Growth is a double edged sword. Unchecked, growth can be cancerous and destructive. It is this type of ceaseless expansion that has put our society into the precarious environmental and financial positions in which we currently find ourselves. On the other hand, growth can be regenerative and life-giving. Following a forest fire or a bitter winter, the first green shoots to emerge from the earth bear witness to the earth's ability to restore life in the wake of disaster.

My goal for this blog is pretty simple and open-ended: I want to document and share with family and friends my efforts to incorporate an ever increasing degree of self sufficiency, voluntary simplicity, and environmentally-conscious design into my life as a would be urban homesteader.


Wednesday, February 2, 2011

They say it's your birthday...

One year (+ one day) ago, I started writing this blog. It was cold, there was snow on the ground, and I was chomping at the bit for Spring to get here. 366 days later, things are exactly the same. I'm not really sure what prompted me to start doing this. Mostly I suppose that I like being able to look back and see what I've accomplished. Conversely, I can also look back and see what I've managed to successfully put off (cough*rain water tank* cough). In any case, I'm certainly not trying to get famous considering that my "following" amounts to my brother, Autonomy Acres, and some Muslim guy who apparently subscribed to my blog by accident. Whatever.
I think the best thing that I've gotten out of doing this page is that it's given me the opportunity to check out a lot of other homesteading blogs. It's nice to see that there are other people out there who are interested in doing the same sort of things that I am. Through our collective successes and failures, we can help each other figure out how to live more self sufficiently. I need to be more intentional about helping to build that community. Along with adding a links section (something that I can't believe I've neglected to add for a whole year), I'll try to highlight a cool homesteading blog once a month or so.
The weather is frigid, and growing things seems a long way off at this point. In just a few short weeks, however, I'll be planting seeds and laying the ground work for the early spring garden. From there it's off and running for another year. Here's to 12 more months of trying to decrease my family's dependency and increase our self-reliance.

1 comment:

  1. Cheers and Happy B-Day! I like the addition of links to your page, it is always fun to find new stuff to read. I hear ya about this time of year, I couldn't wait any longer and started some seeds this last weekend - I am so done with winter!

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