Running from the Status Quo

A hundred or so years ago women in the home worked hard, often sporting calloused, chapped hands to show for it. Then came modern appliances and services that made the homestead woman's life much easier. Women could take some time to pamper themselves and didn't have to labor so hard to take care of their families. So why would women give up these modern conveniences and voluntarily return to back breaking hard labor and callouses? Homesteading women across the country are doing just that and loving every minute of it. What makes these women do this? Well here you go, take a look at what makes these women tick.Most homesteading women I know feel like they were born in the wrong time period. We don't fit in with most modern day women. We have no desire to get a manicure or go shopping. This would be pointless for us anyway because usually the gardening has taken care of our fingernails until they are just about nothing, and new clothes would just get dirty in the mud that we slog through during the winter. We actually enjoy those splinters from the hoe in our hands. Why in the world would we use a tiller, that would make things entirely too easy? We homesteading women enjoy hard work because it gives us the feeling that we have accomplished something during the day. We tend to be a bit hyperactive anyway and sitting still for too long of a period of time drives us crazy. We find that we like the things of the past and don't look forward to future technologies and schools of thought.We homesteading wives tend to be creative and truly enjoy showing off our creativity. We will try to make something out of anything. We will use old towels to make diaper covers and old sheets to make pajamas. We never throw anything away because we can always find another use for it. While the rest of the world is screaming to reduce waste by reusing items, we giggle because this is something we do for fun. The more we can make for ourselves the happier we are about it. Many times we homesteading wives take this creativity right to the brink of insanity as we insist we can make cups out of the newspapers, saving water for washing, and then throw them into the compost pile for the garden See triple use for one product and we saved on water to boot because they don't have to be washed. Ok, so that is a bit much. However, we do that stuff all the time and our friends who live in town just shake their heads.Yes, we are indeed a kooky bunch of women who constantly seek the harder way to do things because to us it is most fulfilling. Speaking of harder things, we actually take on the task of educating our children also. Why in the world would we send out children off for the day when it is so much fun to sweep up the cookie crumbs off the kitchen floor a dozen times a day? Or rewash the clean laundry because the children decided to get into a mud ball fight while building their volcano for science? It is so much fun having our children around all day and we get to enjoy the "I don't want too's" that other moms miss by sending their children off. We truly do enjoy the confrontation from parents who do send their children away about how we are ruining our children socially and educationally. It keeps our brains active coming up with different responses to these accusations. Instead of sitting our children in front of the television we keep ourselves young at heart by playing games, jokes and tricks with our children. Yes, folks, we homesteading moms truly do like our children and don't mind being one ourselves some of the time.
We love having a healthier lifestyle and don't have to buy any expensive workout gear to accomplish it. Pushing a fully loaded wheelbarrow uphill 20 times a day gives us plenty of exercise in our ratty jeans and tennis shoes. Grocery store food tastes funny to us and we would much rather sweat in the garden to harvest our fresh produce for supper than eat the stuff they call food in the grocery. We don't mind only eating what can be grown during that particular season and we consider sweating in the kitchen canning during the heat of summer to be as beneficial as a steam room.We homesteading wives are never seen as normal and we enjoy being a little quirky. In fact at times we try to see just how quirky we can be. It is humorous to see people shaking their heads at our tales of trial and tribulation trying to figure out new uses for old objects. City folks never know what to expect from us homesteaders. We wear our babies, love our children, and don't mind the callouses on our hands. We are a different breed of women and we love what we do.