Having committed to a year of isolation on our ever-evolving little homestead, I suppose we could say we're now farm-schooling. For me, it's also an act of rebellion and a way of working toward societal change.
Rhiannon cutting up roof rafters to make garden beds.
Soon after our family went into isolation at home, my daughter started keeping track of how much money our veggie garden was saving us. She'd pay attention to the foraged or homegrown foods we ate over the course of a day or two, then research the advertised cost of an equivalent food product from Superstore's online catalogue, and add that to her tally. After two months of keeping records, our savings total $160. We've also spent $1700 on seeds, garden supplies, chicks, chicken feed and supplies, and chicken coop building (VISA thanks us, I'm sure). It doesn't seem like it's financially worthwhile, but we're looking at the long game, here.
What we didn't expect when we started this isolation was how long it would last, nor the quickly-rising cost and unavailability of grocery store foods. Over the past few months, my daughter's research has showed us that many food items have doubled in price more than once, and food transport and supply has become threatened due to COVID-19 restrictions and fears. If there's a bigger wave of the pandemic in September, as is predicted, then that's right at harvest time, which doesn't bode well at all for our food security. Neither does it promise a return to school or community life. In addition, both my partner and I have had to take pay-cuts, either due to the economy's stumbling, or to our need to self-isolate (my daughter and I both suffer inflammatory conditions that make this virus dangerous to us). It seems evident that we're into both a longer isolation than we had originally imagined, as well as the necessity of living on less income. What do to about that?! Farm, of course!!
Taliesin building porch planters from reclaimed rafters.
We're lucky to have about a quarter acre of land at our disposal; it's not prime farming land, but it's land nevertheless, and some of it is quite good. We're planning to make the best of it. Given the uncertainty around school and social commitments, our kids have already committed to stay home from school and college for at least a year, learning online, and through farming. It's not only about food security, but also this corona-driven push towards farming is helping us realize our dreams of living locally and supporting our own community instead of just running with our noses to the grindstone, hoping to make enough money to buy whatever we can by the cheapest means. That life was no fun. By living locally we mean to do better.
Planters on the hot porch mean peppers and melons!
I've been thinking with blissful idealism about what this change means for my kids' education; their futures. And I'm OK with idealism. There has to be a certain amount of idealism to give us hope in a brighter future, and even to work towards that future at all. Our idealism is not blind nor is it ignorant. We know a quarter acre can't feed our family of four; we know our farming skills are nascent. But we have idealism and determination and a little bit of apocalyptic fear on our side, and that's got to count for something, right? Most of all we're just feeling inspired. Luckily both kids (now 15 and 18) see the potential benefit in learning to farm and provide for themselves, so we're really in this together. My
daughter explains, "when I was younger and didn't go to
school, I couldn't really do a lot of the [garden] work or
decision-making, and then when I was older I did go to school so I was
tired and didn't have time to do it. So now is the first time I can be
involved, while understanding at a deeper level."
Microscopic view of the mites that came with our chicks' hay!
You probably want the details. And I'm happy to oblige! We've started a chicken flock (and if my daughter has her way we'll be adding some pygmy goats for milking). We've expanded our vegetable garden to encompass most of the free space in our yard, and working with the little bit of knowledge we've gathered from growing a few veggies here for the past 19 years, we
hope to at least supply our own veggies, as well as quite a few
potatoes and a little chicken meat and eggs. In addition to this we're
buying grain and lentils from local (well... in-province) sellers, and I just put a deposit on 25lbs of local hormone-free, grass-raised beef which we'll pick up in December. I hope also
to get a bit of local lamb, if we can.
In addition to farming, my kids have learned to cook all sorts of
things that never occurred to them before, using our new staples of rice, potatoes, lentils, and current garden veggies. When the cauliflower was ready we ate it nearly every day for weeks; then the kale was ready; now lettuce and herbs.
We've boycotted Amazon and are discovering ways of supplying our needs
through local farms and craftspeople - mostly we're learning to make do
with far less than we used to, and discovering that we are not wanting. We're learning to mend our clothing and
entertain ourselves in the yard instead of in the city. I am even learning to offer most of the services I
previously charged money for, for free, and finding that I now feel more rewarded for the work I do. This is a time of
amazing empowerment.
Two of our Jersey Giant chicks - pullets, we hope, though we aren't sure yet.
At
a time when disaster after disaster after disaster is upon our species,
so many of us are rising up to make the changes we've needed to make
for centuries or more. Coronavirus, environmental and social devastation
brought by our unending exploitation of land and people; the burning,
flooding, and storming of our capitalism-driven climate change... all of
these things are pushing us to change. People are rising in the streets
against racism, tyranny, and so much injustice. Those who can't risk exposure to the coronavirus are finding different ways to protest and to work through everyday actions to turn our backs on industrial and systemic brutality. People are stepping up to see those in need in their own
communities and offering help wherever possible. We are finally finding
the courage to cut ties with the industrial food complex and eat
locally - sustainably. We are keeping our kids home from school, even as the schools begin reopening, realizing that school wasn't serving us well
enough, and that family restructure is possible. We are discovering that the walls we built to
keep us safe - the walls of capitalism, industrialism, and colonialism -
are only protecting the richest of the rich, and not the rest of us. We are tearing down the walls.
Here we are doing some practice goat-feeding at my brother's house. He and his partner have recently purchased a horse and two goats to live beside their growing vegetable garden, eat weeds and fertilize the land. But mostly for love.
This morning I received an email from our hydro-electric provider, advising me of two things: I’m failing to meet my energy-use-reduction challenge by twenty-nine percent (frown-emoji!) and I can earn fifty points on my challenge by sending them a photo of a fan in use in my home (the premise being that it’s replacing the use of an air conditioner, so, saving power). I assume this email was intended to gently prod me into energy-saving action, but it did the opposite.
First I was just incredulous – then a little pissed off. We’ve been on a ten-year journey of rebuilding our home to increase insulation, efficiency, etc. We dry almost all our laundry outside or above the wood stove, and generally use far fewer appliances than the average urban household. We don’t even own an air-conditioner, and right now, when the outside temperature rarely rises above room-temperature, we rarely even need to open a window for cooling. In the deepest heat of late summer we’ll start using a fan. Who are these people, suggesting I should use a fan instead of my air conditioner? They’re not people who know me – that’s for sure. I’m just a number to them. This email made me feel unseen, misunderstood, and totally unappreciated. Instead of sending them a photo of a fan to earn some ridiculous “points” for my “challenge”, I sent them an email advising them on some better ways of engaging their customers.
