In the natural rhythms and routines of life, there is something particularly autumnal about wandering through a library. I think it’s because, even as a kid, I remember the shift from outdoor activities to indoor as the temperatures changed and light faded. Fall is always a time of return to those more winterish hobbies, be they reading, crocheting, or extra baking. So, as we drove home on Friday, I felt a bit of nostalgic giddiness as I soaked in the season. We came home to a bunkhouse bedecked with pumpkins and faces full of smiles. We had finally decorated this week, adding a tangible layer of festivity to the normalcy of life. I got busy making a pot of Cuban-style black beans and rice, a family favorite we discovered during a homeschooling unit study decades ago. It works especially well on cold evenings — which Friday promised. My sisters and nieces hurried outside, bundling up against the wind to harvest everything left in the garden, preparing for the possible frost Saturday morning. I helped wash and prep veggies for storage while I simmered beans on the stove, especially thankful for the warm house and pumpkin spice coffee.

It had been a long week, with our dogs making life particularly difficult. As I mentioned in our last update, all three of our females are going through their heat cycles, so we’ve had a lot of noisy dogs and many sleepless nights. One female is too old to fix, and the others we plan to breed someday. It’s enough to make us all rethink our life choices to even have dogs — though of course we love them all dearly. This too shall pass, but we are all tired.

Along with dealing with our dogs, it was another week of cleaning and organizing for the changing seasons. Grace and I put our storm shelter back together on Monday, carefully setting up our benches and organizing pantry totes. Technically, the paint on the floor is still curing, so we elevated our totes up on the benches for now. We’d had everything usually stored in the shelter scattered around the homestead — crammed into the bunkhouse, office building, several vehicles, and in the yard under tarps. It felt good to put things back where they belong before the rain rolled in.

We had two full days of rain, which was so needed. We worked indoors, digging out totes of warmer clothes and fall decor. It’s always a big project to sort through clothes and pack away the summer items. We also did a bunch of cooking for the week. By the time the rain let up on Friday, we were all happy to get out of the house — even though it was cold.

Bonnie-Jean and Grace did a good job with our final harvest, bringing in green tomatoes, peppers, and ornamental pumpkins. They brought in several bunches of herbs — parsley, thyme, lemon balm, and a basket of lavender. The lavender belongs to our niece Eilley, who started it in her little aquaponics set earlier in the year. We plan to use most of the herbs right away, but we hung the lavender from the quilt frame in the living room. It looks festive and smells delightful. The girls also brought in bouquets of flowers that will soon wilt, either from this first patchy frost or from another soon.

We finished the week with a golden October Saturday — the sort that feels absolutely perfect. For those with a sweet tooth, the day started with pancakes and venison sausage as we waited for it to warm up outside. Gold and orange leaves shimmered in the mild breeze while we busied ourselves with various tasks. Several family members set up a little shooting range as a warm-up for deer season — first the youth portion next week, then the adult not long after.

My sisters, nieces, and I baked Banbury tarts in preparation for the Feast of St. Lukes’, which we celebrate today. The tart is traditional for the feast day in England, which is a nod to our plentiful British heritage. Last year we made Banbury cakes, which were just lovely, but this was a fun and slightly more historic variation. We cheated and used store-bought pie crust, which made the assembly rather easy. The raisin filling is perfect for fall — it’s easy to see why this tart became associated with the Feast of St. Luke’s.

While we worked, we sipped mulled tea — the first time we made it this year. It’s a simple pleasure we’ve enjoyed for so many autumns, bringing together black tea, citrus, cinnamon, and cloves. It wasn’t as productive of a week as I would have wished. The homestead to-do list is as long as ever. Still, we were faithful with our days, making what progress we could. The house is a little cleaner. We are more ready for cold weather. And we had so many sweet moments to be thankful for. It takes discipline and intentionality to remember the good sometimes — to shift the focus from what hasn’t gotten done to what has. Maybe we didn’t get started on our shelves. Maybe we still need to organize our tools. But we did make it to the library this week. We did make mulled tea. We smiled while shaping Banbury tarts. We took a couple walks outside. We sought God in our daily routines. And we enjoyed each other. Sometimes — maybe most times — those things can be enough.

“O hushed October morning mild,

Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;

Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild,

Should waste them all.”

Robert Frost

We didn’t accomplish as much as we would hope, but life has been even more chaotic than usual. All three of our female dogs went into heat, and our two males are going crazy. To make matters worse, Jeremiah’s German Shepherd Dagger cut his paw last week on a rock. It had pretty much healed until he busted it open playing outside this week. So, he has to be kept indoors and mostly off the paw. With all the dog angst, few of us have slept well all week. We hope that by the end of next week, it will all be over.

Despite the zoo that is our life right now, our brother Jeremiah hosted his annual family highland games yesterday. He usually does this earlier in the year, but between the hot summer and various health issues and life events, he kept putting it off until it was a good time for everyone. As part of our festivity, we started the day with a Scottish breakfast — sausage, bacon, eggs, potato scones, and British-style baked beans — served with hot English breakfast tea. We cooked almost everything over a campfire, enjoying an outdoor breakfast at the picnic table.

