Getting There

Not my brightest moment.

Last Saturday, I spent the afternoon driving around to all the different grocery stores in our area, stocking up on all the sale items at each store. I do this every week in an effort to stretch our grocery dollars as far as possible. The roads were wet and sloppy that day. One turn in the road before our driveway, our van slid to the side in the wet snow, and smashed quite hard into the curb. The wheel rim was pretty damaged - a big crack and dent.

My husband, I must say, was very nice about it. He didn't even frown. But I felt so foolish!

At first we thought maybe it wouldn't matter - but as the week progressed, the crack grew and Chris had to leave work early yesterday to visit the junkyard for a new rim. It cost $125.

Ironic, isn't it? Here I was trying to hard to save every penny, and instead I ended up costing us over a hundred. I was so ticked at myself. We are supposed to be saving everything we can right now for a downpayment, not plunking down money for car repairs. 

Oh well. These things happen. Let's hope I can manage the rest of the winter without any more mishaps...

Looking back, looking forward.

2011 was a great year for our family. We welcomed a new member of our family (who, I might add, is growing cuter and sweeter every day) and Chris was blessed with a good job (as an industrial machine builder) that he enjoys. 

And how did I do in my journey towards a simpler life? Despite our tiny, shaded, soggy backyard, I did manage to grow some herbs and make some healing salve, as well as dry some herbs for use in the kitchen. (Interestingly though, I found that even the rosemary and sage were weak on flavour - I am guessing this is a direct result of not getting enough sun.)

I made herbal tinctures for the first time this year - dandelion and lemon balm - and have not used them. I found the alcohol was just too strong for me (I don't drink at all, not for moral reasons but just because I don't like it). I think in the future I will stick to herbal teas.

Our green bean harvest was decent, but our tomatoes were a stunning failure. And just to prove that our back yard is cursed - I planted several zucchini plants and only got a single zucchini! Who ever heard of such a thing...

I didn't do some of the things I had planned for 2011--I decided not to buy a pressure canner because I really don't have room to store it here. And I actually canned less fruit this summer than the last year, not more. No pickles either. But I have continued to learn the skills required to cook from scratch, and improve my homemaking in general. I now make all of our bread by hand, which is a big step I suppose.

My sewing machine has not been very busy. I've sewn nothing of note all year (just a few baby bibs, a hat, some napkins, and I upcycled an old shirt into preschooler pajamas), even though I wanted to sew some long skirts for myself after the baby was born. Of course, it's probably not realistic to be planning new projects with a newborn babe around...

The first part of the year we were living only off our Etsy business, which hasn't really been bumping in 2011. This meant we were not able to save up very much towards our future home in the country. But that's okay, because now that Chris has a good job, with the chance to work overtime, and we feel confident that by the end of 2012 we will be able to purchase a place of our own--nothing fancy, but some place outside the city limits with a nice big yard so we can have chickens, lots of gardens, and of course, a tree house for lazy summer afternoons.

Perhaps most importantly in 2011, I learned to step away from the screen more often, slow down, relax and enjoy life. Our family started having Unplugged Sundays - no computer, video games, or tv all day every Sunday -  which is a tradition I have come to love. I started writing paper letters to friends, instead of emails, which has been enjoyable as well.

So for 2012, our main goal is to save up a down payment for a house. And for a personal resolution, I am going to try much harder than I have been to exercise. In past years, I have not been taking care of myself and it's starting to show. I have realized I can't properly take care of my family if I don't take care of myself, too.

For his part, Chris is quitting smoking this month. Good vibes are appreciated! :)

Since it is possible we will be moving this year, I think I am going to give up trying to coax a productive garden out of the yard here. But I will continue sewing when I get the chance, and I will be trying to improve my ability to feed my family on a strict budget.

I'm really looking forward to 2012 and all it will bring for us.

Does anyone else have any plans for the coming year they want to share?

 

This year's "harvest."

I couldn't help but put quotation marks on the word "harvest" in the title of this post. Last year my efforts at being an urban homesteader were very disappointing--I couldn't even manage to grow a few potatoes. So naturally I figured this year would be better...but I'm not so sure it was!

