Vlogging has been on my mind a lot recently. A rather infamous blogger, whose blog I no longer follow, apparently announced (I heard this through the grapevine, but through a reputable source) she was going to begin a daily vlog, following in the footsteps of a lot of other folks who are doing the same thing, and supposedly making money at it.
I read in the paper this morning about about two Christian vloggers who document their daily family life on YouTube as their new profession, speaking on everything from their faith to their pregnancies to their marital issues. (Here's a link: http://gawker.com/christian-youtubers-welcome-new-baby-to-a-lifetime-of-m-1736023268
It seems strange to me that in a society where most of us barely have time to keep up with our extended family and friends that for some of us, we still find enough time to watch -- or worse, record -- a daily vlog which reaches out to total strangers about the daily minutiae of ordinary life, be it rural or urban.
If Malala had a vlog I'd probably watch that, but she's obviously got more perspective than to think talking into a video camera about herself every day is a productive way to be in the world. She's too busy trying to change it for the better.
As for homesteading and having a daily vlog, it seems to me that if you're really walking the walk, how in the world would you have time for this? After all, vlogging is a lot more complex than just blogging, which is a lot like journaling. In blogging, you sit down and take a quiet moment to share news or write about something that's been on your mind. That's a quiet time of reflection, thinking and, in a sense, authoring and writing. And if you happen to be a writer, it's a good way to keep your hand in the game.
But setting up your phone or a camera to record yourself and talking to it, or worse, setting it up to record yourself doing some task or other seems like a HUGE time waster if you're homesteading and at the time of year when the days are getting shorter, like right now. Less daylight for the same tasks. Tick tock goes the clock.
Or maybe you just plan on having nightly fireside chats with your viewers and talking about all the stuff you did. Would people watch it? Who knows?
You know, if someone wants to make a living doing stuff like this, and other people 1) have enough free time or 2) lack the brain space to figure out they could be doing something better than watching someone else live their lives, then I guess I don't really have a dog in this fight and should just leave well enough alone.
It just seems strange. First, reality TV and now, reality TV via YouTube. Because, obviously, we just can't get enough of the Kardashians, Real Housewives and Braxtons and need even more content, with people just living. Or staging what they want us to think their lives are like, anyway.
Of course the financial pragmatist in me would love to ask these YouTube fame-seekers how their retirement accounts are doing, or whether they are satisfied with their health care, or whether they've thought about the 10 - 20 year prospects of this new job of theirs. Like any other career in show business, the odds of long-term fame are almost nil, unless you really hit the jackpot. But at least, even for the waiter who occasionally finds work in TV or movies, he does get compensated at union wages, and if he finds roles often enough, will eventually be eligible for SAG/AFTRA union retirement, health care, etc. YouTubers get no such benefits.
But of course, these practical things like figuring out a way to live when you are 70 pale in comparison to achieving a minor status of fame and having followers right now.
But here's a lovely little irony: In other news, I read another article that said that by the end of this century, certain geographic regions of the Middle East/North Africa will no longer be able to sustain human habitation, due to temperatures rising to new summer highs of 165 - 170 degrees, or the equivalent of an oven hot enough to cook a chicken nicely.
The vlogging vloggers and their band of blind followers somehow never seem to tackle topics like this, instead preferring to bombard us us with day-in-the-life type posts -- every day -- featuring their freshly made-up faces front and center and banal stories of "what I did today." Which may explain why a certain segment of the population prefers them to the actual reality of their lives and their planet. It's an uncomfortable reality we're facing more and more.
Maybe the YouTube vlogging phenomenon is an unconscious attempt to distract attention from the elephant, who at this point is roasting, in the room.
So there is another blog I read from time to time, from a conservative columnist living on acreage in Northern Idaho. ( http://www.rural-revolution.com ) While politically we are polar opposites on almost every issue (therefore I usually skip her political posts), I love reading her posts about life in the woods -- their livestock, their weather, their homesteading efforts (which are significant).
But she posted this morning that someone had complained about her blog, saying something to the effect that writing about broken chest freezers, biscuit recipes and other around-the-house topics was just a big yawn. And of course instead of just getting lost and reading a different blog, the letter writer felt the need to let this lady know how boring he/she thought that kind of life was.
