Island mama Mandy Troxel might be best described as nimble.
She manages two jobs while raising a quartet of Rhode Island Red chickens, a duo of sweet, sandy-haired daughters and one extremely furry, bewhiskered dog – yet it’s rare to see Mandy without a smile and a cheerful word.
“I do what a lot of young families do,” she says matter-of-factly. Mandy’s husband of 13 years, Andy, works as a fine homebuilder with Woodsong Construction, doing custom art framing on the side. Their daughter Lucy is four, and Molly is seven.
Mandy meets regularly with friends Amy Lum and Kari Van Gelder for what they call “Bossy Days” to create adorable wool critters for their shop, Bossy’s Feltworks.
“The bossy moms bring their bossy kids to bossy day and we work 10-6,” Mandy explained. “We distribute lots of snacks and the [five] kids play … The goal is to always have at least one mom working, while the other two field requests – usually one is making lunch while the other one is negotiating sand toys or something.” Mandy also helps man the company’s Saturday market booth, and logs hours as a desktop publisher for a California church.
The family shares a roughly 700-square foot, two-story cabin carefully hand-crafted by Andy.
“We are not living extravagantly because of those other things we have chosen to make a priority,” Mandy says. “We are also all sleeping in one middle-sized room. We’d like a master bedroom sometime in the next few years – before teenagers please,” she laughs.
Asked about a typical day for the family, she answers, “Every day is different because there are so many things going on – you keep the kids happy and entertained; on certain days of the week, I need to work on a newsletter; on other days, we spend the whole day out at Eric and Amy Lum’s farm for Bossy’s Feltworks. Today it was a play date with a friend. We just wandered out on the beach … I’m also fielding a request for snacks right now while we talk.”
The one activity that’s always on the docket, day in and day out: “Going anywhere I have my little box of felted projects to work on,” she said. “My house is full of different projects to try to fit in somewhere if there is a window.”
Last year, schooling for Molly involved a blend of homeschooling, art and Spanish classes at Salmonberry School, science club led by Kwiaht, and the Orcas schools’ ALE program.
“We feel really fortunate; we have five acres that we bought five years ago, just before land prices rose beyond what we could afford,” she said. “We work awfully hard. I don’t think that we’re special – I think a lot of people are working a lot of different jobs. I think that’s why some people leave Orcas. They get tired. One 9-5 is still not enough.”
In between tasks Mandy says she relaxes by watching real-time “chicken TV,” the antics of her feathered foursome – since “you don’t need a satellite dish when you have chickens.”
“Every day I am aware of how fortunate I am to be a family on Orcas Island,” Mandy says. “I think it’s a really great blend of creativity and work and family, and when it goes smoothly, it’s fabulous; when it doesn’t you keep working and trudging away and know that equilibrium is out there. Since it means we get to be here on Orcas Island, I wouldn’t change a thing about it.”
