in the fullness of being

Except for the youngest, the kids are, by and large and for all intents and purposes, grown. They are their own people, and while that's been true since they were born, it is true in a different way now. And it is always possible that some big intervention of some sort would be needed, but not likely at this point given who they are.

It was very easy to be a natural, attachment parenting parent when the kids were really little and the biggest question was whether or not to vaccinate. There was no way I was going to ever let them cry it out. Ever. Or not let them nurse on demand. But when my nipple started dissolving in one's saliva, I did say to the child, I can't do this -- and she did cry -- and that, people, is why it takes two parents (ideally one of whom has boobs and one of whom does not). So yeah, if warranted I would get their attention in a parental, introductory-guide-to-this-life, manner.

As they grew, they ate what and how much they wanted to, within the fact that we have three meals a day and that comes first. So, if your snacking interfered with meals, the snacking stopped. If you didn't like something, we made sure that there was something that you did like but mostly expected a bite of whatever it is that was for supper . . . most of the time. But when one doesn't like cheese grits for breakfast, a small pot of oatmeal is prepared. That is no sweat off anyone's nose, and not nutritionally compromising either. There was one child who just didn't, for the longest, like any veggies cooked -- he always had them raw. He also didn't like things touching. Or mixed together.

But anyway, even with all the nuances, the things that are reasonable requirements (eating, brushing teeth) tempered with compassionate self-direction, attachment parenting and unschooling were easy choices early on. Then came the middle years, and late reading, and odd interests, and sometimes defiance, or moodiness, or somewhat persistent fantasy worlds, or whatever. It was somewhat harder then but only in the sense of questioning "Am I ruining their lives?" But all it took was one look around at the "normally parented" kids to decide, nope, we're fine thanks. Likewise, I look at kids who've had no direction and can plainly see that kids do indeed need parents, not reliving-their-childhood abdicators. Time and again, we shuffled through the choices and came to the same conclusions -- whoever they are on their own, with our love and guardrails, is better than anyone we can make them into. Heck, one look at us proves that it doesn't work out that you are who you "get raised" to be anyway . . . and not engaging in that sort of power trip is, we hope, far less fraught with useless baggage for the kids to carry.

And now, for the most part, here they are, emerging into another fullness. They have a solidity, a groundedness, and yet an ability to fly, take off, dream. They know stuff, a lot of stuff, but what I value most is their knowledge of themselves, and their inability to be swayed, their unwillingness to doubt that knowledge. They haven't been raised in boxes that can be replaced with other boxes. They don't need people's stares in order to feel better about themselves, nor do they wear masks or costumes. They aren't performing their lives, they are living them.

I don't know. I never feel like I have words enough for the family, for unschooling, for our adventures whole. It is easy to explain how we planted this or that, or how to make a loaf of bread, but a lifetime relationship with family that is full and growing and reciprocal -- you can't explain that.

The girls and I very often have nighttime giggle sessions. I go to bed and somehow, they end up on the bed with me and we talk about anything and everything and I can usually be counted on to say something that makes one of them say, "You are not the typical Mother."

And I laugh and get that fire in my eyes, and say, "No, I am not bwahahahaha!" or, if I'm feeling more tame, "Thank your lucky stars honey."

And each night the youngest tells a goodnight story of his own invention to his dad. And the older three have their own business ventures and we all have chores and work together in the garden and, well, just so many things.

I am comfortable that they do know stuff. And that starts with how to read, how to find stuff out, how to grow stuff, how to eat, how to stay warm, how to figure out what they don't know about any of that stuff. And I think they will be able to find their own place in the world, their own place, their own way, with a superego that is their own voice, not Eisenhower's, or even the Capt'n Crunch Kids. I believe we have worked out relationships that can always be worked out, developed; relationships that are rich and fertile. Everyone is a resource for everyone else, so that it truly is, one for all, all for one.

small steps, giant leaps

goin' to the moon

I found myself in a venue that was not compelling for me, and there confronted with hostility. A school teacher, no less, saying something every week about why homeschooling was not a good thing. Oh my but what she would have said if she could have even imagined unschooling.

She raised first socialization, of course. And I parried that with my utter uncaring. Not that I didn't care about her question but that I have the example of my children as well as my instinct to know that this concern about "socialization" is a false one -- how could I be concerned?

The next week she did not question me but pressed to service another tactic: a loud story pointed directly at me about the importance of schooling, and the more of it the better. I sat and studiously ignored. And seethed. This little conversation was no accident.

Lo and behold, the next week she avoided me like the plague. I was not exactly saddened by this turn of events. It was, in fact, the least burdensome weekend yet, although that might have been as much because I only bore one day instead of two as because of her relative silence.

And then . . . and then . . . she approached me and she said, "You will laugh at me." And I probably looked at her blankly because, ok, laughing would be better than scowling at her so I'm not seeing that as a negative but obviously she is. Then she somehow explained to me that she was now, as of this very past week, homeschooling her own daughter. She was sheepish about it and she kept mentioning that she had yelled at me the previous week about homeschooling.

I tried to take it in, make sense of it, and you can tell by my rendition of it that I had some trouble with it, and all I could say to her was, "Good for you. Can I help you?" And she asked me some questions and I told her some things and to me the most touching thing was that she said that she'd been fighting with her daughter every morning to get up and go to school, yelling fighting screaming and I just touched her shoulder and said, "Don't do that." Because no relationship is fertilized by constant interpersonal strife. All relationships have some but to me your relationship with your daughter is far far and away more important than going to school. Of course, I don't think going to school is important at all so it isn't much of a contest for me.

