year four

Summer slithers toward the blue certainty of another October. Vines lengthen. Fruit ripens. Animals grow. Flowers start to seed.

I trudge to Spruce Pine and back every day. I come in, change, pick up the dirty tomatoes and hold them, one by one, under the cool clear water. I exhale the stale dust that has hovered eight hours between my keyboard and screen, inhale the thick, sunny steam of our kitchen.

I want to hear about his day.

He calls me to ask about punctuating the haiku he is writing as his Instagram caption.

I text him a question about our weekend plans.

We load the canoe.

We irritate one another.

We walk up the road in the evening light, back down in the glow of August’s hazy moon.

‘Tis the gift to be simple, ’tis the gift to be free/’Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,/And when we find ourselves in the place just right,/’Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

 

we did it! (or “budgeting and pictures and a kevin costner link!”)

Today marks an important milestone for the Smith-Cook Homestead. Even though we’ve been at it for seven weeks now, last month D still had a couple last paychecks come in, so July was the true test of our financial stability with a single income. Despite all our planning and budgeting and reassuring ourselves, I was still curious (and a little nervous) to see how it would go. I worked on a detailed budget that allows me to track every purchase we make and sort them into categories. For each category, I allocated a certain amount for the month, which was based on spending in that category over the last three months. The total allocated amount for the month was a little less than my monthly paycheck. Our hope was to have a tad left each month to go towards our checking account buffer (one month’s expenses). Once the buffer is met, those small monthly surpluses can go to savings….And we did it!

I know this all sounds like basic budgeting, but I learned a lot this month:

1. I found that the trick to building up our checking account buffer, for emergencies or direct debit mishaps, is to keep our monthly income fixed as one month’s actual income, NOT our checking account balance (which changes from month to month). That way, I don’t end up mindlessly spending because my balance went up a bit (especially right after getting paid, for example). Instead, our fixed income starts over and stays the same each month, and we are forced to spend within that amount. Those small (okay tiny) surpluses each month will slowly contribute to our buffer, without us really thinking about them because again, we are working from my monthly income, not our checking account balance. Maybe it is common sense, but it has helped me this month and I hope we can keep it up!
2. I also realized that this change is forcing us to change our lifestyle in ways that we wanted, but probably could/would not have done if we were both still working. Kind of like the whole “if you build it, he will come” idea, but sort of backwards. If you want to live in a more sustainable way, you may have to reduce your financial income, which will cause you to reduce spending, which will force you to live more sustainably, or something like that. Yeah. I love you, Kevin Costner.

Anyway, enough boring money talk! Lot’s happening this week, here are a few highlights. D discovered Tomato Hornworms munching on our plants and fruits this week. So nasty, so destructive, and so camouflage! Once the chickens overcame their fear of these large, strange pests, they took care of the problem for us.

Tomato Hornworms!

Can you spot the worm?

Rasberries? No! Worm Poo!

The livestock have been enjoying the cool summer. One of D’s recent projects has been getting the horse moved down to the pasture at my grandparents’ old house. Here, the land is flatter and she is closer to our house, both of which should make it easier for D to work with her. After a few days of repairs on the fence left by the previous renters, she was ready for the move. The rams and weathers now have access to her shed, which they seem pleased with.

Happy sheep.

Smiling goats, because, they’re smiling!

Checking out the new grass.

Happy horse in her new home.

The chickens have also been playing musical coops this week. We moved the teenagers from the mobile coop to the big run, where they’ll hopefully teach our three lazy, unproductive Dominiques how to be real chickens! The youngest brood moved up into the mobile coop, where they have a little more room and green grass. Soon we hope to have all 22 birds in the big run that surrounds the garden, eating bugs and weeds and laying yummy eggs.

We are right on the cusp of that time of summer when everything seems to ripen overnight, and we get inundated with vegetables. We’ve been enjoying onions, radishes, peas, beets, lettuce, summer squash, potatoes, shelly beans, tomatoes and rhubarb for weeks now, but it is looking like several things are all going to come in any day. D will be busy with canning, freezing and drying, and I will be grateful for his presence at home.

Finally, we had two wild animal sightings this week! Vicious creatures!

A snapping turtle!

It’s a hard life for Newman.

All in all, it has been a wonderful month. Thanks for reading, and for your prayers and kind comments. I will keep you posted!

sweet summer

All is well in summer. We are in the middle of Week Four of homesteading on a single income, and so far things are continuing to be pretty wonderful. The holiday brought a lapse in posts, so here is a little update.

