Things I love and don't love about moving to Missouri

Well, we’ve been here a little over two months, and no regrets yet. Granted, I sometimes wonder how crazy we were/are to move from our city suburb home in San Diego to squashed between two Amish Farms on a piece of wooded, undeveloped land in the middle of the Missouri Ozarks. Our entire San Diego neighborhood is smaller than my backyard. Sometimes I feel like I’m living in the novel Christy, and sometimes I feel like I’m a millionaire who owns their own Central Park. I can literally go for a run and never leave my own property. Excuse me while I pinch myself over here.

I joke that we live in the “Little House in The Big Woods” because we have six people and a puppy living in a small, slightly decrepit, eleven hundred square ft house, and there’s nothing around us but woods. When the weather is nice, it’s fine. When it’s not I spend my days mopping up mud tracked everywhere and dodging snowballs. I particularly love that my washer and dryer are within tossing distance from the kitchen. If I look at Pinterest, I start to get discouraged, but when I think about my ancestors living in dirt huts or little log cabins, I perk up a bit. Honestly, I wasn’t happy in San Diego, so it’s much easier to have a good perspective. So let the record reflect (for future perusal) things I love and things I don’t love about living here (in no particular order).

Negatives:

1. We inherited two cats. The sellers never mentioned them, but apparently they came with the house. We are not cat people, but we’re learning. The kids have named them Lightning and Tiger. They’re very fat and happy cats, so I assume they’re living their best life as rodent sheriffs.

2. Our back porch is rotting. You have to pretend you’re in an Indiana Jones movie and step on the correct planks otherwise you risk dropping through to the septic tank…which also needs cleaning out and relocating.

3. There is random trash everywhere. The property was maybe a little too well loved and self identified as a garbage dump. The sellers cleaned up most of it, but there’s still a fine dusting of Dorito bags and miller lite sprinkled around. We’re working on it.

4. There is no Thai food here…or sushi.

5. You have to drive between a half hour to an hour to get anywhere. (This doesn’t actually bother me yet because the roads and countryside are so beautiful, but I’m assuming I’ll have to come to terms with it eventually)

6. Our California family and friends aren’t here and we miss them. We console ourselves with lures of visits, and my parents are coming out in a few weeks so there’s that carrot hanging out in front of us. (if you’re reading this, feel free to visit anytime! We offer great accommodations of tent camping and pond baths.)

Affirmatives:

1. We inherited two cats! Which means we have zero problems with mice. (knock on wood) They seem to have developed a vague league with a possum and armadillo. Not sure if this is concerning or not, but they all hang out on the back porch/yard with a bunch of bluebirds and cardinals, making the kids think we live in a real life Disney movie.

2. I learned how to use my wood burning stove! The thing is a behemoth, and after I finally cleaned the chimney, I still couldn’t figure out how to get it lit. I did grow up with a wood burning stove, so this was somewhat embarrassing. A couple from church learned of my dilemma and came over. They gave me a lesson, (my problem was there are FIVE dampers, and I only had the two I knew of open) and they brought us a truckload of fire wood…and eggs…and meat…and donuts, which leads me to my third thing…

3. People are unbelievably nice here. Far nicer than I was expecting since we wear the cone of California shame. So far I’ve been given bacon grease, quilts, farm fresh food and a whole host of other small things, like help with banks, explanations of how things work here, offers of loaner vehicles, tools and chimney equipment etc. I start to tear up if I think about it too much. We haven’t however met our neighbors yet (Amish or otherwise) so there’s that sword of Damocles hanging over my head.

4. Everything is inexpensive here (except for produce). You can take the whole family out to eat for less than $40. The kids are taking Jiu-jitsu which also comes with a gym membership for Jim, Jamie and me for less than a quarter of the price it costs in California. For the first time in my life, I can lay in a tanning bed or sit in a sauna while my children are being taught how to immobilize bad guys. I definitely call it a win win.

5. Our property is gorgeous. I don’t know if it’s one of those things where I just bonded and imprinted on it so I’m biased, or if it actually is that amazing. When we came out in September to look at properties and houses, I always slipped off my shoes and escaped away from the realtors to see if I could really picture myself there…like sense the bones of the place (hey, I know it sound’s super woowoo). This place was just magical. I would be fine if I never had to go anywhere… which really helps with long drives thing. Ahem.

6. Life is (mostly) normal here, like it’s still 2019. Even though 2020 was a great year for us, I didn’t realize how much we missed all of the little things that give us humanity. Crossing fingers that it stays that way, but if not, there’s always the possum and armadillo to talk to. (not counting the woods full of deer and wild turkeys).

The boys are settling in… they thought the armadillo was a bear at first, and they still run around barefoot and half dressed (even in the snow), so nothing’s changed there. Jim’s replaced and rewired a new electrical panel, and we’re working on the baseboards this weekend. All that’s left to do is remodel two bathrooms, build a garage, chicken coop, and well house, move the septic, put in leach lines, plant a garden, put up a fence, tear down an old shed and clear the road going through the woods.

