Hot Air

Strange things seem to happen here at the holidays... on Thanksgiving I woke to my neighbor's cow in my yard and on Christmas Eve we woke to a pounding on our door. People were here inquiring if they could land their hot air balloon in our yard. A hot air balloon. Of course we said yes...and several minutes later it was laying sideways in the driveway as they let the air out and detached the basket. Funny, the things you see out here in the country.
Nothing much new has been going on here, which is why I haven't been writing. There hasn't been much to say, other than that I am caught up a bit in my own head, trying to find my way back to the homesteading I love so much from this world I have fallen into of caring what people think, dressing to impress and aiming to please everyone around me. To be honest, that isn't me at all and it is taking some adjusting to figuring out how to balance the work side of me and the real side of me. It's challenging in that I don't really work hard physically and that's all I really want to do around my house. It's been easy to get caught up in a sort of lethargy that takes hold and sort of sucks the will to do anything at all out of you. I'm slowly getting it back, but it's been a rough way to go.
My moods have been a lot more balanced lately- that is to say that I feel flat and a bit empty like everything is colossally boring, except I know of all these things I used to love and now I can't bring myself to really care so much about anything, which totally sucks. I love homesteading, I love the lure of being independent and self-sufficient out here on my pretend farm. (That is, it will someday be a farm.) I love this lifestyle, but I am having such a hard time getting going again, getting over the hump of this mental block that I am sure I am making much more difficult than it should be.
I need some inspiration, and my darling hubs got me some for Christmas in the form of Jenna Woginrich's new book, Barnheart. It's neat to hear the story of another real-life homesteader and all the things she has gone through. I'm reading it and probably will read her other book, Made from Scratch again shortly after to get my juices flowing again.I just love Jenna's writing and like her, long to be making money with my words so I can live out the dream of homesteading full time.
That's another realization I have come to these recent weeks....I want to farm, but I want a subsistence farm, not a farm for profit. I don't want to raise or grow food for other people, just for myself and my family with a little bit to give away to others. I think that is one of the things that separate me from others in this niche- that I don't want to really farm. I want to SemiFarm, just for us.
Do you want to farm or semi-farm? What do you think the difference is for you? How do you balance who you are at work with who you are at home- are they different faces to the same person or do they integrate well for you? How do you do it? I would love to hear...

Thanks for listening to my hot air and about the hot air. I promise this blog will get better and better as I practice my writing and practice my thinking with this whole new way of living I am learning. Give me your feedback about what you like and hate so I can keep on growing and going.

Baaaa Humbug

I'm not really one who gets into the holidays. To me they seem mostly about stress, rushing around, spending money you don't have on things people don't need and encouraging rampant consumerism. I want a simpler holiday, home with my family, without all the parties and the hustle and bustle. I want to do it slow, cook a goose all day and hang out with my family enjoying each other. Still wishing there were sheep bleating in the back yard to my sentiments of "baa" humbug, but we'll get there someday eventually.
I'm really blessed with all I already have. I have a steady job, some freelance gigs (though I'd happily take more of that kind of work), a (mostly) healthy family and a pretty architecturally stable roof for over our heads. Our cars are old but they run well. Our neighbors are nice people and not serial killers and I can forget to lock my door and not worry that the place will be empty when I return. The chicken coop is built and ready to go with some fencing and next year we'll welcome some hens to the property. I have two loving dogs who are a huge part of our family and two cats and a fish that also help keep up company.
This year has taken a downward curve on the financial side of things, so there won't be much under our tree but there'll be some. What's more important are the two other people who'll be sitting there with me in pj's christmas morning, next to the fake tree with the handmade ornaments others have given us. That's what really matters and I hope I can put smiles on their faces with what little we've scraped up.
It's a simple Christmas at the SemiFarm, and maybe it is a simple holiday where you live too, but that's okay. We're simple low-key people and we like it that way. Homegrown, homemade and homespun are how we roll, and if I can't keep up with the outside world spinning at a million miles an hour I'll take my dusty living room and broken old reclined and family any day of the week. Our hearts are way bigger than what would fit under the tree anyways and that's where real gifts come from, not the mall.
After tonight's office holiday party,  the only one I'll go to, I'm going home to my kid, my dogs, my husband to sit near the lights on my Christmas tree, enjoy a glass of local wine and be myself at home in comfort, slow and easy.
Wishing you and yours a holiday season full of what really matters.

