Between two worlds

I've come to dread mornings. It's not that I mind getting out of bed per se, though on days when the wood stove has almost gone out and I'm snuggled under a pile of wool blankets it can be hard, but it's getting the kids up, fed and out the door for school that makes me want to lose my mind. Especially since I know I get to do it all again the next day. And the next.

I know the value of routine and giving kids lots of time in the morning (especially if they're dawdlers like mine) but no matter how early we get up, or how many lists I write, and how much warning and prodding and eventually hollering I do, there is almost always a last minute scramble followed by running down the driveway for the bus. The routine seems to deteriorate as the week progresses: on most Monday mornings the kids are ready to go a full 20 minutes before the bus arrives, and they're rewarded with time to read, draw, listen to music -- whatever. But by Wednesday, my carefully crafted routine has fallen apart and once again I'm yelling and they're scrambling and usually one, if not all, of us ends up in tears.

Sometimes I wonder if my expectations are too high because as soon as I ask them to do more than the basics -- eat their breakfast, brush their hair and teeth, and wash their face (they pack lunches the night before) -- there is a cacophony of whining, talkback, attitudes, and sometimes even temper tantrums. I admit to not always being consistent with them -- sometimes I make hot breakfast as a treat, other times it's up to them (usually when I'm making something else, like today it was homemade granola for tomorrow's breakfast) and while we need to bring in wood every day, I don't always make them do a load, and as Ella forgot to wash eggs last night I asked her to wash all eight of them this morning (which she proceeded to do in a sink full of her yet-to-be-washed breakfast dishes… ugh) and that evidently takes a ridiculous amount of time and before I know it Jack is still in the woodshed, Ella has yet to have her hair braided and the bus is at the end of the driveway. (We're lucky in that the bus passes our farm twice, but the kids always want to get on the first pass so they have extra time with their friends.) They's only missed the bus a handful of times in 4-1/2 years, but too many times the kids have left their "other" responsibilities (the abovementioned dishes, wood, etc.) and I'm left to clean up the mess.

I know my reaction doesn't help -- the more they drag their feet, the more impatient I become and the more my tone starts to rise. Before I know it I'm cajoling and prodding and hollering again, because I'm just asking them to pull their weight and is that really too much to ask? You always hear that the country is a great place to raise kids because it teaches them responsibility, but in our case it seems to be teaching them how to push mum's buttons until she explodes. (And yes, I'm being somewhat disingenuous here.)

As I've always been home, they're used to mum being there and picking up the slack when they don't get things done (like their laundry or dishes or taking out the recycling), but I have other jobs beside being a mother, like working to pay the mortgage.

And while I believe that mothering is my most important job, I often feel caught between two worlds (and I know I'm not alone), especially now that the kids are getting older (Ella is eight, Jack turns 11 tomorrow). I believe that to become functioning and contributing human beings they need to learn the value of work, responsibility and seeing tasks to completion, but against that, I want them to have as much time to just be kids. They're only young once, and before I know it they'll be off to school and I'll have just myself (and the barn animals) to look after.

Growing up my mum was always home and while that provided security when I was younger, it became stifling as I grew older, especially as she fell deeper into her alcoholism. She had no real life of her own, beyond my father's and mine, and as I grew from a pre-teen into a teen, and tried to find my own way in the world, she stewed in her codependency and inability to take an active interest in her own life, instead sinking hooks into mine. I know this made her deeply unhappy and this, in turn, fueled her drinking and her rages against my dad and me, but as much as I committed then to always be there for my kids, I never wanted to lose myself like she did.

And therein lies a seemingly impossible conundrum: always being there for your kids without losing oneself. I know that parenting is like reaching for an ever moving target and the kids and I are always changing, but too often I seem stuck in the middle between two opposing armies -- one side doing too much and the other not enough, for them and myself.

I want to model that women can be strong and independent and have lives that are theirs alone (while teaching them the value of real food and "simpler living" in our materialist world), but I've also committed in my heart to home-cooked meals and family sit-down dinners, help with homework and baked after-school snacks, bedtime stories and pre-dawn snuggles. Can I do all that and still retain some sense of me? I don't know yet but on mornings like this it feels like neither side wins.

love cards

Over dinner last night Ella told me that all of the kids at school get stuff for Valentine's Day -- chocolates, toys, cards and the like. I hear this a lot -- whether it's at Christmas, Easter, St. Patrick's Day, birthdays, whenever -- friends at school invariably get lots of stuff. (One friend even got a trampoline for Easter. When I was a kid I got a chocolate bunny.)

