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in which the true dork shines forth
here is my inner artiste. examining profound things, like eggs.
the little brown eggs are the first from our baby chicks, which are not babies anymore. only one is laying. her name is roger. our other four chickens are in chicky heaven, after the great massacre of 2011. let's not talk about it.
i like that my garden and the chickens have kept me sane this summer. actually it's all a pain in the neck, but i'm convinced we all need some inconveniences to be happy. my friend ashley and i talked about this recently, how the ways of the past are maybe wiser. like we should live in small, tight communities and toil for our food, and women should work side by side in doing household chores every day. instead, we isolate ourselves in our homes and have too much free time and get lonely and depressed. i know that all sounds very idealistic but i think it's true! hauling water and working in the fields sounds awful maybe, but so is being lonely and depressed. which a lot of people are! basically i want to live in lark rise to candleford as queenie's neighbor, but you already knew that.
thoughts? does anyone want to join my 19th-century commune? it could be like the village without the fake monsters.
29 comments:
Do we help each other paint rooms on this commune? Rooms that perennially smell like pee? I'm in! Did you know you reader ads are for birchbox?
I think about this on an almost daily basis!
I just typed a forever long comment about this and decided to delete it.... just know that I have a lot to say about this and that I think it would be very ideal socially and spiritually...
I think about this all the time too, Abby. Everyone has their own private home but there's a large communal space to play, garden, eat dinners outside. A simple life at it's finest.
You already know I will be there! =) I love those pictures.
Lark Rise is the stuff of dreams. But I think I would miss things like plumbing and warmth and stuff. I like the idea of it all. I used to want to live as Laura Ingalls' best friend next door.
Love that egg holder. I was just going to buy one of those in order to get my shipping free, 'cause one item has to be full price to get that deal.
I'm with you. That reminds me of the thing I hate most about Phoenix, and it was the thing I noticed first when we moved here 25 years ago. Every darn neighborhood is walled off by concrete block fences. We live in square mile concrete fortresses. I know . . pools. I get so down every time we drive back into Phoenix and it takes me a couple of days to appreciate living here again. My model for a neighborhood is sharing beautiful, green grass. No fences. Think the Uncle Allens' yards. Salt Lake has some cool developments where all the houses are built with a large, common grassy area in the center where children play and people come out and visit. This has not much to do with communal living, but at least you wouldn't feel so isolated.
I love the inner dork of Abby! Sadly, I can't agree with you though. I love modern day stuff like netflix, ben and jerry's, and clothes with zippers. But.. if you're looking for commune with air conditioning, pools, diet coke, and nannies to mind the children than i'm down.
Wow. I sound like a modern day brat.
At least I can admit it right?
in.
completely
enthusiastically
in.
I'm with Mrs. Godfrey up there. fences shmences. communal back yard garden with chickens and a milking cow.
my husband wishes I felt that way. he'd be in heaven if we lived that way.
can we clean my house first?
Look at you complaining about your photos and then you go and post these magazine worthy ones. I love that egg holder thingy. Anthropologie?
I'm really jealous that you have a garden and chickens. I know that's ridiculous. But, I just love the idea of being "self reliant" (I'm sick of that phrase) and I wish I was in the situation where we could do those things (apartment living!). But, then again, I am not much of an animal person and would probably gag if the chickens smelled bad.
I'd love to live in the olden times for so many reasons. One big one would be to wear big dresses everyday.
I like your thoughts on inconveniences are needed to make us happy.
Also, you forgot to mention that we isolate ourselves in our homes, have too much free time, and get depressed when we look at blogs but somehow continue looking at them and feeling like we have no talents. I'm not as bad about this, but I still get that way.
Love and miss you (can you tell? I know my comments are long, but this is a very long one).
now i must hear about the massacre of 2011. i have been meaning to ask you about those hens of yours.
a lark rise kind of life? i agree. wholeheartedly agree. i'm in constant need to revaluate my end goal and it usually involves having less and doing more.
it's such an impossible uphill battle to blend them- the two kinds of worlds. this indoor life keeps sucking me back in and does a more through job of consuming me.
sigh. i'm with you...totally with you.
I LOVE your photos. You should do a cookbook. It wouldn't even matter if the recipes were toast. You would make toast look amazing enough to spend $25 on the cookbook for it. I am not kidding.
