Well, life is very busy! Evan started school. I am getting more hours at the bookstore. Fair season has started for the knitting business. And I have started a new class! I am taking an Organic Vegetable Production class as part of this Umass online Small Farming and Sustainability Certificate.
It is a very exciting venture for me. I am not sure yet what this will translate into for my future but it feels like a good step forward. I hope to either find a job working to support farming or perhaps transfer to Unity college for an Enviromental Writing Degree. Regardless of what the future holds I think the knowledge will help me look at my land and home in a new way.
This blog started as a homesteading blog. I have shared trial and tribulations. I have shared the quiet pleasure of watching things grow and joy of raising my sons. I have shared what has happened in my garden and the amount of food I have put up over the many seasons that this blog has been going.
Now it feels like this blog can be a record of something else. The question I have been trying to figure out for myself over the last summer as the weeds have overrun the garden and the shelves are bare for this time of year is how does a single mother manage a homestead on her own. Is this something that needs a couple in order to be successful. Is it worth it? Do I have to sacrifice my dreams and principles because I am on my own?
I resist this kind of thinking I guess. Stalwart independence perhaps. But homesteading has always just made sense to me. Perhaps I will have to compromise in some areas. I will have to recalibrate expectations. But I have to acknowledge certain truths that have always made sense to me. First and foremost, the more I produce from my own hands the less money I need.
The one commodity I feel lacking right now is time. It could be the time of year, it could be the schedule I have right now, it could be I need to let somethings go or perhaps I just need to find time to relax a bit so I can make better use of the busy time. It is part of the work ( in the inner work) I am trying to figure out right now.
Either way I feel renewed energy. I feel like I have untapped resources that I can explore right now.
On the homesteading front, I am excited to have new laying hens. It has been several years since we have had some. It is is such a treat to go to the coop and find a clutch of eggs. I took the old ram shed and turned it into a chicken coop. A bunch of friends came over for a work part and helped me fashion a coop out of scrap wood. I call it ramshackle chic!