Jeremiah usually leads our family members in a contest of traditional Scottish games — like caber toss and tug-of-war. This year, we opted for something a bit less physically taxing — disc golf. It isn’t technically a Scottish game (though golf itself is), but we thought it would be close enough. Most of the family took turns following flying discs from the bunkhouse down to the spring, which was challenging but accessible.

In the midst of the fun, we took a break for a light highland snack of apples, various cheeses, and oat cakes — a homemade oat cracker that we all fell in love with.

For dinner, we went for a Scottish pub theme. We sisters whipped up some Scottish steak pie, Neeps and Tatties (mashed potatoes and rutabaga), and buttered pees. We finally opened up some of the cherry cider we brewed this spring. It was all so good. For dessert, we had cranachan — a raspberry whipped cream parfait featuring whiskey-soaked steel-cut oats. It was delightful.

It was a fun day, which we all needed after such a long week. Things weren’t perfect. I battled a headache all day, and our dad pulled a muscle in his knee playing disc golf. We took the difficulties in stride though, thankful for the much-needed quality time doing something fun outside as a family. We realized how rare these moments have been this year, with so much going on with different people. It made us all want to be more intentional about enjoying the fall, even if it means being a bit less productive.

“Autumn is really the best of the seasons…”

C.S Lewis

Our big project this week was our storm shelter. Due to issues with mold down there, we decided to paint it with Drylok Extreme Concrete & Masonry Waterproofer. As I shared last week, Bonnie-Jean scrubbed everything down thoroughly with vinegar. We started on the paint this week. It was a multi-day project, as we had to work each coat into all the little divots and craters in the concrete. Grace and I applied a total of three coats, alternating brushing and rolling. We are going to finish the shelter with some porch paint on the floor next week.

While we had all of our built-in benches out of the shelter, we decided to clean them as well. Bonnie-Jean washed all the cushions and let them spend some time in the sun. She also scrubbed the wood frames. Grace followed up by spraying the frames with Eco Wood Treatment, which will help them resist future mold and mildew.

Tuesday was Michaelmas, which provided an excuse for some fun. Michaelmas commemorates the victory of the War in Heaven, when tradition holds that the Archangel Michael through Satan out. There are all kinds of legends around this event, including that Satan landed on earth in a blackberry patch (therefore, you shouldn’t pick blackberries past this date). Our mom helped the kids in the family make a devil piñata, which they got to use on the feast day. We also dined on deviled eggs, roast meat and vegetables, and wild blackberry crisp. The adults finished the day with a blackberry cocktail.

On Wednesday, our new freezer arrived. Our family had ordered it for deer season. We set it up out in our covered dog kennel for now, planning to move it onto our deck once it is covered. The freezer is garage ready, and our research indicated a covered porch was a suitable setup for fall (though we planned an enclosure for winter). Unfortunately, the freezer kept tripping the outdoor GFCI outlets. We tried several fixes, all to no avail. Thankfully, Home Depot picks up appliance returns within the first 48 hours for free. We decided to send the freezer back and rethink our plan.

Along with the chaos, we had the electric company coming in over the last couple weeks to clear out along the power line easement — which is the entire front of our property. We had planned to brush hog this area ourselves, but with our tractor still not running, it felt like a huge blessing having the Ozark Electric get us started.

When the rain rolled in on Thursday, I was ready for a day inside. I spent a whole afternoon on bookwork. It’s been so crazy, I had let our record keeping pile up for nearly a month. It felt good to sort through all the receipts, product registration forms, and Amazon returns.

Thursday evening, Bonnie-Jean and Grace whipped up a festive treat for the feast of St. Therese of Lisieux. Therese’ nickname is the little flower, and she famously promised to “let fall a shower of roses from heaven” (symbolizing spiritual graces due to her prayers). Rose-shaped treats are traditional for the day, so my sisters made some Apple Roses. They turned out so good — both how they looked and how they tasted. We are already thinking about excuses to make them again.

On Friday, it was the Feast of the Guardian Angels, calling us to remember those spiritual beings God has placed around us to guard and protect us. We served up angel hair pasta dressed in pesto we made from our garden basil. We also baked what our Memaw always called a “funeral cake” — angel food cake covered in lemon pudding. While the heavenly treat makes sense for funerals, we felt it was a fitting dessert for this feast day as well.

Along with our festive cooking, Grace and I processed more peppers this week — some of the last of the year I think. We mixed up a batch of refrigerator jalapeños and another of seranos. Grace also made two big sheets of high-protein jalapeño poppers — some made with bacon and some with venison sausage. The poppers were a lot of work, but they sure were delicious.

We aunties have all been enjoying our tutoring this week as well. My sisters both outdid themselves with fun activities this week. Bonnie-Jean wrapped up her science unit study on Crayfishes this week. She had helped the kids build two kinds of traps, and they also caught some by hand. They cleaned/dissected their catch and finished their study with an old-fashioned Crayfish boil. Grace hosted a language arts epic poetry reading. The kids learned about the original meaning of rhapsodizing, crafting their own poetry that employed traditional meter and rhyme. They finished with a recitation — donning togas and sipping melikraton (milk and honey).

