Insourcing: Embracing Natural Self-Reliance

There are so many entry-points to a more natural, self-reliant lifestyle, don't you think?

Some of us began our foray into natural, sustainable living by becoming increasingly disenchanted with an overly-industrialized, consumerist culture that devalues the homemade and the handmade. Others of us discovered the power and possibility of natural living through the natural birth experience and the trust and self-reliance inherent in that process. Many of us discovered natural family living through homeschooling and the discovery of our children's own innate drive to learn and synthesize. Still others of us, myself included, stumbled upon natural family living through Attachment Parenting: following our wise instincts and our children's lead.

It has been interesting for me to see, over the past five-plus years of motherhood, the evolution and expansion of my naturalist, self-reliant lifestyle, my gradual reclamation of control over my family's well-being away from "experts" and towards myself and my home.

In the beginning, I bowed to my obstetrician, pediatrician, and the ubiquitous forces of mainstream culture convincing me that babies should be born in hospitals, newborns should nurse only every two to three hours, they need to quickly learn to fall asleep alone, and they need many medical interventions to keep them safe and healthy.  That lasted eight weeks until I realized that none of that made sense for my baby girl and my instincts were telling me otherwise.  Still, I straddled the conventional and natural worlds for a few years, increasingly questioning, wondering, learning.

After my third baby's natural homebirth, it all became abundantly clear: I hadn't truly realized the power of my natural instincts, of my extraordinary ability to produce wonders within my own home, without expert interventions or synthetic goods.  At the time of my daughter's homebirth, I had been practicing Attachment Parenting and had committed to homeschooling and natural learning, but I discovered just how much I continued to rely on externally-produced goods and services, rather than "insourcing" these things.

Insourcing--producing within our homes--brings with it an extraordinary sense of satisfaction, self-reliance, and personal responsibility that has been steadily degraded in our culture as we increasingly rely on factories to produce our food and home-goods, experts to deliver, teach, and heal our children, and mainstream cultural messages to guide our thinking and doing.  We can change the course of our consumerist, mechanized, outsourced lives by recognizing our stunning ability to produce and accomplish within our homes, within our families, naturally and sustainably.

What path have you taken toward a more natural, home-based, self-reliant family lifestyle?

Farm Prep

We have been busy with preparations for our upcoming Vermont farm-stay family vacation. I wrote recently about the books on my nightstand that I am steadily wading through, mostly focused around life on small farms, homesteading, and do-it-yourself living.  

This week, the kids have their own pile of library books about farm life that we are happily tackling, while discussing what life on a working farm in the summertime is like and imagining the adventures we will encounter.

I had to convince my fancy five-year-old that her sparkly city shoes may not be appropriate when milking cows and feeding chickens.  A pair of pink cowgirl boots with matching hat seemed the perfect compromise.

I am also blown away by the guest-posts I am receiving from homesteaders across the country who have committed to a self-reliant country life where they live and learn as a family.  Most are homeschoolers on small farms; all chose a homesteading life to be closer to the land and to each other.  

I can't wait to share these fabulous guest-posts with you soon and then report back about our northward excursion.  Now back to planning, prepping, and packing--with a little dreaming mixed in too....

Solstice Strawberries

Over the past year, as I have tried to become more attuned to the natural rhythms of the seasons and the celebrations of each, I have been focusing more on the "harvests" of each season.  We celebrated the fall equinox by harvesting apples from a country orchard, the winter solstice by harvesting our holiday tree from a local tree farm, the spring equinox by harvesting maple syrup, and tomorrow's summer solstice by--yet again--picking strawberries at my favorite little farm just a short trip from the city.

Joined by city friends, we happily roamed the pastures, visited the animals, and soaked in the work and wonder of life on a small farm.  We also visited some of the animals that will become our food, like the Thanksgiving turkey and the chickens, and had a conversation about the importance of knowing our food, of being more greatly, reverently connected to it and understanding, not only the conditions under which it has been raised, but also the humility involved in eating an animal that we have gotten to know.  I used to be a vegetarian, but the more I learned and the more I contemplated, the more committed I have become to eating local, pastured foods from all food groups that are organically raised on small, nearby farms.

