kelseybacon.com

A very dear friend has been online this morning, afternoon where she is at as she has traveled beck to the UK for work.  The conversation has provoked thought that I would like to explore deeper.  The question of identity comes into it, as does the question of how am I adapting?  There is family to consider as well as myself in asking “Where am I?” 

Being where I literally am, it is not easy for family to understand how living away from one’s native culture for so long changes who you are to a level beyond their comprehending.  I know that comes off as some sort of elitist self-pity, but it is the case.  I am grateful for it too, because it helps me to gain an understanding of what my wife and kids are going through now as they are new to my country, which, as helpful as my family would like to be, is impossible for them to understand!  Most Americans buy into the American Myth, and dismiss out of hand any troubles adapting or cultural longings because they think that everything is better here in America as though everywhere else in the world is defined as “third world.”  Even if it is better in quality or content here, the truth is, you think of what you are used to as better.  So better for my Brits is British on many things!  There are a lot of things here they have been truly amazed at, and have thoroughly enjoyed, and in many cases these things have been “as compared to…”  But there are also things that have been sent for from Worcester, Worcestershire, UK. 

Happily, because the lifestyle in the US allows for much greater freedom than it does in the UK, which can be quantified and measured, but not by the unskilled in such matters, such as me, I can say that my family are doing well here!  We are lucky to have gone from living in a 900 foot council house in the UK, to a 2.3 acre property, 1930 foot house with horses, here in Nevada.  I have my grandparents to thank for such opportunities and making this transition possible!  We are an hour from Las Vegas, so the amenities of the city life are at hand, but that hour separates us into the country life, plenty of space to move about, and only the lights of the city glowing on the horizon at night to even hint or remind us that it is there.  Missus is working, but not in the city.  She is contracting freelance work off the internet, so she is free to work when she needs to, and not commute from the bedroom to do it, though a laptop is available should she decide she needs the outdoor air, or to work on the road between here and the next small town up from here. 

So to the question of adapting, I think things are going swimmingly.  Some things are still in flux.  I expect them to be for a long time.  But some things have taken root quickly in my family, and in me, which help to remove the toxicity that a former culture can invade into a person.  The horses are a huge part of that.  Of the three here, we are working on a painted mare now to get her to the point she can be trail ridden.  Throw either of the boys on top of a horse that refuses to move when wanted, or who moves unexpectedly when not wanted, and memories of England are banished from the mind while fear and concentration take over.  Who can consider any kind of homesickness when on top of a beast who weighs more than seven times your weight?  There are many such activities here, such as my missus learning to drive a car, everyone enjoying quad biking, chickens, ducks, dogs, cats, and horses to keep, more to plan for, and a landscape that is as foreign and stunning as Mars for them?  The strongest strings for any is family in the UK.  But the Internet has made it so much easier and cheaper to keep in touch with all of them!  As for the everyday things such as light switches and door handles, things work better over here.  In the UK, every vacuum cleaner we ever had would work great for four months from new, then begin to cut out after overheating during use.  It would have to be left to cool, and would cut out again before long whenever you went to finish the job.  It just has not happened to us yet over here.  And there is more floor to vacuum clean!  Things like that make adapting here very easy! 

I have a million other thoughts to consider in this, but frankly, it is time to get out of bed and get ready to train a horse today!  So I am going to do what has to be done, and get up and on with my day!  Typical of how we are getting on here! 

On Thursday I drove my grandparents and my eldest step-son to Northern Utah to stay with a relative overnight for a funeral in southern Idaho on Friday.  The Funeral was for the wife of a neighbor and friend of my grand-parents who had been in care for the last four years.  This particular couple had been married for (count them!) sixty-eight, yes, that’s 68 years! 

It is a humbling thought, and impressive! 

To boot, the the relatives we stayed with are a man who is in his final months with cancer, and expected to pass on soon, and his wife, who is bravely facing an almost certain future which could only be changed by some sort of trauma like a car accident. 

As a husband, and a father, this trip really did make me think about my wife, and my kids, and how much I appreciate them, and how I fill my roles to them. 

You could add to it the fact I was with my own grandparents and I watched them struggle with so many things on this trip. 

It has not been a depressing trip for me as I see the eventualities of life as inevitable.  There is always a risk of losing a spouse or a child, and I have seen it happen with too many people.  But I have seen those people carry on, and make a life that honors the ones that have passed away.  I have seen the opposite happen as well.  I know where I would rather be on that spectrum.  But for this moment I get to stand in the sun, no shade cast on me, I want to spare a thought for those I love, for those I have loved and lost, and include family and friends, and keep them in my heart as I fall asleep, to remember how thankful I am for each, and how important they all are to me. 

Kelsey Bacon

The Granary

How The West Was Won: Wire & Wood

The Tack Barn 1

The Tack Barn 2

Polar Opposites

Any favorites?  Comments?  Did you see a rat made of snow?

KB

Death is an eventual part of life.  If you live, then you must die.  So it is with a friend of the family this week.  We are sad at her passing, and wish her family well.  On Thursday I will be driving a small contingent from our family up to Idaho to pay respects at a service on Friday.  Saturday will return us home, and with any luck, in fair weather and safety. 

