Seeking simplicity

Red blackberries (or perhaps logan berries?) - these are just ripening, ahead of the blackberries. They taste like tart raspberries and I'm thinking that they'll make a amazing pie or jam.

As I sit here and type this on a fancy laptop, using wireless internet, while drinking imported coffee (sort of – imported from Hawaii) and wearing New Zealand wool…I can’t help but feel like a bit of a hypocrite. A big part of our ‘Simple Metamorphosis” is the idea of simplicity. Scaling back on things to make life simpler and ultimately, easier. This sounds like a virtuous endeavor, but it’s not as easy as it sounds.

Part of this movement for me was disposing of the ‘disposable’ lifestyle. This means that I refuse to buy clothing items that fall apart after a few washings or tools/equipment that are not built to last. Sometimes this means buying things that are not made in the USA. If I can find local products to rival the quality of the products I am buying from overseas, then I’m willing to spend a little more. Unfortunately, it’s often not a cost issue, but an availability issue. We bought a cream separator made in India because it was the only hand-crank one we could find. I have a lot of clothing from Ibex and they source their wool from New Zealand (though many of the items were at least made in the US) because there is just not as much US wool available (though, this is changing). I figure that buying one, good quality item once (even if made overseas) is better than buying a crappy item and having to replace it over and over again as the discarded versions end up in a landfill.

In addition, I struggle with wanting to use hand tools for everything. I’d like to always choose a whisk instead of a mixer, a hoe instead of a tiller, a bicycle instead of a car, a paint brush instead of a sprayer, and a goat instead of a lawn mower. The problem arises in our ever too dwindling time. Doing everything by hand takes much longer. And goats don’t mow lawn very well, either. ;-) So in trying to find a balance between work and play and between the office and the farm, we’ve made some compromises lately. In retrospect, I think we’ve done a little too much compromising. I can joke that we are ‘stimulating’ the economy, but in reality, we are getting away from our original purpose.

In the past month, we’ve bought a gas-powered weed trimmer (the rechargeable electric one held a charge for a whopping 15 minutes!), a riding lawn mower and a power painter. We are also talking about buying a gas-powered chain saw because when H gets the opportunity to go ‘logging’ with our neighbor for firewood, our plug-in electric one is not going to work. While all of these tools have saved us massive amounts of time (particularly the painter) that can now be spent on other pursuits, it’s still hard to come to terms with the consumerist spin that our life has taken, lately.

How does one effectively simplify? I guess that in our case, selling the farm would help. We could get out from under the mortgage that forces us both to keep our existing jobs. If we didn’t have that debt, living off a small farm income might be possible. Of course, having sold the farm, we wouldn’t have that small farm income to rely on, would we? We could continue as we are (with two full time jobs), working towards a day in the future where the mortgage is paid off, but to manage both, we need to make some compromises (like buying time-saving tools). There isn’t much else that we could do without – we have internet because my husband works from home, so it’s required. Our only magazine subscription is to Mother Earth News (the other two we get: Cooks Illustrated and National Geographic are gift subscriptions). We can’t give up our social life, our travel, our ‘toys’…because we don’t have any. We can’t consolidate debts to pay them off better because we don’t have much else besides the mortgage.

When I break it down into its small parts, it’s obvious that we are living pretty simply for a typical American couple with two incomes. I guess I’ll have to be satisfied with doing the best we can as we strive to improve. I’ll take solace in the fact that nothing we’ve bought has been superfluous…and that someday, when neither of us has full time jobs, we can work towards cutting our grass with a scythe and washing our laundry by pounding it with rocks in the stream.

How to simplfy

The roses are blooming again - even without my attention!

When my husband and I decided to move out here to the PNW and to buy a small piece of land and start our own little 'homestead', the idea was to simplify our lives. Are we on track? I think so. Because of the price of land here, we had to take out a larger mortgage than we wanted. It's certainly affordable with our current salaries, but with the economy on shaky ground, what happens should one of us lose our job? I *think* we could make it on one salary, but all improvements would have to come to a grinding halt. We owe $ on two cars, but selling the Prius should rectify that. Not only will one car payment disappear, but applying the remainder towards the other car will bring us down to only having to pay on it for another year before that one is paid off too. We have student loans, but no credit card debt. We do pay towards our retirement and we have other investments as well. All in all, I'd say that we are in a very stable place, financially.

I'd like it to be better. I'd like to be debt free. The plan is to pay additional towards the mortgage each month. We didn't on the first payment because we are still paying rent on our apartment, but once that is done, we will start chipping away at that mortgage.

Eliminating debt is one form of simplification. We are working to provide more of our own food from our land. Freezing and canning the harvest (and the milk and milk products) will help us offset food costs in the coming winter. Once I get the pantry set up, rotating our food and having all the things we need on hand to prepare meals makes life much easier. Less last minute trips to the grocery store will not only save us money, but save us gas and most importantly, time.

This weekend we have a couple of companies coming over to give us estimates on residing our house. We will also get our insulation evaluated. We have about a cord and a half of wood, and we will purchase some more to get us through the winter. We will also be filling our oil tank shortly (just to have it). The goal is to insulate and conserve as best we can to avoid throwing our money in the home heating toilet this winter. Again, simplifying instead of wasting.

Already, I'm getting better at managing my 'animal' chores each morning. And each day, I come up with new ways to make it easier. Just last night I got the bright (and necessary) idea of using a plastic bag as a cover for the milk bucket. This keeps out the rain, dust, etc and makes it easier for me to complete the other chores while the milk awaits my attention (instead of having to take care of the milk immediately). Keeping a small, water-proof container of chicken feed near the coop saves me the trip back to the garage to keep them fed. I just ordered 4 resealable lids for the 6 gallon plastic buckets we can get a HD or Coastal. The lids will allow us to use these buckets to store the feed in an airtight way - which will be essential when the rains start and moisture is an issue again.

Is my life simpler? Not yet, but we are getting there. I'll admit that it's difficult living in two worlds. At work, I'm an engineer working on high-tech products for a very consumer driven world. At home, I'm a farm wife. Like anyone else, I struggle with finding the balance. Some weeks, work wins the power struggle...some weeks, the farm does. I don't have much free time, but considering how much I enjoy the farm work, I'm ok with it. I've never been one to embrace inactivity for too long anyway.

In many ways, though, this whole endeavor has truly simplified our lives. I no longer yearn for things like nice cars, exotic vacations or gorgeous clothing. I still appreciate beauty, of course, but at the same time, I see those things and think of all the waste created in their production. I feel good about our choices. I don't feel like I am missing out on 'life' by not traveling to Europe. I've always taken pleasure in simple things (like the smell of warm dirt, cut grass or lilacs), but now it feels like I notice those things way more often. It gives me a sense of peace. In so many ways, I don't feel like I can adequately explain it. Maybe it's just contentment. Contentment makes life more simple.