Beginnings

I am a part time pioneer dreaming of a rural life. I have harbored a rural fantasy for as long as I can remember. My cousins all had horses and my grandfather promised to get me one if only we'd move back to Ohio. I begged my dad to move, but we didn't. We lived in a suburban tract home outside of Rochester, NY. It was the the Cape Cod style, not the Ranch style, white with black shutters. My mom had a green thumb and grew the tastiest tomatoes and biggest cucumbers during the summer. What we couldn't eat, we'd give away to the neighbors carrying bags across the street for delivery.

For all practical purposes I'm a city slicker with a hillbilly heritage. My dad and his two sisters were born in a log cabin in West Virginia at a time when home births were not the fashion, but the necessity. Their family moved to northern Ohio so Pap, my granddad, could get a job at Westinghouse working there for over 30 years before retiring. Granny never learned how to drive, but she could pluck a mean chicken and fry it up.

One winter in West Virginia, Pap worked as a lumberjack cutting down trees and made $75. When he told the story he added, “It didn't take much back then. No, it didn't take much.” Today it seems to take a whole lot more. With more stuff to buy and own and consume, it is hard to even imagine a time when we didn't need all of this stuff. I think about that a lot. I'd like to think that part time pioneering means that I am finding ways to be resourceful, conserving and creating energy in my own backyard.