Goodbye to the Homestead

Reading the passage in Little House on the Prairie where Laura Ingalls Wilder recounts leaving in the wagon and watching out the back as their homestead grows smaller and smaller, becoming a tiny speck in the distance has always had a profound impact on me. When I read it as a girl, it seemed more tragic than the ending of Old Yeller. When I read it as an adult, it blew me away that they had built a cabin and homestead on the open prairie with their own hands, and then had to pack up and leave it behind. How did they do it? All I could explain it with is that we all do what we have to do in life, and just go on from there. They must have done just that.

At the beginning of September, I moved off of my own homestead. This post has been a couple months delayed, and for those readers who have been wondering where the blog posts went for so long, life has been busy. In early Summer, my husband of ten years and I parted ways after trying for a long time and realizing it was just not going to work. We needed to not be sharing a life and homestead together. It was as simple and as complicated as that. This was a weighty decision not taken lightly for me, not just because of the impact on our children, but because I had gotten to where I was doing exactly what I wanted to be doing in life. Homesteading and homemaking were the dreams I had built a life around and I was at a point where I had to let go of that. It seems that letting go was meant to be the theme and major life lesson for these past few months. So, I shifted gears and redirected my energy from running a homestead to looking for a job and figuring out where I was going from there. Let me tell you, job-hunting after being a homemaker for the better part of ten years is frustrating. My college degree and work experience from a decade ago could only be stretched in so many creative ways, and in the middle of this economic downturn, jobs are far from abundant. In the meantime, I kept watering, harvesting and caring for my homestead knowing I would be saying goodbye soon, and gradually preparing the kids for all the changes ahead. I don't know that I could even describe the ways in which these parts of the summer were hard. The upside to things was that in the midst of upheavel, I endeavored to do everything I could think of to fortify myself for weathering the transition. I backpacked more than I had in years, I taught myself the banjo, I took up weightlifting with a friend to get in solid farm shape, I picked berries, I caught wildcrafted crawdaddy dinners, I dug out my old target throwing axe from College and found my axe-throwing aim was still fairly true, I worked on my storytelling skills, I went on expeditions through the wilds in search of rare carnivorous pitcher plants, I ate bear for breakfast, I made time for reading again, and found many ways to get to the center of who I am and cope with difficulty. While letting go of all the aspects of my life I enjoyed but couldn't take with me off of that homestead, I made darn sure to gather all the ones that I could take wherever I went.

Late in the summer, and opportunity came along to become a live-in farm intern at an intensive small-scale permaculture homestead in the area, and I jumped on it. I visited the farm, worked some mornings with the farmer, and we all decided it was a good fit. I figured that if 80 chickens to tend, bountiful permaculture gardens to work in, and breathtaking views of fields with grazing cows weren't enough to help see me through the transition off my own homestead, I didn't know what was. I packed up what would fit into my small but cozy new living quarters in the back of my friend's truck, and drove away watching my homestead grow smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror. It was the height of the growing season, with crops in the field, berries on the vine, fruit trees taking off in their second year of growth, and chickens peacefully scratching for bugs. It was the perfect image of a dream realized, and will always stand in my mind as one of my greater accomplishments. I watched it disappear in the distance and had to let it go.

Time has fairly flown by since then, and I find myself settling into the rhythms of the seasons on this farm where I live and work and this new life I am creating for myself. I am both enjoying and navigating through the challenges of my half of the time as a single parent, and the other half of my time as a single individual. It is filled with much that is different, much that is the same, far less old stresses, a few new stresses, joys, losses, exciting adventures, and quiet moments all to myself. I can honestly say that life is good, but I would be lying if I said it was easy. Sometimes I miss my homestead terribly, and it hits me at the most surprising times like in the middle of preparing a garlic bed, helping with a chicken butchering workshop or turning compost. Farm work, however, is a very therapeutic endeavor for a displaced homesteader such as myself, and every time I clean a chicken coop or plant a cover crop, I feel a little better. I'm literally working through it. I have no doubt in my mind that I will have my own place to homestead again one day. That may sound like a very grandiose dream considering where I'm at right now, but I got there once somehow, so I'm sure that I can do it again. Whatever twists, turns and adventures life has in store for me, I know I am ultimately headed in that direction and it will be a good day when I arrive.

One evening when the kids were with me this past week, we had some friends coming over for a playdate, and decided to throw an impromptu Martinmas lantern walk at our new place. I spent the afternoon cooking some hearty food, baking a pecan pie and gluten-free brownies and mulling hot cider, and we gathered up all our lanterns from past Martinmas celebrations at our Waldorf school. We lit little candles all over the house, ate by candlelight and walked all over the property serenading the chickens and next-door goats with our lantern songs. When I was pouring up the hot cider, my son told me in a very serious manner that it felt like home now. I had to agree with him. It really did.

