The Walden Effect: Farming, simple living, permaculture, and invention.

Do homesteaders need vacations?

Laciniato kale

In Your Money or Your Life, Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin write that people who live fulfilling simple lives shouldn't need a vacation.  They may be right, but the truth is that I seem to need a solid break sometime in October between the rush-rush-rush of the growing season and the gentler writing period of the winter.  Some years, a staycation does the trick, but in other years --- like this one --- we seem to crave a more solid break.

Late tomatoes

The best thing about an away-from-farm vacation is how much it makes us appreciate our everyday life.  Coming home to a not-quite-frosted farm, with newly-vibrant colors and the scent of fallen leaves in the air, Mark and I both concluded we live in paradise.

How about you?  Do you feel the need for a vacation even if you live in paradise?

(Stay tuned for far more beach photos than you care to see in this week's lunchtime series.)

Our automatic chicken waterer kept all three flocks hydrated while we were away.


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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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Vacation
yes, even though I live in an incredibly beautiful place, I am constantly busy and making lists in my head of all that needs to be done. I have to go away to be able to just be.
Comment by Anonymous — Mon Oct 14 21:59:03 2013
comment 2
Living in a city with only about 1/4 acre may not qualify me to answer but I say yes. My wife and I took a nice relaxing trip to Yellowstone this year and stayed in a cabin for a week. We hit the trails before anyone else was out and we were just amazed at the beauty, and quietness of everything. It also made us feel very small and insignificant in the vastness of the wilderness. It's always nice to have a vacation that can help you get out of your routine and allow you to view everything from a different perspective. Plus there is no TV in Yellowstone and hardly any cell reception so it's easier to truly escape without any electronic temptations.
Comment by Brian — Tue Oct 15 12:34:07 2013
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