Where Are You From?

I'm from Denmark, a little country in Europe. Are there other members outside the US here?

I love the late forties and the fifties, and have loved Donna's blog here for many years. I've always lived sensible, but want to improve further. She calms my mind and encourages me to go on. So thank you SO much, Donna.

Wishing you all a lovely day. :)

br, Sanne

Hello!  I am from Connecticut USA.  I truly appreciate GDonna and her posts.  I too look for old diaries and journals and want to learn from days gone by.  We are a frugal household who owns two businesses (a music teaching studio and a vintage/antique shoppe)

Sanne G, I believe I recognize you from another site that was around several years ago: "My 50s Year" run by another Donna. She started a 30s year, but stopped after a few months.

I currently live in Arizona, but have been a bit of a nomad, physically traveling and moving, but also "time traveling" - a favorite pastime.  Having an "era" to base my life on keeps me grounded.  I've been following Grandma Donna for years and have learned so much about ways to live more simply and as a result, more frugally.

Hello Sanne. I'm Rhonda and I live in the Sunshine Coast region of Australia. Like most people here, I've read Donna's blog for a long time and while I'm not doing the 1930s study, I am reading along with interest.

Thank you for your replies, I hope more will join in. Have a lovely weekend. 

@Lynne, yes, I followed the other Donna from the start to the end. I would love to live like a time traveller, but it is not for my husband, so I do it in my mind.

I live in a small regional town in South Gippsland, Victoria, Australia with my children, 3 cats, 8 chooks, a guinea pig and plenty of honey bees. I have a large vegetable garden and small orchard in my front yard where I love to potter around weeding, planting & harvesting. Right now I have a huge glut of zucchinis I'm trying to find creative ways to use so that they don't go to waste.

I have been Grandma Donna's blog for a very long time and have learnt so much from her. My favourite era is the 1930s & 1940s, and though I'm not doing the whole 1930s study this year, I'm as always doing bits & pieces from it to simplify my home and life to slow down and save as much as possible.

I love this forum idea and look forward to getting to know you all.

I have just discovered this site recently.  I enjoy reading all the diary entries.  I live in Washington state in the Pacific Northwest.  I was tempted to try and be more immersed in the study but about the time I started planning I unfortunately broke my wrist.  I wish I could say it was a slip in our recent ice storm but really it is because I am a klutz.  It did make me very grateful for modern medicine.  It does however cramp my ability to bake bread or wash laundry the way my grandmother did in the 30’s.  So for now I am following along

@Rebekah C, it’s good having you here. It’s good seeing another Australian her. It’s a great idea to simplify and slow down using parts of the 1930s study. Good luck with it. 

Hello @Nancy H, welcome to to Donna’s forum. Donna isn’t feeling well so I’m standing in for her at the moment. I’m sorry about your wrist but I’m sure you’ll learn a lot just by reading Donna’s posts and the diary entries. Maybe you can join the study later in the year when your wrist is better. 

I live in Michigan and have followed Donna (and Rhonda's) sites for quite some time. Thank you, ladies, for bringing a group of like minded people together.

Rest and feel better, Donna!

Another Aussie here, from a small regional town in East Gippsland Australia. I found Donna’s blog from Rhonda H’s Down to Earth blog quite a few years ago now.  Have learnt so much and appreciate the sense of calm I get from reading her posts on simply living and learning about past generations. It’s like visiting a friend.

I’m in Cheltenham, England. I’ve always been interested in the 50’s and the lifestyle back then but didn’t really do anything about it. I’ve found myself feeling very nostalgic recently for my childhood and I’ve realised I got so caught up in modern things that I was in danger of forgetting simpler things. I learnt to knit socks in the lockdown and I feel like that grounded me and made me want to discover more about the past and a random internet search led me here a year ago :) It’s  so awesome that we have a forum. 

I'm also from Australia. I heard about the forum from Rhonda's blog, so I decided to poke my head around the door and have a look.

I have a real interest in living simply - and then I use the money I save to go travelling. My 4 boys are pretty much off my hands now and so for the first time in my life I'm FREE to do pretty much whatever I want. I have a large veggie garden out the back and a small orchard in the front yard. An hour ago I was out picking plums to stop the lorikeets from stealing them all. 

I'm looking forward to 'meeting' more of you!

I'm Karen. I live in New Zealand on a farm. I'm in my 60s and have read GDonnas blog for a few years now.