You know, there are things in life that do have to be done. You have to eat your veggies and brush your teeth and pay your taxes but by and large those things can be worked out without strife, creatively. Not by ignoring them, not by not doing them, but creatively finding ways that are not unpleasant. Life can be seen differently. Relationships can be seen differently. And first seen is then done, and once done another vista of seen anew can open again. It is rather like aikido, where people's bullying energy is simply sidestepped, redirected to no affect, the highest level of morality.

She asked me, then, what my kids were doing about a diploma. They won't have one. Or they will have one we print out for them. Little odds. Well, she said on the verge of apologetically, a high school diploma, and her daughter having one, was important to her. I said I understood that it would be. She said she didn't know why it was important to her but it was. I said it was because she was indoctrinated to it being important but we can choose to live outside of that like we can choose to live outside of having to go to school.

She had said the week before that in the real world you had to go to school every day. In my real world, you have to eat. In my real world, you have to have fun. In my real world . . . well, you get the idea. You decide what is important to you. In most people's real world, one has to go to work everyday . . . and I do go to work, off the homestead, a lot of days. But I do it because I want to. It is work and it is people that nurture me, and if it weren't, I'd be out of there before feeding time. I try very much to be a positive presence in the world, to offer more than I take, to be an example of a considered morality but I never lose focus that my priority is my family and my farm. All for one, one for all. They indulge my horse passions -- we all indulge absolutely to the greatest extent possible each other's passions. And we are able to do this to the extent that we've freed ourselves from indoctrination, institutionalization, and external validation.

The husband and I were talking the other day, sharing some of our latest insights into how to be healthy and hale and hearty into our more advanced middle age. We decided two of our best moves had been to not have a mirror in the house, and to not have any comfortable chairs in the house. It is a lot easier to break the external validation habit without the mirrors, and a lot easier to have good posture and a strong body and a lot less fat (which translates into health) by not sitting much.

Unschooling has been like that too. We took away the idea of school. We rejected testing summarily. We examined and did away with most all competition, and all "real" competition, in favor of cooperation and celebration. We've never engaged in busy work although there is always plenty of real work to be done. We find what we are good at, and what we can contribute, and what needs to get done . . . and joy and humor and thoughtfulness and challenge . . . and so much more. And the longer we unschool together, the more things we parents find we were indoctrinated about that with thought and with intention and with care and love can be . . . extinguished. There is no room for it in the intentional life. Unschooling has been what we've called the process of freeing ourselves from indoctrination and institutionalization, and what we've called the process of not insulting our children's psyches with indoctrination and institutionalization to begin with.

And while my new arms length "friend" may be homeschooling with Alpha Omega curriculum and not unschooling, she has taken a great huge leap away from the industrial-schooling complex of indoctrination and institutionalization. May she learn to define her own world, measure her daughter using only her daughter as the measuring stick, measure herself using only herself as her measure, and use a real reality as a guide instead of an external and false reality.

milking from the POV of a stranger and the story of Anastasia

We entertained unexpected guests last week, unexpected to me at least. Let us just say that the newness of their eyes looking upon our doings gave me the gift of some fresh perspective.

We'd been sitting in the kitchen for some time, sharing some food and tea. The boys were in the living room immersed in their common interest and the rest of us were just trying to pass the time politely if a little stiffly. But finally it came time to milk. There is no getting past that.

"Ok, let's milk," I said to the gang. "You all come on and watch," I encouraged her and her daughter. And then I saw with what fluency we did so. Four of us go milking together, and each of us has a job, and each of us knows what the other jobs are and how to fill in if need be. We check what is going on with each other in undetectable ways, silently, with looks or code words or body language. I go in the field to get the cows and the other people are posted where they will be needed. Then everything moves over to the milking stand. And then we milk.

The most interesting thing about milking is the conversations we can have. Mostly it is silence; everyone sort of in his or her own thoughts, but we'll also talk about stuff. I couldn't really tell you what, but I do know it is this sort of time when things really get shared, when the temperature gets taken, when you have some real idea of what is really going on inside others. Real intimacy. It is quantity time plus having constructive endeavors wherein we rely upon each other.

And then, rather suddenly, milking is over and one child takes the milk and the rest of us fall into places for putting the animals up for the night, and the milk disappears into the house and the animals are put up and given hay and water, and that flows into getting the goats and feeding the horse, and then the milking stuff gets washed.

My point is, I guess, that my kids know how to do all this stuff, and that we also know how to work together to get it done, and that such knowledge is an unusual, even a remarkable thing. And yet even this visitor, who watched us do this, quizzed us about the whole homeschooling thing.

It isn't that I mind. The quizzings don't, by and large, come from a place of suspicion but of honest curiosity. And honest concern too when people find out we don't do formal music or algebra or anything else. What about holes? The conventionally schooling don't always know to put it in so few words, but almost always one of their concerns (once you get past socialization) is what if they (our kids) don't learn all the stuff everyone else does.

Of course, my first external, verbalized response to that is that everyone else doesn't learn it either! I mean, really, how many people do you know who don't know who Odysseus is, or where Japan is, or how to solve a quadratic equation? I was surprised at how many people I knew who didn't know these things, people who have been to college or sent kids to college.

My first internal, never verbalized, response is, 'Did you notice that your kid doesn't know how to milk a cow? Now that's a hole?' But I don't say that, of course. I'm comfortable that our kids could raise a garden, care for animals, manage to get food from both those things, build a passable shelter, and stay warm in the winter without much infrastructure, if it came to that. May it never come to that.