It was a well-rounded week, but it was busy — a lot busier than we like to be. We tried to carve out a bit of intentional downtime, but something happened daily that made rest — or recreation — feel pretty impossible. For this reason, many of us hit the weekend feeling a bit out of balance. I’m always thankful for Sundays and the reset they provide. I’m looking forward to Mass this morning and a parish potluck for lunch. In the afternoon, we are looking forward to a relaxing evening watching the Chiefs game. In busy seasons like the one we are on

, we are especially thankful for quality time together enjoying these simple pleasures.

“As long as the child is in the mother's womb it is not entirely separate, but by reason of a certain intimate tie, is still part of her: just as the fruit while hanging on the tree is part of the tree. And therefore it can be said with some degree of probability, that the angel who has care of the mother guards the child while in the womb.”

-St. Thomas Aquinas-

The week started sweetly with my niece Bridget Rose’s baptism. It was such a blessing to see her be welcomed into the Church. I was honored to be named her godmother — a historic role dedicated to helping a child’s parents raise him or her in the Lord. Our Parish gave her a sweet little reception afterward, which made our whole family feel incredibly loved.

Despite the lovely weather, I didn’t spend all that much time outdoors this week. Instead, we’ve been doing some fall deep cleaning — giving everything a nice refresh before we decorate the bunkhouse with pumpkins and autumn leaves. We decided to move my electric piano into a different room, which led to Grace and I spending almost an entire day rearranging the furniture. We keep trying different iterations of our belongings, tucking away building supplies and camouflaging unfinished aspects of our space. When our dad got in from work at 9 p.m. that night and asked what we were doing, I smiled and explained I had wanted to move the piano. It’s rather like the scenario laid out in Laura Numeroff’s infamous If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.

While I’ve been a bit housebound, Grace spent most of her mornings in the garden, bringing in a small harvest each day. Things are slowing down, but we are still getting a couple zucchini and a few tomatoes daily. Most of our fall crops didn’t survive the late September heat, but we did get some radishes this week.

Early in the week, Bonnie-Jean’s German Shepherd puppy Carmel finally found her forever home. Her new owner met us in Bolivar to pick her up, and Carmel willingly jumped in her truck, excited for the treats awaiting her there. Her new family named her Astrid, and we can already tell how much they love her. They’ve been sending us update pictures with her new human and dog friends, and we are thrilled to see what a good fit she is for them.

Jeremiah got his first deer of the season on Wednesday evening. I was battling a headache, so I was mostly a support person — offering drinks, finding batteries for flashlights — until I tapped out. Bonnie-Jean, Grace, and our niece Chloe were up late helping with the initial dressing of the animal. On Thursday, Grace and I helped Jeremiah cut up the meat. This time, we opted to set a little aside for stew and jerky, then turn the rest into burger.

Jeremiah also turned several pounds into some breakfast sausage — mixing in fresh herbs like sage and thyme as well as black and red pepper.

With this big influx of meat, we have been struggling with our freezer space. After some discussion, we decided to purchase a bigger freezer to have out on our porch. We read some articles on how to set up a freezer outside. The freezer will arrive next week, and we are excited to figure out how to make our outdoor spaces work for our needs.

Bonnie-Jean started the arduous process of cleaning our storm shelter this week. During the hot summer, the humid space has grown more and more dank as mildew sprouted all over the place. After some family discussion and research, we ordered some mildew-resistant masonry paint. We’ve cleaned the shelter with vinegar before, but this time we took apart our built-in benches so that we could clean everywhere thoroughly. On Friday, Bonnie-Jean scrubbed the whole place twice with straight vinegar, then mopped with vinegar and multi-purpose cleaner. Our little niece Eilley Mae helped out, scrubbing right along with her. We hope to paint in there next week.

Along with our projects, we’ve had a few other happenings on our homestead this week. Our nieces and nephew started their homeschooling year, and each of us aunties is tutoring a subject. I’m helping the kids with math, Grace with English, and Bonnie-Jean with science. A little intentional time sitting down with the kids has brightened all of our days, even if it has made us a tad more busy.

For meatless Friday this week, we dined on beans and cornbread. This traditional Catholic fast from meat is suffering for some in our family, while others of us love this southern comfort food. The pinto beans are healthy on their own, and we made both sugar-free/gluten-free and regular cornbread. It was a late night of cleaning and deer processing, and we were all very tired. We ate while we finished up various tasks. It tickles me how much the kids in our family love this meal, as it was a staple in my house growing up and in my mom’s family of origin as well. I especially got a kick out of the fact that my nieces used the leftover cornbread to make “cornbread and milk”. My Memaw always enjoyed this Arkansas treat, and she taught me to love it. She would take a piece of cornbread and crumble it up in a cup, pour milk over the top, and eat it like cereal. I like this best with sweet cornbread, and I’ve shared it with my nieces over the years. I love that it’s a tradition we are passing on to the next generation.

