Beyond the sidewalks

Beyond the sidewalks Living beyond the sidewalks, being self-sustained and truly independent. http://countrylivin1./ en-us Webligo BlogHoster tipis and yurts <p>You wanna do some alternative living? Consider a tipi or a yurt. Both are simple, circular, snug environs that you can use a guest house, a private work space or even your year round home...</p> <p>yes some people live in them...nomadic people did and still do....</p> <p>you can get a yurt for a few thousand bucks and move it on to your land in the country....you'll have to construct it yourself, but the savings make it all worth while...</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Sponsored by EnterTo.com the first REAL <a href="http://mail.enterto.com/signup.html">spam free email</a><br /> <br /><br /> http://countrylivin1.3steps.com/20485/ Ashley's Closet???? <p><font size="3">What's in Ashley's' closet??? And I'm trying to decide who to vote for, of if I should even vote....the future of our world hangs in the balance.....is McCain really economically clueless? Is Obama a leftist sociallist who will sell out America?</font></p> <p><font size="3">May the best man win, but how can he if all we are worried about is what's in Ashley's closet???</font></p> <p><font size="3">America wake uP!!!!!!</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Sponsored by EnterTo.com the first REAL <a href="http://mail.enterto.com/signup.html">spam free email</a><br /> <br /><br /> http://countrylivin1.3steps.com/19916/ Sarah Palin is tough <p>Country life is not for everyone-I now know this so well. But apparently there are lots of people who don't get that. This point hit home to me when I heard the state of Alaska being criticized....it's the latest way to degrade Sarah Palin. </p> <p>Though I don't now live in the great state of Alaska, I used to live there, and I know why it's so sparsely populated. It's a kick-butt state. Most of the liberals that judge Palin harshly couldn't survive life in Alaska. It's an inconvenient life there, you aren't close to the mall and the 7-11, etc....</p> <p>That's one reason I admire Sarah Palin-I know what it takes to live in Alaska, and I know she's one tough lady because of it. So liberals beware-Sarah Palin won't be backing down or buckling because of your wimpy words. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Sponsored by EnterTo.com the first REAL <a href="http://mail.enterto.com/signup.html">spam free email</a><br /> <br /><br /> http://countrylivin1.3steps.com/19434/ Prank Phone Calls <p>I don't know how to describe them Piney Woods. To start with, they're full of beautiful pine trees and lots of hills-big and small ones, and lots of creeks and rivers. The air is fresh and clean and there are many winding roads....very winding roads and you'd better keep your eye on them as you drive along or you'll find yourself on the side of one of them. You never know what's around each curve. Once a girl stopped her car and got out to help a turtle cross the road; her act of good will cost her her life when a car came around the bend and, well you can imagine the rest. </p> <p>Them Piney woods are full of critters of all kinds, both the two and the four legged variety. Many of them  critters are of the type that sit around in their underwear and make crank phone calls all day- in lieu of a job. You take Bill Jordan...what's he got to do all day but sit around...in his underwear-in his Sears mail-order home? I know because I've found him that way on numerous occasions when sis Darla and I have stopped by to peruse his junk collection. When we've needed a piece here or there for one of our projects, it can usually be found in Bill Jordans' piles of junk. He's been letting the junk accumulate most of his life, and it's become his, it's become <em>him</em>. You know how some folks just sit around and watch the grass grow? Well Bill Jordan sits around and watches the junk grow....in between the prank phone calls. </p> <p>I don't know how it grows, but each time I"ve visited, I swear there is more of it.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Sponsored by EnterTo.com the first REAL <a href="http://mail.enterto.com/signup.html">spam free email</a><br /> <br /><br /> http://countrylivin1.3steps.com/19047/ If only I spoke tree... <p>Many days I have sat on our back porch just listening...comtemplating the huge silence that's now such a big part of my life. Is this what it's lie to be deaf? Can you imagine a soundless world? Or having all sound taken out of your surroundings...the world just sucked dry of decibels? Is outer space this quiet?</p> <p>I am forced to slow down because of silence. See that 100 year old oak tree? Can you imagine all the silence it has endured; through storms of untold magnitude, freezing nights and long, hot days, as well as all those pleasant days when no one was around. I'd give anything to sit at the foot of that tree and absorb its knowlege...if only I spoke tree. