Agrarianism & Home Schooling

Allan Carlson wraps up his survey of the New Agrarian movement by praising home schooling as the one "change that could invigorate working homes," and noting that it had been denied or ignored by virtually all of the New Agrarians. It would almost seem that home schoolers are not only the heirs of the agrarian impulse, but possibly its only viable hope, at least in this country. It has been true in my family that home schooling came first as a priority, and that the greater independance we are seeking on the land came later, but until now I'm not sure I'd seen the connection of the one to the other quite so clearly.

It seems that having tasted household freedom in the act of home education, the family looks for other ways to grow into autonomy. Its members have come to know what it feels like to be "refunctionalized" and they seek more. - Allan Carlson, The New Agrarian Mind.

This book was sometimes frustrating to read at points, but not due to any fault with the author, but rather with the realities of his subjects and their shortcomings. Ultimately it is a good illustration of the futility of the mind without Christ, and once I got that through my head, it was much more hopeful reading.

In December of 1985 Sue and I were living in Tusayan, Arizona, just five miles south of the Grand Canyon. I was running a small grocery and gift store for Babbitt Brothers Trading Company. My job allowed me to flex my schedule, and in those days I would spend a lot of the frosty mornings calling coyotes with my friend Rick. Rick would sell the hides to the fur buyer and I think he was getting about eighty to ninety dollars for a good pelt. I still did a fair amount of hiking in the Canyon, too.

But today was Tuesday morning, and I went to work. We would get a little bump in our business for the Christmas holiday and I needed to get ready for it, the month was flying by and it was already the 17th. Sue and Rick's wife Theresa had left for Flagstaff that morning. Both of them pregnant, they had arranged their doctor visits so they could car pool for the ninety mile drive, and get in some Christmas shopping. Sue was due in January and Theresa was due a month later, both expecting their first child.

I took for granted that this was the way the world worked, you got married, had kids, they grew up, etc. Been working fine for thousands of years. I figured I had a month to go before this birth event in my life came, and my biggest worries were concentrated on the pressure of being in the delivery room or not. Being a coward, I had just about decided that I would just be in the way.

Sometime early in the afternoon Theresa called me at work and told me that Sue was having the baby and I needed to come to the hospital. I honestly thought she was pulling my leg and it took her a few minutes to convince me that this was not the beginning of another practical joke.

Seems they had both gone to their respective appointments and were at the Flagstaff Mall when Sue's water broke. Theresa, proving what a hardy sort she was, ran the length of the mall to bring the car to Sue and drive her to the hospital where they performed an emergency c-section. Theresa didn't give me any details, she just told me that Sue had been taken in for delivery and that I should drive.

I was pretty ignorant of things generally, and the implications of a five week early delivery never entered my brain as I drove to Flagstaff. I believe I passed the time thinking of names, and had pretty well decided on some now forgotten boy name, but had not narrowed down the list of girl names. I figured I would get there and maybe Sue would still be in labor, a thought I was somewhat dreading, or that the baby would be delivered and I would get to hold my child and be the beaming Dad.

When I arrived the staff immediately took me to see Sue, who was heavily sedated and looked, quite frankly, awful. Pale and trembly, and hooked up to stuff like she'd been in a car wreck, she was barely able to communicate. I tried to be strong, but as I looked at her and held her hand, my legs began to buckle. The alert staff suggested maybe I'd like to see my daughter.

Ah, I thought, I can hold the baby and this will seem more normal. My first view of Natalie was from the outside of the oxygen tent, where I could hold her little hand and watch her little lungs struggle to adjust to the hard work thrust upon them before they were ready for it. At seven thousand feet, this was an even harder job. Watching her and not knowing why my daughter was having to work so hard in her first hours of life, the concern shadowed my face. Once again the alert staff stepped in, explaining how well she was doing, pointing out the good pink color and how they would not have to transport her to Phoenix.

Later I learned that if Sue had not been in Flagstaff on that day, or if she had come straight back after her appointment, Natalie would probably not have made it. I can't imagine this life without her presence. She has more than a few times demonstrated greater obedience than her parents, and her life has sometimes been a needed rebuke to us, as she was quietly patient with our foibles and our sin. God was surely ordering all things, and protecting her, and her beautiful mom, and even the young and oblivious man that was her father.

It's been twenty years to the day now since that day, and I am grateful and even proud of her as I've watched her mature through the years of transition and change that the family has gone through. Even now she is not making a big fuss over this turning twenty thing. But I will. Happy Birthday, daughter.

Maybe you all could go by her blog and wish her a happy birthday, too.

To Do List

I'm not really good at keeping track of all the things I have to do. When I was a manager I kept a Day Timer intermittently, but the To Do pages were what I mainly used. I would sometimes fill them out and hand them to some poor flunky.