In the last months, I’ve thought a lot about tradition. Being around kids so much makes you see how your actions carry on long after you are gone. Things you do that seem insignificant are reflected in their habits, choices, and sometimes their personalities. That’s one reason we’ve chosen this lifestyle. We want the younger generations in our family to have the skills to live close to the earth, to grow and hunt their own food, to love beauty and simplicity. And more than that, we want them to know they can live lives that really do center on loving God and the people around them. Living in community is hard, but you can grow in your ability to find compromises and get along. Life on our homestead is messy — both in the relational and housekeeping sense — but even difficult situations can be brought into order. I tend to think the process is sanctifying, whichever way you mean it. Those skills — be they tidying up a room or working through a conflict — are traditions worth passing on, along with a taste for cornbread and milk.

“Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance.”

C.S Lewis

One reason we were busier than intended was choosing more labor intensive meals than our usual fare. We’ve been eating a more anti-inflammatory paleo/Mediterranean diet this week. We tend to eat very clean in general, but the busy summer had ushered in a few bad habits — like relying on lunchmeat rather than prepping grilled chicken, or using store-bought mayo instead of olive-oil based homemade. Tightening waistbands all around encouraged us to make time for healthier meals, even if that means we are a tad less productive. Several in our family struggle with autoimmune and dietary issues, and everyone seems to be feeling a bit better already.

Our garden is officially slowing down. We are still getting enough squash to eat it for dinner more than we want to, and I suppose that’s a good thing. Grace and I picked most of our pumpkins yesterday, though it’s a rather small harvest this year due (I think) to all the cucumber beetles. Even though it doesn’t feel like fall yet, it’s fun seeing the cheerful orange pumpkins on our porch.

We still have Bonnie-Jean’s pup — she seems to grow in sweetness daily. She is officially ready to find her new home, having completed her vet check this week. We’ve been advertising, so we hope the right family will find her soon.

Archery season started this week for deer and turkey, so our brother Jeremiah has been heading out almost every morning to try his luck. In preparation for needing more room in our freezer, he decided to purchase an electric meat grinder to turn last years venison into burger. We had several large cuts still in the freezer taking up more space than we really have, so this was a great choice. Jeremiah chunked up all the meat with some help from our dad and our niece Chloe, who can’t wait to get out to the deer stand herself later this fall. I cleaned the new grinder and helped move tubs of meat in and out of the freezer to keep everything cool. It was a fun family project, even if it was a bit messy! When Jeremiah finally started feeding the venison into the grinder (along with some beef fat), we were impressed with how quickly it worked. The directions said to grind the meat twice, starting with a larger size and going smaller. Once the meat was done, my nieces and I portioned it up and packaged it. We ended up with about 20 pounds of ground venison, which is amazing. And thank goodness, it is so much more compact than on the bone.

After all that work, we had to turn some of the venison into burgers right away. A lot of our family doesn’t really care for venison, so we only prepped six patties to go with some chicken for dinner. When we sampled the finished product, though, even somewhat squeamish people (like myself) were impressed. While I opted for my typical chicken breast, the burgers all got eaten right up. We declared it a success.

Even though we were busy this week, we did slow down enough to celebrate our mom’s birthday on Friday. Our mom tends to be too low-maintenance for her own good, and I had hoped to make this birthday really special since the last couple were during unusually crazy seasons. Unfortunately, Bonnie and I both had migraines, so that put a damper on some of our plans. Thankfully, we were still able to spoil our mom a bit and spend some quality time with her. She opted for a quite day watching a TV show together while all the guys were all at work. We sisters made her a sugar-free cheesecake, as well as potato skins — a whole-foods splurge that wasn’t entirely off of our diet.

For being uneventful, this week left me tired. I think a lot of it is the heat — we are all over it. And hopefully, so is the weather. Right now, the forecast shows highs in the 70s starting Monday. It seems too good to be true, but it does have to happen at some point. I know we will still be looking at some hot days in September and October, but I sure hope we are done with these near 100s temps. I’m ready to enjoy the outdoors again, to make progress on all the projects the heat has slowed down. I’m ready for cool mornings, mulled tea, and a bit of flannel now and then. Thank goodness, autumn is just two days away.

“My sweet little sisters, birds of the sky, you are bound to heaven, to God, your Creator. In every beat of your wings and every note of your songs, praise him.”

St. Francis of Assisi

After a mostly restful Labor Day Monday (even on holidays, there is always plenty of cooking and cleaning to do), we enjoyed a productive week that felt delightfully normal. Our routines were varied and interesting, and we all felt particularly satisfied at the end of the week.

One thing we changed is the way we divide our housework. With so many adults living together, we’ve worked hard to find a way for us to all “get along.” While we are a close family (we couldn’t do this if we weren’t) — we have quite the array of personalities, energy levels, and work habits. We’ve learned that everyone simply “doing their share” doesn’t work in practice. We’ve tried shared schedules of various types over the last few years. We’ve tried having one or two people responsible for all the housework, while others were assigned outdoor/construction jobs. Some of these divisions of labor have worked better than others.

