Today I wanted to take a few minutes and write about the little things that make me happy in living this provident lifestyle. This is what it looks like at my house today.
Now I will be honest, the snow is not what makes me happy. In fact, I am not a fan of cold and snow. Why I ended up here is beyond me. Oh yeah, I love the man that chooses to live here. Anyway, I was outside this morning doing chores in all this white stuff. While I was feeding the various birds, I realized that I was out of chicken feed in the grain shed. That meant I needed to get the feed out of the Jeep and to the grain shed. This is not a big deal on a normal day. I throw a 50 lb bag over my shoulder, and it isn't a problem to get it moved and in the bin. Living this lifestyle has made me a much stronger (physically) person. However, with all the snow and no really good paths through that snow, it is hard for me to carry those big bags of feed. We have a couple of wagons, so I thought about putting it in one of those to move it, but then I realized that pulling the wagon through the snow wouldn't be very easy either. Then I remembered the little tin sled that was leaning up against the tool shed. A few years ago my husband's dad lived in the little sea can house (I'll save that explanation for another day) on our property. He was in his early 90's, but he was still very independent and capable of doing so many things. His entire life has been lived as we are trying to live now. He is an amazing man (still going at almost 95), and he has taught me so many things. I miss him since he moved away. Anyway, because he was so independent, he had all kinds of things around to make his life easier. He had some chickens that he insisted on taking care of even in the winter. We had them living in our greenhouse, so it was a bit of a trek for him to get to them. He made this little sled so that he could transport water and feed to them every day.
I figured it was the perfect size to drop a grain bag onto. I dug it out of the snow, pulled it over to the Jeep and proceeded to load the first bag onto it. It truly was the right size. The weight of both bags was too much for it, but it pulled the individual bags really well, and it wasn't like I had to go miles. It was just a short trip across the yard. The second wonderful thing about my little adventure was that the sled with the weight of the grain on it, packed the snow down and turned my little trail through the snow into an actual path through the snow. How great was that? Within a couple of minutes, I had the grain bags moved, dumped into the bin and was getting ready to put the sled away when another great idea came to me. The sled would be a great way to transport wood from the wood shed to the deck so that I could then carry it into the house. We totally heat our house with a wood burning stove, so we go through a lot of wood. I normally carry about three or four armloads of wood from the shed to the deck, then from the deck to the wood box in the living room. Not a big deal, but I figured I could save a few minutes if I stacked wood onto the sled and moved those arm loads in one trip. I still had to unload it at the deck and then transported it an armload at a time to the house, but it saved me various trips from the wood shed to the deck. Now this amount of wood was moved in one trip.
When living this lifestyle, the smallest thing can be considered a blessing. I'm thankful for the wonderful father-in-law that I have, for the great things he taught me and for the awesome things he left behind for me to enjoy. Thank you T.D. Hatch for all the knowledge, kindness and love that you have shared with me. Who knows when I will run across another one of your wonderful inventions to help me through another overwhelming moment in my life.
1 comments:
Loved the post!!! Made me homesick!!
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