Story

My husband Lyle and I have been working on some things for several years now. I suppose we started with some of it as children; my mother was into gardening and he grew up on a farm. A real farm, mind, not one of those 1,000 acre monstrosities in the American Midwest. His family's farm is in New England. Of course as young adults we both indulged in many modern conveniences and appliances, although even then not to the degree of many other folks our age. We do have a television but I reckon it's about seven years old -- we bought it when its predecessor decided to set itself on fire one day. No cell phones or iPods or any of that stuff. We have PCs (used) and one newish laptop (belongs to the company he works for), and one high quality printer because I'm an artist and print out my own cards and limited edition prints.

Whenever we've lived in places where land was available I've had a garden, whether in the city or the country. I wouldn't say we're as good about that as we could be, but we do manage to supplement our diet with homegrown veggies and some fruit too, year-round. We have excellent choice and variety from all the local farms now, so we do our best to help support them as well.

Our plant-choices have expanded from the basic peas, green beans, onions, tomatoes and lettuce. I find kale is easier to grow than lettuce, more nutritious and has a much longer season. Of course if we can fit it in, I still grow some for summer salads. Potatoes, beets, parsnips, carrots, maize (sugar and meal), soldier beans, different types of onions, garlic, squashes (summer and winter), etc. We've tried oats twice and while we've managed to grow and harvest them, they keep getting knocked down by all the storms these past two summers. So next year Lyle wants to try barley instead and see if that does better. We're also growing flax -- our second try and doing better this year than the last; for fiber not oil. You can grow flax for the oil seeds but it's usually a different variety. Also, by the time the seeds are ready, the fiber in the stems has become weaker. I'm feeling
more hopeful about the flax though, so next year I may try to grow enough to harvest some for fiber and keep some longer to grow my own seed for the following season.

We're both into crafts and are at least sort of handy, so that's been useful not only for living more lightly, but also saves money of course. Although since we like to work in good quality fibers for knitting and weaving, we don't necessarily get the cheapest materials available -- but wool and linen
wear so much better than synthetics, breathe better (important on humid days), and wool wicks moisture away from your skin so it's truly a superior fiber for whenever you might get wet. We also sew, do a bit of carpentry, can do a bit of light electrical work (existing wiring, not laying in new
lines), etc.

At our old house we built our own rainbarrel -- which we used as a bargaining chip when selling it to the current owners, who'd fallen in love with our gardens. Here at the folks' farm we now have two rainbarrels – it helps with the gardening during dry weather.

At the old house we put in quite a few improvements: digging a ditch on the uphill side and laying in fresh drainage pipe (protect the foundation), new 30-yr roof, insulation, replaced many of the windows, insulated shades, painting, plastering, repairing, etc. We couldn't afford to do a full
re-insulation so I came up with ways to store fabric, wool rovings, off-season clothing, shelves of books, etc. against the colder outside walls during the winter. I also put up nails or hooks and hung multiple layers of fabric or blankets on some of the walls where we couldn't have insulating materials stacked against the wall (like on the stairway). We ended up leaving some of it up year-round so that it could also keep the heat out in summer. The house is an old Victorian/Edwardian, so if you understand how the air circulates in it you can use the house to help cool itself in
summer. A couple of rooms we rarely used (task-oriented rooms), so those were closed much of the year to keep cooling and heating fuel use down. We do the same in our current home with one of the rooms. Although the heating system at the farm house is a pretty good one and most of the windows have been replaced, I still have worked on putting in more insulation where possible. After all, the more stable you can keep the temperature of the house, the less fuel you need to use, regardless of what type you may be using. My in-laws don't heat one of their rooms in winter either, unless the room is being used for a good bit, and just keep the door closed to it.

I'm very slowly working on replacing some of our clothing with linen and wool. I'd like to be speedier about it but there are so many other things I do that it's taking a while. Our older clothing is getting a bit ragged here and there -- farm living can be a bit rough on clothing. I've finally suggested to my husband that he ought to make a leather leg protector to wear over his pants, because he keeps putting tears in the thigh of the right leg on them and I'm getting tired of patching them. He uses his right leg sometimes when stacking bales of hay, and I'd as soon not have to be
patching pants I've handmade myself!

The farm has a number of different crops, one of them being maple syrup. We go to the farmers market most Saturdays of the season and sell syrup, cream, and candy. It's also a great place to meet people, learn things, and have chances to teach. I taught a young lady spinning this summer, which was a lot of fun.

We both have blogs (I post more often) and will write about things going on at the farm, projects we're working on, etc. I occasionally would write up bits on creative insulation, creative lighting, emergency preparedness, etc. Our local paper has a green section and I got to write a bit on creative
insulation for them as well -- a real challenge, trying to fit as much as possible into a limited space! I'm not famous or even well-known, but I figure if I can help out even a few dozen folks that then they can help some other folks and pass it along.