Every time these conversations come up I feel my hackles (if I had hackles) rising. I mean, stuff is one of the problems with society. Our love affair with stuff is at the root of many environmental and social issues. (Instead of listening to me rant about this, check out "The Story of Stuff".)

But bringing it back to the dining room table, I gently tried to reaffirm to the kids (without sounding like a total grouch) why I'm encouraging we stop coveting stuff: because we're watching our spending, because stuff invariably ends up at the thrift store or landfill, and days like Valentine's Day, or Mother's Day, or any Day that has its own Hallmark card, have largely evolved into a marketing scheme that encourages people to spend money on stuff to show others how much they love them. And instead of taking one day of the year to show our appreciation fr each other, why can't every day be Valentine's Day or Father's Day? (This isn't a veiled excuse to eat more chocolate, even if I had a big sweet tooth, which I don't.)
 
The kids have been getting this speech for years and they seem to get it (Jack even said to me several times this past December that although it was a small Christmas, it was an awesome Christmas) and I tell them how much I honestly understand that it's hard to be "different" from other families. So far, at ages 8 and almost 11, there hasn't been much of a backlash (though I'm bracing for it).

But we find other ways to mark these special days, often with homemade treats and some sort of crafting. Jack no longer makes Valentine's Day mailboxes with his class (that's grade five for you) and he said there wasn't an in-class party or anything this year. However, he could have bought a $2 carnation for that special someone. He wanted absolutely no part of that. None. Nada. I think he was a bit mortified by the idea.

But Ella still loves to craft Valentines for her friends. So last night, while Jack practiced his skateboarding in the garage, we made simple paper heart flowers and attached them to colourful postcards.

While I know most kids at school with be exchanging store-bought cards (no judgement there -- just stating a fact), I love our annual card-making ritual. Each year the cards get a bit more fancy, the cutting is a bit more precise and there's more glue on the cards than on the table. She hasn't yet been teased for her homemade creations and I hope when that time comes she can find the strength to follow her heart. Especially on Valentine's Day when love for oneself should trump love for more stuff.

sufficient

You know that awkward feeling when you pick up the phone to call a friend who you've meant to call about a dozen times but every time you do something gets in the way or you get distracted or you don't really feel much like talking anyway and so months and months pass but  you know that it's too important to put the phone call off yet again, and you really don't know what to say and however you start it sounds sheepish and self-deprecating and you really wish you could just pick up the phone and pretend like months and months haven't gone by, but you know you can’t and you really need to explain your absence even though you feel like a self-indulgent and self-absorbed tool for doing so? Well, this blog post is a bit like that. It's also a bit like an awkward, over-sharing confessional that I may regret a day, month or year from now. 

Deep breath, Fiona, and away we go...

In the relative downtime of winter, I try to spend time catching up on my accumulated piles of books. (Some women have a shoe fetish; for me, it's books.) The latest I'm reading is "Sufficient" by Tom Petherick (Pavilion, 2007). His basic premise is that it's time for us to become more responsible for our rampant levels of overconsumption and to change to a more self-reliant way of living. In his words, "It is a book about feeling satisfied with what we have -- in short, 'sufficient.'"

His idea of sufficiency speaks to me on many levels. What drove us to the farm in the first place was a need to find a simpler way of living. It was about scaling back, making do with less, growing our own food and reconnecting with the things that matter -- family, good wholesome edibles, and the wondrous earth that supports us and all living things.

While we knew this kind of living wouldn't actually be easier, this life off-the-beaten-path was the only one that made sense to me. Having grown up in Toronto and spent seven years in suburbia, I knew that I needed to get away from the corporate ladder and from the 'keeping up with the Joneses' mentality that elevated compulsive shopping to a form of therapy, or worse, recreation. I was tired of the noise, the traffic, the stuff, the concrete and the disconnect between us (as in our society) and the natural world.

I wanted desperately to move to the farm, to raise kids, grow food and write about it (among other things). Simple, right? Yes, but not easy. The first six months on the farm was blissful, filled with long walks in the woods, trials in the garden and the deliciousness of fresh air and silent nights (except during cicada and spring peeper season - it's noisy then!). 

But then I let my bliss get the better of me and I started bringing critters home to the farm. In quick succession we went from a family a four plus a dog, to a family of four plus a dog, two cats, 12 chickens, six ducks, three goats, two donkeys and a geriatric horse. We went from simply living on the farm to a complex life juggling a tribe of creatures with differing needs, all while figuring out how to get us through the winter without running out of wood, running out of patience, or most crucially, running out of money.