I've often been referred to as a 1950s housewife and I embrace that. LoL. Gardening, canning,cooking, sewing, knitting,  reading are the things I like best.

I am also from Australia, currently living in the Adelaide Plains, north of Adelaide in South Australia. The weather here is Mediterranean in Autumn/Winter/Spring, but more towards arid in Summer - yesterday’s maximum was 43C or 108F, but it has gotten up to 50C some years.

I am in my early 60s and a child of the early 60s! I am retired and live with my husband, 2 short-haired border collies, one tabby cat and 2 chickens, on a 1 hectare block (2.2 acres).

My dad tended a very large vegetable garden when I was young and all our veg and fruit came from our backyard. I am gradually getting our garden and orchard to be as comprehensive as Dad’s. Mum cooked every meal from scratch, even baby food, and I learned from watching her.

I have been cooking from scratch since I was 8 years old - my parents divorced and mum and my older sister worked mornings and nights, so I went to school and did all the housework at home. I have stuck to home cooking my whole life and so it is all just natural reflex actions for me now. But there’s always more to learn especially from GDonna, everyone here, Rhonda Hetzel and many more.

My career was in technology but I fell out of love with that side of life and strive to have less tech in my life now. Just yesterday I exchanged my smart phone for a dumb one. In contrast I have some old tech now that brings much joy - a Fowlers Vacola preserving unit, a hand powered meat grinder, pasta machine and many pasta shaping tools, etc.

RebekahC - aren’t zucchinis amazing plants? So easy to grow and sometimes so expensive to buy. There’s always a glut, but growing them yourself means you can harvest at different sizes - small as normal veg, larger ones stuffed and baked. I also grate up the large ones to make fritters, add to soups and zucchini cake

Like Karen S, I love knitting, crochet, sewing, reading etc. And talking as you can see from my long replies!

Sharon H.

Talking.....yes....me too. Hahaha 

Was born in 1960.

Our grandson whose thrown to our side of the family can out talk everyone. LoL. Must be in the genes. 

I had a good laugh when I read your comment

Hello all. I am from the Netherlands. My parents are still alive and 91 years old, living close by and still on their own. So information from first hand. My mum is half english and was many months a year while young in England. My husband is from Austria so my cooking is very international :-).

Reading GDonna for many years and it makes me calm and gives me insight in how could be/should be and can be. 

So nice the possibility of a forum here has been made, thx.

Wendy

Hello

I am from Aotearoa (also known as New Zealand). I live on the East Coast of Te Waipounamu ( the South Island) on about an acre near a small town. We back right into a forest and look out towards large often snow covered mountains.  We have lots of birds all around, many trees too and we grow as many vegetables as we can manage.  We haven’t been here long and we are still nurturing our soil which is clayey and often running with water. We have comfrey mixture (a la Rhonda) and seaweed mixture too. Great both.   

I have followed Rhonda ( Down to Earth) for a very long time just quietly and treasure her writing.   I am here because awhile ago she mentioned Grandma Donna and so I have been reading along and both learning and enjoying ideas and life from Alabama with GD  ????

I am almost 70.  I live simply. I knit and sew and always have cooked from scratch. We garden and walk and think and read and enjoy our family although they are so spread around the world now it is hard sometimes and I am sad.  
I am delighted to be here on this forum and to contribute even a tiny bit  Thank you GD and Rhonda too.
I think we don’t have to make many adjustments to live like the 1930s…! 

I'm from Australia and live on the mid-north coast of New South Wales. 

My family of 6 live in the mountains about an hour inland and is on a farm/homestead which we are setting up from scratch. We also live entirely off-grid. We do have satellite internet for all communication which is important, though we haven't always. When we first moved here we had no internet and no phone connection. 

Due to our lifestyle choices of living entirely off-grid and on a single income with very little debt, I find I often relate more to people living an old-fashioned lifestyle than I do to people my own age which can have its challenges. I was born in 1983. I love living simply, baking, writing, cooking on our old wood Aga, gardening and sewing. 

I find a lot of encouragement from this blog and Rhondas and am thankful I found them and for the internet to link me to like minded people of all ages. xx

Grandma Donna wrote, thank you Sanne G for putting up this topic so everyone can get an idea of where we are all from.  For those that have never read in my blog posts where Charles and I live, we are in Southeast Alabama United States.   

