Grow the Change: Dark days indeed

23 December 2008

Dark days indeed

These are our shortest days, we get down to about 8 1/2 hours of daylight. I love being on the other side, knowing that the light is returning, and spring will be upon us before we know it. We spend the long evenings talking, planning, dreaming and reading aloud to one another.

Every cold morning we wake to a new ice painting on the kitchen window.

Wishing you all a happy holiday.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...: Ditto, Freija. Keep warm!; December 23, 2008 at 3:59 PM
Anonymous said...: Mery Christmas, my friend!! :); December 24, 2008 at 8:12 AM

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The way we live

Just in case you are curious about the way we live... We produce enough income from a half-acre market garden to live a simple, debt-free lifestyle. We are off-grid and produce our power from an 80 Watt solar panel to run the things we need. We hydro-cool our perishables, and can, dry or cellar our food instead of running a fridge or freezer. We cook and heat water with wood, year-round, which means getting a fire going each morning, even in the heat of our two week long summer, and doing all the cooking and washing before the heat of the day. We ride bicycles to get where we need to go, especially to the Community Internet Access Center, and barter for rides into town for shopping a few times a year. In our Northern garden, Zone 4, we produce and preserve our own vegetables, herbs and most of our grains in a half-acre garden and acre grain field. We keep a small herd of goats, and a small flock of hens, to produce our meat, dairy products and eggs. We live seasonally, our daily life in the spring centers on planting and cultivating, our daily life in summer centers on harvesting and preserving, our daily life in fall centers on preparing for winter, and our daily life in winter centers on reading, learning, writing, philosophizing, planning and crafting. We are always looking for ways to innovate the tools and techniques for growing food on a home-scale. And we are always looking for ways to strengthen the effect of our lifestyle choices by connecting what we do with the larger community.