Job-wise, I was able to make the move to the farm fairly smoothly in that as a freelance writer and editor I was able to take my work with me. But Lucas had to largely start from scratch in the summer of 2008 when the recession hit hard and he lost a long-term contract that he was relying on to get us established in our new home and community. To say it was tough is a gross and laughable understatement. Looking back, it was foolhardy and hugely irresponsible to rush into getting so many animals (and those of you who have been following the blog since the beginning most likely saw that), but I was impatient to be living the dream. Now. (I even knew fairly early on that it was foolish and foolhardy but I resisted "fixing" my mistakes because that would have been an admission of failure. Yes, seriously.)

But we continued to struggle along, dealing with frozen barn pipes, predator problems, depreciating savings and an overwhelming sense of "I have no idea what I'm doing." Eventually Lucas got a two-year contract (now ended) and I cobbled together enough contracts to make a living wage, including a job that gave me a steady paycheque but left me feeling depressed, short-tempered and miserable. But by this point, Lucas was spending 60 hours a week away from the farm and I was spending more time in front of the computer than out in the fields. Slowly the dream was crumbling, bit-by-bit -- or so it felt (keeping in mind I have a shocking affinity for the dramatic).

Tensions at home started to rise because I didn't feel like I had enough help and Lucas felt like he was drowning in responsibility while trying to follow his own dreams that didn't involve shovelling poop or digging in the dirt. The simple life was anything but simple and the bliss that permeated the first year was, by year three, intermittent at best. This isn't to say that it was all terrible -- I fell head over heels in love with beekeeping, discovered the aliveness and gorgeous taste of fresh homegrown veggies and fruits, and reaffirmed my love of working with animals, both feathered and furred. I rediscovered knitting, found peace and solace in long wandering walks in the woods, and unearthed a passion for kitchen and traditional remedies, as well as cooking real food with real ingredients. Jack and Ella had blossomed into happy country kids and we truly felt that we were raising them in the best possible place.

But the stress brought on by shortcomings in what I thought I should be doing and what I actually had the capacity for doing kept growing. Lucas wasn't interested in farming, and the kids, who I'd envisioned helping me in the barn and the garden, simply were busy doing other things. There was my dream, my lonely reality, and a huge chasm in between filled with unfinished projects and a never-ending to do list. I felt betrayed, let down, bitter and above all, deeply sad.

But then last summer I went away on a solo camping trip for a week. I brought with me only some essentials -- a tent and sleeping bag, a small one-burner stove with some simple foods, a few changes of clothes, my hiking boots, my camera, some reading books and my journal. I spent the week hiking, reading, writing and thinking. It was sufficient, it was enough, and I was happy. During this time I realized how much my decisions had placed unnecessary strain on my family and yet rather than assume responsibility for that, all of which were mine, I was blaming everyone else for my missed expectations and unhappiness.

The farm or my family hadn't let me down -- I'd given up on it and on me. It was a realization that was both liberating and crushing -- so many people would give anything to be where I am, and yet here I was moaning about how things weren’t working out as planned. I felt humiliated and humbled. It was during this time that I disappeared from the blog, turned inward and tried to rekindle my sense of direction, without expectation of what things should look like. Writing can be like turning a magnifying class on yourself, warts and all, and I needed some time to rebuild my confidence. What's more, I needed a break from comparing myself to everyone else.  

But I've been re-visioning the farm and my place in it. I've also quit a job that has left a hole in my bank account but some space for this new dream to grow (which I'll be writing about over the coming months).

While the farm is still blanketed in snow and my plans are still largely on paper, I admit to running the risk of ramping up the complexity of my days (it's about reaching for a dream without falling over the precipice's edge). The difference now is that I don't have expectations that Lucas (or the kids) will be walking this path beside me. While they're 100% supportive of my dreams (and they appreciate the benefits they receive), this farming gig is mine alone. (I don't say that with any sense of self-pity either; not anymore, at least. This is meant as a declaration, not a resolution.)

I've always struggled with my own perception of being enough, and I often label myself as falling short. I let these insecurities fuel the fear of failure that's inherent when stepping outside one's comfort zone to reach towards a dream. I've written about this before (at times that often correspond with these lengthy blog absences). But I'm so very tired of that sad story. While it's damn hard to work, run a farm, keep a homestead and raise children, it's harder on my heart to not. In the year that I turn 40, isn't it time for me to finally feel satisfied not only with what I have (which is easy), but what I am, warts and all?

