Family Life

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Grandma Chism Has Gone Home

I loved my grandma Chism and would like to share a couple of memories of her that stand out in my mind.  Lots of memories of grandma in her house (the house I live in).  She built the kitchen cabinets.  She always hung mistletoe in the back room at Christmas (she loved kisses).  As an adult she came to Christ and spent large volumes of time reading her Bible later in life.  She enjoyed painting.  She made bookshelves for family members using pine and she preferred a fruitwood finish.  She could whip up a lunch for 2 or 20 in the same amount of time, never knowing how many people grandpa would drag to the table for dinner.

She always had cookies on hand.  Oatmeal chocolate chip cookies were almost always in quart bags in the freezer.  My cousin (who is 15 years older than me) and I would often share a bag with a glass of milk at the table.  Those cookies say “grandma” to me.  I’ll share the recipe but, please understand, the recipe was written down and she said, “That’s just about right”.  Here it is as written in the Chism Family Cookbook but trust me, add more flour.

Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies
Marjory Chism
1/2 c. butter
1/2 c. lard or shortening
1 c. brown sugar
1 c. white sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 c. sifted flour
1 tsp. soda
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. vanilla

Mix in mixer.

Add by hand:
3 c. oatmeal
1 pkg. chocolate chips

Drop by teaspoonfuls on greased cookie sheet.  Bake at 375 for 12-15 minutes.

The Oliver 66

I was 8 at the time and I wasn’t present for the back story but here is my understanding of how it all went down.  It seems there was something grandma was wanting to buy.  Something she really, really wanted to buy but grandpa said she couldn’t because the money was too tight.  This was a normal condition in the household but this time, whatever it was, grandma really wanted it.  Grandpa went to an auction and came home with a 1950 Oliver 66.  Now, try to picture the event.  Grandma was on the porch when grandpa came home with a tractor…after telling her they didn’t have any money.  If you ask me, grandpa thought the price was fair and bought it on impulse but when faced with his wife he said something like, “Well, it’s like the tractor I started farming with.  I bought it for Christopher.”  As if buying a tractor for a grandson would somehow make it all better.  At any rate, it looks like Grandpa:1 Grandma:0.

Fast forward a few weeks (maybe months).  The family makes the drive 100 miles to visit grandma and grandpa at the farm.  Both are at the door.  Grandpa has no idea what is about to happen when, as I get out of the car, grandma yells, “Christopher, go into the barn and see what your grandpa bought for you.”  I gave a puzzled look at my grandpa and remember him standing with his head down looking defeated.  Grandma gets the win.  I still have the tractor.  My dad restored it years ago and took it to a number of parades.  We sometimes use it to pull a hay wagon but it is mostly retired…but still cool.  Thanks Grandma!

Time Passes

A few years ago my grandma moved to assisted living.  For a short time the house was rented to a crew of men from Missouri who were installing rural water in the county.  Before then I had never seen mud on the carpet in the back room nor had I seen beer cans or poker chips in the house.  They finished their work just as Julie and I were looking for a farm.  It was further from town than we wanted to be but we decided to go for it.  We rented my grandma’s house at first and that gave us an acre to start with goats and chickens.  Then we bought the farm…in the most literal usage.  Though I live here now, it’s still my grandma’s house.  I have trouble with some of her rules.  I know what rooms I am allowed to eat in.  Weird.  I put my garden where she had her garden.  But things have changed.  We don’t watch TV (let alone Lawrence Welk) so our living room isn’t focused on the TV altar.

Great Margie is going in a hole?

My 4 year old nephew is a cute, smart, manipulative (lol) little guy…but still cute.  When the tractor came to dig the hole all of the kids ran out to the cemetery to see what was happening.  One of the children said he asked why we were going to put Great Margie in a hole.  We took a moment to explain the grave and rock are just the memorial.  Great grandma isn’t here anymore.  We are honoring her passing and work to preserve her memory for future generations.

