Homesteading and stuff....

The weather here has been so annoying.

Rainy and cold for the last two days.
Couldn't do a whole heck of a lot in regards to the cleanup efforts.
Today Tim and Anthony and his brother Steve were out there most of the day cleaning up.
They have already made a pretty good sized dent.
Not finding a whole lot that can be salvaged.
Tim is already thinking about his next course of action, he is about 100 steps ahead of everyone else, as usual.
I asked him today what good does he think will come out of this?
He told me that his focus is going to change and that he will be doing a lot more writing and teaching. His scrapping will continue as well as his building the soil on this property to be the most rich, fertile soil possible.
There have been so many people coming forward with words of encouragement and wanting to help him build up his tool supply once again.
I can't tell you how much this is appreciated by our whole family.
The two older kids have taken the incident very hard, but things are beginning to get back to normal. Caleb lost a lot of his own tools and many other irreplaceable items. Two tractors that were in his care that belonged to his Grandfather, and his Great-Grandfather. He keeps telling me how much he wished he was here when the fire started so he could have gotten things out before the fire consumed them.
Sam lost all of the lawnmowers he had collected as they came into the scrapyard and he was working on rebuilding.
I am not sure what Rachel lost, she hasn't talked too much about it.
Matthew is doing well, he is very resilient. He is taking the resentment his brother and sister are feeling towards him very well. It is going to take time for their emotional wounds to heal.
Mine too, for that matter. I think I have stated before that I am really bad when under stress. I was completely frantic before Tim arrived on the scene. So frantic that Rachel had to grab me and wrap her arms around me tightly to calm me down. She wouldn't let go even when I tried to get away. I look back on it and wish to God he had made me tougher so that I could have been the one keeping everyone else calm. I feel foolish for letting my emotions get so out of control.

OK, onto the topic of the cleanup...
We are expecting the men from the Northern realm this weekend.
They were originally coming down to meet Tim and learn a little about how we do things down here, but it has kind of turned into a cleanup weekend.
So far, Tim's brothers and Father have been here to help him.
Tim has been collecting all the scrappable material he can and loading it up into the scrap trailer.
Here are a few pictures I took today.


This is what's left of our hundreds of canning jars.


While it is sad to see this part of our lives come to an end, it is exciting to see the direction Tim takes next.
We know what we lost will take a long time to regain.
We also know that what could have been lost is far worse than the material.
Our kids are safe, everything else is replaceable
Our animals are safe, our home is safe, our food is safe, our seeds are safe, our powerhouse is safe.
We didn't lose anything from our syruping operation so we will not be slowed down a bit on that this season :)

I was trying to think of something homesteady that I could blog about, instead of focusing all the energy on the fire..
Everything has been harvested and is drying in our livingroom... which makes our space very limited in there right now...
We have deer jerky drying above the woodstove..I finished my second ragrug, and I think it is much prettier than my first one..
Matthew lost his first tooth...
My father-in-law made me the most beautiful bench for my birthday!
Note to self: change age on profile to 41 :(

Stephen got his first full time job at the Lowe's distribution center in Rockford.
I am very proud of him becoming a working man, making his own money.

We had a leaf raking day about a week before the fire. We worked all day raking leaves and carrying them to the compost piles. We had a little fun too :)

I again want to thank everyone for their comments and well wishes.
Anyone who wants to get ahold of Tim please feel free to email him at peetyuk57@yahoo.com
Or me at lori_howerter2@yahoo.com
or on my facebook page... http://www.facebook.com/lori.howerter?ref=profile

I will continue to blog about the cleanup effort in the coming week or two.

