Who, Me?

I was completely shocked, no wait confused, when I read a recent e-mail. What? my blog?


Turns out Julie over on Flip this Body has deemed my mistakes worthy of being the Bestest Blog of the day for October 20th 2006.

When I first exchanged links with Bobby at Bestest Blog, I never thought that I would get this honor. Who would actually be interested in reading about my day to day life on a homestead in the middle of Kansas?

The Bestest Blog has also allowed me to find some of my {now} favorite blogs.

Here's to Julie and to Bobby for allowing Julie to make her first mistake. We love her all the same.

I moved my family {no. This blame lays solely on my husband} five years ago Halloween. We began a simple garden and started homesteading two years later. I am still in the learning phases of it all. So many things to do and master. It's not easy. We lose sleep, we bleed, I cry and curse. But when the day has come to an end, and I can actually lie down, I am happily exhausted.

I know this seems strange to many people. But this . . . this make us happy.

Before I met my husband, things were not good in my life. I was homeless, I was drinking so I wouldn't grieve over the death of my first son. I had no wants. My husband was a junky. He was a man that had trained to be an orthopedic surgeon, but gave it all up to use. We made a lovely couple. This August marked our 10-year anniversary. I stop drinking within two months of us meeting. He has been clean eight years.

Why am I telling you all of this? Because I want you to understand a little of why this makes us happy. We moved away from the suburbs, so that our children could enjoy the freedoms of running around without boundaries. But we struggled. We bought our house shortly after 9/11/2001. And living in an area that the primary jobs are from the aircraft industry, well things became financially difficult. My employer’s checks began to bounce, and my husband was unable to get a promised raise. Our simple hobby garden became a need. I had to learn how to preserve foods to make sure that my children didn't have a childhood like my husband's. Soon though, things got better. I continued to learn to homestead, and my husband has made a decent name for himself in the American motorcycle industry. We are no longer at a point in our lives where homesteading would be a necessity. Now it is a way of life.

I have always been fascinated with old school ways. No, not just the little house on the prairie stuff. Some even older than that. We do not have the same frustrations’ we once did. We have new ones, but those are of our own doing, not from machines and employers. It's "the salt of the earth" mentality that is hard to explain. We are both educated people {though our educations differ from one another} We are not anti- government, and only one of us suffers from Big Brother syndrom. We are trying to live our lives to the fullest in the only way we have found to compliment us. We got lucky.

I never thought I would live to be 28 years old. I figured I would end up dead in a gutter somewhere, or death by my own hands. But now I have found a pride in myself that I never would have thought possible. I have even stepped up and pursued non homesteading goals that I coward from before. Doing things for myself, growing my own food, carving my own story into the earth, that's something that makes me feel as though I can grow old, and in my own time.

It's late here. If you have any questions, feel free to ask, I promise not to ramble in response.

Dream well ~Phelan