Stay-at-Homesteading

8 pounds!  Rhubarb Jam anyone?

Ready for winter in 09

Good thing our neighborhood allows clothes lines!

I was at a party a few months ago, and when a woman asked me what my job is,  I answered, "I'm a stay-at-homesteader." She replied, "you must have chickens!" Well, I don't have chickens (yet), but it did get me thinking about what I mean by calling myself this. After all, it's a pretty heady designation given that  I don't live on anything close to a ranch or farm. Or have any edible livestock cavorting in the back yard. (If you don't count the cat, who I consider barbecuing sometimes.  Just kidding, Luna!)

For me, this all started when I was home with my first son, and was deeply confused about what I was doing with my life--I had left my career behind to do what???  I felt completely lost. My self-concept changed for the better for two reasons:  I had unconditional support from my Mom and Husband,  and I read an interview with  a woman named Shannon Hayes.  She wrote a book called  Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity from a Consumer Culture. 
The publisher's description: "Mother Nature has shown her hand. Faced with climate change, dwindling resources, and species extinctions, most Americans understand the fundamental steps necessary to solve our global crises-drive less, consume less, increase self-reliance, buy locally, eat locally, rebuild our local communities.In essence, the great work we face requires rekindling the home fires.Radical Homemakers is about men and women across the U.S. who focus on home and hearth as a political and ecological act, and who have centered their lives around family and community for personal fulfillment and cultural change. It explores what domesticity looks like in an era that has benefited from feminism, where domination and oppression are cast aside and where the choice to stay home is no longer equated with mind-numbing drudgery, economic insecurity, or relentless servitude.Radical Homemakers nationwide speak about empowerment, transformation, happiness, and casting aside the pressures of a consumer culture to live in a world where money loses its power to relationships, independent thought, and creativity. If you ever considered quitting a job to plant tomatoes, read to a child, pursue creative work, can green beans and heal the planet, this is your book." 


 Hell, this is not my book, this is my life!  The cover even has a buffed out lady waiving a rolling pin in the air in a power salute!  Oh yeah!


So, for me, Radical Homemaking and Stay-at-Homesteading, means unplugging in as many ways as I can from having to buy things, so that I am not pressured to make money.  It means living in a 629 square foot house.  It means energy efficiency.  It means pulling the boys in the bike trailer all around town.  It means working at the gym day-care so we don't have to pay for a membership.  It means washing diapers, making my own wet-wipes, and  growing my own potatoes and rhubarb.  It means canning and freezing and preserving as many things as I can to see us through winter.  It means kissing and thanking and thanking my Husband and Mom for helping bring in the money so I can pursue my radical life.  And, one day soon, it may mean chickens.  Or not.  Luna may have other plans for the chickens. 

The Barn

Do you see what these two photos have in common?  

The cabinet below was made from the very barn siding you see above.  We have the most amazing cabinets thanks to many people: Blake Sander, my mother, my husband, Pat Zabinski, Erik Kemp, Kenny Bradley, and Mitch Porter.  In 2006 my mom was talking to her friend Blake Sander, who mentioned he was looking for someone to deconstruct his family's 130 year old barn in Ohio in trade for the wood.  So, Scott and I traveled to Ohio to meet Pat, Eric and Kenny to perform a HUGE job.  This year, our friend Mitch built these pieces of art for our home.

In 2008 I wrote an article for Homelink Magazine that tells the story best: 

Barn StoriesBy Megan Moore-Kemp

We cannot predict where some things will end up. Once I am finished with that sweater, bike, or casserole dish and pass it on, I imagine myself casting it from dormancy back into life.

The second life of wood-or third, rather, because it was a tree first-isn't something I thought much about before I met my husband. He is a carpenter, so providing a future for unused wood is one of his callings. Currently, our community is surrounded by unused wood. As we embark on the challenge of finding a second life for the beetle-killed pines around us, it is exciting to imagine the future this wood may have. As an illustration, I'll tell the tale of Blake Sander's Ohio barn as a lovely example of the unanticipated ways old wood can be put back to use.



Blake Sander's Grandfather, Ed Sander Sr., took ownership of the family barn in the 1890s, ten years after it was built. He ran a farm and housed dairy cows under its massive timber-frame shell. Three generations worked and forged a life beneath the huge hand-hewn timber. Mr. Sander may have predicted farming would fade as a way of life for his family, but I don't believe he ever could have predicted the future of his hard working barn. 

When Blake assumed responsibility for his family's farm, he learned that a barn that isn't working doesn't work. After years of spending money to maintain the roof, siding and grounds, the old structure was becoming dangerous to both his savings and curious by-passers. Some neighbors-folks he grew up with-dealt with their family barns by knocking them over and burning them. Blake's vision was different; he wanted the land and barn to have a legacy. He wanted the land to become wildlife habitat and the building to pass into someone else's vision. So-he set out to find someone who cared about wood.

When Blake mentioned his quest to my mother, she called me right away. “He's looking for someone who loves wood. And I said, 'my son-in-law is passionate about wood!'” After many phone calls, several reconnaissance trips, a visit to our bank, and a long drive, we stood in front of the behemoth we agreed to deconstruct-more than a bit daunted by the task before us.

We set up camp near by, grabbed our gloves, nail pullers, and pry bars and got to work. In addition to a month of sweat, dirt, blood, bug bites, danger and discovery, it took hands-on help from family and friends, a man-lift, a forklift, an excavator, a dump truck, a semi, and some money to bring 40,000 pounds of century-old timber to our home in Colorado.

Now, the wood is living up to Blake Sander's vision. The maple from the granary is window and door trim; the pine siding, a bookcase; the oak knee braces, a table; and the oak and birch beams will be worked back into a residential timber frame. If most products in our lives go from the cradle to the grave, this wood has avoided its fate and hopped right back into the cradle.

The first time I stepped into the barn it spoke to me. It told me of its history as huge trees brought down by men and horses, then worked by hand into a frame and raised-a home for dairy cows, hay, and plows. I learned of the times the Sanders had need of more space; additions were put on after things like concrete and lumber mills were invented. Both in construction and deconstruction, the barn's stories prove that legacies are a collective effort and take time. As it turns out, we have many to thank for the unexpected beauty which comes our way. I find it exciting the way the barn keeps telling its stories in ways Ed Sander never would have imagined. And, I'm looking forward to the stories our own beetle-killed pines have to tell in the future. 

© 2008 HomeLink Magazine | Park Range Publications All Rights Reserved.