Her Story Goes On

She believed that she was not an accident.  She believed that life has value and that value is not measured by her flesh.  That our bodies are temporary but life is eternal.  That an eternity with God is far preferable to an eternity without Him.  She believed that Christ left heaven, assumed a human form, came to Earth and lived as a man with one exception: he did not sin.  She believed he was killed, not because a few people in Jerusalem 2000 years ago were bad but because all men have fallen.  Because all men needed his pure sacrifice to atone for our sin debt.  Further, that Christ arose from the dead, defeating death and defeating the hold sin has on our eternal lives forever.  That one sacrifice, made for all, acts as a new covenant with God, bridging the gap between His perfection and my natural inclination to go my own way.  Grandma believed this story and I believe Grandma has gone home.  Grandma told me this story.  Our true Chism Heritage is not merely on of agriculture.  Ours is a heritage of faith.

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What is the Value of My Wife?

OK.  I’m a little worried that if I reveal this I’ll see different results but I’m going to do it anyway.  I read what you search my site for.  Readers search for all kinds of things.  Very interesting things.  Like the title of this article.  What is the value of my wife?  Now, I think they were looking for this article but I’m going to answer the question anyway.

We could look at this several ways.  Maybe the reader was evaluating his wife and sought a bit of wisdom from my not-quite-near-daily pontifications.  Maybe the reader is thinking of selling her and upgrading to a newer model year.  Maybe the reader wants to buy my wife (a wise investment if possible) I dont’ know.  But I suspect they are searching for a post on how much I love, honor and cherish my lovely bride.  How much I depend on her.  How strongly I feel that I could never trade her for a newer model year because they just don’t make them like that anymore…not that I have been out shopping.  Maybe I should stop here before I get into trouble.

SO.  Let’s indulge the reader.

I met Julie nearly 20 years ago.  She was is hot.  What’s the value of beauty?

My folks moved just before my senior year.  I was going in to register for school, heading up the stairs toward the office.  She was coming out of the office walking down the stairs.  I’ll never forget our first conversation.

Me: “Um, where is the office?”

Her: “Right over there.”

How great is that?  I should have kissed her then.  Instead I went in to register for classes.  She met her mom at the bottom of the stairs and I learned much later the conversation included this line from her mother: “He must be a new kid.  You should show him around the school.  You never know, you might marry him someday.”

So there you go.  I immediately started dating her best friend.  Yeah.

Now I’m going to skim over youth group, high school, going to my senior prom with different people, going to her senior prom together, going to college, being married with 2 years of college left (ages 19 and 20), being newlyweds living in an apartment above her aunt (awkward), being newlyweds living in a crappy rent house, buying our first house, buying a second house (foolish), gutting and remodeling a 100 year old house we bought out of foreclosure, 3 kids are born and now we’re 7 years into marriage.  OK.  Catch your breath.

7 years.  We’re piling up an enormous amount of debt remodeling our house with a construction loan, there is no kitchen, we’re building a too-big garage with additional debt, working long hours, being super-involved in church and community and raising kids and then one day it all came to a head.  We had grown apart.  We weren’t married so much as we were roommates.  Pretty ugly situation.  Worse than you think.  We didn’t even hang out.  We were just there.  Sometimes.  I started living another life and dreading both.

Now, I don’t want to get preachy but since I do believe in God it spills out from time to time.  By God’s grace we not only patched up our relationship, we made it better than it had ever been before.  We closed the door to the world, bought a Nintendo Game Cube and played Mario Kart Double Dash with the kids all summer.  We talked.  We went to counseling.  We went to church.  We read books…lots of books.  But outside of work I was next to my wife every minute of the day…a habit I still continue.  SO what’s the value of faithfulness?  Of commitment?  She said “for better or worse” and stuck with it when it was worse.  Tell me what that’s worth.