Winter Weather Preparedness

Here at the SemiFarm we are gearing up for our first snowfall of the season, putting plastic over drafty windows and readying the plow. They're only calling for a couple of inches down where we live but as much as 6 inches up in the northern counties. We aren't going to get too dumped on but it will be blistery, windy and cold so it was a good time to squelch any drafts that might be lurking before the heating bill (we're all electric) goes through the roof.
Today was hubs' birthday and we didn't do too much celebrating because that's the way he likes it~ as close to a day like any other as he can get. Presents were exchanged, dinner was ate, and everything carried on just like every Thursday here at the homestead.
The neighbors are almost back from their trip, but the cow hasn't really wandered any more. It's been a quiet ho-hum sort of time here, a little on the boring side.

Me, I'm searching for a new weekday routine as I adjust to a five day workweek- five days in a row, that is. Banking has been very different than retail in a lot of ways but the schedule, though I love it, has been the hardest to adjust to. Mornings are the same as they ever were but I have so much time in the evening and no real routine of what to do with it just yet. Maybe some yoga is in my future before bedtimes once I gather up enough energy. This awesome Ohio weather has me so exhausted lately I've started to take a vitamin D supplement to help with the sleepiness.

Making a dog sweater for our newest dog, Jabba, who came home a few weeks prior to Thanksgiving, He's a boxer mix and gets so chilly when he has to go outside even though it isn't cold yet, so we're prepping not only the house but the puppies as well.

Otherwise, things here are pretty dull and I mosey through my days half in a sleepwalk. I really need to start making things by hand again, doing things the slow way. I think that brings the magic to homesteading and keeps all the chores from sucking~ knowing you are connected to some sort of past, something bigger than yourself with your actions. Maybe this weekend as we put up the tree and get in the holiday spirit I'll start baking bread to heat the house up and make it smell nice and can some items for gifts this year. With all the expenses we've had lately a good, low-budget homegrown Christmas is in order and I haven't time to knit.

Hope you and yours are bundled up warm this evening with a cup of hot tea or cocoa all snuggled in for the first bit of snow.

Two Sides of the Fence

I apologize for not writing more recently. There is going to be a bluntness to this post you won't often get from me. I'm usually much more cerebral and intellectual in my posting, but reader, this time, I think the truth shows more about what this blog is about, what my life is about, and how my goals are colored though that lens. So bear with me as I bare my soul here a bit and please don't think differently of me if you enjoy my blog. It's still about homesteading and it will always be, but maybe with a different angle than you are used to.
The truth is I have bipolar disorder and have been battling an awful depression, something straight out of a greytoned commercial where all you do is look sad and sleep. Until today I think I could honestly say I could barely smile and felt I had little or nothing to look forward to in life at all. I'd cry at random if you looked at me sideways or sometimes even if you just said I did something wrong (just ask my poor boss). I was a hot mess, but I think that's finally lifting a bit. When I get in a funk like that it's hard to think let alone write intelligible sentences that might provoke thought or tug heartstrings. Hence my absence here. A friend of mine met me for dinner the other day and asked if I was quitting the blog because I hadn't written in so long. It was hard not to cry just at that. This blog is my life and writing is what I am. Anyone who has ever battled depression knows it is more than just being sad: it is all-encompassing. You feel like you are drowning and it is hard to remember to wake up and brush your teeth let alone be grateful for what you have and how well everything is going in your life.
It needs to be said that my life has been almost without drama and as normal as can be through my whole depressive episode, although we did lose a car and have to suddenly replace it. No one has gotten sick or died, we are all still employed (again, thank you to my very understanding new supervisor), my house is fine, all is well... just I wasn't and I couldn't help it.Really I couldn't, and for no good reason at all. Thanks you to my fabulous friends and family who have been helping me as I adjust to a new life with meds and learning to combat my stress when it starts before it gets too terribly bad and learning to adjust to sometimes rapid ups and downs my mind throws at me.

