Just like in the city, out here the work never stops.  Still while you are on vacation you try to pretend it does.  For two weeks, deserved or not, you attempt to repress the knowledge that those two weeks of stifling stress have inflated the work load on your return to a such an insurmountable mound that you have no idea where to start digging to get it under control again.

The two week vacation is really an American nightmare to a good portion of the developed world, where they are much more wise to the fact that it takes one month, minimum, to fully decompress and be ready to go back to work again.  After a month, or even two, when you return to the mound waiting for you, somehow, miraculously, it is hardly any bigger than the two week mound!  I don’t understand how this is, but if you’ve ever been lucky enough to take a two month vacation, you know exactly what I mean.

In my garden that fact translates as well.  After two weeks it is nearly impossible to tell the difference between the crops and the weeds, so how much worse could it possibly get if I just took the rest of the season off?  I can pick it back up again for the fall planting.   After all, there are melon and sweet potato vines and plenty of squash taking over what’s left of the tomatoes, herbs, peppers, and corn.  So, it’s not like we’ll starve if I don’t save those last morsels from the oblivion of weed wilderness.  What I really wish is that I could appreciate more what’s out there, but all I keep thinking about is all the changes that should be made for next time.  The space, water,  and soil are at least alterable; I still have no clue what I’m going to do about the voles, deer, rabbits, squirrels, raccoons and poison ivy.

Learning through trail and error, while significantly more efficient than learning from books, is itself terribly inefficient.  Had this knowledge and these skills been passed down to me since childhood, through demonstration by family or even school, they would feel second-nature now.  But, like many suburban raised kids, I had considered nature as something to be clipped and esthetically arranged and shamelessly manipulated, not painstakingly nurtured and gently tamed and regularly harvested, and certainly not studied or understood.

Anyway, because of heat I am back to my desk work for the remainder of the summer, which feels miserably less productive in comparison.  Just another two weeks, please, I keep praying,  if only so my inbox can resemble the garden.

I used to be one of those Nancy Drew, game of Clue, Sherlock Holmes loving kind of girls.  Now I am so damn sick of mysteries I would beg never to have to waste another second trying to incessantly figure everything out.  I read enough about Buddhism to understand control is an illusion, but it’s still annoying how ofter there are times it seems everyone and everything I come across would appear to want to underscore that reality ad nauseam.

Who killed the chicks?  What’s consuming entire full-grown plants of basil overnight?  Why are the fire ants swarming all over the okra and nothing else?  How can one tomato plant be thriving while those of the same variety on either side of it are long since dead?  Where can I hear some truth that works in practice and not just in theory?  Who is John Galt?

How often I am hearing different versions of the same mysterious stories.  For even the simplest answers I’m seeking I find a good half-dozen contradictory solutions.  So obviously, for the complicated topics, the misinformation overload is overwhelming.

Of these complicated topics one recurring subject is the meaning of organic.  In my quest for an organic garden (a goal which failed within two weeks), I called Monterey Mushrooms to learn about their mushroom compost, aka SMS, spent mushroom substrate.  When I inquire if the product is organic, the girl answers in a heavy drawl, “Whatcha meeeeen?”

Momentarily stumped, I pause, offering a friendly, “Ummm, well . . .”

“I can tell ya what’s in it, if you’ll even know what any of it is,” she offers.

“Sure, give it a shot,” I reply.  I’m feeling pretty confident because I’ve been reading up.

“Gypsum, chicken litter, cottonseed meal, soybean oil, straw, . . .” And I’m thinkin, hey, so far so good.

“Urea.”  Op, stop there.

This word can be used to describe both an organic and a chemical compound, and, my little brain churning, in order to separate the urea from the urine requires it be chemically processed, right?  So, that means it’s not organic.  Right?

And then that question leads to another, and yet another, and then a whole series of questions about organics.  What if the seeds I’m using aren’t organic?  What if the chicken producing the litter was not eating organic feed (which we can be quite certain it was not)?  What about the pesticides that went on the soybeans and cottonseed and Bermuda grass?   What if I’m watering my garden from treated water, because it’s ALL treated?  And even if I could irrigate solely through rainwater, What about Acid Rain?!