Which is the total and absolute conundrum about homesteading blogs. If someone is really homesteading, you are going to see a lot of repetition and unless you are a homesteading fan, it will likely become boring to read about over time. Because, compared to modern life, the simple life of homestead tasks IS boring, by comparison. There are no Tahitian vacations, no outlandish luxury purchases, and very little of what people have come to expect for online entertainment, which is D-R-A-M-A. There are chest freezers breaking down, a little blood spilled here and there, fence issues and animal stories.
There is another blog I used to read (which I will not dignify with the term "homesteading blog" since it is not) which panders more to what your average reality-show consumer desires. There is always drama, giant, metaphorical wolves at the door interspersed with sticky-sweet, bucolic farm life monologues, lots of self-promotion and advertising, and lots of opportunities for readers to send money to keep it all going and see the drama continued.
The readers fund the drama in this case, and you donate money to ensure the next "episode" pops up on your blog feed tomorrow or the next day, although the official tagline usually runs something like "your donations keep the farm going." Because as we all know, farms are successful due to online donations, right?
Anyway, this second blog is not a blog about homesteading, although it may look like that on the surface. No, instead, it's actually a soap opera/reality TV show set on a few acres, with the blogger seeking not the simple life, but rather attention and recognition. But, I suppose the complaining letter-writer on the other blog would like it, because it does have a constantly rotating cast of new animals and new purchases, usually followed by lots of crisis and commensurate panic.
I will just say here that I love true homesteading blogs because they inspire me. Honestly, I also love decorating blogs if they inspire me. In my opinion, if you are a real person doing real and creative things, that is interesting. If I read a post about making butter, then I want to make some. If I read about planting a spring garden, then I get excited about planning mine. I do try to stay away from serious decorating blogs for this reason...if I see a newly remodeled bathroom, I start wanting one myself. Better to just make some butter and be content with that. It's a lot cheaper that way.
But regarding the homesteading blogs I do read, I do not expect life on the average, honest homestead to read like an episode of "The Bachelor," with trips, roses and tears in every episode.
Here's to keeping it real on the homestead and the legitimate bloggers who help chronicle it. Let's leave the roses and tears to the drama queens.
These are two of my favorite homesteading-type blogs. The first is the Matron of Husbandry, who has a fantastic farm blog. It is exactly what it appears to be, which is a journal of daily farm life on what appears to be an extremely self-sufficient homestead and working farm. Lots of beautiful pics and great ideas for canning, farming, livestock and planting.
http://matronofhusbandry.wordpress.com/
The second is RootSimple. This is a great blog for urban and suburban homesteaders to enjoy. These folks live in the heart of Los Angeles and are not afraid to experiment to discover how to live a simpler, more eco-friendly and economical life. They are also extremely honest about the areas where they live a more typical urban existence, and where they've tried things and failed. But they have far more success than failures, and are just so inventive it's a consistent pleasure to read their posts.
http://www.rootsimple.com/
So why am I recommending these blogs to anyone who is reading this post? Because it's very easy to get wrapped around the axle of frustration when we discover a particular farm or homesteading blog is are not what it appears to be, or which deliberately tries to lead us to think they are something they are not. I know a few years ago one of my favorite blogging families filed a lawsuit to trademark the term "urban homestead" and, honestly, it was incredibly disappointing to find these people were not who I thought they were. I looked for my inspiration elsewhere and found it, in part on these two other blogs. So it only makes sense to share them with you.
I hope the Hot Flash Homestead never misleads anyone, we are far from completely self-sufficient but just try to do our part wherever we can. I enjoy writing about our efforts and also about the wonderful area we live in, and if it makes just one person put up a clothesline, cook in a solar oven or grow some of their food, I'm happy.
But both these other blogs are also wonderful resources, written with intelligence and wit, and will give you lots of ideas to try. So read and enjoy!
This morning it is a brisk 17 degrees outside. Everything that hadn't died already (and is supposed to be dead this time of year) will be dead when I walk outside today. The remaining eggplants, basil, a lone tomato, along with the bouganvilla on the side of the house, will have all died down to the ground. The bouganvilla will come back in spring, but the aforementioned summer food crops are gone for good.
Inside, the pellet stove is humming away, keeping the common rooms warm and cheery. It's a rural fantasy if you look at the surface....in a few minutes I will don flannel-lined denim overalls and start to clean up the things around the property that didn't survive. It looks bucolic and seasonal and, friends, it feels that way, too. And if you looked no further, you'd think we were a pioneer family, living the simple life and loving it.