But this time, this time when asked about holes, I had a story to tell. The kids recently saw a nondescript animated version of the story of Anastasia. It wasn't well done in any sense of the word. And yet.

And yet it started a discussion that, yes, indeed, there had been a real Anastasia, and when I was a child myself, there were still old women in the world claiming to have been her. It led to discussions of Russian history, intermarriage in the Courts, and hemophilia. And so many other things (how did people live, what views did they have of their world, why was Rasputin loved . . . and hated?).

One of the things that occurs to me when I think about this is how our children gain perspective with facts. What I remember most about school, all school, was regurgitating facts for tests without having any real perspective about it or what it all meant. And I had very involved parents. But I had, basically, no perspective and I rather hope that my kids do.

And since perspective is the place where you look from, I'm thinking the place of milking and gardening provides a really useful view.

the heart of life

We're back in milk and it feels good. She's a very different cow. She has a LOT of milk but lets down very slowly.

There is nothing bad, but everything is different. It has reminded me of the times I've run across people who know already exactly how everything is going to be. The funniest ones were going to raise chicory for their goats to browse on, and when goats proved too difficult for their pansy rears, they got a cow and failed at that too.

Not that there is anything wrong with failure. If you aren't failing at something, you aren't trying at very much. But success just isn't all that difficult either, so if you aren't succeeding at something, you aren't trying at very much either. By any measure, we've failed at most things we've tried in one way or the other. But we've always kept at it, and that is a good measure of success.

The other day a tree blew down across our road, about half-way between the house and the road. Luckily one vehicle was out already because moving it took several days -- although if no vehicle had been on the other side of it, I'm sure we would have worked a bit earlier and more diligently to get it moved. My point, at any rate, is that to most people a downed tree would be nothing but a liability, especially across their road. But to us, it was only a very mild inconvenience and in the end an asset as it becomes the beginning of next winter's firewood. That is because when you shift your perspective, everything looks different. Scratch that, everything IS different.The down tree was a heavy sugar maple. Cutting it into pieces with a bow saw proved an exercise in how many ways one can get a saw bound, and a lesson in levers. There is still one big piece down there that wasn't in the road so we didn't haul it yet, and a bunch of smaller pieces to be worked into lengths there and brought up on the cart. It was fun to hook and work the horse. Then we went on down to the garden and harrowed a bit.

The kids and I came back up to milk because right now it takes the whole crew (at least three people, preferably four). She's getting the routine but we've still got the calf running around loose, and, well, it can get complicated. Luckily our children know what chores are.

Chores, for those of you who might not know, are work that really does have to be done, no excuses, no make work, nothing decorative, no complaining, period, even if you are on your deathbed. Some chores, like doing the dishes or hoeing, can be put off for a day or two but you'll pay for it. Others, like tending to day old chicks, must be done on time or the chicks will die. Milking you get to slide and hour or two but otherwise, it simply has to be done. I think a lot of adults don't understand the nature of chores as they've never dealt with them -- they think it is an imposition instead of a centering, a grounding, a basis for all of life and living. Busywork is the basis of schooling -- it would be my posit that meaningful work is the basis of unschooling.

For the time being we've converted the old shoeing stock into a milking stanchion, and two of us milk her from opposite sides at the same time. She isn't fixed in the stand yet by a head stock so she can leave when she wants too and yet we're still getting lots of milk only milking once a day and not yet having taken the calf off at all. We have tentative plans for an eventual milking area but until this cow, I never would have made plans to be able to have a milker on each side. I may never have another cow that requires it, but one never knows these things.(see that rope-like thing on the bottom of her belly going to her udder? That's a vein! I think that is the coolest. Her teats are really small, her udder huge, those are a daughter's hands, and a cat catching milk from the quarter that had a little mastitis and so it being milked to the cats and not in a bucket.)

(pps I actually have not forgotten the dish rags folks, this is just my normal slowness)

Funny Bunnies

We've had rabbits before. Well, we've actually had rabbits for a long while. And daughter #2 has taken good care of them. Ah, but now we have these new rabbits to breed for meat and selling and daughter has a business plan for them and well, we're just excited about all the possibilities. This new black one may even already be pregnant.

And we got two blues and a white as well.

measured in other ways

THE In-the-Least-Things GIVE-AWAY Concludes!!!!

Well, here it is past the tenth of March and I ain't finished up my give-away even. It ain't time to change my heading picture yet but the leaves will be on the trees again and even I believe that now, after this long, hard, cold, seemingly endless winter. The grass is thinking about greening and it'll bring a tear of gratitude to a body.

I had this other thing I was wanting to write, something about my eldest child reaching his age of majority, but for the life of me I can't remember how it started out in my mind and I can't write it without that. It is probably just as well: I don't tend to write too much about my kids, or our family's unschooling way of life, because when I try to, it sounds stilted. I can't capture the magic of it, the whole cloth of it, just little tiny strings that don't mean much by themselves.

And I never, ever think I get across how important I think this all is. It is like unschooling is many ways, which is far less about what you do than what you don't do. If you want to unschool, what you don't do is schoolish things, like workbooks and scheduled sit down sessions and you don't live a life that depends on external validation. If you want to homestead, if you want to survive and thrive, what you don't do is live large. You can taste large, like you can taste lobster, but if your plan for lunch depends on lobster, you are most likely going hungry round these parts.

