So much to share!

The sun is shining, and I am sitting outside in the fresh air. I can smell the goats and the forest, cut grass, and the strange magical and untangible fragrance of summer ending and autumn beginning. The leaves move around me in the slight breeze. A few of them have yellowed early, giving a hint of the jewel colored forest we will soon be surrounded by. The forests in New England, tend to be a mix of conifers and more standard deciduous forest varieties. This leads to a range of colors and shades in the autumn. I have traveled this whole big world. I have seen amazing and magical things everywhere I have been. But never have I encountered an autumn of rainbow jewel colored leaves that stand as proudly in the autumn sun as we see here each year. New England, is a true miracle in that it so fully and completely sees every season to it’s fullest. Like the early changing leaves, here at Wildflower, we are in the midst of many major changes to our life. Some of have already happened. Others are still works in progress. It’s why I haven’t been here. I have been rather busy and stressed working very hard with a wonderful designer, ADDG.

We are working with ADDG, to fix some of the dysfunction in our home. Red Bird Cottage, is in need of some renewal and has been in such need since we moved in many years ago. We have been saving and saving to do the necessary work in the bathrooms and the kitchen for a long time. Finally, we have a plan and one and a half of my two and a half bathrooms have been gutted. So it begins…. But in addition to this, we also put a beautiful screened porch onto the house. Now I have a new favorite place to write. We have been trying to keep things low budget. The table my computer rests on is a very nice hand me down. (thanx mum!) It was given to us when my mother decided to down size into a smaller condo north of here. This move was very distracting for us as we were helping her clean out her basement some, even as I was starting the plans for what is now unfolding here. My spring and summer were a gardening lost causes as all my time was eaten up by the planning of all these projects. So my absence is because I had to take a break from homesteading to focus on planning the bettering of the homestead. I was also very depressed for a while, as it was during this time that we lost our beloved dog Pikku. So writing about my life here and actually trying to live my life here for a time took a back seat to planning all the change, the death in the family, and helping my mum some with her move also got in the way.  For a while it was really a lot. We lost two planting seasons outside. Which made me feel massively defeated. We got some new pets when we were ready. A golden retriever named Toby, and his sister a beautiful maine coon with the most wonderful personality I have ever encountered. While he goes in and out, she is limited to inside and the new porch. We call her Fairlight, or Fairy for short. So lots of change and craziness here lately.

In addition to the porch and the changes to the house, we have also contracted for a barn to be built to better manage our goats which were and are fine as they are now, but improvements can always and should always be made when possible. So hopefully the construction of that begins soon too. This barn will also allow me to bring my horse home from boarding. Which really is necessary since I have trouble getting to where he is boarded as I don’t drive. For me, it is really necessary to have my whole life centralized in one spot where I can reach everything easily on foot. 

Other things have changed too. My social media has undergone some further changes. I have moved from a platform I really liked called Bluesky, because I began to notice all these weird posts promoting violence that seemed to be baiting others to agree that it was necessary. It looked like some creepy psyop to me, in which the current fascist government might have been seeking to entrap unhappy people by getting them to say the wrong thing. Given that Bluesky is under US legal jurisdiction, I realized, even those not saying anything wrong, even those not inclined or open to violence as a method, could soon end up becoming a focus of a very scary regime. So, I moved again. Now I am on a really amazing platform located in Belgium that operates under EU jurisdiction. Monett, is a really nice small platform still I do believe in beta testing. It bears some resemblance to Instagram, only you keep your privacy, are not subjected to icky ads and horrible algorythms that corrupt and take ownership of your mind. Also, your privacy remains yours. Some of the photos posted are absolutely beautiful. Like everything though it is a mixed bag of material. Engage with what you like don’t engage with what doesn’t speak to you positively. Many of the people I have met through the beautiful images they post have been super nice. In addition to Monett, I have gotten Signal, as one of my sisters inlaw wanted me to have it.  Beyond that, I am still using Youtube, so I can get news and information from credible sources as that is no longer possible on American TV. I have become one of the Meidas Mighty. I also find Adam Mockler, worth watching, I also find Ihip has plenty to offer. I really wish though that they would start posting on Peertube also, as I truly hate big tech like youtube which is a google thing…. Google gave a lot of money to the current evil regime. But staying informed matters. I wish I could do it somewhere less complicit. So that is the current tech update. 

I am currently reading a really good book with the book club, it is called The Giver Of Stars by Jojo Moyes. It is about a library in Kentucky long ago that was mobile via librarians on horses. This library was real though the book is historical fiction. Once upon a time, this nation used to care about education and literacy. It used to care that people could better themselves so they could be informed and educated. Somehow these days. it is a race to the bottom… Even in Kentucky, where most teachers voted against their own interests and those of their students, to support the Mango Mussolini. Literally voted to ruin the schools…. I will never understand how the most educated in a locality can be that dumb. But they were. Kentucky schools have paid a high price too. It’s sad. To go from being the state that literally created and empowered a library on horseback to enrich the people to being the state without a representative and schools that have been all but defunded. All so dear cult leader can raise the price of gas at the pump and the cost of food….What happened to this state and to many others? The Satucket, used to go round the nation. For a dollar a day you could listen to lecturers with credentials discuss many subjects from culture and art to science…. It was a traveling carnival of education. Can we please bring these wonderful programs back??? No. We can’t. Not unless the rich pay their fair share in taxes. Until then it will be a race to the bottom. 