Every time I visit a farm, particularly this sweet one, I leave feeling more grounded and exhilarated, more connected to the food my family consumes and the farmers who work hard to produce nutrient-dense, organic, sun-soaked meals for my family.  It reminds me of life's natural cycles, its seasonal riches, and the awe of being a small part of it.

Weekends in the woods

We've been spending most of our family weekends in the woods lately, hiking through various conservation lands and nature preserves, exploring and enjoying nature.  There is something special about these wooded walks, allowing the children to roam freely, unrestrained by shouts of "stay close to Mama!" or "slow-up at the intersection!"  The moment we set foot in the woods, we can feel ourselves decompress, feel the serenity and silence overtake us.  Unplugged and unhindered, we take our time meandering through the paths, stopping to pick up grasshoppers, listen for crickets, observe spiders and lady bugs crawling on toddler-sized ferns.  We all feel refreshed, enlivened as we forge deeper connections with the natural world and each other.

With the brisk pace of modern life, a regular connection to the wild world keeps us grounded, focused on our priorities and committed to unstructured family weekends spent mostly out-of-doors together.  Contributing to our learning are the field guides, magnifying glasses, and nature collection bags we sometimes bring on our hikes and nature walks, helping us to decipher the sights and sounds around us.  Mostly, though, we follow the children's lead, noticing how their senses seem so much more attuned to the world around them, their minds soaking in all that they discover from these walks.  Skunk weed, for example, was a plant pointed out to the children a year ago on a nature walk with some friends and was easily spotted and recollected by them this spring on another walk.  The same is true of the wildflowers and bugs and birds they spot along the trails.    

As researchers at the Children & Nature Network state: "Because the natural world is filled with sights, sounds, and smells that ignite a young child's curiosity and invite active exploration, being outdoors can make it easy for a parent to follow the child's lead, to respond to the child's cues and expressed interests, to share the child's delight in new discoveries and experiences--the very ingredients shown to lead to a secure attachment."

Weekend family hikes and nature walks are a valued part of our family life, fostering our connections with the earth and restoring us for the week ahead.

I hope you enjoyed a refreshing, restorative family weekend!

On my nightstand....

My bedside book collection clearly reveals where my head is these days: wrapped-up with colorful visions of our upcoming summer farm-stay family vacation on a working farm in Vermont.  Inspiring my visions is a host of books that I have read, am reading, or am about to read on food, farming, homesteading, and living a more deliberate, self-sustaining life that is deeply connected to food, family, and nature's rhythms.

I am currently in the middle of The Dirty Life, by Kristin Kimball.  I absolutely love this book, which tells the true-life tale of a New York City journalist who falls in love with a smart and dedicated farmer and begins a homesteading life on a rural New York organic farm.  The book exposes the good, the bad, and the ugly of farming life with exceptional detail and wit. Love it.

What is it about country farm life that is so appealing, so beckoning?  Is it that it is the antithesis to the hurried and cramped city life?  Or is it more?  Is it more about a refueled desire among many Americans to shift our priorities from the fast and factory-produced to the traditional and time-honored?

I look forward to exploring these questions further during our July farm-stay vacation, where we will be actively involved with milking the cows, collecting the eggs, making the cheese, watching the goats being born, seeing the hay being made, and a countless array of other farm activities, while also exploring the unparalleled beauty of Vermont's countryside.

To help get a more candid picture of life on the farm, specifically for homeschooling farming families, I am putting together a wonderful series of guest-blogs during our vacation from real-life families who homeschool and homestead on family farms, some of whom left the city life behind to do so.

Hmmm.....

As Kimball writes in The Dirty Life: "I'd mistaken fascination for love a few times in the past, but this was the first time I'd got it wrong the other way around."
 

Learning from the everyday

Learning is all around us. As unschoolers, learning is embedded into our daily life, woven into both the mundane and magnificent moments in our home, family, and community.  We learn as we live, through happy and sad times, exhilarating and challenging times, ordinary and extraordinary times.  There is no separating our learning from our living.

This morning, the children watched intently as an electrician replaced a ceiling light fixture, a process that led my five-year-old to ask interesting questions and that later wove its way into my three-year-old's imaginative play.

