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Who am i? Im a wife, a mother, a daugther, a grandmother, a sister, a homesteader, a blogger, a photographer, a scrapbooker, a hatchaholic, a horsewoman, a chicken addict, an animal lover, a peta hater, an ebayer, a leather crafter, and of course..still underconstruction! So the next question people usually ask me is...How did you become a homesteader? Completely by accident! I didnt even know what a homesteader WAS! I just knew that i was sick of living in the city and wanted to move out to the country. Like most people we talked about it a lot, but didnt DO anything about it. Then one night i was sleeping in the truck at the horse pasture five miles from our house waiting for a mare to foal when someone stole half my round pen..right out from under my nose! The round pen wasnt more than 10 feet from where i was sleeping. That was it! We started looking for property in the country. Of course being poor..the first qualification of a homesteader.. all we could afford was undeveloped land. We fell inlove with the first land we looked at..50 acres of prairie grass and woods with no well, no utilities and of course no house! What it did have was rolling hills, gorgeous ponds and lots of wildlife (of course we call most of that wild life predators now lol!).
In the blink of an eye we had bought our land, spent our savings fencing the perimeter and moved our horses out. Then we learned the first two lessons that homesteading had to teach us. Never expect things to go as planned. And never ever ever buy land without the money to drill a well! Of course since we had things so carefully planned.. God felt the need to remind us just who was in charge! So began a very long 2 year drought here in Oklahoma. Our 50 acres of grass turned brown. Hay prices soared out of sight and there we were hauling water not just for us ..but for the horses too! Then gas prices skyrocketed and the commute back and forth to Tulsa started to take a huge bite out of our finances..and with it our ability to build! So our dream cabin became 4 walls with plastic tyvek house wrap and windows because thats all we could afford. The first few weeks of winter were spent trying to heat an uninsulated cabin with a wood stove. It was not fun! Then of course since things do always come in threes Den fell from the roof of a house he was building and broke his wrist. Work on the cabin came to a screeching halt because there wasnt much he could do with just one hand. Overtime at work became non-existent. And I learned how to cut wood with the chain saw in a hurry! I didnt get my nickname of *chainsaw mama* for nothing lol! That first winter was a very long..very cold..and very dry one. It took us almost a year and a half to be able to afford to have a well drilled. You simply cannot appreciate hot running water until you have taken a year of sponge baths with water heated on top of a wood burning stove! I still am in awe every time i turn on a faucet and get water! What a blessing! Have you ever wondered just how desperate a person can get to have running water? Well we couldnt afford to have a deep well drilled so Den decided to dig a point well. The only problem is our cabin sits on solid sand stone! Good for the cabin..bad for the well! Night after night he chiseled his way through sand stone telling himself that he had to eventually break through. I now have a 10' x 3' hole beside the cabin that is 15' feet deep! He never did hit water before we could afford to drill a *real* well. So i thought well i'll turn *the hole* into a storm shelter or a cool storage for my veggies. The only problem is.. as soon as the drought was over and we started to get rain..the hole was *always* full of water! Oh well!! The best laid plans of mice and men... :) |
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Posted by Jamie
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