I've been meaning to sit down and write this post for over a week now. But I just haven't had the right words. I've been mulling it over in my head. Turning it this way and that, trying to figure out how to put my heart in a blog post. Tall order.
I'm thankful that my online presence has been missed! Friends have been missing me on Twitter and Facebook. Noticing I haven't posted much over at my fitness blog. So, where have I been? You might want to sit down for this.
Several months ago my husband and I sat down and took a hard look at our lives. Instead of just letting life bump us along we wanted to live more deliberately. Darran has been working very long hours at a job that would not provide any long-term financial security for us. While he was away at said job our boys were growing up. He deeply wanted to be more present, more involved. We missed him. What we decided was that we wanted to live our lives differently. We truly wanted our family to be the center of our priorities.
Around the same time we began devouring Joel Salatin's books. We watched Food Inc together and I read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. These things called to us, brought back memories of childhood, and stirred something inside. We began having a strong urge to make different food choices. Choices so different that they would change our lifestyle, not just our grocery shopping. Since then I've scoured the library and internet for material on sustainable living, homesteading, gardening, simple living, and the like.
We both grew up in rural areas. In farming and ranching communities. Our long term plan has always been to have land and return to that lifestyle with our children. But why not start now? With what we have? Why not live our lives the way we want?
We made a plan to begin our adventure in March. What is the saying? How do you make God laugh....tell him your plans. The situation at Darran's job changed in such a way that it became clear he could no longer work there much longer.
We changed our plan.
While I'd hoped to have 6 months expenses saved up before we began, I have roughly 3. The last week or so has been rough on me. I'm a huge planner. Huge. Having to adjust my plan has been tough, but I'm over that hump and now I'm downright excited!
Back to where I've been since I've fallen off the internets. We've been finishing our greenhouse (that has been housing the baby chicks we ordered in October). We expanded the chicken coop to hold our existing chickens and the baby chicks. Instead of occupying only a portion of the building they now have run of the whole thing. We made a scratching shed on the side and improvements to their outdoor yard for the long cold Colorado winter. (More on all of that in another post). I've been hanging laundry on the clothesline to save money on the electric bill. We've been homeschooling our boys as well as teaching them things about compost and chickens and growing vegetables that they won't learn in school books. Hubby has been cleaning out the workshop that was his great grandfathers. We've been researching things like worm beds and compost piles. We're planning our raised bed garden for spring.... The list of activities is long. The work days have been long. And I am happy. Blissfully so.
The plan is for hubby to pick up side jobs enough to pay the bills and spend the rest of his time with us. Raising chickens and cows and whatever other critters we take the notion to raise. Gardening and growing as much of our food as possible (at just above 7,000 feet in Colorado this is no easy task). Figuring out how to live on less. Raising our boys to be good men. And me? I'll be doing all that as well as my writing and blogging.
We've taken a huge leap of faith. Believing fully that this is where we are supposed to be. Worst case scenario we fail miserably and Darran has to go get a 'real' job. Best case, we get to live life the way we want. Doing the things we think are important. Enjoying every part of it.
Sometimes you just have to jump.
I hope you'll come along on our little adventure through this blog.
An experiment in sustainable living at 7000 feet.