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Normally, in January, we would have cheeping baby chicks running back and forth in a large cardboard box beneath a glowing heat lamp in the kitchen...but not this year.
Normally we would have our Nubian goats expecting kids in February or March and the children would spend extra time in their pen stroking their big tummies and feeding them carrots...but not this year.
Normally I would have big dreams of lucsious green gardens and would have placed orders for heirloom seeds after spending many nights in November and December pouring over the catalogs that faithfully came in the mail each year...but not this year.
Normally our shelves of home canned foods and jams would be about halfway empty and after all that work from the previous summer to put food up, I would start looking forward to canning again in the not so distant future...but not this year.
Normally we would be looking foward to the first spring eggs our pullets would lay, those small little ones that always got us excited because we knew we would soon be flooded with a steady abundance of fresh, golden yolked eggs...but not this year.
This year is going to be VERY different for us, and we are already missing our family traditions and homey lifestyle immensely. For the past seventeen years, we have lived in the country and enjoyed our homesteading existance and I now realize, we took it all for granted. Never in our wildest dreams could we have imagined moving to the CITY of all places - we would never have even considered such a thing and would have laughed at anyone who told us we would make that drastic move... But it happened. Not because we wanted to, but because God called us to it and we obeyed. Sometimes the hardest thing is life is obedience, especially as adults...
For now, until God moves us back to the countryside and the homestead existance we all yearn for, we are transplanted homesteaders living on the grid on a city block and on a very busy city street - yet that yearning for homesteading ways and a simple life is still coming through even here. It's in our blood, and with winter slowing coming closer to it's end, springtime and all it's beauty and magnificence is calling to our hearts with whispered memories brought to mind and new experiences promised in the coming year...
For those who have always wished to live a homestead life but have never left the city, let me encourage you that you can STILL have a small homestead in your yard and home - and everything you learn can be put to even greater use if and when you move beyond the sidewalks to country life. I hope in part, that this simple little blog of mine will inspire many wanna-a-be homesteaders to take simple baby steps to begin their dream of homesteading - while still in the confines of the city. And even if you don't ever plan on living in the country, with a little work and day-dreaming anyone can have fun and learn new things that fall under the title of "homesteader." Homesteading is in the heart, not just where you live.
But first I should tell my story - the condensed version as the full version could take years to write out! And maybe you can see that country life and homesteading is a journey, a remarkable walk through life that helps define who you are and what is important in life.
I was born in Clark County, Nevada, outside of Las Vegas and we moved to the suburbs in the San Fernando Valley in Southern California when I was four years old. My father was an incredible carpenter who could do anything - literally - even work that others thought impossible (I have some wonderful stories to tell about that - but later :) He came from back east and met my mother by chance when he was wheeled into an emergency room with two broken legs after being in a car accident. One look at my mother though his semi-conciousness and he knew she would one day be his wife.
My mother had been born and raised on a cattle ranch her father owned in northern Nevada and would tell us wonderful stories about her childhood - some were wonderful, others sounded a bit painful though :) Like when the cows stepped on her toes, or the mean barn rooster tore out her hair. But mainly she painted a wonderful picture of childhood surrounded by God's beauty and nature, his laws in action in the form of livestock, gardening and the seasons. It was through those stories that my heart began to yearn for wilder places, old fashioned ways, simpler times and homey surroundings.
Years later, after my mother's death and graduating from nursing school - I met my husband in an emergency room and knew at first sight I would one day marry him. We both wanted to move beyond the city limits - but since he was (and still is) a police officer for LAPD and there is not much "wild space" within the confines of the city of Los Angeles, we weren't sure where we could go. We were and still are tied to his job.
I'm not sure how we found our first house in Green Valley, way up in the mountains surrounded by huge scrub oak trees that were hundreds of years old - but I do remember driving that winding canyon road and how excited we both got the father we went. The house was the cincher. It was an A frame home with solid tongue and groove walls. We didn't have alot of land, but we had three lots which meant we could have farm animals and there were areas that were not shaded by the large oaks where our gardens and orchards were soon planted.