Oh my, please stop! It is all really too much.  Thank heavens it’s 4^th of July so I can drown these burgeoning mysteries in that all-American of southern drinks, the Margarita.  The path to a good buzz, at least, is never a mystery.

When the going gets tough, my instincts scream RUN.  I was not blessed with strong perseverance, and still I regularly choose paths that contradict this presumably innate characteristic:  marriage(s), challenging friendships, a writing career, and yes, obviously, homesteading.

The going has gotten tough and last night I had a brilliant dream that I moved in with my youngest sister in her Manhattan flat.  It was fabulous and fun and oh so liberating!  And then I woke up remembering that I am in fact in the middle of nowhere, having made another serious commitment, with deadlines I have been postponing because of a garden that is now withering away in the current record heat and drought.  I have no friends nearby, my family is all far away, and handy hubby, with his unwavering diligence and deep stoicism, fears my tears more than a bullet to the head.  When I am in such a state he looks at me like a deer frozen in headlights.  But that’s exactly why I married him. While I teeter at each end of the seesaw, he balances in the middle trying not to lose his cookies.

I absolutely knew it would be tough.  Like I knew the Peace Corps would be tough, and getting a Master’s would be tough, and trying to make it as a freelance writer, and pursuing yoga and meditation, and every other challenge I have ever taken on.  You go into it knowing it will be tough, but you can never gauge beforehand which aspects will come the closest to breaking you.

In my case, it is usually a flurry of little things that seem as harmless as snowflakes, until they all fall at once and you wake up to find they have barricaded your door.  I see it’s already time to forget about the damn door and get myself out the closest window, quick, and then take a deep breath, trudge around to the door, and start shoveling.

Maybe you are curious how I do that?  After all, failure and disappointment are universal.  The way I do it is to alternate my focus from the tiniest of details to the very largest of grand truths, while trying my best to completely overlook everything in the middle.  The biggest picture is:  I refuse to fail, most likely because I am hopelessly unrealistic and terribly stubborn, and not because I was predestined for success.  The tiniest details are best seen in pictures.

Compost success! Yes! Like I said, the tiniest details.

1 of 6 types of basil, and 3 of 11 tomato plants are thriving

The corn is superb and there is still hope for the melons

I shouldn't complain, I said I'd be thrilled with any crop at all

The fact that the wildflowers thrive without any intervention makes me certain there is more wisdom in nature than in man

I never meant to take anyone’s life away.  I don’t even know how it happened.  I am battling an unseen enemy, in fact many of them, and so much has expired at once.  The sweltering season has begun and the puppy is gone and the chicks are all dead.  The tomato plants wither away without ever having produced.  The tops of an entire otherwise healthy crop of both beans and sweet potatoes disappeared overnight.  All I could do was escape.

Failure is never easy, but like with everything else, when I do it I go all out.  In self-flagellation I have clawed at the poison ivy up and down my arms until there are trails of blood and stinging open wounds.  I can’t sleep, I have no appetite, above all for any meat, and I’m considering following my sister’s lead and going vegan.  A vegan in rural East Texas?  Why not, stranger things have happened.

Like others, I am weak, so what else could I do but escape to the city.  I pace for 12 hours in front of a friend’s picture window and the gorgeous city skyline view extending beyond it.  I let the shimmering steal and curves of blue towers and angles of gray glass seduce me away.  Then I did all those city things I have been missing these last few months-shop, cut and color, mani-pedi, big pools, favorite spots, old friends and maybe even new ones.  The old friends all saying that country life suits me.  Yes, thank you, I know.

So it is confirmed that the long hours of work these last months are not wasted, and anyway I would not have spent my hours in any other way.  But it’s the mystery that gets to me.   How did it all happen so fast?  Why, what , how to correct it for next time when you can’t see or confront the enemy?   How to overcome failure, when success seems so far out of reach?

