We need a homesteading challenge (!)

I have been lured in by the rush of the wild. I am swept away, deliriously enticed, hopelessly captivated, drawn deep within the untamed wilderness of Alaska: The Last Frontier.

People, I LOVE this show. I love everything about this show. I love the people on the show and the homes on the show and the daily grind on the show and the seasonal rhythm of life executed on the show.

You know how certain subjects just speak to you? Concepts and messages and lifestyles that reverberate the strings of your heart, echoing in your mind's eye again and again, stimulating your senses and intriguing your imagination and and stirring your hunger and inspiring you toward a higher and more noble ideal? Sort of like how I used to crane my neck around to count heads every.single.time. I saw a mega van cruising down the road with a bandwagon of children and think to myself, one precious day....Lord, please, let that be me. Yeah, like that. It's how I feel about homesteading. I'm crushing on it fairly sustainably.

Just the tiniest smidgen, we do try to engage in mindful conservation and sustainability. Like the way we lived a year with earnest intent to buy nothing new with only a handful of unavoidable exceptions. And how we raise chickens and garden and can and line dry and wear hand me downs and buy used and work to avoid monumental commercialism as much as possible. But that Kilcher family? Whoa. They are hard core. As in no running water, hard core. As in living off the land and participating in every aspect of gathering and preparing your sustenance and utilizing what you've got on hand rather than counting on Amazon to meet your needs and becoming intimately, respectfully acquainted with the animals that give their lives so that you may maintain yours and teaching your children reverence for the value of sweat-of-the-brow-labor and coexisting within the blended cycle of bounty and lean that nature provides. Jeez. It all just gets me right here. {Wipe small tear from the corner of my roused eye.} And I thought we were pretty tough for using our wood burning stove as our only source of heat! Um, not so much...

Maybe it's my fondness of all things old fashioned, but for whatever reason, conservation and simplicity and making do with what you've got and opting out of the rat race and jumping off the treadmill and exerting yourself with physically exhausting labor and stopping the endless craving of excessively indulgent want resonates with me in a big, huge way.

The Typical American Dream and the insatiable desire for material gain and the constant pursuit of The Almighty More have long been things I've been interested in carefully evading, not that I am always successful.

So, I'm thinking a fresh challenge is in order for the new year. I just don't know yet what it will be. If you've got any ideas, I'm all ears. Just don't ask me to move to Alaska, okay? Have I mentioned I despise the cold?

Dad trying to guess who made which gingerbread house. Much to the delight of the gingerbread masters, he always struggles with figuring it out...