This give-away is for me about tasting how sweet the small is, and about moving in that direction. A dishrag isn't a big thing, and that is exactly the point. Life really isn't about the once-in-a-lifetime things. Success isn't about, well, anything that people think it is about. I may still have this People magazine somewhere because I'm funny like that, I tend to keep things that pointed me true. I don't tend to be a big fan of the Kennedy's, or of documentaries, and especially not of documentaries of southern Appalachia (they are either filled with pity for us or are making fun of us, and pretty much all documentaries are condescending and meant to change whatever it is they are looking at), but I read this review of a documentary that (I think) Rory Kennedy had made in eastern Kentucky, right over the mountain from where I was raised. The reviewer, who was condescending, quoted Rory, who was not -- she said, "I learned that success can be measured in other ways, like how close your children choose to live to you after they are grown."

Success can be measured in other ways.

Everyone who played with me is a success.

*Madcap probably makes way more stuff than I do and I love her potholders! But her candle dripping saving is one of these things, I think, that is maybe just a bit outside what we normally do and yet simplifies things.

*Mickle knits her own dish rags instead of crocheting.

*Wendy does tons and tons of stuff, I'd almost think she was a kind of a purist from following her blog, at least way more than I am. It was her deodorant that I liked the best -- something I hadn't even thought of trying to do myself. If you want to make yours, how to is in the comments section of the give-away post. Should I get around to trying this myself, I may post it on the blog.

*I'm not sure whether Clairsgarden wanted to "play" or not, but she remembers the dish rags from her granny and will pass the idea on.

*Mrs. H gave us all the most to ponder, and I'm just going to include an excerpt of her comment:

It was when we were able to see with eyes wide open that for the most part, everything we knew, had been taught, had learned was pretty much a lie, at least to us. You will find it in the public school systems, in government, the stock market, your place of employment, in medicine, and marketing. . . . Today, we enjoy each other's company, have come to a natural division of labor, and continually find new and exciting ways to get the most out of everything. Truly, for us, we find pleasure in-the-least of things, freedom of mind, body, and spirit is what we hold most dear.

Really, you should read her whole comment, and Mr. H's blog.

And guess what? EVERY ONE OF THESE PEOPLE WIN! Go to my profile, get my e-mail address, send me your snail mail address, and eventually you will get an all cotton hand-crocheted dish rag!

But I am going to declare a winner, and the winner will get not only the dish rag but the scrubbie! Woohoo I know you are so excited! It is

*JUST A GIRL! Why? I like her curtains and I like her sewing machine and I like that she's in a real different place, being career Coast Guard, in Hawaii, and all, and yet still finding her own ways to be true in the least things.

So send me those addresses and see how excited my mailman gets with me sending stuff to New Zealand, Scottland, Canada, and Hawaii!

Mortality

February has been rather quiet I suppose. Frozen, snowy, and when not frozen, muddy. Hard to get much done except the stuff required to stay warm. Oh, we did have two nice days -- they were so welcome. I've thought a lot of thoughts, of course, always do, and continued to watch the economy and the country collapse and be amazed by the denial involved in that.

A girlfriend that I grew up with was found dead in bed the other day. My age. No pre-existing conditions, just had had some stomach flu for a couple days. And not that I'd seen her in 30 years. But still.

Both of my parents died in the last decade, my dad ten years ago this year, my mom two and a half years ago.

So you pull a carrot from the ground, or you chop the head off a cabbage, or you hold a chicken in your arms and it is warm and breathing and then you chop its head off and pluck it and turn it all into dinner: That's how mortality is. Not dramatic. Death scenes are not romantic or heroic; they might be rattling or they might catch you off-guard but they are really daily, like what's-for-supper.

So we die.

But how do we live?

That's the question that I keep coming back to again and again. It isn't a mortality dependent thing. There is no bucket list to complete. But there are questions that include -- are you honorable? and, well, are you honorable. I mean, it is such a trick question, isn't it? I'm not much of a one for dichotomies, but is one more concerned with superficialities or depth? Has one, in one's life, produced more useful stuff than he has consumed? Has one kept one's promises? Done what he has said he would do?

When I think of my children, what do I want for them and how am I providing that? I want them to know how to live with a sense of abundance, but also know how to live small, where abundance is easier. I want them to be able to pursue whatever it is they are interested in, but also be able to support themselves. I want them to know that the secrets of life include butter and not being suckered into debt. I want them to know they are loved beyond any doubting and that they always have each other.

We provide that by, hopefully, living that.

The Road of Good Intentions

My Free Will Baptist preacher grandfather used to say, often, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." Even though I'm pretty much a confirmed no-hell-er (or I guess I believe that people make their own little hells here that any larger hell would pale beside of), I agree.

I also believe that your intention in doing something or not doing something is hugely important. Doing the right thing for the wrong reason is . . . doing the right thing for the wrong reason: It is not doing the right thing. Oh, but I don't really mean to get into a discussion of what I believe and don't believe. "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

Still, I wanted to pile on and say, "What she said!" Geez, Louise. I've seen first hand too many examples myself. Got the big guns called in one time on another blog because I dared say that I didn't think letting your kid's teeth rot out was an example of exceptional parenting (I actually had the gall to call it neglectful).

The things we have valued in our journey have certainly included freedom, but with freedom comes responsibility -- freedom simply doesn't exist without responsibility. Choice doesn't exist without consequence. We've also valued politeness, kindness, thoughtfulness, and oh yes cleverness. Cleverness is highly valued here. Ok, and hard work too, and work on things that don't just benefit the doer -- one might consider it communality if it weren't that it is family. Expectations do exist but are always negotiable in their specifics.