But if you read this blog, you know there's more to my life than this. And lately it's been bothering me (once again) that others who blog on the so-called "country life" are misleading good-hearted people who read their posts and think, "well, I can quit my job and do that!"
You see, I was at work yesterday, at a job I love. Big Ag, my husband, works long hours on a corporate farm about an hour east of here. That's how we afford to the fix fences and well pumps, add raised vegetable beds to this property, and rent heavy equipment when we need to dig post holes or re-landscape the front lawn with native plants instead of grass.
And for some reason, this morning I've been thinking of two other blogs I read fairly often, where good, old-fashioned "country living" is elevated to almost a religious pitch, but where the necessary realities of having cold, hard cash are downplayed -- unless you want to donate some, that is.
One blog site is in the midst of a legal battle because, for the last few years, they have been trying to trademark the term "urban homestead," and shut down all other websites that use the term without giving them credit. If they successfully trademark the term, anyone using it will have to pay them or at least get permission to use it (and I'm sure the idea that Home Depot will want to market "urban homestead" products has them seeing dollar signs everywhere). But, hey, they are just simple folks, right? They're more concerned with baking bread and growin' food than entering in protracted legal battles to own a term that's been in use since the turn of the century before this, right? Well apparently not.
The other blog is a blog that once inspired me, with a blogger who wrote about growing vegetables and leading a vegetarian lifestyle, playing fiddle, owning rabbits and a goat and working a job in town to keep the bills paid. Then she quit her job and....life went off the rails. Read the blog now and it's become a celtic fantasy world, filled with descriptions of how wonderful it is to ride horseback in a kilt, speak Gaelic to people and animals, hunt, butcher animals, do archery, falconry and role-playing games, with nary a mention of real farming, except for a few chickens and sheep that seem to be kept around for no real purpose. None of which will pay the bills or have any real basis in reality at all.
I'm a believer that you do create your own reality, but only to a point. When the lawyers come demanding their invoice gets paid, or when the truck that takes you to the celtic fantasy reenactments gets repossessed, life gets real very fast. And if you don't have any kind of REAL job, you just might lose the whole kit and kaboodle. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but someday.
Most "farmers" work at other jobs to keep their dream in the black. Both my husband and I have jobs off the property, which help fund our adventure. To tell you otherwise would be misleading, and potentially costly for anyone who wants to do what we're doing now.
Farms take funding, and few survive without extra income coming in. So as they say in show business, "don't quit your day job, kid." Because while an actor or actress might eventually make millions and win an Oscar, farmers rarely come into that kind of fortune, even by using their talents. At the most, they support themselves by selling what they grow. We don't even do that; we do put a substantial dent in our grocery budget by growing our food and making most of what we use, but we could never live off what we do here. To think otherwise would be to engage in magical thinking.
Yet, the latest thing in the blog world is to putter along on your property, and if you get in trouble financially, just ask your readers to support you (literally). But to ask for money when you're not out there doing anything to bring in a regular income to help yourself survive is, well, the exact opposite of keeping your life simple. It's becoming beholden to an "audience" and constantly having to come up with new things to keep them entertained and engaged. That is not farming. That is public relations and marketing.
And it's not the simple life, not by a long shot. Our life may involve having to drive down the hill and go to work a few days a week, but those every-other-Wednesday paychecks DO help keep our life simple, by keeping this farm running and keeping us in the black. To imply otherwise would be to insult your intelligence and our work ethic.
Here's to keeping it real, folks.
Today I attended the regular monthly luncheon for the local DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution) branch, which was a lovely affair, complete with red, white and blue place settings, some light salads and crackers, and a presentation on researching British ancestry. On the whole, it was fantastic, except for the fact that their idea of lunch was, unfortunately, my idea of a light snack.
Basically, this is because they eat like ladies and I eat like a farmhand.
So I supplanted lunch by stopping at a sandwich place on the way home for some grilled chicken and a whole wheat roll with butter and strawberry jam, and as I was gratefully knocking all that back I had to laugh at the fact that I negotiate between two completely different worlds so much.
Maybe you do the same. It could be a difference between your work life and your private life, or your family life versus your time with old friends, but many of us find ourselves straddling two different ways of living, or more. Yet in the transit back and forth, there is often a beautiful balance.
