenty of ribbing from friends and neighbors. Even a few strangers with the off handed comments about me trying to be uber-amish etc. I just laughed, yah, ha ha, and kept working on developing my own thing. I was never one to want to be like others. I always will be myself with my own ideas. LOL Guess I just suck at being a follower! Thus began my whole adventure toward living a more “pioneer life”.

There's plenty of information out there to get ideas from. Our countrys history is full of little anecdotes from our own pioneering period. “Taming the West”, LOL, ruining it is more like it! There are places in the “civilized” world right now where people live just fine without electricity, running water and all those things we take for granted every day. How do they do it? Actually, it's quite simple. To start with, their priorities are different. They spend all their time producing things instead of consuming. Their lives are rural and beautifully simple. What they don't have time or space to produce, they trade for with others around them that do produce what is needed. Their entire existence is different than the present day, civilized “American” way. What's the “American” way you ask? Hmmm, just go out shopping on Black Friday and you'll see exactly what I mean.....

The first aspect of providing for yourself is food. We've got to have it, every day. Now myself, just feeding me, I can cover myself up with plenty of food in a well composted 10x20 garden bed. If I really wanted to just eat vegan and be happy with it, that garden spot would be plenty good. Alas, I am an omnivore and I like me a nice hunk of meat. So, I raise critters and I hunt. I'm also frugal (another word for cheap) and I can squeeze that nickel until the buffalo's nose bleeds! Most of the time I really have to be that way or I can't pay those pesky utility bills. Hence the need to learn to butcher for myself. Yes, it's nasty and messy. Yes, the first couple of times I did a lousy job but no matter how you look at it, it's food. Pretty or not, it's still food and I did it myself. The best part of this whole thing is I'm eating. With a part time, minimum wage job, I'm eating without public assistance (link, snap, whatever they call it now). Would it be easier if I just buckled in and went down to sign up for public aid? Sure it would be. But then, I would be defeating the whole purpose of taking care of myself and doing it for myself. Just the idea of government aid chaps my whole being. I'm just stubborn like that I guess.

So, since you've read this far, you know I'm not “off grid” yet. Solar and wind power where I live isn't the most efficient but it can be done. Alas, those things take money and money is something I just don't have. So, I am trapped in the endless loop of scraping by to pay the utility company for something I could provide for myself if I had the start up money. “Sigh” a sore spot for me, no doubt. Getting off the “utility tit” is another way to live a more pioneering life. Save you a ton of money in the long run too!

Something else I do to provide a replacement ofcommercial products for myself. I make soap. I use what I make every day and even use it for laundry. I stopped buying commercial laundry soap several years ago. It is my personal opinion that clothes last longer washed in the detergent I'm making for myself. Plus, there's no smelly perfumes in it. I tend farm animals and I hunt. Those stinky perfumes in commercial laundry soaps cling to your clothing for days. The animals can smell that and it carries on the wind. By eliminating the stinky commercial soap smells, I have also eliminated the need for those expensive scent blockers deer hunters waste money on every hunting season. I actually just go out and sit in my tree stand in the same clothes I do my farm chores in and I never fail to get a deer. It always cracks me up, every year, all those fancy hunters outfits walking around come deer season. Do you think Joe Homesteader 150 years ago had him a special, fancy set of clothes to go hunting in? Not likely! If Joe didn't bag a deer, his family starved. He did the job, you can bet on that! Jane Homesteader washed clothes with the same lye soap I make. Huh, go figure, LOL It is time consuming and involves caustic materials (that can be made) but it's worth it.

The most important thing you can do in your journey to like a more “pioneering” lifestyle is to change the way you think. Society has been conditioned over the past 200 years to be more “civilized”. That word IMO, is evil because it undermines every aspect of natural life. Don't butcher for yourself, it's cruel. Go to the grocery store and buy it, it's a much more acceptable behavior. Grow grass in your front yard, the pretty green carpet is more pleasing and it makes your home look just like your neighbors. It's a much more acceptable behavior. Let's make a law that says you can't keep chickens in town because that one old lady hates the sound of roosters crowing. Now, go pay $3 a dozen for eggs at the grocery store because it makes our neighborhood more quiet. Stop going with the flow and accepting it just because “society” thinks you should be just like your neighbor. Think for yourself and do for yourself. Adapt and overcome. That's the pioneering way!

The Big Snow Storm

PFFTT, yah, some big snow storm. I know others around us may have gotten a large amount of snow but we sure didn't. I was actually kind of looking forward to some snow. I like snow. It makes everything look clean and bright instead of the dull, dirty, muddy, sloppy look we normally have for the whole winter here. One more thing, it alwasy appears like there is suddenly a whole flock of Cardinals flying around every time it snows. Their beautiful red feathers just stand out against the white background and it's so easy to see them.

I dug out a bag of my Dent corn seed this morning to show some readers what it looks like. I was going to just take a picture of some of it in one of my storage buckets but it's sooo cold out and my camera is on it's last leg, i didn't want to take a chance and steam it up so the seeds aren't cleaned but there they are.

Not much else is going on around here, too cold to be doing anything!