On Becoming a Craftsperson

I first became interested in making shoes after meeting my husband.  He used to work in a cobbler's shop in Honduras.  That there were still cobblers in some parts of the world, making shoes by hand for ordinary (poor) people, was something I had never imagined.  I bought a pattern for soft-soled baby shoes, and a book by an artisan shoemaker named Sharon Raymond, but I didn't get started right away because I had a baby, and I really couldn't do that kind of work until he became a preschooler.   (He's still very demanding but at least he's weaned and potty-trained, and doesn't fall asleep on my lap several times a day now.)  

I still don't get to work on shoes as much as I want, because I want to work on shoes a lot.  Now that I've gotten started, I'm obsessed.  Rarely do I close my eyes for even the shortest of cat-naps and not dream about making shoes.  I sneak up to the workshop just to sit for a minute if I don't have time to do anything else.  I hope this means I've "found my calling", and doesn't mean I'll burn out quickly.  

I also don't get to experiment like I want.  I started with the easiest thing: soft-soled, in-stitched children's shoes, and I started posting photos of the shoes I was making on Facebook, and got a bunch of orders.  But there are so many different styles, techniques, and philosophies of shoes that at some point I'll need to set aside what I'm doing for a while to try a new direction, or rather several new directions, one at a time.  I want to spend some time learning to make traditional moccasins, and a while working out of Sharon Raymond's book, and a while working out of another book I just got called Shoes for Free People, and a while learning to make Ugg-style boots with another book I bought (with those 3 books, I probably have the best shoe-making library in the state).  Then I want to adapt what I learn to be able to use only sustainable, environmentally friendly, and salvaged materials, and even learn to tan hides myself.

This is the thing about shoemaking: it's not very popular, even among leatherworkers.  I guess there are significant barriers to entry, starting with conceiving of the idea of making shoes by hand in our modern world.  While it is not a totally lost art, shoemaking has never been the kind of thing everyone did at home, like sewing, spinning, knitting, and embroidery, for example, so the craft had fewer opportunities to be passed down.  The tools and materials are not cheap: I've got at least a grand invested, not counting my sewing machine.  The few artisans who are making shoes by hand today are, by necessity, doing really creative work, and providing me a lot of inspiration.  There's plenty of room for experimentation in this craft, and while the dearth of available patterns can be frustrating, it is also liberating.  I do worry about my limitations, but there is little enough competition in the craft that I don't feel hopelessly outdone (like I do with knitting).  And there seems to be an eager market for my efforts.  This is going to be an exciting journey.   

On Parenting, Homeschooling, Carlessness, and Chik-fil-a

My son and I went to Chik-fil-A for lunch today, as we do about once a week lately.  I didn't get the memo about today being a special day for them, but I noticed it was unusually crowded at almost 2:00, and I quickly gathered from overheard snippets of conversation that churches had sent people to support the anti-gay cause.  Although I am an atheist and support gay marriage, I haven't been participating in the boycott because Chik-fil-A is the only place we can get to where my son can play with other kids.  There is no public playground or park, or other restaurant with a playground, within walking distance or on the bus route that serves our house.  And honestly, I think I'm doing more good by not buying gasoline than I would do by boycotting Chik-fil-A.  

I've actually been feeling desperate enough to consider trying to buy a second car, even if I'm only here for a few more months.  Parenting like this is just too hard, and I feel like I'm doing permanent harm to my son by keeping him in the house all day, with only me for company.  My child is an extrovert and he needs to play with other kids.  We've tried playdates at home, but I, as an introvert, find it so exhausting to play hostess to the other moms that it's an unsatisfactory solution. 

It has always been my intention to homeschool my son, and I believe I can give him a better education than any school.  But I recognize that he wants and needs the social interaction of school, at least for now.  I have pretty much made up my mind to put him in a half-day Kindergarten in Mexico, so that he can integrate better into the culture and make friends.  I maintain that I will not put him in any school in the United States as long as I draw breath.  But, ironically, I am excited that I've just found a preschool program at a county recreation facility right on our bus route that he can go into for a couple of mornings a week.  I don't know if this constitutes selling out my homeschooling ideals, but it is a necessary compromise for our family and our situation.

Sustainable Low-Carb Eating

I have lost 21 pounds so far (in 11 weeks), following a diet that allows 50 grams of carbohydrate per day, and I have not been hungry or dissatisfied.  The only thing I really miss is ice cream.