Hello! Heidi here from Southcentral Pennsylvania.  Having PA Dutch origins, my family already practices a lot of the things from yesteryear.  This study is helping me remember what the "old folk" did and how satisfied they seemed to be with their lives, even though they would be considered poor by today's standards.  Thank you Grandma Donna for your wisdom and insights!

Wow, I am so surprised at how many Aussies are here. I’m also Australian and live in country Victoria. I’ve been reading gdonna’s blog for so many years  now, I’ve joined in on previous yearly studies but this time I’m sitting on the sidelines silently cheering on, and learning along the way. 

Grandma Donna wrote, Deanne H, when I first started blogging, my first month I had 8 visitors and those were mostly family.  The second month I had 1,342 visitors and there were more visitors from outside the United States.  I remember squealing to Charles, "someone from Australia read my blog"!  Then there were more and more from Australia, and Charles helped me to put up a world map and we pinned the countries. It was beautiful seeing pins all over the world map.  I could only tell the countries that they lived in, but I was running out of room for places to pin in Australia.   

Through emails some would tell me where they were from and I would pin the specific location on the map.  I have always had more blog readers from outside the United States than inside the United States,  people within the United States did eventually start finding me, I was starting to wonder if anyone was here was interested in living an old fashioned simple life but they are here too. I have learned so much from having this blog because I have learned from all of you and about where you live and how you live and how beautiful you all are. You have taught me things I would never know from Sri Lanka, to New Zeland and everywhere in between. I hope they will all join the forum so you all can meet them too.  

Hello,

I'm from South East Queensland, Australia.

Hello.  I live in Jefferson City, Missouri, USA.  I have been reading this blog for a few years and find it comforting.  It’s nice to know there are like-minded people out there, all over the world.  I work part time, 90% of it from home; homeschool my daughter; and try to turn my good intentions into reality

Wow, what a lot of lovely replies, thank you ladies. I need to present myself a bit more too:

I'm from 1963, will be upgraded to version 6.0 in November, so I remember the late sixties very well. As a child my family would have been considered poor nowadays, but I never felt poor. We were living very old fashioned and were happy. I have two younger siblings. My parents are still alive and in their late seventies, living in their big house and doing everything themselves. Dad is a mechanic and repairing everything, he has 5 vintage cars and two motorcycles, it is his whole life. Mum is reading a lot. We had a tiny summer cottage without electricity, running water and sewerage system, and we did very well. So I know about doing things manually, getting the water from the well and digging holes for emptying the loo.

I love a lot of crafty hobbies: crocheting, knitting (only learned it about 12 years ago), sewing and am a repairing expert, since I wear vintage every day, bead work, have just started water colour painting, and my latest hobby is paper crafting, which I've just found. I love writing in my bullet journal and have found many lovely free paper projects on the internet. I also buy some projects on Etsy, they are inexpensive and beautiful. And I love reading, which I have promised myself to do more this year, since I never just sit down and do nothing, which reading basically is. When I sit I knit - or crochet. I love the environment and try to use what I have, buy almost everything used (which is also much cheaper) and shift to environmentally friendly alternatives along the way. I feel calm doing it like in the old days. I look so much forward to go on pension, since I work fulltime and am tired in the evening and therefore running around in the weekends.  I dream of starting a kitchen garden, which I've never had time for. Like Sharon I've worked for 20 years in the IT business which has been very tough and broken me down with stress several times. Reading Donna's blog literally saved my life then, thank you Donna. Now I work as a receptionist in a medical factory and love it. I've also tried to get away from tech as much as possible too, choosing only what I need and using it as little as possible. We live in an old house from 1930 right outside Copenhagen, have a tiny summer cottage (my grandparent's), a boat, three cars (I have an old Opel GT I drive in the summer), and a motorcycle - so we don't need anything, except a helicopter, haha.

I have been with my husband for 42 years now, he is a mechanic too, a true handyman, who has renovated and repaired everything in our old house and has just started woodturning as a hobby, so I get lovely wooden gifts. We have an almost 30 years old son, who is working as a paver/landscape gardener, but he has also sold cars - they are both very versatile and amazing and I love them beyond words. No animals, except for my old tortoise, but we do dog-sit son's and his GF's big doodle dog, he is the cutest.

Sorry, this got long - living in Denmark is very different from the US and Australia, so fun to meet you all. Have a lovely weekend everybody, and thank you again Donna for making this for us. ?

