Micro blog – ep. I

Voltaire once said – more or less – “the perfect is the enemy of the good.” I’d like to have the time and the mental capacity to write a fantastic 5000 word masterpiece to summarize all the shenanigans of the past 18 months, but I have neither. Candidly, I haven’t fully formed an opinion on a lot of things that happened and I’m still working through it. The intent back when I started this blog was to simply share what was going on and to hope that maybe there was a nugget of information that could help someone out. There have been some drafts in the folder for months and months that I never published. Looking back, I’m glad I didn’t. The “me” that wrote those knew a lot more than the current “me” that has lived though the first full cycle of seasons out here. There was a lot more learning than I expected, so I want to write down some of those things and maybe they can still help someone.

The first thing I learned is this – you don’t have to wait to start. We could have been growing rabbits for years. They take a minimal amount of space, they make no noise to speak of, they generate some of the best fertilizer in the world, and they would be perfect for raising in a suburban back yard. We could have been much farther ahead (and had a freezer full of healthy protein) if we hadn’t waited until we had a “homestead” to do homesteading things. Because we waited, we ended up with a steeper learning curve than we needed.

So my current advice to past me is “Start!” Do what you can where you are. If you want to live a more sustainable life, or be a little more self-sufficient, get started! Researching, and planning, and watching homesteading YouTube videos is great, but it can also be an excuse to stall. “I want to know a little bit more… I need to plan a little bit more…” Pick something. And start!