I was asked one day about our lives homesteading from one of my caregivers at the cancer center in the past year. As I gave answers to her questions and told some of the many things we have done on the homestead. They looked at me and said, "Wow, you have lived and amazing life." I honestly can't argue that point because I too feel we have, we have never worried about many things our society seems so worried about, we have sowed and harvested many years now. I always found it to be adventurous and loved the challenges of providing for my family while teaching my children the things that I know.
Then the next question," Do you still find it to be an adventure?" Hmm, this has been giving me thought for some time, I know we are still at it and we sow and we harvest and do many of the same things over each year. I guess I would have to say, that I have passed the adventure stage and have moved into the stage of being content. Yes content, a state of peaceful being or state of happiness. The routine of the homestead in time becomes A routine and we do the same things over and over again. But I will say I have held jobs before homesteading and after we started homesteading and found myself not so content while being there. For several years now our seasonal part time job has helped us support the homestead in many ways, after all we need to pay our property taxes too.
We too buy fuel, lubricants and maintain our machines that do allot of the work here. In our quest on the homestead, we weren't looking for it to provide an income, we looked at it as a way to feed our large growing family when things weren't so good during the recession in the 90's. It allowed me to work at the only jobs that could be found back in those years that didn't pay so well. It also gave us a bunch of freedom that we began enjoying. We found ourselves not knowing or caring if the power grid went down or not, we weren't connected. It gave us food security as well, we didn't have to run to the store every week to get food for a growing family, it was already here.
I'll never say we didn't have plenty of things to worry about, but most of those worries were short lived, things like getting the hay in, the garden harvested and the winter wood supply cut. Those worries went away once those things were finished. I was once told by an older farmer I know, the only two things a farmer worries about this time of year is, "Getting the hay and getting it in the barn." Yes it works that way for the small homesteader as well.
The adventure was a great thing for us in those early years and it was the adventure of it all that kept us going, Now as I approach my 60's I'll never say the adventure is over, but I will say I have reached the stage of being very content in my life and find I am at peace with what we harvest and how much, I'm not worried whether we get the amount of hay we need because the loft by the end of summer is normally full, the pantry always seems full and the wood shed always seems to fill up. I guess after a life time one can learn to be content with their lot in life, as I have learned: Contentment is a learned state of being, we as humans are not born with contentment and our level of contentment is low early on in life, some never find it because they remain on the roller coaster of our modern age. But some are blessed with learning to be content in their life whether they have plenty or little. I am one that feels contentment in what ever the times bring me, and it is truly a peaceful state to be in.
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