Kids have parents because kids need parents. There are things that are simply inappropriate.

I suppose what we've tried to instill in the kids is an ability to internally validate themselves so that they aren't so easily swayed by fashion or external pressure. Discernment.

Happy Halloween!

enter into thy closet

Really, I was thinking of a different post. And really, I hope someone doesn’t mind me using this real story but this is the deepest thing.

See, there is a psychologist I know, dignified, professional, credentialed, experienced, who is going to this mandatory week-long government training session. Who could blame the psychologists that a lot of them like to leave these “training sessions” a bit early to get on home (have you ever been to something so boring you’d rather go to get your wisdom teeth out? that’s what those things are like) . So this time they’ve all received a memo that the very last thing that they all have to stay for is a test! “There will be a quiz!”

Why the h*ll do people do this? Who would allow themselves to be treated like that? Degraded rabble? Evidently dignified, professional, credentialed, experienced psychologists would. Every day on facebook folks comment bluely, “oh gosh darn, another Monday”, or more cheerfully, “TGIF.” School starts teaching that in pre-school and so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that well-schooled psychologists have been trained to be that docile, that obedient, that subservient to the system which sucks them dry.

Maybe it’s a character fault in me but I never could do that. Try as I might, I could not put up with the slow death. In high school we got a new principal who decided that we needed a dress code to include no spaghetti strap tops. Me? I wore one, then called him a dirty old man to be so distracted by high school girls in spaghetti strap tops. I got sent home anyway but I still just have that you aren’t going to tell me what to do, not without some reason anyway, attitude. I learned the futility of trying to “change” the system. The system serves its real purposes quite well, despite what they say.

I learned to live largely outside the system. I touch the system in various places, I use it to my own ends often enough, but neither my well-being nor my self-image depends upon it. It is a really nice thing because I am not diminished by other people. I am, in fact, brightened by other people shining. A rising tide and all that.

The truth of the matter is, when you figure this out, it will be like praying in your closet instead of for show. What is for show ends with the show; what is real reverberates, grows, changes, effects for years and lifetimes and outside of time itself.

(thanks Matthew 6:5-6 -- the title should link you to this chapter)

studies in cultural juxtapositions

We got up and had a leisurely breakfast and went to pick blueberries but it was closed for ripening but being who we are (that is, always leery of rules for rules sakes although respectful of those with sound reasoning behind them) we stopped anyway and husband went to see if there were enough berries ripe to pick or not. Being as there were eight people milling around, we attracted the attention of a person who was working cutting the briars out of the berry field. He came out to see what we were doing and to run us off. When he came out, I asked him if there were any berries. He said no. Behind him was husband, fresh from walking around the field. “What about you?” I said, “Do you think there are any blueberries ready to pick?”

“Oh, there are plenty of blueberries ripe for the picking,” he said.

And you could see that fellow’s face grimace. He was irritated. If he'd a had hackles, they would have been raised. We weren’t going to be easy to run off. How dare we? Dead, awkward silence. I looked at him again. “What do you think? Would she kill us if we picked anyway?” I asked.

He looked up at me, his eyes flashed electric brown, and he said, “That’s my mama!”

“Oh,” I said, “so she would kill us then?” Pause. “We think the world of Mrs. Grullo.” Smile.

And everyone relaxed and we started to take our leave. I don’t know quite what started the next part of it. Some offhand remark, no doubt. I think he mentioned that he’d like to have a cow to milk and I of course said that I’ve milked a cow every day now for six years, and goats before that, and my daughters (who were talking to his daughter who had brought with her a ring neck snake) milk the goat now and that’s when things really loosened up! And it turned into this free flowing conversation telling tales and jokes and stories and family history and now he’s keeping his eyes open for a milk cow for me, and mine can run with his bull after I dry her off (instead of become a beef). We must have stood there for over an hour, with name introductions coming only at our departure along with hearty shaking of hands and an agreement to meet up later in the week.

Then we decided to go catch part of the Virginia Highlands Festival in Abingdon. Now, this thing is big and popular and old -- shoot, I remember coming to it with my mother when I was a child and everything was held on the Barter Green and Martha Washington Inn lawn. Now I usually avoid it, trying not to go to or through Abingdon at all for anything during the three weekends and two weeks that it runs because it totally and entirely gears itself to being a more-money-than-you-have-sense, come-in-from-out-of-town-and-immediately-be-an-expert-on-the-local-arts sort of crowd. Except I do like to catch the photo and art exhibits, and sometimes the arts and crafts booths.

Walking around the arts and crafts area, I admired one painter in particular, and one raku stoneware person who had this copper glaze she’d developed, and there was a leather dress for $500 and some wooden bowls that I told my husband I wanted some wooden bowls and utensils myself, except actually had done, not like those at the fair and done by machine. Then there was this turned wooden bowl booth. That’s all the guy had; perfectly round, perfectly turned wooden bowls and pepper grinders. And, as we’d done with the other wood booths, husband started talking to him about the wood and how they keep it from checking as it dries and the like. The wood turner immediately starts in on how this is all local wood “from right here in Abingdon” but it is obvious that he himself is not. Finally he admits he’s grew up in Pennsylvania. Which is fine. But he has this edge to him. It is like he is trying to be nice but he just doesn’t know how. When he starts telling us how he gets his wood, husband reciprocates by telling him about some trees we have here that were downed by those huge winds in April. I realize that husband is offering this guy to come and get some of this wood. It is the very type and condition that he has just told us he uses. And there I am, watching this interaction, and when we left his booth I said to husband, “That guy didn’t even know you were offering him that wood.”

