The whole wide world sits and watches this plague travel city by city waiting for it to pass over. For many, staying home isn’t a pastime. For many, the home isn’t a refuge, for some, home is bondage. My heart aches for those who feel like this. But for most, home is life! This is the case for us.
As homesteaders and homeschoolers, we find it quite normal to stay home and make the most of our time together. We completed the school year online through K12, my youngest did fundamental learning with me every day and we still have an entire flock of animals to take care of. The only thing my children miss most is their extracurricular activities. Zoom saved the day by allowing our children to continue to dance with their friends. It wasn’t always sunshine and rainbows. The interaction with peers made dancing fun. This experience makes you value friendship and social gatherings for sure.
Now that some restrictions have been lifted, our dancers are finally enjoying social relationships again all while practicing social distancing in summer dance camps.
So how has COVID-19 affected our homestead? Scheduling. It’s spring and we always replenish our coops with chicks. With this pandemic, everyone wants to become farmers. It’s gotten so bad at my local feed store, that we have to arrive an hour before the store actually opens, to take a number to buy day-old chicks.
Grocery shopping in person wasn’t my favorite thing to do in the first place but since I’ve been online shopping, buying groceries has been a pleasant experience mentally and financially. I am also to only buy what I need, but now the scarcity of quality foods is shocking. Every time I place a successful online order, I receive a text as I arrive at my scheduled pickup time to find that half of the things on my list were unavailable or the quantity I asked for is unacceptable. Since the start of the pandemic, I visit the store at least 4 times a month versus twice a month on my normal schedule. But things are looking up! I am back to my regular shopping routine, I spend a little more because we love eating fresh fruits and vegetables. We snack on fruits and enjoy a refreshing smoothie daily. With stone fruits in season, I’d rather splurge on it!
It’s June. Three months of social distancing. Three months of wearing masks (which by the way is annoying) and hand sanitizers. Three months of inadequate shopping experiences and no date nights! Any time Ray and I spend alone, I’ll call it a date night. Walking in the yard: date night, shopping for tools: date night, recording online services for the church: date night. Our children, n the other hand, love staying home and getting creative. Some days, they paint and draw and the other days they will read and make clothes. Being homeschoolers, they have learned to manage their time well at home.
What will the rest of 2020 have in store? Media has taken over and the world seems as if it’s crumbling before our very eyes while being historic in other ways. There’s some good, some bad. Choose to live life and love every moment of it.
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