As Petherick writes, "This then presents an opportunity to look how we can become more self-reliant, particularly on the home-production front. There is little point in lingering on how badly wrong things have gone -- the question is what can we do to effect change for ourselves and the community around us… We are at the beginning of an exciting time when our true worth will come to the fore."

This year I'm looking forward to moving back to my simpler living roots, reaching for the stars and for being gentler with myself when I inevitably fall short. Besides, life's too short to take everything so bloody seriously.

Foto Friday -- Simple pleasures

A still warm egg, the first collected in three weeks.

Homemade pear ginger marmalade that tastes like autumn.

Enough fresh cream to make...

... one beautiful pat of butter...

... for some freshly-baked rye bread.

Have a lovely weekend filled with many simple pleasures!

Lessons learned -- Wood heating

Blogger Mama Pea recently wrote a post on "Getting in wood", which inspired me to write a (slightly cheeky) update on our own heating adventures.

Back in December 2008 (seems so long ago!) I wrote a post on "Winter prep, homesteading-style." In it, I described how we used a combination of an external wood furnace and a Elmira cookstove to heat our home and garage.

We still do, but we've learned some lessons along the way.

Lesson #1: Deciding you want to harvest wood from your own woodlot is easy. Actually doing it, especially when the primary tree cutter/harvester/splitter is working 60 hour work weeks, is much harder.

Lesson #2: Buying logs is easier, especially when compared to harvesting it yourself. Or chasing down above-mentioned tree cutter/harvester/splitter.



Lesson #3: Cutting, splitting and stacking those logs isn't as easy as buying them.


Lesson #3b: Finding a kind-hearted friend (yes you, Dr. B), especially one with a heavy-duty wood splitter, a fancy tractor equipped with a grapple and a free weekend, to help you mow through your massive woodpile makes life so very much more pleasant. And warmer.

Lesson #4: If you think you have enough wood to last the season, cut and stack more -- especially if you don't have enough seasons under your belt to base your opinion on. We thought that log order would last us two full winters. Evidently, we were wrong.

This is our woodshed. It's only mid-March. Insert panic here.

Lesson #5: Desperate situations call for desperate actions. Translation: When it's January, minus 30 degrees out and you're rationing wood, buying a cord that's already cut and split is super easy.


Lesson #5b: Especially when you have lots of little hands to help unload it.


Lesson #5c: It's also way more expensive. We won't be doing that again. Guess I'll just have to knit more...

Lesson #6: When you compare the dollar cost of buying wood versus an annual gas or oil bill, bought wood still comes out ahead -- but not by as much as I expected.

Lesson 6b: In the long- and short-term, wood has the feel-good factor of being more sustainable than fossil fuels, environmentally and financially. It also provides us with a tremendous sense of independence, despite having to buy 'processed' wood this year. Put differently, when oil hits $200 a barrel, our home -- and our children -- will still be warm.

Lesson 6c: I'm not convinced our external wood furnace is the way to go. It's convenient, but hungry. We're considering our options. That, too, is expensive.

Lesson #7: The biggest and our most underestimated 'cost' of heating with wood is time: you need lots of time to harvest, cut, split and stack it, plus time for seasoning. In a perfect, or maybe just functional, world we'd be putting up wood for the 2012 or even 2013 winter, not scrambling to get through this one. But with Lucas working as much as he has the past 18 months, it's been a challenge to carve out the time needed to get ahead. Challenging, but not impossible; I know we'll get there.

Lesson #8: Despite all the headaches we experienced this past year using wood for fuel, it's one of the things that I'll truly miss when Old Man Winter finally gets to rest.

10 simple things

Sara at Farmama inspired me to share a list of 10 simple things that made me happy this week.

While there were so many things that made me happy (what a great lesson in gratitude) these were this week's "top" 10:

1.) Ella skipping. Or more specifically, Ella skipping in her mismatched pyjamas and flip-flops.

2.) Hanging clothes on the line.

3.) Fresh baked yummy goodness.

4.) New blooms

5.) This super quick and easy sewing project.

6.) Collecting eggs from our own hens.

7.) Baseball and home runs!

8.) The joy and wonder of learning to growing our own food.

9.) My eldest child reading stories to my youngest.

10.) Barefoot gardening with kids who like to get dirty.

Oh, and one more... family movie night.


Speaking of family, I can't forget our Henry.


So much for 10 simple things! What made you happy this week?

