GIRL OUT OF WATER grew up on the Pacific Coast in a sleepy beach town and has lived all over America, as well as in Asia. What a change it was to move to the country! This lifestyle takes some getting used to!! I keep saying “You can take the girl away from the ocean, but you can’t take the ocean out of the girl!”
I write these stories and use humor to get through difficult adjustments. I also hope that someone takes to heart the lesson I am sharing with each one. When we moved out to the country there were many things I did not know. Some lessons were more difficult to learn than a simple “drive the tractor like this.” There is so much more going on out here in the country and on a farm than I thought, and I want to make sure that people are aware of some of these things before, or during, their leap to farming.
Some of these stories are more musings about life and life changes rather than straight farming. My husband, the logical Marine Corps Colonel/engineer/agriculture major in college, and I both think that life MUST include a good dose of laughter. But sometimes our life is more like an episode of that old sitcom “Dharma and Greg,” as one of my brothers once told me: the fight between logic and free spirit. The logical man wants everything symmetrical and just so, and the free spirit me wants to paint everything, plop metal sculptures in the middle of his fruit fields, and hang stained glass everywhere, even in the trees in the forest! So you can just imagine the laughter and teeth gnashing that still happens, even in our third decade of marriage!!
I hope that you enjoy these stories of our progress at our farm. Chapter I is the beginning, so I hope you have the time to scroll down and begin at the beginning! Our journey is definitely interesting.
Something exciting has happened: the old hippie magazine MOTHER EARTH NEWS (yes, it’s STILL around!) has picked up my blog and posts them on their website! It’s very exciting to be published by an industry standard, especially one to which my husband bought a life-time subscription back in the 1970’s. Check it out:
http://www.motherearthnews.com/biographies/maura-white.aspx
Copyright © 2011, Maura White. All rights reserved.
Girl Out of Water 
I found you blog on Mother Earth News. I truly enjoyed your story!
Thanks for your kind words!!
Hi Maura,
I also found you through that delightful story on Mother Earth News. I wanted to say that it looked to me like your cows were beef cows, and maybe having a dairy cow would be a different kind of cow experience (which might mollify your husbands’ desire for a cow). I’ve never had either kind of cow, nor any experience with them, but my husband wants one too, and so I have looked into MINIATURE dairy cows, which might be just the ticket! (Less space and feed needed, and easier to ‘overlord’). Also, going at $2000. a head, they might be more lucrative!
I am really enjoying your blog, I too am a girl from Northwestern Oregon who was somehow convinced by my very persuasive hubby that it would be a good idea to move out to the Midwest and start living the homesteading dream! It doesn’t always look the way you expected it would, does it? Sometimes I miss the ocean so bad I can practically hear it… but I have to remind myself that not everyone has the chance to realize their dreams of country life. I have to say, I really wish I’d seen what you said about insisting on having a REAL house first. These “temporary solutions” (like our single-wide) really have a way of outstaying their welcome!
Hey Maura,
Just had lunch with Chris and Elise yesterday at Crystal Cove. Elise told me about your blog so I wanted to check it out. Hope to be a new groupie.
xxoo,
Susan
After reading the above, I think I am going to really enjoy following your trials and tribulations