This past weekend, we took my mom to Stanley, Virginia to show her where we'll be homesteading. She, of course, thought it was beautiful. I'm excited for her. For the past seven or so years, she's been living in two rooms in my basement. There's a little yard space outside the basement, but it's very shady there and she hasn't been able to grow anything except shade- or mostly shade-loving plants like impatiens and begonias. She's also been nostalgic for the mountains and the open fields of New Hampshire. All throughout my time growing up she was busy building gardens and stone walls, taking care of plants in her greenhouse, and preserving food. While she was homeless and while she was living in a trailer park in Florida, and while she's been living with me she hasn't been able to do any of those things. She's pretty much been limited to knitting and reading. Moving back to the country will give her a chance to enjoy those activities again.
I'm not sure exactly when we'll move completely. Much depends on what happens with my house in the suburbs of Maryland. Like most of the people in my neighborhood and many in the country right now, my house is underwater which makes selling difficult. Further complicating the issue with the house is that my husband is on the deed and two out of the three house-related loans. Despite the change in marital circumstances, my bank refuses to let us reconfigure the loans so that only my name appears on the loans. I've tried to refinance with them three times now and all three times they've turned me down. My debt to income ratio is too high. I find that funny in a very non ha-ha kind of way; they already hold the loans, I've been the only one paying them, and every payment has been on time. But they still won't reconfigure the loans. Not un-coincidentally (is that a word??), reconfiguring would also involve a lower interest rate for me and ultimately less money for them. I've also tried to refinance and consolidate with another lender, but because the house is still incomplete from the remodeling we started before my husband moved out, the house doesn't appraise high enough for that. The remodeling work must be finished first and I'm on my own on that. As I'll discuss in other entries, I'm teetering on the edge of disability and finding it difficult (to put it mildly) to work full time, manage a household, and finish the renovations.
Enough of this for now. Back to the land. While we visited this weekend, we stomped more teasel. That stuff is damn pernicious! Last year's teasel is dry and still standing in the areas of the land that haven't been mowed--essentially the areas that are likely to become our two acres. The stems are covered with tiny thorns and it's impossible to walk across the fields given how thickly the plants are spaced. So we've been stomping the plants down with our legs and feet, attempting to break the stems so they stay down. Last weekend we made some progress through stomping. This weekend I brought along a two-bladed scythe and hacked away at the stems. My mom helped gather the stems into a pile. After several hours of this work on Saturday and Sunday, we were able to clear a pretty significant space. Even more exciting to me was that the pile represented the beginnings of our compost heap and what will one day become beautiful, rich soil for our organic garden!
M. borrowed a ride-on mower and took a few turns around the cleared area before he ran short on gas. We now have a small cleared area and it's possible to visualize the garden that will be (gulp) in place sometime in the next month or so. We're already running smack into the difficulty that many homesteaders must cope with: travel is difficult. M. takes a trip to Colorado and Utah every year to the desert, and we are scheduled to leave for that at the beginning of May, prime soil preparation and planting time. I was struck by the artificiality of the mower--the noise and the smell seemed very disruptive and alien, compared to the tools we'd been using: our own bodies.
S., my blind brindle dog, loves the land. He spent the weekend running through the fields squeaking his ball with each bounce. He loves to pretend that it gets away and then he has to catch it again. He had a fabulous time while we were clearing the teasel. He pulled himself along on his belly with his nose burrowed into the ground, snuffling. I've seen the tunnels in the grass, probably from field mice. By cutting the teasel and the grass, we're already disturbing their habitat and displacing them, unfortunately. There are many acres of fields right there for them to move to, and I'm hoping that we'll eventually reach some kind of happy equilibrium with them once we are settled on the land. There will be rock piles and many areas of grass for them to re-settle into. I want as much as possible to keep the environment hospitable to the native animals and plants.
For now, I have much grading to finish up for my courses at the university. I contacted their office that deals with disability accommodations to inform them that, despite my ridiculous efforts to push myself, I won't be able to finish out the semester of classroom instruction. I submitted a plan for how to achieve the course objectives through distance learning and student-led work. I emphasized that the matter was time sensitive: regardless of how slowly the wheels of academic bureaucracy turn, classes continue to meet. Even though I've now missed a week of class and a week has gone by, I haven't heard anything back. Last week I was too exhausted to follow up by phone and to have the difficult conversation about my need for accommodations. After a quiet weekend, multiple naps, and almost twelve hours of sleep last night, and few days of limited stress, I feel a bit more rested. It's a difficult call to make. Essentially, it's equivalent to announcing the end of my career in academia.
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