Whine
I would like to humbly suggest that an urban homesteading lifestyle requires a certain degree of letting shit slide.
You have two choices: make peace with weeds, kitchen dishes, chicken shit and dirty fingernails or go crazy fighting the inevitable.
I would like to humbly suggest that blogging also requires a certain degree of letting shit slide.
You have two choices: make peace with assholes, content thieves and trolls or go crazy fighting the inevitable.
I’ve been going a little crazy lately. See, I don’t just want a productive garden, I want an attractive garden. I don’t just want a pantry stocked with home canned foods, I want a (relatively) clean stove top. I don’t just want quality time with my kids and a fun-filled home, I want organization that allows me to find stuff when I want it. I don’t just want to do all this crap, I want to write about it. I don’t just want to write about it, I want to not wake up to hate email attacking me.
My battle with setting goals that are quite frequently at odds with each other has reached something of a fervor lately. Much of this is related to how much time (and, more critically, emotional energy) I allow my blog to consume. Too much, as it turns out. There was a good several-week period recently where I was pretty sure Al Gore made a terrible, terrible mistake when he invented the internet.
See, I am still learning how to brush off the “realities” of being a blogger – like periodically being told things like:
You write like an 11th grade fat girl, who is poor, and cannot afford to eat right. Do us a favor and write about something youre [sic] proficient in..like shopping at Grocery Outlet and be [sic] single. Don’t dump your inadequacies on those seeking legitimate nutritional advice. Youre [sic] neither qualified, nor worthy to be leading people down your clearly desolate path.
Hugs and kisses to you, too, asshole.
Bump around the internet long enough and eventually you get sprayed with the hatespew of some real fuckheads. My turn to catch spew came a few weeks ago, and it was just one thing after another.
My blog has been very much an extension of a certain part of my life: the home stuff and garden stuff, and periodically things about my family and kids. Perhaps other bloggers keep better distance from their writing, I don’t know. I think most writers get rather attached to what they write, whatever the topic, or they wouldn’t do it.
People who don’t blog (and many who do) say that comments like the above gem are a sign that a site is popular enough to have trolls – and that is a sign that a blogger is doing great! Maybe so. But it doesn’t feel great – it feels exactly as if someone broke into your house, took a shit on your couch and then left you to clean it up. Was any permanent damage done? Well, not really…but I’m scrubbing shit and the loose-stooled perpetrator is down the road, already busy soiling someone else’s furniture.
I suppose the most gracious way to describe this would be “learning experience.”
Wine & Weed
Alright, enough of that. I didn’t actually intend to write about internet trolls, but the topic has clearly been clogging up my fingers, because any time I sit down to write, out it leaks.
Here’s the part of this post that isn’t butthurt navel-gazing. One of the reason that the urban homesteading world has an amazing and (mostly) supportive virtual community is because many of us feel like there aren’t many real-life people in our real-life world who are particularly interested in this Grow Your Own stuff.
All of us recognize that many hands make lighter work, and most of us want some degree of real life community. But you can’t sit around and wait for someone come knocking. If you want a community, you have to make it.
So, I would like to share my secret to making a Productive Home Friend. I call it the Wine and Weed.
Weeding Tool
If you know someone casually, maybe at work or from around the neighborhood, and they seem cool and interested in gardening (they don’t have to be hard core), ask if they’d be interested in setting up a few labor trades over the summer. A couple hours one week at your place, then a couple hours a few weeks later at their house.
Hosting house supplies wine. This is the important part. You aren’t just offering manual labor for manual labor. You are throwing a Mini Productive Home Party. It’s fun! There’s booze!*
Pick someone reliable, and make sure you are reliable, and keep “swapped hours” pretty equal so no resentment builds up. If you have kids, a Productive Home Friend with compatible age and temperament kids is a huge bonus.
Walking around a garden with a friend for 90 minutes, drinking wine and pulling weeds or raking out mulch can get an unbelievable amount done for almost no perceived effort. There is a synergy that happens when you work together with someone that really does lessen the burden.
If you have a particularly close friend, you could even host a “Wine, Whine and Weed” trade, akin to the “Stitch and Bitch” parties knitters host.
The point is to introduce the concept of friendly socialization while still getting shit done. People really go for it – I just floated the Wine and Weed concept at a coworker of mine last night and her response was, “sign me up.”
…And pass the wine.
Do you have a real life community of support for gardening, canning, and other productive home activities, or are you the only kook in your town doing this stuff?
Ya know folks, if we REALLY wanted to show Erica our appreciation we’d venture on over to that Tip Jar thingy she’s got over on the right side…
I haven’t climbed down off my wallet just yet to do so, but I’ve been offering up a book for a giveaway (Erica – HINT HINT – read your email!)…. hey, it’s at least something!
Matt Jarvis
Eugene, Oregon
Hi Erica- I appreciated your post regarding trolls and general internet nastiness. I often question the true value of online comments and reviews (blog comments are an entirely different beast though, and make blog communities what they are), so found today’s NPR article timely. Don’t let ’em get you down- keep up the good work!
http://www.npr.org/2013/03/11/174027294/the-nasty-effect-how-comments-color-comprehension
GOT YOUR BACK GURL. DONT EVEN TRIP. YOUDABES!!!!
Sorry you had a troll experience. I recently watch this on the Rachel Maddow Show. She defines the term quite well regardless if you agree with her or not! Enjoy! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuXGiV82tmg
Ignoring the trolls – best way to deal most of the time – I would just like to say: My friend does the “wine and weed” thing. She calls them “Plant and Rant” (sort of like stitch and bitch, but with yard work). I love it! 😀
We lost Eat At Dixiebells because of trolls. What can you do? Of course it hurts deeply. I know even Rhonda at Down To Earth cops the trolls too. I certainly hope you can purge your soul and shake them off like water and ducks backs and all of that. Without further ado and with no more references to rhetoric and trite sayings, I simply say thank you. John Scalzi is also a good read on this subject and may go some way to making you feel more powerful.
