"Today, as I thank God for all the blessings in my life, I can't help but also thank him
for all the trials and speed bumps too! Every emotion, every trial, every obstacle
course has made me who I am and continues to push me to be a better person!" ~S~
It's amazing to me how much some individuals in our lives cling to the past. Who we are and where we want to go, are the stepping stones to our future. Free of the chains that held us back. Free of the anchor the holds us down, and free to create our future the way WE want it. Not what others want for us. Too many times, our past or who people believed us to be, hold us back from becoming true to our selves and growing into the person we want to be.
Since we began our little homestead, in November of 2011, we have accomplished so much more than we could have hoped for. What began as a failed buying experience on September 17, 2011...turned into buying our home, our little piece of ground, horses, cows, chickens, and now pigs. All in less that a year. Yep, it's been such a massive change and adjustment period. For someone who did not grow up this way, I am very proud of who I have become and how much I've been able to learn. As we grow to fit our needs, I am able to continue learning and growing. Our gardens this year have produced very well. We took an all organic approach this year, and I am personally very impressed with the outcome. Corn, peas, onions, radishes, potatoes, green beans, kidney beans, horticulture beans, bell peppers, jalapeno peppers, cayenne peppers, pumpkins, watermelon, and cucumbers have all produced exceptionally well considering the drought. We battled through critters eating our chickens to butcher over 200lbs of chicken and still have roughly 50 head for layers. Even ended up with a beautiful black rooster! We have gotten our son's calf to a year old, and looking good, plus purchased 4 other heifers(3 are going to calf in September). Lost a calf to coyotes, we think. Purchased our beautiful horses for our own enjoyment. So now, the next logical step in our pigs. We have our cows for beef, chicken, our garden, and now we'll have pork too. It seems so surreal to me to think that 95% of our food, we either raise or grow ourselves. I know some people think we are crazy, but my thought is this: "we won't look so crazy when every ones grocery budget is tripled this fall/winter while our budget is cut to less than a quarter of what it is now." Is it a hassle and a lot of work doing what we are doing? HELL YES! However, I can tell you, when you are able to grocery shop for a family of 4, on less that $200 a month....that hard work pays off! When everyone else is shopping and their groceries bills double or triple in price because of years of drought...mine does not. There is no greater feeling than knowing that so much of the food you and your family will eat has been grown by you, without chemicals, without carcinogenic preservatives and without all the added crap! For me, all the hard work is worth it's weight in gold! I know my family is getting the best possible food.
Our garden producing as it has this year, has given me ample opportunities to sharpen my canning skills. I have not gotten to can much over the past few years due to flooding and last year we didn't plant a garden since we were supposed to have bought a piece of property and would be moving in during canning season. When that fell through, and we ended up not moving until November to our homestead...I didn't can anything and we ran out of everything I had canned from prior years. This year, I have been blessed to can/freeze so much! Corn, peas, green beans, horticulture beans, kidney beans, cabbage, tomatoes, and even some of our potatoes. And we still are canning! Our tomatoes are just now starting to ripen and our plants are loaded, we are still picking and canning green beans, horticulture beans, and kidney beans. I have more jalapenos and cayenne peppers than I know what to do with (not really! they freeze up nicely!). I have green peppers still to freeze, and the pumpkins, watermelon, cucumbers, and zucchini are still going strong! For us to get through a Winter without having to purchase more than $200 a month worth of groceries, we need to can a minimum of 525 quarts/pints of vegetables out of our garden every year. I can tell you that can be a little daunting at the start of every year! This does not include our meat consumption. Since we figure that on an annual basis, it breaks down like this: 156 lbs. of chicken, 800 lbs of beef, and 525 lbs. of pork. Since our food needs are figured on an annual basis, we usually have some left over at the end of the year....but not much. When you total up, on an annual basis, what you spend on groceries - just the food part, I bet you'd be amazed to find out how much you are really spending. I know I was! Our grocery budget is a bit different that some, in the fact that I cook/prepare 3 meals a day. So, if you work and have children in school or childcare, it will be a lot different than ours. For us, an annual food budget of $4100 covers our food needs. That's for an entire year! The rough break down looks like this: Our store purchases - $2400, Garden seed and canning supplies - $200, Meat; including processing - $1500. This is by raising our gardens, raising our own chicken, pork and beef, and utilizing bulk purchasing to make almost everything from scratch. I am able to purchase unbleached flour in 50 lbs bags for $40, and raw organic sugar in 50 lbs bags for $40, as well as bulk spices for a quarter of the cost of any major store. I highly recommend locating a small, family owned general store. We live in an area with a high concentration of Amish and Mennonite families. They have several stores that we shop in, and the prices beat the big stores by A LOT!
