~living this beautiful messy life~
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I feel so incredibly lucky, and grateful today.
I’m having a day at home on the Farm – which has so far consisted of doing the dishes, making bread dough, pruning the tree that has started encroaching on the driveway and Continue reading “gratitude”
Its been a damp drizzly cold morning, so I decided to drag out the sewing machine and knock up a few things with some “leftovers”.
First up was a pair of old cotton curtains that have seen better days, and are not longer of use in keeping the heat/cold out of the house, so they were sewn together to make bed/couch cover.
Then I used up a lace curtain, that just doesn’t fit with our idea of ‘decor‘ – which I made into bags to store fruit and veg in, in the fridge – and some will be used to cover ripening fruit, so the wildlife doesn’t steal it all.
They’re welcome to some excess, but they aren’t very good at sharing, so we’d rather it was us to be the ones to decide how much they get – not them! .
Next up is going to be an old super-light-weight shower curtain, that I am going to make into bags to take grocery shopping, so that I can put fruit and veg in them, instead of using the plastic bags that the supermarket provides.
The material even has a fruit & veg motif printed on it, so I reckon thats pretty darn appropriate! 😀
Hope you are having a nice day, and whatever you’re doing – I’d love to hear about it!
Cheers,
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I pretty much try to single-task these days, just so that I can be more present with whatever it is that I am doing.
I know as a species we’re often quite impressed with ourselves, when we can do a myriad of chores at once, and we convince ourselves that we’re Continue reading “single-tasking”
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It’s around 5pm and it won’t be long until sunset.
The cool evening Continue reading “good evening”
As I’ve said before – I’m at the point in my Life now where there’s some things that have taken on more importance than others…one of those things is my OWN happiness.
I’ve worked at my current job for almost 9 years now, and have worked my way up about as far as I am able to, with the way that this particular business is structured.
I’m also at the stage where I am no longer enjoying my job – a job I used to love.
Because of that, I have scaled right back and have gone from working 5 or 6 shifts a week, down to two – and for a day either side of those two days, I’m either talking myself into going to work, or ‘recovering’ from the mental and emotional load that’s has come from being at work.
Additionally, my workload responsibilities have increased dramatically in the last 4 years, but the pay rate has remained static, other than the obligatory CPI increases.
It’s just not an ideal way to ‘waste’ 4 days a week…
As far as I’m concerned, there a lot more useful and productive ways I could be spending my time – and that’s my goal at the moment.
I’m hoping that by the end of the year, I will be able to resign/retire from work – and once again be a full-time House Spouse.
My Love and I have discussed this in depth, and we’re pretty sure that once the house in town has sold – well be able to swing it!
I am currently earning less each month than the mortgage payments on the house in town, so with that mortgage gone, we’d actually still be ‘ahead’, even without my wage!!
Life is not static, no experience (pleasure or pain) permanent, but for now – I simply have to live it, and make the best of it that I can – whilst working toward and preparing for being able to move to the Farm full time; leave work, take up my role of full-time House Spouse, and continue to grow the Life I want and need…
If you’re anything like me – as happens when you start out afresh with something or reinvigorate an old ‘love’ for something – whether it be cooking, knitting, gardening, diy or even fixing engines – you do a lot of reading…
This week I had a really weird ‘coincidence’ happen to me – which I didn’t realize until I sat down to have breakfast, on Saturday morning.
Most Saturday mornings have become a bit of a ‘ritual’ for me.
After we’ve woken and sat and had our coffee together, chatting about our individual planned days and the world in general, my Love goes into town fairly early to tend to our other animals, then goes to work – so I get to start the rest of my day deliciously slowly…
First thing is to get dressed, otherwise I’m pretty sure I could happily spend my day in jammies.
Once dressed, I pop a couple of bits of bread in the toaster, and while its cooking I do a sweep of the kitchen benches, gathering anything that didn’t get taken out to the dish-washing area the evening before, and I get everything set up ready to do the dishes.