She homeschools our kids.  I didn’t talk her into it.  I didn’t force my wife to submit to my will.  I never told her, “YOU WILL STAY HOME AND BE A MOM!”  Not at all.  Given her choice in the world and assuming that we have enough sense to live within the restrictions of our household income (regardless of how high or low), she chooses to stay home.  But a big chunk of that is her willingness to stay home AND work harder than anybody I know.  There is no Dr. Phil in the afternoon.  She doesn’t spend hours on Facebook.  The TV does not babysit the kids for her.  She finds a task and applies herself to it.  And, getting back on course, at the ripe old age of 22 she told me she wanted to apply herself in the home.  “OK, dear”.  Again, there are several things that make this possible.  We live within our means.  I would buy her anything.  ANYTHING.  I can’t buy her everything but I could buy her anything (look for a post on that another time).  But she wants little.  I have to beg her to buy clothes.  We were moving a few years ago and one of her friends offered to pack her closet.  The friend asked, “Where are your clothes?”  Julie answered, “Right there.”  Friend “You always look so nice!  How do you do it with so few clothes?!?”  She coordinates different things so she always looks different but, honestly, has very few clothes.  Fewer still that she didn’t pick up at a thrift store.  She hates kitchen gadgets, she makes Christmas tree ornaments, she has never paid for a manicure.  She’s very, very low-maintenance.  A good night date to her would be a steak and salad, a glass of wine and a movie at home without the kids.  If we really went out (like out-out (like drive to the big city and go to an actual sit-down restaraunt where they bring the food to your table and stuff?)) she would go for mexican and a strawberry margarita.  Easy.  So what’s the value of that?

Several years and several houses ago I said to her, “Honey, I want to farm.”  Now, that’s just crazy talk and you all know it.  If you don’t know it, well…it is.  Crazy.  Farming!  I’m just about as city as city can get.  My parents raised us in a bedroom community but kept a garden.  Dad did a lot of carpentry work in his free time so I could hit the right nails but hammering and gardening are a far cry from farming.  Besides, I have allergies.  What did she say?  “OK.”  She got books from the library.  We read them together.  She helped make our garden bigger.  She canned and canned and canned.  She conspired with me to have chickens in town even though it was illegal and we lived next to THE cop.  When it was time, she packed up our suburban paradise and moved to a house where the septic tank was failing, the roof leaked and the spiders were large.  She made it a home.  Now we get up at 5, do a little housework, make breakfast and she sends me off to the city to sit at a desk while she milks, feeds, lays out new pasture, organizes school, reads to the kids, makes a few sales on the phone, makes applesauce, gathers, sorts, cleans and packs eggs, cooks and generally does everything all while looking great.  How does that rate?  What’s the value of her work ethic?

So.  How does an average-looking guy of average intelligence and below-average manners keep the interest of a girl like that?  I have no idea.  If I’m asleep don’t wake me up.  I do try hard.  I am nearly domesticated.  I wash a lot of dishes with a minimum of breakage.  I fold laundry.  I can even wash and hang it on the line.  I can cook a few things (better if the grill is involved).  I can reach things on high shelves, pick up heavy things, open any jar and squish spiders.  I excel at generating crazy ideas and I can really crank out the work even when it’s not required.  But these are all things required of any man…well any able-bodied man.  I have yet to accomplish anything that any but my children would call superhuman.  Everything I do is well within my ability…within the reach of an average person.  The things Julie accomplishes amaze me.  She does more before 8am than most marines do all day.  So, what’s the value of her opting to be with me?  All she had to do was to look at another guy.  She looked at me.  What’s the value of that?

Objectively, she earns her keep and then some.  Subjectively she’s priceless.

I’ve never wondered what her value is.  I’m just thankful she’s mine.

I love you Julie-Boo.  I couldn’t do this without you.

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I Know He Can Get the Job…

I know he can get the job but can he do the job?

So.  You want to be a farmer.  I know you can buy the land but can you work the land?

Let’s paint a picture.  Little house…just big enough for the fam but no room for clutter.  A cellar for your jars of canned goods.  A wood burning cook stove.  A milk cow, a couple of pigs, some chickens, a big garden and a couple of fruit trees.  Ah, the good life.  If you have children, add homeschooling to the mix because you love spending time with your family and you know you can give more personalized attention to the children than they would get anywhere else.  Yup.  One of you stays at home with the kids and keeps the farm chores under control, the other drives off to the city to actually pay for the farm and get insurance.  Those rose colored glasses are already clearing up aren’t they?

