What do you do?

I was at a dinner party last Friday and of course as people do they asked "what do you do?" Well as I clumsily tried to explain in a nice short answer that I am raising rabbits and chickens right now, I also renovate for myself and for other people when I have the time and need the money.  My answer is complicated, and multifaceted. Most of the things I do are not glamorous or what I started out in or thought I would end up doing after many years in university. I wouldn't change my lifestyle for anything and the price is a lot of hard work. The payoff is huge, but not usually in dollars.

I grew up at a time when women were supposed to prove their worth on the battlefield of professional lawyers, doctors and Wall Street brokers. As my mother and other woman and men fought to get women the freedom to get out of the kitchen and shake off the limitations of domesticity and labour, I think we lost the freedom to choose to stay home and make that a success.

After keeping all food receipts for one month, I added up what we spent on groceries and eating out and was astounded at the percentage of our income that was being spent on food! It was double what I had confidently estimated. If we were spending most of our money on food and shelter why exactly were we working these paying jobs? Bottom line is it becomes all about what lifestyle you want and balancing paid work with work that pays off.

The reality is that the person in the cubicle next to you may just go home at night and tend livestock, can food for winter and dream of years when they can do more homesteading and less earning. Why on earth would anyone want to trade having others grow one's food for the hardship of growing one's own? Is it because good food costs a lot, produces a lot of pollution getting here, and sometimes causes us to be sick because it has been mishandled or ill prepared? Is it because our children should know how to feed themselves as a basic skill? Is it because fresh food tastes so much better than food grown to arrive looking good over thousands of miles? Is it because during Juan, a hurricane that struck and left us without power for a week and main shipping routes damaged or clogged scared the pants off us? The shelves of the grocery stores were left empty for a few weeks and all of this injected a little dose of reality of how truly cutoff we are on the East coast from the rest of the world , and how close we could come to fighting for our survival? YES. All of these reasons and more.

At a very base level I want my child to know how to feed himself. Think about this. How many people could grow or hunt for their food, start a fire, gut a fish or a rabbit or any of the other things you would need should you ever find yourself homeless, foodless or lost? These are things my child is learning. He will follow his own path in life which may take him back to a large city and in a very different direction than I have chosen but he will always have the basic knowledge to feed himself, a connection to the land and the animals that share that land and that, I think,  is a pretty good place to start life. I feel strongly that all children should be given this knowledge at the start as a foundation to become stewards and protectors of the environment, of themselves and of their communities as well as for their own basic survival. These things are skills that we will lose overtime if we don't pass them on.

I sometimes look into blank eyes that look like they have no idea what planet I come from. They are teachers, computer science techs, medical professionals and the list goes on. I used to worry people would think I am shiftless, or just a "housewife" or uneducated or just plain weird. As I have gotten older I care less about all of these assumptions, none of which are true. You can't run a homestead and be lazy, I don't sit around watching soap operas and I have plenty of education. There is a business side to running a homestead and I focus very much on bottom lines. I am contributing to the economic and overall well being of my family. It is awkward but then you also sometimes get someone who has always dreamt of becoming more self sufficient and you see a little spark of interest in their eyes and did I also see some respect? As more and more people find a way to add some aspect of self sufficiency to their lives, we are forced to re-draw our ideas of gardeners, homesteaders and farmers in the country and in the city.