This will of course mean a break from all blogging and such for a few days. 

When I get back, I hope for fairer weather round here so we can get outside and put to use some of the reading the cold weather has allowed me time for!  There is still so much to do before spring breaks here if we are going to have any success at our adventures!  So much to do, and so little time!  Much of it learning, and much of it working..!!  Books out from the library now include books on horses, farm animals, and cheese making, as well as one classic Peanut’s comic collection for sanity’s sake. 

I think this week is going to be about getting some work done around the house, doing the drive up and back, and planning what to do next week after we are all back from the cold country! 

One last thing, since I am in a matter of fact mood, if you have not done it yet, go to The Prospering Peasant’s Facebook page and “Like” the damned thing!   

Ta,

Kelsey J Bacon

Logandale, NV

It is that time of year again when I get to dig out a pen or pencil, or a new document in Word, and swear off all of my bad habits, and vow to commit myself to new good habits.  This New Year has kept me so busy around the house that I have hardly given it any thought!  Yesterday we built a shelter for the ducks, and today we took down enough Christmas decorations to decorate our house in England four times!

So what will I call my goals for this year?  Well, I need to look at where I am at now, and it has to do with why I have not got resolutions for this year.  One, there is my photography, and getting a business going here in the US that is about it.  The second is my pet project, which has been keeping me busier than anything lately, which is The Prospering Peasant.  I need to get that running full steam ahead, and work on it every day. 

This last year we made such a huge goal in moving to America that this year needs to be about directing us towards our self sufficiency and self reliance.  That is again where The Prospering Peasant comes in.  This year is about finding our feet as Britons and Americans in our new country, and in the new country here in the desert.  We have already got ducks, chickens, and a horse, which is pretty unbelievable!  But we have them and need to learn to put them to good use for everything from food to work to fertilizer.  I have never killed my own food apart from fish, but as I have done a bit of that, how hard could it be to do a chicken or a duck, or eventually a goose?  We will see!  That is something I will be finding out this year! 

Where the future lies from here has a lot to do with the work we land and how we go about setting up our lives.  If we can stay local, and produce an adequate income for our bills and a little bit of disposable, then we should be more than fine.  It would be great to get a cow by the end of the year, and have our jobs and transportation sorted out.  But if there is no way to land work here, then everything goes back into the air again.  So resolutions on that level are hard to work out. 

With all of this in mind, there is a very good way to sum up my resolutions to one thing.  Live every day to the very fullest!  That is so much easier to do here in America, and it can be done in whatever fashion I choose..!!  So far, we have wanted to learn to live the way people did more than a century ago, and so far we have already got 13 different animals of three different species in a matter of three months!  There is no reason to stop now! 

Live every day to it’s fullest! 

The only thing that stands adding to it is to reassess the situation as needed.  So once a month, I will do that!  At the end of the month I will evaluate the situation and decide what need redirecting!  Then I will redirect it! 

Live ever day to it’s fullest, reassess the situation monthly, and redirect as needed. 

Kelsey Bacon

Logandale, Nevada

Here it is, the last day of 2010, and it is 7:23 in the morning, and I think I should get out of bed, but I just don’t.  There is a lot to do today in the duck pen, and to put a few finishing touches on the horse’s catch pen.  It might also be nice to sort out the chicken feeders to their proper heights, and see if any of the fowls are ready to go loose for a while in the garden or yard.  We also need to call to get a bonfire approved, and to prepare it with all wood out on the vegetable patch in order to add potassium to the soil and enrich it for growing.  Then the digging can begin.

So much to do…

I would like to see about enlarging the vegetable patch so that by the time we start planting, we have the entire back fenced area for growing, and not just the section allotted for it now.  The kids want to grow corn, and I think that for seven people, that is going to require some serious space, probably equal to about three quarters of the space we have on the entire vegetable patch now!  It would be most wonderful too if I could use the outer fencing as part of the planned chicken moat, but I will have to see what kinds of bugs are attracted to our garden and if it is worth it to build such a thing around the garden for the chickens to run in.  It is meant to be a way of controlling insects in the garden without using poisons. 

There is a 30 foot by 295 foot section of the property on the west end that runs the entire length from front to back that needs something doing with it.  I think we should put the horses in there to graze it off, then start leveling it off and preparing it for use as animal pens, or a place to grow fruit trees.  It is fenced completely, so there is plenty of potential there for just about anything as it is raw desert landscaped now. 

I have had an idea for the horse shelter too!  It could use a feed and tack room built onto it.  It would be dead easy to construct and could be added nicely onto the current structure right behind where I put Umber’s pen.  It would also add a bit of wind protection to that pen, and better shade in the evenings.  It would also centralize the care and maintenance of the horses to that one place, rather than using the end of the 35 foot horse trailer as the sole tack barn.  There is a saddle rack that holds two saddles on the cleaning platform, so it would be dead easy to use that as a rack in the tack room!  Maybe the cleaning platform, which is made of railroad ties, should be dug up and put next to the other horse’s catch pen.  That would really put everything horse related close at hand!

