Spring on the Homestead

I was the first child to celebrate their birthday on the homestead. I remember feeling extra special and distinctly privileged that day, though the celebration was not memorable in itself. We had been there just over 2 weeks when my 13th birthday came, and we were still in the survival mode. I know that each meal was still a herculean task for my mother to accomplish in our primitive living conditions, and everyone in the family was too consumed with adjusting to our new life to be able to give proper attention to a birthday. There was no special meal that I can remember, much less a birthday cake. Yet I retain the memory of the day feeling very special indeed, for two main reasons...

First, my soul gift from my parents: my very own, leather-bound, Thompson Chain Reference, King James Version Bible - just like my mother's, except a tad smaller in size. This replaced the cover-less, worn out, Sunday School graduation version I'd been using since I was 8, and I felt very grown up indeed to have that heavy, adult-style volume as my very own.

The second gift that set the day apart was the amount of mail I received - 8 pieces! We started out with a P.O. Box in town at the beginning, and Dad only picked up the mail a few times a week. It was simply coincidence that most of them got to me on my birthday, for only two or three we official birthday greetings, most of them being letters from the girlfriends I left behind - Cynthia, Rebecca, Lindsay. But receiving the whole stack actually on the 17th really made the day special!

When Dad got back from town that day and handed out the mail, I hugged my pile to my chest and ran out of the tipi quickly to find the perfect spot to open my treasures. I headed down the 'lane' of our newly surveyed and staked out play town (hereafter referred to as "Roxaboxan" - see Barbara Cooney's children's book by the same name) and settled under a friendly tree in the corner of my 'house'. The ground was damp, and I would have been uncomfortable, but for a handy piece of bark placed just so at the base of the tree as a seat cushion. I don't recall the contents of those letters, but I do remember being thankful for the mild weather so I didn't have to try to enjoy my letters in the noisy, crowded tipi!

Spring in New York caught us off guard - constantly! One minute bleak skies were spitting ice at you, the next, a warm breeze was puffing by, and you realized that suddenly the trees had got leaves overnight. We learned to never go anywhere without a jacket, for even if it felt lovely when you went out, a spring thundershower or even just a cloud passing in front of the sun would require that extra layer. We marveled at how quickly the weather patterns changed, but wondered if we noticed this phenomenon just because we were more exposed to the weather. Within weeks we had learned basic weather-predicting skills - but more on that later...

The property we had bought, on recommendation from the neighbor, and having only seen it once, was nearly 200 acres on top of a hill in a rural county in Upstate New York, about an 1 1/2 hours North of the Pennsylvania border. It was about 2/3's meadows, and 1/3 woods, with a small creek crossing one corner. We had chose our campsite at the highest point of our land, where a corner of woods jutted out into a large meadow. The tipi was tucked in a small clearing right inside the tree line, with the flap open to the west - and the prevailing winds.

The view was primarily of the next hill with a peak at the hill beyond it, and a third, grayer and distant, beyond that. All were heavily wooded, with an occasionally field cleared as farm land. The nearest building in the view was a large barn about 5 miles away on the second ridge.

Our whole family loved the outdoors and looked forward to having a whole huge chunk of property to explore and make our own. The house we had moved from in the suburbs had sat in the middle of 1.7 acres - which was a large lot, buy typical subdivision standards! Us children had made memories in each corner and under every tree of our yard. But it was nothing compared to the unchartered forests and fields of Our Land.

Despite the anticipation of exploring acres and acres we could call our own, it was a few weeks before we ventured outside of the tipi site and the few acres of woods where we gathered firewood for the campsite. There was something unfamiliar and even frightening about all that space! But when we did, we were delighted at the discoveries we made...

- by Trina Holden
Photo by Bethany Wissman

Blustery Day (2 of 2)

Amazingly, the three little girls slept peacefully in the middle of the floor while the wind whipped our tent high over our heads. Dad and Joel were outside with a flashlight trying to re-tie the temporary ropes that had snapped. The Indians had a clever way to secure the canvas that was effective but time consuming. They would wrap a section of canvas over a small stone, then tie sinew around the bulge and anchor it to a stake at the base of each pole. As his fingers grew cold and then numb, Dad fiddled with the lengths of string and marbles we had prepared yet hadn't had a chance to install yet. Joel held the flashlight and tried to keep the canvas still for Dad. The task was made doubly hard by the wind, which continually ripped the edge of the canvas out of their stiff hands.

