Off The Beaten Path

Yesterday, I was away from home allllll day. We spent a grand total of one hour at home, between 830 and 930am. One of the children chose to spend that whole hour indulging in a personal drama. So fun. Grocery store, hardware store, dollar store for sketchbooks, pencils, erasers, paintbrushes, then off to homeschooler’s group.…

The kiddos got to have playday. The cousins visited, and got a taste of the off-grid country-kid life. They found a few things challenging to get their minds around — “you don’t have running water? Like at all?” “Sure we do. The pump is over there. If you want running water, carry the jugs faster.…

When homesteading, very often, it is a shoestring operation at least for a while. Eventually, maybe, there is financial excess and the ability to do things the convenient way, but for the first years it is always a down-to-the-wire, more projects than money or time proposition. As such, there is a mindset that develops –make…

One would assume that a person would eventually become accustomed to change and instability while living the Wild West sort of life. One would be wrong. The human mind is almost infintely adaptable, which means that new things become ‘normal’ very quickly. It doesnt take long at all for a temporary thing to become permanent…

Husband started work today. It’s a big change. We’ve had no schedule but our own for over a year, now we all have to adjust to early mornings and watching the clock. His car is stuck rather firmly in the ice right now, so for the time being, I am a twice-daily taxi service. I…

After three blissfully quiet days, we headed down to pick up the kiddos this morning. And in the killing of many birds with one stone, also laundy, bathing, charging of batteries, sitting in upholstered chairs and the making of a very large batch of chocolate chip cookies. Husband and kiddos made the cookies. He’s heading…

When we left the subject of our mattress, the status of it had not yet been determined. I had pumped it up firmly and that is where things stood. Well. I checked it after an hour or two, and ’twas most decidedly not firm. Hypothesis: leak. Method of observation: remove mattress to main floor. Pump…

We currently sleep on an air mattress. Not because we wish to –we have a lovely, comfortable, handmade wool mattress stored at a friend’s — but because we had no choice. The sleep loft is tiny. At 4x6x2, only a very specific mattress size would fit. So off to the camping section we went. There…

The Kiddos are enjoying a sleepover, so we got to sleep in this morning, and have had the day to enjoy a little quiet space and the chance to eat food without listening to a litany of complaints. Given I got a lovely chunk of corned beef brisket on sale the other day, that means…

For reasons I have yet to figure out, two of my children think potatoes are evil things, put on earth only to vex them, personally. They’ll eat fries, chips and hashbrown patties, but simply putting potatoes in food is a war crime. Well, I frequently commit first degree potato. Premeditated and with malice aforethought. Partially…