On to some other topics that have come up in the past week. As I get older(and less patient, as my family says) I am finding that some of my pet peeves are intensifying. I try to keep my nagging at a minimum, but some days........I can't! I have always said that everything should have a place, and whatever I am looking for(or tripping over!) should be in it's place! I hate when people get up from the table and their chairs are left out, or when I ask someone to clean the kitchen and the counters/stove/microwave/and coffee pot are left dirty. When I ask for a bathroom to be cleaned, I expect it clean....not a quick brush over on the surface to appease Mom! Toilet cleaned, sink and vanity cleaned, tub/shower cleaned, floor swept and rugs in their place. When I ask that the living room be picked up and I walk in, after the vacuum has been run, and there are still piles of stuff vacuumed around on the floor and stacks of books on the hearth...that is not clean! Clean clothes that don't get put away, and you don't want to put them away...does not mean I want to rewash folded clothes in the laundry room!!! Since we seem to have several "catch-all" places; counters in the kitchen, 2-half walls, and the dining room table.....I am constantly struggling to keep them at the very least, presentable! When I make dinner, and can't find a place to sit at our dining table...I get a little irate. No, correction...I get a whole lot irate! Then I start cleaning off the table only to find dirty dishes, buried under the days mail and newspapers, used napkins, and toys - of all the damned things to find on the table! Yep, as I get older, I expect my family to do their part in keeping our home looking decent. I don't live in our home alone, I do not expect to do all the work alone either! I have a full enough schedule without tackling all the farm management, all the finances, all the meals as well as our children's education, and my own business. In my eyes, every person in our home is capable of picking up after themselves, and therefore, should be!
As always, I have decided to include a bit of my attitude in this post. I am a firm believer in free speech, and the liberties given to us by our Constitution and Bill of Rights. However, I get so tired of hearing all the political b.s. that is going on right now. You can only believe a fraction of what ANY politician tells you, and watching any news source is just going to given you the information they want you to hear. I quit watching ALL news sources several years ago, and you know, it has allowed me to make my own educated decisions without all the bias. I don't do mainstream on much of anything, and get really aggravated when I am attempting to give an outside-the-box, viewpoint, only to be ripped to shreds by those following one party or the other. I can and will respect your opinion, but in turn I expect my opinion to be respected as well. This pertains to all areas of my life...not just politics. The decisions I make, are the ones that we feel are best for our family....not necessarily for anyone else! We don't follow trends, nor do we buckle when we are pressured to "be like everyone else." We are not like everyone else, and we don't want to be. We are happy, overall, with the life we have made for our family. Being respectful of others seems to be something that is rapidly decreasing....along with common sense!
When we began home educating our children, aside of the general misconceptions, we found that many in our area were very much against bucking the "normal" systems. Since we made this choice together, it's been a lot easier to deal with the negativity that comes from thinking outside-the-box. I have my own support system within my husband. He has been instrumental in helping me to deal with negativity and misconstrued opinions. We agree on how we want our children raised, educated, and how we want them to grow up. We want them to grow up questioning everything, not just going along with the crowd, and we want them to be able to think for themselves and not have them just follow what a majority is doing. We want them to understand the importance of hard work, patience, persistence, and dedication. We want them to be able to be comfortable in their own skin without the confines that society has been placing on several generations now. Now, we are in our 3rd year of educating our oldest and our 1st educating our youngest. We have had to make adjustments to our schedules, to the way we live, and even a few curricula changes to match learning styles. It's not always easy, and there are days that we have a hard time getting motivated...but we are able to make adjusts to fit our needs. We have found a great curricula now that fits both learning styles of the kids, and allows for a lot more hands-on learning. While some still consider our lifestyle weird, or hippy-ish, we find it refreshing and it allows us more time as a family without outside interference.
In our little bubble, here on our homestead, we live our lives simply. We treat each other with respect, we learn, we teach, we speak honestly with each other, we share each others feelings and thoughts without fear of discipline or vengeance, and we spend all the time we can together. Both our kids help me in the kitchen, both kids help with laundry, both kids help with the gardens and animals, our son is learning to sew, while our daughter is learning how to care for the animals. Our son knows how to care for the animals and is learning how to break horses. Our daughter loves being with the animals, she's constantly roping something, but still loves all her girly stuff. The kids play with farm toys, and occasionally our daughter can talk her big brother into a tea party. Both kids can shoot a gun and a bow. Both kids love to play, and help me cook. Our lives are constantly intertwined, which allows my husband and I to really get to know our kids. We spend so much time with them that we know their personalities, we know their likes and dislikes, we know their learning styles, and we are able to have real conversations without worrying about peer pressure and other influences.
We have been given a very unique opportunity, in our lives, to live so simply and fully immersed in each others lives. We know we are blessed and we work very hard to keep it that way.
~S~
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