vegan journey pt. 2 & one small change

I know I had said I might write next a bit about our experiences raising vegan children, perhaps I will at another time, but because I also want to write about our one small change for March, I just really need to get on with the story now...

So there we were, vegan forever, of course. (Oh yeah, part one is right here.) Our families were for the most part supportive. It was simple because it was a given that there were no compromises to be made. (We face many more issues trying to explain our reasons for most of our other lifestyle choices.. homebirths, no vaccinations, homeschooling, Waldorf, no television, no plastic toys, no synthetic fabrics, super particular about books... we are surely sometimes considered to be difficult. So us being vegan was really the least of it.)

For so many of the earliest years being vegan was a very big part of our lives. But eventually life became about so many other good things, and we just happened to be vegan, and in many ways we didn't think about it much anymore.

I wrote once here about our decision to start using wool, and how it really it all started with beeswax. The feelings we were left most with were how could we choose these synthetic materials, these petroleum based crayons, fake leather shoes, I don't care if it's recycled fleece, it's still plastic... (personal opinion here, respectfully shared, not at all judging!) ... and so we chose beeswax. And a couple years later we started using wool. You see it takes us quite a long time to come to these decisions...

But we certainly were not at that time thinking that we would ever not be vegan. Obviously something changed though. I am realizing now why it has been a little bit difficult for me to continue this story, there is so much to it and we are still so much in the middle of it. So what you are reading here cannot be all of the story...

I will tell you now though that we are no longer vegan. And I will tell you just a few of the specific things that brought about this change, these things that we have been putting much thought into over the past year or so...

Much of it goes back to the natural versus synthetic thing. We want to eat real food! Now of course we have always eaten plenty of real, good food. We eat a lot more beans, whole grains, and vegetables than we do tofu or other soy products. We almost never ate any of the fake soy meats, only occasionally bought soy cheese, (in recent years only, cause most soy cheese wasn't even vegan a long time ago), and in general our use of processed packaged foods was fairly minimal. But... we used soy milk everyday, not to drink but for cereal, baking, Jason's coffee, that he drank every morning for 10 years, (but he quit last year, hasn't had coffee in almost 6 months!), and sometimes we bought soy yogurt, and then there was the soy margarine, in the plastic container, with the various vegetable oils... And I would say that we don't eat a lot of soy products? That sure seems like a lot to me. Lots of trash too! Only recently has there been recycling options for the #5 plastic tubs in our town. And I am seriously sad and disturbed to think of all the soymilk boxes that we have thrown away over the years.

And not only do we want to only eat real food, we want to produce as much of our own food as we can. Jason and I grew our first garden together 13 years ago, since then we have had gardens of various sizes, but moving around a lot makes it a bit more challenging. We own the house we live in now and this will be our third season gardening here, but still, we have plans to move to a bigger piece of land, we will grow everything we can, and we at least want to have chickens and goats. Now of course this brings up more issues for us, can we really take responsibility for these animals, for bringing new lives into this world, and what will the outcome of that be? What will we do when the chickens are not laying so well, can we even emotionally handle losing an animal to illness or tragedy? We sure do not have the answer to these questions yet. But we are putting a lot of serious thought into it.

And now friends, because this has gotten to be so very long, I think I need to say again to be continued. But much sooner than last time I promise! By next weekend at least I will be back to tell you our March one small change, which is all about new food choices.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read what I am sharing here. It comes out so long, and really sometimes I am actually being brief. I am very happy to read any thoughts you might like to share as well.