Modern Homesteading Means Being Prepared

Our raised beds in July 2010

Welcome to New Friend Fridays! If you are coming here from the New Friend Fridays for the first time you might want to know something about me and this blog first. I started writing this blog back in 2005 to tell others about the option of the "modern homesteading" life. It is something that I sort of evolved into over the years. My husband, Larry and I were living in St. Petersburg, FL and were working at the Home Shopping Network. It was a very fast paced job. I worked as a telephone rep taking orders over the telephone and computer. He worked upstairs in the telecommunications area running the telephone system. It was like four telephone companies in one. If it went down you had to work very fast to get it back up. Very stressful job!

Then we had our three grown kids, who were in their late teens and early twenties at the time come down there. To say they brought much stress with each of them is to say the least! So we were ready for a change. We started reading Backwoods Home Magazine, Countryside Magazine and Mother Earth News. They changed our ideas of life. We wanted out of the rat race and the stressful way of life we had been leading. Eventually, we found our homestead and that was eleven years ago. Most of the time it has been quiet, peaceful and almost stress free.

You can never get away from your problems and life upsets. That is part of life. God has given us choices in our lives. We make them and pay the consequences. Then we blame God when life is hard or not easy or sad. We cannot blame God for our family and friends' choices. They choose to smoke, eat a bad diet, drive fast, swim in a toxic river, take drugs, etc.. Then when they get a disease from that behavior, we cannot blame God for not answering our prayers to save them. They made that choice themselves. Many times those same people had no part of God in their lives. If you want God in your life, you have to invite him in! He is just waiting for you to do that.

I love growing my own vegetables. My garden is plentiful this year and it makes me feel contented. I am also doing my best to work on our house. I need my kitchen remodeling job finished and our pantry back into service. I am using it but for now it is unorganized. I have everything in plastic containers to protect from another mouse invasion. My husband has torn the walls and ceiling down and is going to insulate and then line it with tin so that nothing can get in. The floor too. Then we will have two pocket doors for each door, one to the kitchen and one to the root cellar. Once we get that completed and put the shelving in, I can restock it and set it up to be easy to manage.

When I am harvesting my garden I am usually canning part of the harvest. Almost daily once the green and yellow beans start coming. I also buy local fruits and vegetables and can them too. Right now though, it has been so unusually hot for us here in NY, that I am not doing any of that till it passes. "Modern Homesteading" is about being prepared no matter what happens in your life. It is depending on yourself as much as possible.

Copyright © 2010  Kathleen G. Lupole