An answer to the question, "why?"

Since moving to the farm, there's one question I get asked all the time: why?

The answer is here: "A life you don't want to leave" by Minnesota blogger Mama Pea.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

Simpler Living Column -- A year in review

"A year ago this month, I wrote my first Simpler Living column. In it, I described how we'd moved from a semi in suburbia to a 71-acre farm in a small village in eastern Ontario.

Our dream was to slow down and get away from the hectic pace of life we found ourselves in. Truth be told, during that first year, we only managed to exchange one kind of hectic for another...."

To read more, please go here.

Want more? Here's a complete list of earlier installments of "Simpler Living" written for Bankrate Canada:

October 2009: Preserving the harvest for year-round enjoyment

September 2009: Foraging for wild edibles in your own backyard

August 2009: Gardening is a labour of love whose rewards is a harvest of vegetables and knowledge

July 2009: Save money and get healthy by cooking more vegetarian meals

June 2009: Raising kids on the lean and green

May 2009: Reducing the amount of garbage you produce is good for the pocketbook and the planet

April 2009: When life gives you leftovers, make compost

March 2009: The appeal of raising backyard chickens is growing across cities in Canada

February 2009: The perils of seed catalogues

January 2009: Once you learn to make do with less, it's hard to remember why you needed more

December 2008: Preparing for our first winter, homesteading-style.

Simpler Living column: Raising kids on the lean and green

While I haven't been blogging lately, I have been writing my "Simpler Living" column for Bankrate Canada.

Here's the latest installment on raising kids on the lean and green.

"One of the reasons we moved to our farm last summer was to lead a greener, simpler life. We wanted to provide that kind of life for our children, but as most parents know, life with kids is anything but simple. It's also not cheap.

According to the Canadian Council on Social Development, it costs approximately $167,000 to raise a child to age 18. The biggest expenses, after child care and shelter, are food, clothing and recreation.

We're trying to reduce our grocery bills by keeping a vegetable garden, starting a fruit orchard and tending to a motley crew of egg-laying chickens and ducks. When fall comes, we'll preserve as much of the harvest as we can and fill our pantry and freezer with our own sun-kissed goodness. We stock up when items go on sale, buy in season, bake when we can and choose home cooking over convenience meals.

So if these actions help address the major expenses, what about clothing and recreation?"

To read more, please click here.

This is April? Part 2

This morning we woke up to a full-out blizzard. Within minutes, all the green that we had been savouring just yesterday got buried by a few inches of soppy white stuff.

Needless to say, we weren't pleased. Well, some of us weren't.

As Lucas and I sat at the kitchen table grumbling over our morning coffee about how we couldn't possibly believe it was actually snowing (big tufts of it too), Ella turned to us with a sparkle in her eye and exclaimed, "Yay -- I get to make snow angels!"

And make snow angels she did. And a snow man. And snow balls...



As I sit here watching her play from my office window, I'm simply amazed at how young children truly exist in the moment. We adults get so grumpy over things we can't change such as weather or the economy or even little things like having to shovel more snow.



We spout platitudes such as, "When life hands you lemons, make lemonade" -- but there's this implicit sense of intent, like this is what we should do.

Kids just do.


So while I still might not like our surprise snowfall, at least I have a new appreciation for it. Or perhaps for the simple joy it brings to one of the little people in my life.

Simpler Living column, part three

When I submitted February's Simpler Living column to my editor on Tuesday, I realized that I'd never posted January's installment about making do with less.

"One of the reasons we moved to the country was to get away from the buzz of modern suburban life. Even though we knew the dangers of living next to the Joneses, there was always that pressure to keep up or, even worse, get ahead. But that usually meant spending money, and it had us stretched to our limits.

We wanted off the consumer merry-go-round. We wanted to spend less and live more." (Read more here.)

Truth be told, I probably forgot because we've been pretty busy lately trying to figure out how to make more. Money, that is. While it's true that we've cut down our variable spending quite a bit since moving here, there are still nasty things like mortgage payments and property taxes.

Making a living, while living our life, remains our biggest challenge and while we've got loads of possibilities, this darned "global economic downturn" isn't helping much.

So between that and dealing with various kid infections and the inevitable fallout (turns out we've done a great job teaching our kids to share: unfortunately that means sharing nasty little microbes and viruses -- with us) I haven't been blogging much lately.

So sorry, folks. Just bear with me a bit longer.

In the meantime, click here for the previous month's installment of Simpler Living.

