Working for a life

There was a real nip in the air when I got out of bed yesterday. It was only 5 C (41 F) and when the sun came up the sky was bright blue, with not a cloud to be seen. It was windy and cold all day, the perfect day to stay indoors and knit, but, like most days, there was work to be done. We had hot porridge for breakfast, and as usual, I made enough for Hanno and I, the dogs and the chooks. It's a treat the chickens look forward to on these cold mornings and it fills their little bellies up with warm carbohydrates to keep them clucking and scratching happily all morning.

With breakfast over, I tidied up the kitchen, made the bed and cleaned the bathroom. I am using my soap and old terry towelling rags for most of the wet kitchen cleaning nowadays. That soap really cuts through food spills and any grease on the stove, then it's just a quick wipe with a clean damp rag, and a polish with a dry one, and it's nice and clean again. With the kitchen clean, I set to making the bread. Yesterday's loaf was a wholemeal and rye mix with oats and sesame seeds on the top. I vacuumed the house - I do this about once a week or so, I sweep on other days. After the vacuuming, I washed the floors using hot water with a splash of my liquid soap and vinegar.

I spent an hour in the garden while the floors dried. Hanno was out there erecting some posts for a lattice screen we will have outside our bedroom windows. We'll grow food vines, like loofahs, cucumbers and beans, there in the summer to shade that wall from the western sun ,and leave it open in winter to let the sun in. We had a cuppa on the back porch and then I went to talk to the chooks and inspect the vegetable garden. The cucumbers are ready to come out, the kale is really high - Hanno will pick it today for his kale and meat fest, the snow peas are starting to produce little sweet pods and there are some beans hanging like temptresses in the breeze. I planted lazy housewife beans this year, they're very similar to the blue lakes, but I keep eating them fresh from the vines so we don't have enough for eating with our meals. ;- ) I pulled out a few plants, picked a cauliflower, baby silverbeet leaves and some herbs and came back inside to bake the bread for lunch.

After lunch I finished off my Warm Earth article and emailed it in, went in and looked at Shane's quilt and decided to knit instead. I bundled myself in my rosebud quilt and knitted while I watched Time Team. This week they were looking for an Anglo-Saxon palace, but didn't find it. To all the others out there who watch this wonderful program, I like Phil the best. And yes, he is very much like Worzel Gummidge (another favourite of mine). After my break I tidied the front verandah, pruned back the camellias and wrote emails.

Late in the afternoon, I hand washed some jumpers and set them to dry on the back verandah, then came in to prepare our meal. Last evening it was baby silverbeet, herbs and cheese omelettes. We are currently getting three eggs a day with only the Australorpes and Rhode Island reds laying, but that is enough for us. Soon, when the rest of the girls start, we'll be able to sell our excess eggs and that money will go towards their feed. I made some little raspberry and apple pastries for dessert that we had, with tea, after the omelette.

There have been times in my life when I didn't think about happiness. Those were the days when I didn't feel happy at all and I didn't know it was possible to actively seek it out. Two things have changed now. Now I live with happiness every day and although I know it is possible to find happiness, my happiness now finds me. To many people, that day spent in my home yesterday, working alongside my husband, doing the chores that provide our needs, would seem banal and tiresome. To me though it is a joy to be here. Our work provides us with the life we wish for ourselves. It isn't hard work by any means but it is life affirming and enriching, and when we go to bed each night there is satisfaction knowing that we made our own lives that day and tomorrow we will willingly get up and do again.

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