That moment when you don't have the herb you need to make supper. You go out to the greenhouse and blammo! In spite of the brutal cold, the lack of light, the thyme and lavender are both surviving. Victory!
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I don't need more garden planning or less circulation but seriously, I can't stop dreaming about this:
So, when you take a step back in your job, you take a lesser job for a cut in pay and a cut in stress, you scale back your week, you move into a smaller, cheaper house, you do something that reduces money and stress, that's sanity money. I recently not only gave notice in my Supervisor position, I've gone back to an old job that I love. It's a job that I rock, one with flexible hours and a massive pay cut. Yep, you read that right. Pay. Cut. Both lower wage and fewer hours. I was offered another job with a bigger wage and the potential for way more hours and tonight, after the poor Woodsman had to hear it all, we opted for the sanity money. The sanity money is enough to pay the bills - just. The reduction in stress is a major bonus, both because I can do this job in my sleep and still love it and because I'm outside of the other management stressors that were driving me nuts! I have some significant health stuff that definitely flares up with with stress. And frankly, the stress has been consuming a lot of my thought and creative energy - and exhausting the Woodsman and Teen who aren't big fans of seeing me stressed. And usually, I deal well with stress but caseload stress isn't the same as this stress. So, I took the advice that I often dispense - consider my priorities and move in that direction. So sanity money it is. It will let me enjoy most days at work, and still be able to be home with goats and chickens and the garden, not to mention the fam. And explore all of my creative ideas. Will there be challenges? Sure. I have the debt from my store to pay off and a grocery bill that needs to be cut in half. But are those challenges worth it? You bet. Nope, I'm not Moneyless though I feel myself pulled in a less money direction. Especially after the Teen and I kicked off the New Year by watching this: The Teen may have been gaming and had the youtube playing proximally, rather than specifically watching however, he absorbed enough of it to facilitate an interesting conversation about Mark Boyle's message and his mission. Thanks to google and a bit of research, we also had a great conversation about his background (business, for those naysayers in the audience). I love the message he's sharing - highlighting the fact that we'd likely waste less food if we grew our own and the true cost of cheap clothes. And the man can talk the business talk, which I think is good. It shouldn't be needed but truthfully, it is. Someone with a degree in business is much more likely to be listened to - and more difficult to discredit with jargon, and 'insider knowledge' - when the person has formal training but still rejected that path. If I'm such a supporter, why not go moneyless myself? It's a question I've explored a lot, and need to explore some more. Truth be told, it tempts me often. If we pulled up stakes, built a towable tiny house, and bought a truck to tow it, we could be debt free and that, my friends, is tempting. But, it's not wholly how I want to live. To sum up quickly, it's currently -15*C (5*F for those of you who live with fahrenheit) and almost knee deep snow. So, foraging here is limited, and in a tiny house, storage is limited as well. So, I would need some way to get food during the winter and I'm not a fan of relying on purchasing food for my way of life. There is the argument in favour of moving somewhere that year 'round food production/foraging is an option however, an equally strong option (or perhaps stronger) is that to pull up stakes would mean leaving the community we have here. I actually don't believe there is a realistic way to be an island, as it were. I think self sufficiency exists best in the context of community. I'm not an intentional community type, neither do I need people around me all of the time; in fact, I've been at home since Boxing Day with little contact with the outside world, including my friends and am quite content. But I also have no illusions that doing it all by myself all of the time just isn't realistic. I don't think that a single person or even a small family can grow all of their own food, make their own clothes, etc. Even Pa and Ma Ingalls couldn't pull it off in Little House. They did most of it but they still needed to trade for some things and that was when you could. I don't think my local grocery store would let me trade my egg abundance for for sugar though once upon a time, you could do exactly that. I also feel, very acutely, the call to land stewardship. In my region huge tracts of forest and farmland are being "developed". First, everything marketable is taken off them - timber, top soil, whatever. And then big houses, or huge houses, are built upon the remains. If we were to sell, the acres of trees and pasture we're protecting by doing almost nothing* would no longer be protected and at the mercy of "development". The cost of that protection is an exchange of cash until we own it outright (and then a bit more cash annually for taxes). There is something in that for me. Now, if there was a critical mass of people who share Mark's views it would be different as well. My experiences with intentional communities hasn't been all that positive. In the circumstances I've observed, the intentions ended up miles from the end result. The Woodsman has seen other examples - most notably on when touring (musically) a few years ago. They were more urban examples however, and the issues of land use and conversation weren't prevalent the way they are in forested areas. If we were to live in an urban area, I would look for a community like that - one with a shared kitchen and a community but individual space and privacy as well. My strongly developed I (introvert) just can't work well in a busy, populated, heavy social obligation community. I need quiet and space. Now on that note, watch the video while I head back out into the gorgeous wilderness with my dog. |
AuthorI'm a 40-something writer and smallholder living in the wilds of BC with my family, our small herd of Nigerian Dwarf Goats, chickens, ducks, dogs, and cats. Archives
August 2017
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