Ooops sorry Mom it's out there now ;0P

I have been reading so much since I started homeschooling eight months ago. I have come across some pretty interesting information. But for now I just wanted to share my early childhood. (yes Mom I am revisiting this tale toned down for you twenty odd years later. Forgive me.)
My parents were hippies the nature loving kind :) And so they built our home from the ground up. We homesteaded before it became a catch phrase. Mom grew an immense garden of veggies and tried her hand at various fruits something that was harder at the time due to the zone we were in.
Our home had no television or anything electric and no one missed it. We would play charades in the long winter hours and make puzzles. My sister and I filled our free time (we were PS kids) with all sorts of wonderful games. We wandered freely in the bush playing in the tall ferns and poking in the stream. We liked to wander to the beaver pond at the back of our property and poke at the leaches that swam in the beavers channel. (No Mom wasn't happy about that.) We carried frog eggs on shovels trying to relocate them.(Probably not the best way to transport eggs.) One of our favorite things was to bend tall grasses over and make tunnels in them to crawl through. Or playing rabbit and fox under the evergreen boughs that hung low in the winter. There was just enough room to crawl under in a cozy little nook.
I remember large boxes of ripening tomatoes in the hall come fall time and eating them raw with great zest as they were more refreshing then apples. I got turned off of apples one year by biting into a worm, organic can be overrated ;P
And Mom would spend a lot of her time canning. Oh the canned goods were the best, peaches, tomatoes, pickled beans, pickled carrots, corn relish, bread and butter pickles, dill pickles, on and on it went. And although I loved the fruits of her labors I can honestly say I detested berry picking especially the fingernail sized wild strawberries. Sure they made delicious jam but sitting in a hot field picking was really boring.
I never gave it any thought as to how I was living until now. I am a parent myself and no we are not homesteaders. I don't know how my mother had energy for it all. But I do appreciate all the effort. And even though our plumbing was outdoors and that could be rather scary at night all alone. I wouldn't trade my hippie childhood in for all the xbox's in the world.
And some days when the winter winds blow I remember with fondness the magical glow everything had by the light of the kerosene lamps and I miss them. :)