When I was able to put myself in the moment, and forgive the city for its flaws and the country for its share, and me for my own, the little city escape went well.  It’s just during all those other times that I kept recounting my loses.  It’s like when you break up with your love and suddenly everywhere around you are happy couples, so it is with me and my murdered chicks.   I’ll bet you never realized how many references there are to chickens and eggs during the course of a day.

As for the chicks, which evidence would show became the breakfast of a single raccoon, I wish, I really do wish, I could blame the raccoon.  And I might add, question if he really needed to destroy all of them, in a single hour?  But placing blame aside, in my gut I know, they were in my care, and I failed them.

I know it would be overly dramatic to say that a little piece of my heart is gone, but when you are in the middle of one of these tough life lessons–the ones trying to show you to stop being so damn hasty, and learn to ask for help more often, and the most obvious of all, the one that is begging you reconsider entirely the nature of the chicken and the egg, and while you’re at it whether you really even need to be eating them-these kind of realizations always come terribly slowly.

It is really quite unpleasant to get an extended glimpse of your inferior angles.  What is it about human nature that makes us so eager to count our chicks before they hatch?  Every bit as much in relationships and money, as in failure and success.

Due primarily to the new addition of the most obstinate 6 week old puppy imaginable this post will be in pictures, because I’m too tired for words.  Adding to my sleepless nights is my continued fight against the ever invasive poison ivy again encroaching into the garden, onto the porch, and under every tree.  Now with my fourth boiling rash of the season I have given up the battle of chemical free eradication and brought out the big gun:  Super size Round-up with pump sprayer–to the rescue at last.  I tried, I really did, but if I ever hope to sleep again, or have scar-free wrists and ankles, it’s time to admit defeat.

But I just wanna play!

Former owner's hunting blind will serve as temporary garden shed

After repeated attempts to keep them from nesting on the porch we finally gave in. An equally obstinate family has taken up residence in the lawn chair

On the way to a little farm with 8 three-day-old Rhode Island Reds

His favorite swimming hole, always reminding me to appreciate the rainy days too

Man cannot live on blackberries alone.  Can he?  I know I can’t.  So while I collect them by the kilo and have big plans to experiment with my first unquestionably real homesteading project, making blackberry wine, I fully realize it is all just frivolous fun.

I do, after all, have a keenly developed palette and a natural aptitude for the finer things, not necessarily in possessions, but absolutely in experiences.  I like my vodka from Russia, my cheese from France, my smoked salmon from Norway, where else?  I can only appreciate Spain and Cape Cod in the off-season.   In fiction I read the classics over what’s popular, and in films I prefer foreign over blockbuster.

What I have always liked to call distinguished taste or unusually high standards and expectations, my mom has sometimes referred to as a sense of entitlement.   As if that is a negative thing!  But what one culture might call snobbery, another calls gourmet.  And one man’s privilege is another man’s nightmare.

It’s true, when it comes down to what I want, I want it all.   That’s not so unusual, is it?  Is that not the American way?  So it is with the strictest set of standards that I now boast, I have grown the best arugula and radishes I have ever tasted.  What an incredible sense of satisfaction it is to serve them at my table.  Now if only I could do without all those other exquisite tastes, we’d be well on our way to self-sufficiency.

On another level, thanks to technology, I feel I have it all.  I live in the country, without a neighbor in sight and rarely an unnatural sound to be heard, but still I am connected to all the knowledge of every expert and university, as well as all the friends and family who don’t think I’m nuts, or who maybe do, but love me anyway.  Some of these friends, of the former variety, have asked me what the hell I do out here all day long.  They know I have no television stations, and no pub, and no real job, and no friends nearby.  Before I scratch their name off the Christmas card list I answer:  I cut bamboo to make tomato cages; I cook every meal from scratch; I hang the laundry on the line; I read, a lot.  And somehow I still find time for cocktail hour while bird watching.

