Happy Holidays, y’all! The passing of this year is quite welcomed for us. It’s been our toughest year on the wee homestead by far. There were even a few times we discussed giving in and packing up.
We moved here in 2009, after Hurricane Ike, having purchased raw land in 2006, after Hurricane Katrina. It’s the new normal, I guess, that our memory is set by weather disasters. Now 2019 will be marked as the year of the manufactured storm bombs: crazy tornado and giant hail.
Judging from the amped-up geoengineering agendas, who knows what next spring will bring—floods, fires, more ‘tornados’, unprecedented lightening storms, maybe a land cyclone or two—certainly continued weather whiplash will remain on the menu.
I don’t imagine it’s possible to prepare for every potential catastrophe, but still, we’re staying put. It’s not that we’re gluttons for punishment, or like to live dangerously, or are too stubborn to see the writing on the wall. It’s not even that we’ve come too far to turn back now, having learned so many of the essential homesteading skills, having devoted so much blood, sweat and tears, not to mention $$, into this lifetime project.
It’s for love. Love of the land, the nature, the work, the critters, the learning, the lifestyle, and of course, love for each other. Where else would two such misfits fit except in the woods, I wonder?
When there’s no turning back, and as we’re too young yet to sit still, but too old to start over, the best option left is to up-skill. So, that’s what we’re doing.
Handy Hubby has transformed his butchering talents from mediocre to practically professional with the help of the Scott Rea Project. It is truly impressive, especially considering what big jobs he makes work in our very small space.
I’m following his lead by upgrading my own culinary crafts to include more traditional fare, like offal, which really isn’t so awful at all! This’ll be my last bad pun in this post, I promise, even though I find them offally hilarious.
I don’t really follow recipes, but I’ve been finding guidance and inspiration from Of Goats and Greens and Weston A. Price. I recently made a rather delicious Lamb Liver Loaf and an offal salad of heart and tongue. (FYI, it does not taste like chicken.)
I’ll also be doing more foraging with the help of The Forager Chef and a bookshelf full of expertise on mushroom hunting, wild plants and herbs, traditional cooking and healing. I’m more committed than ever in holding space for, and gaining knowledge of, the ancestral arts and crafts that were missing from my childhood, and indeed for most of us for many generations in this country.
I’m not going to share any lame platitudes about silver linings and growth opportunities, because that’s slave-speak socially engineered by the faux-authorities to assure the rabble don’t complain about their lot in life. I intend to continue my fair share of complaining, and then some.
But, I will offer this cliché instead—It ain’t over ‘til the fat lady sings! And this lady’s got no plans to plump up any further, or join the choir.
“May all your storms be weathered, and all that’s good get better. Here’s to life, here’s to love, here’s to you . . .”
Kensho Homestead 