The upswing started Thanksgiving Day, when I awoke to my dog going crazy in the back yard after several hours of too much depressive sleep. I looked out the back window to find my neighbor's cow, Uncle Wiggly, staring back at me from next to the chicken coop, knee deep in the mud that is our yard when it's as rainy as it's been. He'd decided to take a Thanksgiving morning romp by himself outside his pasture and had busted out and wandered over to our yard.
Ordinarily I'd just walk over and have the neighbors help with the cow but they are currently in Russia for a month adopting some children so no one was home and I had no one to call about it. We stood there staring at each other for a few minutes and he tried to eat my daughter's pants until we began to walk back toward his pasture. Thankfully, he followed us and waited patiently until I figured out how to open the gate he had busted through wide enough for him to get back in and stayed there until we discovered how to latch it back up securely.
So that's how this wanna-be farmer spent her Thanksgiving, sweet talking cattle and taking Prozac. Some things around here might not look normal and I might be fighting  this uphill battle in my mind everyday until things get a little leveled out, my posts may be sporadic and make little sense sometimes, but deep down at the bottom of it all there's a lot of heart, a big part of me that just wants to provide as much for my family from these 2.5 acres that I can, that just wants to be happy with the simple things and leave the drama for some other folks. If it takes meditation and pharmaceuticals to make it happen, so be it. I'll be chasing after my dream with this bottle of pills by my side to keep me going.
My friends can't be available 24/7, so here's to hoping you don't think less of this homesteader for needing a little help to get by from some other source and that you'll keep listening to my ramblings whether I am a little down on my luck or grinning like a cow out of his pasture on Thanksgiving morning.

Saying Goodbye

The blog here has been quiet lately, mostly due to my beginning a new job and not having the time or energy to keep up with it as well as my freelance gigs. Things have been churning here at the Semi-Farm, and we've been busy nearly every day and relishing our downtime as soon as we are afforded it.
It all started with a casual hunt for a new career during my leave in betweeen times of weeding the garden. I was fortunate enough in this rough economy to impress someone with my resume and personality and was offered a job with a local bank where I'd work hours similar to my husband and, for the first time in my adult life, no evenings or weekends. The pay is much less than I made at my last job, but the trade-offs in scheduling and vacation benefits are well worth the little belt tightening we will have to endure. I just couldn't say no, so I turned in my notice and have been in training ever since, learning a whole new system and various policies and government regulations I never before thought I'd ever need to know. It's been invigorating, exhausting and stressful but fun.
In between commuting to Sandusky and Norwalk, each over an hour from home, for a month, we've managed to finish painting the chicken coop and now it only needs a shelf with some nest boxes, a perch and a chicken door and we are ready to go. We have decided to wait until spring to bring our girls home, as we can take our time with fencing and building a covered area for them to run in for the winter months. So our poultry adventures are stalled for the moment as the days grow shorter, cooler and, at the moment, more moist than we'd really like.
Yesterday we said our final farewell to our first garden which, for weeks now, we'd slowly been retiring to the compost bin as the last of our peppers and eggplants were harvested. I've learned a lot from that patch of land this year, including having  patience for the earth and myself and the ability to see mistakes as opportunities rather than failures. The earth is a grand teacher is we're observant enough to hear her over the hustle and bustle of our crowded and chaotic lives. When I feel like imploring, it's most often because I haven't made the time to spend outside, breathing in clean air and with the grass beneath my feet. Especially inside the shady woods, all my problems seem to drift away on the wind, hastened along by the soft rustling of leaves, whether overhead or underfoot. I'm reminded by the grace of the seasons that some times my greatest efforts are too much pushing and too forceful and if I step back and let go, magic will certainly follow. This is evidenced in last year's spontaneous tomatoes grown from playtime creativity and this year by the fully formed butternut squash that emerged from the brush that grew over last year's compost. When I try to hard and rush things, my impatience stunts my eventual progress. This is a lesson my over-caffienated life needs repeated, often and loudly.
Otherwise, life carries on here at a slower pace now that training is over and the garden laid to rest. I am knitting my first sock very slowly and deliberately and am enjoying the calm before the winter sets in, meeting new faces and adjusting to an autumn of ease and reflection.
As winter's cold chill threatens a forced rest indoors in a few short weeks, I'll be outside enjoying the leaves and the crisp fall air and remembering that,like careers and seasons, soon everything eventually changes.

A Song for Your Sunday

video from here

Coop De Grace