We did grow some string beans along the fence that did pretty well--we got enough beans for about 3 of our family meals. That's good, since I used leftover seeds from several years ago. And I have left many pods behind to dry out so we can have seeds for next year (although as I'm not sure what kind of seeds they were to begin with, I don't know if they're really sprout. I figured it was worth a try since it would cost nothing.)

And I did get a good amount of calendula for my healing salve. I filled a jar of extra virgin olive oil with dried calendula blossoms. It's been sitting in my back window for a couple of weeks now, and I think it looks so pretty and golden! I have some plantain leaves drying too, and once they are dry I'm going to top up the oil and add them, too.

I planted a number of chamomile plants but the harvest here was pathetic to say the least. I was hoping I would get enough to make tea for the winter...not quite! I think the chamomile must have loathed the damp and shady conditions in my back yard, because I only picked about a hundred tiny tiny straggly little blossoms...so after I dried them I added them to the oil for my healing salve, since the plant is known to be soothing to the skin.

I did make one single cup of weak tea, using a handful of chamomile and some lemon balm leaves...I found it funny. Some day I will do better than this! Some day I will have a lovely sprawling herb garden bursting with bountiful tea-making ingredients...just not right now.

My yarrow plant didn't get big enough to blossom, and my lavender died outright while it was still tiny. We only got 2 miniscule and sickly looking sunflower blossoms from the seeds we planted--so much for the cheerful bouquets the seed packet promised me! My stevia plant grew in leaps and bounds, but now I am not sure what to do with it because the word on the street is that the dried leaves taste terrible...

I am now working on drying some sage, basil, rosemary, and oregano for winter. I would have loved some thyme (which is delicious in my favourite winter meal, beef stew and dumplings) but couldn't find any plants this year. Maybe next year I'll order some seeds.

I planted four parsely seedlings, and they stayed ridiculously tiny! So much for that...

And then, for the pièce de résistance...behold our 2011 tomato harvest in its entirety:

Since the weather has gotten colder and frost has become a possibility, I picked these green, and tossed the plants (with disgust) into the dumpster.

Needless to say, seeing pictures of other people's enormous harvest of juicy red tomatoes has got me feeling a little jealous!

But I know it will not always be this way. Some day I will have a "real" garden...I just have to acquire a much bigger one so there are bound to be at least some accidental successes. We are hoping that maybe we will not be here in this virtually yard-less house by next year's growing season...So I will just keep hoping and praying, that this will be the last year I will have to try to grow things in a shady patch the size of a postage stamp.

Counting my blessings.

Sometimes I feel very discouraged because our dreams of having a family homestead seem too far beyond our reach. We have a lot of debt--and little savings--and it's difficult to reverse that trend with a growing family and erratic income. We are trying our best--but (and I'm sure most people can relate to this) it seems that as soon as we can save up something, a new expense confronts us. Such as now--with four children we really need a van. Our 1997 Intrepid is getting really cramped!

But although there are days when I feel that we will never save up anything, never get where we want to be, I always feel thankful for all the blessings we do have. Living here, in this small city house, might not be our ideal, but it's still a great place in many ways, and I try to remember that.

For instance, today it's raining cats and dogs, and I have nowhere to go. I feel thankful that I can stay in the house all day. If we had a homestead, there would be chores to do and I wouldn't be able to keep myself dry. Just a little thing, but still.

I'm also grateful for the conveniences that are all so close to us here. We have everything we could ever need within walking distance of our home: doctors, dentists, a library, restaurants, a produce market, a grocery store, an office supply store, a thrift store. Right across the street from us is a Walmart and a Home Depot. Although I'd prefer to see a grove of whispering birches from my bedroom window over the glaring orange sign of Home Depot, it has been very convenient for us to have all this shopping so close by, and has saved a lot of gas over the years I'm sure.

Living here, our family is close by. It's also a plus for us that the kids can easily find other children to play with when they go outside. And one block away is a large park with a big play structure.

Our house itself is comfortable. It has a garage, which has been wonderful for Chris to use as a workshop, a main floor utility room which is nice and bright for doing laundry and sewing, and a tiny back yard where the boys love to play in the sandbox Chris made them--a sandbox which he recently doubled in size. I also love our big master bedroom, and the big diningroom separate from the kitchen which provides a nice place to do our homeschool lessons.