D’s cinderblock meat smoker

http://instagram.com/p/qPAvf0zHSO/?modal=true

A few highlights:

• Listening to the sweet peeps of new chicks
• Canoeing with the boy and tubing the Toe (check out this amazing resource: Toe River Canoe Trail!)
• Eating D’s summer specialty,  smoked pork
• Inhaling cool rainy evenings
• Observing the magic of the Rhododendron maximum and the slow ripening of tomatoes

As summer continues, I can only hope for more of the same. I’d also like to give photo credit for my header image to my very talented little sister, Nell Smith.

week one

It is almost the end of D’s first week at home (and since I am working four ten-hour days this summer, it is definitely the end of my time in front of a computer for the week). I won’t write for D (and hope he’ll write some later), but for me this week has been strange, wonderful, freeing and blessed. I left for work Monday morning feeling a weight rise from my shoulders, a deep peace knowing that he was home. When I came home that evening I was bursting to know the details of his day. I am marveling at the big and little improvements he’s already made. A few updates:

At the top of D’s list: Daily work with our horse, Adela. We bought her with hopes of breaking her to work a plow, but so far have barely had time to see her.

Day 1: She’s ready to work and happy for the attention!

Day 3: “I’m tired…Do I have to?”

The chickens have moved up to a larger coop. Pretty soon they’ll be ready for the big run which surrounds our entire garden!

Enjoying scratching at some real food!

A real weekend! Now that D can contribute to work at home during the week, we can actually spend some time together on the weekends (instead of playing catch up on chores on Saturdays). We checked out two local farmers markets to see what folks were selling, and spent the afternoon hiking around Mt. Mitchell.

Fog rolling over the ridge below the summit of Mt. Mitchell.

Happy hiking.

Supper. I don’t want to gloat, so I’ll just let the pictures speak for themselves.

Fresh spring roles with boiled sweet potato, green onion, and herbs.

Sugar snaps and herbs.

One of the most gratifying changes for me so far has been that we now have time for evening walks. So precious, these strolls have made a huge difference in my overall sense of well-being.

Evening walk up the graveyard hill.

D has already had a couple requests for help and catering, and he has actually been able to consider them, since he would have time to do them now. More updates coming soon!

a new light

With the change I wrote about in the last post, I’ve seen a new lightness in D’s step, and a new light illuminating our home.

•   “Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” ― Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches
• “We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.” ― Plato
• “May it be a light to you in dark places, when all other lights go out.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

 

more on home and work

When I started this blog, I wrote a lot (here and here, for example) about D and I building a home-centered life on Bee Branch, living simply and together with our community, eating food we would grow and setting ourselves apart from the mainstream, get more stuff, job-centered culture. Our plan has always been for me to work at a job that will allow Derrick to work at home. We have lots of examples of people successfully living this way; friends and acquaintances in Virginia and Michigan are making it work (with the added challenge of children!), so we know it can be done.

It has been two years since I wrote about that, two years since we moved into our own home and we both started working full-time. We have kept up gardening, tending animals, and loving our home and community, but as you can imagine (and as many of you probably know from experience), both of us working 40+ hours away from our home has made it difficult to homestead in the comprehensive way we would like one of the most stressful, yucky times of our lives! On weekdays we leave home together at seven in the morning and get home around five-thirty or six. We fly into chores, me catching up on laundry, cleaning up, and starting supper; Derrick feeding animals, mowing, and/or working in the garden (or splitting wood, in the winter) until around eight-thirty. Then we eat supper, do dishes, and are lucky to get to bed by ten! It feels like we are running a marathon, every job is done just well enough, and we barely even see each other (let alone friends and community members!)!

(I know that the lifestyle I’ve just described is one many people have no other choice but to live. Circumstances demand that they work hard at a job just to survive. I understand that to want something different is a privilege.)

How did this happen? If you remember, D started working at a local heating and plumbing business nearly three years ago, while I was frantically submitting job applications and looking for work. Then, I found it! I got a full-time, grant-funded position in the public school system in our neighboring county. While I loved the work I did with students in the GEAR UP program for nearly two years, I couldn’t shake the instability of grant-funding, and the pay wasn’t quite enough as our single source of income. During this time, we bought a small home for (we think) a modest price, and we encumbered a small monthly payment. We needed a reliable vehicle (we live in the mountains where the nearest grocery store is 30 minutes away, winter includes snow and ice, and public transportation is virtually nonexistent), so we bought a nice car that we hope will last decades. And we adopted another monthly payment.

Now, I’ve just started a new job at our local community college, which has meant longer hours but more financial stability. While I am immensely thankful for the comforts of a home, car, and job, I fear that our homesteading dream might soon become unrealistic. Sometimes I find myself thinking more about the purchases I’d like to make. In my moments of extreme self doubt, even though I know that we have tried to spend little and buy intentionally, I even start to feel like a phony, wondering if we’ve sold out by making these big purchases, and aligned ourselves with the culture we were trying to avoid (the horror!).

So, while D and I still have the luxury of making choices, before our lives so subtlety adapt to two incomes that we can’t do anything but keep working away from home, we want to make a change. Next week, D will drop his job and start working at home full time.

We are nervous but terrified! We have just started imagining what it will look like (“You mean, you will do supper, and the laundry, and grow our food?”). Please say prayers for us as we try to scale back our expenditures even more, as we communicate to friends and family this big change, and as we seek to connect on a deeper level with our home.

I will keep you posted!

Ch-ch-ch-changes!