Hello.  My name is Sheryl and I hail from the UK.  I too was born in 1963 and, like  Sanne G, will be upgrading to version 6.0 at the end of the year (I love this and am going to shamelessly steal it!).  I live in a converted portacabin on the West Sussex coast, about 5 minutes walk from the sea.

I've been interested in social history for a long time and have long felt that we need, as a society and species, to return to a gentler, more sustainable way of life.  Being brought up 'poor' and having very little money as a single mother probably helped reinforce this idea.

I can't remember how I came to Donna's forum but suspect that it was either via the Down to Earth blog and forum (thanks Rhonda H), or the Homemaker's forum (hi Laura B).

This is the first time I've attempted a whole year of living in the past and I have to confess that I'm finding it very difficult to slip into the mindset.  I can cope with most things but really, really am missing my microwave (I batch cook and freeze to save time and money but hadn't realised how often I was using my microwave to reheat meals or to cook things like porridge/scrambled eggs/custard) and find it impossible to read or study via dim candlelight.  Oil lamps give me a headache too!  (Moan, moan, sorry ladies - what ever happened to British 'pluck' ?).  I hadn't realised how much  I rely upon YouTube for small bites of information and entertainment either. The one thing that strikes me about the lives of our diarists is, how small and (dare I say it?), mundane and repetitive their lives are.  Have we become addicted to a much faster pace of life?  Have I become addicted to a faster pace of life? 

Having said all this, I will be persevering.  I am sure I'll get used to it. The days are getting longer and the need for candlelight during the evenings will decrease.  I have learnt to get the maximum use from my 'wood stove' (aka electric hob), refilling my whistling, stove top kettle and putting it onto the cooling plate so that I don't have to start with totally cold water the next time I need a cup of tea.  I'm getting used to using candles to navigate the cabin in the middle of the night - I live with a very indulged cat who frequently decides that the early hours are the optimum time to roam around outside  (not too hard to accommodate as I have post-menopausal insomnia), and as I hand wash my clothes anyway...

It is lovely to have this forum as a media to connect with other, like minded people (can I say women? Most, if not all of the participants appear to be women - many apologies to any male readers!).  One thing that has changed for the worse in our time is the lack of neighbourly contact - and I know that I'm as guilty as the next person for an isolationist attitude.  This forum helps make up for this and I know that I eagerly await both Donna's blog entries and the forum posts.

Once again, I've rambled on for too long... sorry folks!

Sheryl, you're welcome - the "version upgrade" comes from my many years in the IT business. Being upgraded is normally considered good - and age is a privilege. ;)

Dear Donna and dear all, 

I’m from the Netherlands and live in a village close to Amsterdam. As you might know the Netherlands are a very crowded country. It is quite busy, hectic and noisy. For me that makes it difficult to live a simple and calm live, because there is always distraction. Sometimes I have to escape my home because of the noise of festivals or building works…..
I’m reading Donna’s blog for years now.  As Sanne G. wrote on this forum: ‘ She calms my mind’. That’s the same for me! 
My opposite neighbor and I aspire to live a more simple live. So I will be visiting this forum for more inspiration and ideas. 
I’m 59 years old, married and have a son and daughter. I live in a terraced house with a reasonable garden according to Dutch standards where I grow plums, blueberries, blackberries, apples, strawberries and some herbs. 

Thank you for starting the forum Donna and for writing your inspiring blog all those years!

Grandma Donna wrote, Mirjam, yes, you have been reading along for many years now and I am happy to see you here in the forum along with all of you that have been tucked away behind your computer, tablets and phones and you get to meet each other :)

Hello ~ I'm another Donna :)  I live in Dallas TX, but originally I'm from Ferndale, Michigan.  We still keep my parents little bungalow there, and that's where we head every summer, when Texas is scorching hot.  I never adjusted, lol, but the winters here are much nicer.  I believe I found Grandma Donna through Rhonda Hetzel's "Down to Earth" blog.  Glad to have this blog to meet new online friends and learn new ideas for living simply and with common sense. 

Hi sheryl c *waves*

I know somebody recommended here, and I have read the blog beginning to end twice. 

My name is Laura and I live in Central Scotland. I am 57 and in a previous existence I had a smallholding and farmed pigs. We kept a few sheep, a goat and a LOT of hens. Now not. 