What do you say to a man who has lost so much?
That is a question I have been asking myself for the last couple days.
I am trying to be strong.. I am not really known for being strong in stressful situations, I am usually a basket case.
I am trying not to cry when I am snapping pictures of the charred remains of his life's work.
I am trying not to annoy Rachel with the question..."are you ok?"
I am trying to be patient with the younger two boys who don't seem to fully grasp the enormity of what has happened.
I have moments when I have to step away and weep for my husband's loss in private because I don't want to seem like a drama queen.
I am an over emotional cry baby from way back.
I read the comments on my blog, I read the emails sent to me, I read what people are saying about it in forums, the questions, the sympathy people are expressing... And I don't really know how to respond to it all.
One question that keeps coming up is..."does he have insurance?"
That question is both simple and complicated... no we don't have insurance.
That is the simple part.
The reasons behind that fact are the complicated part.
As I have stated before, we are not a part of the "system", we are off the grid.
We don't want anyone to have authority over the property, whatsoever, so we don't petition for the benefits that invite such subjection.
Freedom is taking responsibility.
You can't be free if you don't take responsibility for your own provisions and dealing with the consequences of your own mistakes.
Freedom is a choice, you can either choose to be free and pay the consequences whether they be good or ill, or you can submit to the authority of other men in the hope that they will coddle you in your time of need.
We don't need the coddling, we will clean up our own mess and take care of our own mistakes.
Most people don't understand Tim, and why he chose this path in life. Some people will never understand no matter how often it is explained to them.
I find it very difficult to explain it myself, but I do understand it.
Tim will be more than happy to discuss his life choices with you himself if he can find the time... peetyuk57@yahoo.com.

The cleanup was in full force today, even though it was cold and rainy all day.
Tim and the boys were out there all day long going through things, organizing and cleaning up.
Caleb came home today, he has been gone for two weeks staying with friends and didn't know about the fire until today. He had a lot of things in that shop, a lot of tools and the tractors that he put a lot of his own money into recently. I don't think it has really hit him yet, although as he goes through it and remembers everything that was in there, he says it is getting harder for him.
Rachel seems to be taking it very hard, but she will get through it in her own time, in her own way. She has been through worse, they all have, and they will get through this.

Here are a few photos I took today.


I hope no one mistakes my talking so openly about this as feeling sorry for ourselves or searching for sympathy from any of you.
I am merely trying to deal with my own feelings and thoughts during all of this.

It makes me feel so helpless and sad to think that my husband made his living scrapping, and using that money to buy and build all this for 20 years only to have to scrap it.

His life's work wasn't in vain though. We have plenty to work with and build from.

I want to thank Tim's father Roger, who was here bright and early this morning to help clean up.
Also Ron, and Tim's brother John for helping today as well.
Mostly I would like to thank Anthony for trying so hard to keep up with Timothy the last couple days :)
Anthony lives in the cabin on the other side of the pond. He has been here for a couple months now. He has become a member of our family. He has been working his fingers to the bone since he arrived here. The last couple days have been tough and he has not once complained.. at least not seriously :)

Thanks to everyone who commented and emailed. We really appreciate all the support.










........

Letters from Timothy....

Timothy has been up part of the night pondering and corresponding with a few of his friends.
He let me read a couple portions of those messages and I felt they would be relevant, here.
The poem below was written by MY grandmother.
Timothy isn't feeling terribly poetic right now.
Driven would better describe him.

.............................


All of my trials have been terrible, especially at the outset.
Every one of them puts greater distance between me, the accursed, and the people I have known all my life, the uninitiated. No one knows what to say.
No one can appreciate the magnitude, the pain, nor the loneliness out here on the cold, hard front. I don't know anyone who has willingly given up more, and then been required to endure such an unceasing flow of tragedy.

This is part of why I have insufficient patience for the likes of "certain people" who clumsily assume and end up putting their foot in their mouth regarding the whys and hows of my misunderstood walk and approach to life.
Know one knows better than I how far I have to go in the area of patience and compassion for the grossly naive.

That shop represented twenty years of me, my approach to provision, my efforts at accumulating at great profit what others throw away, my knack for gathering shit and rotting carcasses only to grow the sweetest smelling roses, and my very personality in how I set up my place to work.

That shop was a large part of me..... lost......again.....

As I stated before, it is not over. I don't know what the end of all this will be, but by everything that I have ever learned or grown to understand, there will be a day dawn so intensely bright at some point in my future that this hard and ever harder rock will be overcome for the good of it, and that, I must believe, for eternity.

In the interim, I keep my gaze forward, and walk.


Timothy


............

Seriously enough, the shop and barn were stuffed full, and I mean full, of material items that I, in my uniquely educated mind (forgive the not-so-humble reference) believed to be of the highest value to myself, family, friends and the unsuspecting for the purpose of dealing with the aftermath of a complete, economo/politco/socio holocaust.

