Sproing!

When winter finally concedes defeat, it seems that everything needs to be done AT ONCE: the coop and barn need to be cleaned out, the yard is a disaster, the garden beds are knee deep in weeds. Long to-do lists are made and muscles and backs ache continually from trying to do it all.

But that's not why I haven't posted.

Spring also brings new life: trees bud, tulips and dandelions bloom, bunnies and kittens are born, and we were privileged to spend time with our children and joyfully welcome a new grandson.

But that's not why I haven't posted, either.

I have lost my blogging mojo; nothing seems worth putting fingers to keyboard. This spring I just feel sprung.

For many, many years I have been desiring a more self-reliant, country life; I was a poster child for the back-to-the-land, Mother Earth News generation. I retired early and for 10 years we developed Woodchuck Acres into a mini-farm with chickens and goats and bees and a huge garden; hard work and I loved every minute. Two years ago, we took a leap of faith and moved to Indiana. Our reasons were being closer to our grandchildren, a warmer climate, and more land (without rocks!). 

Those reasons are still valid but my goals are less clear to me.

Various health issues have curtailed what I can reasonably accomplish, roadblocks arise that are tough to overcome and everything seems harder than it should be. I'm thinking the cosmos is trying to tell me something.

In other words, I am in yet another midlife crisis.

(Yes, I know that at 62 years of age, "midlife" may be overly optimistic, but it describes my dilemma as well as any other term I know.)

I am an old hand at re-evaluating my life; I know the drill of touchstones and imagining perfect days, of finding your strengths and plotting dreams. I may be too familiar with the process-- sometimes it can be hard to knock yourself out of your old habits and see things from a new angle, to consider all of the possibilities of the world.

But I am not looking for a radical change. I have no ambitions towards becoming a surgeon or conducting an orchestra. Rather I think I need to tweek what I have and love, to expand it further.

I still love living in the country but I miss the diversity of thought and lifestyle found in a more populated area. I'll give up gardening when you pry my trowel from my cold, dead fingers but I can let go of the obsession with growing everything we eat. The animals of the farm still bring me joy--well, some of the them. Guinea hens are every bit as noisy as their reputations suggest and the sheep have not been a success for us (for sale: 2 Katahdin ewes, one ram, year old). And owning an older house, even with all of the repairs and quirks, still means "home" to me. 

I need some help. Have you ever reinvented your life? Changed directions, sought out new adventures? I'd like to hear about it; not only the "I went back to school at 96 years of age to become an astronaut" showstoppers but the small, meaningful swerves your life took, even the mistakes. 'Cause this baby boomer is anxious to get back in the groove.
 

Island Style

In our search for scrounged materials to use in the chicken coop, we found surfer dude under a cabinet in the garage. I think it's a sign, a reminder that the spirit of aloha should always be in our lives even when we are far beyond the Pacific.

Shaka, brah!

Kneejerks

In many ways, Lick Skillet is a step up from Woodchuck Acres.

The house is bigger, there is a three car garage (our first functional garage in 40+ years of marriage), we have 3 acres instead of 2, the land is soil instead of rocks, we’re in hardiness zone 6 instead of 5.

But stepping up comes at a price.

We lived at WA for 10 years. That was 10 years in a one story house at ground level. Even though the terrain was hilly, my legs forgot what it was like to climb stairs.

Our Indiana home not only has a second story reached by 13 steps but each entrance requires clambering up 3 steps also.

I thought this would constitute great exercise but my knees have rebelled. I am now lurching awkwardly downward every time I go outside and avoiding the upstairs all together.  And I am shopping for cheap knee braces. If it gets much worse I will be crawling up and down.

In old age we return to childhood, as Shakespeare said,
       

        “That ends this strange eventful history,
        Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
        Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”

And I would add, sans knees.

For now, I’m managing but starting to walk stiff-legged like a zombie, at least I haven’t developed a taste for human flesh.

T minus 5

T minus 5 days and counting.

We are in the final days before moving. It's been a long year so far.

The idea of moving began back in December in casual conversation. The thought lodged in the brain, planted deep and dormant, waiting for the right conditions to germinate.

2012 provided nourishment--the possibility of gas drilling in our area, future changes in the arts community, the lure of family.

By late January the seed had sprouted and was pushing it's way above ground. Maps and lists and Internet searches provided moisture. Pre-approval for a mortgage was an unexpected burst of nutrients. February came and a whirlwind trip to Indiana gave warmth and sunshine and fertile ground for a new dream.