Home is such a complex thing to define, yet we know it when we feel it. I suppose when it comes down to it, home is where you eat your meals, raise your children and lay your head down to rest at night. That must be what it's all about when they say "Home is where you hang your hat." I would venture to say that homesteading is a similar sort of term. When you consider that it's really about self-sufficiency and leading a life made by hand, you start to get the sense that one really can be a homesteader without a homestead to call their own. I think the important part lies in the way we live, more so than where we live. With that in mind, I'll just keep on being a homesteader, and when the day comes along that I arrive on my own homestead, I'll be ready.

Mushroom Madness

Fall has really set in around here with foggy mornings, flying leaves and a fair amount of drizzly weather. All these mark the beginning of my favorite wildcrafting expeditions of the year, mushroom hunting. Getting out in the woods as things are winding down for the Winter to gather up baskets full of succulent, tasty fungi is a treat all on its own, not to mention the wide array of culinary possibilities that await upon returning home with the bounty.  It's also a favorite wildcrafting adventure for my children, who after complaining about the enforced labor of berry picking by the time Summer is over, run about shouting with glee as they find fiery orange chanterelles, violet hued pig's ears, and creamy colored hedgehog mushrooms emerging from the moss and duff of the forest floor. Think Easter egg hunt in November, and you've got the idea. It's a good time.

The last two months have been a little drier than last year, so mushroom season has gotten a slow start, but I figured it was time to visit some of my favorite spots and see what could be found.  My daughter and I brought along some friends who had never been, and although I could tell the season hadn't yet gotten into full swing, our rainy afternoon of scouring some nearby Forest Service lands yielded a respectable haul. Being the natural keen-eyed gatherers that they are, the kids managed to find more chanterelles than the adults. I'm not even sure that they're big fans of eating them, but the fun was in the finding. 

Since then I've been enjoying such delights as gourmet chanterelle pizza, chanterelle scramble, Chinese stir fry with chanterelles, and beer cheese soup with chanterelles and artichoke hearts. I try to spend a few minutes everyday brainstorming mushroom recipe ideas, lest I run out of ideas before I run out of mushrooms. Since I only found chanterelles on this excursion, I'm thinking another is in order for some hedgehogs and hopefully a cauliflower mushroom if I'm lucky.

Fall is delicious.

Pumpkins all Aglow

As far back as I can remember, Halloween has been my favorite night of the year. While life has gone along, and the magic and delight of many childhood pastimes have faded in their awe, Halloween night has never dulled. The fun of dressing up as whatever you want to be for an evening, seeing all the amazing costumes other folks think up, the comforting glow of jack-o-lanterns on front steps and porches driving away the dark and damp of the chilly Autumn night, the array of tasty treats (especially cupcakes), and observing Nature winding down into the slumber of Winter are all things worthy of eager anticipation and thorough enjoyment. At the center of it all stands the tradition of creating temporary art out of garden vegetables. Halloween is my idea of fun.

This year, I discovered pumpkin carving tools, and it expanded into a new found outlet of creative expression. I started with my traditional pumpkin fairy house I do every year and went from there. I found that with various sizes of woodworking chisels, you can make stars and swirls, and all manner of designs carved into the skin giving different levels of light. This, I realized, was a whole world of pumpkin carving fun I had been missing out on all my life.

The thick pumpkin walls and glowing candlelight keep away all the little hobgoblins lurking about in the night, so the fairy inhabitants can sleep safe and sound.

This pumpkin was my favorite. It depicted the story of  a wild mountain woman who wrestled bears beneath the starry sky.

After carving this one, I had an inspiration to carve "story pumpkins" with folk tales etched on the sides in pictures. I'm already cooking up ideas for next year.

With it being that time of year and all, I have mushroom hunting on the brain once again, so of course there had to be a jack-o-lantern adorned with an array of my favorite woodland morsels.

Which leads to my costume.

I really wanted to be something scary for once. I thought for a long time about what really makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end, and as a wildcrafter with mushrooms on the brain, the deadly poisonous Destroying Angel came to mind. I needlefelted a wool cap with gills, which I stretched over a straw hat for a frame, donned some white clothing, had a friend do my face up in white makeup and yet more gills, and wore a tag that read "Amanita ocreata" so there would me no mistaking what specimen of mushroom I was supposed to be. When I got a look at myself in the mirror, I felt thoroughly scary. I wouldn't have wanted to run across myself in the woods. I'd say it was a costume success.

From here, we move around the wheel of the year towards late Fall carrying with us the festive glow lit in all those pumpkin luminaries on All Hallows Eve. As the days grow shorter and we see less and less of the sun, there will be lantern walks, festivals of light, gatherings of friends, and warm meals to share around our tables to keep that glow fortified. While the rain and cold may be on their way, there is also much to look forward to.