People need to be seen. You know how most good preschool and kindergarten classes begin with sharing circle? This enables kids to feel seen, connected, and valued at the beginning of their day together. My daughter’s progressive senior high school groups have a daily check-in, which accomplishes the same thing. It allows the group to connect before delving into other activities, so that every member feels seen, and is more able to engage genuinely with the group. Forbes tells us that “Employees who feel their voice is heard are 4.6 times more likely to feel empowered to perform their best work.”
But obviously, this feeling of being seen has to continue beyond just the daily check-in. We need to feel that the groups and activities we engage in are well-suited to us; that we’re valued, and that we’re seen as individuals. Our education system is failing us in this.
We have made learning a desperate act. Our kids have to succeed or fail. They must remember all the elements in the top three rows of the periodic table by Thursday or they won’t pass the test. And if they don’t pass the test, they may not pass the year, and if they don’t pass the year, they’ll have to repeat science next year, or they won’t get into the program they want, or they will simply make their parents angry. Adrenaline will help them to learn. Maybe the fear of failure will make our kids remember the order of those elements; maybe they write them out a hundred times or use a song to memorize them; maybe they list them mentally before every meal, before bed and upon waking. They learn to list the elements, along with their atomic numbers and symbols. And next year they learn them all again, on the same desperate quest to pass the year. And when these kids are forty years old and their kids are listing these elements yet again, they can’t remember them anymore, or maybe worse, the recollection of learning these facts fills them with frustration or rage. Because it was a useless skill in their lives, but they feel inadequate because they’ve lost it.
That big frown-emoji on the email I received from our hydro-electric company reminds me of the disappointment of my teacher when I received similarly disappointing percentages on my tests in school. But did my shame then or now prod me on towards success? No. It made me feel worthless. It made me stop trying. This is what shame does to people. Maybe in some way we can use it to spurn us on, but not really to success – just to a menial good-enough pass or preferably to escape, as many students are waiting to do from the school system.
Does it really have to be this way? Of course not. Those of us practicing respectful, non-coercive parenting and teaching, self-directed learning and unschooling know very well the importance of building confidence and self-worth in our children. We know that when our children are respected for their own individual truth they will be motivated to succeed, and that that success will look different for every one of them. It’s not our job to mold them into a pre-designed vision of success; it’s our job to look at them with open hearts and discover how each of them defines “success” for themselves.
My son taught himself all the elements when he was seven. You know why? Because he was excited about burning stuff! He was excited about setting fire to my scouring pads since he had learned from a YouTube video that they could burn. Then he wondered what else could burn, and how, and why. And we bought him a book by Theodore Gray that explained about the elements in terms of Mr Gray’s explorative play and crazy dangerous experiments, and our son studied it until he knew it all. Because it was fun. Nobody in this house cared whether he knew the names of elements, but he was so curious about what could burn, and then what was in the things all around him, and what was in space, and what happened when he mixed these many things together, that by the time he finally took a grade 11 chemistry class in college, it was all too easy for him. It was boring. Except the chemical equations. He had to learn those, and he did so in an act of desperation because he needed that chemistry credit to attend university. Now he’s questioning his desire to study sciences because, for him, the process of discovery has been stripped from science by our education system. We can learn in all kinds of ways, but some learning delights us, and some devours us.
Recently some of my friends reminisced on Facebook about our grade 8 sewing class, where we were instructed to make a pair of cotton shorts. They were hideous shorts without pockets or style or anything interesting at all other than whatever print we’d chosen for ourselves when our mothers took us shopping for that special piece of shorts-making fabric. Most kids never wore the shorts; many of us had forgotten the class. But I loved it. Because I refused to make the shorts, knowing I’d never wear them (and also afraid of that complicated-looking crotch construction), and I insisted on making a skirt with a lizard-print fabric. So the teacher allowed me to self-direct my project, using a different pattern and making a skirt. And out of my scraps I made a matching skirt for my doll, which I still have today. I remember that class and the extra hours I voluntarily put in much more than whatever we made in cooking class, and also more than the academic classes from that year, which I’ve completely forgotten, but not nearly as much as the wonderful assortment of little judges’ wigs I made for some of my dolls during my grade five math class. I stole yarn and masking tape from the art supplies trolley and stored them in my desk. During math class I reached into my desk and carefully folded masking tape into the shape of my dolls’ heads that my hands knew without the aid of my eyes. Then I cut thin strips of tape, coiled the yarn around them, and affixed them to the little bald-caps I’d made in neat rows, changing direction of the rows as they progressed across the caps so that they hung down at the back, just like old fashioned judges’ wigs. My teacher was furious. My mother thought it was hilarious. The only three things I remember from that classroom are the art trolley, the judges’ wigs, and the assortment of different reward-stickers that I rarely achieved, but learned to steal from behind the teacher’s desk.
You know why I remember these things? Creativity. Problem solving. If, instead of providing us with a shorts-pattern and allowing us to choose our own fabric, the sewing class provided us with an exciting assortment of materials, varying patterns, and free time, things would be very different. Some kids would sit around doing what appeared to be nothing. Some might make clothing, or stuffies or dolls. Some might twist the fabric into ropes and hang like monkeys from the rafters. Can you make a strong enough rope? Can you twist or braid until it holds and doesn’t tear? Can you open up the rope and use it as aerial silks? What kind of fabric will work best? Kids in a class like this will not all learn the same thing. They won’t fit neatly into a system for grading. But they will learn, and they will remember. Those who “do nothing” may in fact be learning social skills, or observation skills. Maybe they’re just processing whatever happened at home that morning. And I guarantee you, it is just as useful to learn to make stuffies, rope or social skills as it is to learn to make shorts. Each of these things involves beneficial lessons; each of them challenges the learner to solve problems and each of them provides opportunity for discovery. And if the teacher makes a point of engaging and appreciating the individualism of each student in their unique activity, each student will be seen. And far more students will have positive, memorable experiences from that class.
