Busy Hands Homestead

Tired is lodged between my shoulder blades.   I pick a shovel and one scoop   at a time close up the trench connecting the power from the shop to the shell of our house. Seven hours later I shower and drive Adam to the airport.  He is mostly out of town for two weeks and I have no option but to keep moving.  Every day starts and ends with an impossibly long to do list.    I am woken up Tuesday morning a semi load of insulation being dropped off at my curb.  After work an (unbelievably kind) neighbor and I lug each giant bag of rock wool into the house and pile some in every room - down stairs and up the stairs – until my arms no longer can hug the bags to my chest.   Wednesday night we do the same, but when I try to bear hug the first bag insulation to me I find I can’t carry a single one on my own.   As we round up the corner of the stairs the first time a flutter catches my eye.   An owl is trapped against ...

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...

Sylvan's blue and orange glove keeps slipping out of my knitted mitten. He and I wave to Ivory on the school bus, go down the street, and up and over the bridge. There is a skiff of snow on the ground, a hint of sunlight through the clouds, and the sound of birds chirping. Flocks of black birds morph across the sky, the morning light flashing off of their wing flaps, and for an instant they are foating glitter. Our hands slip and we switch sides. I can't remember what we talk about, but the kid walking next to me is happy and bubbly and is rattling on barely audible over the drone of trucks. It is hard to imagine that just half an hour earlier, he was screaming about breakfast and shoes and going to school in general. The snow and cold surprised me. I wasn't ready. Sylvan is bundled up in snow pants and bright orange sneakers. His sister's hand me down bogs I saved from last winter are still too big, and I haven...

I gave myself permission to delay posting about day 2. Day 2 was the day of the Northside vs. Westside Softball Challenge with I helped organize. There are still a few banners in the car that need to delivered back to the game's sponsors, but other than that, it is over.  It is a fundraising event for the North-Missoula Community Development Corporation , and I still need to tally up the final expenditures and earnings, but overall it was a success. The Westside won 18 – 9. Back to the #SNAPcallenge and food related issues. Breakfast was oatmeal. Oatmeal is a perfect breakfast choice for my family of picky breakfast eaters because it is easily customizable. Adam and I eat it as a savory dish topped with onion, cheese, eggs and greens, while the children opt for brown sugar and cinnamon. Oatmeal (4 x .043 = $0.172) Cheese (0.16 x 2 = $0.32) Eggs (0.21x 3 = $0.75) Swiss Chard (CSA) Brown Sugar (4 tablespoons = $0.096) Coffee (cost of my coffee ...

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...

For an entire week our mornings and evenings were filled with the chink, chink, chink of cherry pits. Two cherry pies, cherry danishes , and quart bags of pitted cherries are in the freezer.   Jars of apple cherry jam are on the shelf. Once a year we drive up to Finley Point to pick cherries in the summer sun and then jump into the clear  cold water of Flathead lake.   The silver fruit picking ladder gets warm  in the sun and is almost to hot  to touch against my skin as we move from one tree to the next. The sticky, sweet, dark red juice runs down my fingers as I fill the same basket over and over, carrying it up and down the ladder, and we fill the cardboard boxes we brought along. The kids pick cherries for a while, and then get distracted and sprawl on blankets, eating lunch and running through a sprinkler the owner’s of the orchard left on. Between my feet and the ground, between where I stand on the ladder and where the ...

Today is President's Day.  This kids are off school, wrestling around the bedroom as I am typing, because sleeping in on a day when there is no school just is not an option.  We are going on a road trip.  We are going to return to a few of our favorite Helena places.   I might be bribing the kids a little bit, because I have an ulterior motive.  We are making a quick jaunt over the pass to make an appearance at a legislative committee meeting to make a public comment on House Bill 361 .  This bill revises the criteria for who is eligible for SNAP benefits cutting benefits for many low income Montanans while also costing the state upwards of $500,000.  Go figure.  I can only assume that the sponsoring legislator likes poor people even less than he likes being being fiscally responsible. Driving two hours to go speak for a few minutes about proposed legislation is a a new adventure for the three of us and I have to admit that I am ...

Sylvan stands on top of a rock on top of “a mountain” proudly announcing that this was the first mountain he had reached the top of while being six. This event  being categorized as his first summit as a six year old was true, but the definition of mountain was being applied liberally.  The landscape feature we are standing on top of is the same as the view out of our dining room window, or rather the view we used to have before all we could see are walls of shiny metal on the new townhouses, and that feature is aptly called Waterworks Hill.  “Let’s walk to the top of the Mountain”,  sounds so much more exciting, as does: “We made it to the top of the Mountain”.   He holds my hand the whole way up and then the whole way down as he plans our first whole family expedition to Mount Everest. “That is half way around the world in Nepal,” I tell him, “and cold, with ice fields, steep slopes and a lack of oxygen.  We need to train.” He contemplates all th...

I haven't been sleeping well. I fall into bed feeling exhausted and tired but the moment when I finally relax and am just about drift off to sleep my head just starts running a never ending anxious monologue. I try to refocus, breath.. I've been doing yoga for years, I should have this mastered this by now...  get up to and go the bathroom and then try again. But the underlying anxiety that drives the monologue and keeps me on the edge of tears and starts all over again. Here is why. A month or so ago I signed a letter.  A letter supporting the opening of an office for an organization that helps resettle refugees in the United States and would resettle a few individuals here in Montana. I didn't think much of it initially – because if we have the ability to help people out of terrible, desperate situations it simply is right thing to do. Then this happened. I received this image as a text message I don't know who took the picture .And since then - I ...

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.   ...