Did you know gardens grow weeds?  That orchards grow deer?  Did you know that livestock die?  Worse, did you know they sometimes get sick and don’t die?  Can you actually send that steer off to be killed, shoot the pig or kill the chicken?  Do you want to sit out all night hoping that ^&*(#! raccoon/mink/possum/skunk/etc. comes back so you can shoot it?  Sleeping (well, tossing) in the open air night after night with a gun in one hand and a flashlight in the other.  Do your children see roadkill and ask if we should stop to pick it up for the compost pile?  Have you ever had a hog bite the sleeve of your Carhartt and pull if off of you (and drag it through the mud) while another hog bites a hole in your new rubber boot and the rest of them put their dirty noses against your work pants and nibble at the seams?  Then you’ve got manure on your sock, in your boot, on your pants, all over your jacket.  You become immune to the smell that lingers and only the other customers at the shopping center notice it.  How many layers do you want to keep on your acreage?  DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY EGGS THAT IS?!?!?!?  How many eggs do you think you can actually eat and sell?  Seriously!  What are you going to do with them all?  Throw them at the pigs?  (…that’s not a bad idea…)

How about compost?  Each day you muck out the stall (horse, cow…whatever) into a wheelbarrow.  Then you add it to a pile (probably requiring you to fork or shovel it high onto the pile).  Then you fork or shovel the pile a couple of times to keep the compost active and hot.  Then you fork or shovel it into a wheelbarrow again and head off to the garden for more forkin’ shoveling!  All so you can sneak a few minutes here and there of pulling bushels of weeds and handfuls of produce from your garden that never quite manages to look the way it did when you first envisioned it.

And oh!  A wood cook stove!  How romantic!  You see the nice glow in the stove, you see the lovely wife pulling a roast out of the oven with a pie in the warmer.  You don’t see the husband off camera with a hole in his boot wearing a smelly jacket (stupid pigs) holding a chainsaw for his entire week of vacation, felling, cutting, splitting and stacking the wood so he can save a few dollars over just buying propane.  Oh, you can get the job.  No problem.  But can you do the job?

Fresh milk!  It’s fresh!  It’s raw!  It’s fun! (for the first two or three milkings).  Then it becomes a chore.  Another chore.  I mean, you got up early this morning, fired up the wood stove, went mud-wrestling with the pigs, let the chickens out (checking for dead birds), moved the chicken tractors, watered the ducks, pulled a couple of weeds in the garden while getting a beet to feed the cow, somehow managed to catch the cow, squeezed the milk out of her for 30 minutes (oh, my aching everything), strained and chilled the milk and somehow 7:00 turned into 9:30 and those small humans you keep in the house haven’t eaten yet.  Oh, and there’s laundry to wash, laundry to put away, summer clothes to pack, fall clothes to unpack, lunch to make, phone calls to answer (your husband asking if you are having a nice day), eggs to wash, sort and sell, somehow you have to make time to teach those small humans to read, write and cypher, the goats managed to escape somehow so you have to chase them down.  Then that husband of yours who drives to the city to sit on his rear all day will be home soon and he had the gall to ask what you did today since there is still a basket of laundry that needs to be folded and you didn’t gather the eggs…you know, because HIS TIME IS TOO VALUABLE TO WASTE GATHERING EGGS OR PUTTING AWAY LAUNDRY!  HE CAN GO FEED THE STUPID PIGS TONIGHT!  Oh, and you totally forgot to work on the applesauce, to pick and freeze peppers out of the garden, and another day passed without watching that webinar for that new side business you’re thinking of taking up in your free time and if you don’t start making cheese soon you’ll have to buy yet another fridge!

You can get a farm.  No problem.  But can you do the work?  Whew!

I’m not saying you can’t do the job.  I’m asking if you can do the job.  I know you can get the job.  I’m not arguing that with you.  Banks will loan the money.  Interest rates are attractive.  But what are you going to do when you get there?  Will you miss your manicure?  You won’t miss the weight you are guaranteed to lose.  You might miss putting your feet up from time to time.

So that takes us to why.  Why do we do it?  Why do we quite literally work our rear-ends off day after day?  That’s a question for another post.  I’ll give you a hint: Before the farm I felt like Joe from the clip above walking around the office in his pointless life.

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Hard Working Children

I have to stop here for just a moment to say how proud I am of my children.  This is the third year we have been processing chickens.  The first year, my then 9 year old son stepped up to the plate and hit a home run.  He immediately learned to eviscerate.  Further, he started teaching adults who came to see what was going on.

