you may be a homesteader if...
You have livestock in the back seatYou have day-old chickens in your bathroom (or kitchen, or spare bedroom...)
You hate slugs
Picking up 50 pounds bags feels like nothing
Your house, office, and home has bailing twine everywhere
You get excited when you see TV commercials at friends' houses (it's been a while)
You drink out of canning jars, a lot
You forgot what grocery store eggs taste like and don't care to find out, thank you
You have corn in your backyard
You really hate slugs
Shopping malls freak you out
People who work at the feed store know your first name
The idea of eating an animal you raised doesn't bother you at all
You buy Christmas light timers in September (for the chicken coop)
You're coffee table has hatchery and seed catalogs on it
You love playing in the dirt
Share some of your own, please!
posted by Jenna Woginrich at 8:37 AM
41 Comments:
When your back porch hosts sick llamas, wounded chickens, orphaned sheep, and any other IN NEED animal.
When Your husband tells you they stink and wants you to move them to the barn.
HE stinks and I let him stay in the house!
He won.. but I moved them to the summer kitchen where I could keep my eye on them...
You see resources, (Hmmm, I bet I could use that for .....), when other people see trash.
You hardly even notice the mosquito bites anymore, and picking ticks from your flesh is just a mundane chore.
"Pest Control" consists of chickens, guineas, and an alert dog rather than toxic sprays.
You can have a half hour conversation about rabbit poop and compost....if only someone would listen.
when you run across berries, etc you look at the canning, freezing, drying possibilities ... not just yum!
Your neighbors get excited about their new boat, you get just as excited about your rain barrel!
For your 18th wedding anniversary all you have asked for is a new beehive!
You accidentally wear your "barn shoes" to work (did that yesterday). You go to the grocery store, and can almost skip the produce section (need lemons for lemonade). Someone tells you about a food they had at a restaurant, and your first thought is "I can make that from scratch, and probably make it better".
Funny!
.. if everytime you are on the phone in serious conversation your rooster crows...
My dad owns a feed store.. he knows my name :)
This is great.
roosters on the phone is a classic!
as is the tick removal....
Dressing up means wearing jeans that don't have poo on the knees
Church means taking a seat in the middle of the garden and just realizing how blessed you are
No container sits without having something planted in it
Our current table books,Blacksmithing,Cob building,cook books,canning books and gardening.
There's bits of straw in the back of my car
I wish we had bought a truck instead of a wagon.
Before you leave the house you check what little bit of finger nails you have for dirt and scrape the bottom of shoes,not everyone wants to see blobs of poo, on your shoes of course..
You know that animal blood is high in nitrogen and you water it down for the compost pile.
I hate slugs.
Pigweed is evil.
It takes you a month to fill your garbage can.Everything else goes to the various critters or the compost.
You love your life so much you try to get more people to jump on the bandwagon.
Rois, i can so very much understand wishing you bought a truck instead of a wagon...and they hay in the back!
I also check my shoes for poo...never get it all.
This is great!
You play referee between your hens, turkeys and ducks
you gleefully toss slugs to your ducks
the smell of fresh pine shavings is hotter than perfume
you overseed your lawn with Timothy and rye for better forage
Toby
When you have more barn shoes than you do shoes you can take to work!
Natalie
1) You realize you're two eggs short of being able to make omlettes for everyone, and head out the back door to the coop instead of to the supermarket.
2) All your T-shirts are stretched out and saggy in the bottom front from being stuffed with tomatoes, cukes, and squash from your trips out back "just to check on things."
Blessed be to that! I'm beginning to identify with all! Arwen
When you go to the farmers market, everybody asks you about your new goats.
You don't even think about putting on makeup anymore.
You go to the post office and get into a conversation with the woman in front of you about why the tomatoes are doing whatever they're doing, and next thing you know she's offering you plants for your garden.
When you help your chickens find bugs to eat....
You really hate yellow jackets.....
Your son is getting married and you are really trying to hold it together and not do the ugly cry....your husband leans over and says "I have chicken crap on my shoe!" Then you are laughing so hard that everyone thinks you are really balling now!!!
So many of all these comments I could have written for myself...
I wouldn't change my life for anything
Hey The last anonymous was me....my first time posting. Just forgot to sign.....Thanks Tink
You don't go to an office anymore because this lifestyle is your whole life.
You grizzle about the ones who don't understand you have to be a home between 5+6 every day to lock up the birds or the fox will get them.
Your ex-sister-in-law says "You love gardening" when it's Winter and heavy work time and you haven't got time to run around after her.
Your preferred mode of dress is flannie and pants and your daughter has stopped complaining you dress like a farmer because you now answer "I am one!"
You speak a new language that only other smallholders understand.
You know the difference between 'rural' and 'ag' pipe dimensions.
Your life is satisfying,grounded and in touch with the real things like the moon phases,rainfall and how much growth the trees have put on this year.
You know about goose contraception!
Your pockets (you now always wear clothes with pockets) are full of bits of baler twine,wire, box cutters for the feed bags and other mysterious bits of pipe fittings and maybe an egg you forgot to remove.
You can tell which geese have been mating and how often.
You don't blanch when you find a dead bird/animal/tree/vehicle.
When everything stinks and you don't care.
When you top priority is a new tank not a new item of clothing.
When you're happier talking about fencing/animal husbandry/weather/price of feed than you are about the price of petrol/clothes/trips to the movies.
When this is your real life and your other lives seem too far away to have anything to do with you.
