Dominion Family

I’ve written on this blog about being a failed agrarian and I have written quite a bit about Southern issues. After listening to more of the Plain Talk Cds I thought I might begin to talk about what we did wrong and what we did right in our failed agrarian experiment and where we are today as a result.

Why?

Because I really want to encourage families to follow at least a few agrarian principles even if they never totally break free and I want to do it honestly. Agrarianism is about ideas. Many people become agrarian not for the love of the land but from the realization that something is wrong with our culture. This article from the Rural Missourian goes a long way in describing the ideas that form our current cultural situation. It is 15 pages but you have to stick with it to the end to get the whole picture.

There is a lot that is wrong with the internet but in many ways it is giving people a chance to reclaim their thoughts from the PC media machine.

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I don’t mean to be totally obnoxious and I know some of you live in the far north but I can’t resist posting a few Bradford pear pictures. To make you feel better it will all be over by this time next week.

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Husbands are delicate creatures and must be handled with care. Several months ago I developed a purely philosophical interest in agrarianism. Now my dh is embarrassing me by talking to strangers about the dangers of animal id’s. He found our family a source of raw milk, cheese, butter & eggs, and he has the kids plotting backyard garden spots. I think I am going to erase my agrarian blog links because I found out he is actually reading those blogs !! I finally put my foot down when he said, “If we get a cow we are going to need pigs.” PIGS!! Who is this man?

Speaking of raw milk. I thought I would give one of my unpopular opinions. I believe (whole) milk, raw or not, is good for people. Yes, I refuse to believe that milk is the great Satan sent to destroy our bodies with its oversized molecules. My children drink tons of milk. In all my years of parenting I have only seen one hairline break in the bones of my children. This may not seem like a big deal but my children are not known for their quiet play. Timothy once had a iron weight fall on his head from a rafter during a barn raising. His skull is still intact. As for the estrogen, I would prefer not to have it but so far all of our males are thoroughly masculine.
Milk, like eggs, is a cheap form of protein.

I don’t think I have ever had to say, “He has the croup.” We do get sick but not with that sort of sickness.

Btw, none of my children are overweight.

So there you have it. I am pretty much the only old school homeschool mom I know who will say this and hence I have heard all the arguments against milk. Please feel free to argue. I will just smile and nod and go buy a few more gallons.

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I told you how I was kicked out of the bona fide homeschool mom club, but just to prove I am humble I will now tell a story that will get me kicked out of the agrarian blogger club.

Ok, I’m not really in the club but Rick did ask me to do a Plain Talk Cd and kindly offered to talk about baseball, if needs be. I wish I had taken him up on the offer since maybe it would have been a clarion call to Greg Harris and Doug Phillips to bring baseball to the table.

The truth is I turned Rick down lest I be found out a fraud. Since then I have not only been outed for fraud but murder. Sitting in my kitchen for a week now is a disgusting piece of something called Kombucha. A very sweet, elderly lady cut a slice of Kombucha and gave it to me explaining all the ancient benefits it has brought to Mongolians, I think. It is a precious living thing to be cherished and reproduced. Agrarians clamor for Kombucha. ( I capitalize the K to honor the lifeforce of Kombucha.)

What it looks like though is a nasty piece of slime and you are always suppose to keep the slimy side up. Yum. You make tea and put the thing in the tea and let it ferment. Some people are such purists they get upset that the Kombucha apparently lives off of tea and sugar, without sugar it will die. I appreciate this quality.

So you ferment the tea and drink the liquid and the Kombucha actually has babies. The little old lady showed me the babies which look like thin versions of the parents, just like my babies.

But I am deathly afraid of drinking the tea and an online article says that it is possible that I have killed my kombucha. I wish it were true but I don’t know how to tell the lady I killed it. I am considering lying to her. That will get me kicked out of a few more clubs.

And if I do make the tea who will I get to drink it? What Nehemiah will step forward to test the gall? Should I choose the noblest child or the most irritating? I know I said that children are born persons but I am definitely not going to drink that stuff first. I want to see if the drinker keels over.

I guess I am going to make the tea and then throw it out in a flagrant disregard for life.
Next week she has offered to give me Kefir, sometimes referred to as manna from heaven and therefore capitalized. Guess where Kefir comes from? Mongolia. Why would Mongolians want to live forever in all that snow?

