On the market

 There are two options for our hypothetical acreage dream.

1) An acreage we can get for around 100,000 that's very dated or needs a lot of work, but livable. That way we'd eliminate our mortgage debt and be able to send that cash toward fixing it up. This is probably the husband's favorite option.

2) An acreage we can get for more our current house price (or slightly more if Matthew's income goes up with a job change) that needs very little done to it and is instantly livable. With all the correct number of bedrooms and bathrooms.

Our realtor sent us one today that was over 280,000. A little 5 acre one out by a town that's basically a suburb of our larger town-city-thing. It looks like a tree-covered patch in a quilt that is basically a field.

I'd be interested to see it, but I'm guessing it wouldn't work. First off, it has three bedrooms. We need at least four, 1 - me and the husband, 2 - the two older girls, 3 - the baby, 4 - Aunt Joy the Senior. She's the husband's sister, and Joy-the-baby inherited her middle name. I can't have the baby in with the older girls, or in my room. Aunt Joy Sr needs her own room. Also, the place has one 3/4 bath and one 1/2 bath. So basically, one shower.

No.

Aunt Joy Sr really needs her own 3/4 bath.

And Grace freaks out in the shower. Some sort of sensory thing?

Also, it's much easier to bathe three girls in one tub than to do individual showers, or a plastic tub in a shower, or whatever. Our old house didn't have a tub and we made do, but mass washing children is both more efficient in both water and mess localization, and more entertaining for the kids themselves. Bathing one child in a plastic tub or showering with them was ok. Three? That takes a veritable assembly line.

So something would have to be done right away. And at that price? I would guess we don't have much money to throw at renovation.

But still. I'd like to look. Even if we have to move out of our town-city.

Cluck Old Hen

This is just a public service announcement.

For background, I have a fiddle. I've taken some lessons from a guy who does learn-by-ear Americana. One of the first songs he showed me was "Cluck Old Hen." I was listening to some versions on YouTube by like Alison Krauss and I found one by the "Whiskey Sivers."

DON'T WATCH IT.

I'm traumatized. I felt like I needed to shower afterward.

Now, let me say I think the song is catchy (although I have no idea what it's about) and I actually kind of like it. It added country-style words on the base of the Cluck Old Hen tune.

But the video is dark and twisted and has like four dark twists along the way to make it worse. If you have a bizarre dark twisted sense of humor, maybe you'd like it, but I hated it. If you choose to ignore me, don't say I didn't warn you.

That is all.

Is my ideal a homesteader? Hippie? Farm girl? Crunchy mama?

 Update on the strawberries: still no sign.

I'm probably overthinking this, but I'm pondering identity. Some people, me included, love labels. I'm an ISTP, a Type 5 Wing 4, a Gryffindor. So is my quest for homesteading or an acreage related to some misguided identity crisis? City kid is gone, townie ain't working for me, so now I want to be a country girl?

I said to someone I wanted an amber necklace, like the type Joy (9mo) has for teething. I hear it has health benefits, like calming anxiety, relieving joint pain, etc. No problems I have. I just think they look cool. And like natural. Having an amber necklace makes you look like your a health hippie or something.

I talked to an adult with an amber necklace. I was asking, "what's your style on minimalist toys? Waldorf? Montessori?"

She's like, "I don't have a style. Me. It's just me."

I like labels. When you know the definitions, makes conversations easier to have. What is easier, "I like all music," or "I like American folk, Irish folk, and rock"? "I'm eating healthier" or "I'm eating pop-paleo with dairy"? "I'm in a relationship with Jesus" or "I'm a Southern Baptist." The first statement is true, but has no details. Maybe if you're on your first date and have already exhausted all your other ice breaker conversations, you can have a long drawn-out explanation, but if you're having a five minute conversation in church, it leaves me knowing nothing and with no way to know more. I can Google a label if I don't know it. Try Googling "eating healthy."

Ok, that was a tangent. What I'm asking is, am I doing a lot of this because I believe in it, or because I want to be seen as the associated label? Would I make my own soap because I actually have issues with "toxins" in "regular soap" or because I want to be a cool DIY homesteady-person?