That’s cultural -- those two men, the one of the blueberries and the one of the wood turning -- being so different. It is like one speaks the language and one does not. And the thing that gets me is that it is not a language that cannot be learned -- it is just that most people who come to live here don’t believe it is a language worthy to be learned.

We both shook our heads and took our leave of the wood turner without introductions or shaking hands or arrangements to meet up later. We moved on to the photography exhibit which was manned by old hometown folks I’d known all my life, who remember being young children themselves and going to see my grandfather preach. Roots are not grown in one generation and the truth is that without real roots, there are no wings either. There were only two ridiculously pretentious entries into the photography contest; most of the entries were actually quite good. One pictorial piece in particular called “Ma done sold the farm” was excellent. And a portrait called “Kenny” I particularly liked. What the judges had awarded “best in show” probably really was and that is nice.

But it was already time for the exhibit to be locked up and so we voted for our favorites and walked back across the viaduct . . . under which a train was passing at just exactly that moment. It was switching some cars out on a side rail and we stood there and watched the whole thing, including getting to see the brakeman switch the tracks and getting to see the tracks actually move, and we talked about the guy who invented the coupling system that saved so many lives and what it might be like to work on the railroad and how big those cars really are and how scary and not like Polar Express it is like when you can’t see the engine or the caboose and the cars start moving right beside you.

And then we came back home.

looking for the mustard seed amongst the blackberries

I don’t have photos, but it was 24 pints of blackberry jam, then the picking of eight gallons of blueberries. There will be more in the coming week. Plus the laying in of some hay.

While husband was picking the blackberries, there were canes that grew high, way over his head. Someone had been in this berry field before him and had not bent those canes down in order to pick the ripe berries but had bent them down and BROKEN them in order to pick the ripe ones. This leaves the unripe ones to rot, not ripen for the next person (or for the birds).

This is why I have so little faith in humanity.

Instead of asking ourselves how we’d live if we died tomorrow, it would be useful to ask ourselves how we’d live if we lived forever. Because we do. Through our children. It makes no sense to buy into artificial constraints (like those of schooling), but it makes even less sense to pretend there are no constraints at all.

This is the time of year for fruit. It is also the time of year to plant the fall/winter garden, to can, to preserve, to lay in, to provide for that time of constraint that is coming.

The Results of Living a Life

I might have said the results of unschooling but while avoiding school, schooling, and schoolishness is all good, it is not enough. Kids want to do what parents and by extension all adults around them do, want to know all that they know, so if the adults around the kids are not engaged in real and ernest enterprises, the kids can still end up indoctrinated to uselessness.

As you might imagine, not our kids. This year the girls, 13 and 12, took over milking the goat. They don't need any help -- they just do it (because they want to). And they are responsible for it, all of it: For putting the babies up for the night at chore time;
(don't you love the little pen made from pallets and spare fencing)

For putting her in her stanchion the next morning;
(as you can see, this stanchion is just a snap on a wall. It is perfectly serviceable. No need for fancy smancy or expensive -- and she goes there and waits for you anyway)

For milking her out;

Today we made goat milk ice cream as our treat. Life on the farm provides many opportunities for treats.

I think so many things about unschooling and living as a family but I can never adequately express them. You'll just have to read it in all the things I don't say, in all the things we don't have a need to do, in the grins and laughter and freedom that play here.

I picked these the other day
and sitting in my bay window they seem to have inspired

the wasabis.

another song about rain

After four years of drought, rain is always blessed. When it comes in the form of two warm fronts with temperatures into the sixties after we’ve been frozen to bits with lows in the teens for a week, it is even more welcome. No matter how inaccurate it might be, I love a weather forecast.

But this is also what days of rain mean to us.

Even if it rains four inches, it will takes days and maybe weeks before that makes it to the springs, if indeed even that is enough water to refresh them. So water must still be hauled. But at least we could still haul water in the rain. Wood is another story. Wet wood just doesn’t burn well. At the same time, with higher temperatures, we really don’t need as much wood, at least not to stay warm. Ah, but the end of the warm and wet spell will bring a cold spell, so we do need to tend to the needs of the parlor stove so we aren’t suffering through cold when that happens, and have enough wood for the cook stove until then.

This is how you have to think: ahead.

I have blogged before about the importance of asking yourself, “What do I want to do in this moment,” and doing that. But I also acknowledge that sometimes you’d better want now to be warm four days from now. All or nothing philosophies always, always fall down. Many times, whatever you want to do in this moment will suffice just fine (and all the more so for those of you with store boughten lives, ah but those lives can disappear in the blink of an eye, and are in fact now in the act of disappearing), but sometimes you’d better just go ahead and want to do in this moment what actually needs to be done in this moment. I am a person who believes most strongly that we always have way more choices in this life than we ever think we have, but I also know that sometimes you don’t have a choice at all -- except in how you choose to respond to it.

And so we said, you know, we need to work really hard on these things. And we did. We cut wood and split wood and stacked it in the house and in protected areas and gathered smaller wood and kindling and twigs to start the fires with. We hauled water. So what that we didn’t get the house entirely clean, and we didn’t get the Christmas tree yet, and we had canned soup for supper.

