Greenjeans Farm

“We wake up in the morning - old hat, think nothing of it.  We might even grumble at the early hour, or the cold floor, or the rain.  But what a miracle that we have another day at hand!  We have another opportunity filled experience to embrace.  Where is our gratitude?  Start the day with gratitude, and feel that gratitude lift us above any seemingly annoying little non-issues to appreciate all that we have, and all that we are.”

  -Lissa Coffey

I have been practicing a couple of disciplines this new year, so far…..   I am not really great at discipline, as anyone who knows me knows!  Each morning I get up and the first thing I am trying to put in my mind is gratitude!  No negativity or worry.  Just what makes me happy to get up this morning?  What about today makes me grateful, gives me strength and makes today more special than yesterday?  It might be as simple as “It’s not still Monday!”  Or “I get to plant radishes!” Or I’m going to sing those Ipod songs in the car all day while I have to drive!   Or I found these fabulous Dinner plate Dahlias!  Cheap!   What ever it is, it is meant to cherish and enjoy!  Hell, I am the kind of person that can even enjoy dirty fingernails! And I love the smell of manure mixed with dirt!     

Today it was the rain!  How fresh everything smelled!  I could see the rain feeding the roses I planted on Saturday with the  stinky egg shells and coffee grounds I saved, and the buds swelling on the fruit trees in the waxing moon!  Also knowing because of the humidity I don’t have to water the green houses until day after tomorrow gave a welcome break.

And when it comes right down to it, we have soup made from our weekend  meat splurge and biscuits and butter and milk and left over key lime pie!  Life doesn’t get much better than this! 

Tommorrow it is the plants.  They are my real focus this year…..     

“Happiness isn’t having what you want, but wanting what you have.”  This is our family motto.  These words are in a frame in my kitchen above my stove and have been since my children were toddlers reminding me and them to be happy every day for the people and things that bless and add to our lives. 

In the summer months it seems like I spend my days in the kitchen.  Cutting, Chopping, Canning, freezing, drying, sweating, more canning.  My husband Jeff harvests and drops baskets in the kitchen and putting it up is my responsibility.  There are times when I wilt to the floor when a new basket hits the door, but I have that farmer mentality; “do it now, it’s ripe, it’s at it’s peak, what else could I possibly do with a tomato, basil, corn, a cabbage?”  Later on in December and January I thank myself for doing something with that tomato, basil, corn, cabbage.  We make the best Marinara on the west coast!  And Jeff makes the best spaghetti ever!  And then he makes Chicken with the sauce!   And there is nothing like homemade red or green tomato catsup or relish. And then I have my friend Barbara call me to let me know that her sourdough starter is ready and she wants to share!  Good I’m doing spaghetti on Sunday!  Another neighbor has a bottle of wine, and another wants to do sausage! Another has Abolone that she wants to trade for beets!  (go figure)   I am famous for cherry and peach wine!  Tastes great on a January night in front of a fire!    These are the things your life is made of.  It’s the cookies at Christmas and the caramel apples at Halloween.  These are the things you take to your grave!   

Some of the happiest moments come in the most odd times and carry you through your day if you open yourself up to the world around you.  It can be as simple as getting up before sunrise, grabbing a cup of coffee and listening to the frogs and crickets and then as the sun starts to come over the hills the birds and roosters and cow symphony.  A flash of a smile from a teenager that “used to be your baby”.  How rare!  Having a real baby wave at you in the grocery store, then turning down another aisle and having an old woman wave at you from the motorized cart and ask for some help grabbing some garlic! How could a life be better? 

All I’m saying is live in the moment you are in.  It is a whole lot better than regrets or what if’s.  No worries about what you want because it will happen if you live in your moment. 

There is a framed postcard in our bathroom that greets me each morning on the shelf where I keep my make up brushes.  It portrays a 1950ish beautiful blonde woman ala Lana Turner in full make up and the caption on the bottom is “Frugal is such an ugly word.”  There is also a framed postcard on another shelf in our bathroom that portrays a 1950ish beautiful red headed housewife type and the caption on the bottom is “My Garden Kicks Ass”.  

These two postcards totally explain my relationship with frugality.  On one hand thinking frugal is a pain, on the other hand it can be greatly rewarding and a heck of a lot of fun.  The fact that I chose to place these two in our bathroom is beyond me.  I guess I think of the bathroom as a place of reflection!  And I am definitely a split personality.

There is the me who wants to be able to live in the Pottery Barn Catalogue.  And there is the other me who looks at the pictures in the  Pottery Barn Catalogue and can figure out how to get the same look and feel at a fraction of the price!  That spurs me on to other frugal adventures.  It would be wonderful to be able to hire people to decorate your home, or landscape your property, or if dogs and cats and mud and dust and fly’s didn’t exist!  And yet it is rewarding to be able to plant with abandon and make things grow and have a beautiful multi colored frog visit you in the bathroom while you are brushing your teeth.  And to not have to pay $300 for a slip cover that your dog is going to destroy in a matter of months. 