(and for me – doing the dishes is its very own ’strange pleasure’ lol)
Once that’s done – my toast is ready, so me, my toast and my juice spread out at the dining table, with either my pen and lists, a book or an internet article I’ve been saving to read while I eat and just look around at the beauty outside.
As an aside – I seriously can’t wait until we have a decent outdoor table to have breakfast at!
Now, bear with me while I back up for a minute…
A couple of days ago, I had to go to BigW in town, to get some stationary supplies.
I of course somehow ended up going to the Stationary via the Books section, having a quick glance about as I passed though – trying super hard not to get sidetracked by alllll those books that would love to come home with me…
However — a small book, not much bigger than a notebook, with a grey and white cover drew me in.
The title was ‘Destination Simple’.
I flipped over to the back cover – and read only the first line: “simplify your life – from the inside out”.
I didn’t need to read any more, or know who it was by, or how much it was.
This book had chosen me!
Fast forward back to Saturday morning breakfast time, and that quiet bit of the day when I like to catch up on some reading – and I remembered that I had the book that I’d bought the other day, to make a start on!
Bite of toast, slurp of juice, and I smooth open the cover to the first page – which is the Acknowledgements:
“to everyone who has read of listened to Slow Your Home over the past few years: thank you”
Somewhere on the back of my neck, a few little hairs begin to raise…
I put down the book, and drag the laptop to within reach.
I wake it up, and pull up my browser.
Typically – there are about 12 tabs open.
I skim across the tabs, hovering my cursor over each one – reading each title as I go, but not opening them.
At the fifth one, I read: ‘Slow your home – slow right down and live the simpler life you want’
😐
I open the tab, and its a blog: Slow Your Home
Author: Brooke McAlary
I look down at the discarded book beside me – Author: Brooke McAlary
I grab my phone and double-click my way to my podcasts app, and scroll through the list of podcasts still waiting for me to get to.
Amongst those waiting to be listened to is: The Slow Home Podcast with Brooke McAlary
😐
Those little hairs on the back of my neck are zinging by now…
I’m sure many would say that in my subconscious, I came across the book because I already knew about it, because I had seen it on the website, or heard about it on the podcast – but the thing is this: I had yet to even open the website, had yet to even listen to even one of her podcasts, and as such had no idea that a book even existed!
I had no idea Brooke McAlary even existed.
And just to cap it all off – she’s and Aussie too!
Added to all of this, the fact that the BigW in our town is not known for stocking anything that even remotely resembles ‘alternative’ reading!
Its pretty much narrowed down to either cook books, kids books, or the paperback equivalent of chick flicks!!
~ Ugh ~
So – the dishes might just have to wait a little bit longer this morning.
I think I’m going to spend a little bit of quality solitary time, getting to know this woman – and to see what loveliness she has to add to my Life.
I’ve got a feeling already that its going to be enjoyable…
I’ll let you know how it goes!
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Until next time – have a good one and look after YOU!
I’m changing my Life.
One small step at a time…
I’m moving myself slowly and gently back towards being a Simple Life Farmer.
What does that actually mean?
To me and for me – it means that my Life will no longer be about working outside of the home.
It means that I will spend my days working our small 1.5ac holding (known as Strigidae Farm) growing as much fruit and vegies as I/we can manage to sanely look after.
It means I’ll be cooking the majority of our meals from scratch.
It means pre-prepping and freezing some meals – so that when I have busy days and just cant be bothered with dinner – there will be something tasty and nutritious easily at hand.
It means canning and dehydrating our surplus food, so that we have plenty of stocks for during non-peak growing times.
It means I will be sending my Spouse to work with a thermos of coffee, an insulated water bottle and a lunchbox of yummy home-made stuff, instead of drinks and lunch having to be bought.
It means I’d like to recycle and upcycle as much as I can – particularly when we’re DIYing around the Farm.