I think it's important for us to count our blessings wherever we are, and enjoy our lives right now. We spend a lot of time dreaming about the country property we'd like in the future, about the gardens, and fruit trees, and all that; but right now we are here, and that's not all bad.

Sometimes I feel like an imposter.

Really, I do. Although we do live simply in many ways, sometimes I feel like an imposter because I am writing a blog about self sufficiency, and yet I live in a small (and ugly) city house with a backyard that is only about 150 square feet. I have books about homesteading in my sidebar, yet I don't feel that I homestead at all.

Sometimes I wonder, why would anyone read my blog? What do I have to offer, when there are other bloggers out there that can showcase their chickens and goats, their cellars full of home canning, their children roaming through the woods and hiking up mountainsides, the homemade quilts they whipped together, their cozy woodstoves in the winter? I have none of those things. When I started this blog I hoped that maybe by now we would be living out in the country, but it hasn't worked out that way.

Sure, there is such thing as an "urban homesteader," and many people do it quite successfully...but I don't even seem to have the time to really do that. I was so late getting my herb seedings started this year that they are still just small seedlings and look silly out there in my raised beds. I don't think I'm going to be able to harvest any lavender at all this year at this rate. My two tomato plants are similarly tiny, and the zuchinni...I just planted the seeds a week ago. I was also late even buying my other herb plants, so no sage, thyme, or basil for me!  And I was so excited to have a spice cupboard this winter filled with organically grown dried herbs!

My sewing machine continues to gather dust--so much for beautiful quilt I wanted to make before Amy was born--I haven't even started it! I have noticed that knitting is a favourite hobby with many bloggers, but me? I have never knit anything but square dish cloths, and a very misshapen teddy bear...and I have a feeling that is as far as I am going to get. It's all incomprehensible to me.

I am not even sure if we are going to get a chance to go strawberry picking this year, as it is strawberry season right now and Chris is so busy with work...he's doing wholesale orders for our Etsy shop and also doing other full time contract work as an industrial mechanic on the side! I suppose I could find a way to take all the kids with me...but last year it was hard enough to keep Jasper from trampling the strawberry plants with two grown ups present...I'm not sure if I can tackle that task on my own. (If you knew Jasper, you would agree with me.)

I hope we find a way, because last year's strawberry jam was sublime!

Perhaps others can relate to my struggles, and that's a good thing...I hope I can be encouraging to others who want to live a simple, deliberate life, to concentrate on the things that really matter, to do things for themselves, and yet who don't find it an easy path. I hope so, because sometimes I feel like I am only acting a part, and I feel a little nervous that someone is going to notice that I am not genuine enough, that my life is not as simple and beautiful as I might pretend. Actually, many days our house is chaotic, everyone is squabbling, the VCR gets used more than I care to admit, and supper is something out of a can or a box...Some days I am so frazzled trying to care for the children, get some homeschool lessons in there somewhere, and keep the house in reasonable order, that I wonder if I could even manage a big garden and some animals on top of it all. Although, perhaps seeing something other than asphalt outside my window might help my state of mind, I don't know...

It just seems to me sometimes that I have a long way to go, before I get to the place I want to be. A very long way!

I've been blogging for almost a year now...

I just noticed the other day that I began this blogging journey in March of 2010. How enjoyable and rewarding it's been for me to share my triumphs and struggles as we move towards a simpler life, with like-minded folks from all over the globe. I really have had fun, and met some wonderful friends along the way.

Since it's been a while since I began blogging, I thought maybe it would be a nice idea to do a sort of review post for those of my dear readers who are new. I myself find that sometimes when I find a new blog that I like, it's frustrating if I can't figure out what the blogger is talking about from time to time because I haven't been following all along and don't know the details of their lives.

So, for those readers who are relatively new to my little corner of cyberspace (be it ever so humble), hello and welcome! I'm happy to have you here. My name is Laura, but I often go by Laura Jeanne online to distinguish myself from the many other Lauras out there born in the 70s (I wonder if it has anything to do with Little House on the Prairie?). I live in a smallish city in Southern Ontario with my husband Chris, and our three children, Kira (12), Owen (6) and Jasper (2). We have another little one on the way at the end of March or beginning of April. I homeschool the children, which is something  I truly love to do, not only because it gives me an excuse to fill the house with books (I am an extreme book geek), but because I really love having us together all the time, and being able to watch my children grow up before me so closely. It just feels right to me.

