My little Corona Typewriter Born between 1920 and 1922.

Last night the rain poured down angrily. The down pour left puddles all around the barnyard, the goats are hiding in their house in horror and disgust. Goats, originate in a dry arid place as a species. They are very closely related to sheep. Besides pissing off my dairy goats, the rain created a whole mess of mud. Which is troubling on a Climate level as mud season happens twice a year here in New England. For it to be happening now means it is alarmingly late…

The rain washed away last year and all it held leaving the world clean to go into this new year so we might begin again. The year ahead remains for now, unspoiled. But for how long? I must admit I find myself dreading what is coming. So I have chosen, after a certain social media platform gave an obscene amount of money it could have spent to house the homeless, on the inauguration of a 34 time felon. To cut that company out of my life for good.

It is very simple. Our information is a commodity, our privacy is a commodity, and some are trading on it to make money. Then they turn around and betray us for their own personal further profit and tax breaks by funding what is not in the best interests of those they use. The result is, we become for convenience, passive funders of what doesn’t serve us. I made a choice to start this new year by taking some of my privacy back and expending my information and privacy on platforms that are not choosing to damage other people for personal profit and tax breaks. I can now be found on Bluesky, Goodreads, Bookclubs (where I manage my book club,) and here on this blog. This is a change I have been preparing for now for some time.

I started by offering everyone who might want to stay connected a place to continue to be in touch, Bluesky, I also made an offer to trade real world personal contact information. I also told them that they can reach me via the comments section of this blog. So, if they wish to remain in contact, the ball is in their court, and I am good with that because I stay rather busy here on my little homestead.

What keeps you busy? This is a question I get often. I am a homesteader, I wear many hats. baker, cleaner, animal care giver, gardener, greenhouse gardener, blogger, cook on occasion, researcher, student, herbalist, equestrian, forager, pyromaniac in the winter when starting and maintaining the wood stove fire that keeps me warm, ice cream maker, dog walker, self care product creator, clothing maker, household cleaners manufacturer….. The list goes on forever it seems. Something is always going on here for me, staying busy helps a lot with the isolation that comes with homesteading. So the connection others choose to maintain or not is entirely up to them. More importantly dumping a social media platform really isn’t a difficult or problematic thing for me. It is actually a gift. It is amazing to start to notice how often I was checking my phone! WOW.

This lifestyle does slow a bit in the winter especially. So what do I do with my down time? Well, I am not Amish (which is not to imply anything is wrong with the Amish.) I do enjoy a good movie or tv show sometimes. I also love to read, right now I am reading two books at once. One about living in Maine in the backwoods back in in the 1930s. Another I am reading right now is called, The Frozen River. I manage a book club and a craft circle too, for book club this month we are reading Euphoria, a fictional account of a period of time in the life of Margaret Mead the anthropologist. Another thing I love to do is write, though I will grant between my lack of imagination and my dyslexia I am quite poor at. Writing is further complicated by a neurological condition I was born with called essential tremor as it is in my hands and makes writing by hand a bit of a pain in the arse. What do I write? Stories, I have a couple novels I have been toying with for years now. I also maintain regular correspondences with several pen pals. While I am not Amish, technology, is not something I personally feel much draw to. I prefer living an older way of life. I realize not everyone likes older methods of function. I am not advocating that anyone should divest from technology if they don’t want to. I am however talking about me, the way I choose to live. I spin on a spinning wheel. I dream of getting an old wood burning cook stove and oven into this homestead so I can bake and cook on it. I recently, bought myself a typewriter built sometime between 1919 and 1922. It is my new modality of keeping up my correspondences. I will likely use it for other writing projects as well. It was of course purchased in relatively good shape but used. It is an antique made by I do believe the first company to ever create a typewriter, Corona. It needed a bit of love and care. Fortunately, Dr. Farmer Moomin, comes from men who enjoy tinkering with machinery. He was able to get it working and functioning as it is supposed to so that now I can use it to save my hands.

I keep up correspondences especially over the winter partly because I have the time, partly because none of my pen pals is American. I fear what is coming, and I worry about new laws that may be passed that outlaw proper journalism. I hope these fears are just paranoia. Nothing would please me more than if they were. These pen pal connections are wonderful as they allow me to have friends elsewhere and to learn about life in different places. They also allow me to remain connected to people who are still receiving proper legitimate information, in the event I lose access to such information. So yeh, lots of regular writing is always ongoing on this homestead. None of it any real good, but, it makes me happy to dabble at what was once proclaimed to be the impossible for me.

Other things going on here of late…. Let me think… Hmmm…. Christmas is winding down we will be putting it away this weekend. I will miss it so much till next year. The new vegetable plants in the greenhouse planted after the great thermostat catastrophe of 2024, have begun to poke up through the soil. The new life gives me some hope and brings me so much joy. We got many fabulous presents for the holiday, for which we are truly grateful. My favorite gift received might be a series of books from my mother. The Fox Fire books, all of them. They are the m0st fundimental text written about my way of life to date. I can’t wait to start getting into them as soon as I finish my current book We Took To The Woods.

Well, I hope that answers the big question about what people do on little farms where there be dragons on the map. I may not be out there in the world making a mark on society. I may not make much money, it’s ok. My impact, is through the permaculture model I use here on the farm. Improving the world and climate in my own tiny little way. It is in my disengagement from what lies beyond the boundaries of my farm yard, and in what I get to share with those who stop by to visit, that came up from the ground, or that I made myself. It is in the mindfulness I continue to learn as I live here doing what needs to be done when it needs to be done. It is also in my relationship with myself and my awareness of myself and my impact, and my awareness of the impact of the world out there on me.

I find a great deal of fulfillment from older ways of life and doing things.
I find fulfillment in the dirt under my finger nails.
I find fulfillment in sharing what has saved me with anyone I can however I can.
Thank you for reading.
I hope you too find Wildflower Farm, to be a meaningful place to spend some time even if just through the computer.
Amanda Of Wildflower Farm