Inside, Mom had begun to sing praise songs and Jordan and I joined in, trying to keep up our spirits. It was hard to sing with my teeth clenched to keep from shivering from fright and cold. I could just imagine the canvas breaking free from the remaining bits of twine and flying up over the tree tops like a conical parachute. I had squeezed my fistfuls of canvas tighter at the thought, and my knuckles grew white.

I don't know how long it took to get the canvas to quit its wild dance, nor how many praise choruses we half sang, half cried as we struggled against the elements. The memories of that night are among my worst, and reliving them has been sobering. Neither Mom nor I wrote many details in our journals, probably trying to forget it as soon as possible. I do remember that we eventually got back to bed, Dad having done his best with the tie-down effort, and we slept, though fitfully.

We found out later that the wind had reached gusts of 60 miles an hour that night. We hoped that was the worst weather we would encounter, and that it would never happen again. But the very next morning as Dad was frying pancakes - a special treat to cheer us up - the wind picked up again. Plates and forks were dropped and we jumped to our stations.

Once again Dad went out in the cold wind and sleet. This time he had day light working for him. He and Joel got it tied down and this time it held. Eventually the sun came out but the wind continued all day, chasing huge puffy clouds across the bright spring sky. I did not go outside. All day I sat in the rocker, my ears plugged to block the sound of the wind roaring around us, praying - pleading with God to make it stop. Mom believes I was in shock, and both of us had a holy terror of windy days from then on. Even after we were cozily settled inside solid log walls in the cabin, whenever the wind picked up, Mom and I would often get sick to the stomach. It was years before I could enjoy thunderstorms again, having felt so helpless and exposed during those months in the tipi on top of that windy hill.

- by Trina Holden

A Blustery Day (1 of 2)

The key to fitting a family of 8 and all their gear, plus kitchen and pantry essentials in a 20 foot tipi was to follow the old adage, "A place for everything, and everything in it's place." Mom had been extremely organized in preparing for our summer of camping. It was her way of coping with the uncertainties we were facing - knowing where everyone's toothbrush was at any given time gave her peace of mind.

The tipi was mainly our sleeping quarters, with cots and sleeping mats using up most of the floor space, but there was also a large old workbench and a couple shelves for food storage, one book case crammed with curriculum for homeschooling, and a rocker for Mom to nurse the baby in. Under the large, army issue cots someone had given us we stored our clothes - one bushel-sized apple box for each of us. Three changes of clothes and a week's worth of underwear and socks. At night Dad and Mom would blow up their air mattress and after they got settled you'd better hope you didn't have to get up again 'cause you'd have to step on people's beds to get anywhere.

By the third night in the tipi we were getting into a night time routine. We unrolled sleeping bags, brushed teeth, and took turns making trips to the latrine with the flashlight. The Coleman lamp Dad always lit at sunset made the tipi glow like a giant paper lantern, welcoming us back from our business in the woods. We still had to tie down a few things, but as it stood, it was the most home-like thing on the landscape.

Dad was filling the wood stove and banking it for the night, while the boys were braving the elements to bring a few arm-loads of wood under the canvas in readiness for morning. The wind had picked up, and it was getting hard to ignore the unsettling noise of the canvas flapping against the poles over our heads. I stared up into the shadows between the poles at the top of the tipi to the star-shape black hole that revealed the sky. No stars tonight. I tried to remember how exactly the canvas was supposed to stay connected to the frame of poles. I had been busy gathering kindling to start fires when Dad and the boys had been working on that. I slithered into my sleeping bag, hoping the wind wouldn't get any stronger, or the noise would definitely keep me awake.

"We didn't quite finish staking the canvas down," I heard Dad explaining to Mom as she was putting Anneke to bed in her port-a-crib, "-but it should hold until morning. We'll work on that first thing - should be able to pull it taught enough so it won't flap like -"

Suddenly his voice was overwhelmed by the strongest gust of wind yet, and we saw the canvas lift, ghostlike, up and out from the poles, until we saw night over the top of the inner lining. The wind's breath spent, the canvas flopped down again, only to snap taught again and flap anxiously.

All this in seconds, but already the atmosphere in the tipi had been transformed from bedtime calm to emergency mode. Dad bounced off his mattress and began giving orders. Mom and I were to hold the canvas from the inside while he and Joel went out to re-tie the ropes that had snapped. Before he got his boots, the wind had gusted again, and again the canvas lifted up higher than our head, and Mom wailed "Hurry, Hon!"

