In May of 2011, Sister Jann McClary and her husband Tariq moved from the Washington DC metropolitan area to establish a new home in the mountains of Colorado, building it from the ground up as part of their plan to become free of the spiritual and physical stress of modern urban life. Sister Jann is documenting her experiences for the Muslim Link. See her earlier installments at www.muslimlinkpaper.com by searching for Running for the Hills. Make sure you select "Exact Phrase" in the search options. --TML
Ever check out birds? They seem to be the least concerned with their stuff. You don't see them trying to figure out what stuff to take with them when they leave the nest everyday. I've never seen them with backpacks to put their stuff in. Maybe they've got little twig lockers where they keep all their bird thingees. Nah, probably not, but they're hiding stuff somewhere. Everybody's got stuff. Some have too much. Too much will overflow. Overflow needs more space. Toss it? Nope. Save it? Yup, might need it. Where to put it? Without a basement or an in-home thrift store, you either live with it, and it becomes an eyesore each time you walk by it, arrange parts of it cleverly outside your home and call it ìyard artî, or you consign it to that money-pit called a rented storage shed.
From the time we are born, no even before that, in utero, we start accumulating stuff. Folks are forever giving the baby-to-be rattles, pillows and fuzzy neon critters even before it climbs out of the womb; bouncy seats, pacifiers, bizarre little squiggly things that squeak and more ones-ies than the child could ever possibly wear in one lifetime will clog closets and drawers. Good thing we have mommies. They seem to know when it's finally time to get rid of it all. But it only gets worse as we grow. We just can't seem to stop accumulating stuff! Maybe we need to slow down because Allah subhana wa t'ala warns us in Surat-ul Takaathur that ìThe mutual piling up of things diverts you 'til you reach the graves...î So while babies don't have much say in the matter, we grown ups have to keep ourselves in check.
One thing homesteaders are guilty of is having too much stuff. I stand accused. I don't mean vases and artwork, gilded mirrors and tea sets. We've got too many plastic tubs, old tools and jars; too many pieces of pipe, bits of netting, faded tarps and half-empty cans of paint. We can't seem to part with all this flotsam and jetsam. (Mommy, help!) We tell ourselves, ìI might need that do-hicky if the whatchamacallit breaks.î Or, ìI can use that beat-up pot whenever the thingee starts to leak again. (Didn't have enough left-over silicon goop to fix it proper the last time.)î All of our pieces of might-could-use get kept because when homesteaders have to use ingenuity over cash to fix a thingee, that might-could-use will be just the fix. We never know what task or project can utilize something in our stuff pile.
Gotta keep all this stuff accessible and that means another building project: a storage shed. Wouldn't be a proper homestead without one. We went to a local sawmill and got some rough-cut lumber for the walls and studs. Our neighbor and jack-of-all-trades, Rich, came over to help and within a few days he and Tariq put up the floor, walls and roof of what will be our very own personal mini stuff store, insha Allah. Even though we purged our apartment of unnecessary stuff before making the trek to Colorado, homesteading necessitates the acquisition of new kinds of stuff; lumber, cinder blocks, mortar mix and barbed wire; buckets, rope, ladders and lanterns; and more cans of food than you can shake a fork at!
The cans of food and pantry dry goods like rice, flour sugar and coffee are essential, we've come to realize. If we get snowed in or otherwise prevented from getting out for too long a period, we can fall back on our reserves. The wisdom of storing up food is mentioned in Surat-ul Yusuf (ayaat 46-49) in which Nabi Yusuf (alaahi salaam) interprets the king's dream about seven fat cows being devoured by seven lean ones, and seven green ears of corn and seven dry ones. He (alaihi salaam) mentions about the corn saying, ì...then will come after that seven hard years which will devour what you have laid by in advance for them, all except a little of that which you have guarded.î
Laying by in advance is one way to tie your camel, as long as your intention to do it is for future need and not immediate greed. In this life a constant weighing goes on in trying to keep a balance between the stuff we need and going overboard in trying to get it. Sometimes it's, ìCan we forgo that solar battery now in favor of another load of road base?î Other times it's not the stuff itself, but the work involved in obtaining it. The way the birds handle their stuff is awesome. Umar bin Al-Khattab (radiallahu anhum) heard the Messenger of Allah (sallallahu alaihi wa sallam) say: If you trust Allah with the right kind of tawakkul, He will provide you with sustenance as He provides for the birds - they go out in the morning with empty stomachs and come back in the evening with full stomachs.î (at-Tirmidhi). They don't sit around obsessing about their stuff, and they don't expect to get the stuff they need without some work. Alhamdulillah, He is Ar-Razzaq and Al-Khabeer, the Most Aware of the stuff His creatures need.
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