Homesteading possibilities

Today I write to you from a place of longing and wishful thinking.  I long to be free to live in a way that is simple, yet fulfilling.  To live off the land and solely on what comes from the combined skills and talents of my husband and myself.  Since we were married, almost 6 years ago, it has been a dream of ours to be financially free to create and live stress/debt free and do things that were important to us, without having to compromise our lives working in a job that we didn't enjoy.  Since then, I have tried to live this way on my own as my husband encourages me to to what I feel is necessary for my creative expression and happiness.  However, the financial stress has not really made that possible.  Yes I have the time to do the things I feel are important for me, but living with one income to pay for everything is something that is always in the back of my mind.  Not only that, knowing my husband has to spend 40+ hours working jobs he does not enjoy and do not bring him fulfillment is not what I had in mind.

Now this is where I feel most people just give in, or more common, just don't see or think there is any other way around it.  It's just accepted that you work, and toil your entire youth through middle age to pay for a certain standard of life with massive debts from your education, cars and homes.  It isn't until retirement that you really get to do what you want to do.  To me, this is all backwards and has never been the kind of life that I wanted to live.  I remember talking to my husband on the phone one night, before we were married and telling him that I don't think that I could live in the current time and place that we live in.  I hated all the pressure and expectations put on me by society to "know" what I want to do and spend the next 8 years of my life in school and the next 20 years after that of my life in debt.  I told him that the only way I thought I could live is if I went off into the forest and lived the way humans lived over 10,000 years ago.  I remember feeling desperate and that everything that happened in the last several thousand years had been a mistake.  I laugh to myself right now, remembering this and I'm still thankful that my husband was in my life during that time to help me get some perspective on how I could live outside of that in the here and now.

Fast forward to now, and we arrive at the current tiny house movement.  We don't want to live in a tiny house, because we are young and plan to have more children.  The tiny house movement is great because it goes along with a lot of what we want to accomplish in a short amount of time.  Unfortunately, I feel like that tiny house movement caters to those who have already lived the life that I don't want to live and have great credit and money already put away from their careers.  I say this because, how else do you just drop everything, buy land and built a tiny house that ends up costing ten, twenty, or even thirty thousand dollars.  It's great that people want to get out of living in our current system, but what about those of us who refused it from the start and don't have a hundred thousand dollars to show from it?  Is my journey as liberating because I didn't "leave it all behind" to start a home stead.  When I say "it all" I mean the three thousand square foot home and the career.  What if you refused it from the get go, which meant that you live pay check to pay check because you didn't go into massive school loan debt.  In the current system, no debt also means, no credit.  Which to me is completely backwards.  How does it make sense that the person who buys things they can't afford looks better then the one who lives within their means and saves for the things they need?  So here we are.

It may take us longer, and it may be more radical, but we will get there.  We have began serious talks to leave our $1000 a month apartment by the time a year lease is up.  It might take a year of living in an RV or something of the like, cramped and mostly uncomfortable, but that's what I am willing to do to achieve our goal of having land and living sustainably.  If giving up a year of relative comfort, allows us to be on a road to financial freedom then I am all for it!  So welcome to the cusp of our homesteading journey.

Pasta night!

My husband has been wanting a pasta maker since forever.  I have been searching my local craigslist and even came across one at my local goodwill.  I checked amazon and compared prices everywhere, but was never happy with the common $25 plus price listed.  Sure I could have offered something I was more comfortable with to a craigslist seller, but I honestly don't really like doing that.  I didn't want to offer my $12-15 range to someone and then deal with arranging a time in both our homes schedules that work and have to drive 15 minute to a half hour to get it.  When you add up the stress of finding an arrangement and the gas it takes to get too and from, it just didn't seem like a pay off in my mind.  So you can imagine my glee when I came across one at a local thrift store, and in my price range! My husband happened to be with me, which is not common while I'm thrifting, so I checked if he was interested and put it my basket.  

Here it is set up and ready to roll (hehe) on our table.  So shiny :-)  The flat roller has different numbered settings so you can roll the pasta thinner and thinner by adjusting the number higher and higher.  Then there is the attachment with the fettuccini and spaghetti cutters.  Tonight we made fettuccini.  So we got out our recipe book, which was also a thrift find, and got to work!

Usually the first time we try a new recipe or new food, my husband is always the first one to get on it.  It awesome because if it goes bad the first time, hey! At least it wasn't me :-P  There he goes starting the pasta dough.  It's essentially the same deal as when you make pie dough, the consistency is the same so now I know he can make a pretty damn good pie crust by hand.  I was telling him to through it in the mixer but the book was by hand.  Anyway, he makes the dough and when it's ready we rolled it out because what we really wanted to do was use the pasta maker.

So I took a turn rolling out the pasta, flatter and flatter until it was time to put it in the fettuccini cutter.  That's were the team work came it.  It helps if one person rolls the pasta maker while feeding in the pasta and the other person catches the newly cut fresh pasta.  We didn't have anything to hang the pasta so I has some hooks in my crafts supplies and some heavy duty thread.  Attached them to the underside of the cabinets and viola! We had a place to hang our pasta to dry :-D

Since the pasta is fresh it didn't take as long to cook as regular pasta from the store takes.  It's best to just hang near the stove and keep tasting until al dente.  

We decided that we would also get some fresh mussels to go with our pasta.  Se we did a simple pasta with butter,  garlic, Parmesan, lemon,  and parsley.  We steamed the mussels and it was amazing all together.  We had a fresh Italian, seafood meal for probably an 8th of what it would have cost in a restaurant! I also don't think I've ever had pasta that was 'made fresh in house daily' either :-P  

This dish was was super easy and also has the added advantage of cooking with your love :-). I hope you will try it too.  I know we will definitely make it again.  What's more, we can make different variations with fresh ingredients and really explore with pasta.  Also, ravioli! Don't even get me started on ravioli! 

Until next time, stay thrifty! :-D