You can't have it all.

Chop, clap! Chop, clap! I hear when I walk to the chicken coop to collect eggs. In the barn I see Sander putting the pieces of wood on the chopping block and with a hard blow, he splits them into pieces with the axe. Chop, clap! Chop, clap! Block by block is chopped into small pieces for the stove.

Yesterday we ate all the bread so now it is high time to bake new again. I walk to the house with a basket full of split firewood. Mmm, what do these smell nice. It is spruce wood and they smell wonderfully of resin and a little of Christmas. When I put a few pieces on the fire, it crackles and splatters nicely.

In the large earthenware bowl, I mix the flour with the salt and the yeast. With the kettle, I pour warm water on it and start kneading. While I am working on this, my thoughts drift away to how I could explain our philosophy of life.

Independence is one of our keywords. In other words, control everything yourself.
Why don't we have running water, a washing machine, a dishwasher, a chainsaw etc. etc.? Of course it is wonderful that these time-saving things were invented. But everything comes at a certain price. With the arrival of electricity and facilities, the bills will also come. It is a vicious circle. To be able to pay the bills you need more money, more money means more work, more work means less time to do something yourself, less time to do it yourself is buying more, buying more is more money. You can't come out of it. We turned it around. With fewer bills, we have lower costs, we need less money and we have more time to do it ourselves. Where others get their sense of security from a permanent contract and wages, we get that from making it ourself and low costs.

This gives us a lot of freedom to organize our own time and do what we love and find satisfaction in, but this way of life is not for everyone. It also has another side. Anyone who likes to travel, go out, shop, gets tangled with our way of life. Life is all about prioritizing, and the only one who can make the choices in your life is you.

I like to sing during my household chores and one of my favourite songs is the Dolly Parton song "coat of many colours" and especially the following piece:
They didn´t understand it, I tried to make them see
That one is only poor, only if they choose to be
it´s true we had no money, but I was as rich as I could be ......

The dough is now completely soft and smoothly kneaded. I make a nice ball of the dough and with a damp tea towel over it, I let it rise. With a book, I settle on a chair and move to another time and world.