Jordan, only 10 and short for his age, stood on top of his cot and tried to grip the canvas above his head. Mom and I were climbing up on the work bench to reach the section of canvas that seemed to be loosest. It flapped over our heads, out of reach. When it settled down again, it was to0 taught to get a hold of. The next time it flapped up, we felt cold pricks of ice on our faces - it was sleeting. We scratched at the canvas, trying desperately to get a handhold. Jordan began whimpering, giving voice to the terror rising in my own throat. The wind seemed to be at war with us, and if it won, the closest thing we had to a home would be carried off into the tree tops!

...to be continued

- by Trina Holden

Pitching the Tipi

Our campsite, chosen with the help of our neighbor, was 1/4 mile from the road, up on the highest meadow on our property. Here the meadow wrapped in fat "L" shape around the said point of trees (hereafter referred to as 'The Point"), which contained the remnants of an ancient apple orchard, and many middle aged maples and ash trees, doing a good job of shading out the apple trees and making the woods their own. Just inside the boundary of the tree line, a clearing had been made, simply by sawing down one giant old maple. This was done in preparation for our arrival by a neighbor with a large chainsaw. Here would erect the tipi.

Saturday morning was bright and crisp - a welcome change from the previous day's gray skies and sleet. The boys, Joel and Jordan, helped Dad unload the tipi poles and lug them to the clearing. Next came the pieces of the plywood floor, and the 2x2's that the floor would be screwed to. Most of the morning was spent assembling the floor. Mid morning Mr. Studt (or, Uncle Carl, as us children called him) arrived with a friend of his, Ted, and his two sons. They were tall, lanky boys, just the sort to help with the lifting and reaching and tugging and tying involved in the day's project.

In describing the pitching of the tipi, I had to refer to the book, "The Indian Tipi" by Reginald and Gladys Laubin. This was because my job that day was to babysit my three younger sisters in the cab of the moving truck. It was a typical early spring day in N.Y. - the sunshine was bright and promising, but the breeze was still frozen, and there was still snow in patches in the shade of the woods. The air was much too cold for a 7 and 4 yr. old,much less 6 month old Anneke, just transplanted from the sunny south. We played old maid and go fish, while mom tried to find essentials in the back of the truck, and the men went to work.

The first step was to select three of the largest poles to form the initial tripod. These were tied together securely about three feet from the tips, then hoisted by a length of rope and the combined muscles of 4 men to an upright position, and the 'legs' of the tripod spread out to the circumference of the floor. After this, the remaining 15 poles were set evenly around, cradled in the spaces between the main poles. The men lifted the poles by grasping it in the center, setting the butt end on the ground at the edge of the floor, and 'walking' up, under it, hand under hand, until it was elevated enough to set in place. Next, the rope was wrapped around the bundle of poles at the top where they met, to make sure they stayed in place. Joel was sent shinnying up a thick pole to help the rope get snug in place.

The poles set, the next job was to get the canvas in place. This was made easier with a great trick learned from the Indians. The canvas was folded over and over into a long, skinny triangle about two feet at the base. It was then lashed to the 'lifting pole' and hoisted up, up, until it lay in place next to one of the rear poles. One of the men kept his foot braced against the butt of the pole to keep it from slipping. Then it was simply a matter of unrolling the cover, like a scroll, until the two sides of the canvas met at the front of the tipi.

The way the Indians closed the canvas was clever, too. Two long rows of button-hole stitched holes extended from the top of the canvas, down each of the front edges, to the opening for the door. The canvas was generous enough to over lap about 10 inches, so these rows of holes were atop each other. Then a 'lacing pin'- a strong wooden dowel about 12 inches long, was 'sewn' down inside the left set of holes, and up through the right hand holes to the outside of the canvas again. 11 pins held the front of the canvas shut - 9 above the door hole, and two below.

It was the first time we had seen our tipi completely set up, and it was magnificent. The canvas was taught and bright, rising in a perfect symmetry toward the tall tips of the blond pine poles, stark against the blue, blue sky. Mom paused in her efforts to put together a lunch for the hungry men to take several pictures of our new home. It looked so nice - but would it work? would we be dry and warm in our new home? Our first week would answer those questions.