Although we live in a small townhouse with a tiny, shaded backyard, we're trying to live a simpler life right where we are, gardening, sewing, cooking from scratch, all that kind of stuff. We'd really, really love to live in the country someday on our own homestead, and have chickens and goats and a huge berry patch, but for now we are trying to be content where we are, and learn all the skills we can so that someday when we do make it to our country home, we won't be clueless. Right now I am focusing especially on sewing, which I have discovered I love. I'm especially excited to try sewing myself some clothes after my shape returns to normal, since I have never been able to find clothes in the stores that I like.

Here's a little review post I did about the skills we learned in 2010, and another one detailing our goals for 2011.

Here's a post from way back about what simple living means to me, and another one about living deliberately.

We run a small family business, called The Wood Garden, which offers natural wooden toys and dishes. Chris handcrafts our products in our small garage, and I take care of the business side of things. We enjoy this and hope we'll be able to do it for many years into the future.

The photo at the top of my blog, I just love and I don't think I'll ever be able to replace to my satisfaction. It's a photo I took of Owen 3 or 4 years ago (I can't remember) when we were renting a lovely little cottage just north of Barrie, Ontario. I love everything about the image, but especially how the bridge seems to be leading us into a place of glowing light - it feels representative to me of the brighter future we are hoping to make for our family by stepping off the beaten path, and living a more simple, deliberate, and family-centred life.

Well, there you have it. I hope I've cleared everything up for those lovely people who might stumble across my blog and wonder who we are. :)

Rambling thoughts on decluttering the house.

Recently when I was rereading a favourite fantasy novel, A Wizard of Earthsea, I was struck by a particular passage. The main character, a young boy, is leaving the village in which he grew up:

Ged fetched what he had to carry, which was the good bronze knife his father had forged for him, and a leather coat the tanner's widow had cut down to his size, and an alder-stick his aunt had becharmed for him: that was all he owned besides his shirt and his breeches. He said farewell to them, all the people he knew in all the world, and looked about once at the village that straggled and huddled there under the cliffs, over the river-springs. Then he set off with his new master through the steep slanting forests of the mountain isle, through the leaves and shadows of bright autumn.

Ged lives in a pre-industrial world filled with poverty and hunger, and yet when I read that passage, I envied him. I don't really want to own nothing but a knife, a jacket, a walking stick, and the clothes on my back, of course--and yet...how free it would feel to not be encumbered with any possessions, to able to leave on a new adventure at any moment, to be free as a bird.

I think in the back of my mind, I often desire that feeling of soaring free, because I have placed photos and artwork of birds around the house. I have always been enamoured with birds. Chris, for his part, has covered his workshop walls with artwork of air planes. I wonder if we both feel the same way?

I can soar as a bird in my imagination, with no stuff to worry about or drag me down, but of course I need to keep my feet grounded in reality as well. With a family of 5, soon to be 6, we do have material needs. Aside from the regular things that everyone needs, we have a business that requires tools, and since I homeschool we need some books...Okay, I have a lot of books, many of which I truly love and would never let go. I have no plans to give everything we own away. Yet, I have found over the years that without even trying, we always end up with more things than we really need.

As I mentioned in this post that in December, I enjoy going through our possessions and rethinking what is important to us and what is not. This feels appropriate to me this time of year. Christmas inevitably brings new possessions which I need to make room for. And in winter we spend much more time inside the house. Our house is small, and I don't want it to start feeling cramped with things we don't really need.

As well, although we have no plans to suddenly up and leave our birthplace like Ged, yet we know this is not our permanent home. We really want, hopefully sooner rather than later, to find greener pastures (literally). I don't know when our move will occur or how. We have sometimes talked not so jokingly of just picking up one day, sticking all our stuff in a rented truck, and just driving until we end up somewhere that feels like home. I don't know what we will do, but I do sense some kind of adventure in our future, and I don't want to be encumbered with a lot of extra stuff when we do finally decide to get out of this city house.