I love down-and-dirty homesteading, for instance. I love the simplicity that comes from making things myself, hanging my wash on the line and growing my own food. But the other day I was reading a homesteading blog where the author (and many who commented on her post) were discussing getting rid of all clothing that they didn't wear regularly. "I'm heading towards just having one uniform -- jeans and a t-shirt," one commenter stated, to the agreement of many others.
It was interesting, because I could never do this. As much as I love the simple life, I also love beautiful clothes, vintage accessories and cute shoes. I love standing in the often palatial halls of a winery tucked into the California hills with a glass in my hand and eclectic company surrounding me, watching the sun set.
If I linger in those halls too long, I begin longing to be back on my hilltop, with my pellet stove, my dirt and my animals again. But its a fact: some of the pleasure of all that refinement comes from the juxtaposition of spending my days getting dusty, sweaty and sore doing manual labor, then jumping into a late afternoon shower, washing off the day, and putting of a fabulous dress and heading out the door when evening comes.
There are some in the homesteading community so dedicated to living the 1800's Life, as a lifestyle, that they would probably call me a poseur, and that opinion would not bother me, even though I don't agree with it. I believe there's room for all kinds of homesteaders, and my homestead may function a bit differently than yours, just as yours will from somebody else's.
Besides, when I read those really hard-core homesteading blogs, I sometimes wonder what's not being revealed in the blog -- like maybe the fact that they keep a stash of Twinkies or Reese's Peanut Butter Cups in the cupboard or occasionally spend a day doing nothing but lounging on the sofa and wasting electricity by watching reality TV shows. You never know.
All I do know is that for as many people as there are, there are at least twice the number of lives that could be lived by each of them. Day life versus night life. Hometown life versus vacation life. Homestead life versus wine country life.
There's room for all of it.
My new Ball Canner arrived today, which means I can begin canning in earnest next week. I already have my large Graniteware canner, but it has a wavy bottom that the makers of my new electric stove say will not safely work on the glass-top burners. So off to Amazon I went to purchase one with a flat bottom, and this is it! Pretty, isn't it? I even have a side burner on our propane stove outside, which means I can do my canning outdoors in summer using either the new or old canner, something I'm very excited about.
As I sift through what homesteading activities mean the most to me, I can definitely state that the canning part of it is here to stay. I love the preserves, tomatoes, and pie fillings I'm able to put up, in season. Anything that comes out of my canner tastes about 100 times better than the replacement item I'd buy in the store. I can be picky about the fruit and vegetables I choose to throw into whatever I'm making, which I can't do if I buy a canned or bottled product that someone has already made.
I occasionally read a blog written by a woman who lives alone and lives the homesteading lifestyle, and she was saying this morning that she stayed up all night keeping the fires in her wood stoves stoked so the temperature inside the farmhouse wouldn't drop below the 40's or 50's. She talked about how thankful she was to not have central heating, because she felt the way she was living was more authentic.
It gave me pause, because I do not agree about this sort of extreme, Colonial Williamsburg kind of "authenticity," and I depart from many hard-line homesteaders on this. If I have central heat, I may not use it as often as my Modern Living neighbors, but I do use it. It's on right now. I will heat my house up to about 70 degrees this morning and then shut it off, crank up our pellet stove and let it keep us warm until this time tomorrow morning, when I will crank up the central heating once again for an hour or so. It's a system that works, it's inexpensive, and it keeps us comfortable.
A lot of people who heat with wood have not even thought of the fact that, if everyone heated with wood alone, there would be no more wood for their woodstoves because the forests would all be cut down by their neighbors, in order to quell their own appetite for heat. Then they'd be reeeeeally cold. So the practicality of practicing an "authentic" lifestyle en masse is even more questionable than the practice of it as an army of one family, here and there.
But I like to can, I like to grow food, and I like to limit my gasoline and electricity consumption, because those are things I find valuable. So I do those things, and I no longer feel guilty about the things I don't do.
Everyone should know what to do to survive in primitive conditions; I certainly believe that. But that doesn't have to mean you live in them now. Maybe it has something to do with being 50, but I have little tolerance for suffering for the sake of suffering or to prove to yourself or a public that you can. And if you're trying to sleep in a freezing house, you're suffering, whether you care to admit it or not.
Perhaps the greatest thing about getting old is knowing you have the right to not participate in something, and feeling perfectly comfortable in not doing whatever it is. Because it's not only in the doing, but also in the not-doing, that contentment and happiness (not to mention comfort) are found.