With so many different needs in our home right now, we decided to divide up the household tasks by person, so everyone can get their own jobs done whenever it works best for them. After one day, we were amazed at how much smoother things were running around the homestead.

Bonnie-Jean still spends a lot of time watching over Tilde’s puppy, who we have been calling Carmel. She is quite the smart pup. At eight-weeks-old, she is pretty much potty trained to our kennel. Bonnie-Jean has also been working on crate training her. She is so sweet and our whole family loves her. She very much needs to find her new home before we get more attached. We wish we could keep her, but we have too many dogs already.

Grace and I still start most days in the garden together. Thanks to all the rain this week, we didn’t have to water as much as we have been. Cucumber beetles have become a major nuisance in our garden, and sadly they destroyed our cucumbers and most of our melons. We had already gotten a large harvest from both, so we aren’t overly disappointed, but we plan to treat with neem oil more often next year to prevent the beetles. Since we had less plant care this week, we took some time to weed our pumpkin patch. I helped a bit one day, but Grace got a lot done herself the next.

Along with beetle issues, we’ve had rodents routinely raiding our mini-pumpkins. We invested in some heavy duty mouse and rat traps, and we’ve been catching big, fat voles and the occasional mouse almost daily. Our Jack Russell Terrier Dolly has been helping a lot as well, often catching rodents on her own. She doesn’t understand why we don’t let her have the ones we catch in traps, opting to take them in buckets to dispose of them out in the woods. She has also taken to checking our larger bucket traps on her own sometimes — and getting caught in the lids on occasion.

Our summer squash and tomato harvest have been slowing down, though we are still getting both daily. We had more melons than we could eat for the last two weeks, but those are about done now as well. We started getting ornamental pumpkins and gourds a couple weeks ago, and recently picked our first sugar pie pumpkin.

We are finally getting a lot of peppers, so much so we decided to do some canning this week. Grace and I spent all Thursday afternoon packing pickled jalapeños and serrano peppers into jars. We opted to slice both and cover with a simple brine. Unfortunately, we had the same issue we had last year — our canning jars kept breaking when we dipped them into the boiling water bath. In all my years canning, I’ve never struggled as much as I have lately with breaking jars. It was disheartening, as we broke three of the sixteen pints we prepped. We kept having to dump out our boiling water, clean up glass, and start over. It turned a simple process into a long, arduous task. We agreed we are purchasing new jars before trying again.

Aside from helping with the garden, I worked on flooring for the rest of my brother Levi’s suite. We had stained the plywood plank boards a couple weeks ago, then got busy with other things. On Friday, I applied a couple coats of polyurethane to the boards. We installed the flooring in his kids’ space yesterday afternoon. It was the final area of subfloor to cover, which feels so good.

The cooler mornings made it easier for us to use our oven this week. I decided to experiment with the slow-rise sourdough recipe I’ve been using, adjusting it to use whole wheat flour instead of white. I read a couple blogs on how to make the switch — adding additional water to the recipe and doing a few more stretch-and-fold sessions. I made just one experimental loaf, but I was pleased with the results. It isn’t as fluffy as white sourdough, but it isn’t too dense either. It is healthier, which is the goal.

On an unhealthy note, we whipped up a batch of our favorite pumpkin muffins on Saturday, since it felt like fall.

It’s late Saturday evening as I am finishing this post, and the windows are all open. With all the heat we’ve had this month, we’ve spent more nights than not shut up with stale conditioned air. While we have another round of hot weather coming our way, I am so thankful that we only have another week of summer left. I say this every year, but its always true — autumn is my favorite season. I’m so ready for the cooler weather and dappled trees. I’m excited for later mornings and earlier evenings. I’ve always loved the fall, but these last few years, I feel like I’ve earned the change in seasons. When we drove over Stockton lake on our way to Bolivar yesterday, I was thrilled to see the beginning of our autumn colors. A new season is just around the corner, and I am so ready for it in more ways than one.

“They whom we love and lose are no longer where they were before.

They are now wherever we are.”

St. John Chrysostom

We live the given life, and not the planned.

~ Wendell Berry

Wendell Berry died this week. He left this life on the eve of the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, which is the beginning of the five-week Season of Creation in the Catholic Church. In his homily for the day, Pope Leo XIV shared sentiments that sounded like something Berry would have appreciated (despite Berry being a lifelong Baptist).

From contemplating creation and encountering its Creator, there arises an awareness of our particular place within God’s wondrous plan, and of the responsibility that we bear both personally and collectively for preserving the original harmony. Thus, as we become conscious of our shortcomings and failures, we can renew our commitment to restoring the relationships among all creatures according to the will of their Creator.

Pope Leo XIV, Holy Mass for the Care of Creation, September 1, 2026

For so many of us, Berry’s work helped us discern our place — or where our place might be — in the economy of creation. I felt his loss like the passing of an old friend, even though I never met him.

As I’ve written before, I was introduced to Berry as a college student struggling to choose between an agriculture major and an English major. My advisor in the agriculture department told me the pursuits were not mutually exclusive. He asked if I had ever heard of Berry.