I have 5 children, 4 older and settled and my youngest daughter is at University. I haven't tried to live like another era. I might at some point, but I can find very little information about the depression in the UK. Right now I am gearing up for living on WW2 rations (I always seem to be a year out lol)

I am from California, and live here still.  My husband and I are long married, and happily so.  We have two young adult children who live with us still.  We own a home in a lovely town (a city of 70,000 people but still a town to us) that has a long history and as such has the infrastructure to make living like the 1930s very doable.  I've been a full time homemaker for 25 years now, after having had a career in finance.  I have a passion for real, from scratch, down to earth cooking and baking.  I love to create things with my hands and engage in sewing, knitting, crochet, embroidery, card making, simple art, loom weaving, and many more arts and crafts.  I love keeping home and decorating for the seasons (both the seasons of nature and liturgical seasons), religious feast days, holidays and special family days, and more.

In this past week we've had a friend diagnosed with an aggressive cancer, and a member of our community died in a crash -- she was a mother of young children.  My husband and I both are realizing how short our time left really is, and how we don't even have a guarantee of those years.  This has dovetailed with my goal in 2023 4to extricate myself from living my life online versus fully in person, and these tragedies just show me that I am on the right track.

And so, while I decided to post an introduction because I have made many posts in the forum, I really don't intend to be here on a regular basis.  I took a break of several days from this forum, and found I enjoyed it very much.  Stephanie G mentioned stepping back from immediacy, and I wanted to try it.  Indeed, I don't intend to be here even weekly any longer.  The more I step away (not specifically from the Gdonna forums -- I mean from all internet activities such as forums, online news, social media, online shopping, etc.) the better I feel.  So this isn't goodbye, but I don't think I'll be here all that often.

Kimberly F I am finding greater happiness and more relaxation being offline too. I've been working hard to get offline and it's required me to be online a lot to cancel things! But we've got almost everything changed over to paper billing and banking, and except for a very few things I will need to order online, the only thing that really attracts me back is Grandma Donna's blog. I've been considering stepping back even from that just to get a good break away from the internet for awhile. I will miss you but I know you have made the right decision. I wish you all the best and will enjoy your occasional visits. :)

Hi Sanne,

I am from Tasmania, Australia. Even though I am in the Southern Hemisphere, I still relate to and read Donna's blog every week. I also relate to living not just a simpler life, but a more fulfilling life by actually thinking about how things can be done better rather than just accepting what society says.

I love what you have to say Donna! And I agree, reading your blog is calming and inspiring at the same time. 

Have a terrific day !

Gillian

Hi, I just found this site a short while ago.  I live not that far from GDonna - I live in the Northwest bend of Florida in the US, called the Big Bend, in a rural area.  I was born in Kentucky, though, and grew up in a tiny town on the Ohio River on the very southern tip of Illinois, an area where people farm a lot and speak with a southern accent.

I was born in the mid-fifties, and I have always loved history and knowing how ordinary people lived.  This site has given me a lot of enjoyment, and encourages me to try the old-fashioned way when possible.  

I currently live in Illinois in the St. Louis (Missouri) Metro area. I have followed Donna’s post for almost a year and find them very informative. I was born in Georgia (and still have family there), so Donna’s messages about the South seem very familiar. I grew up in western Kentucky but moved to southeast Missouri where I taught for about 30 years. I met my future husband there who wanted nothing more than to move back to his hometown of St. Louis (which we did in 2007). 

Admittedly, I can’t “live” in the 1930s although I can take inspiration.  My husband is fascinated with the “modern” life. He always says he wants all the buttons and whistles. Just yesterday, he teased me about not liking anything modern. While he makes his coffee with a Keurig and its coffee pods, I make mine with ground coffee in little tea ball and am perfectly happy. I usually mix my cakes with an egg beater. I enjoy reading and various types of needlework.

Some of GDonna’s stories remind me of those my mom and Georgia relative would tell. When She writes about washing clothes, I’m reminded of the stories Mom told of helping with the wash outside in a cauldron over a fire. She was born in 1935 and was only 9 when her mother died in1944. One of her jobs was helping with the ironing using a cast-iron iron that had to be held with a cloth. She remembered a time when the cloth slipped and her hand was burned. An adult there (don’t think it was her mother) quickly cut a potato in half and rubbed it on Mom’s hand. It must’ve helped because I don’t remember any scarring on her right hand.