Of course not every student is going to learn the same thing. In the shorts class, some of us remember the teacher; some remember the fit of the shorts; some remember shopping for the fabric. The grading rubrics may have been equal, but the lessons were not. Life is like that.
I read George Monbiot’s article about homeschooling his kids through project-based learning, “placing ecology and Earth systems at the heart of learning, just as they are at the heart of life.” And I wish I knew him so I could reach out and say “YES! Yes it works, George! I’ve done this with my children, by just keeping them home and letting them explore the world, and now they understand so many ecologies!” Now they’re thriving in the time of isolation because they’ve already learned how to entertain themselves in creative, explorative ways. They’re thriving and living life.
Ecology is life; we are ecology. Ecology is the interrelationship of everything, and looking at life and parenting and school and learning as just a part of the earth’s great ecology is exactly how we see and recognize each other for our individual gifts and values. And it doesn’t have to happen only at home. This kind of learning can happen at school, too. A group of individual children is an ecology in itself, and it’s deeply rooted in the rest of the world those children relate to. School doesn’t have to be a failure. It doesn’t have to feel like a prison for our children. School can be a vibrant place for meeting up with friends who are exploring, too. School can be an open supported environment of discovery and delight. School can be a place where kids (and adults) come to get creative; to access a bunch of exciting resources and materials and make, do and explore whatever they feel like, until they go home at the end of the day all tired out from laughing and playing and learning. And will they learn to read, with nobody prodding them along with threats of failure? Yes they will! Because actually reading is fun and interesting, though they may not all learn at the same time, or for the same reasons. They will learn to read and to calculate and to care about all kinds of histories and sciences because they will have an intrinsic desire to experiment and discover.
It will be like herding cats. And that will have to be OK with us. Because humans were not built to fall into neat rows and repeat the same words their forefathers repeated in lines of desks with pencils scratching. Humans were not built at all. We are not machines. We are alive, and we are evolving. We are running around like inquisitive, curious cats, sniffing each other and poking each other, and playing with all the mice and the catnip and the strings and cardboard boxes. We are discovering and playing with all that interests us and learning from it and growing and advancing our understanding of how everything works. That is science. And when we have opportunity, we do it of our own free will, because it’s fun.
But how do we get there? We change. We change the way we’re relating to our children, so that being respected and seen is natural to them; so that when they grow up to become teachers and parents, they’ll naturally respect and see the next generation for each individual’s value, and a cycle of true individual engagement and prosperity will have begun.
So I emailed the people at that hydro-electric company. You know what I said to them? I told them that instead of sending their customers challenges, expecting us to submit proof-of-achievement photos to either succeed or fail, they should encourage us to share our own unique energy-saving innovations. Because people are innovative, and we like to share. We like to be seen. And when we feel seen, respected, and valued, we will be successful.
It’s time for us to do the very rewarding work of opening our eyes and seeing each other. We need to see our children, our partners, our friends and co-workers, employees, and just the guy standing ahead of us in the socially-distanced grocery store lineup as individuals who are interesting and valued. It’s time to see ourselves and our activities as unique and essential parts of the great ecology. That is how we succeed as a species.
Walking with my husband the other day in the pre-rain quiet, he told me that if somebody ever wanted to trap me, they could bait the trap with nuts and bolts. He's probably not wrong about that.
The first thing I ever remember stealing was a cookie from the strawberry jar in my step-mother's kitchen. It was a feat because, as my sister taught me, she used that giant ceramic cookie jar so she'd hear us when we stole a cookie. The precious can of nuts and bolts that Grandma had given us was right beside the strawberry jar, and that is the second thing we stole. We took it under my big sister's bed in the middle of the night (because obviously if somebody heard us crunching from under there they'd never find us, right??)... and we crunched up those nuts and bolts. Every piece was wonderful.
My Grandma with my dad, before my aunt was born.
Grandma's nuts and bolts are so renowned that even my brother and friends back on the island where I lived with my Mum and Pappa can remember the flavour of them. At least once a year I'd return from visiting my father, step mother, and sisters with a gift from Grandma: always in a green MJB coffee can, with a piece of wax paper under the plastic lid. The green can and the feeling of lifting off the wax paper was like the
take-along version of Grandma's love, and the contents were
something extra special: A small stash of the dream collection of spiced and toasted cereals, nuts and pretzels that nobody anywhere could make even remotely as good as my Grandma could.
And that was by design. There were rumours about her recipe; my Mum said she was sure it came from a local newspaper back in the 60's. But that's as close as we came to knowing Grandma's secret. A few times over the years, Grandma clapped her hands and told me delightedly about her neighbour's husband who always came to visit her for some nuts and bolts. Her eyes sparkled as she described how her neighbour came begging for the recipe so she could make them for her husband, and Grandma obliged, giving her friend the recipe... but without the key ingredient. The husband kept coming to my Grandma, because yes - Grandma's nuts and bolts are the only good nuts and bolts. There's just something about them that defies explanation, and you just. can't. stop. eating. Even when it means dangerously stealing them from beside the noisy cookie jar to eat under the bed.
Grandma in the 2009, still telling her stories!
It took me thirty years to find the recipe. When I was in my early twenties, Grandma called me with urgency in her voice, asking whether I was going to the US anytime soon. She said she was in dire need of "Old Hickory Smoked Salt", and although she refused to tell me what she needed it for, I had a pretty good idea. I never did go shopping in the US, and never bought her that salt, but I've also never forgotten the clue she gave me that day. I thought maybe Grandma would bequeath her secret recipe to her daughter and all of us granddaughters when she got old, but a series of strokes took her communication away from us before that could happen, if it ever might have at all. The last time she spoke to me about nuts and bolts it was only to tell me again the story of her neighbour's husband and the secret ingredient she never gave away. Grandma died with the nuts and bolts recipe still shrouded.
Let me just tell you a little something about my Grandma, because there's no point sharing her recipe without sharing a bit of her personality. She was the daughter of Ukrainian immigrants, and talked about her mother hiding in the trees as her village was overtaken in war. She liked to eat perogy at the Saskatchewan Pavillion restaurant or the Ukrainian Village. She had ESP and had rather involved conversations with birds. Her house was a virtual shrine to the sixties, and included my father and aunt's nearly-in-tact bedrooms and rec room from that time. Her fingernails were also a relic of the sixties, but her conversation was extravagant. She was a bold teller of stories. She never stopped. She even went and
kissed the Blarney Stone, on a trip with my Irish Grandfather - a feat that involves being dangled over the edge of a castle by strapping young men just to kiss the same piece of rock that thousands of babbling lips before have touched. She told that story often. So I can't tell you for sure how many of her
stories were rooted more in fact or fiction, but they were sure amazing.
