Happy Earth Day!

This year, Earth Day is going to mark the beginning of some changes in my lifestyle. I will think of it as a kind of New Years resolution type of deal, except it will be oriented towards the Earth.

My mind is running wild with all the changes I'd like to make. I also just finished watching a moving documentary on Netflix. It's called American Experience: Earth Days, and it's a great historical film about the creation of Earth Day and the environmental movement that fueled it. I got chills watching it.

I've spent a lot of time over the past year or so trying to figure out what I want to do with my life- what is my calling? I know that motherhood is a big part of my life and is definitely a calling of mine, but I kind of feel that it is a natural calling of every woman. I've always felt like there was something else out there that I was supposed to go find. I now think I have found it. Something changed in me when I watched that documentary. The beast that had been laying dormant has now arisen. I need to make change. About all of the things that I feel passionate about- sustainable living, organic food production, environmentally friendly practices, and more. I have a deep spiritual connection to this Earth. When I go outside and feel the soft grass on my feet and hear the wind stirring in the trees, I just know that these are the things I value.

I am concerned. I am concerned for the future of this planet. There are some very ignorant people in this world when it comes to respecting our planet. Our resources are finite, but some people are not able to see this. We can only go on like this for so long before it is all going to come crashing down. The ravaging effects on this planet are already starting to show with global warming. And yet, there are still some people that believe global warming is a hoax. Our temperatures here have been unusually high- so much so that my hubby and I have planted some of our garden already. We did so a few weeks ago. Normally we don't plant until June 6th. We were almost two months early. As enjoyable as it is, it is equally as disturbing to me. I have a really odd feeling about what's going on. It just doesn't feel right.

Therefore, my number one resolution for this Earth Day is to find some sort of organization that I can become involved in. I'm not sure what my level of involvement will be yet, but at the very least I would like to be in the know about some environmental issues and perhaps do some "couch protesting" as I like to put it (via the internet).

Some other changes include planting a very, very large garden (twice the size of what we had before) and really making a big push to learn a lot more about preserving. We have dawdled in canning for the past few years, each year adding more that we do. I have greatly enjoyed our success from last harvest season and I would like to expand it to include more items this year. It is an indescribable feeling to be able to stock your cupboards with food that you not only grew yourself, but preserved it as well.

The rest of my goals are smaller and numerous, so I'll make a somewhat brief list of them:
-More eco-friendly methods to water garden (i.e. rain collecting buckets, water from the creek in our yard, etc)
-Eat more local foods
-Learn about more eco-friendly methods of living (I'm always on the lookout for these ideas)
-Continue to try to buy items second hand first and try to avoid buying things if we don't truly need them

I will try to post more often on my thoughts, progress, etc. I find it difficult to get time to write blogs as often as I'd like and sometimes when I do have time, I have too many ideas that I don't even know where to begin, end up getting frustrated and overwhelmed and don't write. Comments do help though, so please keep them up! It helps me feel like my blogging has a purpose other than releasing thoughts from my head.

Happy Earth Day! What changes will you make this year?

To homestead or not...that is the question.

Money. It's a funny thing. It can make you happy, it can bring you down. It can trap you, it can free you. It can prevent you from getting what you want, it can bring you what you want.

Regardless, we currently have a lot of it in our bank account. While many of you readers may think "How lucky!"- hear me out first. When my hubby and I end up with a large sum of money it actually causes us difficulties. While you may have read earlier in my blog that we are very spontaneous people, you will now read about it again.

We have had our hearts set on the idea of having a self-sufficient homestead for quite a while now. In our heads we have it all planned out- we get a parcel of land (30-40 acres is ideal) and we either obtain or build a super cozy, energy efficient home that is just big enough to house the family. On our land we are going to beekeep, tap trees, grow a huge vegetable garden, maintain a wooded forest so we have a constant supply of firewood, and the rest is going to be a large organic crop of some sort (wheat, flax, etc), cattle/livestock, or a fusion of the two. We will not have conventional jobs. We will be working for ourselves. Physically laboring on our land for the sole purpose of being able to get by. Money will be tight, so pleasures will have to be derived from simple things, such as reading books by the fireplace, or long walks in the back 40. The whole idea is tremendously romantic. We know it will be tough and we actually look forward to it. There is certainly nothing easy about a homestead. When we talk about our dreams to older generations who have grown up living such lives, they laugh at us, give us an odd look once they realize that we're not laughing, and then shake their heads. They have absolutely no desire to go back to the land.
So....are we crazy? Sometimes I truly think we are. And sometimes I also get a bit nervous about diving into such an endeavor, because we may not be able to get back out. 95% of me is ready to just do it. Right now. The other 5% is shaking in my boots and is kicking small stones around trying to delay making decisions. Unfortunately that 5% is somehow the part that makes most of the decisions.

We have been saving our pennies for a down payment on land. Whether it be land here, or land back in our hometown. We've been getting ready for it. We've had the itch to homestead. We've been daydreaming about it. We call each other up and talk about how exciting it's going to be to do it. We plan our immediate future and determine how long it will take us to have the down payment, then get our debt in order so we can take the dive. This fall we could have the down payment ready.

Note the word "could".

That doesn't necessarily mean we will. In fact, we may not even get past this month with our money. A funny, but somewhat sad way of putting it is that my hubby and I hate money. We truly do. We hate it so much that when we accumulate a large amount of it, we look for ways to spend it, then go out and spend it, so we're back to square one. Now that may not sound like a description of people who hate money. In fact, it sounds quite opposite of what I'm stating. Please allow me to explain further. After we spend our money and are back to square one, there is an odd relief that we both feel. We actually prefer to live poorly. We enjoy being frugal and our finances tight. For a while, we even purposely made our finances tight by paying down debt. Why on earth would somebody purposely make their finances tight? Because if our finances are tight, then we cannot go out and splurge on silly material purchases. The more stuff we buy, the more stuff that we feel ties us down. We don't feel very good about ourselves afterwards, yet the money just burns a hole in our pocket if we let it sit there. It's sick, I know. So to avoid this oh-so-fun circle of nonsense, we take preventative measures by keeping ourselves financially tight.

Except right now. We are rolling in the dough because we have saved, saved, saved. And oh is it burning in those pockets. In the past few weeks we have debated spending our money on an endearingly ugly 1980 Toyota Bandit, house improvements, a future homestead, a muscle car, a cross country roadtrip, a cross country roadtrip in an endearingly ugly Bandit, or a cross country roadtrip in a muscle car.

Our train of thought will typically go like this: Well, we should save our money up for a down payment. Okay, we should, but once we're on the homestead we may be dirt poor. So shouldn't we enjoy wild crazy trips while we can? Also, shouldn't we do these things when we're young and when Bean is young so it's easier to travel? Yes, I suppose. But if we do this, then we'll be delaying getting our homestead even more. Hmm. True. Well, what if we do house improvements? That'll improve our chances of selling this place and going to our homestead anyways. Okay, sounds good. How much do we do? Windows for sure. While we're at it, we should address the siding. If we do the siding, I want to do the driveway too since that's the first thing people see. And while we're at it.......Wait- where do we draw the line? Windows. We'll just do windows. Okay, sounds good. But do you think we could do the bathroom too? I really hate our bathroom and after all, we will be here a while......

And so forth. It just goes on and on like this. I think we live in our heads way too much. But at least we do it together and when you both live in your heads, it makes for some wild and crazy, spontaneous fun. Like spontaneous roadtrips in an endearingly ugly Toyota Bandit to see a rainforest, climb Half Dome, go to a Burning Man festival, and head home with our hair whipping in the wind of a hot muscle car from Las Vegas.