Connect
-
Adjusting to a New Family Dynamic
This year marks another major adjustment to our family dynamic. Our Family Dynamic Up Until Now Up until the fall of 2024, our family (of five) has been largely together 24/7. In the late summer of 2019, we bought a second home in the mountains and migrated the bulk of our daily living to up there. Then, in March of 2020, when the world all around us turned upside down, we made our way back to our homestead. With each move, we stayed together, adjusting as necessary to either the environment around us or to the effects of what was going on in the world-at-large. Then, in the summer of…
-
Little Free Libraries: Human Connection Venues
A few years ago, our daughter established, built and stocked a Little Free Library at the front edge of our property, because of her personal passion for reading & circulating hard copy books. Thankfully, we’ve had many different people donate books to the little green box perched at our Homestead Stand. I’ve personally enjoyed reading some of them and donated a few of my own. Look Inside! In an attempt to draw attention to this gem in our local neighborhood, I recently took a physical inventory of its contents and published a list to distribute to those who regularly visit us and to those who live nearby. Then, I blogged…
-
New Website for Carrie (Not Kelly)
In 2024 I started a Substack under the name CarrieNotKelly as a way for me to build an email list and communicate with those wanting to remain in touch with us via email. Over the past year, I used that platform to share some of what was going on in my personal life. I didn’t really have a publication strategy or even a marketing strategy to bring on new subscribers. I was just feeling my way through it, as I worked heavily on revamping and building out this WiggleCulture website. After taking the last several months off from writing much on-line, I came up with my new human connections plan.…
-
What Good Is Following the Lively/Baldoni Case?
I realize the pop culture outlets want to focus on the names of those involved in the Blake Lively vs Justin Baldoni legal drama because that’s what gets most people’s attention, but the people who are actually following this case & reading the documents are operating on a different level than many of the general public. We’re using our critical thinking & reasoning abilities. Given that we each have a voice, we can shape the public narrative going forward. We can make it more about the wrongful actions than the people who are making them. That’s what I want to do anyway — because honestly, nobody I know within my…
-
Faith- vs. Value-based Communities
In response to a series of videos my husband recently started on his Tywiggle channel talking about intentional communities, he & I started doing a video series together, entitled Ty and Carrie Talks. Our first set of talks centered on Faith- vs. Value-based Communities, broken into several 15-20 minute segments. (A recap of the entire series is given at the end of this post.) In the first video I shared what I found to be problematic in faith-based communities, considering our own personal experience over the years. Then I introduced what I thought to be a better foundation for a community: one that is based on shared values. In the…
-
What Do YOU Need?
I’m growing weary of continually crying out to have my needs met, even though it’s not so much my needs that I’m looking to have filled — it’s more of my children’s needs. And really, it is also the needs of those around me that I’m seeking to help fill, but I don’t think people realize they need what I have to offer. Everybody seems to be getting their needs met elsewhere, or at least they think that’s what is happening. And for some, that is what is happening. But for many, I don’t think that’s the case. Unmet Needs I think people are lonely. And deep down they all…
-
Tywiggle on Youtube
Hello friends. A new chapter has started in our life here on the Wiggle homestead. We finally got real internet installed after waiting for many years. This opens the opportunity of sharing my voice by video. The old internet might have uploaded at 1mb and now we are uploading a nearly 100mb. An upload that would have taken all night and been paused for errors now takes just a few frustration free minutes to be completed. Hello world! Carrie and I have been talking about what we want for our future selves and how to perhaps achieve that. In all of our knowledge seeking and solutions based approaches to what…
-
Not Just Homesteading
When my husband chose to change his lawncare strategy a decade & a half ago and brought in cows to mow the front yard and goats to clear the brush in the back, we naturally started becoming homesteaders. And when we decided to do more with the dirt that surrounded our home than simply travel on it and began to sow seed & transplant starter plants, bushes & trees into it, we naturally began to become food producers and eventually gardeners. Today, those who drive by our property can see that we are a bit over-the-top in our homesteading. We have way more animals roaming the land than we really…
-
Free Books at the Homestead Stand
Years ago, when we first built our Homestead Stand, I had toyed with the idea of putting a Little Free Library at the front edge of our property. (I was trying to think how we could better serve our neighborhood and get folks in the local area to come around.) But, with all the other things going on around here, that thought got put onto the back, back burner.
-
Living Life Together
With all the troubles we’re seeing in the world right now, I believe co-housing is becoming more of a necessity for life. And the manner in which we live can make or break us. Therefore, I think we all need to be wise in deciding where & with whom we choose to abide and how we choose to live there. Where to Shelter Ourselves We all need safe shelter. I personally think it’s unwise to dwell in densely populated areas, because I believe they are danger zones when trouble strikes on a societal level. With Whom Do We Abide If “united we stand, divided we fall” is true, I personally…
