Finding our way

I have a few things to talk about in this post; a bit of farm action, a sprinkling of homesteading insight and just a dash of personal awareness.  But let’s get the farm stuff out the way first.

I’ve been going on about the end of construction and the beginning of farming since the start of the year. Well, guess what?  We’re still building stuff BUT we have placed a seed order….Hurrah!  However, some of the projects that we’ve completed have made me really proud.  Not least of all, the poly tunnel (you can find pictures of the build in the last post). 

You may find it hard to understand why I appear delighted to have a huge plastic cylinder constantly in my vision.  There are many reasons; firstly the opportunities it offers to have year round supply of fresh produce, and not just veggies, but fish too.  Ian is attending an Aquaponics course at the local university with a view to installing an Aquaponics system in the middle of the tunnel.  Basically this is a giant fish tank, usually stocked with tilapia or prawns.  Then there are various types of veggies growing either on top or alongside.  It’s a kind of symbiotic process; the fish waste is transformed by bacteria to provide vital food and nutrients to the produce which in turn provides oxygen, etc. to help the fish thrive.  It’s a newish concept (although it’s origins are from Mayan agriculture) that really fits with our permaculture values.  It’s really exciting to find interesting initiatives to aid us in a journey to self-sufficiency and that underpin our ethics.  (See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquaponics for more info on Aquaponics).

Another permaculture value is about building communities and so the second reason that the poly-tunnel project made me proud was the community driven building process.  As usual, most of the materials are salvaged and reclaimed.  The building took a lot of blood sweat and tears, but nothing in comparison to the day we put the poly on the damn thing.  The day was miserable, wet, cold and windy, not ideal conditions for manipulating giant swaths of poly!  However, my heart had plenty of opportunities to swell.  Our friends and neighbours turning up and enduring these conditions to help us wrestle to wrong-sized, fly-away poly rendered me speechless.  Also, although I am usually loathed to publicly credit Ian with anything, watching my brilliant husband problem solve and lead the troops was awesome.  After we started pulling the poly over the frame, we realized that we’d been given the 20ft wide poly instead of the 30ft we needed.  But what can you do when you’ve unrolled it and got it covered in mud and there’s volunteers there waiting to help?  Nothing, you have to make it work.  Anyway, as we discovered the problem I turned to one of our friends and said “Wait for it, Ian will think of something in the next 30 seconds” and I saw his brain whirring into action.  I counted down from 30 and by the time I got to 6 Ian started “Maybe we could….”.  Of course, he made it work and I was so proud.  I normally resent it when people say “Good job Ian” every time we complete a building because I’m there too working through the cold and the dark, but he can have credit for the poly tunnel, he made it a triumph.

I’ve been forced to think about my place and approach as a homesteader.  This occurred when I had an accidental meeting with two inspiring women.  The ladies in question are two sisters, each one a homesteader with a family.  They live in different places in the North of BC.  Immediately this evoked admiration.  Homesteading is hard work and takes commitment, but doing it in the north with extreme weather and Kodiak Bears rendered me awe-struck.  So when they asked if they could come and see our little homestead, I was both honoured and struck by inferiority complex at the same time.

Watching these two ladies walk around Laurica Farm admiring the projects and bickering about the ‘right way’ to homestead was fascinating and hilarious.  One of the ladies’ approach to homesteading is to make EVERYTHING from scratch.  She literally spends all her time making everything from bread (including grinding her own flour) to candles, deodorant, and household furniture.  She even artificially inseminates her own cow…!  The other sister claimed that this was fools work.  She informed me that while her sister worked her fingers to the bone, she was sitting in the warmth of her kitchen cutting out coupons.  Of course this means that she has to run 3 chest freezers and might have to eat pizza for weeks at a time but she’s happy that she’s never broken a sweat on her homestead.

This exhausting visit, which seemed to involve me doing a lot of mediation between the two sisters in their 70’s, made me think about my place in the homesteading community.  I had never thought about my individual approach to the lifestyle.  I feel like I’m at a happy medium between these two women.  I make all our food from scratch but will look for deals on my deodorant.  And I’m ok staying along that middle-road.  It may not be as cost efficient as the ladies’ lifestyles but it’s not as time consuming either, nor do I have to face a freezer full of processed foods just to save a few dollars.  I think we’re doing ok at it to.  We’ve significantly reduced our grocery shopping bill to $75 - $100 a week for a family of four; that’s pretty good.

 

The next part of this blog is a personal observation.  Some of you might not like it because I’m at risk of sounding a bit preachy.  I apoligise in advance but this blog was always meant to document the transition from our urban lifestyle so here goes.

The final reflection, sparked partly by the sisters, relates to how mass consumerism and societal pressure makes us believe we need certain things & that we must live in a prescribed and generic way.  As our family has stripped luxuries from our life to reinvest in the basics, I come to realize what a load of corporate BS it is.  I looked at the sisters, both in their 70’s, and saw two healthy, fit, astute and empowered women who have always enjoyed a stress free life (the one thing they did agree on).  I thought about the things I imagined I would miss about our old lifestyle.  For example, I used to indulge in the occasional pedicure but view it as a necessity.  I haven’t done this since we moved, not due to some grandiose hippy gesture, purely due to lack of time and money.  But hey, I managed to keep my toenails painted all by myself.  I haven’t developed scales or dry skin on heels.  The only weirdness about my feet is my freaky tiny toes, and that’s genetic.  My hair is not freshly cut or coloured, but my husband hasn’t left me, no one has de-friended me and I haven’t been asked to leave any respectable restaurants due to my offensive roots.  I haven’t shopped for crap from Home Sense and people still visit my house.  There are no new shoes from Aldo in my closet or new clothes from whatever the trendiest shop is at the moment, but no one says a word when I go out in my farm footwear.  I haven’t set foot inside the new Cactus Club restaurant to dine from their generic, franchised menu and I haven’t been cast out of society, nor am I starving to death.

The things that seemed important to me before (all of which cost money)  have been undermined by my new outlook and that fact that nothing bad has happened to me by going without them, in fact, I feel more relaxed, more liberated and less pressure. 

I’ve realized that there is not a set homesteading model that I have to aspire to, meeting these two ladies and 7 month out of suburbia has encouraged me to forge my own path down the long and windy homesteading road.  Let’s just hope I don’t trip on my uncut hair on the way!