The embryo has grown roots, stems, and leaves. 

Time will tell if the harvest is fruit or poison ivy.  

Life is like an onion

I pulled my onion crop yesterday. They really needed to mature longer where they were planted but it was time for them to go.

Hmmmm...there's a lesson there somewhere.

Horehound

Every spring for the past 5 years, I have tried to grow horehound from seed. And every year it failed to germinate.

Until this year.

From an entire packet of seeds, one plant came up. And it survived transplanting and is thriving in the herb garden.

I'm not sure why I was so determined to grow horehound. Possibly memories of the lozenges sucked as a child for sore throats, possibly the name (disappointedly derived from the Old English har--grey and hune--plant), maybe just the challenge of having another perennial that I managed to coax to life from a seed. 

Whatever the reason, I finally, in the year when I leave my garden in the middle of the growing season, have a horehound plant.

It's now in a pot. I hope it likes travel because it's being driven 750 miles to our new home, along with a few other herbs that I can't bear to leave.

Gardens to go. A little bit of the old life to start the new.

Fitting into my genes

Along with Howdy Doody, roller skates and the neighbor's talking crow, the background of my childhood included the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, fallout shelters, and air-raid drills. Yes, we really did prepare for a nuclear war while at school by kneeling in front of our lockers and holding our hands over our necks.

My mom decided the fruit cellar, a room off of the basement, was our safe room for disasters. Mom was too much of a pessimist to think even a well-built shelter would help us survive those Russian bombs so I don't think her preparations ever got farther than some bottles of water and jars of her chili sauce (Mom's chili sauce was never canned, just ladled into jars, so they represented danger of another kind).

My mother was a complex woman. She escaped a hardscrabble, abusive homelife by packing a suitcase, tying it closed with rope, and riding the train 20 miles south to the bright lights of Oneida, NY.

She and Dad were opposites. Dad was gregarious, easy going but with a quick temper. She was introverted, a worrier, and internalized her emotions. The one thing they did share was being short, a trait all of us kids inherited.

There are four of us siblings and I often wonder what we picked up from genes and what from environment. I've got my mom's eyes, straight hair, and thighs. I too am introverted and quiet and subject to mood swings.  But while she told of hiding in her bedroom when chicken killing time came, I've dispatched birds on my own and have no qualms about doing more. She liked beauty parlors and perfect nails, I don't feel right if there isn't dirt under mine. I'm her match in stretching the family budget but have never equaled her housekeeping.

My sisters and brother are also a mix of nature and nuture and as I get ready to move four states away from them all, I'm glad to have had them all in my life. My brother is the image of Dad and shares his vocabulary but is more openly loving with his family, my older sister has my Mom's classy style but is a real people person, baby sis seems to have gotten the best physical characteristics of both but surpasses us all in brains. I miss my parents but Mom and Dad live in us all and I hope their heritage lives on in our children.

We are not pack rats. In our 41 years of marriage, we've moved many times and every time have cleared out and pared down.

Even so, there are still some things you find when you prepare for another major move.

This morning we cleaned out Tom's file cabinet. Tom is a self-employed musician ( see We interrupt this blog) so he needs to keep business records, music files etc. But as we delved into his papers we found the kind of things that make you wonder "What the hey?"

• Like programs for concerts he never went to.
• Letters of rejection from publishers that went belly-up years ago.
• His 3rd place award for a radio ad that he can't remember writing.
• And our daughter's school newsletter from 1991 when she won the local spelling bee.

We could get all sentimental and nostalgic, maybe shed a tear for time's swift passage. Or we could feel guilty for the amount of stuff we will now be adding to our local landfill.

Either way, moving can be...

...bloodcurdling.

Surprises

I can't imagine building a brand, new house on empty land.  There would be none of the discoveries you make when you buy an older property.

Like the cherub in the yard.

And the tomato cages behind the garage.

The lavender growing by the steps.

And the catbird nest by the side door.


Of course, there are also those niggling questions that will never be answered, like

Why would anyone install a three door garage...

...with NO DOOR HANDLES?

Bittersweet

Except for one year in paradise and one in purgatory, I have lived my entire life in New York. That much time, that many memories, make for many mixed feelings about the move. There is much I will miss and some things I am glad to leave behind.

I will not miss our sad excuse for soil..

I will not miss the weather.

And certainly not the taxes.

But there are more things I will miss.

The scenery.

Our clawfoot bathrub.

Friends (and our new library).

And family.

Life is for learning

I'm a child of the 1960s, a Baby Boomer. Come of age during the Vietnam War, flower power, and make love not war.

