Adventure Awaits (Part 1)!

When I started this blog over a year ago, the idea was for me to have a place where I could chronicle my family’s adventures in learning how to homestead. Our goal for several years has been to find a place in the country where we could have some land and work toward a self-sufficient lifestyle. We both love the mountains and knew that was where we wanted to be. In the meantime, we would learn what we could on a quarter acre in suburbia.

A couple of months ago, CT came to me and said that we need to do *something*. We needed to figure out a way to make this move to the country a reality. He's not happy with his job and I’m feeling serious burnout after only 3 years of teaching (but that’s a discussion for another day). We both acknowledged that it was time to pull ourselves out of the rat race before we got dragged further in. We decided we would try to make the move by the end of this year. I wasn’t too keen on possibly moving to the mountains in the dead of winter, nor leaving my students in the middle of a school year. I felt it would be better to wait one more year and make the move next summer. CT reminded me that if we kept making excuses about moving that it would simply never happen. There’s always going to be a tomorrow, but we need to live for today. I think my next response shocked him. I told him we would have to move this summer then. It’s easier to find a job as a teacher when I can start at the beginning of a school year and it’s easier as a teacher to work with students from the beginning of the school year. If we were going to do this it was time to jump into the deep end.

I began researching counties in the western part of the state and started looking into open teaching positions in those counties. I quickly found one position that I was very interested in (middle school science) and another I was only semi-interested in (middle school math AND science) so I promptly sent off my resume to both positions and continued to look. I was contacted for a phone interview at both positions within a couple of days. The interview for the science only position would happen a week prior to the math and science position. The interview happened on a Friday and went exceptionally well. They requested my references including my principal’s contact information which meant I had to break the news to my principal that I might be leaving. Although my principal was upset to hear the news, she also understood our need to get to the mountains. She was very supportive and wished me luck in obtaining the position. I have no idea what she told the principal from the new school, but by the following Monday I had a new job. I could hardly believe it!

The first part of our plan to move was in place. Now we had to find a place to live! That was going to be a little more difficult. We currently live about 5 hours away from where I got the job so it wasn’t like we could just drive over and look at houses. Not to mention, we have dogs and that can put a damper on finding a rental. In any case, I’ll write more about our search for a place to live in the part 2!

New Neighbors

For Christmas last year, my dad sent us a beautiful heart-shaped wreath made of natural ingredients like eucalyptus, dried flowers, and sticks. The colors are red, white, and blue so it’s useful year round. I’ve had it on the front door since Christmas and I absolutely love it! Some of the flower colors have faded a little, but it still looks beautiful.

Well, a few weeks ago I noticed some new sticks right in the corner of the heart. Although they were really more like small twigs. It appeared that a bird had found a place for its nest! No big deal, I thought. We don’t actually use our front door a lot since it’s right next to the garage and we typically go out through the garage. So I watched the nest steadily grow over the next few days and listened to the birds happily chirping right outside the door. Then one day I noticed that the nest looked complete so my curious self decided to take a closer look. Much to my surprise, I found a light blue speckled egg inside!

I then watched the nest closely for the next few days. Mama bird sat in her nest chirping away and papa bird (presumably) sat on the corner of the house watching over her. Day after day they were there, chirping back and forth to each other and each day, there was a new egg until we got to a final total of 5. (I missed getting a picture of the day there were 3 since I was gone most of the day).

After looking all over the Internet and in a book of local birds, I’ve decided the birds are house finches. The last egg appeared a bit over a week ago and according to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, they have an incubation period of 13 to 14 days and a nesting period of 12-19 days. My best guess is that the first egg was laid about 2 weeks ago. If that’s true then we should start seeing babies in the next few days. We’ve been careful to not approach the nest unless the mother is already gone and especially careful not to touch anything. The nest is high enough up on the door that only other birds would be able to reach it. I really hope that I’ll be able to get pictures of the birds, but I don’t want to scare mama bird away from the nest so I’ll have to be careful. In the meantime, we just enjoy listening to the birds in the morning and we’ll just have to wait and see what happens!