Overwhelmed

So right now I'm slightly....OK, actually more-than-slightly overwhelmed at what we've taken on at the new house. As per usual, there is a lot we've learned since closing escrow that has added to our to-do list and will put a strain on our wallet. There are busted window casings, broken blinds, and garage doors that don't open. Is it ever any other way? Do people ever buy houses without hemorrhaging money for the first six months? 

I'm not even gonna list all the things that need to be done, because it will probably make me cry if I see it all written down in one place, and I don't think you have that long to read it all anyway. But some of it has to happen before we move, and the rest will be done by us (long) after we're in.  I don't even have a date for moving right now, because as I said....some things have to get done first, which means I'm relying on The Guys (collective term for the Flooring Guy, the LockSmith Guy, the Tile Guy, the Windows Guy, the Contractor Guy, and the Garage Door Guy) to start work on the things that are on the Before We Move list.

That's right, I'm expecting contractors to show up and complete work on time. Clearly I have lost my mind already.

But once we're in, I suspect I'll have projects going on for literally years. And since I actually like projects, this may be the most perfect house ever for me. But looking at it from the start is a little like staring up at a skyscraper you are about to climb. Hopefully once you get past the 10th floor it'll get easier. Hopefully.

In the meantime, I'm enjoying our last few weeks in The Vineyard House. The Vineyard House is like good, strong alcohol...incredibly enjoyable until it gives you a headache. I will miss the views, the grand trees in the back, and the quiet -- but not the total isolation or the fact that something died under the house recently and is causing intermittent stinkage. Neither Big Ag or myself feels inclined to crawl into the crawlspace and inspect, and the company does not seem to be inclined either. They already have this place rented out when we move, so I guess the new employee/tenants will have to deal with it.

I also had the fun experience of having a mouse living INSIDE my car recently, which stays in the barn when I'm not driving it. One electronic trap later and I have solved that problem. But living in a working vineyard has its drawbacks, I'm tellin' ya.  Yet I will miss it deeply. How dysfunctional is that?

So in the overwhelming moments, I'm having to just breathe deeply and remain in the present. After all, how does one eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Of course this situation is actually TWO elephants. One elephant is this house (packing and readying to move) and the other is the new house (unpacking, projecting and making it  a livable home). But taking it all in good time all any of us can do when faced with a pages-long to-do list...

Boldly Forward

"The Old Farmhouse" by Reb Frost

I am happy to announce that...tentatively....we've found our house!

We made an offer on a newer farmhouse about 30 minutes north of here last week and found out over the weekend that our offer was accepted! We'd been watching this house for several months, waiting to see if the price would drop, and once it did, we moved in with an offer.

So now there will be the usual round of inspections, which is why we're still tentative at this point. (We may discover that a swarm of Asian stink bugs, or Amelia Earhart and DB Cooper have been inhabiting the attic for years. I doubt it, but one never knows.) But we're extremely optimistic that this is The One.

It's been a long road to get here, and as much as finding the right place took a long time, what also took a long time was finding out how we wanted to be in this "new world" we moved to 10 months ago. Did we want to be suburb-ians with chickens or true country bumpkins? Flatlanders or mountain folk? What cities did we want close proximity to?

There was also an insane sellers' market this last summer, and we decided early on that we were not going to lose our heads in bidding wars or in having to make immediate offers on places we weren't sure about. I am glad we didn't succumb to any of that madness, even if it did make our wait longer.

But I think the biggest mistake we made (in looking at the 20+ houses we saw...20+!) was in thinking we should adapt -- either to a house that wasn't really "us" and needed extensive remodeling,or to an area that made sense geographically but didn't necessarily feel like home. You figure if you move 800 miles, you are going to have to adjust to almost everything, including your home preferences. But if you do go in that direction, you will feel a keen sense of loss over what part of your personal dream (the things you already believe about what "home" should be) you are giving up. It might be enough closet space, that extra half-bathroom, or the view out your window. 

But if I could give any advice, I'd say honor those things, however irrational they seem to others. Or you will not be happy.