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Sponsored by EnterTo.com the first REAL <a href="http://mail.enterto.com/signup.html">spam free email</a><br /> <br /><br /> http://countrylivin1.3steps.com/18673/ A footpath of my own <p>I've traded my high heels for work boots since moving to the country... I've traded a briefcase for a pitchfork, a cell phone for a shovel...you get the idea. My use of those artifacts in the city never meant much to me. I could set my briefcase down somewhere and walk off and forget it, I could never find my cell phone in the bottom of my purse and as soon as I got home the first thing to go were those high heels...how they hurt. I never felt natural, never felt like me when I worked in the city. There was an inner yearning, something calling me to a <em>real</em> life....a life beyond the sidewalks, beyond the crowded freeways and power lunches and hurry up and wait life. </p> <p>Sitting behind a desk never gave me any real human connection, I knew I didn't care about the bottom line. I was there because I had to be. That wasn't any kind of liberation, it was bondage. It was bondage that sapped my soul a little bit more each day. I needed to make myself whole, and I'm so glad that I finally found my way out...a life outside the malls on a footpath of my own. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Sponsored by EnterTo.com the first REAL <a href="http://mail.enterto.com/signup.html">spam free email</a><br /> <br /><br /> http://countrylivin1.3steps.com/18451/ Bug zappers and six-packs <p>Bug zappers and six-packs, dogs running in packs and peeing on the "yard art", giant dooley trucks cruising through mobile home parks. These are some of the funny things about life in the country. Here, entertainment for a Saturday night is a bug zapper and a six-pack-what's wrong with that?</p> <p>Here, an acre of land and a gun makes one an instant cowboy. Folks around here get whipped up into a frenzy pretty easy and that's when they take off down the dusty country roads with their guns, in their monster dooley trucks...-a dooley is a huge pickup truck with six tires, four on the back and two in front.....stay out of their way.</p> <p>More later....</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Sponsored by EnterTo.com the first REAL <a href="http://mail.enterto.com/signup.html">spam free email</a><br /> <br /><br /> http://countrylivin1.3steps.com/18365/ Man/Woman in the Moon <p>Learn the phases of the moon. What it means to wax and wane. What the moon means to us Earthlings. There's an entire moon movement out there....that big orb of light that hangs over us all of our lives....has provided light and fascination and many reflective moments, is such a complex entity....and largely unknown....but looked up to...</p> <p>You can't have a horoscope without it, every almanac out there addresses it, you can plant vegetabels by it. The full moon is a great time for anyone except a Virgo to cut their hair....the first and second quarters are good times for Taurus and Libra to buy clothes....hae you ever heard of such nonsense?</p> <p>I'm skeptical of moon power, and I"ll also admit moon power bears further scrutenization....we are 70% water and the moon has a pull on us because of it...I want to know all about the man/woman? in the moon......</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Sponsored by EnterTo.com the first REAL <a href="http://mail.enterto.com/signup.html">spam free email</a><br /> <br /><br /> http://countrylivin1.3steps.com/18141/ The Texas Seven They aren't criminals. Ther're just funny looking birds that travel in a tight-knit wad of seven. Are they philosophers, or savages? They cruise the farm with their beaks to the ground, scavenging every crumb mother nature will give up. They live off the lands' bounty. Their little guinea eyes see things mine never will. Bugs, mites, worms, aphids; a plethora of pests that live in the grass of our fields. It is these bugs that our guinieas feast on; I sometimes thnk of the guineas as beneath me, but really, they are above me. Because they are in touch with a world I know very little about.   <p class="MsoNormal">Sponsored by EnterTo.com the first REAL <a href="http://mail.enterto.com/signup.html">spam free email</a><br /> <br /><br /> http://countrylivin1.3steps.com/17978/ Out the Ying-Yang <p>Today was a great day, every hen laid an egg. I now have an assortment of "easter eggs" that continue to amaze me. My Auracana hens lay colored eggs in shades from turqouise to olive green and several shades of brown. How's that for amazing? I have a good mix of the Araucanas and the Rhode Island Reds-they lay lots of brown eggs. Both are strudy breeds and good layers and they make a beautiful show of color in the chicken yard-some have golden feathers mixed with black, some are red.