She would tell you about anything she felt like, and nothing she didn't. Every time I asked about how to make nuts and bolts, I got some kind of story, but never the recipe.
So this year, two years after Grandma died, my aunt showed me something amazing. It was an old yellowed newspaper clipping in a plastic baggie, with the still-discernible recipe for nuts and bolts -- the original clipping from the December 7th 1961 issue of the Vancouver Sun newspaper. Page 64. Then she invited me to dig through my Grandma's ancient spice jars. I mean they're older than I am. And so stale you can't tell for sure that they contain what the labels say they do. Some definitely don't! All of the labels are Spice Islands, and you can't even buy those around here anymore. Who knows what Grandma filled them with.
So I bought some fresh spices and followed the old recipe to make a batch of nuts and bolts. I had to make some adjustments and guesses, because there are SO many types of "seasoning salt", and SO many types of "smoke flavoured salt". And also my family is gluten-free, so I had to adjust for that as well. From my Grandma's spice-seeking phone call, I knew the salt had to be hickory smoked, but that wasn't anywhere to be found, so I substituted the pepper for hickory smoked pepper that I found at Queensdale Market in North Vancouver, and the smoked salt for sea salt.
Bah. It just wasn't right. It was like all the other nuts and bolts in the world: disappointing. So I looked at the spice jars again.
Grandma Gallaher's newspaper clipping.
Oh Aunt Liz I can't tell you how informative those stale old spices
were. And the one that says it's old hickory smoked salt but clearly
contains some kind of flavour-deprived, petrified garlic or onion? Ew.
But SO informative!! Because those old jars have no ingredient listings, so I had to go researching. And that's when I found something curious: The ingredients in Spice Islands Old Hickory Smoked Salt are salt, cocoa, smoke flavouring, propylene glycol, and silicon dioxide. WHAT?! COCOA?! I knew right away we didn't need those last two ingredients, but something in my gut told me to throw a bunch of cocoa on my inferior batch of nuts and bolts. So I did. And it worked!! Grandma's secret ingredient was cocoa. And did she even know? I'm not sure. It was part and parcel of the smoked salt she always used, but I'm telling you right now: As soon as I added a couple of heaping spoonfuls of cocoa to my already-baked nuts and bolts, they were right. The kind of right only the initiated would recognize. So I brought my brother over and gave him some to sample. He approved. It's not just my imagination.
Here's my slightly-more specific version of Grandma's nuts and bolts recipe. You might adjust to your preference, but don't omit the cocoa.
Hermila, Amo, Mischa, Bree - this is for you. Make the nuts and bolts. You deserve them. We all deserve to make a hundred cans full and eat them whenever we like until our hearts are full of all the goodness. Which apparently equals cocoa. Enjoy. And thank you, Aunt Liz.
Love, Emily
Grandma Gallaher's Nuts and Bolts
box of gluten-free Rice Chex
box of gluten-free
cereal O’s
bag of gluten-free
stick pretzels
bunch of
peanuts
bunch of
pecans (more than peanuts!)
1 cup butter,
melted
1tsp smoked
paprika
1tsp dried and crushed summer savory
2tbsp dried
marjoram
1 tbsp
hickory smoked pepper
½ tsp
powdered garlic
½ tsp
powdered onion
1big tbsp sea
salt
2 tbsp
cocoa powder
Toss all together
and bake at 250F until perfectly crunchy and slightly brown.
You can add Shreddies if you're not having to be gluten-free. :-)
Maybe use a spatula to turn them over a couple of times.
As a follow-up to my previous post about starting our chicken-farming adventure, I thought I'd introduce you to some of our chicks. These are just those that we are getting to know best at this point. Only a handful of the 30 it turns out we have. We aren't naming any of them until we know which ones we're keeping, but for now... meet some of our babies!
Little fluffy-face! Such a funny little one this is. A white Ameraucana.
This one is HUGE. Stands nearly an inch taller than the rest of the chicks, and spends its time calmly supervising and getting between squabbling younger chicks. We're calling it the caretaker for now. We think it's an Australorp but it might be a Jersey Giant.
The LOUD one!!! This little Lavender Orpington stands up and shouts. A LOT. And it's ear-splitting.
This little one is one of the quietest. We're not sure but it might be a Swedish Flower Hen. Just stands around observing a lot.
And here she is, one of our adorable pair of Cream Legbar pullets. She's very small and quiet, and also extremely timid. We know we're keeping her for sure, but we don't have a name for her yet.
Well, we've been planning this for years, and finally jumped in and did it. Our first time raising our own chickens! So exciting!!! And if you want to follow our progress, we're going to document it every Friday on our YouTube series.
Meanwhile, would you like to meet our chicks? We have 29 chicks from Greendale Heritage Farm in Chilliwack and Wild Acres Farm in Armstrong. A mix of the following breeds of unsexed chicks, and we hope to end up with about 10 good laying hens and a rooster:
chocolate orpington
lavender orpington
jersey giant (black and blue)
swedish flower hen
crested legbar
australorp
ameraucana
I designed a coop that met our needs for number of birds, and Markus built it using partially reclaimed materials. It's hopefully vermin-proof and easy to clean/maintain. I described it in the video.
We know there will be some heartbreaking times ahead, but right now we're in the honeymoon phase... a closet-brooder full of adorable little downy fluff-balls and hearts full of dreams. Enjoy.
This is going to be a vulnerable post. Telling you what's happening now means telling you what happened before this, and that part was horrible. I lost my husband. Not his life - thank goodness - but I lost his heart to the point where we haven't been wearing our wedding rings for most of ten years, now.