Christmas in January

Okay, I know it's not really Christmas in January. I was going to write, "Christmas revisited" but since we've already revisited pumpkins this week, that didn't sound too original.

I'm the first person to preach, I mean say, that Christmas isn't about gifts -- it's about spending time with family, friends and appreciating all the good in your life.

But I gotta say, I got some pretty neat stuff for the farm this year.

My dad and step-mother gave me this basket.

It's a twin-bottomed egg basket, also known as a "gizzard," a "butt" or a "hip." You can guess which name my kids use to describe it.

According to the artist who handcrafted it, it's most commonly used for gathering, storing and transporting eggs as the depressed centre is useful for carrying the basket on the hip or on the backbone of a horse or mule.

While we own both of these animals (well, two donkeys rather than a mule, which is the offspring of a horse and a donkey) truth be told, I'm not sure if I'd risk carrying eggs on either one of them... crazy creatures, they be.

But I know someone else who is more than willing to step up to the job.

I highly recommend checking out the artist's other work at Smallbones.ca -- it's gorgeous stuff, that. (Yes, the picture in the top right-hand corner is one of my daughter collecting eggs. And yes, she's wearing her pyjamas.)

My dad and step-mother also gave me this. It's a rather unflattering picture of a U-bar digger or broad fork.

It's used to loosen beds at the beginning of the garden season. Since mine will be an organic vegetable garden, it's all about deep soil preparation. I mean, who knew that happy carrot roots burrow deeper than six feet underground?

With its 10" tines, it digs down deep but without disturbing the soil strata. Studies have shown that turning the soil over completely can cause soil compaction, upset the balance of microorganisms and causes layers of organic matter to be buried too deep, below where beneficial insects can break it down.

I could use a rototiller and perhaps I'll resort to that if I'm faced with hours of back-breaking work wrestling with stubborn soil. But there's something appealing, even intimate, to working the soil by hand and leaving the fossil fuel-burning, noise-belching machinery in the garage.

Check back in the spring to see this bad-boy in action.

My brother-in-law gave me this -- an antique spinning wheel.

I've got this romantic notion of one day raising sheep for their wool (though the owner of the "local" knitting shop -- it's a few villages east of here -- is trying to talk me into raising alpacas.)

I think we've got our hands full right now with the goats, donkeys and horse but one day, I hope to see woolies munching their way through our barnyard.

In the meantime, I'll practice my knitting (I'm great at hats, scarves and basic sweaters using simple stitches-- gloves, socks and cabling, not so much) while I try to find someone who can teach me spinning.

And last, but never least, Lucas gave me this.

He lovingly and carefully carved it by hand -- giving new life to an old post that might otherwise been cast away. It's meant to be out in the garden but I've placed it beside an armoire in the living room. It exudes wisdom and timeless contemplation, two qualities that are desperately needed in this crazy world of ours.

The common theme of these gifts that I hold dear is they were all made by hand or facilitate work by hand. In these days of mechanization and mass production, I find there is something satisfying with going back to the basics and simply experiencing the world through one's fingertips.

Looking back

It's hard to believe that I'm writing about the holiday season in past tense already. I mean really, people -- where did 2008 go?

But now that both kids are back in school, the holiday dust has settled and life on the farm has returned to our version of normal (complete with a barn flood and power outage -- more on that later), I've had a chance to do some reminiscing about the past year.

Just this morning, Lucas and I looked at each other, with incredulity and wonder and asked, "How did we get here?" You'd think after six months we'd be done asking that question but when a dream comes true, it takes a while to sink in.

Truth be told, moving to the farm isn't the first time I've had a dream come true. The day I married my husband and the births of both my children are the most important occasions of my life.

But moving to the country, living just as we're living right now, was for a long time something that seemed beyond our reach.

It was just over a year ago, New Year's Eve 2007, that Lucas and I had a mutual feeling that 2008 would be a "big" year for us. I half-expected this "big" would have something to do with our careers. Lucas had just quit his job and was looking for a new opportunity and now that the kids were getting older, I'd hoped to spend more time building my freelance writing career.

We had a good life -- fabulous friends (who I still miss dearly), a great school for our kids, a comfortable home -- but we were faced with a growing feeling that our beliefs were becoming incompatible with our lifestyle.

We wanted to move away from heating our home with fossil fuels, but we lived in a 150-year-old semi-detached home, surrounded by mature trees and close to a major road, that was not a good candidate for retrofitting or even supplementing with alternative energies.