So when we got to the place in August I started a sort of computerized to do list. Then I forgot about it until this morning. That made it more interesting to look at. It has all sorts of things, everything from paperwork that I have to take care of, to dropping the dead oak in the front yard. Some of the stuff on it just isn't that important, and some didn't need doing at all. A lot of it got taken care of just in the normal routine of keeping my bones moving. And a few items are important things that I still need to take care of.

I'm going to resist the temptation to spend time tweaking the to do list, or sit here blogging, and go out and do something. Have a great day, all.

Still More Wandering

We'd been at the campground at Sand Hollow, Idaho for over a month. The rates were reasonable and they let us have a site where we could watch the boys playing. Normally we had avoided the private RV Parks in favor of State Parks, but we we needed a place located close to where I was looking for property.

We had arrived in Idaho bone tired in late March. By then it had been five months since we'd left Phoenix. I was not only tired, but discouraged. We had taken the south central tour - Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Missouri, but we had hoped to cover a lot more ground. A previous commitment meant we had to be back in Arizona in late January, and we'd had to head back before I wanted to . We had not been able to get to several places that were on the short list.

But we had great visits with folks in San Antonio, Brownsville, and Weatherford in Texas, Searcy Arkansas, Sand Springs, Oklahoma, and a brief visit to Springfield, Missouri, which we had cut short due to incoming weather. We passed through El Paso again on the way back to Arizona, but only after delaying for two weeks in Weatherford as the flu finished going through all of us.

Before heading up to Idaho we'd made an attempt to determine if we had seen any place in our travels that was inevitably the place we wanted to be. In other words, did we really need to continue this trip at all? We had taken notes on every place we had stayed, but everything seemed to be one big blur as far as the places we had seen. We could pretty much separate the people into their various communities, but all the land and property that I had seen was more than I could really deal with. The bookmarks on realtor. com were way out of hand.

Boise was not on our short list, mostly because I didn't think we'd find land suitable for the agrarian yearning. We had thoughts of just rolliing through, just spending enough time for Natalie to visit with a pal. One of the most troubling aspects of our trip had been saying goodbye to the folks we met. Everywhere we went, people absorbed the story of what we were doing, out wandering around; and as God's people they universally received us with love into their churches and homes. This process was too much like dating and became emotionally exhausting to us. At one point in Searcy we'd determined that if we didn't leave before Sunday, we never would, so kind and lovable were the folks there.

Anyway we decided it would be wrong not to visit the church while in town and ended up worshipping there on the Lord's day, and that's how I came to be looking desperately for property around Boise.

The members of the church opened their homes to us in true hospitality and we began to get to know them. The kids are still talking about our visit to the DeWinkle family's Mooriah Dairy where they had the honor of catching a loose Jersey calf. Howard and Juanita Frazier, a delightful and wise pair, took us under wing and volunteered as grandparents. We were, as I think I mentioned, weary, and grateful that such oddities as we were, folks were still willing to accept us. We were past the point of being able to drive away from it anymore.

I called Jeff, our home church pastor in Phoenix so he could begin transferring our membership, and continued looking for property. We had put in a low bid on a foreclosure, a small acreage with a beautiful but run-down farmhouse on it and the bank had accepted our first offer. But upon inspection, the termite damage was extreme and we had to back out. Sue had really loved the place and was almost in tears when I gave her the news.

We lowered our expectations and began looking at 1/2 acre places and small towns. After offering on a nice old house in a little community called Greenleaf, the deal soured as the seller became angry with my counter-offer and backed off of his earlier concessions. An offer on a third place was scratched after Natalie checked out the Idaho sex-offender registry online and found that the nice small town neighborhood was inhabited by a predator. My realtor was the model of patience.

Idaho was aggravating because of all the empty land. Land, land, everywhere and nowhere to live. Millions and millions of acres of BLM land, maybe not farmland, but certainly grazing land. Can a fella buy a few acres? Nah. Frustrated by the sound of doors slamming in my face, I called Jeff in Phoenix for his thoughts. We weighed some pros and cons, but the essence of his advice was something like "I told you a long time ago that I thought Springfield was the place for your family." He suggested that I consider giving it "equal time" with Boise and then making a decision.

Later that week I went to the Men's Forum meeting in Boise and sadly explained to the men that I had decided to do just that, and that we'd be pulling out the next day for Springfield, Missouri. This experience was just as miserable as I thought it would be. One of the highlights, however, was the blunt counsel of one of the elders, in words I'm unlikely to forget. As I attempted my agrarian explanation of why I thought my plan necessary, he told me,"Acres, Schmakers, you need to be in community with the people of God." I wish more men would speak so simply, eloquently, and correctly. After assuring him that if we did not indeed find a like situation in Springfield, we'd be back, he graciously offered his blessing. I still smile at that conversation. Maybe I should call this place Schmakers Acres?

I'll wrap this up with one more post. . . when I get some time. Besides, I'm having more fun reading Tom's, Herrick's and the Milkmaids blogs than I am writing this one anyhow. And should we still be thinking about a Jersey milk cow?