Week 2 Homesteading Journal
This week was dominated by Raz’s heart surgery. He’s in rest & recovery mode this week. Slow walks down the driveway, nutritious food & lots of rest for him. I’ve been busy researching, writing, dreaming & taking care of the man. We published our first book this week, as a part of our Craftsteading plan.
Heart Surgery
Raz has severe, sudden onset Atrial Fibrillation. It started abruptly and has caused him to drop to a dangerously low ejection fraction. That means that his heart isn’t filling up with enough blood to pump out to his body because the erratic heartbeat doesn’t give it enough time to fill all the way. His cardiology team performed a cardiac atrial ablation on Tuesday to try and stabilize his rhythm.
The procedure was successful in restoring a sinus rhythm! Now it will be a waiting game to see if it “sticks” or not AND seeing if the added blood flow gets his heart pumping better again. 🙏
Homesteading with Health Problems
Health is everything…..you can’t do ANYTHING without it. Are we nuts for even trying to do this? In our 50s with him in full blown heart failure?
Homesteading can be a great way to improve your health. It can also be a fast track to physical destruction. We’ve experienced both across our decade of homesteading. The difference is often a fine line. We’ve found that the secret is “good enough”.
Good Enough
This week would seem like a failure to a “normal” homesteader. We didn’t really get anything done, didn’t make any decisions and actually fell behind on things already — the meadow needs to be mowed, nothing is ready for planting in the garden, the coop is still dirty and it almost feels like we’re just camping here in our RV. But, then I remember Raz just spent the last 3 months fighting for his life and I shrug and say, “good enough.”
Gentler, Realistic Homesteading
There has to be a gentler, more realistic version of homesteading that can meet our needs as we age, produce an income so we don’t wear ourselves out trying to work an outside job and support our health & healing. Stay tuned as we work through it.
Craftsteading - 1st Venture
We’re working on a post about the crafts we’ve chosen to make our homestead a profitable one. One of our avenues of income is publishing books. Indie writes, Raz edits & we’re both into photography & art so publishing was always at the top of our list. While Raz was in between surgeries in late March we created our first book! We got our proof copy in the mail on the last day of Week 2. It was so exciting to open the package! It’s available on Amazon. Trolldom :)
