A Life You Don't Want To Leave

Fiona over at Rowangarth Farm made a comment to my blog entry of Monday this week, "Leaving Home." She wrote of a short trip she made this week into the "big city" nearest to her and how much she wished she was still back on her farm rather than doing what needed to be done away from home.

In her comment she wondered, "When did I become such a homebody?"

It's so easy to become a homebody if your choice is to live on a homestead/farm, because it becomes a way of life that is difficult to walk away from even for a short period of time.

For starters, there is so much to do on a homestead. Sure, a lot of the stuff "to do" could be classified as work but benefits gained from that labor are almost enumerable.

Perhaps mucking out the barn or cleaning the chicken house isn't high on the list of fun things to do, but it's hard to beat that feeling satisfaction and accomplishment when it's done.

Getting the garden planted is work for me. There is so much to do at once and in many instances, you can't even see any results at the end of the day. But when all those seeds start sprouting and make the transformation into orderly rows that turn into edible vegetables . . . now there's a reward for a job well done.

Preparing a meal for yourself or your family with produce from the garden (whether it be fresh or preserved) or eggs or milk products or meat from an animal you raised gives a personal satisfaction which can't begin to compare to purchasing the same products from the grocery store. You did this! You produced this by using the ingenuity, organizational skills and muscles of your own body. And the nutritional benefits of such a home-produced meal to that body are priceless.

What kind of recreation can surpass a walk in the woods or a picnic in the meadow? What about watching the birds at the feeders? If you're ever in need of a calming influence, sit still for a while and watch the ducks and geese on the pond.

I don't know of anything much better than strolling through a well-tended garden in the early evening or watching your animals eagerly going out into their pastures or pens first thing in the morning.

What better life's lesson could you give your children than watching a calf, lamb or goat kid being born?

On a homestead with all it's responsibilities and work and gratifications and pleasures, you aren't merely existing; you are living. You are responsible for other lives. Those lives, both plant and animal, give back to you each and every day in countless ways.

Given a choice, why would you want to leave the life you experience on the homestead for the often artificial, contrived, unnatural, sterile life elsewhere when each and every little task you get accomplished on the homestead enriches and improves your very life. On a homestead you are to a large (or small!) part controlling your destiny.

My dictionary defines the word homebody as: One whose interests center on the home. When your "home" offers you a life that is so rewarding, so interesting, so alive why indeed would you want to leave it?