One of the common misperceptions about a low-carb diet, one that I myself am guilty of believing, is that it means you eat mostly meat.  I've been surprised to note that my consumption of meat hasn't increased much since I returned to the low-carb lifestyle a few months ago.  Low-carb eating appears to go against the grain, no pun intended,  for someone who tries to eat a sustainable diet, but in the balance, I believe it would take more of society's resources to medicate my obesity-related health problems or raise my orphaned child than it does to provide me the kind of food I need to be healthy.  It isn't my fault I have developed insulin resistance, it's a product of the high-sugar, high-refined-starch American diet I've eaten since childhood.  Still, I do my best to make my low-carb diet sustainable.

While we don't do anything as formal as Meatless Mondays at our house, we actually do have plenty of days when we don't eat meat, and some of them happen to be on Mondays.  I eat protein in the form of eggs from our chickens, cheese, yogurt, and locally-grown peanuts.  Often, when I do eat meat, I end up eating the same portions or the same meal I would have eaten before, minus the starches: I don't replace the missing starches with meat, because I don't need to eat that much any more.  My consumption of vegetables and salads is the only thing that has increased dramatically.

Nose-to-tail eating has always been my soapbox issue, and it applies here especially.  When I buy offal from local farmers and they ask me what I'm using it for, they're always surprised I'm eating it myself rather than feeding it to dogs.  If, as many assert, it is immoral to feed livestock food that people could eat while there are hungry people in the world, is it not worse to feed pets?  People can eat almost anything dogs can eat.  It's simply a question of learning to prepare and eat the whole animal so that nothing is wasted.  Look to authentic ethnic cuisines for ideas.  If we don't request and buy offal from our farmers and butchers, those parts get discarded.

Food storage is more of a challenge when you can't rely on grains and other dry goods.  Meats and fish can be canned, dried, cured, and smoked, although it is expensive to build a supply of preserved meats.  In the garden, we've started growing peanuts, and we're growing seed pumpkins (Lady Godiva) and spaghetti squash rather than pie pumpkins this year.   Greens and low-carb root vegetables are easy to grow, especially in the fall garden.  Growing stevia is something I haven't had success with yet, but I intend to keep trying. 

Not all family members require a low-carb diet. I do feed my child and my husband bread, rice, pasta, tortillas, beans and potatoes.  I believe whole grains and natural starches are fine in moderation for healthy people.  But, we must be careful not to perpetuate the plague of obesity in the next generation by feeding our children too much sugar and white flour. 

Choosing an Urban Life

My garden has been very neglected lately because my husband is working 6-7 days a week.  I had some friends over a couple of weeks ago and we planted Irish potatoes under straw mulch, and the two and half hours I spent in the garden left me with a sunburn that hurt for 5 days.  I give up: summer gardening is not for me.  In fact, agriculture is not for me.  I'm not lazy, but I look at my gardening friends and at my husband, and I am forced to admit that their stamina for working in the garden is four or five times what mine is; I am simply not suited to it.  I only wish I hadn't wasted so much time learning to homestead before figuring this out.  I could have spent that time learning crafts instead, and I wouldn't be at this frustrating novice stage that I'm at now, feeling like I'll never master anything.  Oh, well.  I once spent two years learning about real estate investing, and that was a worse waste of time, with much more disastrous results.

I discussed in previous posts some of the reasons why I've chosen to move back to Mexico.  What I have not discussed here is why I have chosen to live in a city, rather than a small town or rural area.  I know this must seem counter-intuitive or even naive to many people.

I got romanced by the fantasy of country living, of the perceived freedom and safety and wholesomeness of it all, and I know I'm in good company.  Not only do many people in the doomer community tell us that we must flee the cities and live independently in remote locations in order to survive, but the country-living fantasy is a strong part of our culture.  Unfortunately, not all of us are cut out for this lifestyle, no matter how much we may want it.  And what about the long-term consequences?  What is going to happen to rural places without automobiles?  That's a question not enough people ask.  It's not hard to answer: you can look to our own past, or to the present of poor countries, for some answers. 

This is what I think is going to happen.  Within a few generations, small villages in remote, especially mountainous areas, will be like the one my husband comes from in Honduras.  There, everyone is related, because the pool of marriage candidates is quite small.  But being related doesn't make them get along or trust each other.  People in these villages are, at best, ignorant and superstitious, gullible, often illiterate, and they develop dysfunctional cultural quirks.  They can be hostile to outsiders, and often quite cruel to one another.  And it's not just the backwards mountain villages that will make a comeback: in places favorable to agriculture, forced labor, so common in the past, will also reappear, in one form or another.  It is simply the most practical way of organizing a society that will survive in times of limited resources.  I believe Hispanic immigrants will gradually be enslaved first, as they are a class of people largely outside the protection of the law, and they are already doing the vast majority of agricultural work. 