It's amazing when I make an effort to declutter, how many things I can cast off. Back in December I threw out a large portfolio of artwork I had done in highschool which I no longer felt sentimental about. (The only thing that survived was the monochromatic bird painting pictured above, which I placed next to my sewing machine.) Last week I gave a few bags of assorted items to the thrift shop. I have a large box of baby boy clothes and a bag of vintage sewing patterns I won't be selling in my shop sitting by the front door waiting to be picked up. And some more things in the car waiting to be donated. Today I cleaned out our linen closet and removed some old, pilled, gross things to be tossed--including some tacky, faded sheets for a double bed. We don't even have a double bed, why was I keeping those? And I feel so happy about this. I love removing excess things from our home. Each time a bag goes out the door, I breathe a bit easier.

I think next I will go through the computer desk--we are hoping in the future to replace our ancient clunker of a PC with a much smaller laptop, and replace this enormous old corner desk with a smaller desk to save space. So it wouldn't hurt now to start going through the stuff crammed in this desk--old computer games, road maps, binders, DVDs, photo paper, notebooks...I'm not even sure all of what is here!

I apologize for the long, rambling post. I just wanted to share my thoughts on decluttering today. I wonder if anyone loves getting rid of stuff as much as I do?

Goals for the coming year.

Out with the old, in with the new! With 2010 behind us, we're filled with ideas and plans for the new year. First and foremost, before we start up homeschooling again on Monday (we took three weeks off for the holidays) I want to clean this house from top to bottom, and get it organized! A lofty goal, yes, but I'm going to get started just as soon I finish writing this post. Wish me luck! The idea of beginning the new year with a clean, tidy house is very appealing to me.

On a more general note, here are some of our goals for 2011:

• I'm going to continue to improve my sewing skills, quilting specifically. My next project will be a quilt for the baby girl who will be gracing our home some time in late March. And although I'll be busy with a newborn throughout the spring, perhaps in the summer I'd like to try making a wall hanging to decorate our livingroom.
• Chris is planning to learn more about electricity, and wants to build his first experimental generator, since when we do move to the country he would like to get us off-grid if possible.
• Since our tiny backyard vegetable garden was a failure this year, I'm going to change tactics where gardening is concerned, and try growing herbs instead. I plan to grow a variety of culinary herbs, some of which I will preserve for the winter, and medicinal herbs, so that I can try making some herbal teas and salves. I like this plan, not only because I have always wanted to have an herb garden, but because I know that generally speaking, herbs are less fussy to grow than vegetables, and I will after all have a newborn to care for this spring and summer. 
• I want to improve my skills as a homemaker. By this I mean specifically, I want to get better at making our home a cheerful, inviting place. This is something I have never been very good at. The first thing to do in this respect is paint a brighter colour over the drab and depressing grey of our livingroom. We've been talking about doing this since we moved in here 5 years ago, but this time we're really going to do it! I believe that if we are going to live the life of homebodies, we should have a pleasant home in which to do that.
• Chris is going to do our small business taxes for the first time this year. This will be quite a learning experience, I'm sure, especially since most of our sales are in US dollars (through Etsy) but we live in Canada...but I know he can handle it. :)
• This summer I want to expand the food I preserve from just jam, to pickles and canned pears and peaches. If finances allow, I would love also to acquire a pressure canner so that then I can can virtually anything.
• We are both going to try even harder to save money towards our downpayment on a piece of land, regardless of our employment situation. We are already living very frugally, but we will try to tighten our belts even more. Some of the things we plan to do: Buy only secondhand clothes, buy larger quantities of food when there is a good sale, preserve more food for next winter, buy meat in bulk from local sources instead of from the grocery store, and simply follow the old adage: Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without. 

I suppose this list isn't very ambitious, but I don't want to overdo things since we'll have a new baby this year. Our main "work" is going to be saving money. I am excited to do some quilting though, and to create my herb garden. (Does anyone have a suggestion for a good Canadian seed catalogue that sells heirloom varieties?)

I feel upbeat about the coming year and all we will accomplish, and I hope my readers feel that way too. Does anyone have any goals for 2011 that they care to share in the comments? Please do...and Happy New Year! :)

(Sorry I have no photo for this post or the last...my camera batteries are dead and I keep forgetting to charge them!)

2010 in review.

When I started this blog back in March, my goal was to use this space to chronicle my family's journey towards a simpler life--in one way, by learning the skills to be more self-sufficient, like people were in the "old days"--and in another more literal way, by saving up to buy a piece of land in the country where we could have our own homestead.