I totally agree with you about gardening and I would love to live in your farming neighborhood. I dream about these things fairly often. My husband reminds me we would not be able to take vacations anymore and of the investment cost (land, house, barn, farming equipment) and what if our garden didn't do well and our chickens didn't lay and how would we make enough money to pay for supplies for repairs etc.; because our little garden only provides enough for snacking (we would need a much larger garden to actually feed us all year). Basically i need to be rich to be poor. That is what is holding me back (and that my husband is being way to much of a realist right now). And it would have to be the right people. Everyone would have to get along well and be forgiving (because we all screw up sometimes) or it just wouldn't work. Yes, I have actually thought a lot about this topic... Count me in with you.
I think about this all the time. I'm a lazy person at heart. But we do live on a farm, and there is stuff that needs to be done, and sometimes I just let my mil do it because I don't want to go weed the garden with a baby and a 3 year old and a 5 year old. But work is good. It makes me happiest in the end.
I love the idea of working together. Plus, we would have natural foods instead of a bunch of chemical garbage making us sick! You are the one that recommended Lark Rise to Candleford a while back right? I have been wanting to THANK you for that recommendation - it is seriously THE BEST show EVER!! Such quality, humor, goodness.... I have been getting the dvds at my library. I think we need to revolt since they stopped filming after season 5. Anyway, I just had to tell you how much in love I was with the show. (Can you tell!?)
YES! you know i'm in. but really that would be amazing...
my mom has some little chickens that just started laying eggs. my niece helped gather a few of them, and then later discovered they were half cooked from being out in the hot AZ sun. (sorry i felt compelled to tell you that gross story.)
will you be supplying husbands?
if so, count me in. sounds like heaven
I would join. Because the food will be amazing. Can we get internet hooked up though?
I'm on the bandwagon too. Throw in a huge library, and it'd be heaven.
ok, the egg crate? I want it.
hey abby. i got pep's shirt at baby gap a couple of months ago.
look at you with all your 21 comments and stuff. i thought i'd leave a creative, unique comment but they have all been taken...
just know that i agree and think a commune is the best kind of idea EVER.
yes, yes, and yes.
Abby, it's your creepy psuedo-friend again. I just have to say that I love your blog, you are a gifted photographer, and if it meant I got to hang out with the Godfreys again, I'd join your commune in a minute. Isn't that the way we kind of lived in Kennewick, back in the day? Basically living at each other's houses, door always open? My kids don't live that way with their friends. Good and bad, I guess.
I was thinking about this at church last week. Lucy wandered off somewhere, but anywhere she went there was another family willing to entertain her, give her a cracker, etc., until she moved on. Everyone in our sacrament meeting does that. If a kid wanders up to you, you play with them, watch out for them, etc. Kids can play with each other and roam and there is always someone watching them making sure they are okay. Maybe it's because I stayed up too late watching football the previous night, but I think the best description of it is "zone parenting." You are right, our neighborhoods these days aren't very conducive to zone parenting and I think it does lead to burn-out. If you find your little plot of land, count me in!
i seriously think about that all the time. i do. other countries still live that way and i wish i could live there. i'm not very good at this whole "american dream" thing.
by the way, have you seen the vicar of dibley? the massacre of 2011 reminds me of it...
I totally agree with you, I've been complaining to my husband for years that I felt isolated and never understood why. I have plenty of friends but none of them are around here playing outside, gardening, etc. I feel like this is why I am so drawn to history (I was a history teacher before my kids came along) because I am drawn to a simpler life. When I read this post I ran to Don and told him that this is what we are all missing. I wish I knew how to actually incorporate these things into my life. It feels like to make it happen the world would have to change but if you can make it happen count me in!
I would be the firs to help get it going. I loved the 11th ward because we all had our apartments and shared the yard. Now just add a garden and animals to the mix, perfect.
There are some areas in my neighborhood that remind me of the village. Seriously, it's weird. But I TOTALLY get what you're saying here. It all makes sense and I think I could join you.
i'm totally going to tell blogher you're only doing a post like every other week. you're going to be sooo busted!
kidding.
but seriously. i just want more abby via the internet. it's not to much to ask is it?
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