Isolation. It is one of those areas that is rarely talked about or acknowledged in the world of homesteading. And it was one I was unprepared for. I also did not realize how much harder it would be to homestead with small children and babies. Interestingly, I'm a self proclaimed hobbit, an introvert. I love to be alone. I love to be in nature. But I really underestimated how much I would need civilization as a new mom of small children. In hindsight, I think moving 60 minutes away from the city and 30 minutes away from the nearest town (that actually has a grocery store, not a tiny trading post) would have been better reserved for a different period in our life. It is not uncommon to hear me tell other families that homesteading is better with older children or after your children have flown the nest. I would absolutely love living in my home if it was just my husband and I here. But with two small kids, I feel overwhelmed, overworked and…. Isolated.
When kid #1 was born, my world literally turned upside down. Let's first start with the fact that for the first six months, she hated her car seat. And I mean full on hated it. As soon as we would strap her in, she would lay on the tears and screams, and would not subside until we removed her out of the car seat. Considering that it takes at least 30-40 minutes to get to our Doctor appointments on a good day, these easily turned into 2 hour trips as I would of frequently stop to check on her, rock her, comfort her, bite my nails, pull my hair out….. It wasn't until I shelled out the money for a nicer rear facing car seat with better padding and materials, that she finally stopped. After that, I never bought or borrowed cheap car seats again. Sometimes sanity outweighs being frugal.
Even when the every single car ride screaming stopped, trips to town were still difficult. And it became more difficult due to the fact that my daughter needed physical therapy for the first 2 years of her life and most trips revolved around that. It became impossible for me to decently buy groceries or run errands or cook a meal. I remember pre kid days being able to stop on multiple stores to take advantage of sales at different locations. Being able to cook…. Now, I was frantically putting the baby in a baby carrier (because you can't push a stroller and a cart at the same time) and taking full advantage of stores with one stop shopping features such as Krogers or Walmart just so I wouldn't have to go through the car seat ordeal multiple times. Pre kid days, I was quite the budget queen. Now I was buying Papa Murphy pizzas and pre cooked whole chickens at Kroger just so my husband and I could eat something that night. I have also become an Amazon fiend.
My limit to this day is still just two location when I have the kids with me. For example, I might get my oil changed and pick up groceries. But all my other errands have to wait till another day. Occasionally I will do more but I often pay the price in exhaustion meters later when I get home. As a result, I find myself staying home a lot. I rarely go into town unless I really need to. Which at this point in time is two days a week since I take my oldest child (who is now six and into playing her leap pad patiently on the long car rides now) to a homeschool co op on those days. While she is in school, I try to do at least one productive errand but often I find myself driving around while kid #2 sleeps. Because funny thing happened with kid #2. She actually likes to sleep in her car seat. As long as I'm driving. Once in awhile I will get the bright idea to park and read a book while elder kid is in school. Big mistake. As soon as I set that parking brake, the screaming and crying commences and the only thing that calms her down is if I take her out and carry her around until my back is sore.
Being isolated with small kids is really tough. It is a period of your life when even the most qualified hermit needs other people. I mean I seriously need my mom more than ever but we are now one hour apart. And let me tell you, you think prior to buying your homestead that one hour will be nothing but I was so wrong. She has commented a few times how she wishes she could swing by after work and check on us. I increasingly wish for this too. My husband is also one hour or more away from all of his jobs. Because of this, he is often gone two extra hours a day and over the years I've come to resent it. Not him of course but when I think about how it would be nice to see him at six o'clock for dinner as opposed to 7 pm which is nearly bed time for the kids… Prior to moving to our homestead, I used to be able to meet my husband for his lunch hour. With the added difficulty of traveling with kids, that happens once in a rare moon or so. My poor husband.
