Busy Hands Homestead

Every morning I make a list of three things that made me happy the day before. A practice I started when life became crazy - and that was a while ago - years ago. Little things: walks, dinner, kid crafts, baking bread, flowers opening, bathing, sleeping in, having a shower to shower in. Time is tracked in lists. April - The numbers of eggs our chickens lay per day.  What is the average?  (3.6) What is the MAD (mean absolute deviation)? (.706) What is the normal range? (2.89 - 4.3) May - The wild flowers we see on hikes. The birds we mange to identify. Time moves fast, slow, doesn't exist at all. Adam dates a check the 8th.  "Where have you been", I say. "Today is the 15th." Time is tracked in shopping lists and meal plans . Ivory pours over recipes for cookies, candies and desserts.  She creates excuses to makes sweets and delivers them to neighbors: toffee, gummies, french macrons.  I discover wishful items added to my shopping:  ...

There are moments when anxiety squeezes my lungs, I blink to push away tears, and I focus on what is around me right now.  Life at this moment is scary with so many things unknown, but at the same time I deeply grateful to be where I am, at this moment, with my family, and hyper-aware of just how much privilege this moment holds. At the beginning of March 2019 we turned on the heat in our house that we had been working on for almost a year. After living in the bus for seven months, followed by house sitting and couch surfing for the coldest of the winter, we made the decision to move out of our 30 foot school bus and into our house.  We had no kitchen and unfinished bathrooms. It was rustic at best, but warm. We camped out in a construction mess and for months as we finished bathrooms, built cabinets, added doors. In March of 2020, I am hyper-aware that warm water and hand-washing is a luxury, that having space (or money) to store essentials and minimize grocery runs isn't u...

There is something that I love about being solidly in the winter months. Past is the anxiety about the coming cold, the lists of unfinished work, all the things we could have done but did not do. It is a new year full of dreams, and potential, and things yet to come. It is dark enough at 6:30 in the morning to see the earth's shadow cover the moon. Ivory glaces upward, takes in the moment, and crawls back into bed. Sylvan looks up and keeps looking. The cold creeps between bathrobes, and coats, and boots on bare feet as we stand looking at the sky. The early morning darkness gradually becomes lighter, the afternoons noticeably longer. Winter is an excuse to hunker down, to bend our heads close, sip warmth and gradually put the pieces together. Puddles form and ice sheets get smashed while waiting for the school bus. The surface of the road slowly appears and disappears on my walk to work. It snows, and it seems that ev...

My eyes are squeezed shut, I am gripping the sides of the car, my feet are pushing into the floorboard I am so nervous I have to pee.  I am terrified.  There was an upside down car laying in the boulder field just below the road, granted, It looked like it had been there for 40 years or so, but it instantly gave an image to what I was feeling.  I have a phobia of mountain roads and yet I regularly sit in the passenger seat while Adam patiently tries to drive while I freak out.  Why?  Well,I like picking huckleberries and I love hot springs so I find myself in the situation more often than I would like to admit.  How did I get here this time? I am entering the fourth decade of life and to celebrate we turned off our cell phones, threw food, clothes, the tent, the dogs and the kids into the car and embarked on a road trip to places we have never been before.  A loop through Idaho stopping to dip into a few of the many hot springs that dot the state a...

Since we arrived home, nearly midnight, on the fourth of July, our days have been full. Our days have been brimming, no, over flowing with activity.  The weeds were all pulled to reveal little rows of seeds that sprouted in my absence. Kale has been coming into my kitchen by the arm full. Onions are being pulled. We had our first cucumber, followed quickly by many more. Zucchini, Chard, Eggplant, Purple Beans and Snap Peas, Mint, Parsley, Rhubarb, Strawberries, Blueberries and Currants move from garden to plate and sometimes just straight from plant to mouth.  Our hens, which were little more than awkward, gangly adolescents, are now shiny and proud. We check the coop every so often for that very first egg.  Will it be brown? Blue? There are berries to harvest.  And a sink full of strawberries fills our house with a sweet fragrance as they simmer in the process of becoming strawberry syrup and butter.   ...