One cricket at a Time

One cricket at a time – A change of perspective

So for most of my life I've been a city girl. And loved every moment of it. I love my Starbucks and my mall. I loved my faced paced job at an advertising agency. I loved the hustle and bustle.

But about a year and half ago I had an overwhelming feeling it was time to step away from the rat race. I felt pulled to be home with my children. I had homeschooled my oldest son off and on in the past and truly felt with all my heart that was what I was supposed to be doing with the children. So when I was laid off from my job it was a blessing and a challenge. I got my wish to be home but our income was cut in half. Yikes. But we knew it would be better in the long run.

At first I kept the children in school and daycare and just took some time to detox. Then I started an adventure in learning how to cook from scratch. Mostly out of necessity because our income no longer allowed us to buy packaged dinners. With each recipe I felt more pride in what I was doing. Not everything turned out, in fact more often than not the recipe didn't turn out well, but I was learning. Then, again out of necessity, I started making household cleaners. Thank you Pinterest. I was totally surprised how inexpensive it was to make my own cleaners and how much better they worked. One day it hit me, our grandmothers had it right. I used to think it was SO old fashioned to use homemade products. But there was so much pride in making my own cleaners and homemade foods. I felt better about what I was feeding my family and knew, should my wild boys get into my cleaners, they were going to be just fine.

The seed was planted.

I had been dreaming of a beautiful house in the suburbs and my husband always talked about a large piece of property with animals and our own garden. I scoffed at the idea, I’m sorry but no, a city girl like me out in the boonies? No thanks. But there I was making dinners from scratch, making my own cleaners and considering homeschooling all of our children, and constantly feeling like it was time to get back to basics. My husband’s idea was sounding less and less ridiculous.

A year ago I pulled my daughter out of school and began homeschooling my daughter and two boys in January of 2013. I was getting ready to homeschool our oldest again this fall but he got into an amazing program with the local community college so I will just homeschool the youngest three kids.

This last spring I asked for gardening supplies for our kids for Easter and we planted a small pallet garden behind our apartment. We failed epically. We were forever forgetting to water our plants. At first we enjoyed every moment of it, but as lives got busy and the interest waned, we forgot. Though I have to admit, it was a great trial run and I am determined to try again.

This fall I attempted canning for the first time. It was scary. I've always heard how much work it is. Now I am hooked. I want to can everything in sight and though our budget and apartment sized pantry (a small linen closet converted into a pantry) don’t allow us to can a significant amount of goods yet, again this is a total learning experience and a trial run at a more sustainable lifestyle. A life style I would have laughed at two years ago, actually I did.

Homeschooling, canning, homemade cleaners, growing a garden … so what is the next step for us? Well we have decided to prepare to buy a piece of property and build our own home. A home designed with a large kitchen so that I can prepare our food myself. A home with a root cellar to store the foods we grow. A home with a built-in classroom for homeschooling our kids. And a piece of land big enough to raise any animals we choose to in order to provide for our family.

And thus our journey begins. It is going to be a very long road. And we are at the very beginning. We've started looking for properties but will need to address getting loans and building a savings account. I am also starting to work on designing our home, some of it we can do ourselves. My family had a cabinet and countertop business for years, and my husband can do some of the frame work and drywalling, so I know a lot of it can be built with family assistance and hard work on our part.

I am looking forward to getting back to the way my grandparents did things. As I sit out on my back patio and listen to the frogs and crickets I get more and more antsy to get out of the city and on to our future farm, listening to one cricket at a time.