At least we’ve got the fruit trees planted?

Coffee, slugs and a homestead

When you have all boys (or girls too...I have no idea), you can play a game in the morning where you pour your coffee and then try to dodge all of the flailing limbs, hugs, fights, parkouring and what-not with your coffee intact. It could be a slightly dangerous game if the coffee were hot, but “mom coffee” is never hot because it takes 3 hours to drink. It’s a perfectly safe game if perhaps a little hazardous for decorative pillows and carpets.

I listened to a podcast today that was talking about how we often outsource things to avoid the pain of dealing with it ourselves, and I think that’s part of what I’m dealing with when it comes to gardening. I don’t want to grow my own food, I want it to magically show up in the supermarket. Now that I can’t stand going to the grocery store, I’m more tempted to face the drama of growing my own food (even if it’s 1/23848 of what we eat… it’s the principle of the matter). It’s not easy though, something was eating my garden, so I dug out the diatomaceous earth from the bowels of the pantry and went outside to sprinkle it around my plants. To my horror, the flashlight revealed a scene akin to something from Stranger Things. My precious plants were covered in hundreds and hundreds of slugs all twisted around each branch and stem leaving slime, death and destruction.  Jim, Jamie and I picked them all off by hand and drowned them with salt. I think the experience may win as the grossest thing I’ve ever done. Only a few plants survived, but thankfully, I have a growing addiction to buying seeds off of home gardeners on Ebay so I’ve got lots of backup plants in various stages of development (sitting in things like milk and egg cartons because I refuse to go to the store). I just need to figure out what to do about the problem lest I allow the small slimy sociopaths to destroy more of my sweet baby plants. The DE seems to help a little, but not enough to deter them completely. Maybe as it gets warmer and drier here it won’t be a problem? 

We started out this whole Coronu thing with one pet turtle. Now our urban farm has expanded to include chickens, a pet boa, a beta fish, and a foster dog. So far everything except the snake contributes in some way. The fish fertilizes an aquaponics garden, and even the turtle water goes into the compost bin. In fact, if you count super tiny farm animals, we’re also the proud owners of a kombucha SCOBY, sourdough starter and a worm farm (although honestly, I feel more attached to the pepper plants that finally decided to sprout). 

Now I really never get to drink my coffee in the morning. 

Surviving the flood and the great chicken escapade

I’ve wanted chickens for a long time, but didn’t see any way to make it happen.

But necessity is the mother of invention, and there’s nothing like four growing boys and a limit on eggs at the grocery store (if there are any on the shelves at all) to force one to throw their shoe over the fence and figure it out. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who was thinking in this direction, because baby chicks were sold out everywhere I called. Mail order chicks from reputable places were back ordered until May and I didn’t think the chicken dream was going to happen until a friend found a mail order place that had some.

I am not one for fancy chicken breeds, I’ve tried to be the chicken whisperer in the past, but I don’t do well trying to keep up with Silkies or Polish breeds. I’ve played wet nurse, vet and undertaker to more “fancy” chickens over the years than I care to recollect, so I just wanted plain hardy Rhode Island Reds. …During this coronapocalypse I might as well have wished for the moon. 

We learned the hard way that California doesn’t allow mail order chickens in the state, and  it looked like all was lost. While I was trying to figure out a way to smuggle them across the Arizona border, my network of chicken spies alerted me that the local ranch & feed store received a new shipment of 200 New Hampshire chicks...first come first serve. I jumped in the car faster than you could say “but where will we put them” and high tailed it down there and came home like a rain boot wearing, spring version of Santa Claus, shouting “Merry Easter everyone, I’ve got presents!” and dumping out a cardboard box full of cheeping yellow fluff.  Thankfully we’ve got a giant snake terrarium (empty!) that’s been appropriated and turned into a chick brooder...which is kind of funny in a circle of life kinda way. 

The kids couldn’t be more thrilled, and it’s like having our own YouTube channel running 24/7.  Being quarantined with chicks, children and a worm farm while it rains for 40 days and 40 nights has got me feeling like a modern day Noah. Do you think he grew microgreens? Surely they didn’t live off of dried goods the whole time? Maybe he had a green house somewhere in the ark.

I was listening to a gardening podcast that talked about how seeds learn from the climate and soil they’re put in and then pass on that information genetically to their offspring. So if you have heirloom seeds that don’t do well the first year, gather the seeds and try again anyway because they probably “learned” to deal with whatever curveball you’re throwing at it. I feel like my plants this year though are getting a false sense of reality. I keep telling them not to expect rain like this next year and not to tell their children or grandchildren about it because it doesn’t happen very often. 

And yes, I am now talking to my plants. I haven’t quite succumbed to playing classical music for them yet or laying hands on them, so clearly I have retained some of my sanity. ...maybe.