My current personal book is called The Moneyless Man, by Irishman Mark Boyle. Previously I read his book The Way Home. It made me really stop and consider the technology I was using. In The Moneyless Man, he does an experiment to live a year without using money. Can it even be done??? I am not done with the book. So I do not know just yet. But the book is full of wonderful ideas and pointers related to the freeconomy. In the current circumstances we find ourselves in, his ideas may be of more service than we realize. He writes well. 

Ecology studies, i am reading a book by Peter Wohlleben, The Secret Network Of Nature. I read another of his books about living independently off in nature producing for my own needs some months back. I have returned to him because he spent a long time in forestry and he has a very deep understanding of the natural world. I like his writing style and I always learn a lot from him…. Homesteading and living close to nature….. I have come over these last 13 years to understand…. It isn’t just a way of life. It is also a study of the nature you live close to. How to live off it and within it and as kindly as possible to it, to get the most out of it. So I usually have some book of this nature I am reading even as I usually find myself reading a couple other books at the same time, one for book club, one for personal enrichment and to expose myself to new ideas I would like to learn more about. 

As autumn begins, I am working hard not to lose another gardening season and get back on track, even as my bathrooms are ripped apart and soon even more of my home will be ripped apart. Much of the greenhouse is now planted. Though even here we have made some changes. Dr. Farmer Moomin, made me a second big grow box. Then he filled it with my Coast Of Maine soil that I love so much. He was here carrying 95 lb bag after 95 lb bag and pouring it into the new pine box he built for me. This means, no interruptions as we will be able to plant a second winter harvest in the new box a little before we start harvesting the first box. Now we have plenty of space in there for planting and growing our food. I have set up a lighted shelf of herbs, and soon I will set up bags of potatoes, tomatoes, and cucumbers. Already our hydroponic system has been planted and our lettuces are coming up. Soon they will be big enough to start harvesting. Once they reach that point, I will start the micro greens on a shelf with lighting just above the herbs. I find purpose in going out to the greenhouse everyday to care for our food. I have missed that these last two seasons of getting side tracked by the projects to improve the function of this place. I would rather be doing these kinds of things then choosing tile. I would rather be working my garden than picking paint colors, or bathroom vanities…. But, there is a time for everything, and we can’t always do the things that we love most. Sometimes we have to do the chores necessary to keep things nice even when they aren’t enjoyable jobs. That said, everyone I have worked with related to these thing has made this process as much of a joy as is possible. Unfortunately…. Nothing tops or comes close to the smells of garden soil or seeing one’s food shooting out of the ground under a sunny sky. The feel of green living weeds in your hands as you pull them…

The leaves are dancing and the sunlight is changing as the sun begins to drop in the sky just a little. The porch is warm and sunny. It is a joy to be out here. Hard to believe how much time I spend out here when 3 weeks ago this space didn’t even exist. Sometimes you don’t know what you are missing until it is present rather than missing. I love this space. It is unfinished. Which for some has been something they do not understand. Why not make it all sheetrocked and paint it finish it into another room of the house. Because I don’t want another room of house. I have a wonderful house with a wonderful room by the wood stove for the winter months. But a space outside, that feels like an outdoor space…. Now that I need. Especially free of bugs. It feels like an old cabin porch by the lake or back in the forest, unfinished. lit with twinkle lights. We have all but stopped watching television lately. Largely because we no longer have streaming services for reasons of political morality and human decency. We have set up a speaker out here on the back porch. Often music plays out here. We also have been listening to audio books in the evenings out here in the magical glow of the twinkle lights. We just finished Dan Brown’s most recent book. Most days I spend most of my time out here. We have named the porch Hummingbird Station. It overlooks an out of control rosebush that gets visited daily by a very cute little hummingbird. I look forward to being out here as the leaves turn colorful, and the grass prepares to be covered by the snow. I know I will be sad when we close the door for the winter and choose the warmth of the wood stove to the open air of the porch. I will race back out here in the spring, to glory in the spring sunshine. I am convinced porches are deeply magical spaces, after these last 3 weeks out here reading comfortably on the outdoor sofa, and eating in the glow2 of the twinkle lights listening to the crickets and the toads back in the woods. I had forgotten how loud nature is at night… Even when you can’t see nature in the dark, it doesn’t cease. It continues on doing what it does. Now, we are often outside to hear it. All because I gave up what I love for a time to plan projects to make this place function better… 

Homesteads, are living things. Like the earth itself. Always growing always changing and going through their cycles. Part of that cycle includes fixing bathrooms so old and degraded they are literally crumbling. So that brings me up to date. I will try to be less of a stranger to this blog. I miss it when life takes up so much of me that sharing here becomes one too many things to do. This phase of change will pass. And as it does, I promise to write here more often. Especially now that I have this beautiful outdoor space in the sunshine where I can watch the goats on the hill and look deep into the woods.

Thank you for reading 
Amanda of Wildflower Farm