I could go on but have to clean out my goose houses! Cheers All!!
picking bluberries with your Mom and then sharing the bounty on the way home on the way home.
I am a homesteader but I don't know if I could eat an animal I knew and named. Maybe if it was one of a large herd of identical whatevers that someone else would slaughter...
I love having day old chicks in the house. Ours always get the laundry room.
I knew I was really a goner when I got excited to find out there was a Tractor Supply store in my hometown.
You leave the bale of pine shavings in the car a bit longer than necessary because it makes the car smell nice.
You make your own soil amenity ingredients from used coffee grounds and ground egg shells (from your own chickens).
You find the perfect piece of land to homestead and love it, the view and the barn and notice that it comes with a house!
And you are no longer squeamish about "taking care of" mice in the barn or basement.....
When you realize all your shirts are rags, so you MUST buy more, and you find yourself buying all of them in poo and dirt colors.
When your big Saturday night is driving to the next town to trade a rabbit for a chicken.
Hi, Jenna - What a batch of brainstorming you started. I started to comment with my own list but shortly found it was getting way too long so wrote it up in a blog entry of my own. So much fun to read everyone's comments.
http://www.ahomegrownjournal.blogspot.com
They not only know your name at the feed store, but you helped fund the new construction by your weekly purchases.
"Day off" means...well, let me get back to you on that one.
You take your newborn piglet into your cabin loft to warm up on a cold November day. The other 9 are doing fine, but that one little runt needs some special attention.
You sit at work with a 1000 yard stare, dreaming about being at home.
You haven't been to a movie theatre in 9 years. Or a mall in 8. Everything you do equates to a bag of feed. Or a bale of hay.
When among mushers or farm friends, you can enjoy good food while talking about de-worming dogs and pigs.
Slugs...none here, but that was my favorite chapter in your book.
I copied Mama Pea's idea and made a list on my own blog. You can take a peek at www.swampriverridge.blogspot.com.
And, andrewodom? I couldn't agree with this comment of yours MORE! Beautiful sentiment!
"Church means taking a seat in the middle of the garden and just realizing how blessed you are."
:)
Your chickens know their names. Seeing your flower blossoms die is just as exciting as seeing them bloom because you get to collect the seeds. You have containers of seeds drying everywhere. Someone asks you to get the cream out of their fridge, and it takes you several minutes before (and after asking what color the container is) to realize it is in a store-bought container. Store-bought bread is utterly disgusting. You wouldn't dare by eggs from the grocery store. You're constantly trying to figure what else you can do on your little plot of land (for urban homesteaders) without the neighbors going beserk.
Thanks for the pick-me-up this morning, I really needed it.
-you really hate slugs
-you've been asked on a regular basis some variation of "You really think you two can eat all this food?" or "What do you think you're going to do with all this food?" or "Why, when you can get it at the grocery store?"
-*THE* summer treat for your Yorkie is yellow wax beans.
-when you give directions to the house, you add "It's the only one on the road with a greenhouse in the backyard."
-you have dreams about getting chickens, but that's for next year....*sigh*
When you are more worried about your heirloom black tomato plant than your lawn when the crew comes to roof your house!
When your child will ONLY eat veggies straight off the plant (or pickled by you).
When directions to your house include the phrase "Go slowly around the curves and watch out for loose cows".
I am always drinking out of glass canning jars! That's so funny.
Nancy
When exciting weekend plans involve canning tomato sauce
Summer squash becomes a curse
Your kitchen cabinets are cluttered with vegetables to process.
Between the chicken bucket, pig bucket and compost bucket there's little need for a garbage disposal
Haha, all of these are great and so so familiar, especially livestock in the car and house and conversing for hours about manure!
- when you tell your friends what you've been up to and they complain that it makes THEM tired to just hear it
- when a day "to do nothing" really means just not leaving the property
- when all of your plans revolve around when you'd get back to milk the donuts (er, goats) "time to milk the donuts!"
- when "homemade" and "from the garden" are the most common adjectives on your menu
- when the whole family recognizes the "ugh I stepped in poo" sound and commiserates
- when the one house rule is NO CHICKENS IN THE HOUSE, but you break it every spring anyway
You can make an entire meal from food from your backyard!
When you have to interrupt putting up hay for the winter to accompany your daughter to school. Keeping your distance from the other mothers because you smell and have hay in your hair, shoes, bra, etc.
When you covet other people's barns (because you only have a glorified shed).
When you get excited about your first bale of hay (from your own field).
When the books on your kitchen table include Gene Logsdon's Practical Skills, More-with-Less Cookbook, Harrowsmiths Magazine, Rural Delivery and Made from Scratch.
When your requirements for a new mini-van are must seat six, and fit at least 8 bales of hay, or three large dog crates (for livestock).
When you hate seeing abandoned farm fields overgrown with trees and brush.
When you get turkey poults just to turn over the compost heaps and reduce the fly population.
When you sneak around to all the coffee machines at work every morning collecting the grounds for your worms and compost.
You make your own ketchup.
re: Alison
I make my own ketchup!!! Isn't it the best thing you've ever had? :D
1] youre a 17 yr old girl and you ask for veggie seeds for her b-day
2} your favorite present was a food dehydrator
3} you are in charge of the garden
4} you talk your mom into getting a goat to train as pack goat
5} you think the mall is over-rated
6} your favorite store is lehmans
oh wait! thats me! ha ha ha!
katie
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