There was a time when ‘growing your own food’ was something humans said at dinner parties to sound interesting.

A little herb garden on the windowsill. Some cherry tomatoes in a pot. Very Pinterest. Very aspirational!

Well. That was then….

Now I’m out here at stupid o’clock, covered in dirt, bleeding from lantana (and bloody leeches!) muscles screaming in places I genuinely didn’t know existed ~ turns out I have a hip flexor and it is NOT happy…..

and I have never felt more purposeful in my entire life. Well. Since becoming a mumma bear. And a wifey. And a sister. And a daughter. And a youth worker. And….ok, I have a lot of purposes. This is a new one.

We’re preparing our land.

Digging swales. Clearing. Planting. Dreaming in seeds.

And somewhere between the 50th lantana vine of the afternoon and the discovery that my lower back has officially filed a formal complaint, it hit me….

How incredibly lucky we are to be doing this.

Not in a smug, look-at-moi, look-at-moi way. In a slightly overwhelmed, hand~on~heart kind of way ♡

Because the world is doing a lot right now. Food prices are climbing. Supply chains wobble. Humans are genuinely anxious about what comes next.

And here we are ~ with land beneath our feet, seeds in our hands and a creek we can actually swim in (not to mention, drink from) ♡

And I keep having to stop and just….breathe that in. Some days that thought genuinely makes me want to cry into my garden bed. In the best way!

The freedom to grow food. To choose what goes in the soil. To watch something you planted with your own tired, scratched-up hands eventually become dinner ~ that feels almost radical right now.

This is not the off-grid aesthetic you see on Instagram. There are no linen aprons. No golden hour harvest baskets. No one is looking serene.

I am looking feral.

There is lantana in my hair. Possibly in my soul. I have developed strong feelings about lantana that I will not be sharing in a public forum. The swales are getting there. The garden beds are taking shape. The compost situation is…..evolving. (we don’t talk about the compost situation lol)

But every single day, we’re building! Something that will feed us. Something that connects us to this land and to each other in a way that no algorithm, no grocery delivery service, no doomscrolling session ever could.

So yes ~ call it off-grid. Call it self-sufficient. Call it ‘basic bitch with a shovel and a dream’

Label it however feels right ♡

I’m calling it freedom ♡

The slightly muddy, perpetually sore, lantana~haunted, creek~swimming, seed~buying, soil~under~your~fingernails kind of freedom ♡

And yeah….I’d choose it every single time. Even the lantana (ok, not the lantana!)

(The hip flexor disagrees. But the hip flexor doesn’t get a vote)

Love, the not so basic

Rain x