You Might be a Homesteader If . . . .

Jenna at Cold Antler Farm just did this post, and then my mom, at A Home Grown Journal, copied it. Now, I'm in, too! (Plus, it gave me a break from the sweat dripping off my nose while working in head-to-toe bug netting out in the garden.)

Here goes (please add your own!):

You might be a homesteader if . . . .

• Your Scent of Summer is bug dope.
• A full woodshed provides you with an inordinate amount of comfort and peace of mind.
• Your pantry was the first (and as yet only) finished room in your house.
• You asked for an expensive wheelbarrow as your only birthday present.
• You received a chicken plucker attachment for your drill for Christmas. And you’re a girl.
• You wear Carhartts nearly every day of the year. And you’re a girl.
• You are no longer phased – in the slightest – at the most recent live animal the cat has brought into the house “to play with”. (Juvenile Yellow-Bellied Sap Sucker yesterday.)
• It’s “completely normal” to cradle a chicken in your arms one day and chop its head off and eat it the next.
• You’ve had several dead animals on top of the car or in the back of the pickup waiting for the next trip “out” so you could dump it away from the house.
• You think, “Well, that’s life!” when you go in the ditch 4 miles from home a week after massive surgery and you decide to walk home because you know no one will come along your road to help you because you live so remotely.
• You can’t stay overnight at friends’ in town after an evening out because you have to “close up and do chores” (the animals, garden, etc.) at home.
• You’ve done chores in your pajamas.
• You sleep with the window above your bed open – all year long – so you can hear if there are any troubles with the animals during the night.
• You put a broom in the grain barrel so that the chipmunk who eats out of it can GET out of it.
• You could – and have – fixed several wonderful, unexpected meals when you hadn’t been to the grocery store in 2 weeks, thanks to your livestock & pantry.
• You can’t easily take even an overnight away . . . because of all the animals & chores.
• You know the value of food and so load the deer up in the back of your truck after you accidentally hit and kill it on the road.
• You have to pee when you’re away from the house . . . and so you just step behind a building or tree and squat (or, yes, stand, you lucky men)!
• You have a biffy.
• You miss your turn-off on a hiking trip and end up walking out on the busy highway very late at night . . . and breathe a massive sigh of relief once you turn OFF the highway and onto a deserted back road.
• You carry a measuring tape, flashlight, and notepad & pen in your purse.
• There will be no such thing as ‘Retirement’ for you.
• Unless you leave home, there’s no such thing as a ‘Day Off’.
• You’ve raised baby chicks inside your house at least once.
• You have a wood cookstove. And use it.
• You would rather go to Home Depot, Menard’s, or a farm store than a mall. (And you’re a girl.)
• You have almost given up trying to get all the STUFF wedged into the pockets of your husband’s pants before you do laundry. Almost.
• You go to town with your “good jacket” on and completely forget that you’d collected eggs on the way out and slipped them into your pockets . . . and they’re all still in one piece.
• Your car has to be turned on and off by a marine switch located on the battery each time you use it.
• You desperately long for a barn and cow. To start with.
• You walk into the lumber yard, and the greeting hollered out is, “Hey, Chicken Mama!”
• Your husband has to drive every time you go to an “event” because you didn’t have time to put makeup on before you left . . . and you have to do it now. “Watch the bumps, please!”
• You get to the post office so seldom that they don’t even use your box anymore and just throw it all into one of their plastic bins for you to take home.
• You order sand & gravel by the yard and always have a few yards on hand “just in case”. And you always use it.
• Your husband goes fishing on the river for fresh fish for dinner, and you use the telescope upstairs to see if you can spot the canoe.
• You subscribe to ‘Backyard Poultry’ instead of ‘People’.
• Your husband makes you a bench for your garden and a surprise bench to set the basket of laundry on underneath the clothesline, and you’re tinkled pink!
• You realize that living The Simple Life is exhausting. But you wouldn’t trade it for the world.
• You think there’s no place like home.

And, you might be a homesteader in northern MN if . . . .

• You are covered in hot, sweaty bug netting every time you step out the door June 1^st – September 1^st.