Beyond being thankful for the rain, I’m thankful that my kids know how to work, know the rest that comes to the truly weary, and that they know the rewards of producing some directly used something every day -- they help to cut the wood one afternoon and the next morning they stand by the stove getting warm; they pick blueberries in August and enjoy them with breakfast in December; they help to plow the potato patch in the spring and help to plant the potatoes and then to hill the potatoes then, now, magically dig up some earth and find caches of glorious potatoes that they then wash in the creek and that will become a french fry supper.

Life waxes and wanes. Best to be prepared for it. Much more pleasant to ask one’s self, “What do I want to be doing in this moment?” when one isn’t shivering cold from lack of dry wood.

Rhythm & Roots

We rely on a spring for water. After four years of drought, we don’t have any. Our creeks still ran even in the driest part, so we didn’t have to worry about the livestock. And the garden has a pump that pulls from a branch just below it. But the springs that fed the house water system have been dry for months now.

We decided to design a water system around those springs because they never went dry and it was a lot cheaper than digging a well and we could do it ourselves. For many years, they ran year round. The only problem then we ever had was if a pipe that ran from the springs to the cistern would get plugged, we could sometimes run the cistern low before we noticed. But the springs, they ran.

I don’t remember which year was the first that we took to bathing in the creek in late summer but it was sometime in the late 1990s. The springs still ran as I remember, just not enough to allow us to wash clothes or to bathe. We could do dishes and flush. And in late summer, bathing in the creek is really a pleasure, not a chore. We became used to late summer conservation of water. After October the water would returned full force.

But this year, for the first time ever, after four years of severe drought, the springs went dry. Bone dry. Not a drop, not a drip. And it is December and they still are not back (although they are beginning to be wet on the bottom!). We have been on water conservation in the house since at least June. Since the springs went dry, we’ve hauled water from the garden pump to put into the cistern so that we can still wash dishes and sponge bath ourselves. Then we save that water to flush with.

Now it is so cold that the pump in the garden is frozen. So we’ve taken to getting water by the barrel out of the creek and hauling that to the cistern. It is actually easier to do this so that we might well be able to haul enough extra water for everyone to get to take a bath. The reason it isn’t our first choice is that the little branch below the garden is the cleanest water that we trust the most.

I wrote all that, really, to get to this:

Husband and elder daughter had business in town today. It was also today that we realized we were going to have to resort to the creek method to get water instead of the garden pump so the routine of how to do that would be new to us. After sending husband and daughter off, the rest of us bundled up and went to work. It was cold today. The truck was already in the front but the barrel was up here so we walked down carrying buckets and rolling the barrel. Every cat on the place went with us. Younger daughter and elder son dipped fifty gallons of water out of the creek one bucket at a time and I tipped it all into a barrel in the back of the pick-up. Younger son helped sort out the buckets and herd the cats.

While I said this before, it was cold today. And working in water was even colder. But there wasn’t a complaint. The sun was shining. The cats were funny. Daughter found it easier to dip without gloves on and son found it easier to tote without his coat on and I froze for them. The kittens evidently hadn’t been to the creek before and rock hopped and batted and sometimes made mistakes in their calculations. Noses and fingers turned red.

We had the best time.

When I hauled the truck up to the cistern, found the old hose, and tried to siphon the water out, I quickly gave up. I laid it down and went to check to see how low exactly the cistern was. 37 inches down. And daughter hollered, “Mom! It’s dripping!” and sure enough, it was so I took my end of it over to the tank and let gravity do its work.

Fifty gallons gives us about a day and a half of regular conservation use water. A little later I will go down to make sure it siphoned all right and also add a cup of bleach to the cistern. I will move the truck so the sojourners can get all the way home undeterred. I will finish the cheese and make a fresh loaf of bread and sweep the floors and dream of a bath. The kids will do their chores and resume their lives and dreamings. The sojourners will return with some treat for us probably.

We’ll feed the fires and stand around the stoves and warm our bums.

And tomorrow, we’ll do most of it again.

Our Finest Hour

My truck broke down. Twice. Twice mind you. In one day. The first time I was on my way to work, and getting later every minute, with 18 hungry horses waiting to be fed. The second time we thought it was fixed, with my family on their way home and me on my way back to work, when it was dead dead dead. Again. So I walked those three miles back to work. On that very hot (ninety degree) day.

My family had their own trials. Husband hates, and I do mean hates, mechanical work of that sort. He cusses the entire time. My kids were all still asleep when the call came to get up, do chores, eat, get dressed, and not know what the day would hold from one minute to the next. And new starters don’t come free.

But here is what happened. No one panicked and no one whined. Everyone met the challenge. Even the youngest sucked it up and went with the it. When it was over, he told us how much he hadn’t wanted to do it, but he had done it anyway. While the kids were at the barn with me, they helped work. A lot. Later when they were at home, when husband had to come back to fix the truck the second time, they looked around and they did not just do whatever. They knew how much stress we were under and they not only did their chores but asked themselves what else needed to be done and did it. In fact, they undertook a major project that had been waiting in the wings and they finished it. Themselves.

In the movie Apollo 13, Ed Harris who is playing Gene Kranz confronts the potential scale of that disaster and says: "With all due respect, sir, I believe this will be our finest hour.” That day was definitely one of our finest hours, an hour that showed the absolutely magnificently right stuff our family is made of. I am awed by every one of them. And all of us together, well!

And not only my family. A friend came and got me to work the first time, and my boss was totally great about all the irregularities of the day, and I had help that day which I usually don’t or I never would have finished up. A stranger with nothing to gain tried to help me the first time I was broken down. Kindness after kindness was shown to me.

