Pamela Robinson:  

I live in a rural area about 24 miles outside of Jackson, MS on 20 acres of wooded land. We have a 1/2 acre pond fully stocked with Brim and Bass, a small hen house so we have fresh eggs every day, a greenhouse where I can keep my plants in the winter and start new plants every Spring. I have an herb garden so we always have fresh herbs, plus pear trees, apple trees, blueberry bushes and plenty of space for my husband to have a garden every year. My husband and I like to make jam and can pie filling from all the fresh fruit. We built our current home on this property 20 years ago and retired five years ago. It has taken us several years to build all the extras on the property, but it has been worth all the work. We would like to be able to be self sufficient for as much of our food as possible. I have always been a city girl, so my family was astonished when I told them where we were going to build our home. They asked me, "how do you know you're going to like living in the country?" And I told them, " all I know is that I've always wanted to live in the country, so I'm going to do it." The first first flock of chickens we got were mine to clean up after, water and feed. We had ten hens and I named every one of them. The hen house and chicken yard were totally surrounded by fencing so the chickens could not get out unless we let them out which we did every day because we had read that eggs from free range chickens were healthier. Every day after work and on the weekends, I would go out to the chicken yard and when the hens saw me coming, they would run straight for me and if I bent down and opened my arms, they would run straight into my arms and let me hold them. In other words, they turned into pets. Well, after about 3 years, hens don't lay very well and it was time to get new stock, so we had to use the older hens for meals. When the day came to kill the first hen, my husband asked me which one did I want him to kill first, I told him to just pick one and not tell me which one it was! He caught and killed a hen, blanched it in hot water and pulled the feathers out, cleaned it and cut it up and brought it to me ready to cook. I made chicken and dumplings for supper that night. We sat down at the table and served the chicken and dumplings onto our plates and. . .neither of us could eat a bite! I felt like I was about to eat my best friend! If our survival depended on eating our hens, I'm pretty sure I could do it, but for now all domestic animals on our farm live very long lives and die from old age. My husband hunts every year during hunting season and our two freezers are full of deer meat. We haven't had to buy beef for almost 6 years. My husband processes his own deer meat and makes sausage, hamburger, steaks, stew meat and roasts out of it. We have six children, eight grandchildren and 1 great grandson and 1 great granddaughter. When you add other family members and friends we want to buy gifts for, our Christmas gift list is very, very long. We try to improvise to enable us to be able to afford to give each one a gift. For example, I wrap a small inexpensive gift for my sister (she moved to Mississippi about 20 years ago), but we also cut, split, stack and deliver a truck full of firewood to her house for her to enjoy in her fireplace. That's a pretty good gift when you consider that buying one cord of firewood here costs from $185 - $200. We probably burn at least 2 cords of firewood in our own fireplace every winter. It's a lot of work, but it's free fuel! With all the trees on our land, my husband always has plenty of firewood cut, split and stacked for us to use in our fireplace. We don't live an exciting life, but it sure is a good life. Actually though, we have had some excitement. My husband was given a one week Caribbean cruise from his employer on a Royal Caribbean cruise ship called, Song of America. It had been named Cruise Ship of the Year the year prior to our trip. We visited Puerto Rico, St. Thomas and several other ports. The ship had a beauty salon, a movie theater, a work out room, a casino, shops to spend all your money in and all kinds of free activities planned for every age group. There are many opportunities to eat, fresh pastries on deck at the bakery at sunrise, then it's time for breakfast, then a mid morning snack, lunch, ice cream on deck during the mid afternoon and dinner in the evening, at midnight there is the Captain's dinner, not to mention the fruit basket in your room that was kept full of fresh fruit and the mint you found on your pillow every night. Everybody should go on at least one cruise, it's fabulous. A few years later, my husband won an all expense paid trip to Hawaii for one week, the problem was I have a flying phobia. But my husband really wanted to go on this trip so I agreed to go and we stayed at a hotel right next to the airport the night before we were supposed to leave. My husband said he woke up at 5:00 a.m. and I was curled up in the fetal position shaking like a Chihuahua. Needless to say I couldn't get on the plane. My husband called the travel people to try to reschedule the trip, which they will rarely agree to do, usually if you don't make your scheduled flight, you lose the trip. But they agreed to reschedule our trip with the understanding that I would go through 6 weeks of phobia training to see if it would help. During the sessions, my therapist did some hypnosis on me and at one point asked me how many take offs and landings we would have on the trip. We looked at our tickets and it showed three take offs and landings, because we were staying on Oahu, but planned to make a day trip to Maui as well. My therapist told me if I had any problem on the trip, I could call him, night or day. At the end of the six weeks of therapy, I manage to get on the plane. But we found that we had one more take off and landing than showed up on our tickets, but I still managed to make every plane change. Hawaii was beautiful and I was absolutely astonished when we approached for landing on Oahu and saw that Diamond Head really does exist! It's one thing to see pictures in a book and quite something else to see it in real life! We had signed up for a lot of tourist trips, but finally decided to cancel those activities and just rent a car and go wherever we wanted, whenever we wanted and that was a lot more fun! The air in Hawaii is different from any place else I have ever been. There is a constant ocean breeze and it feels like feathers constantly brushing against your skin! After one glorious week in Hawaii enjoying the cliff divers, the botanical gardens, the shopping...Expand for more