I Still Don't Sleep At Night

URBAN HOMESTEADING

Hot town. Summer in the city. I'm not sure how I came across this Path to Freedom blog. I was sort of idly gazing at the "sunny sunflowers" in a somewhat self-pitying way. I didn't recall seeing too many flowers lately, or maybe all is jaundiced to the jaundiced eye. Then I saw the apple pie and read something about baby ducks. I began to perk up.

I'm a sucker for baby ducks. I'm in the generation that just accepted that on Easter the Easter Bunny brought you live baby chickens and ducks. I hate to say it, but sometimes the chicks were even dyed pastel--but we never got those. We usually found a farm somewhere for the nasty, smelly chickens when they reached their gangly teen phase, but the ducks we loved. We even took baths with them. It was our Dad's idea and we were kids. What did we know? Our basement flooded one time and my Dad's first course of action was to send in the ducks. What a guy. Sure do miss him.

I'll cut this short and get back to the apple pie and sunflower blog, but big problems occurred when the ducks were full grown and could fly. They would roost on the roof of the garage. Unfortunately, they didn't respect neighborly boundaries when it came to where they would take their little pellet dumps. There was duck shit everywhere. Us kids (that includes Dad) weren't going to clean it up. And my mother hated the ducks. Finally they had to take their one-way trip to the farm. I was unconsolable. I'll tell you this right now. To this day, buddy, when I see a duck I always say hello. Quack!

So I am looking at this nostalgic to me weblog, reminiscing about my sojourns in various rural parts, and envying these people two-forty. Lucky stiffs--living in some remote outpost--what's it say here, homesteading? I've been living in the city again for quite a while. Then I see it says "urban" homesteading. So I clicked on the first upper-left link about homesteading, and sure enough they are living in Pasadena, CA. It is all members of one large family. They have a philosophy about living a simple, self-sufficient life, but they don't have anything like a farm. They do have a car, but try to use it as minimally as possible. They buy in bulk. They raise edible flowers and herbs in their yard and sell to local restaurants. They want to help others to become self-sufficient and free as well. They give tours of their urban homestead two days a week. And right now in the weblog, they are giving free plant seeds away to children, and publishing their letters.

So I'm happy I ran into the Dervaes' blog. It kind of snapped me out of feeling sorry for myself. You know, it's what you make of it and all that. There's no reason I'm not growing some nice tomatoes and sunflowers, or at least city pansies, except that I didn't think about it earlier. And I'm way ahead of them on the living simpler stuff. I don't own a car and haven't in years. I do hate the SUV's and all road hogs, and all that pollution. Frankly, I don't like anyone who thinks bicycles belong on the sidewalk. I was extremely interested tonight in a bit of news from another weblog about living a more natural, less dependent life. I it found listed in Rebecca's Portal. It was listed under "food, glorious food." It's called fuck corporate groceries, which called out to me for so many reasons, starting with genetically altered foods and rushing right into preservative and antibiotic additions I didn't ask for, don't want.

I found two things I could grab and run with today. One, how to kill fruit flies without insecticide--worth the price of admission right there. Put out a glass of sweet wine. They drink themselves to death. And two, the writer, a fellow bicycle shopper who also lives in Chicago without a car, advises using a bike rack with a milk crate to eliminate heavy backpacks that can't carry enough anyhow. This I have to try. My back does not like it when I bring home cases of Diet Coke in my guaranteed-for-30-years Jansport Backpack. My back should only hold up as well as that backpack.

I have to go back and read this delicious, chocolately blog some more and check out the great Chicago resources. But I read enough to know that these fuck corporate grocery people are not growing their own. They are going on bicycle, foot, el and whatever to farmer's markets, specialty shops, restaurants, produce markets, things like that.

Here's to simpler living I say, as I light up a Native all natural $9.35/carton cigarette, which, I know, is still insane-smoking, but what the hell. One step at a time. Do they make a back to nature version of Diet Coke? And don't say water. I need the fizz and I need the caffeine and whatever secret drug they still put in that stuff that makes it special. I'll live with the rest of the cast of Survivors off Borneo and fight with them over who digs the latrines as long as there's Diet Coke. I guess I wouldn't last too long. I'd want to take a shower anyhow.

Some night when we're sitting around the fire just shooting the shit, I'll tell you some stories about way back in the 70's, and the back-to-the-land movement going on then. One time I spent three months living in nothing but a tarp lean-to 15 miles from the Canadian border on the Ely River. Another time my husband at the time and I moved from Chicago to a town in Southern Illinois so small there wasn't but one stop sign in the whole town. The geese had full run of the main drag. It took the natives two, three years not to warm up to us, no; not to accept us, no; but to sort of say hello; how are you. Many's a story in that town--Sand Ridge, IL., population at the time: 50. I grant you that it didn't help that we had what you might call a different lifestyle than most of them, but still...

Yeah, thanks Dervaes' for reminding me that country living is not all you might think when you're a city mouse stuck living with too much concrete in July. Yeah, the novelty of having your own well water rubs off fast when the well runs dry. Then you find out the plumbing was shaky anyhow. That's why the old outhouse was still standing all along. It wasn't there for decorative purposes. And boy, when it's June and you're in your twenties, and you find a house sitting on five acres in the middle of nowhere with an actual rose-covered trellis, it DOES seem romantic to think about the cozy nights that will be spent around the old wood-heated space heater.

Ha. Ha. Ha. I do know now that Hell must be cold. It can't be hot. I prayed and prayed to be hot again. I don't ever want to be that cold again.

So one of these days we'll talk some about country living. Till then let's read about other people who are getting by very well without living there.