OK readers, in light of a few recent posts that are bringing me a little down, a post about the positives of right now:

D and I bought a house. When we aren’t feeling overwhelmed by the prospect of long-term debt, we are basking in the joy of having our own little home. The house came to us through a bit of wu wei; we noticed the ‘for sale’ sign at the bottom of a driveway on Bee Branch at a time when we were just settling into my grandparents house right up the road. We took a look just for the heck of it, met the owners and heard their amazing story of working on the house over the years. They bought the four acres from their friend, ordered the cedar logs from British Columbia, and have been laboring in love, little bits at a time (as this was their vacation home) since the 70’s. D and I fell in love with its small size, cozy wood stoves  and cedary-smells, and have been blessed to work with owners who empathize with our less-than-impressive income.

a little peek of the little cedar house on bee branch

We put up our first Christmas tree in the house last weekend. Need I say more?

the magic

We traded in the old mini-van for a new car. Yep. Crazy. Jetta, TDI, car of my dreams. Loving the gas mileage and the coolness. Not gonna lie.

I have a full-time job (thus the house and the car, whew)! After a year of working one part time job, a month of working two part-time jobs, I finally have full-time work with GEAR UP NC in the Yancey County School system. For the next seven years, I hope to be working with parents and families to see more students graduate high school and succeed on a wide range of post-secondary paths.

Gearing Up at the high school!

In many ways this year, I am feeling for the first time like maybe I am becoming an adult. With real pain and suffering has also come real joy. Alongside all the unsettling, unpleasant changes I’ve been experiencing lately, I must also acknowledge the sweetness of the positives.

a spring post and, it’s happening

It is that time again. Daffodils. Bradford Pears. Cherry trees. Magnolias. Forsythia.

I can’t resist. You should see our yard.

Pink and white Magnolias

Greening garden

Evening Willow

Remnants of the hardworking, Creation-loving couple who tended this place before us. I can’t look outside without remembering Mawmaw’s soft hands, Dadaw’s sun-spotted arms.

This time of year marks new beginnings for D and me, too. Our first home-place. Moving back to Bee Branch. I knew when we came back home that it would not be the same home it was when I left. Everything would be different, mostly because I was different. How would home become ours? How would it feel?

Home is the new reality that we are all co-creating. It is happening. It feels good and right.

Certainly there are still dark moments, things we wish weren’t so. But at least we have a bit of good ground to stand on. A life free of envy. Happy to be doing what we love. Answering a call heard deep within. What could be better to wake up and think of nothing but what you love, absent of any longing to be somewhere else, doing something other than this?

Is it a rare privilege, to live this way, or is it available to each of us?

chicken coup d’état

Almost as soon as we moved back to the mountains, my parents informed us that they were through with their 23 Buff Orpington chickens. In typical my-parents-style, they couldn’t remember which of them had ordered the chicks last summer, and neither of them had the time or desire to continue caring for them now. 22 good laying hens and one very arrogant rooster. Did D and I want them? Did they really need to ask?

We made a temporary coop in our old garden shed, which would make a nice spot for the ladies and fellow until we could finish the portable coops we wanted to use. Then, we did the hardest part of the job, catching the chickens. No one bothered to tell us how much easier this shenanigan is carried out at nighttime, when the birds are roosting and you can walk right up on them. So we spent several hours corralling them into their little chicken house, where we could easier corner them, grab them by their scaly legs, and place them gently in the truck. We managed to get all but six, including the rooster, who seemed to know trouble was brewing as soon as we pulled up. (He ran straight for the briar patch and made as much noise as chickenly possible until we were gone.)

We got the chickens moved into their temporary home, fed, watered, and situated with roosting perches and laying boxes.

The farmer and his ladies.

Yesterday, I happened to step into the big coop just as a lady was laying an egg. I watched as she squatted and swayed a bit, and the smooth egg rolled right out of her downy underside. I grabbed the egg as soon as it dropped, wanting to feel if it would be warm; it was almost hot I tell you!

The plan is to have the rooster and two or three good brooders (ones we think will be good to sit on fertilized eggs, based on their behavior) stay in the chicken house, and divide the rest of the  ladies among three mobile coops. We will see how it goes…right now we are enjoying far too many fresh eggs and early morning wake-up calls from the big brave rooster. Ah the joys of being home!

boxwood joie de vivre

We have these amazing, ancient boxwoods behind our house. (My mom says they have been here since the Civil War; is that possible?) They are huge and draped with ivy. When we were little they were our boxwood playhouse, forming giant, cool rooms where we could set up house.

Now, they are a perfect haven for so many songbirds. This evening, as I rounded the corner in the gloaming dusk, I heard the rapid, secret, rush of wings as two finches fluttered above me, disturbed by my sudden presence. I looked up to see their dark outlines against the dusty blue sky, the pale yellow half-moon glowing above the ridge. I felt a surge of joy. I knew that I was intruding on this place, that the birds and boxwoods had been here long before me. I was honored to be their pesky disturbance. I knew they would be back.

I inhaled the electric joie de vivre, the joy of life.

 

Bridal posing under twisted boxwood branches