For  me this new lifestyle, the simplicity of picking blackberries, the learning curve and aching muscles of gardening, the creativity required to solve simple problems in order to make due rather than to make purchases, none of it has been a sacrifice, not at all.  It is the exact opposite,  it feels like my greatest privilege and my most satisfying accomplishments.  It’s not just what I deserve, but what I have been working my whole life to appreciate.  I feel like I am experiencing the very best existence has to offer, and there’s not a day goes by that I don’t thank my lucky stars.

Make no mistake about it, what we are doing here is not, and has little hope of ever being, sustainable or self-sufficient.  But that doesn’t mean those aren’t fundamental goals of the modern homesteader.

First of all, sustainability to me means not just for a community or a country, but for the world.  Four people on 50 acres, even if it were a desirable prospect for the average person (and I know very few who even like to entertain the thought) could hardly happen in this country.  In a country like India or China the proposition would be laughable.  Few would applaud the latest self-sufficiency movement of urban homesteaders louder than I do, because I realize their goals have much more hope of being sustainable in our current global reality.

Because the nearest grocery store is 20 miles away we are more dependent on fossil fuels than city folks, and maybe even most suburban folks, too.  But city and suburban life aren’t for everyone, so I will continue to dream up some way that country life could ever again be considered remotely sustainable and somewhat self-sufficient.

I’m brand new at this, but like any industrious idealist, I have no doubt that we can make it happen, for us.  I certainly don’t have the answers to translate our inevitable success at homesteading, itself a loaded word as well, into a potential solution to fix any of the world’s problems.  Right now I’m just asking a lot of questions.  And with every new question I look to those who have come before me.  Sometimes they are old-timers, but other times they are the young, like Jenna Woginrich.  In her new book Made from Scratch:  Discovering the Pleasures of a Handmade Life, this 26 year old says,  “The scary thing was that I was completely dependent of fossil fuels, and so was everyone I knew.  My gas-heated apartment, my groceries from the supermarket, my station wagon parked outside-everything was part of the system.  And if the system broke, I was going to be hungry, cold, and immobile.  So I threw my hands in the air.  I was done with Walmart and Wonder Bread.  I wanted something real.  I wanted something basic.  I wanted a lifestyle that was no longer a part of the problem, or at the very least was constantly striving to be less involved in it.” Thanks Jenna, my sentiments exactly.

The answers I’m continually seeking in this new lifestyle are sometimes practical, sometimes philosophical, and the words of all the others who are trying it their way too are always useful and inspiring to me.

What else I’m reading these days:

The Modern Homestead Manual:  What it REALLY takes to Succeed Beyond the Sidewalks and Power Lines by Skip Thomsen and Cat Freshwater

The Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live It by John Seymour

VoluntarySimplicity: Toward a Way of Life That Is Outwardly Simple, Inwardly Rich by Duane Elgin

Complete Guide to Home Canning and Preserving by U.S. Department of Agriculture

Natural Beauty from the Garden by Janice Cox

The Woodlot Management Handbook by Stewart Hilts and Peter Mitchell

Lost Arts and Celebration of Culinary Traditions by Lynn Alley

Preserving Summer’s Bounty A Rodale Garden Book

Storey’s Basic Country Skills by John and Martha Storey

Texas Gardening the Natural Way by Howard Garrett

I can only entice them with my sweet water.  I cannot force them to come or to stay.  Usually I do not even ask them, or will them, so clearly I do not plead or beg.  If I want them to return I appeal to their needs, on their terms.  I give, and they give in return.  There are no takers in this equation.

Once here I appreciate what they offer, and I do not expect what they cannot give.  It is a far more fulfilling and natural relationship than those we often cultivate, you know what kind I mean, the ones based on guilt, and manipulation, and sometimes even exploitation.

Our expectations could not be more simple or basic.  I need their beauty and their grace, and they need my sweet water.

Homesteaders revel in the idea of autonomy.  But, in order to be autonomous we must have significant freedom, and that is often beyond our control.

We like to think of ourselves as living in the land of the free in America, but we forget that freedom is a very relative term.  For example, I am not free to sunbathe at the beach without covering my breasts, but I am free to expose the entirety of my derriere.  I am not free to grow a number of different kinds of plants in my garden, but I am free to purchase all the equipment necessary to grow those same plants indoors, as well as all the paraphernalia required to process and consume them.  I am not free to marry whomever I choose, or for that matter, to marry several people of my choice.  I am not free to pay taxes to fund only those programs I believe in, or to not pay taxes to fund wars I do not support.

