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The Big White Farmhouse

intentional living, little by little

June 12, 2025

No.929: A Summer Integrated Humanities Program // Week One

“River Landscape with a Ferry and a Church” by Jan Van Goyen (1656)

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

Welcome to Week 1 of the Big White Farmhouse’s Summer Integrated Humanities program!  To ease into this project, we’re going to start with some light and airy choices.


ARTIST OF THE WEEK: JAN VAN GOYEN

Jan van Goyen was one of the most gifted landscapists in the Netherlands during the early 17th century.

“Many of his earlier pictures, from 1620 to about 1630, show the influence of Esaias van der Velde, his teacher in 1616. These landscapes are highly detailed, have strong local colour, and often serve as a stage for genre scenes. His characteristic style developed from the 1620s, when his compositions became simplified and his technique broadened. A use of low horizons gave his landscapes a Baroque sense of spatial expansiveness. His concern with rendering natural light and the depiction of subtle atmospheric effects, however, are the principal identifying features of van Goyen’s tonal landscapes.” (via)

If you’ve read here awhile, you know that I’m intrigued by cloud formations and photograph them often.  I love the way van Goyen used color within the clouds!  So beautiful and true to life.

“Farmhouse” (1628)
“A Calm”
“River Landscape with a Church in the Distance”

A POEM AND A SIMPLE NATURE STUDY

Effie Lee Newsome was a Harlem Renaissance writer who mostly wrote children’s poems.

“Newsome was one of the first African American poets who primarily published poems for children. She was the author of one volume of poetry, Gladiola Garden: Poems of Outdoors and Indoors for Second Grade Readers (The Associated Publishers, 1940), and she published numerous poems in the Crisis, Opportunity, and other leading journals of the Harlem Renaissance. She also edited the children’s column “Little Page” in the Crisis. Her poems helped her young readers celebrate their own beauty and recognize themselves in fairy tales, folklore, and nature.” (via)

Sky Pictures
by Effie Lee Newsome

Sometimes a right white mountain
Or great soft polar bear,
Or lazy little flocks of sheep
Move on in the blue air.

The mountains tear themselves like floss,
The bears all melt away.
The little sheep will drift apart
In such a sudden way.

And then new sheep and mountains come.
New polar bears appear
And roll and tumble on again
Up in the skies so clear.

The polar bears would like to get
Where polar bears belong.
The mountains try so hard to stand
In one place firm and strong.

The little sheep all want to stop
And pasture in the sky,
But never can these things be done,
Although they try and try!

Things to Do…

  • Photograph the sky everyday at the same time for a week.
  • Learn the differences between ten basic cloud formations.
  • Try your hand at solar printing and make unique botanical artwork.

A LITTLE SHAKESPEARE
“Midsummer night’s dream” by John Hoppner

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a comedy by William Shakespeare and is one of his most popular and universally performed plays.  Use the book to follow along with the play from The Palm Beach Shakespeare Festival.


MISCELLANEOUS RABBIT TRAILS…

+ Invest in and take a landscape watercolor class to paint those beautiful clouds you photographed.

+ Embark on a free audio course called A Survey of Shakespeare’s Plays.  “This is a course on Shakespeare’s career, given at Brandeis University in the spring of 2010, by William Flesch. It covers several representative plays from all four genres: comedy, tragedy, history, and romance. We consider both the similarities and differences among those genres, and how his more and more radical experimentations in genre reflect his developing thought, about theater, about time, about life, over the course of his career.”

+ Read the poem, “The Cloud”, by Percy Bysshe Shelley.

June 9, 2025

No.928: Last Week at the Farmhouse // An Unexpected Turn

“The Doctor” by Luke Fildes (1891)

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

Well, this week took an unexpected turn!  On Friday night, I woke up out of a sound sleep with chest tightness and tingling fingers.  It was concerning but after thirty minutes and some deep breathing, I chalked it up to stress and was able to go back to sleep.  I woke up Saturday morning feeling fine, but started feeling weakness in my left arm within an hour.  All of these things came so suddenly and unexpectedly that my husband thought it best if we head to the ER.

