There is a bit of irony that our first Tailwind Acres blogpost should be about homesteading and we are in thick of a pandemic. We speculate backyard homesteading will make a stronger emergence into mainstream culture after the COVID-19 pandemic subsides.
I hear it’s hard to find flour and yeast in the local groceries. Lately, I’ve seen more homemade bread loaves on my Facebook feed than kitten memes. We’ve heard that times of uncertainty are good for garden seed sales and indeed there has been a big uptick in seed purchasing. I also hear chicks are darn near impossible to mail order.
We’re accustomed to our own version and routine of homesteading. Aside from not going to our places of employment, we haven’t altered our practices. In weekend ritual Adam whipped up two loaves of bread today. Normally one would go into the freezer to pull out during the work week. Then half of one of the loaves would be consumed by the three of us fresh out of the oven. Today’s loaf was predictable, but no less delightful oozing with almond butter and honey. We took inventory of our seed collection back in December and received our shipment of seeds on January 13, two days after China had its first confirmed death from Coronavirus and before it hit U.S. soil. In fact, most seeds are germinated and under our bank of grow lights. We're not rationing eggs and collecting about 12-14 per day.
We’re watching the world react in a way that makes us feel very, very fortunate to have the ability to grow and nurture our own food in our backyard. We did this when we lived in town, through trial and error we found tricks that work for us. That’s the beauty in gardening, every year is cumulative. You always learn something from a season. Even if it’s let’s not do that again.
Did I mentioned we continue to fail at things? We continue to fail at things! We’ve never mastered storage potatoes. Please help us if you have tips. Inevitably our potatoes get so many eyes they’re some creatures from Monsters, Inc or worse yet, Alien.
Mind you we do feel accomplished by other things. We still have a few mangy fingerlings, frozen basil and cilantro based pesto, frozen enchilada sauce, frozen tomatoes, canned salsa, and jars of maple syrup. We recently used our last carrots and beets that we tried storing in sand for the first time, and we just used our last head of garlic this past week (mind you we planted 400 cloves this past fall so there will be NO shortage this year, baring no crop failure).
Indeed, we feel more and more acclimated and adjusted to life at Tailwind. We have been here long enough to have witnessed every season at least once to make subtle observations that’ll guide our future decisions. The list of things we want to do keeps growing. Truth is that our “reality list” is take our “dream list” cut it in half and then halve it again. I consider ourselves want-to-be-farmers (ok, I have milked a cow...once.)
If any of you have read this far, you’ll likely point out that I’m not doing a great job in sales. Rest assured, we are dabbling and experimenting with selling produce because frankly we hope it inspires YOU to try a hand at growing your own food. Will there be errors? Absolutely! Will there be unexpected victories. I hope!
I speak with more confidence and assertion when it comes to our ability to share, ad nauseam, the fitness aspects of our life. We have ~40 years of combined competitive running experience between us and are eager to share bits and pieces of what we’ve been learning about our running journey, tips for training, injury prevention and all around runner self-care.
The current situation hasn’t changed our training too much. Adam always trains solo, but now instead of running over his lunch and after school, he’s been setting the alarm for 5:45AM and taking to the gravels or treadmill. I’m missing runs with a colleague from work, but otherwise I’m running and becoming more accustom to some of the local gravels. We both have expressed we miss immediate access to pavement.
The other day, it was windy. It’s always windy here, but even by flat land standards… it was a windy day. I was dragging my feet to start my run. Adam and Linden dropped me off about 7 miles from home so I wouldn’t have to do my tempo run into a headwind [insert, awesome husband award!] It was the first run I’d done since Adam came up with the name Tailwind Acres. As I ran home I couldn’t help but chuckle. What an appropriate name.
Tailwind: : a wind having the same general direction as a course of movement
We’re not naive enough to think this will be the last pandemic nor the fact that we face immensities of climate change, habitat destruction, loss of biodiversity, pollution… that all threaten our immediate ways of life and human survival. I hope a year from now, I’ll look back on this posting with relief that our world has rid itself of the immediate threat of COVID-19. More so, I hope we are smarter, more engaged, more nimble and willing to refocus on taking care of each other and the mothership. I can’t help but feel the tailwind.
Tailwind : a force or influence that advances progress toward an improved condition
