No.863: Last Week at the Farmhouse // My Next Decade

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I turned the big 4-0 this week.  I met this milestone not with dread, but with a sense of awe and immense gratitude.  How quickly I reached this point!  What a gift to have been alive for four decades.  What an incredible life I’ve lived so far.

You know me, I’m a ponderer.  I reflect on the past and look ahead to the future.  The question I kept thinking about this week was: what do I want my next decade to look like?

The next ten years should be a significant time of change.  By the end of this new decade, I will be close to becoming an empty nester.  Most of my children will be out carving their place in the world.  My hair could be completely gray.  I might be a grandmother!  As I reflect on the next ten years, I know I’m at a critical junction: what I do and how I take care of myself in this decade will greatly influence how I age in the (hopefully many!) decades to come.  So here are my priorities as I enter into my 40s:

• Eat in a way that makes me thrive. //  I know what that looks like and how my body reacts when I stick with it.  Time to stick with it.
• Take care of my oral health. //  If I want to keep my teeth as an octogenarian, I probably should focus on taking good care of them now.  I’m seeing some gum recession that I would like to mitigate and am curious to try this dentist’s recommendation.
• Prep for perimenopause/menopause. // This is a big change and I want to lessen the worst symptoms as best as I can.  Lots of research to be done in this area.
• Deal with stress. //  My constant nemesis.  Always learning, always trying to improve.  My lifespan depends on me getting this in check.
• Continue in personal education. //  The past few years of Mother Academia have changed my life!  If my reading has taught me anything so far, it’s that man is the same throughout the ages.  Without virtue, we follow our base desires and we act like animals.  Life is a battle!  I want to read and read and read, learning from history, acknowledging perennial truths, and continually challenging myself to be better.

Hoping to document the abundance around me all year long!

Around here, abundance looks like…

+ taking a mini fall break.  We’ve had a fairly typical autumn so far, but the temperatures are quickly taking a chilly turn and we’re scrambling to finish a bunch of farm projects ASAP!  I decided to put a few “Teacher Farm-service” days on the calendar so I could work on the list.  The kids helped with a bunch of the heavy lifting – so grateful for strong teenage boys!  I put in at least six hours each day and boy, did I sleep well each night, ha!

+ a weak showing for the Weather the Storm Challenge.  I’ve been feeling a bit discouraged with the whole thing and my priorities were with the farm anyway.  Maybe a little distance from the project, if only for a week, is a good thing?   Anyway, this week, I:

• used the weekly grocery store ad to buy apples, croissants, and Primal Kitchen mayo on sale
• purchased five items to put back for winter (soups)
• planted seed potatoes from my spring batch to grow/eat over the winter
• got the kids to look at their things for anything to declutter/sell (I list for them and they keep the money when sold)
• listed a few items on Poshmark/ebay

+ finding mold.  Our basement generally tends to be quite damp and all of the rain we received last week didn’t help things.  Even with the dehumidifier running, I could smell something off.  After a little investigation, we found mold growing in one section: on cushions, luggage, an old couch…it was a mess and we had to throw out a lot.  Digging deep here to find the good, but I guess I’m thankful for an excuse to declutter the basement.

+ selling five unneeded items for the Car Loan Payoff Plan: two books, a pair of snow pants, a fleece pullover and a video game for my son.  After shipping and fees, I made $44.15.

Reading //

• Rehumanizing the Humanities from James Hankins at First Things // “People who want to learn just need a knowledgeable teacher to orient them to the books they want to read and help stir their enthusiasm. They want the framework of a course to help impose some discipline on themselves, and they want congenial companions with the same interests who like to talk about literature and philosophy. Teachers just want students who love books and want to talk about them, and enough income to supply themselves with tea and cakes. You can have effective education, it turns out, with very little fuss and expense.”
• Why “The Great Music” Is as Important as “The Great Books” from Peter Kwasniewski at The Imaginative Conservative // “Although one cannot train the ear in a day, a week, a month, or even a year, a beginning must nevertheless be made in developing the skill of what we might call ‘attentive listening to beautiful sound that is inherently worth listening to.’ “
• So, a Chatbot Did Your Homework from Jacob Riyeff at Plough // This is a really important conversation.  If education is nothing but an “information-processing exercise to get a degree”, what’s the point?
• Candy! Candy everywhere! And a case for the Ascetic Economy from J.E. Petersen at Dispatches from Outer Space

New Additions to The List // 

• Dark Calories: How Vegetable Oils Destroy Our Health and How We Can Get It Back by Catherine Shanahan
• Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary by J.R.R. Tolkien
• Hacking Planet Earth: How Geoengineering Can Help Us Reimagine the Future by Thomas M. Kostigen

Watching/Listening //

• 30 Day Declutter Challenge 2024 from Clutterbug // I got a bit behind this week, but did check three days off the list and decluttered 56 items.  Totals so far: 8/30 days completed and 141 total items to sell, throw out or donate!

Loving //

• this fleece vest // Mine is a hand-me-down (thanks, Mom!) and I’ve been wearing it almost everyday when I’m outside working.
• slow cooker pot roast // ‘Tis the season!  The perfect dinner for chilly evenings.