Speaking of my husband, for the first few years I would greet my husband at the door each evening and rattle off my bits of insanity to him. Not intentionally but when your husband becomes the only adult you see or talk to for days at a time, you cannot help yourself. I literally could not at times stop myself. I would start talking and just would not stop even when his eyes glazed over. I had all my new mom worries, concerns about the homestead and an increasing honey-do list for him. After a while I stopped because our evening talks would become stressful and I trained myself over time to wait until the end of the week to talk to him about the really important things. But come Friday and I would unleash. And not always in a good way. Being a new dad and the sole provider for our family as well as commuting as much as he was AND caring for the homestead, he was exhausted too. This was tough because my husband and I had a completely different relationship for ten years in our pre kid and pre homestead days. Not a better one but a less complicated one. And there are times I really miss that…..
The other tough thing is being away from other moms. What I didn't realize moving out here to the country is that everyone and their mother already has friends. They already have a community. And considering that my husband and I are not church people, we eliminated nearly 90% of our potential friend group right off the bat. If you join a church, become republican and believe in the raptor, you probably won't run into the same isolation problems I did. So it may be worthwhile to find religion. Truly. Back to being away from other moms. All the moms I continuously relate to or become friends with all live in town. Because of my distance, I've missed out on a lot. I still do. For example, at my daughter’s school , all the moms have a complex and unique carpooling system which allows the moms to drive less and stay home rather than driving all over creation. Because of where I live, I cannot participate in this and must relegate to driving all over creation.
My own mother once made a comment to me that in her medical profession, all the stay at home and homeschooling moms that she sees are all on anti-depressants and meds. Many of them have immune system issues from being overworked and the sole caregivers for their tiny beings. At the time I took offense to this as I had just had my baby. It was a tender moment for me. I know she was trying to warn me, to kind of put a hand out there and prevent what she herself had gone through and what so many moms have gone through. But oddly enough now six years later, I can honestly tell that you in my diverse group of friends that the ones that homeschool their kids and kind of do everything are the ones with the most medical issues, depression and anxiety. My friends who have part time jobs, kids in schools, well… They are doing much better. And really it comes down to the fact that our culture and society has a better social infrastructure for busy plugged in moms than for stay at home homeschooling moms. I hate to even admit it because it goes completely against the original vision I had.
I also underestimated how social my daughter would be. Being an introvert myself, it never occurred to me that my kids might love being around other people and crave this. But unfortunately we miss a lot. She currently wants to play soccer this Spring but we have to turn it down due to finances and the crazy logistics of commuting. I had this crazy idea that living in the country would keep her busy. That being in nature would satisfy our needs. That having farm animals would be enticing enough for all of us. Well, yes it does. Five months out of the year. Summer time, we love living here. We are outside every day. We have local trails and rivers and lakes we frequent. We frolick through our meadows with our livestock and two dogs. But come late September and I find myself perusing apartment rentals in the city.
I could go on and on but then I would just be ranting and whining. It is tough because I love our home at times too. Especially in the summer when the sun is out and everything is green and fresh. But we have had serious talks about whether we should stay here or move. My husband has no desire to leave. He loves it here. But he also gets all of his socialization and creative outlets with his work and for him, our home is a get away. At this time because of the equity in our home (we own over half our home), we are more likely to rent this place out and either buy a home closer into town or rent an apartment where we can fully take a break from homestead ownership duties.
So let's talk about ways TO COMBAT ISOLATION:
- Be open to childcare. Whether it is babysitting or finding a daycare you can use one day a week. We did not find a babysitter for five years. And it wasn't due to lack of trying. Now that we have one, I pay her twice what everyone else does. And not because she asks but because I want her to pick us any time she has a choice between our family and another. Tough market, I know. She. Is. Worth. Every. Penny.
- Look for free child care. With my first I did not take advantage of this. I was too freaked out to leave her in anyone's care. Another homeschooling mom was telling me how she drops her kids off at the free two hour daycare in the grocery store and then goes and has a cup of coffee right in the store’s coffee shop. Genius! I am so doing this second time around. The store doesn't take kids until they are two years old but my kids look older than they are, ha ha ha! Another free childcare option may be at your local gym. I definitely plan to look into this as well. Just to go and sit in a steam room for half an hour…. backstroke in a cool pool…. Tan in their tanning bed….. Walk aimlessly on a treadmill and watch, gasp! adult TV.