I long for an all white living room, I always have.  If I ever lived by myself I would have one, it would also have a view of city lights and ever changing floral themes in the room.  But I live  on a working farm with the people I love, so I won’t attempt an all white living room any time soon and if I ever get there I think it would be initially satisfying, but really lonely. You are never going to get alot of people that want to live in an all white house.    And hey, I can always go to my all white living room in my head and the people I love know not to bother me when I’m there! 

Visiting second hand and consignment stores rather than “antique” shops.  Making new friends, finding friends who have saved what they tore out of their homes and are willing to give you that wood that is just laying around, or the clawfoot tub that didn’t fit in the new bathroom. Or trading a tent for a mattress!   Buying that fabulous three door refrigerator that is marked down by 50% because there is a scratch on the side that no one will see.  These are the things that make frugal fun.  Trading plants and recipes with a neighbor.  Buying a side of organic beef that two families can share!  Now that is fun!  That is participating in your life, being conscious of what you are doing!

There are a lot of people who think they are entitled, either because of education or their “place” in society, what ever they think that is.  But none of us should think that it’s not work, getting up everyday, hitting the ground running.  Here and there you slam your head against a wall or fall down and brush yourself off and hit the ground running the next day!  The only rule should be it is never at the expense of another. 

I am not sure what this whole ramble means, except that I am leading up to taking a sledge hammer to my 7 foot living room ceiling.  Honey get the tarps out and catch on to the vision! 

I did a smart thing earlier this year and managed it in a very dumb way.  I transferred my banking accounts to paperless reporting via the internet.  I patted myself on the back for not wasting all that paper and helping to reduce both ours and the banks carbon footprint, marveled at the way you can categorize your expenses right on line and print off the neat little reports, and went on my merry way.  Each month I received an email from the bank reminding me my paperless statement was available on line.  “That’s nice”, I would think to myself, “it’s ready”.  It really wasn’t necessary to do anything, I’m paperless right?  And I can check my account on line anytime I want…..  My little three ring binder where I would usually put my statements and check copies stood empty all year save for the first statement and the pretty reports I put in it.

Then day before yesterday I sat down to do my taxes.  Pretty straight forward here, income from my day job and Jeff’s part time endeavors and the farm.  Expenses tracked via statements, check stubs and receipts.  I quickly realized I had no statements saved or printed, no pretty reports, no categorization.  Eight hours, a stiff neck, a good ol’ excel spread sheet and a bottle of wine later I had captured the year, completely run out of black ink in my printer, and our taxes were 99% done! This year I will remember the stiff neck and the entirely wasted day  and send myself little annoying reminders regarding due diligence. 

The interesting thing that happened as a result of all this is I categorized not only the expenses for the farm, but every expense we had over the past year.  Some 1200+ transactions.  I am not much of a budgeter and we tend to live feast or famine, we are very frugal and always live well, but I’m into effortless these days and preparing for worst case, and let’s face it, when you are a farmer, some months are better than others.  Please indulge my feeble attempt to explain my utter disregard for saving money for a rainy day here. 

I took the total of every expense and divided it by twelve to get our average monthly expense. (I would love to say I always knew these figures in the back of my brain, but that would be a lie) I then compared the expense against our average monthly income after taxes insurance and house payment.  I then added in our projected refund from our taxes and portioned that out on a monthly basis.  Sure we will soon have money in our savings, but over the course of the year that will go out and not come back in.  We were still 200 dollars a month short!  At this point I panicked!  I can’t demand a raise!  I am lucky to still be working!  I could sell 20 more CSA shares….. but where would the time come from?  Jeff could get a full time job, but who would take care of the farm?  And there goes the CSA!  We could give it all up and move into town into one of those “Bank owned houses” that are now selling for about ¾ of what they are worth, totally not an option.    

So I sat in my wine induced eureka moment and thought of ways to shave it off the expense.  

I looked at the phone bill, and realized we don’t really NEED call waiting or caller ID or long distance for that matter. And we have a good ol’ fashioned answering machine.   We all have cell phones which combined are cheaper than our ATT bill.  However being in a rural area we do need basic local service for internet.  -75.00. 

Our electric bill has been the bane of our life for the entire time we have lived here.  We heat our home with wood, but somehow our electric bill is always huge.  We do have a hot tub that we enjoy most mornings and we do not wish to give that up.  We have to run 2 freezers and refers to preserve and keep the harvest.  I have given up fighting with PG&E and am going to put us on an automatic payment plan that averages your expense over the course of so many years.  -25  at least. 

Then I had to look at our grocery bill.  We love to eat, and eat for fun and enjoyment!  It is our entertainment, we don’t get out much.  Jeff is a fabulous cook and I am a fabulous eater and a food junkie.  Food to us is wealth.  And our expenses show it.   Food is the bulk of our expense other than our house payment.  I made the commitment to myself to save 400 dollars a month on food BANG, just saved it.  I know there is room in there, and we have all the veggies and fruit that we need from the summer, that is as long as we keep the PG&E going to keep the freezers running.  Thus the Toni and Jeff challenge.  Oh yeah baby, there will be more to say on this topic!