Thursday, February 03, 2011
Who Knew?
One of my favorite quotes from a book, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy” is:
“I really wish I’d listened to what my mother told me when I was young.”
“Why, what did she tell you?”
“I don’t know, I didn’t listen.”
I never thought that I would be the type who would want to get away from it all, have a lot of land, raise chickens, learn to grow veggies, learn canning and preserving and basically find ways to live off the grid.
Growing up, my parents had an enormous vegetable garden, that we kids had to weed, (bleh), and they did a lot of canning and preserving. We also would go out camping and go for hikes to pick berries and mushrooms. My dad would go hunting, taught us how to fish and tried to teach us how to sustain ourselves. My mom made everything. My dad knew how to fix plumbing and basic electric work and his passion was wood working. He had every tool imaginable in our big garage and he redid the cabinets in our kitchen and bathrooms. He built things like my rabbit hutch, (I loved that...it was cool as hell!) They shopped once a month, planned, organized, and thought ahead about what we were going to eat. We rarely had anything already prepared. It was all healthy, home made and cheap. And do you know, I hated all of this.
We had a “fruit room” in our basement. At the bottom of the stairs, before you went left or right to the family room or laundry room, there was a small room with a door. Inside that room, where it was dark and scary, were shelves along one side of the wall. This is where my parents would store their jars and jars of fruit and preserves for us to eat. We kids were always being instructed to go down to the fruit room to bring up a jar of peaches or pears or apricot jam, (blech!!!), as we would be having said items for dinner.
I remember watching my parents, at the stove, with a huge pot of some sort, lots of steam, a thermometer, Kerry jars and lids all over the counter tops while they canned and preserved. I wanted absolutely no part of it. That was boring. Boring! I didn’t want a jar of peaches from the fruit room, I wanted Del Monte peaches! I wanted Jolly Green Giant, just like all the other kids got. Life was very unfair and embarrassing.
In the summer, we had to weed the garden; that huge, horrible vegetable garden. We had pumpkins, squash, beans, raspberries, carrots, beets, sunflowers....we had everything. Row after row after row of vegetables. The only thing I did like was the raspberries, I did think that was kinda cool but I loathed the rest of that garden and I hated weeding with a passion. I hate weeding more than I hate doing the dishes. That’s saying quite a bit, kids.
One summer, disgusted with my boring life and my boring parents in our boring town, I opened up my pie hole and declared that I hated it there, why couldn’t we live in the city, why couldn’t we have store bought brands, why was this place so boring, I’m so! bored!
I got to spend the next few weeks weeding the entire garden since I was “so bored”. Parents are such idiots sometimes. As if weeding was somehow less boring than whining about how bored I was. I was not allowed to go swimming until the entire garden was weeded. Swimming was my thing and that was not fair.
But I also have my pride and I showed them. I weeded all day one day until I almost passed out from dehydration and had to be brought in, was on the couch the rest of the day and felt sick. I got up at 2-3 in the morning, when it was cooler, snuck downstairs and started weeding some more. I was so sure I was going to get busted, in trouble for doing that. My mom hears everything and while I thought I got away with it as a kid, I’m pretty damn sure now that she knew I snuck out to the garden. She never said anything but I know she knew and I’m pretty sure they may have even snuck out behind me to see what I was doing. But they weren’t going to tell me to stop weeding even if I was doing it at 3am. I wanted to go swimming, damnit, and this garden was taking FOR! EVER!
Anyway, I’m looking around for ways to make some more money, saving up what I do make at work and scouring real estate ads for places with land. I want to get out and be my own person. I don’t want a boss. I don’t want to wake up to an alarm clock. I don’t want to continue to waste my time every day doing something that I only marginally enjoy. I want to LIVE. I have dreams, aspirations, hopes, things I want to do, make a difference, help the animals. I don’t have time to waste on whiny tourists.
The difference for me is that I’m doing this on my own which makes everything harder. I’m not saying it’s easy for everyone to come up with a down payment but it sure as hell helps when you have two incomes compared to one. It does make life a little easier as long as you aren’t being stupid with your money and spending.
So I have pretty much narrowed down where I’m going to live. I know the state it will be, I have a base area that I want to go and the cost is not expensive at all. The problem is, there’s not a lot of employment in this area, either. So I need to become as self sufficient as I can while I work on getting things up and running for a sanctuary or rescue.
For example, I might buy a house with a lot of land, (acres, kids, acres), and have to deal with cutting costs as much as possible. Best way to do that is grow your own food. Best way to keep that food around during off season is to can it, freeze it, dry it, preserve it. And lo and behold, I had ALL OF THAT WISDOM before me when I was younger but I was too good for home grown back then and did not pay attention at all. So now I get to learn everything the hard way! Isn’t that fun!
Luckily I have a tiny bit of knowledge because you cannot live in a house with two people who are frugal to the max and not pick up something along the way no matter how hard you try to avoid it by staying in your room and dreaming of the big city. I also have this wonderful thing called the internets which is a wealth of information, if used correctly, and I have books to read. Lots of books to read. But mostly, the internets is insanely helpful.
I learn by reading others’ mistakes, their successes and take all of their advice to make it my own. I get information about things I hadn’t thought of. I find solutions for things. I will still have mishaps, for sure but it’s like having 100,000 friends or acquaintances at your table, telling you how it can or should be done.
