Answer I - How I got here...

Q: Hiya Paul, have been reading your blog for a while and yes I am curious as to how you came to the life that you now have. A little info would satisfy my curiosity :-)
Best wishes
~Babs
Well Babs, here you go. (I'll get to the other questions in order if that's alright?) It's probably more information than you could ever have wanted, but it is a good intro to me and It's something that I'd like to have down in print for the future anyway. I hope you enjoy.

A: I have to admit first off, that while we do do a lot of things around our house that might/do raise some eyebrows when seen or mentioned; feeding my chickens first thing in the morning in my go to work casual dress clothes before I head out, making homemade cheese or yogurt, grinding wheat for flour etc. I don't really see ourselves our lives as all that different. We take our kids to a pretty normal school (Charter school though...LOVE IT!), I work at a normal 40/hr week job and we live in a very suburban area just north of Salt Lake City UT. But on the other hand, unlike our neighbors, we don't have dogs barking in our backyard, we have chickens clucking and announcing the arrival of fresh eggs, I come home from a full time job and work many days until the sun is down to accomplish the things at home that I feel are just as important to our family as my going to work outside the home. We are a little different, and evolving all the time. But that's the root of the question isn't it? How did we get where we are today?

I have to take most of the credit for initially steering our ship toward this harbor. I've always been a little bit different like that. Growing up in Southern California I had two great parents that really let me explore a lot. My dad taught me to use hand tools at a young age and my mom taught me to sew....err, fabric weld. We had a family bookshelf and I remember my favorite books being the Do-It-Yourself books by Time-Life or something like that. I've always had a passion for creating, doing, learning and experimenting. I wasn't a great student, but absorbed what I wanted. Around high-school, I started dreaming of building my own "RV". You know, the old hippy renovated school bus kind with the sweet barn wood walls and recycled everything. What can I say, there were a lot of them at the beach and I lived at the beach!

I've also had the opportunity to see much of the world and it's helped a great deal in shaping who I am. I was born in Sweden you see, and although I moved here as a baby, half of my family was still there. I took my first oversees flight by myself at 9 yrs to go visit family in Sweden, had the chance to travel Europe with my family as a 12 yr old (11 or 12...Mom, help me out here?) and went through checkpoint charlie in Berlin before the wall came down. After high school I studied art locally in San Diego but then had the opportunity to spend a semester studying (and I use that term loosely.) at the University of London, it was one of the greatest times of my life. A couple of years later I enlisted in the US ARMY. I needed some direction, and more than a little discipline. I got both in spades. I also got to spend two tours of duty in Saudi Arabia where I got to learn about the culture of the mid east in person. My last big adventure was almost ten years ago when my oldest son and I went to Singapore and Bali to visit my parents who were then living there. I bring up travel for one reason. Seeing other cultures, talking with people from different circumstances cannot help but shape a persons outlook on the world. I know it did mine.

Recently, if nearly ten years is recently, I met and fell in love with a woman that can only be described as my soul mate and while today we are living a pretty comfortable life, that wasn't always the case. When we met, we were both going through very messy divorces. It wasn't the best timing, but like I mentioned in my last post, it's hard to go wrong following your heart. The first few years we were together we were basically broke. We got help from others, did what we could, and just kept plugging along. We have known what it is to want, to be burdened with debt and to feel helpless. That is not a feeling either of us wants again.

A couple of years ago, we began a process of "cleaning house". Two of our sons had been diagnosed with asthma, and one had missed nearly three weeks of school from it. We didn't know where it had come from. No one on either side of their family tree had it and we didn't know what to do. We learned about how pathogens and chemicals in our homes and food were so common, and how many experts believed that they were a great deal of the reason for many children's illnesses. We made a decision to start small and added on over time as we learned things. We made changes to our home like removing carpet and sealing our walls will zero VOC paints. One thing lead to another and food was the next logical step in our evolution. I began to see what I believed, still believe, was a threat to our future food security in the industrialization of it and it's reliance on fossil fuels that are reaching their peak. I got to a point where I was getting depressed because I wanted so badly to move to a place with some land. To have a small but productive acreage where we could do more for ourselves but couldn't make it happen. It was then that I found the Path to Freedom site, and my eyes were open to a whole new world of possibilities. A~ and I began to change our focus toward producing as much sustainable, healthy and secure food sources as we could right here on our 1/4 acre property. We expanded the garden, worked towards making keeping hens legal in our town and have been actively encouraging others to do the same.

It's been a long strange trip, to quote "The Dead", but I couldn't be happier with how it's going so far. A~ and I often work side by side. We have a common goal and faith in our future. We feel secure in our ability to provide food for our family and live in a healthy home. Our oldest son, the one who missed so much school, has hardly missed a day in the last two years. He still has triggers, but it's controlled 90% without medication. The future looks like it'll be a interesting one...but that, is a topic for another post.
Till then.
P~

Quote of the day...& maybe a little hope.