At the time, I was working at the College of the Ozarks dairy. A country girl at heart, I hadn’t been sure I even wanted to go to college. But C of O is a different sort of school, with a work program allowing students to avoid debt while working on campus. Since it was founded, C of O has had an integrated agriculture program, including an on-campus dairy operation. I remember touring the school, seeing the cows, and thinking — I could do this.

Finding the large-scale farming emphasis of my agriculture classes at odds with the holistic small-scale model I’d grown up with, I ultimately switched my major to English. My agricultural roots stayed with me, though — and in the English department, I heard more about Berry. We read his works. We discussed his philosophies. To this day, I remember some of our class discussions about his novella “Remembering.” The feeling of displacement caused by modern society resonated with me, as I, too, longed for times and ways of being that seemed to be slipping away.

I’ve always been an unapologetic idealist, believing that if there was a right way to do something, then that right way ought to be possible. It was certainly easier to live connected to nature and our communities a hundred years ago, but it isn’t impossible now. Now is the life we’ve been given, and what we do with it is what we ultimately offer to God.

The chance you had is the life you’ve got. You can make complaints about what people, including you, make of their lives after they have got them, and about what people make of other people’s lives, (…) but you mustn’t wish for another life. You mustn’t want to be somebody else. What you must do is this: “Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks.” I am not all the way capable of so much, but those are the right instructions.

― Wendell Berry, Hannah Coulter

My life certainly hasn’t turned out the way I planned as a dreamy-eyed college student. I have learned to give thanks in this messy, imperfect, given life — even while complaining at times about the things and people gone wrong. I’ve taken steps over the years to move toward the sort of being Berry described, no matter how slowly. I’m blessed to have family that is similarly minded. When we drove around the midwest looking for the place we wanted to homestead, we visited the Berry Center in New Castle, Kentucky.

I got to see Port Royal, too — the town Berry based his famous Port William on. The experience was surreal indeed.

While we didn’t settle in Kentucky, I think Berry would appreciate that we landed right here in the land of our own ancestry. My mom’s people have lived in the Ozarks since the 1830s, and some of my dad’s family have as well.

The news of Berry’s passing came during the hottest week of summer to date. I’m still not living up to Berry’s ideal, but I’m closer to a rightly ordered existence than I used to be. I thought of him this week, as I worked in the garden under the blistering sun. This is creatureliness, this interaction with the flora and dirt and sky. It is in turn both glorious and miserable. This week, it has been downright wearying.

With all the heat, we’ve been spending most of our time indoors deep cleaning the bunkhouse. We put our living room back together this week, as we had moved furniture around to accommodate Tilde’s puppies. Even though we only ended up with one pup, there was still a big whelping box in we sisters’ room, and then a little pen. Now the pup roams the room freely, and she is mostly potty trained to the kennel outside. We are hoping she will find her forever home soon, as we are getting attached to her.

On Friday, a bunch of us ran some errands in Springfield. On the way, we picked up some breakfast burritos at Hot Spot in Ash Grove — based on the suggestion of our brother Jeremiah, who had sampled one awhile back. I didn’t have high expectations from a gas station convenience store — but boy, were we in for a treat. We agreed they were the best breakfast burritos we’ve ever had — full of sausage, bacon, eggs, and some sort of queso sauce. We were intrigued by the label, which read Wilmoth Ranch — an operation out of neighboring Lawrence County. We had to do a little research when we got home, and we found out the Wilmoth family owns the gas station. Far from being your typical convenience store, barbecue is one of their specialties. We had already been impressed by the coffee bar and drink selection, and the service is always friendly and professional. We will definitely be repeat customers.

The day finished with some Friday night chaos. One of our two main air conditioners went out. We weren’t surprised, as our indoor temps have hovered in the mid-80s most days lately, despite the running systems. We jumped online, found a replacement at Menards in Springfield, and our dad headed off to pick it up. It was a late night of installation, but our brother Jeremiah did most of the heavy lifting. It ended up a blessing in disguise, as we can tell already that this new unit is working much better.

There as an irony in the air conditioning drama this week. Wendell Berry, as far as I have read, lived without air conditioning his entire life. It was part of his rejection of the rhythms of modern society, believing people should live integrated in nature. Ever the idealist, I do think Berry’s ways are better. We lived without air conditioning for two years when we first moved out here (excepting a little unit we ran in the tent at night to make it bearable). I remember days we just had to stop. We would rinse off in the hose or dip in our spring. We’d sit in our hammocks under the cicada filled trees. It was hard to be slowed down, but in hindsight, those moments were lovely — if a tad sticky. These days, we have family working remote jobs in the bunkhouse — jobs that would be miserable if not impossible without air conditioning. For most of us, that is our future, as we are finishing up this initial construction project and looking toward a future where we will need more financial stability. Reflecting on Berry and the legacy he left, I’m thankful for his bravery and fortitude, blazing a trail to an older way of living — even if I’m not quite there myself.

