🌪 Freeschoolin' Through Uncertainty
I haven't written in a month and now I'm sharing why.
Hope's Birthday was awesome. So much joy and fun and celebration. And then we were thrust into planting season, a wonderful time of year.
Our goal is 500 lbs of organic potatoes, grown with seeds from last year and double our regular garden full of zucchini, squash, pumpkin, tomatoes, peppers, carrots, greens and spices which help us afford the diet that supports our health properly. So it was a day of planting, watering and covering when we first heard the news that rocked our world. Our landlord of 12 years pulled Jaze aside as he filled buckets full of water to bring to our back crops and told him that due to finances, he was regretfully going to have to sell the house. At first, we just broke down. We cried together, holding one another, and pulled out superbed the first night so we could be closer. We slept in the tent the next night and ate by the fire, soaking in all we love so much. And then we began to process things. You see, when I say we are a low income family, I mean that we only survive and thrive because we are excellent at using what we have to make do. We live on a pension, that we are very grateful for, but despite much effort put forth in supplementing in our income, we have been unable to keep up with what people are earning these days to the point that rent is so far out of reach outside of our current home, we would be homeless, even if we could bear to lose our farm animals. We have saved every penny to extremes in hopes of buying land of our own to homestead, only to have car repairs or other unexpected purchases foil our plans. It is through no lack of trying on our part that we are in our situation, yet here we are.
The Bad News We might have to move from here in 3 months. It's terrifying. We plant not knowing if we will be allowed to harvest. We care for our animals not knowing where they will go or how our mental health will suffer without them. They have been an integral part of our healing practices which cannot be replaced. We are at the whim of other people's choices, circumstances and policies. Our fate feels utterly out of our control.
The Good News We have been dreaming. There is land available to purchase and a way to relatively quickly set up a homestead should we find the funding. If we were able to stay the winter here and buy land in the spring, we'd have the summer to set it up with all it would need for safe living. We could offer up extended stays in our pay what you can bed and breakfast accommodations for those wanting to help build and thrive in a community. This news could go from being a devastating blow to our dream come true if we can find a way to make it happen. The Plan Until we hear otherwise, we are continuing to hope we can stay here for one more winter. Which means we have some time, but not a lot, to manifest the resources necessary: land, a yurt, a well, solar power system. Looking at current costs we might be able to do it all for just over $100,000. Which may seem like a lot but compared to current home costs, it's really a fraction of the price.
How You Can Help Us I've never done this before, directly ask for help from our community. We are very close to finishing our 2nd Freeschoolin' children's book, which we hope will help in our goal, but until it is ready we are going to be asking anyone who can to spread the word of our currently available titles and our Freeschoolin' Clothing and More shop. Our biggest following is on Facebook and they show maybe 500 people out of 11,000 what we post because we won't pay for ads. If we had the people's help in sharing about Freeschoolin' and what we offer I am sure we could get more of the support we need as a little family trying to make it in this crazy, big world. I do custom illustrations, logo packages and more, all of which you can contact me about.
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Make sure your notifications are turned on for social media so you don't miss when we post. We LOVE connecting with you, our beloved community, and detest that algorithms interrupt this for the sake of money.
Thank you for being a part of our extended family, especially if you're one of the families that have been with us since the beginning. We couldn't have made it this far without you!
CATCHING UP
Despite the stressful challenges we're facing, we wanted to live life to the fullest, with as much joy as possible. Our chickens are amazing therapy. Hope loves hanging out with them outside or in the house and we have trained them to be cuddly. Our rooster is coming into his own, a great hen protector. He's still needing some lessons on who is in charge but so far, his aggression is manageable. We pick him up and carry him around when he just can't help himself to a peck or two at our boots, to help him know we're in charge, but we love him and are grateful for his beautiful self. Hope is loving her digital art sessions though she is very much still attached to traditional drawing with real tools. It's wonderful to see her expand her artistic passions! Lately Hope and Jaze have been going on walk/bike rides and taking snacks on their adventures, something Hope loves. She is going to need her seat and handle bars raised as she's already grown taller since last year when she got her new bike. Thanks to a wonderful homeschool friend who has a lovely flock of her own, we were gifted 3 newborn chicks. She saw us lose half our first batch and wanted to help out. Hope is loving this new batch of chicks and they are so different from our Rhode Island Reds! There is Burzbee, the grey Ameraucana and 2 Black Maran/Ameraucana mixes, Lucky, mostly black, and Cricket, grey and black. They are adorable and so healthy, now 3 weeks old. We have had campfires and campfire meals and slept in the tent, hit up the beach and city park for picnics and even went for a river walk, something new for Hope. The highlight of our June was definitely our field trip to the Ontario Falconry Centre with a group of homeschoolers. We got to handle and learn about an array of birds of prey including a golden and bald eagle and a great horned owl! Sam is an amazing, knowledgeable host and handler and folks can contact the centre to arrange their own workshop events. It was quite a road trip and we actually woke up that morning to a flat tire, but thanks to our incredible more-like-family landlord, we borrowed wheels and not only made it to the Birds of Prey field trip, but visited family in a nearby town for a beach park picnic.
VIDEO
HOPE BLOWING OUT HER BIRTHDAY CANDLES
Much Love Always,
Wendy
About the Author
Wendy Elizabeth Hart - Author, Illustrator, is a radical unschooling, homesteading Mom of 2 amazing kids and wife of more than 12 years to her bff, Jaze. Together with their daughter Hope, 11, they live a life of daily discovery in rural Ontario, Canada and share it with the world to connect with and support other families in the unschooling community.
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