Coffee Chat: Opinionated

 

I'm being opinionated.

I've been thinking of dozens of things lately and one of those things is home decor.  I've followed along on Instagram with many 'decorators', not pros but homeowners, who love to putter in their homes.  One trend that I cannot get on board with and which I feel strongly about is the 'no curtains' look in homes.

Just this morning I sat near a window putting on my makeup and I was sincerely chilled.  There was a closed blind, a pair of sheers and a full set of curtains between me and that double paned window, and I still felt the cold radiating off it as though the darn thing had been open next to me.  How do people live without any curtains at all on their windows?!

Some of the people live in the country, well off the road as we do but honestly at night when it's dark do you really want that dark pressing in on you?  It bothers me no end to see rooms with no curtains and complete blackness filling the space.

Some live in much colder climates than we do.  If I felt that chill at 29F this morning, how much more does someone who lives in true winter conditions with temperatures in the negatives fight the chill in their homes?  

For those people who live in town, in a neighborhood, what about privacy?  I can't be the only person alive who has run through the house barely dressed in order to retrieve something necessary from the dryer and then scurry quickly back to the bedroom again.  Even living as we do well off the road and surrounded by trees, I feel terribly 'exposed' in all sorts of ways in those rare moments.  Yet I see men and women wearing what passes for sleepwear with those un-curtained windows and anyone who wants can get a good long look...

Is it just me?  Does anyone else feel a curtain, even a sheer one, offers a measure of privacy and just plain makes sense with keeping a home warm (or cool in warmer climes)?  Do you have an opinion?

On another subject I find myself following a lot of 'homesteaders' these days.  Now some are not actually homesteaders, but they live as though they were.  They cook 'from scratch'.  They buy all organic, in season produce, and raise a semi-garden such as I myself might have (a few tomatoes and beans and potatoes, herbs and a lot of flowers).  They preserve food.  They buy raw milk, pasture fed beef and free-range eggs and chickens, and they make sour dough bread.  A lot of them don't shop at ordinary grocery stores but at Whole Foods or privately owned small health food based groceries. And the latest trend among this group is that they grind their own wheat into flour.  They have lovely electric grain mills that do a beautiful job of it for them.

This group aren't exactly new...In the late 70's and early 80's the 'homestead' movement was reserved to a small number of "weirdos" who had grown up reading the fledgling Mother Earth News and decided they too could live like they did in the early 1800's... Some of them were even rumored to be former hippies.  They did sincerely attempt life as it was in the early 1800's.  Now it's done differently. Now it's an 'elite' thing to be.  

I know.  I know I sound snarky about it.  I am.  Most of these homemakers will tell you sincerely that they are doing this for the health benefits to their families and they are right, it is beneficial and many will go right on to say they don't see why all families don't do it.  I'm snarky about it because (a) it's a bit beyond my abilities much as I'd like to do the same and (b) it's become a passage of privilege.

I can explain better about (b) than I can about why I feel as I do about (a).  I'm still working out all my reasons on that half of the matter.  About (b), I'm fairly clear on why I feel snarky.  

There was a day and time when what these folks are doing was perfectly normal.  If you lived on a farm or even in town you likely had some chickens and a cow or two. I say this was so even in big cities.  Remember Mrs. O'Leary? 

You had grazing grounds for cows and at the least a sizeable back lawn they could naturally 'mow' by eating it down a bit.  You bred the cow, and once the calf was born and the cow's milk came in you took over and milked the cow, allotting enough to the calf to get it growing well.  You now had raw milk and butter and cream and buttermilk at your disposal, and you likely learned to make some sort of cheese and yogurt.  It was just natural that you'd do all you could with what you had.

Eventually you'd slaughter the calf when it got big enough and you'd breed the cow again and that became a whole cycle of dairy and grass-fed beef provided for the family.

You had your chickens and their fresh eggs, and you let the chickens roam the yard and the garden patch however big or small.  You'd kill the chickens as they aged or cull a few young roosters in the spring when eggs had been hatched and the roosters were less than 2 months old, and you had 'free range' eggs and chickens right at your disposal.