Let me tell you our story. Nearly twenty-five years ago now I met Markus. We were introduced by our friend Chloe, because she said we were so similarly strange. Actually she coerced me to go meet him; I tried to refuse. But off we went to the bus station in Vancouver, where the bus from Victoria pulled in, and I sat complaining about the stupidity of a blind date, while watching the passengers get off the bus. One of them meekly stepped off towards the luggage, his head turned away from where we were sitting, and his long blonde hair tumbling over the brown leather jacket on his shoulders. I wanted to meet him before I saw his face. I wanted to meet him before I knew he was Markus. He walked over and shyly shook my hand, eyes lowered behind blonde lashes. It wasn't until a minute later that he braved a glance at my face; I saw his gentle green-blue-hazel eyes, and fell in love forever.
I knew in that first moment that he would be my friend for the rest of my life. Over the next few years we adventured together; we traveled and explored, and talked about everything interesting and zany in the world. We found we agreed about everything - even burning candles on our Christmas tree and how to decorate our home! Our Chloe was right: we were perfectly matched for each other in our apparent weirdness, and completely relieved to have each other to share such a fascinating world with. Everything was comfortable, and most things were easy.
After 4 years together, we got married. It was an amazing wedding, and although the idea had been mine, our families made the event so wonderful that it seemed to be a community event. It was a true bringing-together of our beautiful tribes. Then we left the city and moved to this house - the house I grew up in on this beautiful island I love. And Markus loved it too. He began telecommuting two days a week, and commuted to the city on the other three. And less than a year later we conceived our first child.
Our kids' early years were idyllic. There were times Markus couldn't telecommute, but mostly he managed to make it home in time to eat dinner with his children, and any distance that might have grown between us all during the week was mended on the weekend. We had such a rich and wonderful life, full of music sessions and parties, family adventures and fun. I loved being a stay-at-home mother, attachment-parenting my kids, and for the first time in my life I had lots of friends, and felt supported in a life I was creating for myself. We eventually decided to unschool our kids and discovered we agreed about even that! We thought we were doing really well for ourselves.
Then slowly there came the creeping feeling that something was wrong.
By our tenth wedding anniversary something was very wrong. I realized it had been years since we'd had a good conversation. I realized Markus had begun disappearing, both physically and mentally, on a regular basis. He would take the 4:30 ferry home, and instead of walking straight to his waiting family, arriving by about 5:30, he'd arrive at 6 or 7. Often I worried something terrible had befallen him, until I became used to it. He was usually just walking on the docks. When he was home he was usually drinking. Beer and whiskey in the evenings; coffee you could stand on all day. On weekends he'd sleep in until 10 and wake with such a raging headache that he was incapacitated all weekend.
I begged him to quit all the addictions, and he did. He's a good and loving husband, and wanted to do well by his children. We quit drinking together, and it seemed so easy (not to mention a huge financial advantage!) But we couldn't connect anymore. When we did talk he was often bitter; unhappy with who I was and unsatisfied with life. He was uninterested in our home and family, despite going through the motions of participation.
Don't bother trying to diagnose. I tried that. And when I realized his memory was disappearing, we involved the doctors. Sometimes he forgot important life events; sometimes he forgot what happened two minutes earlier. Constantly, he just couldn't. get. moving. He drove off the ferry at about one quarter the speed of the other cars, and it took him at least a minute to get up to speed. He took so long to answer the phone that it often went to the answering machine. He couldn't make sense of simple household tasks, even though he was simultaneously working full time as a software developer, raising two kids, and miraculously rebuilding our home on a relative shoestring and partially reclaimed materials. Despite being one of the cleverest, most interesting people I knew, his brain seemed awash with confusion. He said he lived in his "empty box". I noted that our problems began soon after we moved to this island, and asked him many times if he'd like to move back to Victoria; if maybe being nearer his parents would help, or in the city he had lived in before me. He had no interest. In anything. At my behest, he asked the doctor about his symptoms, underwent various tests including a CT scan. No cause of this misery was found.
For over ten years now, if I ask him what he thinks or feels, his answer is "I don't know". We've fought many times because this is so unbelievable to me. I've accused him of not caring; of being lazy with our relationship. But it has persisted. He says he loves me but he's just not there. The kids tease him about smiling because it happens so infrequently that it seems weird to see on his face. I wish I had been more gentle with him.
Then came this pandemic. He was reluctant to work from home, because for nearly two decades, now, from the day we moved to this island, he's been getting up at 5:30am at least three days a week and trekking into town. It's his routine. It's one of the few things that's normal to him. He has always said the lack of sleep doesn't bother him, and the morning walk to the ferry is nice. He goes to work like a zombie and wakes up by the time he's there in the city at 7:45. Also, how would he connect with his coworkers by virtual meetings? He feels connection at work is important (ironically, I thought, since we don't have much at home).
But he had to stay home, so he did. And the miracle happened. We didn't get covid; we just self-isolated. And eventually he even received a pay-cut from work. These aren't supposed to be miracle-inducing events. But here we are, one month into this isolation, and I have my husband back. He wakes up every day around seven or eight, and commutes one minute to work in the office of our home. Then he makes me breakfast and brings it to me in bed. I make him lunch and we sit on the porch and look out at the world together. Sometimes we walk down the hill to get the mail and we look at all that changes along the trail, on the way. We talk about everything. For the first time in twenty years, I can say he's my best friend again. I feel supported by his love, again. He has ideas. He has opinions. And he smiles.
And now we know: It wasn't addiction or lack of love, or depression or even illness that took my husband away from me. Those were all symptoms of lack of sleep. We know that sleep deprivation causes many terrible symptoms, including most of those experienced by Markus over the past couple of decades. He now sleeps eight to ten hours a night, and his symptoms are gone. But just in case this wasn't enough to convince me we'd found the root of the problem, we ended up going back to the mainland a few days ago. We woke up at 6:40 and drove in for a day of shopping - our first masked and gloved isolation shop. He drove off the ferry at the same speed as all the other traffic, and was helpful and thoughtful about our shopping! It was wonderful to feel in connection again - living life together for the first time in so many years! But he hadn't slept well the night before, and by the time we returned home in the late afternoon, he was exhausted. He walked around like a zombie. He couldn't understand what our evening plans with the children were, and my heart broke a little to see him so weak. It took him two days to return to the old normal. Two days to get my husband back again from one night of bad sleep.