- by Trina Holden

Our First Night as Indians - Tipi Tales

The first night in the tipi was mercifully non-eventful. We had found our bedding, set up the cots, and rolled out our sleeping bags by the light of a Coleman lamp. We were all grateful for past family camping experiences that made certain aspects of this new adventure familiar and thus comforting. The smell of the lamp oil, wood smoke, and camping gear that had been stored in the attic for months all brought back memories and helped to make us feel a little more secure, if not entirely at home.

The last sounds came Dad as he shoved wood into the stove to keep it going over night, and then the hissing of the lamp ceased as Dad turned it off, and the glow slowly died, leaving us in blackness. Quickly my eyes adjusted, and I could just make out the hole at the top of the tipi where the poles stuck through the canvas. Then I snuggled down in my down sleeping bag, shoved my pillow into place, and closed my eyes. It was very quiet, the air still frozen with early spring, there was not even a cricket to sing us to sleep. A slight breeze made the canvas shuffle over our heads, and I felt a draft flow over my forehead. We were warm, but that was more thanks to the huge wood stove in the middle of the floor - no more than 8 feet from any of us - than the slight protection the canvas offered us. Throughout our time in the tipi we would always feel like we were still at least half-way outside, a nice feeling on a calm, summer afternoon, but rather terrifying in a thunderstorm.

I'll never forget that first sunrise in the tipi. Our ancient orchard/maple grove stood between us and the eastern horizon, so the orange light of morning had to reach us through a maze of twigs and branches heavy with buds. The pattern of sun and shadows was painted quietly over our heads, the canvas soaking in the colors readily and speckling us in turn with the orange and pink light. I was smitten, and have loved early rising ever since.

Dad was already tending the fire, which had not made it through the night, due to poor quality firewood. Mom told us kids to stay cozy in our sleeping bags until they'd got rid of the chill in the air. Dad worked so hard those first weeks - actually, he never stopped - trying to make things as normal as possible for us. Normal was hardly the word to use, though, as we were so far removed from the most vague definition of the word. But he always rose first in the morning, and was the last in his sleeping bag at night, working to ensure that we had the best he could offer of the basic needs - food, clothing, and shelter. The tipi taxed his patience in that last goal - proving to have a life of its own when the wind rose - but, again, I am getting ahead of myself.

Judging the drafts during the night to be more than 'normal' for even a tipi, Dad greeted us in the morning with the news that the tipi would have to be re-pitched that day. This would mean a huge amount of effort for the family, since we didn't have extra help today, but we all agreed that we wanted to be warmer! It being Sunday, Dad explained to us that though we didn't normally work so hard on the Sabbath, the Lord allowed exceptions, such as when the Isrealite's ox fell in the ditch. So, we began hauling everything outside into the frosty morning...

...to be continued

- by Trina Holden

What's cooking? - Tipi Tales Part Four

Swiss Family Robinson, Little House on the Prairie, Wilderness Family, Goldilocks and the Three Bears - we could relate to all these stories during our time on the homestead. Wait - Goldilocks? Oh, yes - porridge for breakfast every morning...

Cornmeal gruel, to be exact. Honestly, we couldn't stand the stuff. But we were dedicated to making a sincere effort towards simplicity and self-sufficiency, even if our taste buds suffered. Before we left N.C., Mom had made one final order from the local bulk food co-op, including 25 Lbs. of ground cornmeal, 50 Lbs of oats, and 50 Lbs of brown rice. These grains were the basis for most meals on the homestead. We also had dried beans, whole wheat flour (and some white), lentils, peas, and other good stuff, all stored in air-tight plastic buckets, labeled with permanent marker, completing our pantry.

We didn't have meat a lot, not for any particular reason but that no one had time to go hunting that first summer. Once in a while the boys happened to get a rabbit or a squirrel, and Mom would faithfully add it to the stew after they had cleaned it. I usually passed up this particular form of protein and went for a spoonful of beans instead! We had beans a lot, to make up for the lack of protein. One dish I remember well consisted of rice, boiled dried peas, sauted onions, and summer savory for seasoning. I liked it, but this, too, got old.

My dear mother did her best to provide variety and treats to keep moral up. But cooking over the wood stove we had installed in the tipi, and later, all summer, over the open fire in the middle of our campsite, she was limited in what dishes she could create. No oven meant no cassaroles, breads, or baking of the usual kind. She learned to use a dutch oven (a heavy cast iron pot with short little legs so you could set in in the fire, and a lid with a rim to hold coals to heat the top), but most of our meals were what could be prepared by frying or boiling.

