Thursday, January 31, 2008

What You Do When You're Tired of Waiting To Move To Acreage

You figure and figure and figure, and while others are mailing off their seed orders or their fine live chicklet Murray McMurray hatchery orders, your stuff...the BIG STUFF THAT'S BEEN ON HOLD HOLDING AND HOLDING AND HOLDING...keeps on holding. So you get more daring in your simplicity.

Because you want to Get There.

Fast.

Much faster than it's feeling like right now.

Yes, you know you must plan and work and have patience and plan some more, and that things will unplug eventually, but you still search the craigslists and wonder and begin becoming the radical freakoid you worried you might one day become...at least in your mind. Or maybe it's more worrisome because you start thinking that thinking these things are less and less radically freakoid and actually are MORE SANE (which might be true).

Yes, we actually had a conversation today about how to live in a horse trailer. Oh not the sort of conversation that goes, "oh well, if we can't get there soon because of this or that, we could just park a horse trailer on the property and make coffee over a campfire (chucklechucklechuckle snortsnort!). No, there was an actual lengthy conversation along the lines of "well we could adapt a horse trailer to sleeping and have the bedding be removable so we could use it for animals later, and we could wire it for AC or electric if we had to, and you know my cousin knew somebodyortheother who used theirs in remote locations and threw down Navajo blankets over some built-ins and on the floor and you'd never know it wasn't a little camper" (and so on and so on).


And so went the off-road topic of living in a horse trailer.

Or a converted school bus.


Or a slide-in truck topper. Or a pop-up camper. Or a trailer-ish anything that could fit a bed. A gypsy caravan (we actually said those words, though covered wagon didn't come up).

No tent...too many snakes, panthers, wild tusked hogs and things that could eat you. No yurt, same reason, plus the wet. Something that could be plopped on location at will and lived in...either WHILE or UNTIL we build other things (yes, we have to say that, right, or we're one of THOSE PEOPLE who are just a little too nuts to read further? lol!)

Um, ok, we're taking things a bit too far...LOL


THIS from the girl who hates primitive campgrounds, spiders in the dark concrete block recesses of damp campground showerhouses, and bugs flying down her back or hair in any situation. Yes, I'm a contradiction in terms, my own conundrum, lol!

What I have right now is sort of like spring fever. When things are so close to happening you can almost taste it, and we're poised like a diver hovering over the water just before taking the big plunge. We want the plunge! When all our kindred spirits out there are gathering eggs, shoveling poop, starting seeds under grow lights, ripping old clothes into quilt squares or dustrags or homemade baby wipes, making goat's milk soap, building engines that consume only old Chinese restaurant cooking oil, finishing fantastic structures made of cordwood and wine bottles....our present "NORMAL" feels like being stuck in algebra class while everyone else is out having a snowball fight.

Someday our "NORMAL" will change. I'm having homestead spring fever. We're SOOOOOO CLOSE!

I type blog thingies and then read back over them and find them totally boring or complete rants, and then push the delete button. I tell myself that this stage is part of the whole process, just as important as if I were building the much anticipated chicken coop or buying our first sheep.

Ok, now the whining is winding down, for now :)

We're stalled in paperwork with one property that looks favorable, awaiting the dislodging of the clogged bureaucratic pipeline that seems interminable just now. The other property is subject to the vagaries of human scheduling, negotiation, and... more waiting.

I feel like the race horse stuck in the starting gate after the bell dings and all the other horses are galloping madly.

Or maybe I shouldn't use the horse analogy....it just brings back the possibility of the horse trailer allllllllll over again! LOL ;-)

OK, I'm heading off to read about black-belly sheep


and heritage breed chickens


and pastured poultry and the NAIS and staining concrete floors and Zone 9 fruit trees I'll order if I ever have a place to plant them, and rattlesnake pole beans, and barn cats and grazing cattle in woodlots....


Back later when I'm not a whiner and haven't said the word "horse trailer" for at least 24 hours, ha!

Reminder to Self: I have MUCH to be thankful for and God's timing is always perfect. And I'll be content. But still scribble lists and dog-ear seed catalogues ;-)

Photos from these sources:

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://jdstiles.com/redneck/mobilehome.jpg&imgrefurl=http://jdstiles.com/redneck/index.html&h=343&w=490&sz=32&hl=en&start=3&tbnid=_eGPqrxDWVCWWM:&tbnh=91&tbnw=130&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dredneck%2Bmobile%2Bhome%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Den


http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.mrtruck.net/featherpic/featherlq.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.mrtruck.net/featherlite.htm&h=1046&w=1500&sz=294&hl=en&start=5&tbnid=tVG2rIw9Q_jNOM:&tbnh=105&tbnw=150&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dhorse%2Btrailer%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Den


http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.afence.com/WWjpg/horseBB2.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.afence.com/EquestrianSupplies.html&h=270&w=450&sz=50&hl=en&start=18&tbnid=cyDuZMooZA8yYM:&tbnh=76&tbnw=127&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dhorse%2Btrailer%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Den

http://realenergy.net/files/images/temp/new%20camera%20229.preview.jpg

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.vonslatt.com/images/bus/intfrontcent-sm.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.vonslatt.com/&h=240&w=320&sz=32&hl=en&start=15&tbnid=9X6SGBvbBXh4xM:&tbnh=89&tbnw=118&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dconverted%2Bschool%2Bbus%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.gypsyhorsesource.com/othersaleitems/wagon-7-medium.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.gypsyhorsesource.com/othersaleitems/plans.htm&h=262&w=350&sz=34&hl=en&start=2&tbnid=uc6Sq7kBmy4ISM:&tbnh=90&tbnw=120&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dgypsy%2Bcaravan%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Den

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.rcmaenterprises.com/images/DSC_2636.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.rcmaenterprises.com/page1.htm&h=255&w=384&sz=61&hl=en&start=38&tbnid=kwFwfb__AHld-M:&tbnh=82&tbnw=123&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dblack%2Bbelly%2Bsheep%26start%3D20%26gbv%3D2%26ndsp%3D20%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN

http://www.jphpk.gov.my/English/PartridgeWyandotte.jpg

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

just anote to say that your not mad ..or maybe you are and my wife has exactly the same ailment,even down to the scrawled notes on anything made of paper,which she intends to recycle ..oneday..