Me? A homesteader?

Every so often, I pick up another book from the library, or I add another blog to my "To Stalk" list, where the main subject is Backyard Homesteading. Living from scratch. Self sufficiency. Hobby farming. I love those subjects. I love to imagine that I could actually be like those people.

As I'm reading through yet another book - Made From Scratch, by Jenna Woginrich - it kind of occurred to me... maybe I already am like those people. Maybe I really am a modern-day homesteader.

I had no idea how many people there were out there that are like me until recently. But now I keep running across blogs, all of these people going back to their roots, trying to undo modern progress and start living from scratch again. And it's making me kind of giddy, thinking that there are enough people doing this that it's become "cool". Maybe I'm not really crazy.

Yes, it's hard work. Our society has become inordinately lazy, depending on Central American slave labor and excessive use of fossil fuels for our food, Chinese slave labor for our clothing, electronic, mind-numbing entertainment, and hormone-injected meat for our tables. Why? Because it's easy.

A year or so ago, I remember lamenting to my husband how unfulfilled, unsatisfied I felt with my life. I'm pretty sure there were tears involved in that talk. Yes, I'm raising two beautiful girls. Yes, I'm a homemaker and that's what I've always wanted. But there was something missing.

This minor obsession that I have with providing for our family has filled my life with purpose. It may not really matter, in the long run and in the whole scheme of things, whether or not we're living authentically when the rest of the world keeps on the same path they're on. But it fills my heart with satisfaction to live this way. I realize this isn't the life for everyone. But it's undeniably the life I was meant to live.

So I'll spend my days canning jars of tomato sauce and picking peas and butchering elk, sewing dresses and knitting warm hats, and teaching my little girls how to read right here in our living room, because it's a darn fulfilling life. I wouldn't trade it for all the easy the world has to offer.