I didn’t stop blogging due to trolls, I just didn’t have the time anymore, and ungrateful dicks in the real world were grinding my niceness & generousity away, making it hard for me to bother making time. Many, many good and wonderful people in my world, just like I am sure Erica has, to help battle those odd low moments you get tiny minded fuckers annoying us!!!
Another word of support from a Swedish fan. I love how you write and what you write about, so please keep at it!
Heja heja! (Swedish for woot woot)
Erica,
Thank you for sharing. I am sure it is very hard to have people say things such negative things about you. Also, thank you for putting exposing yourself to this kind of bullshit in order to help others and to do something you car about.
As a new gardener I enjoy your blog and have learned a great deal. You blog has not only helped me become a better gardener, it has helped me better provide for my family. For example, you pointed me in the direction of Valicoff farms when I asked you for a tomato source and I ordered 40 lbs. We are still using the last of the tomatoes I canned and every time I open a jar, I think how much better they are for my family than store bought canned tomatoes.
Stay strong. If you ever need a work buddy, I would be glad to trade work days between our gardens. Wine included of course.
Alan
Ignore the haters, or at least enter them in your own private “Hall of Shame.” Best of all pray for them because they must be miserable to attack someone publishing such a beautiful site. I put out an inspirational newsletter about love and get hate mail 🙂 In the words of Jim Carey in “Liar Liar”… DE-LETE! :))) You rock.
Hi there
Thank you for your amazing posts/blog….always remember if folk fling bad words and thoughts at you via the internet, it should be negated as they do not know you personally…and besides that I guess one mostly reflects that which applies to one’s self either in lack or in good as we only see through our eyes and only see that which prevales within.
Happy planting greetings form way South..Cape Town…
Erica…this really pisses me off. I have gleaned SO much information from your blog. Including some of your amazing recipes. You personally too the time to answer my slug questions and commented on my sand to loosen up clay issue. If it hadn’t been for you, I would have a concrete raised bed. That some idiot posts that to your blog….again, just pisses me off. I wish there was a way of outing these people by being about to track them. Someday.
Just found your blog today, and I love it!!! This post in particular, although it’s only the 3rd one I’ve read. The Wine and Weed idea is brilliant, but the Whine part – well, I am finding it inspirational… that might sound strange, but I have recently started a blog (all of 6 posts so far…) and right now, it is really an experiment in writing. And my biggest issue with writing is the whole putting-yourself-out-there part, because as you said, we are very connected with our writing, which can make us vulnerable – but don’t pay attention to the creeps, until they ask for the help they really need!
http://firsttrythis.blogspot.ca/ if you are interested…
At first I thought…wow, she might be losing fans with that language, but you speak with honesty. Don’t mind the trolls. I love your blog! You are a breath of fresh air!
Hey you have so many people who love what you do. There will always be people who are going to disagree with you or what you are doing. Often those people are jealous because they cannot do what you are doing. Dont even sweat it. Tell them to stay off of your page/website. I like what you do and I am using some of your website here to start my first gardening project. Wish me luck!!
Thanks for the idea! I have friends who do the work party thing, but I don’t think any of them have applied it to gardening.
I LOVE you! I love your messes and your writing. Your honesty and your swear words. Thank you for not being pinched and uptight and perfect.
‘So sad-n- sorry for those little M@ther F*kker$ that are so filled with self loathing that they have to spew it onto others. What dark, sad little worlds they must live in. Little Rush Limbaugh wannabees.
Still, they need to be rolled in stinging nettles and tossed far, far out into the Sound so they can have a long think while they are trying to swim back in.
I’ve had my share of trolls too. It can really freak a blogger out! Big hugs!
I know you received lots of feedback and encouragement regarding the troll already. But… I still have to add my part. I have just discovered your blog a couple of days ago. And I love it! Not all on it will have relevance or work for me, seeing as I live on the other side of the world, but I will be back and really enjoy your writing. So much so, that I just tipped some coins in your tip jar and hope that many others will as well. Please go on and don’t give up. xx
I don’t usually read blogs but I love your willingness to share your life and experiences with what many just haven’t a clue. I am a healthcare administrator and have worked in the corporate world and the healthcare field. It is so refreshing and inspiring to read about how you go about caring for your family. I love to can and preserve food and have done so for many years. Your blog has inspired me to try some new techniques, thank you!
Sorry someone was so unhappy about themselves and the life they have made that they struck out at you. It truly has nothing to do with you but speaks volumes about the poor choices they have made for themselves. You are obviously an educated, hard working individual with a lot to say. Thank you so much for the tips and your fresh, kind spirit. I’ll be back. God Bless you and your family.
I tried to read all the comments to see if anyone had suggested never ever quoting trolls on your blog, but there were so many comments, I just don’t have time to read them all. So sorry if I’m repeating what others have said. Don’t give any of your time to sad idiots who write garbage; life is too short and your blog is too good. And look at all the attention they got out of it, which is what they want! Ew!!!
Please don’t let the trolls stop you from blogging. You’ve inspired me to start learning and now I’m also doing. My first harvest this year of several different veggies has me giddy with excitment, I’m already planning for a bigger garden harvest next year. All of your recipes and ideas you share are wonderful. Keep the inspirational ideas coming, I love to read your blog and I’m always excited to see a new post.