One of my fondest memories from visits to Georgia are of sitting on the front porch with the women shelling peas and beans (we were always there when the garden was beginning to “come in”). Since I was disabled as a child, this is one activity in which I could participate. There was the bonus of getting to hear lots of family gossip. :)

We don’t garden. My husband doesn’t enjoy being outside and we’re both disabled. I currently use a walker and am awaiting another hip replacement. Interestingly, my husband is now excited about composting. We’ve tried unsuccessfully to do traditional composting. True to his “modern” inclinations, he found an electric composter recently. In the two weeks we’ve had it, he’s already made four small batches of compost. Admittedly, I like that we can put our excess food (ie., a small bit of leftover veggie stew) into this rather than just down the disposal. Yesterday, he bought his third bunch of bananas specifically to compost the peels (which it does very well).  Now, what he’ll do with the compost although he’s talking about trying to grow tomatoes again and could use the compost with them.

Hi everyone! I’m living in Southern Indiana but grew up in Arizona. I’m turning 37 on Saturday. I live on one acre in a rural setting. I love living away from the city (but not too far to where it is inconvenient..I’d go further out if I could). I found GDonna’s blog almost 5 years ago. I love reading about a simpler time. It’s what I want to give to my three children. Sometimes I will forget about the blog but then something always reminds me and I have to check in and see how Gdonna is doing. She’s really helped me when I have felt overwhelmed about things.
When we built our home and moved to our acre I enthusiastically put my garden out the back door on machine compressed dirt (yikes!). This will be year 4 gardening and I’ve being doing No dig and look forward to trying again. I’m a full time stay at home wife/mom/homeschooler. I like to knit, sew, bake bread, crochet, play piano and garden.
While I would go and be a homesteader, it is not my husbands’ calling. He loves the garden and all my ways but doesn’t necessarily want to do it himself. So when he leaves for work early in the morning and the kids are still asleep, I light my candle and turn off the lights and have my quiet time.  I will join in and simplify where I can. I also am going to try to get some books so the kids can study this time period with me. I don’t know if I will have time but would like to make a 1930’s skirt pattern that I have. 

I’m also a talker. Especially with people who are similar minded

I live in Eastern Ontario, Canada.  I have read Grandma Donna's blog for many years, but never commented/emailed.  I look forward to every post.  Years ago I wrote a blog called Rural Writings.

Hello to everyone :)

Hello everyone, I’m sure I know some of you from Rhonda’s blog. I live in Rockhampton Queensland on an acre with 4 dogs, 4 sheep and one goat now. I have chooks, turkeys, ducks and geese as well. I probably know Grandma Donna from Rhonda’s blog… I’m still working some casual hours in the disability care industry until I turn 67 in one year and ten months….and counting..

Hello everyone! I currently live in Maryland, USA on a farm on top of a small mountain the Potomac River runs behind the back side of our property. I was born in the Colorado Rockies, was raised in the Cascade Mountains in Oregon. When I was 17 I joined the Navy and was stationed out in Norfolk, VA. I have since lived in North Carolina and now near the Appalacian Trail in Maryland. I am happy to be back in the mountains. The area of NC I lived in was very flat and there was something unsettling to me about that. When I was in the Navy I saw lots of places around the world. I have been to Denmark, Poland, Amsterdam, Belgium, Scotland, Germany, Italy, France, Seychelles Africa, Antigua, St. Martin....I'm trying to think if I've been anywhere else...I can't think of anywhere else at the moment...it's been so long. I remember Scotland being as green as the Pacific Northwest but just a shade darker green. The climate there remindes me the Pacific Northwest. I was surprised to find that the Bahamas were actually pretty fun to go to. They never really intrigued me until we hit Port there. Snorkeling through the reefs and seeing all the brightly colored fish through the crystal blue waters was so fun. I did get sun poisoning though because the entire back side of me got sunburned so badly. You can't say anything about it though in the military or they can get after you for "destruction of government property" for allowing yourself to get that burned that it impairs your work, so I had to work on like nothing hurt. But it was worth it. I also got to ride a horse down into the ocean water there. That was really fun. I regret not going to see the Anne Frank house when I had the option. I chose instead to go to Belgium with a friend. As much as I thought Belgium was beautiful I forever regret not seeing where Anne Frank spent her last years and wrote her diary. While in Poland I saw Stuttoff concentration camp. I hope I spelled that right, it's been a while.  That was chilling to experience. I documented everything to show my family when I got home so they could learn more about that time. I spent over 8 years in the Navy as a firefighter. Being at sea was awesome. Though there were times we worked so long and hard that I'd realize I hadn't gone outside of the ship and seen the sun in three days. I realized that the sun shine rays do help ward off depression and made it a priority to go outside and see the sun once a day from then on out. Funny how not seeing mountains was unsettling but seeing flat oceans to the horizon was not as unsettling to me. I did enjoy when the waves rolled though. When the clouds were dark over head and the water was dark grey and rolling as high as the ship. It was like moving through moving mountains. The water could be the color of the slate grey rocks of the rocky mountains. I did find a comfort in that even if our ship was rolling from port to starboard and fore and aft. I will never forget when we'd hit really rough seas (the Baltic in the winter was known for that) I'd be walking past the galley and we'd take roll...all the pots and pans could be heard crashing to the ground and sliding across the floor lol The cooks would be yelling. Usually the bridge would announce, " Stand by for heavy rolls" over the intercom but there's not much that can be done about the pots and pans.  Anyway, I'm 38 years old now and I'm from many places. Regrettably I did not get to see Australia. I have always wanted to. 