Breakfast. Oatmeal. Every few weeks, we tried variations - oatmeal with peanut butter and honey, oatmeal with cream and berries, oats raw with milk and honey poured over. Honey helped - some.

Cornmeal - stirred gradually into a pot of briskly boiling water. 'Gradually' being the operative word here - certain of us absolutely couldn't stand lumps in the mush, and many mornings I would wake up to the sound of the antique, metal egg beater whirring away as Dad tried to annihilate every last lump in the pot.

Granola - fried slowly and stirred frequently on the top of the wood stove ina large pan, rather than baked, served with fresh cow or goat milk was a quick breakfast and a favorite.

Pancakes were a real treat, and were had for dinner as often as breakfast, because they took so long to make, two or three at a time over a carefully tended fire. This was one of the first meals I learned to make myself...

Lunch was whatever happened to be ripe in the garden that day (more on the garden later), cottage cheese, yogurt and granola, rice, unleavened bread. We loved the simple recipie for this that our nighbors taught us - flour, salt, oil, honey, and water. Pat it into a cast iron frying pan and lean it against a stone a little ways from the fire. Flip it once, and when done, cut it into pie-shaped wedges. Some of us with sweet teeth drizzled the top with even more honey. When we had company, or some other pinch required a fast, filling lunch, we would do peanut butter or tuna fish sandwiches. All the ingredients being store bought, we felt that this was 'cheating', but often it was the only option.

Dinner was same as above, maybe the one meal a day that would have meat. If it was a day she was in town on other errands, Mom might bring home some fresh ground beef and we would make beet spaghetti. This was made by grating a huge beet (our nieghbors grew them nearly the size of cabbages), adding the meat and tomato sauce, and simmering it over a good fire for 30 min until the beets were tender.

It sounds gross, and it looked rather interesting, too - a swirlling stew of red tomato sauce, nearly overcome by the violet beet 'noodles', but I remember loving it. Probably 'cause we were so hungry after a long day of chores in the fresh air. Other days, like when a continual rain kept us from starting a fire, or the time a skunk invaded our campsite (now, that's a story), it was just impossible to cook, and we went for pizza.

Mom struggled with feelings of guilt whenever we had to make consessions like that, however, as she was doing her best to prepare for the day when we wouldn't have that life line - when we would no longer have a vehicle and the nearest pizza shop was a 10 mile walk. So, she did her best with what she had, and was amazingly creative. I don't remember going hungry, but I do remember eating till my sides ached - fresh cornbread bakded in the dutch oven, veggies stew with dumplins, and apple cobler. It was worth all the arm loads of wood I had hauled and chopped myself to keep the fire going all day...

- by Trina Holden

Are you crazy?! - Tipi Tales Part Three

I had to post this piece by Trina this morning because I am going to meet her right now! I am excited to finally see this dear friend face-to-face...and perhaps I can share a picture later! - Natalie

People always ask us why we chose a tipi. Sometimes we still ask ourselves that question. :) I was discussing it with my father and mother the other night, and we came up with several reasons, though some of them hardly make sense in retrospect.

My father had seen and been inside a few tipis that had been used at the big 'pow-wows' he attended with the boys in the Christian camping ministry they were a part of, called Royal Rangers. The tipis were attractive for their durability and comparative spaciousness to other tents. When considering what we would live in for the summer months while we built our cabin, a tipi seemed more solid and roomy than our 8 man Coleman dome tent with its thin, reedy support poles and nearly-transparent nylon skin.

Another thing we had to consider was our neighbors. These people had befriended us, shared their vision and a glimpse into their lives, and inspired us into this homestead thing in the first place. They were very committed to a most primitive form of lifestyle, and we felt that it would be important that we try to interface with them as well as we could, in order to achieve the community support that would be essential to our survival in this new life. They lived in a log cabin with a dirt floor, cooking over an open fire in a chimney built from field stone. We figured a tipi would fit in on the landscape just right.

We had the offer from a great-uncle, concerned at our choice in lifestyle, of a camper to use for the summer. Dad refused, believing that if we were going to do this thing, then we should do it right. A tipi would be our temporary shelter.

We mail ordered the tipi canvas from a Ma and Pa company in Minnesota, and it came in two large, heavy boxes one day in early spring to our address in Durham, N.C. The big brown delivery truck never failed to cause excitement among the children when it pulled into the driveway. We gathered around as the man in the brown shorts muscled each box off the truck and onto the pavement. One of us proudly announced that that was our home in those two boxes. It took a little explaining for the delivery man to understand and believe us, but I'm sure he still had questions in his mind as he drove off.

