October 13, 2016

Greetings My Friend, For some reason I have been intrigued by the homestead lifestyle. They mostly are off the grid a bit away from urban America and sustain themselves for the most part, by bartering and using very little money to live. In recent years I have become doubtful of the power companies that supply our water, handle our sewage and heat and strive to have our own heat, water supply and eventually our own electric supply. In this I am learning to put up food for the winter and I have learned that many homesteaders put up a supply of food for a year, I think from planting season to planting season the next year. This too appeals to me and I have begun this journey to some extent. I have found that for us it may take a while to get to this point of a years supply of food staples. My new thought is that we build at this for a year getting food staples, meat, fruits and vegetables and such. Recently I read of a good way to work through this process is to have a set amount of money for the extra things and not to get those with the groceries when I am doing weekly shopping. I believe this will help me a lot. Yesterday we were doing our weekly shopping at Walmart since I needed to get a bobbin winder and then we did grocery shopping. These days we get me the wheelchair from the grocery store. The idea is we will not be as apt to impulse buy due to the limited space in the basket on the wheelchair. I wanted to get a sack of potatoes and a bag of apples mainly to put in the root cellar since these are in season right now. We needed the space so we will pick those items up during the week. As much as I want to wait I struggle picking up extras and this week the basket space was more limited which is making me keep to the program. I have decided I should make a list of what we need like flour and then determine approximately how much we will need for a year. By shopping the list I believe it will be easier to achieve our goal. Junior has 2 rooms to start renovating on and finish the kitchen. Once those rooms are done most of the renovation process will be over with. He will then need to fine tune things like redoing more of the ceilings in each room finishing a deck on the back of the house and such. I am not able to get around in the yard that well so gardening seems to be low on our list of priorities. We do have some plants we put in pots and I am sure this will be perfected. I see that once fruits and vegetables are in season we will more than likely buy them and preserve them. The same with meat we will buy it from a meat packing place since tending for animals is difficult for us to do. The more we learn to rely on the earth's bounty the closer to God we have become. I like this closeness so much. Training ourselves to see that all of the things we have in our modern times is difficult, I think I have to have the latest gadget to keep our home clean, comfortable or beautiful is truly more work. Junior and I are decorating our home in primitive decor and in so doing he is making the cabinets in the kitchen very rustic. This shows me that the simpler design is easier and less work. I have begun to think that much of technology does not save us but gives us one more thing to stay on top of. We have no true down time anymore even if we don't answer that text or phone call it will intrude on the moment. Breaking away from all of the noise of our world seems to make sense. May God bless you and keep you make His face shine on you. Love Janet