I Like Being Nuts

It's going to warm today, but super wet and super windy.  A "bomb cyclone" is supposed to occur this afternoon which is basically what my house looks like it has been hit by right now.  Clothes are all over the floor, dishes, garbage, pillows.  Everyone is hanging out here all day and it shows.  By the end of the day, I'm pretty wasted and that's when I should be getting everyone to tidy, but instead I go to bed and I'm literally asleep within seconds.  I'm going to have to adjust the cleaning schedule a bit so I don't come down to this every day.  The problem is with the Covid-19 thing going on, every day literally feels like a Saturday....

Not knowing how long this is going to go on has made us adjust our farming, gardening and living-more-self-sufficiently mindset.  Before this crisis, we always knew we had grocery stores as back-up, farmer's markets, etc.  But everything feels up in the air right now and so we've made some plans.  We'll begin with the garden.....

We've grown a garden a few years, but the only year we had major success was the year my husband was involved in the tilling, seeding and weeding.  Now that his schedule is a little freer he's committed to being more involved which I hope will guarantee success again!  On the one hand, I'm so excited to actually grow a garden and have fresh vegetables because I've bugged him for so many years.  But on the other hand, I'm a little worried as he's taking this "plan ahead" thing to whole new level.  The amount of seeds we've ordered should get us through any apocalypse.  I've canned in the past for fun.  Now it looks like I'll be canning enough to have my own canning show.  He promises to help!  My kids saw what we were doing the day we ordered the seeds and my oldest started asking questions in a very funny worried voice, "Mooooommm.....Daaaaadddd?  What are you doing????  What are you getting us into????"  I laughed out loud as they know when we do stuff it's never on a small scale and that we somehow always rope them into something without getting a lot of buy-in until it's too late and their involved whether they like it or not....haha...Sorry about that!!!

We're going to give the micro-green thing a go again as well, but we'll move it on-line which I'm horrible at, but I guess it's something I'll have to get better at....maybe with some help from some reluctant kids.....

My husband is brainstorming extra income ideas constantly as he'll lose some of his teaching income soon.  That will free up some time though to get something going he hopes.  Even though he's at the college full-time he still hasn't lost his entrepreneurial spirit which is great. 

We're still selling things on kijiji.  I'm glad that hasn't been shut down, so that is a source of income, too, though erratic.

We plan on still selling hay though we can't sell to Florida anymore due to the border being closed.  The horses in Florida will have to eat local!

We did a fair amount of bulk buying just so we don't have to head to a grocery store as often.  That has been quite the experience lately as I've been in waiting lines outside and inside the store.  Don't love that.  I usually go first thing in the morning when I do go, but even then there are line ups.

Tomorrow we head out to pick up a bunch of meat chickens.  We'll being eating fresh free-range birds in 2 months, so that's great.  We have enough space in our freezer so we can handle that.  Then, in June we'll be picking up layers, enough to sell eggs at the side of the road as well as for ourselves.  That means we have some work to do in our barn to set up for all those birds.  No more walking all over the property, as much as they love that.  I don't! 

We're looking into buying some piglets, too.....these animals make me want to be vegan, but I do love pork, so we'll only get a couple.  But it seems like everyone is thinking the same way, so we are having a hard time finding some!  They're all quite far away.

We won't be planting any more vines this year, but we are half way done all the pruning and the plants that made it are looking good.  I've never seen my kids so keen on getting in the vines!  They actually seem to enjoy the whole process and it gets them in the fresh air and doing work so it's been really positive. 

If I think too much about all these purchases, I start to feel a little on the overwhelmed side, but again, my husband has promised to help and the kids will be on board if they want to eat.  I'll be real nervous if he starts buying sheep so that I make my own wool.  I might draw the line there.

I'm wishing he would get a dairy cow, but he's drawing the line on that one....maybe one day....so he does seem to have his limits.

The way we do things is a little backwards.  You're supposed to count the cost and then make your decisions.  We do count the cost, but we don't really think too much about the work involved.  I have a funny feeling that, as usual, we're going to be over our heads in vegetables, jars, chickens, eggs and a side business at the side of the road, but generally speaking that's how we feel most of the time....kind of a drowning feeling, but in a good way?   That might not make sense, but this is the thing, we know we have a lot of mouths to feed.  We know the grocery stores and things like viruses are unpredictable, so we're just making a plan that makes sense so we aren't out of food one day.  We also love having things for our kids to do that are meaningful and, yes, hard work.  The days that they are out in the vines, they sleep harder and feel more productive, so even though they are a little nervous, we actually think they are kind of excited deep down.  There are days I'm quite certain they would like to have different parents, but then again, deep down, I think they're glad that we're a little nuts.  I like being nuts.  I like having a crazy husband.  I like that he's willing to do things that make sense and yet make no sense.  It's a lot more fun to live this way, so I don't mind even though I'm quite certain come June, July and August I'll wish for a less crazy husband when I'm drowning in carrots and cucumbers. 

Oh well....for now it's fun to anticipate, even look forward to the work that's starting tomorrow with chicks......and really, are we nuts?  Or are we doing what they used to do only a generation ago?  If you google canning or gardening or living off-grid, tons and tons of websites and youtube channels show up.  We are hardly the first ones to want to live this way.  It is a lot more work, I will admit that, but it should be a little easier now that there are so many at home with capable working hands.  I guess we'll see what happens!