Busy Hands Homestead

We got up a little earlier than usual. Today was ONE LESS CAR DAY in Missoula and rode my bike down to the end of the street to walk back through the neighborhood and scoop up kids along the way.  I wore cloth shoes and it rained, but the rain has finally cleared the wildfire smoke from the air, and everyone was in good spirits.  Breakfast was quick. 4 tortillas (0.15 x 4 = $0.60) 5 eggs (0.25 x 5 = $1.25) 2 ounces of cheddar cheese (0.16 x 2 = $0.32) Coffee (cost of my coffee share per day $1.52) Cherry Tomatoes (FREE – no really – I have been saving these seeds for 5 years now.  These were tomatoes that volunteered in my yard when we moved to our house and I have replanted them every year since.  I grow them for the cost of water, except I have a flat rate water bill that doesn’t change based on use…  so we will just call them FREE!) Total Breakfast Cost: $3.69 for a family of 4 Wet shoes and all, I walked to the Clay Studio to get a...

So, we bought a school bus. I'm hoping its not the worst decision we have ever made. Adam has slowly, much too slowly been morphing it into, what hopefully will be a living space.   And I have been trying to pack up our house, sew a million curtains, and keep life normal.  We have successfully (what is success anymore??) been navigation the line somewhere between a mess and a disaster. Some days I drop both of the kids off at the bus stop, other days I drop off one at the bus stop while the other would rather hold my hand the whole way, since I walk past the school on my way to work anyway. We always arrive just at the front just as the buses pull up to the back. I spend more than I ever imagined staring at a computer screen, navigating an entirely new and foreign world of a federally funded affordable housing project. Damn, that shit is complicated. Late August, I received an email about participating in the Community Food and Agricu...