No.843: Last Week at the Farmhouse // We Were Made for More

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Vacation has a way of making you see life in a different light.  I took a much-needed break from technology that week, leaving my computer at home and my phone mostly in my bag.  It was wonderful!  I was immersed in real things, real conversations, real memory-making.  It was just the reminder I needed that we’re made for so much more than the technological prison we put ourselves in.  I felt the freedom and I wanted more!  

Fast forward to being back home and life is back to breakneck speed: kids here there and everywhere, a husband working long hours, a neglected farm that needs constant attention, school starting in just a few weeks…  Technology is needed for so many important day-to-day things but I’m also guilty of using it just as a mindless escape.  I need to carry the peacefulness of vacation into this messy reality at home!   I’m still in the brainstorming phase, but I’ve nailed down five “micro goals” to keep that mindset going:

Put your feet in the grass.  Get off the screens.  Sit in the sunshine.  Chat with the people around you.  Be a creator, not just a consumer.

It’s a start.

Hoping to document the abundance around me all year long!

Around here, abundance looks like…

+ LAUNDRY.  So much post-vacation laundry.

+ getting back to work on the farm.  Our second batch of 175 chicks arrived, I picked overripe vegetables for the animals, and I got a small start on the massive weeds invading the garden.

+ starting a biiiig project, one tiny section at a time.  I’ve complained about my first floor walls for years at this point.  They have a textured surface and are impossible to clean.  I thought the only way to fix the problem was to skimcoat over it and I had resigned myself to years of saving for a professional. ($$$$)  BUT!  One road trip conversation and a Reddit post later, I realized that I could just remove the texture with a putty knife!  A putty knife!  I started with a wall by my back door (in case I messed up) and it worked beautifully!

+ planning for the new school year.  We hope to begin in mid-August, so lots of preparation to do.

+ selling fifteen unneeded items for the Car Loan Payoff Plan: a card game, three pieces of clothing, three books, a Bible, one pillow insert and six reusable produce bags.  After shipping and fees, I made $57.95!

Reading //

• Let Them Be Born in Wonder: How the brief life of a storied liberal arts program changed lives the world over from Fr. Francis Bethel at Comment // “Senior devised a formula to synthesize these first two steps, which especially brings out the central emotion to be cultivated at each level: gymnastic begins in experience and ends in delight; music and poetic education begin in delight and end in wonder. Delighting in reality, wondering at its mysteries, with a healthy imagination, a memory full of stories, songs, poems, experiences, one would be ready for life and eventually for more elevated, abstract studies.”
• Your Boyfriend Isn’t Your Camera Man from Freya India at After Babel // “I don’t think it’s trivial, for example, that we’ve been conditioned to use the person we love as a tool—a tool to gain approval from an audience that most of the time we don’t even like or care about. I don’t think it’s trivial that the compulsion to document the perfect memory can degrade the memory, turning it from that time we watched the sunset together on the beach to that time we argued after I demanded Instagram photos and you couldn’t get the angle right. I don’t think it’s trivial that some people sacrifice their real-world reputation to improve their online one. These things matter.”
• America’s Mental Health Crisis and the Loss of Meaning from O. Alan Noble at The Dispatch // “And this is the fundamental challenge for modern people. To live the good life requires reflection on what the good life is and resonance with the real world.”

New Additions to The List // 

• Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory’s Power to Hold on to What Matters by Charan Ranganath
• The Flickering Mind: Saving Education from the False Promise of Technology by Todd Oppenheimer
• Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

Watching/Listening //

• My 2024-2025 Classical Charlotte Mason Curriculum Pick | The Children’s Tradition with Amanda Faus from The Commonplace // The educational philosophy they spoke about has made me reconsider how I want to move forward with my two youngest this year.
• Amplify Excellence Through Classical Education – feat. Andrew Pudewa from Memoria Press // Some interesting thoughts on copywork and writing.
• Purgatorio Cantos 1-6 of 100 Days of Dante from Baylor Honors College

Loving //

• my new homeschool lesson planner for 2024-25 // Can’t wait to fill it up with a feast of good things!
• this Lego search-and-find book // I purchased this for the trip, but it’s still been perused daily since we’ve been home.
• these ant traps // I set these out before we left on our trip and man!  They worked miracles!  I think we finally have our annoying ant problem under control.
• a poem by Anna Kamieńska called “Small Things”:

It usually starts taking shape
from one word
reveals itself in one smile
sometimes in the blue glint of eyeglasses
in a trampled daisy
in a splash of light on a path
in quivering carrot leaves
in a bunch of parsley
It comes from laundry hung on a balcony
from hands thrust into dough
It seeps through closed eyelids
as through the prison wall of things of objects
of faces of landscapes
It’s when you slice bread
when you pour out some tea
It comes from a broom from a shopping bag
from peeling new potatoes
from a drop of blood from the prick of a needle
when making panties for a child
or sewing a button on a husband’s burial shirt
It comes out of toil out of care
out of immense fatigue in the evening
out of a tear wiped away
out of a prayer broken off in mid-word by sleep
It’s not from the grand
but from every tiny thing
that it grows enormous
as if Someone was building Eternity
as a swallow its nest
out of clumps of moments