Since I'm not overly timid about jumping in with both feet - we went wild. Those first few years we had dairy goats, a dairy holstein calf, meat rabbits, goslings and geese, ducklings and ducks, turkeys, chicks and chickens galore! We learned what NOT to do the hard way - and I was even hospitalized when our dairy calf got scours and I spent hours caring for her and came down with it myself!
Our gardens grew and I canned - beaming in pride to see shelf after shelf filled with beans, carrots, corn, soups and more. I was a happy homestead wife and our home reflected that. Dried herbs hung from the ceilings, home sewn curtains hung from the windows and home sewn quilts covered our bed...smells of cooking and baking were always present and often floated down the street which is what led to meeting several of our neighbors - especially when they could tell I was baking Whoopie Pies. They always found a reason to come to visit and we spent many happy afternoons in the kitchen talking country stuff...
Soon our children came along and things changed a little. My hands became busy with our three daughters but we still kept up with everything. My husband built our little red barn behind our home when our oldest daughter just turned a year old - and the following year we planted our orchard and I lugged bucket after bucket of water to water the trees three times a week for months when our second daughter was only two months old. The next year we had a huge strawberry garden and I sat and planted 300 strawberry plants - those long strawy colored wiggly roots with the tiny few green sprouts at the top when I was eight months pregnant with our third daugther.
So much had happened between those first few days of moving to the country and where we were years later with children and an established homestead. So many things learned, wild experiences shared, and wisdom gleaned through trial and error. And then we moved again.
This time it was to a small mobile home in the middle of nowhere - actually it was Gorman, California but it seemed like nowhere. And nothing would grow in the earth there - the water turned the dirt to slimy mud which in turn turned to hard concrete when dried! It was very depressing...but this was where we had our first pigs. So the experience was not all bad. When we found out we were expecting baby number four, we found a larger place in the high desert. An acre this time - twice what we had had in our first home. It was bare, flat, brown, hot and dry. Very unappealing - but I love a challenge so my husband and I set about building a new homestead. This was a very different learning experience as the soil was empty of nutrients, the environment was very hot and dry and our animals needed immediate shade to survive.
But build a homestead we did! Several years later we not only had our three girls, but our four boys had joined us too. We had planted a large beautiful orchard that did remarkably well despite the heat and a garden area that started small but grew quite large as compost from the animal pens was added. We had a pig pen, a chicken yard and chicken coop, homemade plywood poultry brooders and a goat pen that just last year we built a barn for. Our children thrived and our family was happy and content... We raised sheep, cows, goats, pigs, chickens, meat rabbits, turkeys, geese, ducks, and more. Our children showed their livestock at the fair and won 1st and 2nd place ribbons... We were a very happy family living what we had always wanted to live - a country life!
Then God called us to step out of our comfort zone in a very unusual and remarkable way. A lady renting a room from a neighbor had many many problems - drugs and alcohol the worst of them. She was being kicked out and had no way to care for her three tiny children that she had just gotten back from DCFS. We had been babysitting for her over several months when she needed help, and she asked us to take her children and care for them "for a while."
We assumed she was going to get her life straightened out and would take her children back within a month or two...but it became very obvious she wasn't capable of helping herself and her children were at risk. Because we only had a small, modest home of 1100 sq ft, which fit our family of nine snuggly - when we took in her 2 year old boy and twin 12 month old girls it suddenly became far too cramped. We began looking for a larger home in the country - but found absolutely nothing that would fit us. In desperation, we started looking towards the city as a possible housing source, our hearts sinking with the realization that God was calling us to move back to city life to continue caring for these little ones that weren't even our own - but they are God's children and it was obvious He wanted us to care for them. We moved - in faith - that God had called us to this task and although it was incredibly hard to do, we did it.
