The Big White Farmhouse

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The farm projects are slowly finishing up for the year and that means more time to read!  I’m excited to resume my Mother Academia studies as they’ve largely been on the back burner as our crazy life unfolded this fall.  I recently heard the phrase, “To be a good teacher, you must also be a good student” and that really resonated with me.  I’ll be using that as my motto as I dive back into the books.  Here’s the beginning of my plans for this winter:

• AMERICAN HISTORY // I’m continuing on with my Civil War Era rabbit trail and hoping to make some significant progress!
  • With Malice Toward None: A Life of Abraham Lincoln by Stephen B. Oates
  • Faith and Fury: The Rise of Catholicism During the Civil War by Fr. Charles P. Connor
  • Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup
• GREAT BOOKS OF THE WESTERN WORLD // I started this list in April and have really enjoyed challenging myself to tackle books I normally would never have attempted.  These are three more selections from Year 1.
  • Shakespeare’s Hamlet
  • St. Augustine’s Confessions
  • Plato’s Republic
• UNMACHINED WORDS LIST // A new addition to the Mother Academia lineup!  Starting with books on the list that I already own.
  • Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work by Matthew B. Crawford
  • The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr
  • 1984 by George Orwell

Hoping to document the abundance around me all year long!

Around here, abundance looks like…

+ completing the first hurdle in the floor remediation.  The water mitigation company pulled out half of the dining room floors and installed dehumidifiers/fans for 72 hours.  It was so loud and sounded like we lived in a wind tunnel!  The next step is now to find a contractor to see the flooring and determine if it can be matched or if we need to replace the entire first floor.

+ a very weak showing for the Weather the Storm Challenge.  Truth be told, I was in survival mode as my husband was traveling for work and we had all of the repairs being done in the house!  Trying to embrace the ebb and flow of this project and not give up.  (Especially when we had another household item die this week…oy.)  This week, I:

• avoided the grocery store, only purchasing a handful of needed items
• made it another week without turning on the heat! (we actually had a bit of a heat wave)
• listed a few things on ebay/Poshmark/Pango
• made pita bread

+ finishing up Clutterbug’s 30 Day Declutter Challenge.  This time around, I did something hard for me: I threw things away.  My previous decluttering challenges have generally involved items in good condition that I was able to pass along to others.  I hate waste but those holey/stained t-shirts and little bits of mostly-used up science kits were not being used.  I’m not doing myself any favors by keeping trash in the house!

+ selling two unneeded items for the Car Loan Payoff Plan: one kids belt and one book.  After shipping and fees, I made $6.45.

Reading //

• The Walking Rebellion: Restoring the Mind at Three Miles an Hour from Ruth and Peco Gaskovski at School of the Unconformed // “There might not be any natural remedy in the world as protective as walking against the deadening impact of our sedentary, chair-bound, screen-mesmerized lives. Walking is the original form of scrolling. Yet it doesn’t lead us down online rabbit holes, but past real rabbit holes. It keeps us grounded, literally by keeping our feet on the ground. It keeps us softly fascinated by ever-changing scenery. Walking is calming, head-clearing, and social and even spiritual when we do it together. If walking were a food, it would be a celebrated superfood packed with nutrients that feed our mind, body, relationships, and contact with nature—and it would cost nothing.”
• A New Preparedness Class from Patsi at A Working Pantry // “If you’re looking for a reasonable and sensible class geared towards women helping women learn how to live in and prepare for uncertain times as well as emergency type situations, then this class is for you. If you’re looking for a ‘dooms day, end of the world rush out and buy anything and everything you can find to ward off the zoombies’ kind of class then this class is not for you.”
• It’s Time to Declutter And Reduce Your Sensory Overload from Jennifer Guttman Psy.D. at Psychology Today // “In a study conducted by UCLA’s Center on Everyday Lives and Families researchers examined 32 California families and found that clutter had a strong impact on their mood and self-esteem. They determined there is a link between high cortisol levels in women and a cluttered household. The same was not true of men.”
• The Clutter Culture from Jack Feuer at UCLA Magazine // This stuff fascinates me.

New Additions to The List // 

• No Place of Grace: Antimodernism and the Transformation of American Culture, 1880-1920 by T. J. Jackson Lears
• The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History by David Hackett Fischer
• Survivals and New Arrivals: Old and New Enemies of the Catholic Church by Hilaire Belloc

Watching/Listening //

• A precision approach to end Alzheimer’s Disease | Dale Bredesen | TEDxManhattanBeach // Fascinating.  I need to pick up his book, The End of Alzheimer’s: The First Program to Prevent and Reverse Cognitive Decline.
• A Day in the Life of a Catholic Priest from the Catholic Diocese of Arlington

Loving //

• this quote from Just in Case: How to Be Self-Sufficient When the Unexpected Happens by Kathy Harrison:

It has occurred to me that I am only doing what every housewife did as a matter of course only a generation or two ago.  She always preserved food for the coming year as it came into season and bulk-purchased staples such as sugar and vinegar.  Our grandmothers did this not because they were paranoid, isolated survivalists, but rather because they had learned from experience that blizzards, crop failures, and epidemics happened.  The prudent, prepared household prevailed.  (p.13)

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If you’re of a certain age, I’m sure you remember the part in the Disney movie Alladin where the main character, floating above the ground on a magic carpet, puts out his hand to Jasmine and asks the question, Do you trust me?  Forgive my childish connection, but I’ve often thought of that scene as a metaphor of God’s relationship with me. Alladin’s next line is also important to this idea: Then jump!

God has been asking me to jump quite a bit this year.  (My husband and I often joke that our particular set of suffering is best described as “death by a thousand cuts” – handfuls of little annoyances that compound on each other.)  I’m not particularly good at dealing with the entirety of these things, but I do know one thing to be true: God is good. He works all things for good. I only have to trust Him.

