Life in the Bungalow

Oh my blog, I miss you! I'm so glad to be writing right now!

We've fully transitioned from suburbanites to urban homesteaders of sorts.... and we're loving it so far. If you've been reading my blog for a while, you know that we bought a 1984 travel trailer to live in for a while for many various reasons. Well we're now renting out our 1600sq.ft. house to some friends and living in our travel trailer in our church parking lot. We've named the travel trailer "the Bungalow". And life there is good. So much less space= so much less cleaning= more time for knitting/reading/family time/various projects/time with friends. There have been some challenges, including the air conditioner going out, the gray water tank leaking, a pipe bursting at one point, and no internet (yet), but my brave and ingenuitive husband has fixed all problems that have arisen. I'm getting used to cooking in a smaller kitchen, and actually enjoying it. We only took 4 cups, 4 plates, 4 sets of silverware, 2 bowls and 3 mugs.... so we hardly have any dishes. They can all be dirty at the same time and still fit in the sink! (Amazing for me, who isn't a huge fan of dishes). Honestly I don't even miss my dishwasher. I've been more creative with the crock-pot, for which I am imensely grateful. I do kind of miss the "mud room" entryway in our house where dirty muddy shoes can be left... but we're working out a good shoe system in the Bungalow, so I think I won't even miss that very soon. Our church has quite a few (completely paid-for) buildings which include a large nursery, a school, and a kitchen-- and they've given us keys to all these buildings. When we're feeling a little closterphobic in the bungalow and it's too hot to go outside, we go play in the nursery. We're also able to use the refridgerator in the kitchen (the bungalow fridge doesn't keep the milk cold enough and it spoils before we can pick up more from our co-op). Some of the ladies at the church have even started excercizing every morning in the nursery building which is literally 20 feet from the Bungalow, so I've been joining them and I'm happy about that-- I have no excuse not to be there! We've been spending a LOT of time outdoors. Zeke and Tula (our puppy) really enjoy that, and so do I. A few of my friends have children that attend the church's school, and so they stop by every once in a while to visit when they drop off/pick up their kids for school. Life is fun there! Living on the church grounds is really the PERFECT transition from suburban life to off-grid homesteading, farming life. We're currently living some sort of peculiar half-homesteading, half-normal life. And learning how to live in the bungalow with so much support from our church has made the transition so much easier. I can't even imagine moving straight from my nice big house in Texas to an off-grid travel trailer in rural Kentucky---I'm sure that would have been quite a shock. But the Lord has been gracious to us and has provided this smooth transition, the perfect time for learning and growing and preparing for the next phase of our life.

Speaking of the next phase of life, Daniel applied for a four month internship at Polyface Farms, the Salatin family's amazing sustainable farm. The internship would be starting in June 2010. Daniel made it through the first essay screening and has been invited to come to a two day "tryout" where he will be competing with other applicants for the few prized internship spots. We're hoping of course that he will get the internship! It looks like he will be going for the tryout in January, but we're not certain about that yet. I will let you all know what happens! :)

As we do not yet have internet in the Bungalow, I am writing this at a friend's house (actually at our house, as in the one we own-- our renters are out of town and we are cat-sitting). BUT my darling husband bought me something I've been wanting for a long time-- a flash drive!! So my plan is to write blog posts on our desktop in the bungalow, save the posts & pictures on the flash drive, and then upload my posts whenever we have internet access. That's the plan. I want to be diligent about this because I know in 20 years we will treasure all the memories and crazy stories from this time in our life. I have a really bad memory and if I don't write stuff down I just don't remember it later.

Did I ever mention that Daniel caught the kids who had been vandalizing our farm & garden project at the church?!! He DID!! It's a crazy story!!!! I'll let him tell you sometime. Since he caught them and they received a citation from the police we have had no more problems, which is a huge burden off our backs.

Speaking of the farm & garden project, it is going well. Now that the vandalism is stopped, we can start making progress again instead of just repairing all the damage that was done. We are providing eggs for a few families in the church, and we have a new batch of broilers that will be going out on the field this coming weekend. We're planning a work day to put in some winter gardens (I do love that you can garden all year in TX!), and quite a few families are contributing all their kitchen scraps to the compost pile. There seems to be a giant mountain of work in front of us, but I'm really excited to leave a "mini" sustainable farm on the church grounds for other people to benefit from when we leave.

What else is going on with us?? Zeke is doing great! He's huge, he's handsome, he's smart. I imagine he will be walking soon. He just started waving bye-bye this week! It's too cute.

Well I need to go give Daniel a haircut-- I hope you all have a wonderful Sunday afternoon!