Our imagination is the only limit to what we can hope to have in the future.
Charles F. Kettering (1876 - 1958)

It's been so long since I last posted a quote of the day, when I found this I had to put it up. It's a pretty simple thing isn't it? If you can imagine it, you can make it so. The only limit is what we can imagine. So what's the big deal about it?

I've found myself thinking a lot lately about the state of things around me and in our world. I mean of course I have right, the economy is tanking, politics has become little more than a dog and pony show and we face things like peak oil, GMO foods etc. etc. Of course I've been thinking about it; I know you have too. So think about what you imagine for the future. Think about the first thoughts that come to your mind. What is it? Do you picture a world of peace and prosperity? Healthy cities with a renewed connection to community and the land? New economies spurred to growth through the joining of necessity, creativity and common sense oversight? Maybe you do, I try to. However, more often than not lately, I find myself imagining a world with more wars over energy or to prop up a staggering economy, unhealthy cities where everyone looks out for themselves and worries about the neighbor cheating them, and a slowly fizzling economy struggling to hold onto it's once top place on the world stage like a too-old prom queen who refuses to grow up.

My point is if we can only imagine the worst, then that is in effect the limit of our hope for the future. How do you get somewhere you can't even imagine exists? But what if we imagine the former? Peace, community, prosperity; couldn't we make them real things? I'm tired of imagining the worst. I want more for my family, I want more for my city and I want more for myself. I want to see these things come to fruition. I will imagine the best for the world and I'll do my part when I can to nudge it on it's way. I hope you'll look at your imaginations of the future and see how you've allowed yourself to dream of the days to come. Picture the change you want to see. Believe that the change will come and expect it any day.

We owe it to ourselves.
Namaste
P~

Marathons and sprints

Ever notice that sometimes in life you're jogging along at a good steady marathon pace, focusing on the long term goals and just kind of plodding along? While other times it seems like your in a sprint to a finish line that is coming up quicker than you expected. That pretty much sums up the last week or so around our house. Problem with that was that while I was trying to do well on the sprint I was trying to run a marathon at the same time.

What the heck am I talking about? It's like that commercial, "Life comes at you fast". In one week, I had to dig and set posts for our fence, then install the fencing a couple of days later. In the time when the fence posts were setting, I was trying to do some basic prep work in the garden beds to prepare for the big planting push, clean up the yard for an outdoor party over the weekend to celebrate with family and friends our children's baptism. Which was a whole other process, taking a bit of time in the afternoon meeting with church missionaries a couple of days during the week. All this time I was getting up and into work early and staying late to meet a deadline that came today. (I made it by the way, despite a 2-day issue that popped up.) Anyway, I felt like I was sprinting to get all the immediate stuff completed, while still running the marathon that is vegetable gardening.

Whaa Whaa Whaaa... all pissing and moaning aside, it was a good weekend. With A~'s birthday on the same day as the baptism, and our Anniversary on the same day as their confirmation; May's a big month in our house. I'm happy to say I think I can get back to a bit of a schedule again, and perhaps get my blog to be a little more regular once more.

Thanks for the patience.

P~

Sometimes life is cruel

I've been making a concerted effort lately not to complain but I have to say that life is sometimes cruel. If you read this blog at all you know that we have been dealing with trying to put in hardwood floors to help with our sons asthma. This has in essence thrown our house into chaos because we have half our flooring torn up, and half the new flooring put down, only a portion of our stairs finished and none of it sealed yet. During this time, we had our cheap driving car die. So I begin driving the truck the few miles to work on the hot days when I just don't want to ride my bike. Then the Radiator hose of the Truck blows. OK I'll just ride the bike for a couple of days until I can get it fixed, no problem. I get the hose fixed, and the A/C quits working two days later. Again, oh well, I can deal with it. Another week goes by and our other cars maintenance required light goes on. Now this weekend I get news that my son from my first marriage is in a bad situation with his mom, and may need to come live with me. This is not bad news mind you, but it does bring with it it's own sets of issues.
I want to state for the record that I will not give in to life's cruel hand. This blog is about the possible and by golly it is possible to get through this too. Somehow these challenges are here to strengthen us. I don't know how, but they are. My wife and I are united and in that state we just can't be beaten. Believe me, life's tried before! When you have these moments or periods in life cling to those you love, ask for help when necessary, and above all believe and know that this too shall pass. We have all been given a wonderful gift to be able to make real that which we truly believe in, sometimes we just have to go on faith.
P~