You raised your vegetables and fruits and preserved what you didn't eat in season.  It was all pretty much organic at one point as no one wasted money on poisons but used the free-range chicken and hand-picking methods to prevent pests eating up the produce until you could get a harvest.  And you had all the cow and chicken manure for natural fertilizers.

And every home had a sour dough crock that was kept active making that good homemade bread from scratch.  They didn't 'discard' anything, by the way.  They used it!

And what they couldn't use went to feed chickens and hogs.  

Hogs were kept for bacon, sausage, hams, chops, ribs, pickled parts (feet) and the all-important lard.  As one old woman told me "We ate every bit of the hog except the oink!"  Often, hogs were allowed to roam the woods and scavenge for acorns and nuts, but a few folks kept them penned up because they were easier to find when you wanted to kill one for meat.  They were the original home garbage disposal system.

The only thing you didn't likely do was grind your own wheat and corn because that was very labor intensive.  For that purpose, you had your neighborhood grist mill that would do that for you.  At least in my area of the South I can tell you sincerely I know this to be true because I visited two of them as a child, while they were still in operation.  And right now, I can count four old mills that are near my home, all within a five-mile radius.  If you didn't have money to get your wheat and corn ground, it was no matter.  The miller bartered.  He took a percentage of your ground wheat and corn to sell to those who had less luck growing that year.

All of this was 'normal'.   They weren't homesteading.  They were just living and everyone lived the same.   But then it began.  The cry of 'modern convenience', 'nutrition', 'sanitary'.

People were led to believe they had less somehow because they did those things themselves.  They were told that butchering their own meat was no good and it was cruel to the animal to use their life in such a manner.  They were convinced they weren't getting all the good nutrients they needed from those fresh fruits and meat and milk, so they pasteurized and irradiated.  People did studies showing them how unsanitary it all was. They were called hicks and rednecks and people treated farmers as though they were the lowest level of intelligence around. 

And then a generation or two later, here we are with a whole group of people who don't do it because it's natural, but because it's now an 'elite' sort of thing to do.   You have to have a certain level of income to afford to be able to do those very things.  It's not that wheat is so very expensive.  It's not.  But the mills are pricey, at least the good ones.  Organic foods cost more and are often shipped as far as the lesser (regular) ones.  There's a huge outcry against the factory raised beef and poultry and pork industries and so the farm raised counterparts go for a higher price.  Part of this was engineered by that same elite class.  They so devalued the farmers' labors that those who have returned to the old ways must pay a far greater cost to do what farmers just did naturally: feed and maintain their animals in a healthy manner and environment to ensure a quality end product.

These women homesteaders actually stay home rather than take a job outside of the home to give their family these privileges, to do the work that our ancestors just naturally did.  Again, the very same ones a whole higher-class level of people took such pains to convince plain old folks was something less than the best.  

What once was a normal way of living, has become so expensive that only a few can aspire to live that way.  

Does anybody besides me see the irony in all of this?  

Let's see if I can sort out (a) a bit better in my own head.

Over forty years ago, I was laid off from the job I held at the time.  I got pregnant shortly after.  And I aspired to be at home with my child.  I took a load of flak from everyone: parents, in-laws, the husband, neighbors, retailers, politicians, feminists (it's your choice...) Like rot it was my choice.  They wanted me to choose what they chose.  Mind you some were distant rumbles heard on talk shows and debate forums (politicians, feminists, retailers).  Some were loud and clear and in my ear. That would be in-laws, parents, and husband.  Some were more polite than others. Neighbor women who'd sigh "It must be nice to just stay at home and do nothing all day..."  Oh Puh-lease!

It was hard.  My husband at the time had a well-paying job and it was still hard, a life of sacrifice and grind.  I'm not for one minute suggesting that all of the women who 'homestead' today are privileged but some of them most certainly are.  We can't all support our husbands and run a You Tube business that employs our family, a handful of crew members and carry a large mortgage...And no I'm not being snarky.  It's truth.  You have to have a certain level of income to manage to live the homestead lifestyle.  You can't do it on a tight budget.  You can do a few things on a tight budget, but you can't do it all and live on a tight budget, not anymore, because all of this 'so much better for you' stuff costs a lot.  It just does.

