Vacation in Maine

We spent 4 days at my brothers house in Maine. It snowed over 14 inches in Hiram while we were there and another 16" I heard on the news yesterday. The kids had so much fun sledding down the big driveway and taking turns putting the smaller children on their laps for a ride.

Manon got such a kick out of the fact that she could walk across the top of the hardened snow without sinking down and dig holes in the giant mounds of snow and sit in them like eskimos.

I loved being in the quiet of Maine. I thought I would be restless but instead found myself wanting to stay there in the house which is so simple and rustic. They use only the necessities and a good portion of food they get right from the land they farm. Laura has the day she bakes bread for the weeks supply and they have preserves from canning and a root cellar with...you guessed it...root vegtables. Their Christmas tree was out of their back woods and all of the gifts we recieved were wrapped in brown paper and tied in red string. I receieved a amaryllis plant and planter...the bulbs had been dug up in the fall from the garden so that they can bloom again.

The Girls, Manons Counsins are being home schooled and are already starting to learn to read.

They each have a wooden desk set up against the far wall of the living room with their paper and supplies. Manon and the girls played "Little House on the Prairie" for most of the second day we were there and they had a ball pretending to go to the "schoolhouse" and pack their bucket lunch of bread and cheese.

The upstairs of the house is not heated, and small but cosy with low slanting ceilings like a loft, and a steep wooden stairway. There are three bedrooms, and they have each a simple dresser and a chair or table. Drawings are hung on the wall, and peeling old paper add a look of an old rustic farmhouse in the 1950's.

My brother and sister in law are not poor. They are humble and they prefer to live on only what they need. They do not have any attachment to asthetics in their home. They do not spend their money frivilously. They do not have a TV, or a DVD, or a microwave oven. They do not have a dining room for entertaining, or any fancy china. They have one small bathroom with a clawfoot tub, and an outhouse for emergencies. They collect their own eggs in the morning. Trade eggs or vegitables for raw milk from another farm. They can and freeze left overs, and always use left overs for making soups and stock. When they shop they buy wheat, flour, sugar and other supplies in bulk from a Co-Op. They conserve energy and Water, and waste barely anything.

They have a compost bucket in the kitchen and collect another bucket of scraps for the chickens.

Laura Knits and cooks while the children play, and she mends holes in clothing to extent their wear. She has only ever purchased clothing from the Good Will or Salvation Army, or taken hand me downs for the girls and baby Joe.

For entertainment we read all in the same room, talk or play with the kids. The game of choice the evening before we left was charades and we played in front of the wood stove and everyone got turns to act out the animal or thing while all of us guessed, and laughed and made time together.

It was a great vacation, and I felt rested and rejuvinated by the time we left.