Some Words of Wisdom

The life of the pioneer holds much appeal for present day Americans-and well it should, for it is to these strong, courageous people that we owe so much of our heritage. The question still comes to us: Why do we who have so much take such pleasure in reliving the past with those who had so little? The answer, perhaps, is not too obscure. When the "little" that one possesses comes so grudgingly, there is careful sorting of priorities. If life is simple,the simple things held onto must be of lasting value. Life tends to lose its clutter and only what is of true worth is accepted and cherished-be it material possessions, friends, personal attitudes or spiritual concepts.

Jannette Oke

Your Going to do What?!

I know it sounds strange, wanting to live back in time, but it's something I've always wanted to do. When I was 13 a wagon train came through El Paso, Tx, sort of a living history museum on wheels. I was in love! I would have jumped on any wagon that would have taken me!! I have always loved "old" things, my mom's mom, Grandma Frankie, also loved old things. She collected antiques before any knew they were antiques. She would embarrass my Grandpa Ralph by making him load up all manner of "junk" and take it home. Because of her, our family has some lovely old things. I think she would be proud of our family, although she might think we're a bit nuts!! Actually I think most people will think we're nuts, I mean in this day and age who goes without electricity on purpose? Well, the Amish, but that's another post. Dane and I have prayed about this for going on 5 years. We finally feel now is the time, our older children are willing and the younger ones are excited! It will be hard to leave family here in New Mexico, very hard, but we feel that this is the direction we should be going. Self-sufficiency is what it's all about, not needing to be dependent on outside sources for food, water, entertainment, ect. Now don't get me wrong, I think we all need a community of like minded folks from which to draw strength and camaraderie. I'm talking about not needing a grocery store everyday just to get by. Dane and I can't think of a better way to show our children the best way to love life than to let them really live it bare bones style!
I have so much more I'd like to write, but the baby is ready for breakfast and he will not wait any longer!
Misty

Life is a Journey.......

....and we want to go backwards!

Yes, that's right the Anderson family is traveling back in time. For some time now we have dreamt of living on a farm in Missouri. By the way, we are currently in New Mexico. We want to farm with our children and give them each a piece of the Family Farm when they reach adulthood. We would like to start from the ground up and build our house and barn and outbuildings. Just the way it was done 150 years ago. As we were thinking of our farm and the way we wanted it to look, we thought, why have a farm "look" old-fashioned, why not "make" it old-fashioned? The more we talked the more excited we got! We could move to our land and "pretend" it was 100-150 years ago. The benefits would be numerous, no electricity would mean no movies, no Wii, no computer games. This would tranlate into more family time, time together, not separated in different rooms being entertained by different forms of technology! No modern conveniences (dishwasher, clothes washer, power tools, ect.) would mean we would WORK together, really work, we think this would be one the best gifts we could give our children. We are hoping to move in the spring of 2011, so we have about 9 months to really educate ourselves and prepare for life in the "olden days"!

Why are we starting a blog? We won't have electricity, so no computer, right? First we would like to record our journey and save it for posterity, we could write in a notebook and we will be doing some of that, but we think others would be interested in what we are doing too! So a blog seemed to be the right medium. We will keep a laptop and a digital camera for updating the blog. We are thinking of using a generator or solar to power them.

There are no hard and fast rules to our Family Adventure, we'll just have to see how it all works out, won't you join us and see where the Anderson Family goes from here?