Power Outage

Today's regularly scheduled full-length blog post was to have been deferred until tomorrow due to a power-outage and dwindling battery power. I will type what I can, though, before enjoying an otherwise technology-free day. Another thing to love about Bent Barrow Farm—we get these occasional opportunities to sample life from another era, to light our oil lamps and sit quietly beside the fire. Days like this make me grow nostalgic for my great-grandparents' time, and make me hanker for a simpler life myself. They also make Mat point out the obvious, which is that I wouldn't last a day without missing the computer.

I like to daydream about getting free from the mortgage, from the bills, from the 9 to 5 (Mat's burden, as I am a stay-at-home mother)—of living off the grid, off the plastic money, off the consumption train. I have an escape fantasy which involves moving to my husbands' family's land, living within the means of a part time job, nourishing the stony land into fruitful abundance and enjoying my family in the peaceful embrace of a humble home of our own making, sheltering my animals in a little barn and watering them from a hand-drawn well.

This is what I would miss: the Internet. Laundry machines. Wickersham.