So, I went to work. I immediately heard from all of the above mentioned that I was neglecting my children (I now had two).  I cooked less from scratch because you cannot go from simply being at home with nothing to do all day to working full time and then coming home to do all that nothing you'd been doing before.  It doesn't compute unless you happen to be blessed with a maid and cook.  I was doing good to afford the day care for the kids and not getting much else beyond that.

We'll fast forward a bit, skipping right through being a single mom of three and doing every single thing all by myself, to a season when I looked at John and said, "What am I working for?"  We sat down and figured it all out on paper, using real figures, and I made $26 a week after all expenses.  We included the realistic cost of convenience foods, gas, clothing, days missed due to no pay for sick children.  I mean we got really real about it all. 

That summer we realized we had to have daycare for Katie who was 5.  And come school year we'd need to pay tuition for school in the county where we worked because no one was home to take care of kids after school.  Our second oldest was doing what she should have been doing: flexing her wings and preparing to fly out of the nest.  Without an older sister who was also built in baby sitter, working was going to cost me money, serious money. 

So, John and I looked at all our expenses. He said, "If you could somehow make just $200 a month, we could do this..."  I called everybody we paid each month and asked, "What can I do to reduce my bill?"  I hit the jackpot with one phone call when our insurance agent said, "Well...since you're not working and not driving as much, and you no longer have a teen driver listed on your policy we can reduce this bill..." and lo and behold!  $200 appeared back in our pockets.  Done.

I listened to that whole cadre of folks all over again, minus the husband who fully supported me. "What a shame you aren't teaching your kids the importance of work...What a shame you don't think you have value outside of the home...It must be nice to stay home and do nothing all day long."  Damned if you do and damned if you don't.

Organic food wasn't even heard of at the time. You couldn't buy a farm raised chicken or cow anywhere around.  You just went to the grocery and bought the best you could afford according to the amount you had to budget for food.   I did cook from scratch, and I cooked seasonally, and I preserved what I could.  I reduced waste.  I made do, went without.  I worked hard.  I just didn't call it a homestead. It was called 'getting by'.  

Because I'm not doing things the same way they are, I often hear these homemakers (I can't call them homesteaders, I just can't), there is sometimes a tone of 'talking down' to some of the viewers who don't do things in the same way.  Yep.  That makes me feel snarky. Because for reasons unknown to me, some folks cannot feel they are doing their best unless they can also smugly point out that someone else is failing to do those things.

Irony again. 

This subject is more related to my last little rant above.  John plays music for a Homeless Outreach once a month.  I go along with him and being a people watcher, I look and make notes about who's new and who's a familiar face and what people choose to gather from the items offered up.

So, a person with good intentions asked why didn't the Outreach program offer 'healthier' food choices for those items that are free to take.  The pastor running the program also runs a modern 'homestead' and raises free range chickens and turkeys and has access to organic pastured fresh beef.  Last month he donated eggs and meats and sourced organic produce and fruit donations. Someone else donated gallons of organic milk.  I think it was lovely of him and others to donate.  I didn't stick around long enough to see who chose to get those items.  Fruit was limited to four pieces per person.  The other items were going to be drawn for because there was such a limited number of items.

Not everyone was eligible for a ticket for one simple reason, obviously overlooked by the kindhearted person who thought they should have healthier choices.  Homeless people, the truly homeless, do not have access to a refrigerator or a stove to cook food.  There are indigent people who come in to take advantage of a free meal and goods because food stamps stretch just so far.  There are two or three grandparents raising small grandchildren who routinely come in, a few single moms with a bevy of children.  I'm sure those foods they can take home to store and cook will be a blessing to them.

But the homeless are still going to the tables where there are chips and crackers (lightweight to carry in backpacks), bottles of water or juices, that sort of thing.  And the fruit will be a good thing for them as well.  Some might opt for shelf stable microwaveable meals but not too often.  They aren't always welcome in the convenience stores which is their only access to microwaves.  And since the food is often packed in plastic, it won't go over a fire...You see there are so many things you have to be aware of when you're offering up things.  Meat sticks, chips, crackers, or those cheese and cracker packets, nuts...those things are usually lightweight enough to pack, and will satiate hunger.  Nutrition isn't the main goal.  Calories are.

And that's my opinion.

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