Thousands of canning jars, grain storage barrels, nails, nuts, bolts, old, rare and hard to find hardware of every possible configuration, non-electric food processing equipment, industrial metal working supplies enough to build and sustain a small factory, wiring and tubing, multiple stacks of used lumber, cleaned and ready to build with, along with tons of other building and construction supplies..... not to mention my tools and equipment previously used potently on a daily basis for the purposes of building the soil, family and community here--

gone.

The sense of it escapes me, but the path goes on, and I see already where next to place my foot.



Timothy

...........



In the coming weeks, I will go into detail about the cleanup and will answer a few questions posed to me recently on forums and in comments.


This is a poem, written by my Grandmother years ago...

All Things Work Out for Good
by Viola Pearl Nordquist

All things work out for good we know,
such is God's great design;
He orders all our steps below
for purposes devine.

This is the faith that keeps me still
no matter what the test,
and lets me glory in His will,
for well I know 'tis best.

So now the future holds no fear,
God guards the work begun.
And mortals are immortal here
until their work is done.

Someday the path he chose for me
will all be understood.
In Heaven's clearer light I'll see
All things work out for good.

From little spark may burst a mighty flame. - Dante Alighieri


Tonight was the night of our big weenie roast.
After I got everything prepared for our guests, I decided to take a walk up the road.
As I was walking I saw an orange leaf... who's stem was imbedded into the gravel and the leaf stood straight up out of the ground... I stopped to look at it and thought it kind of looked like fire.
Being a firm believer in signs... I wondered what this could be a sign for in my life.
I think that about everything, usually I never figure out what the sign is for and I forget about it.
When I got back to the house, the boys were getting the fire going for the weenie roast, and getting the seating arrangements all set up around the fire.
I snapped a few pictures of the boys sitting around the fire and came in the house to double check everything.
I heard Rachel yelling outside about a fire, but couldn't make out what she was saying, but she sounded frantic.
We all ran around the house and saw that Tim's shop was on fire.
The fire was already out of control by that time so I ran in the house and called the fire department.
Tim wasn't home, he was on a run to get compost, but was to return home anytime.
The fire grew so fast and by the time I got back outside, the roof was already in flames.
We were completely frantic, not knowing what to do.
For those who don't know, the shop is huge, and that is where Tim stores everything, and I mean everything.
Things started exploding and I made the kids get back as far as I could.
Tim got here before the fire department and I immediately felt safe, as I always do when Tim is around.
The first thing he said to me was... "we will get through this"
I felt a weight lift with those words.
There were dozens of explosions and I was so scared the house would catch on fire.
Then Tim was gone, he disappeared. Rachel and I were very worried that he had went into the shop to try to save something. He had just went behind the shop to get the front loader out of the way so it wouldn't catch on fire.
The fire trucks started arriving just after that.
We live way out in the country, so it took them a while, and by the time they got there, all was lost.
After the fire department got there, I grabbed my camera and took some snapshots and videos of them trying to put it out.
By that time the explosions had ceased.
Here are a few.





Nothing could have prepared us for what we went through today.
The fire was accidentally started when Matthew decided to use a torch to burn the bailing twine that was wrapped around a hay bail because he didn't have a pocket knife to cut it.
Matthew knew better, but for some reason.... he did it anyway.
Luckily no one was hurt, and no animals were in that barn.
It took hours to finally get the fire down. The fire department just left for the night, Tim is outside making sure the grain bins don't catch on fire in case it re-ignites.

I can't even describe the magnitude of this devastating blow to our family.
Tim has spent years getting things stored up in that barn. Hundreds of thousands of dollars were tied up in farm equipment and tools.
Everything he used to make a living was in that barn, not to mention the things he was storing in there to help people in case the economy crashed.
I feel like my heart has been ripped out of my chest, I can't even begin to imagine what he is going through inside himself right now.
My heart is aching for him.
Nothing I can say or do will make him feel any better.
I can only stand by his side and go through this struggle along side of him.

Somewhere there is a light, we will find it.
Somewhere there is strength, we will find it.
Somewhere there is hope, we will find it.
Maybe not in this life, but we know it's there.

Thank you everyone for your help, thoughts and prayers.
Thank you to the Cuba, Avon and Fairview fire departments and Tim's brother Steve who was one of the firefighters who helped put out the fire.
And thank you to Tim's family and our friends who were here to comfort us.

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired and success achieved - Helen Keller