What we ended up with was something astonishingly familiar to both of us. It is a 1990's build (we have never owned a home older than that) that has a lot of flat, usable land, about 2 acres, with plenty of room for chickens, clotheslines, livestock, fruit trees and vegetable growing. It has a shop for Big Ag. It has air conditioning. But it's also reasonably close to city amenities. 

Oh sure, we spent time dreaming and trying on the idea of living in Victorian fixer-uppers, mid-century ranchers, and quirky old farmhouses with various additions tacked on over the years. But it turned out, what we really needed was a relatively plain-vanilla, modern home with no quirks and no surprises. Sure, we don't get any hidden closets, old wood-burning fireplaces, solid wood interior doors or built-in bookcases. But we did get something that felt like home. To us, anyway.

In short, our mistake was in trying to be too flexible, and force the square pegs that we are into round holes. Do that and it will never fit. All you'll end up with is bruised edges and disappointment. Especially at our age, when we've had a lifetime of living in, frankly, a certain kind of home. It's adjustment enough to move to a new state and settle in. Unless you're young enough to experiment with living in different kinds of houses, you might want to stay with something that feels familiar.

And so it's with a huge amount of excitement that we (hopefully) move on to this next phase of the journey, which is getting ready to move again, but to a place we can't wait to get to. 

One thing that occurred to me is that it will be great to get back to blogging about all things homesteading, that's for sure, as well as writing from a place that feels like home. And home is clearly where we want to be. 

Plus, plenty of time to plant some vegetables in spring! Hallelujah to that!

The changing of the light

There is nothing better than the feeling of returning indoors after a productive day of working outside. This morning I managed to dig up two good-sized blueberry bushes from the pasture that have been struggling down there for three years. I dragged them topside into our backyard and re-planted them in pots, adding them to some nice acidic potting mix which I hope they will love. 

As soon as I pulled them out of the ground I saw what the problem was -- heavy, wet clay soil -- exactly the opposite of what they need. Poor blueberries. I'm amazed they did as well as they did, but they won't have to work so hard anymore. Now that I've learned you can grow blueberries in containers, I'm going to control their environment and give them the nice cushy life they deserve. I just hope they repay me with abundant fruit. They'd better.

And the irony of dragging something out of the pasture to put into a pot was not lost on me. It's ironic in the sense that you can own a couple of acres and still need to do some container gardening after all. It's not just for apartment balconies. Learning to grow things in containers is a skill I'm convinced all gardeners and homesteaders should have in their toolbox. 

I also dragged my citrus plants outside for some fresh air and sunshine, since the temperatures are going to be in the 70s all week. Everyone should be playing outdoors in that kind of weather, including lemons and limes.

Anyway, after a good day's work, at about 4 p.m. I came back inside to find the "changing of the light" happening; it's that time of day when everything takes on a golden hue and you feel yourself satisfied with a day's work done. It's a time for settling in as the light becomes warm and soft and you instinctively feel yourself winding down in preparation for night, like a dove into the nest at day's end.

It's far too often I fail to realize the perfection of these moments. If only I could grab them, every single day, and realize they are enough. There is nothing more to want. There is nothing more to crave, purchase, achieve or discuss. The moment is enough. Or should be.

Dinner consisted of an asparagus, mushroom and black olive frittata (thank you, hens) and some homemade biscuits, along with a very big, dark beer called a Velvet Merlin, produced locally. And then there were store-bought blueberries with some homemade creme anglaise topping them for dessert. Yum.

Days like this I realize I am blessed beyond all imagining, and that the blessing does not change -- only my perception of it does. 

Reunion

I am 4th from the left, last row back.

So this last weekend I went down to Los Angeles for a reunion of the cast of "American Bandstand," which was a television show I was a regular dancer on from about 1977 - 1979, when I was a teen/young adult. For me, those were the height of my "city" years. We clubbed until dawn, grabbed expresso at all-night coffeehouses, taped the show, and somehow dragged ourselves off to work and college when we weren't doing that....crawling through traffic, living in crappy apartments, eating and drinking in dive bistros and chic eateries and, generally, living life in the fast lane (within which there was usually a traffic jam, so not so fast, really). 

