Living Large In Our Little House

The mys­ter­ies of can­ning have finally been revealed to me.

As I’ve writ­ten before, I’ve wanted to learn to can since even before we moved to Our Little House. I had writ­ten a story sev­eral years ago on an older woman, her gar­den and her can­ning and although she invited me back for lessons, I never took the time.

When we moved here, I knew I wanted to learn and this year, I even included a bunch of canned jars of fruit on my vision board.

I asked our friends who are shar­ing their gar­den space with us if they can. “Oh, no,” Alicia told me. “I freeze every­thing, can­ning is just so much work.”

Rae, our end of the point neigh­bor, told me she would teach me if I sup­plied toma­toes from our garden.

This week, how­ever, she sup­plied a bushel of peaches of which we made peach jam. On the first day, we made sugar laced jam, on the sec­ond day it was sugar free.

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I know that the Gusher in the Gulf has every­one think­ing about the envi­ron­ment and our depen­dence on oil. I’ve been think­ing about it a lot at Our Little House.

If 9–11 didn’t start mak­ing us think about it, or the sky­rock­et­ing gas prices that hit an all time high in 2008, I think this was def­i­nitely America’s last wake up call.

Since my post about being depressed over the news, I’m sure many of us have found our own ways to deal with the dis­as­ter, to help relieve the pres­sure for the earth to give us  more oil.

Did you know that if every sin­gle American that dri­ves a car could reduce their dri­ving by 30 miles each week – in essence giv­ing up their cars for just one day – we could reduce America’s over­all con­sump­tion by 20 percent?

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On the 4^th of July, we went over to our neighbor’s house for the tra­di­tional bar-b-que and potato salad. They then sug­gested we go over to Bull Shoals Dam in their boat and watch the fire­works dis­play over the water.

I know, fire­works aren’t envi­ron­men­tally friendly, but see­ing them over the water was some­thing we had never expe­ri­enced. Part of the whole expe­ri­ence of mov­ing to Our Little House in a new area is to expe­ri­ence new adven­tures. Lack of jobs and money have pre­vented us from doing things for a few months and now we’re work­ing so hard, time is an issue.

The boat ride was pretty rough, bass boats don’t do well trav­el­ing at fast speeds on water­ways with a lot of traf­fic and once we reached the dam area, it looked like a float­ing city.

The fire­works, how­ever, were spec­tac­u­lar. Seeing them over the water really was an experience.

We made our way through the crowded rough waters back to our sparsely pop­u­lated side of the lake. The night was pitch black and Fred was still cruis­ing at a pretty good speed when I saw a shadow fly across the deck and hit my life jacket and land in my lap.

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Photo by Mary Nida Smith

One thing I love about Our Little House being so far out in the coun­try is the quiet.

I can sit in the morn­ing, as I have all this week, on the party deck or on the cov­ered front porch with the Fearsome Four, read­ing the news­pa­per and drink­ing cof­fee with noth­ing but the occa­sional buzz of the hum­ming­birds com­ing for a drink off of the feeder.

However, this sum­mer, there’s been an unnat­ural hum ring­ing through the moun­tains that the dogs have even noticed.

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