Hello everyone, I am Tami I live in the east bay of CA.  I have been following Grandma Donna for many years now and was even in the windows blog post I have a picture feeding our dog and chicken a snack.  It was an honor.  I so much enjoy this community of learning how to live this life simply. I was born in 1959 and was able to observe from multi generations living simply. For me my time management is and habit changing is getting in the way of being productive lol! I too like to linger in the morning with a cup of coffee! Well it has been nice meeting all of you. Take care.

Hi everyone! I live in Washington (state), on the northwest coast just 25 miles south of Canada. I found Donna's blog when glancing over the comments on one of Rhonda's instagram post. Someone mentioned they only read Rhonda's and Grandma Donna's blogs, so I went on a search and finally found it :) It's thrilling to meet so many kindred spirits!

Hi

I'm Laura Lane. I am from Carthage, Missouri. We moved to town 3 years ago. We have a small yard that we are going to use to try to garden. We have tried before, but we have not been successful. Lots of investment, very poor harvest. We're going to try again, because we need to!

I'm not actually "doing" the study, but I'm following along, and will try to implement what I can. 

I write about thrifty living and my faith in Jesus at harvestlanecottage.com.

I thought I had replied to this post, but must have gotten interrupted and then forgot.  I've been reading Donna's blog for probably 5 or 6 years and love it.  All her posts are so sensible and calming in this increasingly frenetic world that we live in now.  I have lived in southern Indiana for over 40 years now but was raised in Texas.

Victoria in Indiana

Hi - I'm Rhonda and I have been following Grandma Donna for quite a few years. My husband and I and our 11 year old son live on a small acreage in southeast Iowa. We also have three grown children and two grandchildren. As the world gets more and more crazy I find myself working more and more towards living a simpler and quieter life. Following Donna's posts has been a huge blessing in my life. I get so many ideas and find so much encouragement. Although my husband isn't interested in doing a study, he's very open to working towards a simpler lifestyle and that makes me happy. And it amazes me how quickly and willingly our 11 year old is embracing this concept. As long as he is able to work outside in the shop with his dad he is happy.

I worked outside of the home for most of our married life but now I'm a homemaker and I homeschool our son. Since being home full time I've started raising a garden, which gets bigger every year! And I've taught myself to water bath can. Using a pressure cooker still intimidates me. I'm hoping to plant a couple of apple trees this spring and maybe a pear and peach tree too. We have a dog, cats, and chickens and I really would like to have some goats if I can convince my husband! I am an avid cross stitcher and I've been teaching myself to crochet and to sew. At this very moment I have a chicken simmering away on the stove. I've recently discovered the joy of homemade chicken stock. 

I always felt the most peace when I would visit my grandma and my aunt. Grandma lived in town in a trailer with very little money and my aunt lived on a beautiful farm in a big old farmhouse. While their situations were very different, they both lived very simply and it was like stepping back in a time when you entered their homes. I always felt like they were the lucky ones who knew what life was really about and it's taken me many years to realize I could live that life too.  They are both gone now but I'm striving to live more like them.

I look forward to following along in this forum and meeting likeminded individuals!

Hi! Sandie, 

I am from Connecticut too!  The southwestern part, near the shore. About 50 miles from NYC