What this life is about.

One month of Winter is under our belts, with two more on the horizon. This is when the true cold of the Tennessee Valley is born. It starts of staggering about in fits and starts like a newborn calf. A little snow here, a heavy rain there. That calf grows quickly and by February, you get an idea that you might have the meteorological equivalent of Bodacious the Carbray Bull. We don't (usually) get storms as large as our neighbors in the northeast; Lord and Lady watch over all your farms as you weather the white north, my homestead brethren.

Homesteaders...we seem to be a wide and varied fraternity, a Clan like a quilt of many colors. Whether you are raising organic chickens and eggs, non-GMO grains, angora wool or fresh, hormone free milk, you are helping the Earth. Our lives were never meant to be lived in slave service to companies such as Monsanto or JBS. To each individual or couple, clan or community willing to break good, rich earth and bring back green life to our planet, I tip my hat.

Finding my homestead is more than just securing a house for my family where I will have the space to raise animals that please me. It is more than filling my freezer with goat, mutton, pork and chicken though that is certainly part of it. It's about freeing myself from the chains of a society that has dictated my life lived like food in a TV dinner. All prearranged in the proper order: Birth, School, Work, Marriage, Children, Death. Freeze dried corn, high fructose corn syrup sweetened GMO apples, something shaped like a chicken breast which is really factory feedlot chicken parts, hydrogenated vegetable solids and soy.

It is about finding the life that nourishes me with its sustainable bounty but also with its generous work. To nurture my spirituality with the tending of goats, bringing forth life and understanding death. My church is in the good, rich earth and I pray with dirty hands for gentle rain, bountiful harvest, good stock and a healthy Clan.

And I am grateful for the time I have been given.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle...it was a mantra that I learned while siting cross legged on the floor of my first grade class room. It is a daily physical activity that lends itself to the spiritual notion that we are the caretakers of the earth. Every day I get out of the company vehicle I take out my plastic water bottles, my aluminum soda cans and my glass juice bottles, placing them in our recycling bin.

Reusing is a practice I cherish. Every small trashcan in my house is lined with a grocery bag, the yarn I found discarded places in my yarn bag and awaiting the day I use it to crochet something lovely. I constantly reuse water bottles to carry water with me where ever I roam.

Reducing is hard in a family of seven folks but we do our part by feeding all the cat and dog the same protein rich, corn, soy and wheat free food. We wear our shoes until they fall apart on us; loathe is this Clan to buy something new unless absolutely needful. Clothing that my daughter grows out of is given to family members with younger children or donated the local shelter. Left overs are always eaten in this house, what humans can not eat goes to the dog or cat, what they cannot eat goes into our compost heap.

We do what we can to ensure we have a planet to give to our children. I think of my children's children and the children to come after them. I want them to know a world rich in trees, animals and humans that actually care. Little things make the start to a change big enough to affect our entire world. Next time you are in the park and see a piece of paper on the ground, place it in a near by recycling bin or if nothing else, a trash can. Take your plastic bags with you the next time you go to Aldi's or reuse those empty Aldi's boxes you brought your groceries home with as a handy place to put your cook books. That is what I did with one of those giant Taco Bell promotion boxes!

Do what you can, when you can and be grateful for the time you have been given.

Through December

I've been to the mountain left my tracks in the snow
Where souls have been lost and the walking wounded go
I've taken the pain no girl should endure
But faith can move mountains
Faith can move mountains of that I am sure.
Just get me through December
A promise I'll remember
Get me through December
So I can start again.

- "Get me through December" Allison Krauss
I have taken so much away from this song during these cold, wet and shadow drenched days. I have the love and light of home; even so the soul wanders down the sheer passes of my mountain mind. I think of the losses of the Dying Time, bidding goodbye to some the fiercest joys of the flesh and giving farewell to soft orange kittens with white feet. From this song I have taken peace, I have touched the face of serenity and laid down in comforting arms, knowing no pain and slipping into the softest of lavender kissed sleep.

"Get me through December" is from Allison Krauss' album "A Hundred Miles or More."

It is a wonderful song to sit and sip cold pressed Red Jacket apple juice watch the night waltz in like a beautiful woman in a black ball gown. This post isn't really about homesteading but about the homesteader, a piece of her joy shown to make her human. We will return to the want of the farm and thoughts of goats and fresh eggs, to the pyment steadily dropping out yeast and of the sourdough starter in the baking cabinet.

Until then, listen to this song and know sweet joy.

Pyment on my mind, miles on my heart

My pyment continues to settle out yeast and is maintaining a good temperature even after last night when the outside dipped to a frosty 8F. The moon was just a drop down from full and the night was clear and sharp. If not for the 19 mph wind, I might have been tempted to build a fire in the pit and watch the stars come out. As it was I brought Durellen inside, made myself a mug of pipping hot orange tea, dolloped honey and settled in for a few episodes of United States of Tara.

The 2015 Murray McMurray Hatchery catalog came in the other day; I want chickens so badly. Winter brings a waiting time for all the promises of spring. For sure and in fact, we are getting our Italian honeybees when the weather turns warm. It means honey for the summer if we are lucky, mean in the autumn and winter.

I am also considering attending a writing class to sharpen up my ideas on how to write a novel and get it published. Eventually I hope to write about my life on my homestead, how I give back to the community surrounding Knoxville. In the current time, this is the function of this blog but the makings of a book surrounding my year with honeybees can almost be heard buzzing in my head. The course would be held at UT here in town, so I will look into the possibilities of enrolling.

My mind keeps wondering "I can see it but how I am going to get there." My homestead, something that seems to be soaking into my now life like wine into a carpet but only just so. I long for the day I can work for me, all day and into the night if I want to or must. I continue to clean houses in the mean time to put food on the table and pay the rent. Sometimes I worry that this is all my left will ever be, that I will put everything into this and not put for foundation to my dreams.

Negative thinking...it comes with the head cold. Cold sunshine in the morning will shake off those doubts and tomorrow is Friday and then the weekend. I will tuck in early tonight with a bowl of soup on my belly, under my unicorn blanket and next to my heater. I will remember to be thankful it is not -12 degrees F and say a prayer for Cold Antler Farm. Winter is a strict master in the white north.

I carry around a card in my pocket that says "One day I will sit on my homestead and I will not remember how this life left me hurting."

One day, I will sit there in my rocking chair and make it true.