Though I have been blogging for a very long time (it wasn’t even called “blogging” back then), I still have times in my life when words just. don’t. come. out. That’s been the case over the last few years, as we went through another of life’s hurdle-phases.
Our baby graduated our homeschool. That’s one. And…we bought a forest. That’s another.
In the past several years, I’ve been focused on graduating our four well, assisting them up on their wobbly “adult” feet, and remodeling the house where they were raised so it sells for lots of money so my husband can buy a tractor (and, okay, I want a greenhouse). In the midst of that time, we had a hurricane, of course, and a flood (of the yard and outbuildings, not the house). We also had a few health setbacks, mostly in the form of injuries to knee and hand which make hiking and/or homesteading even more challenging.
We couldn’t move yet.
I didn’t write. I should have.
It’s time. Time to move, come what may. And time to write again, this time of our new adventure. The premise of “just pure lovely” is still true to me today. To explain: Just Pure Lovely was the name of my blog a while ago, and it was based on Philippians 4:8, which advises us on how to not be anxious. “Think on the “good, just, pure, lovely,” etc. I still have to do that. I get anxious, and have to keep focusing on the “just, pure, lovely.”
My childhood was odd: half spent in a self-sustained American village of like-minded doers, and half spent in a primitive South Pacific island village where laundry is done with rocks in streams. Due to that “odd” childhood, I am what my very-American husband calls “ingenious,” in thinking up solutions to problems. He is what I call a “rigger,” thinking up solutions to problems as well, since he was raised by the American School of Hard Knocks, as a kid in poverty.
That’s the background and the explanation. Here’s the now: We bought a 45-acre forest in the Smoky Mountains, Blue Ridge Mountains, Appalachian Mountains (they all merge at our spot), where I hope to carry on the hopes of the 15 generations of American farmers in my family line. I have always wanted “a bit of soil,” as much as Mary Lennox wanted it in The Secret Garden. Finally, I have it, though it’s damp, mountainous, and absolutely challenging.
I’ll write about that challenge here, in the style of the scribbles in my paper journal (often, these words will come from there). The topics may be about what I’m learning: soil, micro-climates, raising chickens in the forest, or about what I’m doing: nature crafts, creativity, fermenting, harvesting, or the topics could be about what I’m thinking about: philosophy and research.
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Thank you for joining us on our adventure,