Of course at the end of it, husband looked at me and said, “Who is going to stop and get the beer, me or you?”

Me.

Conversations

One of the lovely ladies I sometimes get to ride with has found my blog and came to the barn the other day exclaiming, “Wooowee, CG, you taught me how to butcher chickens! I just found out all that old stuff was on [the blog] and I said to my husband, come here and see CG cutting this chicken’s head off.” I asked her if she’d found the pig killing yet. She hadn’t, so as a shortcut, here and here and here’s how we lost a pig.

Someone I know less well asked me about homeschooling. We talked in general terms for awhile as she worked around to asking me what she wanted to ask me and I worked around to hearing what she was asking me. Sometimes this communication thing is tricky. Eventually she said this child in her life had just not figured out at all how to retain and recall information of any kind ever. I think, looking back on it that she meant to ask me how you can teach a child that but what she got from me was an immediate reaction response, “She doesn’t have any trouble retaining and recalling anything she’s interested in.”

She stopped. “You know, I couldn’t tell you what, if anything, she is interested in.” Wow. Isn't that just too true of too many of us? How did what the school deems important become more important than what the person himself deems important? So much so that we cannot even touch what it is we think is important? I just think this is so endemic. Even when a person has a really good sense of what her priorities are, what makes her heart sing, it is still difficult enough to navigate a track to that. No wonder people are entirely lost in their lives when they don’t even know what they themselves are interested in for themselves. Couple that with a desire to avoid meaningful work and no wonder spiritual malaise is epidemic.

Ok, so another conversation was with the farrier. I don’t get to see him very often but he is one of those truly interesting characters. He hunts with a long bow, for instance. Besides, it is probably pretty difficult to make your living shoeing horses and avoid being an interesting character. But what we were talking about was sort of survivalism, which he’s long been interested in, and he mentioned that people think he’s crazy because he stores food. I said, “Oh, really? We just put in several hundred pounds of wheat, rice, the like.” “Oh, I don’t have that much,” he said while looking at me sideways. Made me know how far out on the edge we are, and made me laugh.

Edit: Ooooh, and I almost forgot an important one, with La at a homeschoolers hanging out in the park day. A more than amply fleshed woman was there with far fewer than too few clothes on. As she passed us, La simply said, “I’m not that sexy anymore.” Yes, that is it. I’m sexy -- I’m just not that sexy. Makes me laugh.

Casual vs Formal

I had an interview for a job today. Waaay saner than the last one I had, which involved three different people and pre-printed corporate question sheets and STUPID questions and a job I did NOT get (and I will always think there was probably a blessing in that). Today it was just, "oh, I remember talking to you on the phone. I could tell you were great at customer service. Could you work in the deli? Sure, two days a week and 8 hour shifts, I can work with that." Of course, the pay was $2 less per hour than the one I did not get. If it is sane, that'll be a bargain.

We have survived the last year solely on casual income. That is, nothing steady. And nothing big. We just don't spend much money. And we have a cushion. And we don't owe anything. I'm often enough appalled to look at blogs and see how much people will spend to be "self-sufficient". Oh, and the anger if you say you don't have to -- that there are other ways to be, other things possible, without your only tool being money to attempt to buy yourself a life or a meaning or a purpose.

But I am thinking a small amount of steady income for awhile might be nice. And I truly did have fun at my last job. You have to be able to walk away.

But I'd better not count my chickens before they hatch.

Here's a little unschooling tale: Daughter got several books featuring fairies. She designed and made, with good finishing detail, a fairy dress, complete with wings. I happened to walk in the door when she had the filler out for the wings and she was thinking and I could see her drawing it in her head. But she never puts it on paper, just sews and there it is. Fits too. This one even has darts. Amazing. But no, that's not for Halloween. That's just for every day. She managed three shirts that day too, a good peasant design.

Let 'Em Be

Bicycling Downhill
Originally uploaded by Contrary Goddess.

Reason #18445 to quit screwing kids up and let them learn efficiently on their own: Eldest child, 15, learned to ride a bike this year. Youngest child, 7, is turned just like eldest and is simply not interested in learning. Yet. Both of them are pretty risk averse. Isn’t that interesting since I never had a risk averse moment until I had kids myself. Anyway, middle two kids both learned to ride bikes at more average bike riding age. The three riders that we now have are very fluent riders, as you can tell by the speed at which he is going down that hill; as you could tell if you know he comes back up that hill pedaling, not pushing.

Reading is not different either. They learn when they are ready and how it is appropriate for them to learn. Oh, yes, being a homeschooler I know people who insist phonics is the only way to read, as if we fluent readers read by doing phonics really really fast (which we don’t). Well, I had one kid who was a sight reader so strongly that if a word he knew was in a different font, he wouldn’t know it. But he became a fluent reader in his own time. Another kid was phonics oriented, and she learned to read fluently . . . at about the same age, maybe a little younger. Being a much more schooled individual myself, I don’t really remember not knowing how to read. And yet I didn’t read for pleasure until . . . about the same age that my kids have naturally learned to read by reading for pleasure.

Birds fly, fish swim, humans learn. Unless it is schooled out of them.

Be-Hatted Best Friends

my heart sister
Originally uploaded by Contrary Goddess.

I am so glad we share whatever it is that we share.

And just so conventional folks can know, we had seven kids here today, and you could still hear the phone ring. There were no fights, no whining, and thankfully no injuries. As they used to say in my home county paper that was published weekly, a good time was had by all.