Never again. Sure, we'll go to town again, and there will be sleepless nights. But this rift in our marriage - this long, slow tumbling off the cliff of mental wellness and family connection - this can't happen again. The life we were living - that so many of us have been living for so long - this can't go on. We can't do it. Our supposed future security isn't worth the loss of our present life, as we trudge along the conveyor belt of our society's life-plan. No way. By whatever means necessary, we're going to have to stop this conveyor belt, and build a new and better normal that affords us the fulfillment of a simple basic need: sleep. As much as food and shelter, we need sleep, and somehow our whole culture needs to build that into our expectations. We can do this! The pandemic situation is giving us impetus to develop new ways of working and socializing, and as an added bonus, we're already getting more sleep. I love this train that we're on. Let's keep it going.
*Note* I never write about other people's struggles without their permission. Markus has read and approves of this sharing of his story. We both hope it brings some clarity to a world where most of us have been pushing ourselves too hard, and maybe we can use this isolation time as a new beginning.
Well hello there! Since we're documenting our family's recent theme nights, here's mine.
Welcome to Old Sour Ma's Singin' Saloon!
Hi. I'm Ma! Anybody comin' off a train at the station outside my establishment is welcome here. Just introduce yourself at the door. I get most of what I need for the saloon out of Billy's out back. He's never there, but there's a good supply of useful things, there, and nobody ever complained. Except my potato liquor. I make that in my own still just down below the outhouse. Free with dinner. And dinner's also free. Likewise supper. And pie.
The place where you find yourself: in a land unknown and a time untold. Ma's.
This is Annie - she wouldn't give her last name, nor much else about herself, and we feared she was Annie Oakley until she let slip that she didn't have a gun. Got all kinds of fanciness about her, including that she's been to Canada! She went up there herself and just picked wheat after wheat after wheat up there before she come home! She says she lives "down the railroad track" but won't tell us where that is. She also has a lot of cash, which she says just "has ways of finding her". Mysterious lady.
Anybody walkin' in the door to Ma's gets dinner on the house. There's only one dinner. You get what gets put on your plate. Beef and biscuits, most of the time. Beef I found hangin' in Billy's giant larder right behind that big old jug of rye I steal borrow from. Pie after supper. I get the apples from a tree in Billy's yard.
Anybody willin' to play for us gets a bottle of store-bought root beer. This gentleman come in callin' hisself a lightnin' rod saleman, though he didn't appear to have any lighnin' rods on him. Said his name was Clark Withers, and he turned out to be quite the entertainer. So busy with playin' piano he didn't drink his store-bought until later while we were playin' poker.
This guy was a little bit worrisome. Said his name was Fred Likely, but we thought that was Unlikely. Also said he was a cat rustler, and I had to rescue my cats from him on more than one occasion. During the poker playin' we figured out where that Annie gets her load of cash. Now she has all of ours, too. Whether by bettin' or stealin' ... she's got it all.
When that Clark wasn't playin' for us we listened to a lot of music on the jukebox under the bar. A lady named Kitty Wells happened off the train here one evening and left us a heap of music records in return for dinner. Best paying customer I ever had. It was a good time, and Fred turned out to be a likely dancing partner for old Ma.
Yesterday was Earth Day, which we ignored for most of the day, since we were busy with a bunch of important things, among them my partner Markus' work where he makes software for various land-based companies. Some of them are supposedly environmental companies; some are resource extraction companies, and one even has plans to log our home. But never mind. It's a good solid job and gives him employment and financial security in a time where there's not much security to go around. The bosses even took huge pay-cuts to keep from having to lay off employees like Markus. And besides. We live in a wooden house with glass windows, appliances and a car, and we need those resource extraction companies to supply the raw materials for these things.
So last night at the end of Earth Day, Markus and I snuggled up in our cozy foam bed and down quilt, with a cup of imported fair-trade hot chocolate with instant factory milk, set our nifty black laptop on our knees, and watched the movie about humanity's demise. Planet of the Humans. Well Happy Earth Day to us. We're wrecking the place. Thanks, Jeff Gibbs and Michael Moore, for bursting our hot chocolate bubble.
This film has received a good chunk of criticism, mostly (that I've seen) for being biased, and for using some of the fossil fuel industry's tactics to demean green energy and economy. But some of the points they bring up are truths we actually need to face. Like that switching over to electric cars (which I covet endlessly despite this film) will still require far more resources than the earth has to spare. And more importantly, we need to face the fact that our consumption is simply not sustainable. Green tech is not going to save us; we have to make some sacrifices, and yes - we're capable.
What we already knew:
The problem isn't
fossil fuels as much as it is overpopulation and over-consumption.
If we curbed the rate of human consumption, we could make a better go of long-term survival for our species. Like Markus' bumper sticker says: Save the Humans. We all know we'd be OK without tourism, commuting and global travel-for-work, imported foods, large homes, or all-the-stuff. The kind of consumption our species has become accustomed to is not necessary.
We want to do better by our planet and our future, but we're
competing in a world where everybody is waiting for everybody else to
change, and none of us is willing or able to make the first big jump to a
new way of living.
We're competing. Did I mention that? School is a competition, financial markets are a competition, getting ahead in business and life is a competition, the rat-race is a competition. Hell, half the time even friendship turns out to be a competition. So in some deep-seeded way, our minds know that being the first person to jump off the train means losing the competition -- losing at life. It means our kids won't keep up with their friends; it means our kids will cry about being left out of Disneyland and Hawaii and Broadway musicals; our kids will badger us about why their friends have better computer systems and better cars and better, bigger houses, and why-can't-we?! It means the guy we sit beside at work has a better house or works out harder or just gets paid more. Being the first person to jump off the consumerism train means I will lose, and nobody wants to be that guy.
What we learned from this movie:
No, technology can't actually save us. There is no "green" technology. There is only green consumption... which means less consumption.
Most of the "green" or "ethical" products we buy or use are in fact not green at all. Most rely on fossil fuels - including solar power, wind power, and every. single. company. that claims to run only off of green energy. Hmph.
Electric cars, solar panels, and other green tech are just shiny destructive sink-holes for our hard-, rat-race-earned money. Second only to replacing rotten bits of our home, getting an electric vehicle has been our main goal. We realize now that driving a heap of metal and plastic around using electricity isn't going to save the world. We have to stop traveling. Period.
We've been deluded, and we don't want to be that guy.
What coronavirus isolation is teaching us:
Isolation has taught us that we are happier with less!!
