Way Out With The West's -reposted

(More pictures to follow)
Over the weekend we had seen the West Ladies a number of times, Friday night and during the day on Saturday, we seemed to get on very well. They are a family of three girls, Jasmine, CeCe and Hannah and their mother, Vicki. They sing beautiful harmony. They live within an Amish community, though they are not Amish, they describe themselves as Homesteaders. Which means that they have about 100 acres, mostly wooded, way, way, way out in the backwoods of Tennessee. They do not have electricity, they have spring water. They grow as much of their food as they can. They have a small income from selling produce, music CD’s and DVD’s of instructional homesteading. They are very lively and lovely to talk to. When we mentioned that we were about to travel down the Natchez Trace Parkway the told us that their homestead was only a few miles away and invited us to come on over. So change of plan.
On Monday morning we took another long drive along I40 and fetched up at the West’s Place before dark on the afternoon.
We managed to find a place to put the trailer on their front drive. We had a pooled supper in their cosy wooden house, we had been given two massive pork ribs by the BBQ vendor late Saturday night and they did nicely. We all went to bed early as we were all shattered and it was dark and the house batteries had run down.
Tuesday was wet
It rained all day Tuesday, so there was very little to do outside, they made breakfast of homemade bread, oatmeal cooked in butter (their own butter) and maple syrup (they make their own maple syrup from the maple trees on their land). Jasmine showed me their solar panel power supply, which was very interesting. CeCe showed me the animals as she collected eggs, but for most of the day we all holed up in the West’s Cabin and talked about how to live off the land, we swapped tips on cooking from basics (Sally have taught cooking as part of her Home Economics), and they showed us their sewing and we talked and played and sang and watched the rain and talked. We swapped family histories and some songs. Drank raspberry and mint tea and talked. Had burgers for tea, CeCe made a great Peach Cobbler from their own caned peaches and we talked. This of course was a very tiring day, so we all retired early when the batteries ran out after a good day.