- Eliminate some of the projects. When you own a homestead, the to do list becomes increasingly long. Our first five years here, we compounded that by adding more projects such as gardening, chopping wood, raising livestock, prepping and more. If you commit to projects such as milking a cow every morning and night, you will have less time for some of the things you may really want to do. The more projects you take, the more you box yourself in. In the last year, I really scaled way down on our projects going so far as to sell all of our livestock except a few pet goats and our two dogs and one cat. Anytime we go on a trip, we always had to hire a house sitter to watch our animals and put our dogs in a kennel. It would cost just as much to pay for animal care as it does to go on the actual trip at times. Now we just pay for dog boarding. I had these grand ideas of traveling with our kids and dogs. Let's just say when you have four suitcases in the back of your truck along with coolers, and more as well as huge car seats taking up the tiny footprint, you find that there's not room for Rover anymore.
- Get a great car with great gas mileage. I envy my friends with mini vans and SUVs but I could never own one. My car currently gets 45 mpg and I am so grateful because if I had to worry about gas costs, I probably would have further isolated myself at home.
- Consider bottle feeding. With my first I didn't do this and was very severely limited in how far away and how long I could be gone for almost the first two years. Incidentally with my second I am doing both breastfeeding and bottle feeding due to a health condition I have. Initially I fought this tooth and nail (we spent over $1000 on medical and lactation care) but now I see it was a godsend. Yes, we pay $200 a month on the best formula in the world, but I am okay with it. There's so much conflicting information out there on nipple confusion (which by the way is not well substantiated if you research it) that it was a very dramatic and emotional decision. But once we got over the other side of the hump, our life became calmer. We nurse at night and bottle during the day. Really this has been really great for my sanity in more ways than one.
- Consider public schooling. Homeschooling is awesome. We actually are very immersed in a great homeschooling community. But I never have any time to myself. No creative outlets, no brain space to really just do my own thinking. I'm always driving. I pretty much am a chauffeur these days. In hindsight I wish I had picked a home with a great school district. Our school district is very heavily populated by all white religious families that have strict beliefs such as the girls only wear skirts, and anyone who doesn't go to church is going to hell. Soooo…. Really probe your realtor on this area. I hate to admit this but our realtor actually tried to talk us out of buying our place but we ignored her. - Maybe I should have listened to the seasoned 68 year twice married with four kids matriarch a little more closely…..
- Become insane about your alone time. Currently my alone time is a 2 hour bath once or twice a week when my husband is home. While this is nice and relaxing, it is not really a creative or social outlet. Unfortunately, we are not set up in a way where I can invest more time in that. Which is why the only time I can blog is when I can't sleep at 3 AM as was the case this morning. But don't let your alone time drop to the bottom of the list.
- I wish I had more advice but I don't. It is 5 AM and I'm tired. The only other tidbit of wisdom I can impart is to really think about homesteading and if it is the right choice for your or even just simply the right time. Screen the community closely and maybe infiltrate it before you move into it. Go to a few of the churches and see how you like the people. Many small towns have monthly meetings with the town mayor. Attend it and see what the current issues are. Is there hostility towards certain lifestyles? Are they a bunch of NRA doomsday preppers or are they actually people you want to hang out with? Get a vibe for whether or not these are your people. When the power goes out or the first severe winter storm wipes out the road with fallen trees, you and your neighbors will be the ones out there with chainsaws cleaning it up. It helps if you like them and they like you.
I think the only other person who ever really fully talked about the element of isolation that comes with moving to the greener side of the earth and the isolation you endure is one of my favorite authors, Betty McDonald in The Egg and I. She wrote a true accounting of when she and her husband moved to Vashon Island to start a chicken egg farm. During the time she wrote this, the island was remote. Incidentally, years later I would grow up on this same island during a much more populated time so it was fascinating reading this account. I read this book prior to moving to our homestead and I highly recommend it. I wish I had taken it a little more seriously instead of brushing off that this would never happen to me too. Ha ha ha.
Whatever you choose and decide, always remember it is okay to say later "this isn't for me after all" and be willing to move on and embrace a different type of life adventure.
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