Markus isn't traveling to work every day, and for the first time in about twenty years, he has energy for more than just work. He's building a chicken coop in his spare time. We have interesting and engaging conversations. Our relationship is renewing itself and we're discovering that we're still in love with each other's minds. I can't ever see us letting this go again, no matter how frightening it feels to be that family who stays in isolation when the world goes back to "normal".
Our kids are happy! Don't get me wrong - they're not at all happy about the chasm between them and their friends right now, but the lack of travel to and from town, along with the lack of pressure to do all kinds of activities means that for the first time in years they're well-rested and healthy. Their relationship with each other and with us has improved, as well. We're all finding ways to live authentically as a family and enjoy each other's company, when before we barely had time to sleep between outside engagements. We all are watching the need for all those outside engagements fall away, and discovering that most of what we needed was right here.
Hugs are more important than we realized. I really miss hugging the people I love. If we didn't live in such a globalized community, we could live in small isolated groups and hug each other more.
We don't need as much stuff/food/money as we thought we did. The first thing we did in this pandemic time is realize that our income was going to drop, and make adjustments. We quit buying more than the essentials. That hot chocolate we had last night? Yeah. The cocoa is finite, now, and suddenly we're all very very careful about consuming it. We have a hunk of cheese in the freezer that I keep offering to get out, and the kids decide they'd rather save it for very special occasions. We're doing just fine on (mostly) rice, lentils, oats, and veggies from our garden.
Growing our own food!! Like so many people out there it seems, we now have more time to commit to our food-growing, and it's very, very satisfying. Currently we're eating cauliflower, kale, and weeds from the garden, and next week we'll get a clutch of chicks to start our new flock of egg and meat birds. Around that time we should also get our first asparagus harvest.
I know we're very privileged to be able to say all this - not everybody is having a good or easy time of isolation. We have some land to use (not ours, but a very secure rental from my parents), and Markus' secure job, and the skills we've developed over the years to provide for ourselves without some of the usual conveniences. Additionally, unschooling gave us the confidence to see that change is possible. We can at least lean out the windows of the consumerism train and feel the wind on our faces, so all this change is less of a shock than it might have been.
What we can't change (yet):
Land ownership. We can't afford to buy land, and we're going to have to make do without it. We acknowledge that moving to a much more isolated location would potentially give us the ability to own land, but that would mean leaving our family behind, and we don't want to do that. Additionally, land ownership can only happen if we borrow money from the industrial complex that we're hoping to put an end to. So that, too, is not an ethical choice. You might say that renting is still living on the same system, and it's true, but right now we have to accept it, because we don't know of an alternative.
Working for the complex. The transition to a more self-sufficient life can't happen instantly, so Markus plans to keep working, and hopefully keep earning enough to pay our rent and buy the things we need.
Fossil fuels. We can't yet source everything we need locally, although one day we hope we'll be able to. The more people are living a sustainable local life, the more we can trade within our community and provide for each other, but for now we're still going to need our vehicle to drive out to the valley and buy some farming supplies, grains that we can't grow ourselves, and other such things. Maybe once in a while a piece of local(ish) cheese or a new pair of farm boots, too.
Our kids' decisions. These are kids who have spent time at climate protests. There's no way they don't care about their future. But it's not our place to make decisions for them, and if they choose to keep going to town, the choice will be theirs. Their independence and freedom to choose will enable them to make sound decisions. As parents, we can lead by example better than by force. And besides, who knows -- with their open, creative minds and youthful courage, they might end up teaching us quite a bit! In many ways they already have.
Not being able to make all of the changes doesn't mean there's no point in starting. The more of us get on the bandwagon and live in supportive community, the easier the bigger changes will become.
What we can change now:
We can dream. I envision a day when we grow a field of oats. The oats will feed us (and to some extent, our chickens), and the hay from them will be bedding for the chickens, and then will become a fertilizer-rich additive to our vegetable garden (soil-building!) The chickens will give us eggs and meat and fertilizer for the garden. The garden will give us innumerable different foods: starches, greens, fruits and proteins. I see a cycle of life all around our beautiful home, with all household-members contributing because we're finally home often enough to do so.
We can make our dreams come true. Markus and I have made a massive
commitment to carry on consuming less -- a LOT less. The pandemic
isolation has shown us that we are capable of living a better, happier
life while consuming a fraction of what we did before, and we plan to
spend the next year working towards being mostly self-sufficient. By this time next year we'd like to have gotten through a winter on largely our own produce, and be well on our way to getting our energy-consumption (currently wood and electric) under control. Yep - we put a short timeline on our dreams, because otherwise it might be too easy to be waylayed by the rat-race.
And no more traveling. We're going to have to find our adventure locally. Entertainment-wise, that's not hard to do. I just walk out and look at the world around me, and I am endlessly entertained. Most devastatingly, though, no traveling means we might never see some of our European relatives again, and while that feels truly horrible, we are going to have to find other ways to connect. Globalism has to stop if we're going to have a livable globe.
We can share our dreams and struggles and successes, and I hope you will, too! Judging by the people who, over the years, have told me that this blog helped them make changes in their parenting or lifestyles, I think writing here may be the best thing I've done with my life. Sharing our story has apparently given confidence to others. Imagine if each of us took a bold step to make a change, and shared our story? It could spread like wildfire. It could spread like coronavirus. No, we don't all know what we're doing, but neither did I when I started this crazy unschooling journey. A while ago I asked Markus if he thought I'd changed in the time he knew me. He said that in the beginning I just tried stuff and wanted to know stuff. Now I know stuff, and I share what I know... and I keep learning. I think it was the biggest compliment of my life! If we can give each other the courage to jump, we'll be there to help each other figure out the details along the way.
We can love. I woke up this morning imagining that I was sitting back-to-back with my brother on my porch, just leaning into the love of him. Without sharing our moist speaking, we shared our breath, through the rhythm of our lungs, and the feeling of our bodies, together. I had "phone tea" with a few friends over the last while. I visited a couple of people from a long distance and I longed to hug them. I'm picking up some chicks for my heart's sister and am going to drop them off at her door, hug her from afar with my heart, and then we're going to go on the adventure of raising chickens together, as we keep each other up way too late on messenger, sharing our lives and laughing so much we wake our children. Love is not gone. We can always love.
