1983
The photo above shows a
family friend (far left), me and my younger sister in our mother's lap,
my father, and my brother. But if you look closely, you'll see
we're posing in front of...(wait for it)...our brand new outhouse.
My father was probably proud of the structure and chose the spot.
When explaining this photo to me, Mom added, "This is before all the
[poop] started oozing out from behind the plywood...."
I don't remember the marital strife that seems to have been involved in
(not) emptying out the composting toilet, but I do recall sitting inside
for hours. I wasn't constipated; I was reading.
More
photos from the same time period illustrate our rustic farmhouse
kitchen. One of Mom's favorite stories from this time period takes
place here, when a rat, dying from poison, entered the kitchen in
search of water and drank out of my younger sister's potty chair.
And I was wondering why my parents didn't decide the farm life was
fun....
More seriously, Mom
mentions "One knife was handmade...made from a sawblade.... Errol
looks tired...and sweaty...." (If you're keeping track at home,
that's my father and younger sister in the top photo and my brother in
the second photo, in front of a metal bucket we used to heat up water on
the stove.)
This is what I was doing
while all that hard work was happening. If I'd been a year or two
older, I would have had a book in my hand, but I wouldn't have been any
more helpful.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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Wow- that was a great post! I loved the nostalgia- wonder what Mark's 1983 was like as well...
This post really made Watermelon Summer pop into my mind, even though they are mostly set in different eras, they really connected for me through this post. Thank you!