So I get a house with lots of land. I need some land to grow crops. (Veggies but I call them crops because I’ll be an urban farmer and it makes me feel...down homey. Or something.) As I think about what to grow, I learn what I need to make that a success. Think about critters. Think about weather. Think about seasons.
As the crops grow and are ready to be picked, I need to store them so that they last as long as possible. Think about storing, canning, preserving, freezing, dehydrating, hanging, etc. And how do I make more crops from the crops I have now?
Let’s say I grow potatoes. I love potatoes. But in the winter, when there is snow, (yah, I’m not thinking I’ll stay in FL....we’ll see what the future brings), what do I do about keeping the potatoes? Need a cellar or basement. How do I store them? What about creepy crawlies? And while we’re on that subject, what about creepy crawlies in my garden while I’m weeding? One of the main reasons I hated weeding was because of the eight legged beasts that were out there.
If you’ve read here for awhile, you know I hate those things. They must be obliterated from the planet. There is no need for them. We have birds, we have frogs...they can eat the bugs. Heck we even have bats. No need for 8 legged demon spawn.
Well then, let’s kill two birds, (sorry birds), with one stone. Not only can I have something that eats those creepy crawlies, I can also have something that supplies me with food.
Chickens!
We have chickens at work and I’m growing quite fond of chickens.
So now I need to learn about raising chickens and building coops and keeping out chicken predators and feeding them and keeping them happy so that I get eggs and they eat things I don’t like.
Additionally, I want to build some kind of area for the cats so that they can go outside and eat creepy crawlies and any poor bird that makes a mistake of getting too close and rodents of unusual sizes and lizards, etc. But I want them to be safe and not go out too far and get lost or get in to situations so it would have to be something that is enclosed in some way but allows them to be out, as well. This would also require some sort of cat door to that enclosure. Plus, it would cut down costs on feeding since they eat raw anyway, maybe they’ll be full and I won’t have to feed them as much.
So now I have a house, lots of land, a huge veggie and maybe fruit garden, chickens with a coop and running around area, cats with their area....that means I need other equipment. Like a rototiller. I know what it is, I know what it does, I do not know how much it costs or how to operate it. We could watch, we could never touch.
And then hoses.
And rakes. And shovels. And trowels. And things to clean up the chicken coop. And bowls and hay and bins and crates and holy cow this self living thing is a lot to learn!
But I’m actually dreaming about it all day long. All. Day. Long.
When I’m on a tour and we are going fast, I don’t have to talk. I’ve driven the route a thousand times over and I start daydreaming as I’m driving. I dream about my new place and providing for myself and my pets and my chickens.....and...hmmmm......goats!
What about goats?! They’re funny and pleasant to watch and eat a lot of crap....and they do other stuff that will be good for my self sustaining lifestyle....yes....let’s look in to goats.
So it goes on and on and the only way I can do this is to get there, get the money saved and start doing. I’m tired of wasting my time. The only good thing about this time is that I do have the time to learn and read while I’m waiting for the savings to build so that when I get there, hopefully I’ll have knowledge. I could have saved a lot more time if I had listened and watched the parental figures doing what they did because boy did those two know how to stretch a penny.
And once that is all figured out, we will then move on to solar power and things like that. If I’m truly lucky, maybe I’ll find a well on my property. I feel like a mountain man. Sort of.
Like I said, I never thought that I would want to live this way. It shouldn’t come as a complete surprise considering that my favorite books when I was growing up were those about people living off the land, working hard to sustain themselves. Jack London books, Julie of the Wolves, etc. I liked reading about pioneers and what they did all day long. It was hard work. It was a lot of non stop work. But they were FREE! They did for themselves and did not rely on grocery stores for every last thing.
The price of oil continues to go up, the Mid East is anybody’s guess at this point and I don’t want to pay more and more for the same product. So with the exception of meat, (I can’t, I just can’t do it, I’ll eat it but I can’t kill an animal that lives with me....just can’t), I’d like to be able to do pretty much all other food and such on my own. Hell, I might go completely hog wild and learn how to sew!
Yep, my mother did that, too. She tried...oh she tried to teach me but I didn’t want home made clothes. I wanted Jordache jeans like my best friend had. They were cool and stylish and I’m not a hillbilly, who the hell wears home made clothes?! NOT ME, that’s who!
DAMN I should have paid attention.
So I’ll get a house with land, have my chicken coop, my chickens that are happy and producing eggs, (except in winter....unless I want to go that route but they kind of need a break too, ya know), and my goats and my jars of fruit and preserves and my frozen home grown veggies and my dehydrated jerkies and herbs and my onions and garlics hanging and my home made shirt and pants and hats and scarves and coats and blankets.......and eventually solar power to get somewhat off the grid....
And I’ll need a better vehicle for the snow, (thank God I paid attention to that; learning how to drive in the snow), and my snow shovel, (unfortunately I learned the hard way how to do that), and my winterizing, (yes, always let a little stream of water flow out of each faucet so they don’t freeze at night), and my building I’ll be learning and I’ll be so dang busy I won’t have time for a job but I’ll be happier.
Much happier.
And it would have all been a whole hell of a lot easier had I paid attention when growing up.