Last year, 3 of my children decided they could help pick feathers but none of them really stuck with it.  This year, each of them stuck with it for every stinking bird.  The youngest said, “Dad, we just have to bite the bullet”.  Indeed.

We do not force our kids to participate.  It’s kinda gross and we are taking a life.  If they don’t want to participate we don’t push.  They are all out there voluntarily so we try to find fun things to do together.  For instance, when we kill the last bird we all stop to do the chicken dance.  Good times.

I’m so proud of my kids.

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Thrifty Homesteads and Family Fortunes

Sorry for the lack of posts lately.  The weather is great outside right now and my to-do list just seems to grow.  We’re not even finding/making time to read right now.  My pile of unfinished/reread/just for fun books grows…

It’s all compost and gardens with a smattering of turkey processing.

We are still reading Bill Bonner’s Family Fortunes.  We found a passage that seems familiar to us.

When we were driving through western Pennsylvania recently, we were struck by how cheap it would be to live there.  Houses are very inexpensive, at least compared to what we’re used to in the Baltimore-Washington metro area.  You could have your own garden.  A few goats, chickens and rabbits.  An old car.  A wood stove.  A library card and an Amazon account.

What more do you need?  Once you were set up, it’s hard to see what you could spend money on.  There are no shops worth frequenting, no restaurants worth dining at, no nightclubs, no theatres – not much of anything.

Would this be a barren and boring life?  Not at all!  Gardening, building, reading, visiting with friends, watching movies on the home computer.  What more could you want?  And with such low fixed costs, you could easily splurge from time to time with a weekend in Manhattan or Miami.

What would be a reasonable budget for a life like that?  Maybe $1,000 per month.

OK.  Well, I guess we’re living the dream…though I’m quite a bit west of western Pennsylvania.  I have a few thoughts on the passage above.  He’s not really writing about a dream life of gardening and chickens.  He’s writing about the need to minimize expenses in case your family fortune isn’t measured in millions.  In his example, he suggests a “fortune” of $300,000 at 4% interest to keep you in that $1,000 per month category.  With that, he thinks you could live quite well on your little farm in Timbuktu.  I think you can do better but let’s explore his example.

Garden:  With season extension your garden can provide a huge portion of your family groceries.  Check out The Winter Harvest Handbook, How to Grow More Vegetables.  Get yourself a small greenhouse and you should be in pretty good shape.  Just go out and get your hands dirty.

Goats: Ugh.  Sorry Caitlyn.  Goats are great because they are small enough to manage and they are generally fun to be around (does anyway).  BUT they jump fences, crawl under fences and turn themselves into a fog and pass right through fences.  They’ll destroy your fruit trees if given the chance.  They’ll help themselves to your lovely broccoli plants.  In short, they’ll compete with you for things you want to eat.  Even if you manage to keep them fenced (we keep ours fenced…now) it’s hard to keep things they like in front of them.  Goats like browse.  They want to eat tree leaves and woody, growing tips of branches.  There are a few weeds they like to eat.  This is a good thing early on if you live on neglected ground.  But after a season or two, the voracious appetites of your goat friends will have the weeds and brush under control.  Then what?  Well, they don’t eat grass.  So I guess you’re going to have to feed them alfalfa hay.  Remember Bill’s goal of living under $1,000/month?  It just went out the window.  

I’m going to suggest you buy raw milk from a neighbor or, if you have the room, get yourself a miniature dairy cow, specifically searching for a low-maintenance animal that does well without grain.  The goal is efficient conversion of sunlight into product and cows are just better at it than goats if your soil is in any kind of condition at all.  Milk is a great source of health and wealth on the farm as you can feed yourself, your pigs or even your chicks with milk.  Even the soil benefits from a feeding of milk.  But goats, as great as they are, may not be the best means to that end.

Chickens and Rabbits:
I absolutely agree.  But, if you’re looking to minimize expenses, just keep a few hens for eggs.  Better yet, keep a few ducks as they will eat more grass and weeds than hens.  Rely on the rabbits to provide the meat.  Kept for those purposes, you can mostly feed both out of your garden…and you can mostly feed your garden out of the chickens and rabbits.  Meat birds require a lot of time and energy.  Meat rabbits just don’t.  Four heritage layers will keep your family in eggs for two years.  Then you get a few replacement birds and make soup with the old ones.

