Moving forward honestly

I need to lay some things out here. We don’t want to misrepresent ourselves: We are not terribly Green, nor are we conscious (Jonathan will tell you what he thinks of that word later). We just love to grow food in the garden. We find contributing to society to be satisfying. We like to be self sufficient. We’re not afraid of big brother, we’re not hoarding food for the big one, we’re not looking out the windows expecting to see zombies. We just like to do things ourselves. We like that we don’t have to drive to the market every day. We like that we have a pantry full of things in glass jars and a freezer filled with our own corn, apple pies, and the like. I made my own baby food because I could, not for any grand reason. Baby food is expensive and it smells funny so I made my own. We raise foster kittens because they’re cute.
Yes, we might be more prepared than another household if the big one flattens our homes, or not. We will raise a son with a love of the land and knowledge which will allow him to feed himself. We don’t have a lot of money. We reuse things to conserve the money we have. We shop at the flea market because it’s enjoyable not because we can’t afford a coat at Mervyns or because it’s better for the environment. That's just a bonus. We like to be able to trade and barter for food and services. It’s fun, did I mention we like to have fun? In our town we might be considered fairly conservative. When we leave this little “island” we appear to be crazy liberal. We don’t claim either title. We are just doing what seems right for us in this moment. We have a little lot, just under 7000 square feet with a tall house which leaves a fairly small footprint. That leaves us with a lot of dirt. We just want to do something with it without spending a fortune and while having some fun. There’s that fun again!

That said, my all time favorite book (since I was a young teen) is Earth Abides and I’ve been thinking about learning to shoot a gun. You just never know. There was a show on one of the movie channels called Jeremiah that I very much enjoyed and while watching it I promised myself I would teach my boy some life skills other than just reading and math and the internet. I’m typing this on my Apple Macbook balanced on my Ikea table with the flatscreen TV on in the other room while my boys watch reruns of Star Trek and I’m wearing clothes from Walmart or Target or Ross and vintage jewelry. People are weird and I am no exception!

The neighbors keep asking about the farm so we’ve decided to call our home “City Mouse Farm”. My friend Melissa has scribbled out a little mousey logo for us. Her abilities astound me and if anyone needs someone to illustrate a children’s book please contact me for her info. She drew our logo while on the phone with her Mom one morning. I can’t even draw a straight line with a ruler! I think her little city mouse is the best around. He needs a name. Neville maybe. ooops, technical difficulty. Neville will be posted soon.

The farm needs a lot of work. The house needs a paint job and it will need a roof soon. Our very large kitchen is filled with 3 different sets of cabinetry, all of which I’m sure were hand-me-downs. It’s not pretty but it functions and we don’t really have a spare 30 grand to make it pretty. I did choose a paint color and actually started to paint the house only to find that it’s way too high for me to paint. Hopefully, sometime soon we will be able to afford a proper paint job. There’s lead paint under there so it needs to be cleaned carefully. The windows could use some restoration but frankly, we want to go to Disneyland, so the windows will wait. Prioritizing is a challenge here.

We made dinner for a friend dealing with cancer and made extra for ourselves. Dinner tonight is homemade Chicken Pot Pie with lots of organic veggies from Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home, one of my favorites. It’s a time consuming recipe that involves poaching a chicken, making a crust, stirring together a rich veloute and making a dripping mess of the oven. It’s full of vitamins and love and just plain yummy. We’ve got double chocolate chip cookies for dessert. Now I need to pry my boys away from the Star Trek marathon.

Tomorrow I’ll tell you about the moving of the chickens.