Dad had already prepared a floor- plywood cut and pieced together to form a large, 20 ft. circle, to erect the tipi over. We had also cut poles already from a friend's pine woods - 26 ft long logs, which Joel and I had had the job to debark. The book we had about tipis said that the poles should be shaved clean so that moisture could run smoothly down the poles to the ground, rather than catching on snags and dripping inside the tipi. Hours were spent in the front yard of the house we rented the last 6 months in N.C., getting smeared with sap and scratched with bark, competing with our draw knives to peel all the logs clean. When completed, Daddy practiced pitching the tipi in our driveway in the suburbs - garnering quite a few stares and slow drive-bys from our neighbors.

(In checking back in my journal the other day, I realized I had gotten a bit mixed up as to the sequence of those first days. I read that we had driven all day on Thursday, and arrived in N.Y. in the late afternoon. It was Friday, our second day in N.Y. that we spent getting stuck in the driveway)

We spent that first night at the local Howard Johnson, and the next morning we found a place to store our stuff. We had packed the 24 ft. Hertz Penske truck with all of the worldly belongings we had after selling or giving away anything with an electric cord, or that we could not see ourselves using in on the homestead. The tipi poles lay along the right wall of the truck, extending out of the rear a few feet; we tied a few orange ribbons and an SMV sign on them for the trip up. Several boxes were labeled "Permanent Storage" - heirloom delft china my mother's mother had brought from Holland, and a few other keepsakes we simply couldn't part with, but knew wouldn't find a place in our new lifestyle. The rest was to be placed in storage until our cabin was built - dressers and beds, books and clothes. Only the essentials of food, clothing and bedding would come with us up the hill to the tipi site.

After locking the doors on our two 10x10 ft. storage bays down in Norwich, we headed up to the hill, and promptly got bogged down in the mud. After spending all day in getting to the top of the hill, there was no time before dark to set up the tipi, so we headed back to the hotel for another night. This was our first set back, and after our a day of wrestling with nature to do such a simple thing as 'pull into our driveway', discouragement and doubt were already attacking my parents. Mom remembers spending that evening in panic and tears, wondering "What in the world are we doing?!!!". Thankfully, us kids were largely unaware of the fear and tension - it was still just one big adventure, and all I remember of that night was the excitement of another night in a hotel room, and the rare treat of Burger King for dinner.

- by Trina Holden

Smoking Angels - Tipi Tales Part Two

How many of our days began like this on the homestead? The morning would be full of promise, but sometime along the way, the task we faced for that day would bring us to the end of our resources, and cause us to cry out to God. The unique and wonderful ways He answered those prayers is the meat of the story I have to tell.

There we sat, mired to our axles, and feeling indeed like the stupid greenhorns were were. The men got out of the trucks to asses the situation. My dad, Mr. Shepard and Uncle Tim, the two friends who helped drive our caravan north, and Mr. Studt, new friend and fellow homesteader who lived about 20 miles away, stomped around in the mire at the base of the hill, looking for a solution. The half frozen mud clung to their boots and began to build up until the color and style of each pair of boots was imperceptible. The boys, Joel and Jordan, climbed out of the van, anxious to be apart of the action. Mom's warning to not get dirty seemed futile in this new world.
It was obvious that the truck had too much weight and too little traction. An attempt was made to pull it out with a chain attached to Mr. Studt's Bronco, but all that did was yank off a piece of his bumper - whoops! An old, forgotten hay bail in the corner of the meadow was shredded and thrown under the wheels to try to gain some traction. This, too, failed. Later, my father would become an expert at outsmarting the mud and getting a variety of vehicles through the slough and to the top of the hill, but not this time. We were stuck - first big step on our new journey had us bogged down and unable to help ourselves.

Mom could not stand the tension - she never did get to enjoy this particular version of man against the elements, so she decided to go for a little drive. The situation, coated as it was in a thick layer of mud, had quickly lost my interest, so I decided to go along. The younger girls, including Anja, Olivia, and Anneke, just 5 months old, were getting tired of sitting still, as well, so Mom pulled off from the side of the road where she was parked and headed further down Turner St. to check out our new neighborhood. I still remember the dull grays and browns, the bleakness of the landscape as we drove along. Later, when we learned to love our new world, we would see the ugliness of early April days as the sly predecessor to gorgeous spring weather, trees and flowers bursting into bloom as soon as the sun peeked out of the clouds. For now, though, our new neighborhood did not look very promising.