Old Car?  Check.

Wood Stove?  Check…but not installed yet.  It would be better to go with a rocket mass heater so you wouldn’t have to own a chainsaw, just a good pair of loppers.

Library Card?  Check.

Amazon Account?  Check.  But it requires restraint.  It’s easy to fill your bookshelves or your Kindle with books you’ll never get around to reading.  Budgets have to include time.  Time.  Where does it all go?

$300,000?  Nope.  Not even close.  We have tens of dollars.  Dozens even.  But we’re moving in the right direction.

Other than that I’d say he’s not far off.  If we didn’t have a house payment and didn’t drive to town for work every day our monthly outflow would be something on the order of $1,000.  The difficulty comes when we need to make capital investments in our property to increase fertility, productivity or water retention…but I’m looking at it as a business and he’s just looking for a place to live.

I would also suggest a pig or two for your thrifty homestead to consume garden waste, orchard waste, kitchen waste and sour milk.  Mmmmm…bacon.

Well, those are my thoughts on it.  Let me know your thoughts in comments.

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My great, great uncle

This is my great, great uncle Dick (in 1896 or 1897).

This is the house that my great, great uncle Dick built in 1912.

These are the children who lay in the house my great, great uncle Dick built in 1912.

This is the field that surrounds
the children who lay in the house that my great, great uncle Dick built in 1912.

You see where I’m going with this?

Thanks Great, Great Uncle Dick.  Happy 100th birthday, house.

(Forgive me for using such dated pictures.  I hate to tell you how long ago I wrote this post…)

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Farm Bank Deposits

Northern people have always been savers.  Those that didn’t save didn’t make the winter.  Those that saved may have made the winter.  Farmers are savers.  We are savers.  Unfortunately, we don’t have any money.  We save sunshine.  This is the main branch of the First Chism Heritage Farmers Bank, established in 18??.  We keep our sunshine here.

Isn’t it majestic? (don’t mind the paint job or the leaky roof)  Several times each year we walk up to the teller’s window to make a deposit.

Then, to keep banking fees to a minimum, we head into the vault to help arrange, sort and stack the deposits.  Here’s a small portion of this year’s deposits.

In the foreground you can see a low stack of sunshine in the form of alfalfa bales from the third cutting.  Further back, among the posts, is more sunshine in the form of grass hay we cut earlier in the year.  To the left (and out of the camera) is an absolute mountain of alfalfa hay.  There are also a few fair piles of straw tucked away here and there.  Tons and tons of sunshine.  Think of the different kinds of hay as different kinds of currency and I’ll keep my lame bank analogy running.  When withdrawals are needed we head into the vault, determine which kind of currency is in demand that day and grab a whole bale of it.

Since this is a farm economy (and something of a closed loop) any withdrawls from the loft vault are soon to become deposits somewhere else.

Then deposits somewhere else.

Then deposits somewhere else.

Then out to the alfalfa field.  Just add sunlight and a dash of rain and we’re ready to fill the barn vault again.

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Not a Domestic Engineer

There are no slippers on my feet.  I don’t eat bonbons.  I work.  I work a lot.

A friend was visiting and shared that she had recently stopped working, choosing to stay home instead.  She said people comment that if they stayed home they would be bored.  It’s as if people assume we wear pajamas all day, sitting around watching TV.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

This season of my life is about creating a home.  I know we house wives have fun with the term “Domestic Engineer”, but I personally don’t like the sound of it.  We use it in an attempt to sound professional but it sounds impersonal.  Creating a home isn’t like taking a blueprint of a house, building walls and putting in fixtures and ta-da you have a home.  Creating a home is more like creating a piece of art.   There is no formula for an inviting, warm, welcoming, secure home but I can tell you that it takes time purposefully spent.  Our home is not just a place we sleep and keep our stuff.  For many in my generation that is their idea of a home.  When we lived in the suburbs, our neighbors were never home.  Their homes were where they slept and watched TV.  Their lives happened other places.  So when people comment that staying at home would be boring they think that is what happens at home, we sleep and watch TV.  That sounds boring to me too.

