The concept of ‘futuresteading’ coaxes us to embrace small ways to live like tomorrow matters, whatever the season may be.
Rustle up your swimsuit from the bottom drawer and ponder what to pack in your picnic basket, for the season of twilight swimming and riverbank picnics is here!
Days start early with sunrise walks and the must-do chores of feeding the chickens and watering the garden, before we bunker down in the cool of the house for the heat of the day, where we escape the deafening drum of cicadas. There is no better excuse for reading a few chapters, sucking on homemade popsicles, and making slushies with just-picked fruits.
Other than the odd dash out of the garden to turn on drippers or to whip the sun-baked washing off the line, our days are slow and mellow.
These days flow languidly as we enjoy endless jugs of water filled with fistfuls of mint (we have so much mint that we might go mad, although we won’t tell Mum as she warned us not to plant it all). Long evenings are warm enough to swim by moonlight, and the water feels like milk against our skin.
Cockatoos circle relentlessly in search of their next feed, tomatoes and corn reach skyward, and seed heads are beginning to appear. As a kid, it was my favourite time of year; as a homesteading adult, it’s the season that tests your mettle and your commitment to the cause.
This season sears you on both sides, but the advantage is that it leaves you tender in the middle and best served with a glass of wine or cider, while holding the hose in the other hand.
Once the baking sun has dipped, it’s back outside for more bustle and antics. More watering, patch picking, and barbecue dinners where the kids bounce on the trampoline and kick the soccer ball while the grown-ups turn the chops. The early produce is beginning to flood the kitchen, and we feast on foods that need to be used.
Observations:
- Be still.
- Be still long enough to really see.
- Really see what’s around you. What’s around you is what you’ve created.
- You can own that. The good, the so-so, the wonderful!
- Own it, celebrate it, learn from it.
- Change, adapt, chew it over and make it matter.
- Only you can make it mean something.
- Does it?
Image and text from Futuresteading by Jade Miles; photography by Karen Webb, illustrations by Megan Grant. Published by Murdoch Books, RRP $39.95