Watch Planet of the Humans, and don't let it bring you down. Let it light a fire under you! Humanity can change! Please join me in figuring out a future that is sparing on consumption while abundant with life, love, and hope.
Young lady Rhiannon hosted a party for us all. She instructed us to arrive attired in isolation-Victorian clothing, so we did our best. The afternoon began with tea and dainty little sandwiches in the sunshine...
...followed by some shooting of the bows.
Our photographer was among the quickest shots of the Victorian era.
We, the delighted party of revelers were also quick shots.
...some of us a little more determined than others...
Back at the manor there was parlour music to be enjoyed...
While the maid (she looked like Rhiannon but was NOT), served the first of an elegant meal: onion soup.
The soup was followed by a lovely appetizer of garden peas and buttered thyme, then a plate of citrus-baked salmon (imported from far away Canada!), and roast potatoes. Afterwards our tastebuds were delighted with a shaved citrus ice.
After dinner, the elders sat by the fire for a game of chess, where Emily ably dominated Markus until he achieved a checkmate, and won. Then: Ah! The dancing! Many waltzes were played, and the happy revelers took a small waltzing lesson from lady Rhiannon, and danced for a bit, before retiring for a traditional Victorian game of Goose.
Finally some chapters were read from Little Susy's Six Birthdays, a simply lovely little book that once belonged to lady Rhiannon's twice-great-grandmother, when she was a girl.
Linking you here to the Outdoor Exploration video series - exploring the home, local and suburban wilderness to see how we can get inspired during the season of isolation.
There are six videos at the moment, with topics ranging from edible weeds to where we dump our garbage to veggie gardening. Another video will be added every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. If you want to follow you can subscribe to the YouTube Channel and you'll receive notification of each new video.
Last night I sat beside my usually bright, positive, creative, and self-assured daughter as she cried over the loss of everything. And she wouldn't even let me hug her. A month ago she had her life neatly sorted out: On weekends she studied, worked, gardened, and created. On Thursdays and Fridays she attended a musical theatre program, on Tuesdays and Wednesdays she attended a self-directed highschool program, and on Mondays she worked a babysitting job in the morning, and then spent the afternoon with other youth, planning an annual theatre festival which would have happened this spring, if the pandemic hadn't swept it away. Coronavirus and the necessary social isolation swept everything away: her social time, her school, her source of income, even her ability to plan for her future. We haven't lost any family members to the disease yet, but our friends have, and we know it may just be a matter of time. We're all on edge, waiting to see what happens. Coronavirus isolation isn't just a time of boredom; it's a time of uncertainty and anxiety, bordering on abject fear, and loss of identity.
Imagine going for a snack, only to discover that the chips are gone and your parents don't plan to go shopping for... weeks! It's not that hard to imagine, right? We're all living the lack of convenience right now. And while that's a pretty mild inconvenience, such events are happening all day every day, in every aspect of our lives. Everything is different and uncertain. We're all living the loss of control of each day. We can reassure ourselves by remembering the things we can control: when we eat and sleep, how we interact or what we wear. Difficult though it might be, we can even imagine the future to some degree, assuming that in a few months things will go back to normal and we've seen normal before, and we know what it might look like. Our kids may find that future harder to imagine. Their parents, friends, and school are everything, and suddenly everything has changed. What's coming next? What can they even do to influence the future? They don't have control over their lives in the way that we do of ours. All they had was the security of knowing what was coming each week and each month, and that security has been taken away. They used to have the security of the predictability of a schedule. Now all plans are on hold. School, employment and entire industries are fizzling before their eyes. Some are losing family members to this pandemic, and all are losing contact with family members and friends. We can't reassure them that school will happen again next year, because we don't know. We can't reassure them that they'll be able to visit friends soon, because we don't know that either. We thought that time spent in nature could bandage the wound, but now the parks are closing. Many of us parents can't even promise that we'll be able to provide shelter or food in a few months because the pandemic puts our livelihoods into question. Of course, there are plenty of families who live with this uncertainty all the time, and it's only our middle-class privilege that makes this such a new source of anxiety for many of us. That doesn't make it any less frightening for our children.
Our children are suffering huge losses: Loss of independence, loss of freedom, loss of security of home, education and social network, loss of certainty about the future and often also loss of hope for the future. Loss of something to look forward to; loss of their dreams. We have systems in place in our homes, hearts, and communities for
helping each other deal with loss. But right now everyone - including
our children - is suffering multiple losses, and both the physical systems and
our physiological systems are overwhelmed. This enormous loss can easily be a wormhole into depression for people of any age. At the very least it's hugely anxiety-provoking. It's terrifying to live without security or hope. We can't take away our children's fear, but perhaps in seeing and
acknowledging it we can at least help them not to feel so alone.
I wish I had answers, but I don't even know what new concoction I'm going to make with all the dried lentils and chickpeas I bought, never mind how we're going to overcome these crippling feelings of loss and fear. I'm taking each part of each day at a time, relying on the satisfaction of creative problem-solving to distract me and keep my mind active. It turns out that for me, however annoying, having a rapidly-decreasing supply of ingredients and a LOT of lentils and chickpeas is a problem to be solved with creativity, so every afternoon I get creative with that. We're obviously doing all the curries and hummus and breads, but also blended sauces, lentil sprouts (fresh greens - YES!), and (fingers crossed) planting some lentils to grow our own! Creativity and problem-solving is my way of working through anxiety. It may not be everybody's.
Advice was the last thing my daughter wanted, last night, but she said that having some structure to her days might help, although she doesn't feel she can handle too many demands or deadlines right now. She decided she'd make herself a schedule each morning. We both went to bed still feeling the big sadness of this pandemic, but with the knowledge that we love each other, and we're in it together. Then she got up this morning and folded a heap of laundry, bringing mine to me in my bed before I even got up, myself. She tells me she made a schedule and put a half hour for laundry onto it, because she needed to do her laundry. Mine was still unfolded so she folded it. I had a roommate once who cleaned the house fastidiously every time she fought with her boyfriend. Maybe housekeeping is my daughter's way of working through anxiety, or maybe just having a schedule was the ticket, and laundry was a necessary job. It isn't for me to determine. Only to listen when she's willing to talk, open my arms for the unpredictable times that my affection is a poultice, and to accept her feelings and the cold truth of her pain when it presents itself. In this moment and maybe always, that's what love looks like.