We found our home - 2600 sq ft and only 5 blocks from the community college (where our 15 adn 13 year old daughters are enrolled in classes). Over the past year we have taken the little ones to specialists and have found they are severely handicapped with too many problems to list (and because they are still under DCFS custody, I can't divulge their medical and psychological conditions - but they are SEVERE!!!). And yes, DCFS is a constant daily and weekly source of stress for us and we have been through several investigations brought on by the very disturbed mother...
So here we are - living in the city and realizing a new year is starting and it will be vastly different than any other year we have had since our marriage began 17 years ago... We know we are exactly where God wants us to be, but it is still hard. I can hear baby chick cheeping in my mind and see my children through memories tucked away in my head as they would crowd around the cardboard box and stroke and name the colored chicks that stood out to them. I remember the frigid February nights, with crystal stars sparkling above and my breath billowing out in huge white clouds of steam as I reached into a momma goat to help her deliver a stuck kid or her quadruplets when she was too tired to push out the last one - the hiss and smell of the coleman lantern that never put light just where I needed it... I can remember those first little green shoots coming up from the ground and how excited the children were and how they raced each other to the house to be the first to tell me the potatoes or carrots or lettuce was up - and how we frantically looked for ANY empty container to cover those baby greens when a cold spell came through that would freeze and kill our hopeful harvest.
So here I am, in the middle of January looking around my yard and home and trying to think of ways to grow a little garden and do some simple homesteading type chores and tasks to help us all keep those memories and experiences and knowledge alive and well until God can plant us back in the country where our hearts still belong.
A few things we will be starting on in the next few weeks will be to clear an area next to the house for a small garden. I also plan on finding some smaller rabbits than we're used to, so I can use their droppings for the garden and to keep our children used to handling the rabbits and cleaning up after them (a much smaller job that cleaning up after a homestead full of animals!). I have already ordered the seed for a kitchen counter salad garden - something I have done before and plan to have and keep going indefinately here. I'll write more about that in another blog entry. Since our backyard is basically empty except for a few rosebushes, I will be planting grapes, raspberries and an apricot tree (I can't imagine living without an apricot tree for canning apricots for cobblers and making apricot jam!!!). Depending on the behavior of our dogs, I may turn a corner of the yard into a raised strawberry bed and grow pole green beans too that can grow up strings secured to a pole above them. The strawberries will get some shade during the hot desert summer months and the beans do very well growing up the strings racing towards the sun. I want an herb garden too - but that may need to be planted in the FRONT yard of all places since the dogs would certainly trample it. I have a nice little area picked out for my herb garden in the front and plan to intersperse herbs throughout the flowers in the front yard too. They should blend in very well and it will be a challenge for my children to figure out which herb is which when I send them out to pick a sprig for dinner!!!
I have many more ideas - but will have to wait and write them in another blog. We learned to weave last January before we moved - and I hope to get the girls going on that soon as our loom has been silent in the corner far too long! And without so much to do "on the homestead" like before, maybe now we will have time to learn to spin as well and I will be grateful I don't have to shear the sheep first! (sheep shearing was one of my least favorite things to do next to mucking out the pigpen, and I was grateful my husband didn't have qualms about sitting on the ground amid desert ants with a sheep in his lap slowing shearing away...it was the only way we could do it without hurting the sheep and it worked well but I got far too itchy myself!).
It's late, my bed is calling, and I will look forward to writing more soon. Visit often as you never know when a new entry will go up and I really do enjoy sharing my life, thoughts, faith, and experiences with others - and I haven't even mentioned anything about our business, Hope Chest Legacy and how that started!!! I had trouble at first starting this blog - but I think I'm going to enjoy it more than I realized. SO many memories and things to share and say are bottled up inside me - and I hope to inspire and encourage families to learn a little about homesteading from the comfort of their own homes, a little step at a time :) It's far simpler than you think, and it starts in your heart not where you live... |
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