One Step Closer

We're moving in the right direction. I am close to meeting the stipulations that the lender wants to see before we get our prequalification letter for the mortgage. We very excited! We have our eye on 7 acres with a nice spacious house and already fenced with a barn. So we'll see if it is on the market when we're ready. If not, there are plenty of others!

Most of my plants have doubled in size since the last pictures and are doing very well. The banana's seem to have some problems with the heat, but I'm learning that if I keep a contain of water near it keeps their leaves from curling in the hot days here in Tennessee.

The tomatoes are massive! Even though I got a late start on them, they are blooming a week a little earlier than I expected so we should have black plum tomatoes and Heinz sauce tomatoes very soon! We've already decided that our excess, aside from what we're giving to neighbors that want some, that we'll donate to a local church that does canning.

Its been very beautiful here over the past month, much better than the drought we went though in the previous few years. Steady rain and good amounts of warm, clear days has been a blessing this year. We're hoping our luck holds for the next few seasons so that we can get ourselves established in our new place.

We've been trying to decide where to start. So many projects! Aside from obvious starts such as compost and rain catchment systems, we're also trying to decide what critters we want to start off with next spring. Bees definitely come to mind. We don't want to go too fast with it, wanting to work one project at a time so that we don't end up with one disaster after another. We have tentatively decided that we will do bees first, then chickens, quail, rabbits and then the fish and shrimp. After those we'll work on cattle and whatever else we decide we want. I'm thinking its going to be easy to start the birds together, considering that their needs are similar (not the same!) and incubation can be done at the same time and while we're waiting for them to hatch, it gives us time to build housing for them. I'm not terribly keen on raising hogs, we're not pork people. Some sausage, bacon and the occasional roast and we're good, so we're thinking to trade.

Animals, gardening, solar and wind power, geothermal heating and cooling. The list is nearly endless, but we seem to be moving in the right direction to start living sustainably. The more reading we do, the more we realize that this is what we really want to do.

It is impressive how this movement is gaining momentum, not just in the US but in all the world. More and more people are beginning to realize that this is what we should be doing. Living more simply and producing more on our own instead of depending on a system that was doomed to fail eventually is the norm. Its in the news, more and more companies are going green. More and more people are demanding cleaner ways to live, healthier food to eat and easier ways to produce energy that are not harmful to the world. With more and more of us working towards these goals, the cheaper these things become. Eventually, it will be the norm, but with all change, this transition from mass production to self sufficiency will take time and effort.