Our everyday learning continued on an afternoon bike ride through a city park where we stopped and spoke with landscapers about their efforts to stall soil erosion and work naturally with the soil to create a healthier trailside.  We peeked into chipmunk holes, spotted a colorful array of birds, admired the blooming flowers and trees, splashed in a log puddle, raced and rested.  So much learning, so much living all in an ordinary Thursday.

Giving Birth With Eminem

Welcome to the June 2012 Carnival of Natural Parenting: Embracing Your Birth Experience

This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Carnival of Natural Parenting hosted by Code Name: Mama and Hobo Mama. This month our participants have written about at least one part of their birth experience that they can hold up and cherish.

***

I am a classical music girl.  My Pandora playlist is stacked with Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert symphonies.  It would seem, then, that when I planned my homebirth with my third baby over a year ago, my iPod would have been flooded with calming, peaceful musical masterpieces to guide me through a gentle birth.   

Nope. 

I gave birth with Eminem. Specifically, to his spirited "Lose Yourself" rap song. For me, this fiery song was my inspiration, capturing in the chorus the feeling I had about my progression to a homebirth: 

"You better lose yourself in the music, the moment,
You own it, you better never let it go.
You only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow,
This opportunity comes once in a lifetime - yo."

After two highly medicalized, OB-orchestrated previous births, beginning with unnecessary inductions and ending with life-threatening maternal complications as a result of labor interventions, choosing a homebirth was, for me, the only way I could ensure a completely natural and safe birth experience for my baby and me.  It was my moment, my one shot, to erase the harm caused by entrusting others to "deliver my baby" and instead take full control of my daughter's birth.

Women choose to birth at home for many, varied reasons.  For me, homebirth was and is all about safety.  I knew that I needed a completely natural, intervention-free, relaxed birth environment in order to give birth safely.  And fiery music with a message of strength and determination helped that to happen.  I gave birth to my third child naturally, at home, one week after her due date, with no complications.  

In addition to a safe delivery, giving birth naturally, at home, surrounded by supportive and experienced midwives led me to discover the full power of womanhood, motherhood-- a power completely stripped by my previous big hospital births which were not at all natural and empowering, but artificial, drug-infused, and dangerous.  

I hope that more women will recognize the critical importance of an empowered, self-directed, natural birth experience.  I hope they will reclaim control of their birth experience, trust themselves and their extraordinary power to give life, and fully capture the increasingly rare and beautiful moment of natural birth. 

"Look, if you had one shot, or one opportunity,
To seize everything you ever wanted in one moment,
Would you capture it or just let it slip?"

***

Visit Code Name: Mama and Hobo Mama to find out how you can participate in the next Carnival of Natural Parenting!

Please take time to read the submissions by the other carnival participants:

(This list will be live and updated by afternoon June 12 with all the carnival links.)

