The Big White Farmhouse

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Thought experiment of the week: If your ability to purchase things using debt disappeared tomorrow, could you survive?  If you had to see your purchases not as affordable “monthly payments” but the whole bill, could you afford it?

I listened to quite a few financial podcasts this week, pumping myself up for another intense season of debt reduction.  The financial forecast is pretty dire and most of the advisors believe that some sort of correction is coming.  In one of the podcasts, I heard a version of the question above and it really made me pause.

Like many Americans right now, we’re not in an ideal financial position and our answer to that question is no.  But we want to be!  We definitely desire to free ourselves from the stress and bondage of debt.  So instead of wallowing in frustration and despair, we’re ready to work intensely to get our house in order.  The goal seems significantly harder than four years ago, but we’re ready for the challenge.  Little by little…it all counts.

I loved and appreciated Grandma Donna’s sage advice (shared in the post below): “Get out of debt so you don’t have to pull that ball and chain around anymore. Some people get full of guilt or blame someone else when they find themselves in a financial crisis. We have to forgive ourselves for our mistakes in life. So we need to work on that and forgive ourselves for our financial mistakes so we can move one and get out of debt. It is difficult to look at the numbers when you are in debt but once again if you have to do it over again, forgive yourself and move on, it is going to be okay.”

Hoping to document the abundance around me all year long!

Around here, abundance looks like…

+ making a simple chicken and potato salad dinner using ingredients we mostly grew on the farm. So satisfying!

+ elderberry season!  I picked a bunch before the birds got to them and then made my annual batch of elderberry syrup.  I like to freeze the syrup in ice cube trays and pop a cube or two in my morning water.  COVID is apparently making its rounds in the area again so I’m upping my immune system strength a bit earlier than usual.

+ selling fourteen unneeded items for the Car Loan Payoff Plan: nine books, a binoculars case, a purse, two dresses and a pair of sneakers.  After shipping and fees, I made $74.91!

Reading //

• The Deceptive Rose from Grandma Donna // “Okay, I just wanted to make you think for a bit because the more I read the newspapers through these years of history studies the more I have understood how we were prodded along to change. It did not matter that the change they were doing most often caused debt. The pressure to change was mighty and so many people started living beyond their means and still do today.”
• 1940s Capsule Wardrobe & What Clothing Cost from Vintage Dancer // Super interesting!
• August, 1940 … ish from Grandma Donna // Lots of great advice here.
• I Will Work Harder? from Rachel Woodham at Circe Institute

New Additions to The List // 

• Works of Mercy by Sally Thomas
• The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt
• The Soul of Civility: Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves by Alexandra Hudson
• Our Biggest Fight: Reclaiming Liberty, Humanity, and Dignity in the Digital Age by Frank H. McCourt Jr.

Watching/Listening/Playing //

• How Consumerism Keeps You Constantly Broke | Spencer Campbell from Damon Cassidy // Very thought provoking.
• Two American Families: 1991-2024 Documentary from Frontline PBS
• SPENT // This game is really eye-opening and the reality for a lot of American families these days.
• Purgatorio Cantos 7-16 of 100 Days of Dante from Baylor Honors College

Loving //

• my new mop system // An investment for my cleaning arsenal!  I love this thing.

This post contains affiliate links, which means I may receive a commission of any sale made at no extra cost to you.

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