The next six hours were a wild ride.  The on-call doctor reviewed my symptoms and wanted to rule out the possibility that I may have multiple sclerosis (MS) or the beginnings of a stroke.  I had a lot of firsts: my first chest x-ray, my first CT scan (with and without contrast) and my first MRI (with and without contrast).  And after all of that…there was no evidence of either MS or a stroke.  I’m generally healthy as a horse.  To them, I was a medical mystery…(Spoiler alert: I figured it out on my own – see below)

I am thrilled that those random symptoms were not indicative of something serious, but I definitely feel like I survived a warning.  I’m more convicted than ever to take better care of myself.  Life is fleeting and good health is a gift.

Hoping to document 52 weeks of good things!

Five Good Things…

  1. Healthy tomato plants. // All the rain we’ve had has been wonderful for these plants!  So green and luscious.  I hope that translates to a lot of fruit.
  2. The start of next year’s school planning. // I usually do this in July, but I’m rolling with the “work now for ease later” motto!  I also discovered and signed up for a free trial of Homeschool Planet and I’m in love!  Paper planners always frustrate me because life happens and we miss a day or get behind, thus ruining all of my hard work.  But this program looks promising!  I love how you can reschedule assignments.
  3. That a bug bite reaction wasn’t worse. // My littlest son got a bug bite right below his eye and the poor guy puffed right up.  It was alarming, but rest and an ice pack quickly got him back to normal.
  4. The most lovely little song that plays when the dishwasher is done. // Can you be in love with a dishwasher?  When the cycle is finished, it plays the sweetest little song and it brings a smile to my face every time.
  5. A little side note on my MRI results. // My MRI evaluation alerted me to the fact that I have “degenerative disc osteophyte complexes at C4-5, C5-6 and C6-7 resulting in spinal foraminal stenosis.”  The on-call doctor brushed by this information (he was more concerned with the stroke/MS possibility) but I looked up these terms on my way home and bingo!  This was it.  The stenosis is causing nerve issues, which is causing the tingling and pain down my arm.  While concerning, I’m considering this knowledge a good thing because I can try to mitigate pain and strengthen this area as much as possible.

Frugal Accomplishments //

  • used hay bale twine (that I saved from last winter) to tie up my tomatoes
  • reused a bunch of bubble wrap for a resale package
  • fixed a button on my husband’s jeans
  • sold pork to friends
  • air-dried a few loads of laundry on drying racks
  • researched bulk book buybacks (like World of Books) but ultimately decided to just sell my books myself on ebay/Pango
  • made it to June 5th before having to turn on the air conditioning!
  • sold four books, a dress and a small bowl and after fees, I made $26.52

This Week in the Liturgical Year //

June 5 was the Memorial of St. Boniface, Bishop and Martyr.

To Read: In Hac Tanta (On St. Boniface) from Pope Benedict XV

To Add to the Library: The English Correspondence of Saint Boniface: Being for the Most Part Letters Exchanged Between the Apostle of the Germans and His English Friends

To Copy in the Commonplace Book: “In her voyage across the ocean of this world, the Church is like a great ship being pounded by the waves of life’s different stresses. Our duty is not to abandon ship but to keep her on her course.”