Why can’t Virgin Pina Coladas bring health and happiness and a long life on a sunny beach? I capitalize Pina Coladas to honor their virginity.

I want to have 2 chickens that lay 2 eggs a day and make yogurt. I don’t want to drink weird things that will make me live forever or die in agony immediately.

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We recieved a package in the mail last week from Cumberland Books.

Now I can resume my forays into philosophical agrarianism. To illustrate that I am a serious philosophical agrarian I will relate an incident that occurred on the way to the baseball game yesterday.

We passed the farmer’s stand that I haunt and it had a big sign saying Fresh Strawberries.

I wasn’t driving so we whizzed past without stopping and I expressed disappointment.

Later the driver, trying to make it up to me, noticed a sign that said U Pick Strawberrries.

“Do you want me to stop?” He kindly asked.

“Goodness no, I don’t want to pick them!”

I almost resent Herrick Kimball’s title Writings of a Delibrate Agrarian

Is that a rebuke or something? Both of my grandfather’s were handsome and had big garden’s too. (Buy the book.)

Seriously, I am enjoying the book so far and love Mr Kimball’s writing style.

Tomorrow I will tell you about what I am listening to from Cumberland Books.

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The new Cumberland Books catalog arrived and it is as hefty as a book itself. In spite of the fact I just got a whole box in the mail from Rick and I own quite a few of the titles already, proving that I at least think like an agrarian, I am finding plenty more to drool over. They even carry a few titles in the children’s literature section I haven’t heard of. I am especially excited by a new (to me) Robert Lawson title. As usual Rick has written extensively about each book and section. This catalog will make the leisure reading pile for many a long day.

Now what did I recently order from Cumberland Books besides Herrick Kimball’s lovely book?

The 6 new Plain Talk recordings:
Russ Nellis
Chad Degenhart
Cheri Shelnutt
DJ Hammond
Dave Black
Nathan Black

Tim has beat me to the punch in listening to them but I should be able to catch up now that I finally have a vehicle that runs and has a cd player. With the kind of vehicles we usually buy running and cd players are definitely optional. I am basking in God’s goodness as I drive to baseball in my blue Honda Odyssey.
I have listened partially to Dave Black, Chad Degenhart and Cheri Shelnutt. Cheri has a musical voice and an infectious laugh. She talks a lot about herbs which used to be a hobby of mine. I still have a little herb garden with rosemary (for remembrance) and thyme. It goes along with our Ambleside folk singing and our reading of The Winter’s Tale (Shakespeare).

We also purchased The Ridgewood Boy’s CD Things I Used to Do. After listening to quite few of their podcasts, I knew I would enjoy the CD and I do. Quite a contrast to Strauss but enjoyable all the same.

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We didn’t make any plans for yesterday. We were just too tired from our trip to Fl. We even had a school day, although we finished our morning read-alouds on the back porch. We worked in the yard, cleaned the barn and a few other chores.

Later a local large family invited our children over to jump & swim on the water bounce their son had brought home from work. The little guys did that for a couple of hours.
I grilled some hamburgers and made a salad. At least we could have a little family picnic and maybe go for a walk.

James and Nathaniel wanted to go up to the ballfields and practice ground balls so Tim took everyone except Emily and I up to the ballfield 9/10ths of a mile from our house.

Tim called later called asking Emily and I to join them; a bunch of locals were forming a softball game.
Our town is so little these families just rode up, turned on the lights and started up a game. The younger crowd started up a game on another field. The concession stand was open for anyone who needed air conditioning or Gatorade.

We knew most of the people and they all knew us. The men, women and teens of all sorts and conditions played. Some of the children stood behind the outfield fence waiting for homeruns. I kept the scoreboard. I had worn sandals, not tennis shoes. I had no idea the women would be playing.

We have spent so many years looking for community in the church, it didn’t occur to us that we would find it, by the grace of God, in our …..community. Sometimes I feel that God has dropped us into a time warp.

As we were leaving someone called out, “Everyone back here Sunday night after church.” We all go to different churches but we will all be back, Lord willing and the creek don’t rise.