Our town also has, as of last year, a group of folks who started something called Share the Warmth. It's just for our community because that's what we can manage. Help could be showing folks how to apply for state programs for insulating or fuel assistance, buying some wood for helping some folks keep their stoves going during the coldest weather, raising funds so that we can go to a home and do some of the insulating for them around their doors and windows, and so on. They didn't need it last year, but I also have a large bag of hats and mittens from when I used to make them for sale some years ago (polar fleece, but still they do help); if they're needed this winter for the kids, they're available. Meanwhile, the bag is helping to insulate the house!

My husband and I started doing trash pickup walks when we moved here, and then the local pizza restaurant took up the cause, offering a free pizza for picking up around town -- roads were asked for or assigned to avoid overlap. Many folks just get the bag and do the pickup and don't worry about getting the pizza, but it's still an excellent idea. Every bit we can keep from going down the rivers and into the ocean, the better for everyone. And some of it's recycleable, so it gets re-used instead of dirtying up our woods and rivers along the way.

I've worked on encouraging whoever can afford to, to keep more than a week's worth of food at home, and they should store water too. Ideally, one ought to have 12 weeks' worth of food and a way to store or obtain clean water for the same time -- this is recommended at the U.S.'s site on dealing with contagious diseases (like say a pandemic). That's a tough one – most people just can't imagine having that much food in the house I guess. My mother always had plenty of food in the house, no doubt from growing up in the 1930s and 40s (born in 1928), so I'm used to having a full pantry. Staple foods, some favorite foods, and of course whatever's on sale and keeps well. No, I don't buy only local produce, at least not yet, as locally preserved foods are a bit more expensive. Of course if things keep going the way they've been going, I expect price parity will arrive at some
point in the not too distant future.

Mind, I don't necessarily expect our town to be quarantined any time soon! But there are also weather emergencies, like the ice storm we had this past winter. We have foods we don't need power to prepare, and we also have a wood stove. My in-laws have a gas stove, which had enough fuel for the short time we were without power. Of course you never know how long a power
outage will be, so it's good to have alternative methods of heating. We have a small wood stove upstairs and they have an old cookstove downstairs, plus an assortment of hibachis and grills in storage (for outdoor cooking, or cooking with the windows open).

Having a decent store of foodstuffs is also an excellent thing to have in case one unexpectedly ends up unemployed for a while, the which also seems to be an increasingly common occurence.

My husband and I both continue to work on keeping in practice in many of the skills we have, as well as working on learning new ones. It isn't enough to have useful books or to read those books -- you have to try things out. Gardening takes time to learn, and every year the weather is different --
you have to figure out what grows in your little spot, how to cook and eat what you grow, how to adapt to changing conditions, etc. It's the same with any skill -- one doesn't generally start knitting socks right at the start, but rather simpler things like scarves, potholders or dishcloths (yes, you
can knit a square and use it for washing dishes, that's not an error).

Even with the power outage, I was glad we had tried out using the lamps and the candles and such, because when the power cut out at 4:00 a.m. this past winter, I knew where everything was in the dark and could get to first my flashlight and then on to the matches and lighting the lamps, while Lyle went to check on the furnace and his folks. We have a spring that comes into the house but it takes a while to fill a bucket, so we did use some stored water I'd put by as well as filling buckets as needed (sinks and toilets need electricity to power the pumps that move the water). The first
day we stayed in because the roads were all covered with ice and there were power lines down across some of the roads. I was reminded that the old-style phones will still work even when the power's out -- as long as the phone lines are still intact -- because the old phones can draw enough power directly from the phone line to operate. When we went into town the second or third day, the local hardware store had a huge box of old phones, and a sign on it for folks to take one to use during the outage if they hadn't any of their own.

Everything needs practice, so that if/when you want to or need to do something, you can. We both feel that the more prepared you are (in goods and skills and community/friends/family support), the more confident you feel about coping with whatever the future may bring. If one is more confident, there is less fear, and it seems to me that one of the major problems we're dealing with in the world today is so many people are afraid. Fear leads to some colossally stupid and harmful decisions.

By the way, Lyle and I are both "boomers", although apparently not typical ones (1958 and 1963 respectively).

Well, I guess I've nattered on quite a bit! I hope this is of some use. If there's anything you have questions about or other things you'd like to ask about that I didn't include here, please feel free to write. There's really so much to write about isn't there. After all, this isn't just going camping for a week or two, this is about making permanent changes to one's whole way of life, isn't it?