Reading //

  • Should Illiterate High School Graduates Sue the Schools that Failed Them? from Helen Andrews at Commonplace // “This is the bind schools are trapped in: If they forbid students from using text-to-speech apps and other technological tools that do their reading and writing for them, this can be a violation of a disabled student’s right to reasonable accommodations. When these crutches have the inevitable effect of preventing the student from acquiring these skills for himself, the student can turn around and sue the school for failing to teach him.”
  • Boys! Homeschooling Through High School from Carol Hudson // It was encouraging to see that we’ve already incorporated a lot of her advice in our own schooling.
  • Regarding Joy from Sofia Cuddeback at Hearth and Field //

…joy is not merely the result of achieving or possessing a good. Rather, the essence of joy is in resting in that good. Resting means allowing ourselves to fully note and experience the good, rather than ticking it off our list as some sort of accomplishment and then moving immediately to the next thing. Joy is not achieved; it is experienced through resting in the good that is at hand. If we are distracted from the thing that we love, however, going on to the next pursuit instead, then we are no longer resting in that good. We have lost the joy proper to that good. For example, if a mother has pursued the good of a family bonding at dinnertime by preparing a lovely meal, but then she jumps up to do the dishes instead of joining in the conversation, then she has not rested in the good of this family togetherness, and so she is unlikely to experience joy. The dishes can wait long enough for her to experience the good fruit of family communion!

  • Heirlooming: Objects of transmission, objects of beauty and utility, objects of feminine and masculine heritage from Emily Hancock at Women’s Work //

I think old objects and objects made by true craftspeople are important. I think the planned obsolescence of almost all of today’s mass produced products is not only annoying, wasteful and non-economical but a reflection of a loss of meaning. The meaning imbued into handmade goods is the result of hard-earned skill made manifest, injected with the maker’s personal sense of what beauty or quality means, and the stories of not only that person but the people before them who passed on the necessary skills to make the object. This doesn’t exist in mass-marketed, machine made things. Pair this famine of meaning with the fact that so many things are in fact now made to break, and you have a real disconnect between what people actually need and what they think they want.

New Additions to The List // 

  • The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey by Rinker Buck
  • Iris Exiled: A Synoptic History of Wonder by Dennis Quinn
  • Poetic Knowledge: The Recovery of Education by James S. Taylor

Watching/Listening //

  • Episode 3 of The Commentaries: The Confessions of St. Augustine
  • I. Introduction – Integrated Humanities Program // Excellent.
  • Let Them Be Born in Wonder! | Bishop James Conley from Benedictine College Lectures // The Bishop was one of John Senior’s students.  This lecture was fantastic.

Loving //

  • my Epson printer // I replaced my broken printer a few months ago but wanted to thoroughly try out my replacement before recommending.  And this new printer is awesome!  The ink lasts so much longer.
  • these reading tracker printables // Perfect for those summer reading goals!

from the archives…

WEEK TWENTY-THREE 2024 // The Granny Creed

June 5, 2025

No.927: A Summer Integrated Humanities Program // An Introduction

“Note in Blue and Opal” by James McNeill Whistler (1884)

I’m so, so excited to announce a project I’ve been working on behind the scenes!  I’m calling it A Summer Integrated Humanities Program and it will be a twelve-week blog series, posted every Thursday in June, July and August.

Inspired by John Senior and his Integrated Humanities Program from the 1970s, I wanted to create something that would help women, especially mothers, pull themselves from the modern consumerist/influencer viewpoints of today and into the perennial truths of the past.  Clearly, this will look a little different from John Senior’s college course.  We’re coming together through a computer screen, unable to sit face-to-face, contemplating the works together and sharing our thoughts.  I still hope it’s a fruitful endeavor.

My goal is to provide a feast of good, true or beautiful things for you to peruse; you can choose none, one or all!  The feast is meant to make you think, ponder and contemplate.  Whether you agree with the authors or not, it should help you in forming coherent opinions and see humanity in a longer lens.  I hope it shows that there’s nothing new under the sun and if we want to affect positive change in our current day, we should probably learn from the past.

Each week, there will be a mix of the traditional humanities subjects of literature, history and theology but also art, music, poetry and nature study.  Since we crawl before we walk before we run, there will be a mix of the simple to the complex, “easier” subjects vs. ones that require more focus and attention.  I also wanted to add a bunch of “touch grass” activities to connect us to the realities around us.  Like Fulton Sheen said, Life is worth living!  I strongly believe that in this technological age, we need to intentionally engage with the natural world as much as possible.