Actually, on the soap thing, I'm hoping buying bulk castile soap lets me whip up shampoo, body wash, and hand soap for less and without having to run to the store. There's definitely a penny-pinching component somewhere. Like I'm sure if I just figured out the right store for the right product or whatever trick, I could save dollars. Not on the hand soap, that stuff is like 69 cents a bottle. But I could make foaming hand soap and put it in super cute rustic mason jars.

Do I believe in all organic cotton? Free range eggs? Grass fed beef? Filtering my already-filtered town water? Avoiding sugar? Having my kids avoid sugar? Wearing amber? Blue-light filtering glasses? Walking barefoot for "grounding"? Making my own granola?

I don't know. I'd seem like such a health person if I did it. If I didn't do it, how much would it actually hurt me?

I don't know, maybe I'll never be a Country Mouse. 

Strawberries: Maybe it'll work this time...

 I bought two whole packages of strawberry plants last year from Sam's Club, and I dedicated a whole garden box to them. I wasn't thinking very ambitiously, not of jams and fruit at every meal and pie. I never expected any produce would get in the back door. I may have had dreamy visions of happy children helping me plant them and later harvesting what they produced with shining eyes and a sense of wonder...

Not a one came up. Did I wait too long to plant? Was it a bad year? Should I have covered the box with plastic? Was Sam's Club a dud product?

I don't have answers. I'm hoping it's not a Sam's Club thing, because that's where I bought my two new packages of strawberry plants this year. It's just the most economical.

Honestly, when people recommend gardening to reduce grocery costs, I don't see how it adds up.

I shoveled compost into the box to supplement the "Mel's Mix" dirt. In turning it over I reassured myself that absolutely nothing grew last year.

So today I soaked plants, froze my fingers, and planted a bunch more. It's a square foot garden, so I did the recommended four per square. There were some indications that some of the plants were at least alive when I started. I let Rose (4) plant some too. I'm a bit worried about those, but clearly me doing it myself last year didn't guarantee success, so what's the harm?

Even so, I'm not optimistic. How to people grow plants?

Other probably doomed gardening is also in the works.

I don't know what I'm doing

 You know that story? In one iteration, the City Mouse visits the Country Mouse, and insists Country Mouse visits her. Country Mouse is overwhelmed, and is only happy once she runs back home. Another iteration by Jan Brett has the mice switching places, both being overwhelmed by their new locations and running back home. I think it's an Aesop's Fable, along with being a very old story.

Let's just say I'm a city mouse. Born in a city. Raised in a bigger city. Then a bigger city. And then somehow ended up in a college town in the midwest, which people say is a city, but I have my doubts. It's a cute little college town. Smallest place I've ever lived. I've often said that it's the smallest town I'd ever want to live in.

Until a couple things happened.

1) I had kids. And my fenced in backyard starts to seem pretty small when you're running all around it.

2) I saw an acreage and my mind hearkened back to reading Little House on the Prairie and Cassie and the like. And I suddenly wanted that for my kids.

3) Covid-19 wherein all my city comforts got shut down and everyone in the city seems to stare at each other with suspicion.

4) My city's response to Covid-19, making things a little unwelcoming.

And all of a sudden, I wanted out.

On another angle of my mental frontier, I started to become attracted to less waste, less cost, DIY sort of thing. I did Whole30 and bemoaned the extra cost in groceries, wishing I could maybe garden more to offset some fresh veggies. I played computer games growing up and wanted a simpler life for my kids, one largely outdoors with very little screen time. After having toys scattered around my house, I also wanted maybe a simpler toy selection.

I want adventure in the great wide somewhere... I want it more than I can say...

Anyhow.

I'm still in town. But we may end up moving at some point for a job, or even if the job stays here, we could be looking for a little acreage. And then this town mouse might become a country mouse. Or I suppose find out that maybe she needs to run home as fast as she can.

In the meantime, before my dream acreage materializes (if it ever does), I have things to learn. Things to make. And a black thumb.

So here's the chronicles of a town mouse trying to become a country one.