</p> <p>They're a loyal flock of hens, all thirteen of them. When they hear the back door swing open, they run to meet me. They run and waddle their plump bodies across the yard in deadly earnest and it makes me smile, even though I know they're only hoping for a snack. A chicken snack could consist of anything; they aren't choosy. Apple cores, orange peels, the ends of carrots, cantalope, stalks of celery are among their favorites, and they dearly love bread. I know what I put in them effects the quality of the eggs that come out of them-put love in one end, get quality out the other....out the ying-yang?</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Sponsored by EnterTo.com the first REAL <a href="http://mail.enterto.com/signup.html">spam free email</a><br /> <br /><br /> http://countrylivin1.3steps.com/17708/ Pond Yoga <p>Morning at the pond-Lovely Pond. Cool, damp, dewy. Beagle howling down the road. Penny the donky munching grass behind me. The sounds of the city are far away, a distant roar. Lovely Pond is very still except for an occasional ripple from a catfish coming to the surface to nab a bug. He leaves behind three bubbles swirling inside his ripple. A cedar waxwing trills in the oak tree, a serrated, three-toned whistle that seems to go forward, back and forward again in a zigzag pattern.</p> <p>The pond is a world within a world. Everything that goes on in the planet goes on here. Birth, life, death,work and play. Fresh sagebrush sprouts from the ground right next to decaying horse apples. I feel alone here, yet not alone. I feel a kinship to the life here. I pick up a horseapple and feel its hard, green, convoluted nodules. Why is it called a horseapple? Never seen a horse go near one. Just holding it in my hand feels good, feels solid. I let it frop to the ground; it makes a heavy thud and rolls slightly away...as if to say "Leave me alone."</p> <p>A group of starlings fly overhead saying "Oh my, oh my." But are they worried? I think not. Theirs is a short, simple life centered around working for their daily bread-they have no intangible, untouchable goals. Their song fills the air and adds to the pleasnt feeling at the pond.</p> <p> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Sponsored by EnterTo.com the first REAL <a href="http://mail.enterto.com/signup.html">spam free email</a><br /> <br /><br /> http://countrylivin1.3steps.com/17540/ Molly Mae <p><font size="2">Molly Mae the goat stands at the other side of the barn, watching me warily. She has very alert amber-colored eyes and I dont' think I've ever seen them blink. Do goats blink? Her unblinking amber eyes are like glass marbles; I think they're beautiful-with their black rectangular pupils. Her eyes are always darting from one thing to another, always on guard. It's really funny to see her dart her eyes from side to side as she backs away from me; I have yet to be able to pet her or touch her in any way. A hard pill to swallow since I was hoping for a goat soul mate. </font></p> <p><font size="2">In my heart I know that I haven't spent enough time with Molly. I know if I pull up a chair in the barn and just sit for several hours every day, she'll get to know me; I'll get to know her. And I do hope it happens before she has her baby; she's due in February....maybe the baby will come on my birthday....(we could celebrate together- a bale of hay alongside a birthday cake in the barn?) I'm going to get the chance to do that all important bonding stuff with the baby that I never had the chance to do with Molly. I'm sure the baby and I will be soul mates. </font></p> <p><font size="2">I wonder about people in agricultural countries that spend their lives herding goats. Somehow they learn to communicate with them; they become one with their goats; they communicate. I admire them because I can't communicate with even one goat. One day I started to wonder-just what might it take for me to win Molly over? I made her my "pet" project and after weeks and weeks of baby steps and backsliding, I've gotten her to take bread from my hand and she once came up and "tasted" my finger. That's as far as we've gotten. Daily, I go to the barn, put her food in her dish, she backs away, I set the dish down and turn to go, determined not to be hurt by this latest snub; tomorrow's another day. </font></p> <p><font size="2"></font></p> <p><font size="2"></font></p> <p><font size="3"></font></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Sponsored by EnterTo.com the first REAL <a href="http://mail.enterto.com/signup.html">spam free email</a><br /> <br /><br /> http://countrylivin1.3steps.com/17463/