I really hope you will chime in and comment your thoughts and ideas each week too.  We are all a product of our individual experiences and have so much to share and learn from each other.  See you next Thursday for Week 1!

June 3, 2025

No.926: Plan With Me for June 2025

I’m trying something a little different for goal planning.  My new motto: we are not machines, we don’t have infinite energy levels, we can only do so much!  Hopefully this new method will help me reduce my stress and prioritize the right things at the right times.

Make It Do May was a complete blur but I’m considering it a success!  Our primary objective this month was to dig deep and pay off as much of our remaining debt as possible.  May was also an incredibly full month of celebrations, appointments and the end of the school year, so this challenge of saving/making money was tucked into the little nooks and crannies of everyday life.  A wild ride and I’m exhausted, ha!  As of this writing, we’re hovering around 20% of paid off debt and I’m looking forward to continuing into the summer.  Our big goal is to be debt free (except for the mortgage) by late fall and I really want to make that happen!  On to the plans…

Let’s review May first:

FIVE TOP PRIORITIES
  1. complete standardized testing and mail back (The last big task of the school year – yay for summer vacation!)
  2. transplant all of the tomatoes and peppers
  3. catch up on my stitch-a-day project (Not even close…I’m still really, really behind.)
  4. muck the chicken coops (DONE.  My least favorite farm task.)
  5. declutter at least 30 items (Final amount: 80!)
FIVE “WOULD BE GREAT TO DO” TASKS
  1. wear a dress everyday (24/31 days!  This wasn’t a “trad wife” statement or anything, I just wanted to feel a bit more put together and dresses are the easiest piece of clothing to do that.  Comfortable too!)
  2. propagate hydrangeas from cuttings (I really hope this works…)
  3. buy ferns for the front porch (My slightly unconventional Mother’s Day gift.  I love them.)
  4. deep clean the refrigerator
  5. move the playset to another spot on the property (This has been on my perpetual to-do list for TWO years!  I was thrilled.)
FIVE LITTLE STEPS TO GET AHEAD
  1. debt reduction: earn $200+ reselling unneeded items around the house (Sooo close!  Final amount earned: $193.76)
  2. mother academia: read two Greek tragedies (I read Medea, but am only halfway through Agamemnon)
  3. home: fix the front porch steps (My husband took care of this for me.  So thankful to not have any rotting boards anymore!)
  4. handmade Christmas: choose a new pattern for ornament #3 and begin (I chose this free pattern.)
  5. farm: tear down the old pig shelters (We ultimately decided to hold off on this for now.)

On to June’s goals!

FIVE TOP PRIORITIES

These tasks tend to have deadlines or really should be completed this month.

  1. mail in our testing results and letter of intent for the next school year
  2. install the new dishwasher
  3. finish stripping the side hallway walls
  4. figure out the water leak situation in the basement
  5. launch a new summer series (the first post goes live on Thursday!)
FIVE “WOULD BE GREAT TO DO” TASKS

Examples of these tasks would be seasonal goals or things that just generally have less urgency.

  1. start thinking about 2025-26 curriculum
  2. declutter 30+ items
  3. stay on top of weeding in the garden
  4. make a temporary “farmer’s pool” for the kids out of a chill tank
  5. bake a pie
FIVE LITTLE STEPS TO GET AHEAD

This area is for big, overwhelming goals that can be broken down into bite-sized, attainable steps.

  1. debt reduction: earn $100+ reselling unneeded items around the house
  2. mother academia: finish Augustine’s Confessions
  3. home: invest in new bath towels for everyone
  4. handmade Christmas: finish cross-stitch ornament #3
  5. farm: fertilize all of the fruit trees

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The 10 Year Reading Plan for the Great Books of the Western World

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