“If you wish to engage in spiritual warfare, let that little animal, the spider, always be your example for stillness of heart; otherwise you will not be as still in your intellect as you should be.”

St. Hesychios the Priest

Technically, his name was Rascal Flatts. He joined our family when Jeremiah was just 14 years old. Jeremiah had been begging our folks for a dog. He wanted something bigger, but since we lived in the middle of Branson at the time, he took our advice to get a Jack Russell. They are small, but these little terriers are not “girly” dogs. The one stipulation our folks gave Jeremiah was that, if he wanted a dog, he would help build a fence around the back yard first. Fencing materials being what they were at the time, our folks funded a partial privacy fence, then used wire across the back. Once the fence was up, I helped look for a dog.

I remember struggling to find a Jack Russell we liked in our price range. We looked for months. Finally, I remember clicking on an online ad in the Kansas City Star. There was a cute picture of a tan and white puppy, and I wrote down the contact info. The puppy was from the Clinton area, part of a little girl’s 4H project. It was further than we had hoped to drive, but since I was traveling though the area to listen to a friend preach, I thought maybe we could pick up a puppy on the way. My friend was a good sport, and that weekend, my brother finally had his dog.

There is so much I could say about Rascal. He was energetic and entertaining from the very beginning. My brother had so much fun with him, and so did the rest of us.

Rascal made good use of the little fenced back yard, as well as the rest of the house. He was mostly good but could get into mischief. One of my favorite memories is turning around to see him standing at our kitchen table where I had a bunch of shaped balls of cookie dough sitting. Rascal was looking at me while reaching his tongue out and licking the cookie dough sideways. As soon as we made eye contact, he was gone. Of course I had to toss that cookie — but it was so funny it was hard to be mad.

When our brother Levi started having kids, we wondered how Rascal would handle it, but he loved them from the very beginning — an unusual trait for Jack Russels. Even when the kids were babies, he was fond of them. I still remember the time we caught him napping next to Chloe on the sofa. He wasn’t usually allowed on the furniture, but the new baby was irresistible. His affection for the kids continued for the rest of his life.

When Jeremiah started college, we sisters purchased a female pup to keep Rascal company. We also thought a couple litters of puppies would be fun. Rascal didn’t like Dolly too much at first, as she enjoyed zooming around the house and puppy-torpedoing him. She grew on him though, and they became good friends. They also made adorable puppies.

Rascal loved car rides and camping trips. We took him to Blanchard Springs Caverns in Arkansas multiple times, as well as to Table Rock Lake. When we decided to relocate, we took several long road trips visiting states around the midwest. Rascal went with us on a couple of these trips, camping with us in Wisconsin and the Appalachian Mountains.

Once we moved to our homestead, it was like Rascal was already in doggy heaven. He loved chasing critters and running around in the fields and woods. He loved walking to the creek, and would go with anyone walking there up until this last week. Rascal became more independent on our land, and he always seemed to be going somewhere or doing something.

During the last year, he seemed to start slowing down — but he made the most of the energy he had until he got tired. Then, he would nap in the most random places. It’s like he would get tired and just lay down to sleep wherever he was.

Over the last months, those naps have seemed more regular, and Rascal’s waking hours a bit more confused. After a sharp decline last weekend, where Rascal stopped wanting to walk, I called the Ash Grove Veterinary Clinic. They got us in on Tuesday to see our vet. For a dog Rascal’s age, there isn’t a lot anyone can do. We had seen the signs this year, and when we loaded up Rascal to go to his appointment, we had a feeling he wouldn’t be coming home with us. We were so thankful for Dr. Mozier’s kind and down-to-earth advice when we got there. He looked Rascal over and confirmed our suspicions. He discussed Canine Cognitive Disfunction (CCD), which is basically dog dementia. We chose the kindest course of action, even though it broke our hearts.

The whole experience took up a lot of emotional space this week. We’ve been as busy as we always are, gardening in the mornings and processing food in the afternoons. One day, Grace and I deep cleaned our little office building, which has gotten quite neglected in the last months. But we’ve all thought a lot about Rascal. We’ve missed him, even while we’ve realized just how much his extra care has been costing us in time for months. Death is a part of life, and letting go of our furry friends is part of animal stewardship. When we said goodbye to Rascal, our vet thanked God for his life. It is such a gift to live in an area where most people acknowledge their Creator and can talk about Him freely. This week was tough, but we went through it with gratitude for the blessing animals are in our lives. God created a truly fun little dog in Rascal, and I’m so thankful we were blessed to have him.

“Sun and moon, bless the Lord;
praise and exalt him forever.”

Daniel 3:62 (NCB)

Like many family stories, the origin of the tea set is somewhat fuzzy in my mind, but several facts remain. When she was in highschool (sometime in the late 1950s), my maternal grandmother used to visit an elderly lady once a week to do her hair. I don’t remember how she knew the lady or what her name was, but Memaw would go over to her house to wash and curl her hair. At one point, the lady gave Memaw a tea set as a thank-you gift. This, I explained to my niece, was the original rose tea set.