Whenever I hear "Woodstock" by Crosby, Stills, and Nash, I get teary. Not because of nostalgia, not because I went to Woodstock (I didn't even know it was happening) but because my generation blew it.

We were going to change the world. We knew so much more than the establishment, knew sending young men to war was a crime, knew the environment was in danger, knew politicians weren't to be trusted.

And what did we do with that knowledge?

We grew up to be the people who send soldiers to war in foreign lands, grew up to invent more ways to pollute the earth, grew up to support the good ol' boys in both parties.

I never marched for peace and justice, I am not an activist, not political, not one to rally to a cause. But I am ashamed of my generation, saddened by the lost opportunities.

"We are stardust, we are golden,
We are caught in the devil's bargain.
And we've got to get ourselves back to the garden."

Planning the homestead



Illustration: Dorling Kindersley


It used to drive me nuts. I'd pick up a country living book and there would be a plan for laying out your one or two acre homestead. A nice big square where everything fit wonderfully, never any obstructions (or septic field, well, or driveway for that matter), land raring to drown you in bounty.


Woodchuck Acres wasn't even close. The tax map showed a strange trapezoid shape; the boundaries were obviously laid out by a drunk surveyor after a night on the town. The west half of the property is a hill sloping up to a steep bank down to the creek; there's what we call our oubliette (an old dry well?), deep and dangerous and surrounded by poison ivy. The leach field meanders under some of the best soil, and a huge Norway spruce is plopped square in the middle of the property. These idiosyncrasies pale when you consider the soil isn't soil but rocks, the southern area is shaded almost constantly by the neighboring woods, and we're smack in the middle of an established deer path.


So I was convinced that the live-well-on-one-acre layouts were a snare to entice unwary rubes to buy books.


Then I found Lick Skillet and almost fell off of my chair when I saw the map. A square, a perfect square! Not only that, the land is flat--no hills, no drop-offs, no squishy spots. I haven't had the soil tested but at least two people have told me it sits on good valley soil and the one shady spot protects the house from the western sun but doesn't reach the garden. There are a few established plantings that I'll want to move and a tumbledown shed we'll eventually relocate but that's just fun stuff. I don't even think there's an oubliette.


I guess I owe those homestead planners an apology.

But talk about starting over--this is virtually a blank slate. I keep trying to draw up a plan for fruit trees and animal pens and herbs and I freeze. I think I have homestead writers block. Even committing to paper seems an impossible task and we're only talking about 3 acres. Imagine the panic if I had 40! I'm hyperventilating at the thought.

What would you do first if you could land on the place of your dreams? What's your first, second, and third step?

Money. Again.

In my last post about money, Finding home, part 2 , I set myself up as some sort of financial guru, calm and at peace and having all the answers.

You didn't fall for that, did you?.


This move, like all life changes, is costing more than we thought, financially and emotionally.


We closed on our new place a few months back. I started planning the move.

Fill the propane tank. Ka-ching!
The only highspeed internet will be satellite. Ka-ching!
No washer at the new house. Ka-ching!
Rent a uhaul-type truck. Ka-Ching! Ka-Ching! Ka-Ching!


I have tinnitus from an imaginary cash register.


We knew these expenses were coming but I'm always shocked at how much things cost. Part of the problem in living so long is that sticker shock is a constant companion. As a kid we saw movies for $.35 ($.50 if it was a Disney flick). Popsicles at the mom and pop grocery were a nickle, a fudgie set you back $.07. We bought our first house for $11,500. I remember being shocked when gas rose from $.35 to $.50 per gallon. My brain knows it's 2012 but my wallet thinks it's 1970.


Or as my husband says, inflation has no problem keeping up with us.


So the next few years will be a struggle even though we scrimped and saved for a time like this. We've got a death grip on those pennies. I can only hope it doesn't get as bad as the poorest time in our lives when I crocheted our shoelaces instead of buying them. Top that bit of frugality if you can!

And if you do have any great hints for stretching, saving, doing without, share them. I'm sure we're not the only ones who could use some new ideas.

Changes

Woodchuck Acres was supposed to be our final home.

Growing old together on our two acres of rocks and weeds, living the good life in the country, embracing our twilight years in the serenity of rural Chenango County and all of that bullcrap.

Which doesn't really explain why I found myself in early February driving around southern Indiana with a realtor.

Let's just say Life Changes.

So, here we are well within spittin' distance of Social Security, about to leave this:

For this:

We've got some work ahead of us!