I'm sure I sound elitist, but none of the above is a lifestyle I would want any part of.  My descendants, if they are anything like me, will be happier in cities.  Of course all of our choices come with risks and trade-offs, and we must each decide on our own what is most important to us and, to a certain degree, what is the best fit for our genetic predispositions. 

Of course, there are serious and scary issues with an urban life in the USA in the mid-term future.  But, where I am going, the situation is quite different.  In Mexico, the countryside is still full of people who know how to grow food intensively and are physically able to do so.  They know their land, because they've often been farming it for generations.  A lot has been lost in recent years, but not so much, I think, that a recovery can't be made once the export farms shut down and immigration stops.  Mexican culture, from the traditional street markets to the traditional cuisine, is well-adapted to a low-energy world.  Automobiles exist in Mexico, but they have not transformed that country to the degree that they have the USA.  And, agricultural consumers and producers are more balanced in numbers, so there is less risk of the cities being starved or of urban people fleeing in mobs to the countryside. 

So how does one prepare for collapse (or descent) in a Mexican city?  That will be the esoteric topic of one or more future posts here.

Why I Hate Obamacare

I try really hard to ignore politics.  It is all a show, and we don't really have any influence over any of it.  But, I can't ignore the comments of my friends on Facebook, gloating about the Affordable Care Act being approved by the Supreme Court, and making fun of people who want to move to Canada to get away from Obamacare.  Because, you know, if a system that forces people who can't afford health coverage to pay for it anyway is bad, then a system that spreads the cost of healthcare around based on income must be worse, right?  Except it's not, at least not for most of us.  If I weren't already planning to move to Mexico, I might want to move to Canada to escape this ill-conceived law. 

Let's suppose I'm a member of a financially typical American household a couple of years from now, and lack employer-paid health coverage.  Fewer and fewer of us are covered by employer plans as unemployment and downward mobility increase.  What happens when we're required to pay for health coverage, or pay a large fine, on top of the bills we're already struggling to pay?  First, if we eat healthy foods, that will probably have to stop.  Healthy foods are expensive; foods made from subsidized GMO corn are cheap.  Maybe we'll have to work longer hours or take a second job, or put up with a job we hate.  Maybe we'll have to give up vacations or hobbies.  Maybe we'll default on some debts, even our mortgage.  Is any of this good for our health?  I would suggest that, in fact, someone like me who eats homegrown organic vegetables and grass-fed meats, uses herbal home remedies, gets enough sleep and has time to relax, but has no access to medical care, is likely to be healthier than someone who is overworked, eating poorly, stressed, sleep-deprived, and under the care of a doctor.  It's not hard to predict that this law will make Americans overall less healthy.  So what will it accomplish? 

Well, one way or another, I guarantee you this law is designed to transfer wealth from the poor to the rich.  Maybe they're counting on a lot of people defaulting on debts, and will use it to push through another bank bailout.  Maybe they want to boost the health-care segment of the economy at the expense of our real health.  Maybe they want to crush the local and organic food movements.  Or make hospital care inaccessible to the undocumented.  Or all of the above.

If the government really wanted health care to be affordable, I have some suggestions for what they might do.  For one, eliminate multimillion-dollar malpractice awards.  Cut the lawyers and the insurance companies out of the deal.  For two, provide basic preventive health care very cheaply to everyone, but put a reasonable cap on how much subsidized health care anyone can consume.  It seems harsh to our modern sensibilities, but unlimited tests and life-extending medical treatments cannot be provided when their costs are too much for society to bear: this is like asking your grandchildren to carry you around on their backs for 20 years.  Just because medical science can invent it, doesn't mean we can afford it.  For three, stop subsidizing the industrial food system to produce cheap foods that make people sick. 

I actually don't think the Affordable Care Act will last very long, regardless of who is elected president.  I think enough people will simply refuse to pay for health coverage they can't afford.  The income limits to qualify for free coverage will have to be extremely low as people get poorer, because there have to be enough payers to support the added costs.  The pressure to overturn it will simply be too great.  But, I hope I won't be here to find out.  Good luck, America.

