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I don't think I wrote about last weekend, but it was a really great weekend.
We went to a local State Park to go on a "Wild Edibles" hike where the ranger showed us different forest things that were edible. I had arranged for a meeting there with a Meetup group I am part of, that focuses on permaculture gardening and such. I met some interesting people with whom I'll probably keep in touch. In fact, we are meeting with one of the guys tomorrow and looking forward to it.

Maybe talking to him and having some sort of exchange will be useful for us. I feel like the more we talk about the homestead, the more it gets ingrained into our minds that that is what we are doing and that it's going to work for us.

Last weekend we also went to visit someone that I have grown to love dearly, Seth and Andrew's friend John. Ive mentioned him before, because we made a visit in Feb or March to his place. He has a little homestead set up several hours north of us.

Some people have a really good vibe about them and John is one of those people. I loved being at his place, it truly is an escape from all this other stuff that's going on. His porch is a concrete slab, maybe 1000 sq ft with a long sloping roof that starts at the second story of his house and runs all the way down into his garden where he was growing tomatoes and malabar spinach.
While we were there, a heavy rain broke out and it was amazing to be under that long roof with the rainfall resonating overhead. I love that rich, earthy smell that rises up in a good rain. We were surrounded by it, standing on the porch of his concrete fortress of a home. It felt like a place for people-- a big human cave enveloped in some warm sense of welcome.
I ate plenty of figs from his trees and admired the fruiting pecans and hickories. His ponds were stocked with fish and his gardens were bursting with tomatoes, okra, corn, and some squash.

What we create here in Louisiana doesn't have to be the big concrete cave, but I want to be able to transfer that feeling to some extent.
My little world is more like camping. The wooden porch gets soaked and soggy in any significant downpour-- there's no shelter there. I want to feel like I can sit outside and enjoy our place without being beaten by the rain or by the violent sun.

Seth and I have decided we're going to get rid of the internet. It manages to suck the creativity right out of me. I've kept it because I feel like I need to keep in touch with people, but I end up getting so overwhelmed that I just can't keep up and my mind goes numb and hours disappear.
I've mentioned this before and it still holds true, so we're just going to get rid of it and I'll access it once or twice a week from the library.

Today has been nice because for the most part I've left it alone. It's only now that I am writing because I feel encouraged and somewhat productive. I always feel a lot better when I'm actually doing things instead of obsessively searching the web for things I want to do, or might do, or would do "if only..."

So this wraps it up. Getting online only once a week will make it pretty difficult to keep up. I'll do what I can.
Take care.