The Final Push

It has taken some doing for us to get things to this point in our adventure.

Decisions … decisions … decisions.

Quite a lot of decisions over the course as we worked through the logistics involved in successfully accomplishing this major change in life after sixty. Decisions always have consequences of one sort or another. Decisions always have ramifications. Some of the ramifications are immediate. Some show up down the road a ways.

We have been careful in weighing a lot of ideas over this course before making decisions. We have done that back and forth dance a number of times on some things to insure making the best possible decisions and have, so far in the adventure, done a really good job of eliminating the unwanted effects of poorly thought through decisions.

This forty mile leap is a major change that involves a lot more than geographic distance.

It involves a major lifestyle change.

It is not, for us, one that is unexpected or unprepared for. It is more along the lines of finally being able to more fully put into practice and enjoy our personal lifestyle preferences … elements that we have been practicing all along yet never been quite able to invest ourselves in fully.

A lot of people move. A lot of people move great distances. We have both done it several times during our lives. Short distance moves. Great distance moves. The thing about moves is that people can move … across the street or across the country … and the only major change is geographic location. Other than the geography, and the faces that occupy the geography, nothing else changes. Lifestyles generally remain the same where most geographic moves are concerned.

We would not recommend what we are doing to the uninitiated … to those that haven't studied long on the subject, done their homework, acquired skills suited to the task, and greased their psychological bearings. Simply being fed up with the modern social disorder isn't enough. An infatuation with the involved romanticism isn't enough. Both of these are inherent elements. There is, however, a lot more to this than the combined motivation of these two elements.

We do recommend and encourage people to investigate and invest themselves in endeavors that lead to simplicity and self-reliance. Every step toward simplicity and self-reliance is an important step. Every step that lessens our dependency upon others and upon the system is a step in the right direction. Who knows where the steps will lead? Maybe to a small cabin the woods?

Want to and how to can become can do.

I don't remember the date that I first stumbled across the original Mother Earth News. That was a long time ago. Right after it first started rolling off the press. The original magazine was great. A lot of people were fed up. A lot of people were infatuated. A lot of people were launching out on great Green Acres adventures. The greatest number of these lots of people succumbed and returned to their former lifestyles for one reason or another. The want to was there. A lot of how to was there. Somewhere, along the way, the can do gave out. I think, in the end, social pressure was, and will likely always be, the meanest culprit that exhausts the can do and causes people to abandon their adventures.

Most of modern society simply can't get their minds wrapped around a Walden Lifestyle or any simplify, simplify semblance thereof. And too few of us lack the spinal iron to give the finger to social pressure, regardless who its source is, and walk away from it.

The winter food plot is looking great.

We added a few items to it over the weekend ... beds of salad makings. A bed sown with two types of leafy lettuce. A bed sown with Romaine. And a small bed sown with Mesclun Mix to spice up our winter salads.

We have, until now, taken a systematic gradual approach to getting things moved to and set up at the cabin. There have been a lot of up and back trips. It is now time to give this thing the final major push and wrap it up.

Our goal?

At some point, before the end of October, we will be full-timing it at The Cabin On Huckleberry Hill. 

Planting The Winter Food Plot

The Goldenrod is beginning to bloom.

The yellowing of the Goldenrod, and the blooms of what I call the early autumn bloomers, are always a pleasant and welcome sight. Their appearance means that the brutal lower coast summer season is behind us and that we are on the cusp of our long cooler season.

The daytime temperatures can still be plenty hot. We are still quite a ways yet from needing to pull out the thermals and hoodies. Mosquito dope is still needed.

The Cusp of Autumn, in this part of the world, means it is time to plant the winter garden … with a focus on vegetables that prefer cooler weather. It is a rare thing to have cold enough winter temperatures that will kill these.

One exception is broccoli. It doesn't take much frost to ruin broccoli when it is about ready to harvest. We've had that happen a few times. Another is cabbage. Freezing temperatures will ruin a crop of headed out cabbage. The heads freeze and split. The heads of ruined broccoli and cabbage can be removed to allow secondary heads to grow. I've done that but, since moving away from traditional rows and preferring raised beds and intensive methods in small spaces, I find it more practical and more productive to just pull the winter burned plants and start over with something else.

Building raised beds can be a bit labor intensive. 

Moving to the method was a leap for this traditional row gardener accustomed to disturbing the peace of nature while stirring the dirt with a tilling machine. The results of the leap and labor, where food production and manageability are concerned, are all on the positive side of the chart.

There is, like in anything else, a learning curve involved. Part of the curve is the reality that small well tended spaces will produce a lot of good food … food that is of much higher quality than anything bought at the stores and markets … food that costs only pennies to grow instead of multiple dollars to buy.

Kitchen gardens were once a norm. Growing one's own food was once a norm. This norm is gone and will likely, for most people, never be returned to. Abandoning this norm is, as I see it anyway, part of the sad disconnection from nature that characterizes this modern culture. We are forced by modern circumstances to live unnatural lives and we suffer a lot of assorted consequences on account of being disconnected from nature.

My son-in-law and daughter (our benevolent landlords at The Cabin On Huckleberry Hill) built this raised bed. There is a lot of horse manure beneath that layer of chipped mulch. The plan is to build a number of raised beds in this area, enough to provide for a lot of our fresh picked food needs.

The collard and kale plants that I planted Monday show just a bit of transplant shock. They'll do just fine.