Years later, Memaw’s friend Marie gave a child’s version of the moss rose tea set to my mom. We assume the set had belonged to Marie’s daughters when they were younger. My mom grew up having tea parties with both the child’s and later the full-sized set.

When my mom grew up, Memaw gave her the rose tea set, and my mom had it displayed in a hutch as a newlywed. When my dad’s grandmother was visiting one day, she saw it — and decided to give my mom the tea dishes she had collected in the same pattern.

By the time I was a girl, the rose tea set had grown to several tea pots, lots of cups, saucers, plates, and miscellaneous items. My sisters and I loved having tea parties with the rose tea set — and of course, we always invited our brothers. My mom generously let us use the dishes fairly often once I was old enough to be responsible with them.

These days, the set is much smaller — no doubt due to chipped items we didn’t bring with us on various family moves. Still, it was nostalgic seeing various pieces and reminiscing with my nieces yesterday as we unpacked a couple pots, the seven remaining good cups, saucers, and some snack plates. We were having a little tea party, in honor of the feast day for the Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary. My nieces have been wanting to have a tea party since helping us repack the set last fall — and to be honest, we aunties have been wanting an excuse as well. When our mom read in Kendra Tierney’s The Catholic All Year Compendium that some people have tea parties to honor the Queen of Heaven, she suggested we take a break from routine to make it happen.

The cooler rainy Saturday was perfect for extra cooking inside. Grace made some traditional British Queen cakes — which were rather like tiny sweet biscuits or scones. These are traditional for the feast day.

We also whipped up some mini quiches, Scotch eggs, cucumber sandwiches, and egg salad sandwiches. It ended up being a rather long day, as we still had to do a little morning gardening and our pre-Sunday cooking.

It was a fitting celebration to a long week. Every day has been a repeated cycle of gardening, deep cleaning, food preservation, and cooking. Our newest niece came home with her mother on Monday, so the days have been peppered with baby snuggles as we could fit them in. On Thursday, Grace and I made our first ever attempt at some fall crops — planting various varieties of lettuces, mustards, radishes, carrots, kohlrabi, and bush beans. We had empty garden space where our potatoes, onions, and lettuce used to be, and it seemed a shame to let the ground go to waste. We’ve still been harvesting beans, squash, cucumbers, and tomatoes daily. We’ve gotten a few melons, but most have been eaten by voles before we get the chance.

When we all finally sat down to tea last night, we felt all our efforts were worth it. Only our oldest niece could remember using the tea set before, and both girls beamed as they poured cup after cup of Earl Grey. Even our nephew was impressed with the tea party, as he has been reading C.S. Lewis’ Narnia books and the characters frequently “sit down to tea,” he said. As we sipped and snacked, we reminisced about tea parties gone by — both fancy ones with the rose tea set and casual ones with every day dishes. We talked about Memaw and how much she would have loved the whole event. There is something in rituals that draw us back into our memories, bringing the past close with the present. As I wrapped the dishes back up at the end of the evening, I thought about how many tea parties are yet to be enjoyed by this new generation in our family. I showed my nieces the child’s cups we still have, saying how we always let the little kids use those. They smiled, and we said it wouldn’t be too many years until the new baby can join the fun.

We all agreed a Queen’s tea party should be a yearly tradition, and I couldn’t help reflecting on the particularly feminine quality of our enacted ritual. It brought generations of women together, even though some will never know each other. Thinking about Mary as the Queen of Heaven has been a shift for a lifelong Protestant, but I can appreciate what the elevation does for femininity — as Mary models the dignity of womanhood as it was meant to be. There is something about holding a china cup or pouring tea that makes us all sit up a bit straighter in our chairs. Our movements become more gentle, our voices softer, and our words a bit more polite.

In the Narnia series, Lewis often referred to his female characters as “daughters of Eve.” This identity has always resonated with me, as someone who was especially close to my matrilineal ancestors. It is profoundly human to identify with Eve’s story — the earthiness of her temptation and fall. As Christians, though, in a very real way, we are also daughters of Mary (John 19:26-27). As creatures being sanctified, there is something especially elevating in meditating on the ways Mary’s obedience signified the redemption of womankind. I can’t help thinking that sitting down to a tea party might just be the perfect reminder that we are all daughters of a Queen.

“Consider how God dwells in creatures: in the elements, giving them being; in the plants, giving them life; in the animals, giving them sensation; in men, giving them understanding.”

St. Ignatius of Loyola

Erin was scheduled to be induced Saturday, but baby girl decided to come late Friday night. Our plan had been to watch the other kids at the hospital, but since it was so late at night, Levi and Erin opted to have us bring the kids first thing in the morning. Meeting little Bridget Rose was worth the wait.

We aunties came home after our visit and got right back to work. We hope to have all the cleaning done by the time Erin and baby get home from the hospital tomorrow. The flooring and trim will take a bit longer, but we are excited to have gotten the most important spaces finished and the whole area cleaned. New life is one of God’s greatest gifts, and our whole family feels the blessing.

“It is not that we should be flawless, but that we should never stop starting anew.”

St. Teresa of Avila