I wanted to grow more of our own food but our backyard was a shady haven for hostas and impatiens -- not vegetables (though had we not moved when we did, I was to have a plot in our town's first allotment garden.)

We wanted to raise our own animals, surround ourselves with open spaces and get away from the buzz of city life. Moving to another part of town, even on the outskirts, just wasn't an option as housing prices were going through the roof and developers were circling the city limits.

Besides, our once small town was becoming too busy, too big-box, too suburban.

We knew it was time to move on, before we'd grown even stronger roots to our community. But truth be told, we were scared.

We worried that if we moved to a small town, we'd have difficulty making a decent living. What's more, we'd lived in our old town for nine years and we'd grown to love the familiarity of it all. We'd be starting from scratch, again, but this time with two young children -- which made a move that much scarier but also that much more imperative.

My dad and his wife had moved east of the GTA only a couple of years earlier and we were taken by our impressions of a more relaxed pace of living. We decided to look "east" and we gave ourselves a window of about two years.

Then in late March, I attended a sustainability symposium in Belleville, Ontario. The night before, I stayed at a lovely bed & breakfast, the Motley Manor on Lilac Grove Hill, in Madoc, Ontario -- about 35 minutes north of the symposium. I spent a solid two hours chatting with the owner and her mother, who was visiting, about the area and our dreams for a simpler life.

Visiting the symposium the next day, with its presentations on sustainable food systems, alternative home construction and green energy options, cemented my belief that we were on the right track.

Then just two weeks later, I attended the 2008 Farmland Preservation Forum in Guelph, Ontario, which was essentially a discussion on strategies to help ensure access to land for the next generation of farmers. At my table was a gentleman from FarmStart, a non-profit organization that helps young and new farmers get started, as well as the Executive Director of the Quebec Farmer Association (QFA).

As we went around the table, introducing ourselves and explaining why we were at the conference, I could feel my stomach churning and the palms of my hands started feeling clammy.

When it was my turn to speak, I said that I was a representative of P.O.W.E.R. (a Halton-Ontario based environmental organization of which I was a board member) but I was also an aspiring farmer. It was the first time I'd voiced our dream to anyone beyond a close circle of family or friends.

No one laughed. In fact, a few people smiled and nodded their head in approval.

Then, at the lunch break, the ED of the QFA sat down with me and started asking about our plans. The more I talked, the less crazy I started to feel. What's more, I started believing it was possible.

Then he asked me, "If you didn't try it, would you regret it?" and without hesitation, I answered "Yes." He asked me, "Then what's stopping you?"

What's stopping us, indeed.

I can scarcely remember the rest of the conference. My mind was a whirlwind of possibility and I couldn't wait to get home. Lucas and I had been having conversations about a modern-day homestead for years (I was more nervous than he, by far) and just recently, we'd started voicing our ideas with my dad. But now, our dream was truly "out there."

Now, I'd been browsing for online property listings for ages and I hadn't yet found anything that even resembled our pretty specific dream list. I was starting to think that we'd never find it: a three-bedroom century home on 50 to 100 acres with outbuildings, a pond or a stream, with a sizable woodlot and pasture, all within our price range.

But within a week of the conference, I'd found a property that was all that. Twelve days after the conference, on a Tuesday in late April, we visited and placed a successful offer on the farm we now call home.

Of course, when a dream comes true, it's easy to left with the feeling of "what's next?" Thankfully for us, whether it's the union of two people, the birth of a child or a move to the country, we're guaranteed years of memories in the making.

We still have lots of work to do and we're struggling to make a decent living. To say our learning curve is steep is a gross understatement. But we've never once said, "We made a mistake" or wished we were anywhere else.

So while 2008 was the year of something "big", we hope 2009 will be the year of lots of new "little" beginnings.

Back in business... and a thank you

To all of you who have sent me emails or written comments after my last posting, I wanted to give a heart-felt 'thank you'. Your words of encouragement are truly humbling... and I appreciate them dearly.

And to just reassure everyone -- the latest antics at Rowangarth Farm did not cause me to pack my bags and head back to the city. I have, however, been hiding out for a while... in my fleece pyjamas under a warm blanket, snuggled up with some eucalyptus and lemon tea. Yep, I got sick. Big time.

I came down with a nasty chest infection that made my lungs feel like they were being sliced with razors every time I breathed, especially when I was outside in our minus 20 degree Celsius weather. I pulled muscles in my stomach that I didn't even know I had from all the coughing and my nose got miserably chapped from my constant wiping.