As I said, there is much to do for this old ranch hand! 

Moving the cleaning platform would free more space for the vegetable garden!  The water could be channeled back to the vegetable garden after it runs off the horses!  Then we could wash the horses and water the garden at the same time!  The only thing that would be interfered with is where the trailers get parked.  It would be ideal if a space could be set aside for them which is accessible from the driveway without being visible from the road, but where? 

There are many ideas floating around, and all of them useful material for The Prospering Peasant.  I need to get it going.  So now, I have guilted myself to the point of getting out of bed, and getting to work on that duck pen, and then ringing in the New Year with loads to do still..!! 

Happy New Year..!!

Here it is, the end of the year, and we are finally in America, as we had all hoped to be!  Well, that may be a bit of an exaggeration, but now that we are all here, we all know we are glad to be here..!!  The boys have been doing so much better on so many levels.  They miss their family in England to be sure, but they have so much to keep them busy here, especially as we now have a family that includes seven chickens, five ducks, and one horse!  By the end of January both boys will be in school, and my days as a home educator will come to an end.  But who knows for sure what that actually means? 

I do hope to get some photography appointments, and I hope to make some money at it.  It would be nice to make a career out of it, and it would be nice to really get The Prospering Peasant off the ground! 

http://www.theprosperingpeasant.com

The really great part of the Prospering Peasant is that it is getting more exciting to be involved in ,and with the new animals, there is some content that is developing as I go along.  If you have not “Like”ed it on Facebook yet, please do so, and you too can see how to become a Prospering Peasant! 

http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Prospering-Peasant/153039698051879

Enough for now, as I have some business to attend to ASAP now.

Kelsey

It is always exciting to be in the thick of the Holiday Season as we are now!  But this year has brought such a change for us which is of itself the best gift of all, even if it takes a bit of adapting to.  I have watched with anticipation as Europe and America have been buried in snow!  England has been covered in the stuff too, marking the second year in a row and a more definite end to the warm winters that preceded these last two.  I did of course spend eight years there, and hardly a snowflake fell from those grey British skies to the greying American hairs on my head. 

From our new perch on the world here in Southern Nevada, we only hear of snow from those we know on Facebook who complain of holiday plans being ruined, or how fed up they are of being trapped by impassible roads, or how much fun they are having on the nearly vacant roads around them. 

Yesterday it rained here, which marks the worst of the wintery weather we have had yet.  The landscape is still brown, and the temperatures might require a jumper or jacket of some sort.  I say this not to boast though, because I know that as sure as day follows night, summer follows winter, and eight years has not erased the memory of what exactly summer is in this part of the world!  “Hot” would only understate it by about 20 degrees.  These past days have gotten as low as 40F, but I know summer will add as much as 80 degrees to that! 

There is so much more to talk about than the weather though!  My darling missus is learning to drive in earnest.  She tries to get a practice drive in about every other day or so, and she is mostly doing really well.  There is the odd occasion when she is off, and it shows, but even then she gives me greater confidence than most others I have been with in the car.

Our Jordan is still convalescing from his surgery in August.  He is so fed up of his restrictions, but the doctors said six months before he could really take up an active lifestyle such as swimming, or worse.  He is so eager to get on the horse, or on the quad-bike. 

Dylan has just finished up his role in the Winter play at the middle school.  He had two roles in the three plays, and had to perform two nights in a row.  From our place in the audience we could easily recognize his accent and attitude.  He is truly unique among his peers!

Kirynie is doing more exciting things than just potty training.  She is still amazing her family every day with her intelligence and her ability to comprehend full sentences, and what she sees in film plots.  She cries at the scary bits, and smiles at the funny bits.  But she is just as aware of what is happening around her, and responds to full sentences with less complex, but full sentences of her own.  She is also meeting up to the challenge of covering every inch of property she is allowed to in her new home, and following rules such as to stay out of the horse corral. 

As for me…  There is so much to do, and I have a list as long as my longest appendage of things I have not even been able to get a start on yet!  But the chicken run is built, and will accommodate the seven birds we have till a proper coop can be put in place.  The birds seem happy and active in there!  We look forward to the eggs they will provide in about April or so. 

I have been researching more about chickens so I have all the bases covered from where we are with these, to where we will go with keeping and mating for more.  It is exciting stuff, and I readily anticipate raising our own meat.  The next challenge should be a goat or a pig, then a cow!  Eventually I would like to be food self-sufficient.

Composting is started and coming along well enough, though I would like to see a bit more in there.  It is going to make a fantastic additive in the soil of our garden.  It is also reducing the amount of waste sent out through the garbage bins! 

Having shot photos of Dylan’s plays this week, I am most excited that I may be able to see a photo credit in the news paper here.  That would be a start towards getting myself involved in the photographic community and getting my name out there for some business.  It would be nice to be published, and it would be even better to eventually make some money with this otherwise hobby of mine! 

Well, it is morning around here as I write this, and the day is calling me out.  Happy Christmas to whomever indulges in my journals and if I don’t get another post on, have a safe and prosperous New Year!