• I Had A C-Section. So What! — Jennifer at Hybrid Rasta Mama rewrites her birth story now that she has worked through the feelings of inadequacy and disappointment of not having the “perfect” birth.
• The Perfect Birth — Kellie at Our Mindful Life reflects on how a birth can be far from what we imagined, but still perfect.
• Own Your Birth: My Hope For All Expectant Moms — Andrea at Tales of Goodness shares how she owned her birth spiritually (while navigating it physically) in order to have a joyous experience.
• Carnival of Natural Parenting: My Birth Experience — It wasn't what Lily at Witch Mom wanted, but it was everything she needed.
• The Painless Natural Homebirth of BabyE — Shannon at GrowingSlower wants women considering natural birth to know painless births are possible.
• Reflections on Jemma's Birth ... 20 Months Later — It took a second pregnancy for That Mama Gretchen to fully embrace her first birth experience.
• Loving My Unnatural Birth Experience — Erika at Cinco de Mommy cherishes her very first birth experience, in all its unnatural glory!
• Be Careful What you Wish for in Birth — Amber at Strocel.com had two births, and it was the one that went to plan that she struggled with embracing.
• Redeeming an unexpected hospital transfer — Lauren at Hobo Mama looks back at her first, interrupted home-turned-hospital birth, and finds the beauty in what happened.
• All of it — Laura from Pug in the Kitchen had to learn to embrace the whole experience of birth even though it meant being naked . . . with an audience.
• Birthing Dreams & Realities — Momma Jorje never had a "dream birth," but she wouldn't change a thing about her births.
• Memories of Birth: Calm Amidst the Storm — While neither of her children's births had been quite what she expected, Cynthia at The Hippie Housewife cherishes one moment in particular from each of her birth experiences.
• Embracing Our Birth Stories — Luschka from Diary of a First Child shares a sensitive post on her recent birth which both did and didn't go 'to plan', and writes about the journey of coming to terms with the good and the bad.
• Two Beautiful Births — Sheila at A Gift Universe remembers how her mother brought out the beauty in each of her children's births, and tries to do the same with her sons' birth stories.
• Embracing My Supernatural ChildBirth Experiences... — Jenny at I'm a full-time mummy shares her fond memories on both her supernatural childbirth experiences
• Embracing the Hospital Birth Experience — Jenn at Monkey Butt Junction believes that sometimes a medicated, induced hospital birth is the right choice for a natural parent.
• Carnival: Embracing Your Birth Experience — Stephanie at The Other Baby Blog embraces the birth experience from a paleobiologist's point of view and takes a look at how humans defy their anatomy.
• Reflections on My First Birth and Preparing for a Second — Abbie at Farmer's Daughter shares the strength she didn't realize she had until she gave birth to her son.
• becoming a mama - embracing my birth experience — Meegs at A New Day remembers the birth of her daughter Gwenivere, and the empowered feeling it left her with.
• What About Us? A Poem About Birth — Kat at Loving {Almost} Every Moment shares a poem she wrote about healing from an unexpected and emotionally painful birth experience.
• Be a Man: One Father's View of Birth — Mandy at Living Peacefully with Children shares her husband's advice to other fathers and partners.
• A Birth Monologue — Kat at MomeeeZen shares a monologue she wrote during the process of healing from her birth experiences.
• Forgiveness: My Birth Journey — Leah at The Crunchy Farm Baby discusses what happens when her planned homebirth doesn't end up the way she wanted, and explains her journey of forgiving herself for losing that "perfect" birth.
• Patching together a perfect birth — KrissyFair at Think Mama, Think learned that sometimes a perfect birth happens in pieces.
• Celebrating and Sharing the Possibilities of Perfect Birth — Terri from Child of the Nature Isle joyfully shares details of her perfect births and wishes to inspire a more positive cultural expectation about birth.
• Instinct - Embracing Your Birth Experience — Laura at Laura's Blog reflects on instinctual moments during and after the births of her two daughters.
• I was Foolisn Then — ANonyMous at Radical Ramblings describes how foolish lack of preparation for childbirth led to a feeling of powerlessness and fear, but that in the end she had her baby in her arms, and that's one thing she can celebrate.
• Sometimes no plan is the best plan — Tat at Mum in search contemplates that maybe she doesn't need a birth plan for her upcoming birth.
• Disturbing the peace — Kenna at Million Tiny Things thought she would be a calm, quiet baby-haver. Ha!
• Accepting the Unexpected During Birth — Emily at S.A.H.M i AM imagined herself laboring on a birthing ball but she never imagined where she'd really be most comfortable when the time came...
• Sacred This Time, Too — Kimber at The Single Crunch learned enough to know that the way she birthed wasn't they way she wanted to; but she also knew to enjoy it for what it was.
• The Birth Partner: A Great Natural Labor Companion — Justine at The Lone Home Ranger thinks that the secret to her pleasant natural labors was having a great support system.
• the Best Thing About My Labor Experience — Crunchy Con Mommy realizes that amidst all the things that seemed to go wrong with her labor, the love and support of her husband was the one thing she could always count on!
• Your Birth Was My Favorite — Dulce de leche describes some of the highlights from each of her four births and explains why despite the differences, they are all her favorites.
• Birth Story: Part One - Moon on a Stick! — Gentle Mama Moon tells the first part of her birth story to share some of the delight of labouring at home.
• Embracing My Birth Experience by Sharing My Birth Story — Dionna at Code Name: Mama made peace with her first birth by sharing the story with her son.
• Focusing on the Beauty of Birth — Julia at A Little Bit of All of It shares the beautiful aspects of her birth center water birth.
• A Joyful Induced Delivery — Amy Willa: Me, Mothering, and Making it All Work notes the meditations and perspective that helped her achieve an unmedicated birth despite being induced for medical reasons.
• Finding Joy in an Imperfect Childbirth Experience — Deb Chitwood at Living Montessori Now tells what she learned from her two very different childbirth experiences.
• What's to like about a c-section? — Jessica at Crunchy-Chewy Mama is glad she her second child at home, but she also cherishes much about the c-section she had four years earlier.
• What Story Will I Tell? — Rachael at The Variegated Life realizes that the way she tells the story of her second child's birth matters — and could be exhilarating.
• I Quietly Put My Hopes to Rest E — Erica at ChildOrganics shares her emotional ups and downs with the highly intervened birth of her special needs daughter, Bella.
• Tale of Six Births — Jessica at Instead of Institutions appreciates that unique challenges and joys of each of her births.
• Labouring naturally: nature’s gift — Caroline at stoneageparent describes the most beautiful, spiritual aspect of the labour of her son, the first stages along a bumpy road to giving birth.
• All The Woman I Am. — Lindsay at This Woman's Work shares a poem about letting go and surrendering during the thralls of labor.
• A twin birth story: embracing the unexpected — Megan at The Boho Mama shares her twin birth experience and how she found the silver lining when faced with preterm labor, premature birth, and a two-week NICU stay.
• Giving Birth With Eminem — Kerry at City Kids Homeschooling shares how fiery rap music contributed to an empowered homebirth with her third baby.
• Two Different Births — Cassie at There's a Pickle in My Life shares how she learned from her first birth experience and how to trust yourself and your body.
• Embracing Our Potential: Birth as a Metaphor — Sheila at A Living Family expresses how birth has served as a metaphor to help her through other experiences in life.
• Little Sister's Birth Story: Our VBAC Adventure — Charise at I Thought I Knew Mama describes the recent birth story of her baby girl, her pride in an epidural-free VBAC, and how her story isn't exactly the birth experience she had planned for.
• A Journey in Birth Confidence — Shannon at The Artful Mama shares her experiences with labor during both of her sons' births.