I almost always get sick when I push myself too hard. It's just my body's way of forcing me to SLOW down! So I did, after a short-lived bout of feeling sorry for myself. I slept, I read and I didn't think (too much) about all the things I should be doing.

But today, I got back at it. I spent the better part of the day mucking out stalls (a lot of poop accumulates when you're not in the barn!) and getting myself reacquainted with everyone.

This is part of the L-shaped stall that the donkeys and horse use (we leave the north door open so they can come and go as they please.) The larger stall/part is in the rear and to the left, out of frame. It ain't fancy, but it's home!

As I'm writing this, my back hurts, I'm tired as all hell and I had another painful run-in with Oscar the Grouch. And yet, I had a great day. As overwhelmed as I feel sometimes, there's no way I'm giving this life up. When I stop worrying about the details, I realize I'm having way too much fun.


And besides, I'm just getting started.

Overwhelmed and underpaid

One of the things I've found with this homesteading life is that things don't always go the way you expect them. It's a good thing to be humbled by nature but it doesn't make the lesson any easier.

You see, I'm something of a recovering type-A personality, in that I like to be in control and have things go a certain way. But I also know that's unreasonable (and downright exhausting!) so I'm working at paring down my expectations and instead sitting back and accepting where life takes me. It's a recipe for simplicity and yet I'm finding nothing simple about it.

I knew there would be challenges raising animals here, especially those of the livestock variety (even though Oscar thinks he's a dog, he most certainly is not!) and no matter how many books I read, questions I ask and online forums I visit, the only way to learn is by doing.

I could have made the decision to start the doing after we'd been here for a while. To settle into to farm life first, to get through our first winter solo. But I didn't. Each one of these creatures came into our life for a reason and I made the decision to take them. (Whether it was the "right" is still up for debate.)

The learning started immediately. My first lesson in animal husbandry was that regardless of breed characteristics, each animal has its own unique and set personality. While humans tend to think they can bend nature to their will, to align with their expectations, it's just not the case. And I've got the bruises to prove it.

For example, the donkeys, who were "hired" to act as predator protection for our future herd of sheep and goats, like to terrorize the goat.

We got Oscar as a companion animal (because wethers are supposedly more docile than bucks), but he's taken to headbutting me* when he doesn't get what he wants (I think the donkeys are stressing him out.)

Gallagher came to live on our farm because he needed a forever home, we had an empty stall and I'd always dreamed of owning a horse. What's more, I find spending time with him as good as any therapy. Trouble is, he's fallen in love with Cinderella -- the donkey -- and throws a temper tantrum when he loses sight of her, especially when we put him in his stall. At the age of 18, you'd think he'd have a bit more sense. But he doesn't.

Then there's the aesthetics of the place. When we lived in the city, I used to be conscientious of what our house looked like, inside and out. Beds were always made, dishes clean, floors swept, everything in its place. But on a working farm, I've found I've just had to lower my expectations: there's just too much to do and simply not enough time to do it.

Take the barnyard, for example. The heavy snow is now thawing, and overnight everything has turned into a soggy, sloppy mess. No matter how much shoveling of poop and laying of straw I do, it's just not pretty. Let's just say our farm will never grace the cover of Harrowsmith Country Living.

Then there are the times when I find it hard to draw the line between being a responsible caretaker and being overwhelmed by barn chores. Regardless of how dead tired I am, how late I was up the night before or how much work I should be doing, there are creatures that depend on me to feed, water and keep them clean (that's in addition to my own two creatures who need me, but that's a whole other posting on "mummy guilt"!)

To be honest, I have really down moments when I think, "What the hell are we doing?", "We have no right to be here," "What do we know about anything?" and "I've gotten us in over our heads."

I can almost here people telling me, "I told you so" and "You rushed into things" and "Didn't you see this coming?" Perhaps.

But then I remind myself why we came here and what we're trying to get away from. Modern life is so often one of ease and convenience. Too tired to cook? Then pop a frozen dinner in the microwave. Preservatives and excess packaging, be damned!

And yet, this kind of work isn't convenient, it isn't glamorous and it's far from easy. Truth be told, it's exhausting. It's stressful feeling out of control and not knowing what we're doing 100% (or even 50%) of the time. But every day we're learning something new and each lesson, good or bad, is taking us one step closer to figuring out how to make this all work for us.

And every night, under a black sky filled with zillions of stars, I'm learning how to just look at our barn filled with so much life and living and think, "I wonder what tomorrow will bring?"

* Note to self: Goats are dehorned for a good reason.