It is work. It is hard to call it work. Call it pleasant work. A few sprinkles from the rain on its way. The rumbling of thunder. Some of it close. The not-too-distant sound of iron wheels on the track and train horns blowing at the RR Crossing. The sounds of acorns falling from the oaks. The sound of an occasional bird chirp that I'm not familiar with.

The little Satsuma tree was a gift from a friend on the occasion of my 62^nd birthday. Satsumas are a fairly cold hardy citrus that resembles Tangerines.

I raked back the mulch to expose the soil beneath, scratched it a little with the 4-pronged cultivator, sowed seed, scratched them in, and gave the planted areas a good watering.

In a few days the turnips will start sprouting and showing some green. It can take a week or two for the beets to begin emerging. The carrots can take up to three weeks to start showing up.

Turnips?

I buy two types … Japanese and Purple Top ... mix them in the pack, and sow them together. The Japanese greens are milder than the Purple Top and don't produce the nice roots. The blend makes for a nice pot of turnip greens and the Purple Top's give us a some nice roots.

Lettuce?

Gray Matter Episode. I forgot to get lettuce seed. I usually get a couple types and mix them as well.

Mental note: Get lettuce seed and don't forget the Arugula!

Tiny Cabin Motivation

What is it that motivates us to do what we are doing … to go from dreaming and theorizing about a thing to actually doing the thing dreamed of?

The closest thing to a one line answer would probably be something like … Our philosophy of life has evolved to the point that it is the only reasonable thing that we can do.

The italicized answer makes sense and is good enough for those that have already worked through all the issues and levels necessary to simmer things down to a life-philosophy answer. For those that haven't exercised themselves in working through the issues and levels, the italicized answer … the life-philosophy thing … is kind of out there in left field and doesn't provide much of an answer; though the life-philosophy thing is honestly the ultimate answer.

Our own points of personal evolution are the product of years, decades of years, of personal processing, establishing priorities, refining interests, and storing away volumes of useful retrospect as personal frames of reference. We have discovered, in the aforementioned processing, a lot of motivation.

The past few years, and especially the past year, we have refused to allow anything or anyone to cause our sights to drift off the target. It has required a great deal of discipline on our part. It has not been easy. It has been well worth it but not at all easy.

There are a few major issues that must be addressed where an adventure such as this is concerned. The primary issue ... a question that must be met with a satisfactory answer ... is, What do we prefer to be doing with our lives?

I use we in the question.

We, under this roof, happen to be a we ... there are two of us involved in this adventure. Single people have only an I to decide for. Anyone with a spouse or partner becomes a we situation with we challenges. A we situation with dependent children becomes another situation altogether … not an impossible one but one with other sets of challenges.

I mentioned earlier that, where something like this involves a we, there has to be a lot of agreement. Walking in agreement necessarily involves making compromises. One of the fortunate things, where this we is concerned, is that we share a lot of similar interests. Our personalities are different. We're a Pisces and a Scorpio. One is an Alabama Pisces boy and one is a Jersey Scorpio girl. We have, where two individuals are concerned, a good many differences.

Differences can be complementary provided there are shared life-interests that reach farther than the relational utilitarianism involved in keeping house, raising children, and going on an occasional vacation. Our necessary compromises have never centered upon relational matters. Their aim has been, and remains, always focused upon effectively placing shots within the ten-ring regardless the distance of the target downrange.

We prefer having the freedom to happily follow our dreams and interests. This is especially important to us now as we enter into what some have referred to as the autumn years of life.

Freedom isn't free.

There are costs involved. The associated costs aren't really sacrifices. They are more along the lines of trade-offs that have a way of forming sinew and muscle on the bare skeleton wired together in the coined phrase less is more. In architecture and in life. Less is more. This less is more thing is something that we have long embraced in theory. Only as we have actually invested ourselves in it have we honestly begun to realize the truth contained therein.

We prefer to be happy and at ease.

Not as an occasional thing snatched at with the leftovers of life and personal resources but, rather, as a lifestyle. Happiness and ease, for us, involves not only downsizing to this small cabin. It also involves the freedom to take Fred (our camping van) on long leisurely rides to who knows where for who knows how long. We have dear friends, family, and grandchildren that we'd like to visit. There are sights, sunrises, and sunsets to see while we are yet able.

We have, at this point in our adventure, begun part-timing at the cabin.

There are still a number of things to do to apply the finishing touches to things at both ends of the county. There are things to be done to finish closing down where we've lived and called home for the past 12 years. 12 years is a lot of accumulation. We have, despite all the variables and uncertainties involved in pulling this thing off within our desired time frame, managed to keep things either in the ten-ring or right on the edge of it.

There are still things to do to put the finishing touches on the cabin. Call it an inhabitable work in progress. Mostly interior cosmetic stuff and screening the small front porch to create a mosquito-free spot to sit. We'll be whittling on these as we go along.

There is a very definite learning curve involved in an adventure such as this.

Figured into this curve is a wide stretch that has to do with learning to relax after those decades of running pillar to post and back again. Relaxation. Honest to goodness relaxation. Not the weekend version of it or the annual off the clock version of it; even if the off the clock version comes as paid absence. We're all familiar with those versions of it, versions that always include a too soon Monday morning and a time clock.

This version?

This version is different. It is strange and unfamiliar. This version, at least what we have experienced of it in our part-timing, will take some acclimation. Life lived on the time clock, or constantly doing routines of time and energy demanding chores, doesn't incorporate this version into anyone's personal frame of reference.