Wow, I forgot about this thread! I remember reading this thread right before we took the plunge and bought our land and feeling like at least there are other people out there who have lived unusual lifestyles with kids. Hope you all don't mind me butting in with my story. Right now we live off grid and have for the last three years. We have built completely by ourselves a small strawbale house with a homemade composting toilet and woodstove heat. The home is passive solar with lots of overhanging porch to protect our bales and create outdoor rooms where I will eventually have an outdoor kitchen for my canning, brewing and cooking in the summer. The bales are covered with hand applied earthen plasters that I have mixed one bucket at a time. Our well has a handpump for water and I haul lots of buckets of water everyday. Hopefully by the end of the summer we will have running water and a more permanent solar set up. But in many ways I feel the upgrade is unnecessary.
I grow all of our produce in a very large garden and I am growing more staple crops like potatoes, wheat, oats, quinoa, amaranth, and field corn for ourselves and our animals (in addition to pasture and brush grazing). I also am growing an orchard and a permaculture style forest garden with persimmons, pawpaws, gooseberries, goumis and other unusual fruits and some perennial vegatables. I raise nubian dairy goats for milk and make cheese, yogurt and kefir. We raise chicken and ducks for egss, meat and also weed and slug control. We also keep bees for lots of honey and pollination. I am a passionate winter gardener and we eat kale, spinach, hardy salad greens like mache, cabbage and root vegatables from the garden and cold frames all winter as well as canned, dried and root cellared produce. I also gather many wild edible and medicinal plants to supplement our diet. We get all our firewood from the property and have done a lot of planting of native trees to increase diversity. I sell some of our produce and do bartering especially with honey.
I have three kids, so much of my day is spent juggling homestead chores, homeschooling, and nursing my toddler. It is fun but it can be really overwhelming. I do laundry with a washboard and wringer so that is very time consuming. Right now I am trying to get all my early spring planting in so I feel really busy. The kids love living this way and I am constantly amazed at how flexible children are. My kids love playing outside, eating from the garden and bathing in front of the woodstove in a washtub. In the winter I pile wool blankets and comforters on the beds and we all sleep together to stay warm, and during the day the camp out in front of the woodstove. When my youngest was a newborn it was really hard, I was overwhelmed with washing diapers and wet bedding but we dealt with it.
I am amazed at how few accidents we have had with the oil lamps, woodstove, open fires and sharp tools all over the place. When my middle son was about 4 he took a stick and started whacking on one of our beehives. I heard that cry that means something is really wrong and I see him surrounded by bees. My dh ran and grabbed him, brushed off as many bees as he could, handed him to me and then ran for it with all the bees chasing him. I took ds into the pumphouse, got the remaining bees off and found he had only a few stings on each hand as for once he was fully dressed and his long hair had protected his face. Needless to say he never bothered the bees after that.
I have had to assist goat birthings and we have had animals die. I can now butcher our meat expertly and make some good homemade sausage. I have driven 2 hours with a dead skunk in my car to get it tested for rabies because it had snuck in with my goats. Recently a mauled deer was found on my property and I am wondering if there may be a mountain lion around.
Overall I love this life; though we have to compromise (we have a car and a cell phone, for example), we are trying to create a meaningful life for ourselves and our kids and lessen our impact on the world at the same time.
So often I look at the beams of our little house or my beds in the garden and think how lucky I am; and sometimes I am near to tears trying to fit all the milking, planting, preserving, nursing, reading, baking, knitting and everything else in to one day. I am also positive about how much more I need to do; I plan on getting sheep for wool and meat, angora rabbits, more fruit trees, increase food production so I can do a stand at the farmer's market or a CSA, this year we want to put in a smaller swim pond and a large pond, the south porch needs to be cobbed and glassed in for a greenhouse...I figure at least dh and I are doing this while we are young and full of energy. I don't have a computer (or the power to run one) so my MDC time is limited to when we go to the library or the few times a month we visit friends and family, but I save lots of time by not having the internet as a constant distraction.
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