We discovered our nearest neighbors consisted of a colony of decrepit mobile homes and travel trailers, hitched along the hillside at the south-west corner of our land. Several generations and branches of the Williams family lived here, amid old demolition derby cars and piles of junk which they frequently lit fire to, sending smog up the hillside polluting our fresh, country air. We later called the place 'Williamsburg' just so we could stand to refer to it. Further along, the road became gravel, with a few houses and abandoned barns doing their best to keep the hills from looking any more desolate. The most exciting moment of our little excursion occurred when we spotted some dark objects at the distant edge of a field, and guessed they were wild turkeys. At the end of Turner St., where it joined Miles Rd., we turned around to go back and check on the men.

No progress had been made, other than to decide that the only thing that would get us out of this mess and on our way up the hill would be a tractor or a backhoe. Since no one had one handy in their back pocket, the situation did, indeed, seem hopeless. And that's when God showed up.

The rusty little car slowed as it approached our grouping of vehicles at the base of the driveway, and looked like it might stop. We caught our breath, hoping someone was about to take interest in our plight. The car sped up again, drove past the driveway, then stopped and backed up. The driver rolled down his window, pulled the cigarette from his lips, and asked, "Do you guys need help?"

We all released our breath and sighed with relief. Yes, we needed help big time. And God showed up - big time. The two men owned a backhoe, which they were willing to go and haul all the way from their job site in Greene (15 miles south) and use to get us out of the mud and up the hill. We were amazed but grateful that they would spend the rest of their day helping complete strangers, using their own equipment, in the sleet and rain, no payment but our gratitude. They were angels in disguise, we joked, and we called them our smoking angels whenever we told the story of our first day on the homestead.

When we finally reached the top of the hill, we faced our next challenge - setting up the tipi...

- by Trina Holden

Tipi Tales - Part One

Trina Holden has allowed us to publish a series of memoirs she is writing on her adventures homesteading in the wilderness. I am sure you will be as captivated as I was by her stories. We will be posting these every so often, so enjoy!

When I was 13 my family moved to a tipi in upstate New York to homestead. For years I have longed to tell the stories of our adventure on top of a hill in the country, carving out a lifestyle that belonged to another century, but I have never known where to start. What day marked the beginning? How do I explain how we came to be there? Which story comes first? Maybe this one...

My first memories of the homestead are green, which is odd, since we moved on a cold, muddy, snowy day: April first, 1995. To this day, Mom jokes that she had hoped that day that it was all a huge April Fool's Joke. We had left the cozy, homey suburbs of Raleigh in the middle of the night, saying tearful goodbyes to the dear friends who had housed us for the night after all our belongings had been packed into the big yellow truck.

Dad, Mom, 6 kids, and two friends, in three vehicles pulled out of the long gravel driveway and on our way. Away from the city, the lights, and all things familiar, towards new goals and unknown challenges. Onto the interstate, getting in 6 hours of driving before dawn. Past cities: Richland, D.C., Wilkesbarre, through the hills of Pennsylvania, to a valley in the the southern tier of New York. Our route took us between low hills and ran beside an old canal flowing North to South - we reached Chenango county by mid-morning. The children woke to a different world, and it would literally be years before it quite felt like home again.

Ten hours of driving behind us, we pulled into the 'driveway' of our new property, and faced the most challenging part of the journey: 1/4 mile long, half frozen, half muddy, steep and unwelcoming, the old logging trail slopped up toward the top of the hill. An early spring snow was doing its best to brighten the dull landscape of grays and browns, but all it did was make us shiver as we got out of the vehicles to survey the scene and stretch our legs.

The meadow through which the driveway climbed was grown over with goldenrod and Autumn Olive bushes, the ditch along side the road was muddy with the spring run off and sprouted wild willow, golden orange spikes just budding out. It was hard to see the beauty of the day, compared to the sunshine, warmth, and flowers we had left in the South. Without very many options, the men decided to make a run for it with the truck, to see if they could make it through the mud and onto the first rise, with the goal of reaching our planned campsite and setting up the tipi before nightfall. Within minutes, the moving truck was sunk to its axles, and there was nothing to do but pray for angels to come and help us.

...to be continued

- by Trina Holden, pictured above with husband Jeremy and son Jesse