Oh, strawberries!

We didn't want to miss New England's fast-moving strawberry season, so we headed to a pick-your-own farm not too far from the city to gather enough strawberries to keep us in good supply for quite awhile, with some extras for freezing and, hopefully, an introductory attempt at canning.

There's nothing quite like tasting fresh berries still warm from the midday sun.  So while her big brother and sister accompanied Daddy and Auntie and Uncle to fill our baskets with fruit, my one-year-old plopped herself in the middle of a row and wasted no time filling her belly with berries.

Strawberry topping for the morning's French toast, strawberry smoothies with lunch, and Auntie's strawberry pie for dessert gave us our fill of rosy sweetness for today, and for some days ahead, until this quick harvest ends.  Then it's blueberry picking time!

City Slump

Truth be told, the city can get cramped.  Its compactness and convenience are both its blessings and burdens.  An indoor week of rainy, unseasonably cold weather, jumpstarted with two feverish babes, left me in desperate need of some elbow room by the week's end that local playgrounds just couldn't offer.

Admittedly, I thought about heading for the hills, rejecting the city's tightness for the wide open spaces of the countryside.  Forget about urban homesteading; I was ready for a cow and a tractor.

But then the sun came out.

And instead of abandoning my beloved city, I embraced it and the many gifts it provides--including enough wide open spaces to save me from my city slump.

Today, the kids and I joined a weekly children's nature walk around our city's reservoir, exploring woods and fields and trails and gratefully overcoming the "nature-deficit disorder" that plagued us this week.  In his book, The Nature Principle: Human Restoration and the End of Nature-Deficit Disorder, author Richard Louv states: "...all of life is rooted in nature, and a separation from that wider world desensitizes and diminishes our bodies and spirits. Reconnecting to nature, nearby and far, opens new doors to health, creativity, and wonder."