I choose to stay home.  Our lives happen here and we love it.  I am not saying we never leave and never see other people.  But our lives are grounded here with our family.  I am not a “soccer mom”.  I am not my children’s chauffer.  I will not spend my parenthood on the sidelines as a cheerleader.   Parenting is not a spectator sport.  Is it wrong to put your kids in sports?  No.  But if running your kids around and watching them do stuff is the magority of the time you spend with your kids you may need to rethink your activities.  When we evaluate what our kids do with thier time, can we say that those activities meet our goals as a family?

Our family goals are to steward the resources God has given us with the gifts God has blessed us  with.  God put my kids with my husband and me on purpose.  Their gifts and personalities are a blessing and a help to our gifts and personalities.  It takes time and energy working together to learn and develop the children’s talents.  I would not have that time and strength to get to know my kids in such a way if I was working outside the home and if I was running our kids to 10 different extracurricular activities.

This is not an attack on working moms.  I know for some it is not a choice.  For us living on one income is a financial sacrifice .  We have one car, no cable TV, I do not have a cell phone, our kids are not in gymnastics, karate, or anything right now, we shop at thrift stores for clothes, I cook our food from scratch, our furniture is a little used, my house would never be seen in Better Homes and Gardens.  Those things don’t help our family meet our family’s purpose.  Are you filling your life with purpose or business and stuff?  What are you willing to give up to gain a home?

Creating a home isn’t about a physical place.  For example, I follow Discover. Share. Inspire.  This family has no house in the normal sense.  But as I read their blog and read their interactions with their kids I can see a home there.  God has given them a different canvas to create their family’s purpose on.  Our family’s canvas for right now is our 20 acres.  Our work and interactions on this farm are creating a beautiful home.  At the end of my day I am exhausted but I can look back on it with a sense of accomplishment and fulfillment.

What are some of your family goals?  What is your canvas?  I know as my kids get older and my life’s seasons change my idea of what makes a home will change too.  I am curious what you as an empty nester or single feel makes a home.  How do you create your home?

This was a guest post from my lovely bride.  If you like this sort of thing, check our her blog, The 20 Acre Academy.  She promises to update it as soon as she gets the time….lol.

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15 Years Ago Today

15 years ago today it was wet.  Warm but also wet.  Today we are something like 12-18″ behind on rainfall.  Isn’t it interesting the cycles nature goes through?  Averages average out.

Like the rainfall, our marriage has seen various patterns.  There are times when it’s easy to be in love with her.  There are times when it’s work for both of us.  We have been through the worse of “better or worse” but the average is pretty high.

I’m very thankful that she married me 15 years ago today.  My, how things have changed.

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How does the Week Look?

What does your week look like?  I’m on vacation this week so I’m penciling in the plan.  We got this mostly roughed in during our weekly planning meeting yesterday but not all the detail.  Weekly planning meeting?  Yup.  If we don’t sit down every week to sync up our planners we get lost.  We also meet with the kids to find out where they want to go.  There is supposed to be a big family meeting as we think it is important to involve the kids in family goals.  That meeting was missed yesterday so we could attend the Sustainable Backyard Tour.

This week I have a couple of books I want to finish reading, fence to build, chickens to process, bookshelves to design and build, wire to run, and ponds to swim in.  That means I’ll spend the week reading to the kids, teaching about fence post placement, teaching anatomy, geometry, fractions, measurements and buoyancy.  I also need to get the greenhouse ready to plant for fall crops and I may start digging potatoes…no rush on that though.

Today is more filled out than Thursday.  That’s kind of on purpose.  I try to stay flexible.  Things happen.  Some projects drag out more than others.  No big deal.  I have a to-do list and have that list prioritized.  I’ll knock out what I can and if, by some miracle, I get to the end of my list I’ll find more to do.  There is always more work to do.  If things were right in the universe there would be no unemployment.  But then, I try to avoid discussing politics and economics here.  There is more work to do than can be done…it’s an issue of price.  OK.  I’m done.

This week finishes out our broiler production season.  We may run a small fall batch depending on sales but at this time we’re leaning away from it.  Exciting times.  Chicken evisceration, blueberry picking, raspberry picking, potato harvest, goat milking…it’s both fun and overwhelming at the same time.  Everything has to be done at once.  It has been that way since February.  Ah, the good life.

How about you?  Staying busy?