It's familiar...

So how does someone born and raised in the city, well-versed in city life and activities, end up working a homestead in a rural part of the state? That answer was simple: I became who I was supposed to be. Anyone who lives a fundamentally different lifestyle than the one they grew up with knows exactly what I'm talking about. 

Sometimes you just get mailed to the wrong address at birth. It happens.

Yet for those who are raised in those "foreign" environments, we can often learn to be a pretty good mimic where the outside world is concerned. Just like any place you live long enough, you learn the lingo and adopt activities that allow you to fit in. In short, you become the guy in Rome who did as the Romans did. He blended in, in order to survive.

But at some point, your deeper nature will surface, as it did with me at about age 28. I say deeper nature because deep down, I have always belonged in nature or out in the country much more than on on some nightclub floor or 4 a.m. coffeehouse. As a really small child I vividly remember driving out of Los Angeles, over the Grapevine (Interstate 5) into the rolling farmlands of the Central Valley to visit relatives, and feeling like I was coming home. Which, it turns out, was exactly what I was doing -- just 20 years too early. 

but this is Home.

Yet, thankfully, there is no time limit on coming home and no reason why the first place you live should be "home" for you if you don't really feel at home there. Home is where your soul comes to rest. You might find it at birth or age 70, but the later age does not invalidate the fact that its true. Every soul has a compass that points true north (or south, east or west in reality), and until you heed the pull and go to where it's telling you, you will always feel a little out of place, deep down inside you. You may look like the rest of them, but you're not really one of them, and you know it.

And yet, by being born in a land foreign to your soul, you do learn to be a citizen of two worlds. So when I went down to Los Angeles for my reunion weekend, on the outside I fit right in. I like that, and hope I can always do that. To be a citizen of two places surely cannot be anything but a privilege.  But to know which one is home is the true gift. And for me, to head back, out of the city and to a place where I can see the Milky Way at night and there's no hum of the freeway off in the distance is both a tremendous comfort and something that makes me realize how lucky I was to seek -- and to finally find -- Home. 

Rainy Day Book: At Home, by Bill Bryson

After almost giving up this book during the first 50 pages, because the reading mainly consisted of wordy descriptions of the prehistoric dwellings of Skara Brae and the Crystal Palace of the 1800's, I persevered and am now really enjoying this chronicle of all things Home.

Basically, the book is a room-by-room history of how each room in our modern homes developed, along with lots of interesting factoids about life, diet and personal habits of people from the Middle Ages through the Industrial Revolution. 

I have learned that the word "cabinet" was originally a diminutive form of "cabin," as in "cabin-ette."  Once a piece of furniture to store valuables, it eventually referred to a place in larger houses and estates where the most private of private meetings were held. Eventually, the term actually began to refer to the people themselves in those meetings, which is why our high-ranking government members today are called the President's "cabinet."  

Here's another interesting fact:  In the Middle Ages, bread was primarily baked by professional bakers in villages, rather than in the home.  Around the 1500's, the bakers were accused of adding all sorts of ingredients to bread in order to stretch their genuine (and therefore more expensive) ingredients like flour.  The false ingredients were things like chalk powder, sawdust and bone-ashes.  Once this was reported and discovered, bread-making was more tightly regulated, with weights and ingredients being measured out carefully and records kept.  Since evaporation made loaves turn lighter, however, nervous bakers began adding an extra loaf to orders -- the "baker's dozen" -- so that if the loaves were light the extra one would make up for any loss and the regulators would suspect no attempt at foul play.

And one more:  The word "boudoir" literally means, "room for sulking."  So much for romantic intrigue.

Anyway, those are just two of the fascinating things I've learned from the book so far.  Since it's raining cats and dogs and the wind is howling right now, I am contenting myself with reading and making a winery friend's birthday cake for later today. So Bill Bryson, it's you and me today....at home.