We can choose not to vote, for example, if we are not pleased with either of the two candidates who have any chance of winning.  We have freedom of the press, as long as our ideas are popular, or unpopular, enough to get press.  We have the right to a fair trial, and even an unfair one in our favor, as long as we have money for a good lawyer.

There are other freedoms that are even more precarious, like those that govern our bodies and our land.  In these two areas where we might expect to have the most autonomy, our freedoms are in fact shockingly limited.  In theory we have the freedom to own property, as long as we meet certain requirements that would otherwise quickly forfeit those rights.  For example, as long as the land is undesirable to the government because there has, as yet, been found no exploitable natural resources below the surface.  Or, most commonly, as long as the land is not in an area that becomes desirable for development, in which case its taxes will be raised so quickly as to find it impossible to keep by anyone except the most wealthy.   On my own property, during certain times of the year, and in some places at any time, I am not free to kill an animal whose continued presence in my garden threatens the livelihood of me and my family.

When it comes to our bodies, in many states we do not have the right to a birth a child with the help of a midwife.  We certainly don’t have the right to terminate our own life anywhere, for any reason.  We don’t even have the right to refuse medical treatment.  When it comes to the medical establishment, if we equate freedom with choice, then our freedoms could not be more limited.  While you most likely pay a hefty monthly premium for your health insurance, that insurance will only pay if you visit a physician trained by the orthodox institutions.  In nearly every case, you cannot choose for yourself to see any other kind of specialist, for example a nutritionist, a massage therapist, an acupuncturist, a holistic practitioner, an herbalist, or a homeopathic doctor, and the list goes on and on.

We believe we have freedom of religion, but in fact those freedoms are significantly diminished if that religion strays from our established social mores.  For example, if your religion requires ceremony including a drug we call “illicit,” or if your religion is against the immunization of your children, or the forced treatment of terminal illness.

Before we continue to sing the praises of the “land of the free,” maybe it’s about time we define what freedom really means.

My most troublesome addiction, the one I find most counter intuitive to homesteading, I blame on my grandfather.   I was able to give it up for several years of overseas living relatively unscathed, but for the life of me I can’t recall how I did it.  I believe that by announcing this shameful weakness and admitting to my dependency there may still be some hope for me.  Maybe an informed reader knows of a twelve step program that might break me of my addiction to paper products.

Gramps, whose poor upbringing meant intense rationing, would travel for hours once informed of a sale on toilet paper.  He would purchase as much as he could stuff into the linen closet, and when a space would open up again, he would search the ads for another sale.  His only advice to me before leaving for Eastern Europe was, “Pack plenty of toilet paper.”  I laughed then, but soon learned he had been right.  I was sore and disappointed by the squares of brown paper lunch sack that passed for toilet paper and regular annoyed by the rarity of actually finding some in any public facilities.

Somehow, while I was living in Thailand, I was able to manage without this cherished need, going native, in public at least.  There when you leave the restaurants” or other public facilities wash rooms, having used their “Turkish toilet” with the nearby basin of water for washing your hindquarters afterward , you are sometimes provided with a sink and soap to then wash your hands.  But no towel afterward for drying them.  I got used to wearing a sarong, which was a more convenient towel substitute compared to my pants.

Now that I’m back stateside I am astounded with what I was able to endure.  Where did this courage and diligence come from?  How can I get it back now that paper products are cheap and readily available?  I know they are detrimental to the health of the planet, and therefore to my own mental health, but I cannot stop the madness.  These days the obsession extends not only to toilet paper but to paper towels, and Kleenex.   When I see that we are down to our last ten roles or boxes, I am fretful until the next Costco run, where I am compelled to buy each of them in bulk.  I know our ancestors and folks around the globe have been able to live without such addictions.   How can I free myself once again from this fury?