Food Storage for Short Timers

So, once you've decided to make a long-distance move in less than a year, what do you do with your long-term food storage?  I have buckets of grains, a handful of #10 cans of commercially dehydrated food, and canisters and jars of beans, grains, nuts, seeds, spices, and home-canned foods.  Other than possibly some empty Mason jars, I can't take any of this with me.  Very little of my large extended pantry is really set aside for long-term storage, most of it is already in rotation and is periodically replaced as we consume it.  The obvious solution is to eat this food and stop replacing our stores.  The problem is, if something happens, I might get caught with my pantry down.  We still need emergency food supplies, in fact now more than ever, the way things appear to be going. 

I've decided to make a couple of changes in the way I manage my pantry.  One is to stop buying in bulk: no more 50-pound bags of anything.  Another is to start canning fully prepared meals rather than ingredients, and to can things in smaller batches.  The idea is to diversify the pantry so that we can wait until our departure is very close to eat down our stored food.  We won't eat 100 pounds of grains or a dozen jars of pickles in 2 months, but we might eat an equivalent amount of diverse stored foods if they include plenty of convenience foods like home-canned chili.  Of course all this means more expense and more work, but the work I put in now preparing meals will be rewarded in the hectic days of packing, and will save us the expense of buying take-out during busy times.  Another strategy is to replace some home-canned foods in our pantry with commercially canned foods, and buy things like pasta in regular-sized packages, so that what we don't use can be donated to a food bank or easily distributed among friends.

Changing Priorities

I haven't written in a while, and I'm not sure what the near-term future of this blog will be.  I'm in a sort of transition from doing things I know to doing things that are new to me, and as such, I have little to share here other than personal updates.  

The spring planting had barely begun when I lost interest in gardening.  Oh, don't worry, we'll still grow an impressive garden by most people's standards, but it isn't my focus right now.  Maybe it was the arrival of the first hot, humid days (have I mentioned how much I hate this climate?), or the shift from planning to actual work, or just my contrary nature that wants to do things at the wrong time of year.  But it was also, at least in part, other things.  After my last post, I made a decision.  I finally committed, within myself, to the move to Mexico.  And once I had done that, I began to see a new life for myself, and to move towards it.  I challenged myself to learn a craft - or several crafts - that I can use to make a living, and I claimed one of the two now-empty bedrooms upstairs for a workshop.  I started doing some sewing - working on the mending pile to start - and catching up on the knitting projects I haven't wanted to touch since January. I started thinking about leathercrafting again, and trying to get my former roommate to bring my shoemaking book back to me.   

And another thing happened around that time.  Danny, the guy I lived with in Mexico, who I was nearly certain was dead (of AIDS, which he was diagnosed with 11 years ago), e-mailed me after almost 5 years of total silence.  Not just silence towards me - he totally abandoned his email account, which I had set up for him years ago and he never changed the password to - so the only thing keeping it from being closed down was that I would take a peek every 6 months to see if he had read or sent any messages.  Not because I'm a stalker, but just to see if he was still alive, because I had no other way to get in touch with him.  It turns out his girlfriend  had forbidden him to use email, out of jealousy, but they recently broke up.  I have no intentions of resuming any kind of romantic relationship with Danny, but it's nice to know that he's alive.  We parted as close friends and we both consider the other an important person in our respective pasts.  I was sad to think he had died, and I was also feeling like a bit of a "black widow", thinking I had two dead ex'es already at my age.  But it's also good to think that I know someone in Mexico, again.  It was enough to tip the scales of my indecision. 

It will probably be almost a year before I can go, because of my husband's immigration proceedings, and that's okay with me because I have a lot of affairs to put in order, and crafting skill to develop.  I'm not even at a list-making point yet, but this new vision of my future will affect all my decisions from here on out.  For example, it had occurred to me that I should buy a Kindle rather than try to ship my print library (of course I'll still take a few books).  So I jumped on a deal to get a refurbished one for $49 today.  Little did I know that practically every literary classic is available for free download for Kindle, which goes a long way toward solving my homeschooling-without-libraries problem.  I cringe at the thought of depending on another electronic device, but the thing only has to be charged once a month, and the alternative - shipping the books and moving them around until I settle into a permanent home - is unwieldy and energy-intensive. 

So, much of the time and energy I was putting into homesteading, food-storing, and other non-portable activities (of course, we still have to eat for the next year so there will be some gardening and preserving) will now be put into things like crafting, purging and organizing my belongings, and saving money.  If those things hold any interest for you, please continue to accompany me on my journey.  For me, it is bittersweet: this may be the beginning of a permanent separation from homesteading for me, which is something I love and have gotten quite skilled at.  On the other hand, because I have largely mastered the basics of homesteading, I've been longing for something new lately.