Back in the land of milk and honey

Welcome back to this blog and happy spring!

     Mike and I have had a very busy and full winter working out east, squirreling away resources for this final season building our house in Missouri. And now, after one long and harrowing journey back west with our modern-day covered wagon (Subaru station wagon with attached U-Haul trailer), we are once again in the land of milk and honey, NE Missouri.

     The other day as I was greeting some neighbors here, an industrious swarm of bees looping around their hive caught my eye and it suddenly occurred to me what a perfect description "the land of milk and honey" is for this place because it is quite literally abounding in milk and honey of all sorts. Our neighbor's cow just gave birth to a lovely calf, Mayapple, and her udder is so full of milk that her teets won't stop dripping, even spraying milk! We are being gifted everyone's farm abundance left and right: jars of cow and goat milk, last year's extra sorghum honey, jams and jellies, last year's sweet potatoes and cans of tomatoes, and of course, legions of fresh eggs as nobody seems to be able to keep up with their chicken's bumper spring production. Since we have no food production of our own yet, I feel extra grateful to be the recipient of the overflow. Our only abundance to share at the moment are wild spring greens, which Mike forages and whips up into tasty dishes like, "wood nettles sauteed with wild ramps pesto".

Baby chicks getting their daily dose of adoration from the neighborhood kids

Wild greens salad

Setting up camp.... again!

     On top of all the beautiful and miraculous signs of life unfolding once again around us, we have been enjoying sweet reunions with many friends, with our stray cats who survived the winter, and with our home, still standing and in very nearly the same condition we left it in! In fact, our unfinished house is where we first moved back into when we arrived two weeks ago, as our arrival coincided with a weekend of rain and storms. We put our mattress on some of last year's left over straw bales and set-up a make-shift table and chairs for dining. Our first few nights back were spent dry, safe, and unwoken by the clashes of thunder and lightening and howling wind as is the usual in our tent. Funny how something I have taken for granted my entire life--shelter--now feels like such a miraculous blessing to have. What a difference from camping in the elements! Still, we decided to move back out into our old tent platform for one more summer after we made a few improvements to it, since living inside the house we hope to be soon working in would definitely slow us down.

     In all seriousness, the beginning of this year feels different. Our goals are shifting as one major project will be coming to an end and our focus is expanding to other parts of Giving Tree Homestead. Am I getting ahead of myself? Probably. Would it be prudent to put all of our energy into finishing the house alone? Yes, definitely. But instead we are throwing a few more balls into the air at the same time-- starting a large vegetable garden, ordering dozens of sapling fruit and nut trees, planting and stocking our pond, adding a new driveway to the house, perhaps starting work on our outdoor summer kitchen, and even thinking about getting some poultry, pigs, and bees going on our land! (Okay, I said thinking...) Although it is a lot, I think we can accomplish all this AND be moved in to a mostly finished house by the time it gets cold this year, with a wing and a prayer! Having my aunt Jane visit briefly this past week, I was reminded of her first visit here where she and my parents spent several days helping us fill foundation holes with gravel (see blog post #1), and it really hit me how far we've come.

Our friend Sarah singing opera music at a campfire get-together.
 Her future house in the background is almost complete!

     As we embark on our homesteading projects this year, I am cognizant that for the first time we are finally fully living here, year round. To anyone who has ever lived a split life, with half of one's possessions, friends and livelihood in two separate places, it feels really good to unify those halves into a whole life, somewhere. And that somewhere is HERE, in this magical world where red tail hawks shoot by like rockets soaring into the sky, where we are woken by the gobble of wild turkeys nearby, where turtles and tadpoles swim in our pond, and coyotes yip in our woods, and our neighbor's children can tell us where every new songbird nest is hidden in the trees and grasses near their house. It is truly an amazing world we live in, and for the moment I am blessed to have eyes that still see it. Pretty soon as construction gets under way, I may just be seeing my to-do list as I look around, but for now, spring is abounding!

My favorite spring neighbors have returned-- tree frogs!