For us, time in nature is restorative, enriching, and educational, and serves as a central component of our homeschooling life.  If bad weather or sick days detach us from the natural world for too long, we feel it.  We all get a bit grumpy, even a bit forlorn, wondering if the city life is really all it's cracked up to be.  Gladly, going "back-to-the-land" -- even if it's just down the road a bit--revives our bodies and spirits and renews our gratitude for urban living.  Even in the densest cities, opportunities to connect with the natural world abound and provide a perfect dose of nature to eliminate any city slump.

Early Morning Mothering Recharge

You know you live in the city when you can't tell if the 4 a.m. moaning sounds outside your window are from a drunk or a cat in heat. (I'm guessing cat.)

I couldn't get back to sleep after these early morning yelps, so I left my sleeping babies, wandered the house, made a cup of coffee, reveled in the rare experience of a quiet morning before my early-risers appeared, and noticed the light.  Oh, the June light!  

I opened the blinds wide and watched the early morning sky unfold, taking a few quiet moments to prepare for the day's work ahead.  Often, it seems, we moms can get so busy with the daily job of running a busy household, cleaning, preparing meals, cleaning, planning activities, cleaning, showering our little ones with attention and affection, preparing more meals and doing more cleaning, that we miss the quiet opportunity to reflect on all that we do--how important our job is--and acknowledge that even with the necessary dailiness and repetition of our work, it is the best job in the world to wake up for.

Thoughts on socialization....

As homeschoolers, we all know that one of the first questions we get from others about our homeschooling lifestyle is, "what about socialization?"  We all have our own ways of answering, of determining if the questioner is asking if our children are "socialized" in the contemporary sense of being familiar with pop culture, being able to adjust to rules of order in group settings, and conforming to peer group expectations, or if the questioner is really asking if our children are "social," interacting frequently with other children and adults throughout the week.

Most often, it seems to me, questioners are seeking the answer to the latter, wondering how children who learn without school become social, playing and learning with others.  As the ranks of homeschoolers grow, the opportunities for homeschooled children to interact with other homeschooled children rises too.  Here in the city, we have a large and vibrant homeschooling community that plans and promotes countless, varied activities designed for children of all ages and interests.  From park days to arts classes, aquarium workshops to hiking clubs, board game meet-ups to reading groups, city homeschoolers soon find that the issue is not finding ways to be social, but learning to not become too over-scheduled with the bounty of social offerings!

And, of course, there are all those other social moments with non-homeschooled children, including structured after-school or weekend classes, like dance and sports teams and art programs, and the more spontaneous play that occurs daily with neighbors and friends.

I sometimes hear from parents contemplating homeschooling that they are intrigued by its ideals but wonder if it is right for their child.  Often their child is particularly shy or awkward, gifted or eccentric, and the parents worry that homeschooling may not create the established social structures of school to help the child learn to interact most effectively with other children.  To these parents I say, your child most definitely will benefit from homeschooling!  Children who may be shy or socially awkward or have advanced or unusual interests benefit greatly from the smaller, more diverse homeschool social network.

Let's say your shy first-grader is passionate about building rockets, wants to spend all of her time immersed in learning about and constructing rockets, and you would like her to interact more with other children.  As the homeschooling parent, you could send a quick note to your local homeschooling online community or support group to see if any other children share this interest, and then connect these children around this shared interest, fostering social interaction in a meaningful, genuine, non-intimidating way.

Rising numbers of children learning without schooling, connected to active and diverse homeschooling networks, lead to many moments of natural, constructive, authentic social interactions that enhance the homeschooling life.

The Solstice Months

My two favorite months are June and December.  Short shadows, long shadows, short nights, long nights, these seemingly opposite months are both filled with anticipation and joy.  There is the anticipation of new seasons and the sledding or swimming adventures each one promises, and there is the joy of celebrating time with family and friends, whether nestled in a cozy home or running barefoot in the grass while the light lingers long into the evening.

I am also reminded of the other characteristics these solstice months share, like visiting the Christmas Tree farm to pick our holiday tree, or visiting the fruit farm to pick our own strawberries; spending time in the kitchen preparing our favorite holiday foods or wading through all those leafy, luscious greens that first burst from the ground; bringing light to our home through holiday decorations and winter solstice candles, or opening the windows wide and playing outside in the post-bedtime brightness.

Two favorite months, both honoring light, family, food, and celebration, and all the possibility that a new season brings.

Happy June!