So here on December 31st, it's natural that I ask myself, "What progess have we made towards these goals?"

I think we've done very well where it comes to learning new skills to allow us to do more for ourselves. In fact, saying we've learned a lot this year is really an understatement. A few highlights:

• I learned how to can homemade jam, and it's so delicious we'll never go back to store bought! I also put by a great deal of homemade applesauce and apple butter for the first time. 
• We also learned that when pick raspberries, strawberries and blueberries in the summer, we need A LOT more to last us the year. It's quite amazing how much one family can consume--I greatly underestimated. For example, Jasper loves to eat frozen blueberries as a snack pretty much every day--and here we are in December, and we have been out of blueberries for several weeks. Now I am buying store bought berries for him, which is not at all what I had planned.
• I continued to learn how to make more meals from scratch, and I learned how to make my own sprouts and granola.
• Chris has greatly expanded his self-taught woodworking abilities to include turning bowls, plates and cups. Just now he is experimenting with making spoons, and we hope this will give a boost to our family business.
• We learned a lot about growing vegetables this year. Or rather, how not to grow them! For example, do NOT grow potatoes in pure compost, because it will be too nitrogen rich and you'll get all leaves and no potatoes. Do NOT try to grow pumpkins in a tiny back yard, and do NOT plant four cherry tomato plants when only one person in the family eats them!
• I finally figured out my sewing machine, and have sewed many projects already, including a doll quilt. I have been reading a lot about quilting lately so that I can begin soon on a "real" quilt. 
• Chris and I discovered how much fun it is to create handmade gifts for holidays and birthdays.
• Chris has greatly expanded the number of songs he can play on the guitar. (I consider playing a musical instrument to be a form of self-sufficiency, since you can then create your own entertainment).
• We're learning ways to be more frugal all the time, and make some of our own cleaning and personal care products.
• We've learned how important it is to our sanity to have a daily routine to our family life, and that it's very important to take a break from technology sometimes (i.e. the computer and tv) and just enjoy the peace and quiet together.

Some of these activities have saved us money, but more than that they have all been very satisying. I love the feeling of creating something with my hands--it's something that was missing from my life before.

Our other goal was saving up for our homestead. This has been very difficult for us since not only are we paying fairly high rent to live in the city, but Chris was in college for the first half of the year, and after working throughout the summer was laid off in September. However, these past few months, even though we were living only off of our Etsy shop, we managed not only to get by but to save a tiny bit. And I find that in itself encouraging. I know that we are working towards our goal, even if our progess seems painfully slow at times, and I'm proud of us for making our family business work.

Next year we are going to try even harder to live frugally and save every penny. But I'll talk about 2011 in a post tomorrow. For now, I'll just say a big "Thank You" to all of my readers for joining me as I wrote about our struggles and successes in 2010. I'm so grateful and humbled that you lovely people take the time to stop by, and I sincerely hope to enjoy your company more in 2011.

On that note, I hope everyone has a joy-filled evening tonight, and I'll see you next year! :)

 

The power of boldness.

Today I just want to share some words which, when I read them recently, spoke to me.

Until one is commited, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative, there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans; that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves, too. Whatever you can do or dream, you can begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.

              --German writer and scientist Goethe

These words reminded me of how important it is to have confidence when you are following your dreams. Hesitating or doubting yourself gets you nowhere.

Chris and I have been talking a lot lately about our plans for the future, about our dream of owning our own family homestead off the beaten path. We are trying right now to step up our efforts to save money towards this goal, because we know that even though we may look pretty poor to the average person, and although we have a long way to go, virtually anything is possible if you have enough will power to actually do it.

This tree looked to me like it was reaching for the sky.

It might seem like we're fooling ourselves, but I don't think so. If we convince ourselves that we can do it--if we have enough courage--then we will do it. Maybe not tomorrow, but we will. "Boldness has genius, power and magic in it." We are trying to live by those words.

In the meantime, we will continue living a simple life here, learning and building up our skills, with faith that with enough determination, our dreams will come true.

I hope all my readers have dreams that they are working towards with boldness! I hope that a few people will leave a comment, and share with me what those dreams are. :)