Sometimes inspiration strikes in the most unexpected, and often inconvenient, moments. Take, for example, tonight…it’s at the end of a long day of food preservation and meal preparation, and I’m supervising shower time for the kids when, out of nowhere, a lightbulb turns on. An idea for a new post clicks, when I wasn’t even thinking about the blog. But, one kid can’t get all the shampoo out of her hair, while the other has no idea where his pajamas are (how many times do I have to organize the dresser drawers?!), so writing gets pushed to the back burner. However, that niggling idea just won’t go away, so I’m now up late getting it all out.

More often than not I get the impression that people think we’re nuts for pursuing this lifestyle. Why would we ever want to grow our own food or raise our children in the country? Why go to all that “hard work” when the grocery store and suburbia have everything you need? To answer the first part of that question, please see my last post!

Basically, it all boils down to “my why”. You know the question that you’re asked when starting a new venture, whether it’s losing weight or starting a new job. What is your motivation for doing what you do? Your why…so here is my why.

I love that one recent afternoon my nine-year old chose learning to bale hay over swimming with friends because he “wanted to learn how to do it”. He probably won’t make that mistake again. Also, unrelated, he’d love for someone to invent a milk-cow kegerator equivalent, despite my protestations about the manure involved, and given his fondness for all things dairy, we’re going to need to invest in that sooner, rather than later.

I love that my six-year old picks and eats sugar snap peas and green beans while standing in the garden or freshly shucked sweet corn in the field.

I love that my nine-year old knows that on Monday nights we watch “Antiques Roadshow”, and he’ll remind us that it’s Monday, so we don’t forget to tune in. Plus, he watches the hour-long program intently and suggests which things my mom should take when she goes on the show some day.

I love that my six-year old absolutely smothers the kittens in the shed with all the love she possesses, from the time she wakes up to the time I tell her to call it a night. If anyone is living her best life right now, it’s my daughter!

I love that my nine-year old diligently counts the chickens and un-locks or locks the coop each morning and night. He’s also claimed the job of egg collector once they start laying.

I love that my six-year old volunteers to pick the basil so that I can turn it into pesto and checks the pie pumpkins and apples daily for any sign of ripeness. “They’re starting to turn orange Mama!”

These may be just a few of the reasons for choosing this lifestyle, but in my mind they’re huge. Showing our children that there’s more to life than video games, social media and pop culture is imperative. Teaching them to slow down and appreciate a simpler way of life is monumental. Helping them recognize the important things in life is absolutely crucial, and helps to remind us to slow down and take a closer look. So now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a full moon and some stars to watch.

As a kid growing up on a farm in central Illinois, I remember my father tuning in to WGN radio’s noon show with Orion Samuelson and Max Armstrong at lunchtime most days. He’d listen intently as the announcers read off the list of various commodity prices for the day, which inevitably included pork bellies. Now, as a kid of 9 or 10 years old I could only surmise what the heck a pork belly was and really, if I’m being honest, even as an adult I may not completely understand the business of trading pork belly futures.

“Whatta ya mean my luggage is in Topeka!” – Glenn Loving, photo © Piolov, Inc.

 

However, as our country and really, the world, faces the global pandemic that is affecting all of us, chinks in the global food system have been exposed. Questions like “is our food system broken?” have arisen. Articles like this from Homesteaders of America and this from the New York Times make one wonder if sourcing food closer to home might be the way more people are headed.

Like many homesteaders, or homesteader wannabes, we’ve been thinking about what we can do to minimize our reliance on the global food system. A garden large enough to sustain us throughout the non-growing season has always been one of our goals, and I look forward to explaining what we’re doing about that in a future post.

But something else we’re interested in doing is raising our own meat or, since we aren’t actually on the farm yet, sourcing it locally. As Covid-19 shut down meat processing plants across the country, many producers were at a loss with what to do with their products that would typically be funneled through grocery stores. Through Facebook groups such as Farm Surplus 2 Table and word-of-mouth, many of these producers have been able to connect directly with the consumer, thereby not losing their entire profit or potentially having to destroy their flocks, herds and crops.

By partnering with a local hog producer and meat locker that, fortunately, still had processing slots available, we have been blessed to secure enough pork that will get us through the foreseeable future. Some day, hopefully not long from now, we plan to raise our own hogs and process them, as well, but for now we’re excited to have this opportunity.

In the meantime, we’ll continue to dream and think about the future when we’ll know where all of our bacon (and other food, but most importantly, bacon) comes from.

The time has finally come for us to move forward with plans! It’s been a minute since I’ve written anything, but I have many posts in mind that I’m excited to share, and this one is a long time coming.

Back in Korea, there is a season solely dedicated to strawberries. Other countries have similar produce seasons such as “Spargelzeit” or “asparagus time” in Germany. It’s a season that’s highly anticipated and during which many restaurant dishes and markets highlight whatever the seasonal ingredient is. Does the US have this? Have I just been missing out? If so, please clue me in! I know, I digress. Squirrel!

So, strawberry season in Korea is a big deal. They’re everywhere, and the presentation is half of the appeal. The packages we would purchase contained 12 perfect, enormous strawberries, situated in parallel rows in protective styrofoam containers. Unfortunately, the presentation often reflected the price we could expect to pay, so strawberries in Korea were a treat…as evidenced in these pictures from when the kids were much younger, sigh.

Fast forward to being back stateside…two years ago the kids and I picked a couple of buckets of strawberries at a local U-pick farm and turned them into jam. Those 15 or so jars lasted us two years since, apparently, we don’t eat a lot of jam, or the kids didn’t realize just how darn good that stuff was. So, last fall when I saw that the same strawberry farm was looking for volunteers to plant the next year’s crop, in exchange for strawberries this spring, I jumped at the chance. For four hours one day I kneeled, bent over, crawled, was rained on, dug in and got dirty, all in anticipation of “free” strawberries this spring. I might have not been able to walk upright for the next couple of days, but by doggone it, I was going to get those strawberries!

This weekend that dream was realized. Although the current global situation is prohibiting the U-pick operations, drive through strawberry-ing (yes, that’s a word) happened. From those three, five pound buckets and a whole mess of lemons we managed to make five pints of strawberry-lemonade concentrate, 19 half pints of strawberry jam and some absolutely delicious (if I do say so myself) gluten- and dairy-free strawberry shortcake.

Hopefully these jars will last us until we can find a new strawberry patch…or at least until we can plant our own.