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I have been doing my summerly job of thinking agrarianly again. I have also been learning how to turn ordinary words into adverbs. Most of the life changing ways of thinking our family has had over the years have come about serendipitously or more hopefully, Providentially. How many times did you have to read that sentence to get it? That is called bad writing.

I have been ruminating on 3 new agrarian thoughts lately. One I can’t share yet because I am trying to write an article on the subject. What started out as a sentence in a letter to a friend has blossomed into something I could conceive turning into a book, if writing a book only involved conceiving.

The second thought I can’t share either because I get entirely too snippy sometimes. But the seedbed of the thought is that maybe the reality of true agrarianism might be the cure for Christian homeschool utopianism, which leads so many of us into following erroneous ideas that only work in Internet fairylands. Reminds me of the Apostle Paul reminding us to work with our hands and mind our own business. No matter how you slice it, my home and yours are filled with sinners. Don’t be deceived into thinking the right polish removes sin. Without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin.

Thirdly, When we moved to Alabama we didn’t end up deep in the country like we always were in NJ. We moved into a little town with the PO & Dr’s office visible from our back yard and we are visible from their front doors.

When people meet us here in town they often say, “Oh, you have the children who play outside.” And I say,” Yes, stop in and play anytime you see us out there.”

It’s not that we aren’t in the country. We have almost 3 acres and we are surrounded by fields, our front porch view is a pond. It’s just that we are visible in the community. Now after almost 4 years the phone numbers in the back of my calender book are all locals and we received two birthday invitations last week from people in our town.

For so many years of homeshooling I was afraid of being visible and yet here in E-town (Pop :4oo+) that visibility has brought us community. Albeit, all this has happened in a place where 99.9% of the population belong to the visible church if not the invisible and there is virtually no crime except some guys from TN did rob our little bank and the ATM machine has been ripped out several times.

I am thinking there is a lesson in this somewhere.

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After a long spell of blogging dryness, I now have so much to blog about I hardly know where to begin.

For my own sake I plan on blogging through my notes of the Circe conference. I think that will help me to assimilate more fully the ideas planted at the conference, perhaps planted is not the word. I think what happened was that ideas planted long ago in my mind were watered and began to sprout.

I hope many of you will bear with me and even discourse with me as I rush in where angels fear to tread.

I may be posting multiple posts on a given day as I work through the notes.

But first:

Wednesday morning we had a visitor at our house: our cyber-pal Rick Saenz. You can guess why he was here and why I was nervous. I felt infinitely freer as I drove to the Circe conference knowing that my talk with Rick was in the bag. Rick and I discussed homeschooling and at one point in our non-recorded conversation he asked me a question which became the focal point of my time at Circe. More on that tomorrow. Suffice it to say that Rick is a gracious gentleman.

When he was arriving my 8yo Andrew asked, “Is he that agrarian guy? Is he going to ask YOU about farming?” Not to worry, I retain my position as the philosophical agrarian. the only thing fresh we served Rick were tomatoes from the kids’ garden. Thank-you for your prayers.

Next up: Circe and the Classed Clan

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For some reason, my summer has been just as busy as Carmon’s. Since returning from Circe I haven’t had the time that I had hoped to have to write out my notes, re- listen to the lectures and read my new stack of books.

Today we are out the door again. This time for a quick trip to Tennessee to let the boys meet the baseball coach at Bryan College. I am taking the little guys over to look at the house a family has offered to rent to us. We weren’t expecting this development but we hope to be renting this house which is smack dab in the middle of a huge farm, smack dab in the middle of nowhere. We can hardly wait for our 5 year old to meet the 3 dogs that live on the farm.

I may yet win my agrarian bona fides.

I will be listening to The Abolition of Man by CS Lewis in the van and hopefully Vigen Guroian’s wonderful lecture on why business majors should take literature courses. Did I tell you that Vigen wore a pink shirt, wrinkled pale suit, navy blue socks and green & yellow striped bowtie? He has a mass of silver hair which he ruffles appropriately when speaking. He looks to be a cross between an absent-minded Professor and a hobbit.  Which reminds me: John Mason Hodges looked like Gimli or at least John Rhys-Davies. You won’t find this sort of reporting  from Circe anywhere else on the web.

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