Discovering a new Day, part II

It was during this long and ongoing search into the "natural" that I stumbled across some ideas that began to plant seeds. Homesteading, voluntary simplicity, frugality, and the like. However, what was missing was a religious component. Getting back to the land, spending more time as a family, living with less by choice all seemed like common sense Christian tenements-they clicked with me and my husband. We dreamed of life where we both worked at home with our children and supported ourselves without an outside nine to five. We attempted this-and failed miserably. I hadn't learned enough and we believed we needed to make LOTS of money to support ourselves. It didn't occur to us to live simpler in a smaller home with fewer costs. How I missed that in my reading I don't know. So we jumped into a large business venture hoping to make it big while my husband worked a second job, just until the business got going and the money poured in. But that never happened and he wound up commuting three hours a day or more to a job we needed to pay the bills while I stayed at home with two small children to care for and a business to run.
Our faith was tested but thankfully we got out of the situation with our sanity, our marriage and our beliefs still intact and strengthened. However, our bank accounts were drained and a pile of debt had accumulated in the months we struggled to make ends meet. I continued to read as we dug ourselves out from debt and had another child. We moved into an apartment and attended a new, traditional parish. Through the books others recommended to us I discovered Integrity magazine and from searching online for more information about that I stumbled into the Catholic Worker Movement, Distributism and the Catholic Back to the Land Movement. Before WWII Catholics had all sorts of ideas to change the world, but somehow, these things were lost to time.
Within a week, I was reading a biography of Dorothy Day and the Movement. I'd been reading Day's writings online daily; I was hooked. I sent links to my husband at work and he agreed. Our plans for the future began to take shape in a new way.