Setting Goals

We bought a 36 acres that had a couple of buildings on it but no home. To make this piece of land into something we could live on with our family has taken a series of small projects. For weeks I would wake up and work morning until evening going from one project to another. When the school year started I still had projects to work on, but teaching the kids became a priority and the progress slowed down.

A couple of weeks ago I was talking to a group of moms and the question was: What do you want to work on this next month to reduce the stress in your home. I decided to make my meal preparation earlier in the day my goal. To work towards that goal I actually started canning food again. This has enabled me to take prepared and cooked foods off the shelf to feed to my family as needed.

This also forced me to face another project that I had not yet gotten to. Because we live in a tiny house storage for food is almost non-existent. We want to have a garden and keep the foods we grow, but where do we keep them. This weekend we were able to build a shelf unit for our food. We currently only have three buildings here. One is our tiny house, the other is where we have the washer, fridge, and freezer and the last one we have insulted and finished most of and we use it for storage and study. Unfortunately we haven't actually gotten to the "study" part of it very well. My goal is to have my books in there and have a space the kids can study but that is a project for another day. I have however managed to frame in a closet area for clothes for the kids and as of this weekend for our food storage. I am super excited that we were able to build shelves for our food. 

Setting small goals has been super an essential part of creating our homestead, and I am grateful that we continue to be blessed.

Taking Care of Our Planet

Today our science lesson was on our environment. As my son and I talked about what we can do for our environment it was so exciting for me to talk with him about what our family does for our earth. For years I have hated putting so much into our landfills. Now we recycle, compost, shop when ever possible at thrift stores to reuse good clothes, we use solar energy and we use the run off of our washer to water plants. We throw as little as possible in an actual trash for a landfill. We try to reuse wood, screws, metal and just about anything that we can when we build things on our property. One of the reasons that we moved here was so that we could be better to our planet and I had forgotten how important that was to me and how much I had done to get us there until today's science lesson. The reminder was nice!

Little House on the Prairie

Today we were watching Little House on the Prairie again and Mr. Ingalls was discouraged that a tornado wiped out his crops. It seems that every time things start to work out for their family something bad happens and takes away their ability to get ahead. I really understood that. After almost 20 years of marriage sometimes I feel like we just don't ever seem to make progress. I have a lot of friends who seem to make great choices and have good jobs and savings. We have no job and a pile of debt from student loans and we really don't even have a real house. However we love our little house that we are building and even though like Charles Ingalls (my favorite character) I can get discourage that trials keep coming, I am also so grateful for the blessings that seem to come faster than the trials. I guess I have to admit that I am thankful for the trials that help me see the blessings. I do hope, however, that my husband can find a job soon that he loves here so that we can continue to get out of debt and build our home.

Homestead Family

It has been almost a year since we have joined the Homestead family. As I study history with my children I realize that our modern day homesteading is not the same as it was in the past where people lived on their land for a predetermined amount of time in order to own the land, and yet I understand that as we live on our land we start to build a bond with our land that helps us to own it in a different sense of the word. We don't know what the future holds for us but the past year has been a year of changes and learning.

When I read the scriptures I feel comfort as I read about the tender mercies of the Lord and as I recognize them in my life. In the Book of Mormon there is a group of people who are following Alma. They have determined to apply the Atonement in their lives and do all they can to keep the commandments of the Lord. However their circumstances become difficult as another group of people find and enslave them. The people however plead with the Lord for help and although their trials are not immediately removed their burdens are made lighter and they are able to bear them.

This is how I feel about my life right now. My husband lost his job at the beginning of the year, and although he has not been able to find full time employment our burdens have been made light and we have felt the constant comfort of the Lord. When our funds run out we are able to find another solution and keep going. I know that Heavenly Father knows us by name and loves us and is helping us through this time. Like the people who followed Alma we do not know how long this particular trial will last but we do know that our Heavenly Father hears our prayers and is lightening our burdens so that we can bear them and continue on.

I am thankful for our homestead and I am thankful that we can feel some independence as we live here off grid. We were able to install our fireplace and now we have the ability to keep our home warm without purchasing propane. We can wash our clothes and hang them on the clothesline to dry. We use our solar energy to run everything except our propane stove and water heater. We have a long way to go to be living off our land, but we have so much that I am super grateful.