When I look into the future, I am frightened, but why plunge into the future? Only the present moment is precious to me, as the future may never enter my soul at all. It is no longer in my power, to change, correct or add to the past; For neither sages nor prophets could do that. And so, what the past has embraced I must entrust to God. O present moment, you belong to me, whole and entire. I desire to use you as best I can. And although I am weak and small, You grant me the grace of Your omnipotence. And so, trusting in Your mercy, I walk through life like a little child, offering You each day this heart burning with love for Your greater glory.
― The Diary of Saint Maria Faustina: Divine Mercy in My Soul, p.4

Hoping to document the abundance around me all year long!

Around here, abundance looks like…

+ watching my favorite tree finally turning colors!  Do you have a favorite tree?  Mine is a maple and is usually the last tree on our property to change colors.  The deep red leaves are so, so beautiful and I’m enjoying every minute before the wind blows them away.

+ a decent showing for the Weather the Storm Challenge.  I’m even more motivated to persevere in this project because we received a double whammy: our property taxes increased (thus increasing our mortgage payment) while at the same time our health insurance also increased, taking money out of my husband’s paycheck!  This week, I:

• used the weekly grocery store ad to buy grapes, yogurt and barbecue sauce on sale
• purchased five items to put back for winter (pasta sauce & macaroni and cheese)
• sold eggs to friends
• made pita bread (recipe below)
• mended a small hole in my son’s church pants
• turned my son’s beloved long-sleeved shirt with a hole in the elbow into a short sleeve
• invested in 50 pounds of flour (we buy a ton of flour so after doing the calculations, this would save me – even with the high shipping cost – $6)
• found food grade buckets that we already owned to store that flour
• listed a few things on ebay/Poshmark

+ new floors?  Because we can’t seem to catch a break, we discovered that a significant amount of water had somehow leaked into our dining room hardwood floors and was warping the panels.  It got so bad that the wood would make popping noises like fireworks!  Anyway, a mitigation company came out to see the damage and she said that if they can’t fix the issue through their dehumidifying process, we’ll have to work with our insurance to have all of the hardwoods replaced.  (Most of the first floor is continual hardwood flooring, so this is quite the project.)  Always something!

+ selling eleven unneeded items for the Car Loan Payoff Plan: six books, four pieces of clothing and a purse.  After shipping and fees, I made $54.69.

Reading //

• The Vulnerability and Fleetingness of Beauty from Hadden Turner at Over the Field // “The bulldozer of efficiency is a machine after all. We can just turn it off. We are able to say, ‘thus far and no further’. What this requires is learning again to cherish and delight in beauty, to yearn after it, to value it more than efficiency, profit, and ease, and feel the pain and tragedy when we lose it. We need to understand and appreciate that beauty ‘fufils something in us that other things cannot, and enriches our lives in all kinds of unexpected and vital ways’. We need to remind ourselves that when beauty is noticed, it can be loved.”
• Against the tide: some thoughts on navigating the modern world from Carole Hudson // “This idea of death by comfort has been a motivator for me. It helps me to tackle a difficult book, look up words I don’t know or am not sure of, memorise scripture, get up and move around, practice my guitar, or write a long letter instead of sending a quick email. These are small things but they are diffusive acts that seep into other areas of our lives.”
• Keeping Sacred Time from Elizabeth Oldfield at Comment // “We have outsourced our formation largely to our passive consumption of culture, been too relaxed about how powerfully social liturgies—more subtle and more regular than our actual liturgies—shape our hearts and our habits. I’m more and more convinced that the way we structure our time—collectively, not only individually—is the key factor in our discipleship. The only way we can be formed to stay loyal to the logic of a different kingdom is to focus as much repeated, intentional attention on its stories and rituals and songs as we do on our phones, our televisions, and our shopping centres.”
• Wonder of Wonders from Stephen P. White at The Catholic Thing // “Such wonder, the unaffected wonder of a child who marvels at the world and the one who made it, cannot but gush into a flood of gratitude. In our most child-like moments, all sensible distinctions between gratitude, humility, trust, and praise melt away and we are left basking in the presence of someone who loves us. Wonder may be the beginning of philosophy; it is also a powerful entry into the prayer of contemplation.”

New Additions to The List // 

• Marxism: Philosophy and Economics by Thomas Sowell
• Knight of the Holy Ghost: A Short History of G.K. Chesterton by Dale Ahlquist
• One Man in: The Explosive Firsthand Account of the Lone Special-Ops Soldier Who Fought Off a Massive Terrorist Attack in Kenya by Chris Craighead

Watching/Listening //

• 30 Day Declutter Challenge 2024 from Clutterbug // I checked five more days off the list and decluttered 56 items.  Totals so far: 20/30 days completed and 275 total items to sell, throw out or donate!

Loving //

• this pita bread recipe:

PITA BREAD

6 cups flour
2 tsp. salt
1 Tbsp. yeast
2 cups warm water
1 Tbsp. honey

Let the yeast dissolve in warm water.  Stir the honey in the water and yeast mixture.  Then slowly add salt and flour.  Stir until it becomes tough to mix.

Put the dough on a lightly floured surface.

Knead for about 10 minutes.  Then place the dough in a buttered bowl.  Cover the bowl with plastic wrap or a damp dishtowel.

Let dough rise for two hours or until doubled in size.

After punching down the dough, shape into 10 balls.

Let them rest for 15 minutes, then shape into 6″-7″ round shapes, like a mini pizza crust.

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.  Place on a cookie sheet and bake for 10-12 minutes on the lowest oven rack.