But – what it also means to me – is that I am planning on looking after not only my Spouse in a better way – but also looking after ME better…
Until next time – have a good one and look after YOU!
Editors Note:
I wrote this on another site on the 19th January last year.
Since that time – a lot of things have changed – which I will update you on in the next post or two – but I thought you might like a bit of background as to where my ‘head-space’ was leading me, over a year ago…
Not exactly in the vein of “a new year, a new you” – but some may think it so.
Twenty something years ago, I went ‘back to my roots’, and moved to a thirty acre block in the middle of the backwoods of south west Qld, that didn’t have sealed roads, running water, electricity, plumbing of any sort, or any neighbors.
When we first moved there – it didn’t even have gas.
All we had was a big unlined one room colorbond shed, with an annex slab added, for a ‘kitchen’, and we did have a nice big dam!
I also had four small children – the youngest being just 6 weeks old, and the second youngest still in cloth nappies.(none of that disposable business when my kids were little. lol)
It was a lot of hard work – pretty much from sunup to sundown, but by the time we sold up and left – we had a 5 bedroom home, a visitors cabin, a genny shed, a huge 3 bay work shed, 2 large tanks, and a smaller header tank, another huge dam, a massive thriving vege garden that had shade cloth cover, so we could grow all year round, chook yards, a pig pen, a fully fenced house yard with gardens, sheep, over an 1ac of fenced protea plants, and orchard trees, an 8′ x 8′ walk-in larder/pantry, with gas fridge, a wetback wood stove, a pot-belly stove, solar power, with generator backup, and plumbing with a real bathroom, with a bath, shower, and flushing loo!!
We even had a library!
(I’ve been known to be a little book-crazy!!)
Even though we put in our loo, we still kept the old pit toilet going.
It was in a nice spot, which we moved round every few months, and it had a nice outlook.
On a beautiful day, it was nice to still be able to ‘go’ out in amongst the forest, and just sit and contemplate…And each time we moved it, we’d plant something on top, that would grow in leaps and bounds from all the nutrients. lol
Now, well over twenty years on – I’m feeling the need to get back to the simple life.
Back to basics.
Not to the extreme that it was in those very early day – although it wouldn’t bother me in least if it turned out that way – but definitely back to a Life that has meaning and feeling.
I’ve started growing my own veggies again – and whilst it’s only baby steps so far – we’re trying with the rare spare time that we do have, to work towards making some differences in our Life.
So far in the garden, we’ve got:
two different types of potatoes,
Lettuce
Tomatoes
Two types of beans
Zucchini
Pumpkin
Coriander
Basil
Spring onions
Carrots
Beetroot and
Chillies
We’ve also got a number of fruit trees awaiting to go in the ground.
It’s a start!!
We’ve also been working on ‘reclaiming’ more of our yard, so we can put in more beds.
At the moment, we have what can best be described as a sort-of Balinese rainforest type garden.
Lots of lushness, ferns, palms etc.
We’ve been gradually paring back, so that we will have the privacy that we so desperately crave, but so that our yard can also be a whole lot more productive than its currently being.
Just yesterday we had someone come in, who wanted our old woodshed, and he came and tore it all down, and started carting it off. Free gardening in exchange for a free woodshed!
The amount of room that that alone will give us to put gardens in, will be staggering.
Wheeehee.
And on the news the other day, there was rumor about Masters (the big hardware store) possibly closing down, and therefore having huge sales.
We wanna be there for those sales I can tell you!!
We’ve also just bought a more economical car, which thankfully, is a ute – so that will make it a whole lot easier than its been for a long time, to get plants, supplies etc, from point A to point B!
On a slightly different topic, I have been unsubscribing like a demon of late.
All these things one subscribes to, that just end up wasting your time and cluttering up your inbox (& your mind!) – I’ve been unsubbing from as fast as they come in.
A very liberating way start to each day.
Give it a try! ☺️
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