"The Real World"

I've thought on this before, but never put it into words. At work today (my alter identity, my "real" one being the me and the life I write about here) I was telling a dear friend about the herb I'd found that increases breast milk production. I directed her here to see the picture. She asked me if I ever wrote about her. I told her I only wrote about my life on the homestead, and that she should come to visit more often. :) The conversation got me to thinking about "real life." So many people who don't understand or oppose a simple agrarian lifestyle like to think they live in the real world and we live in a fantasy. These are the people who live in houses practically identical to their neighbors with 5 feet in between; whose lives center around what they do away from home (work, school, sports); who fall asleep at night to the sound of cars going down the road and sirens; who buy and eat "butter" that is about one molecule away from plastic and meat that is sluiced in various viruses and carbon monoxide before being bound up in polystyrene. They grow "gardens" of completely useless pretty flowers and poison any good ground they may have in order to grow a monoculture of inedible lawn grass. They clothe themselves in the latest fashion, regardless of how uncomfortable, impractical or immodest it might be. They plant a TV and/or internet ready computer in each childs large and plushly appointed individual room, completely sabatoging any chance of real family time. And this, they say, is the real world.

Lord willing I will stay on this piece of out of the way land, serenaded to sleep by the frogs and the cicadas and the whipporwills, with an occasional mid-winter refrain from the coyotes. I will haul my water into the house in a bucket, to keep me humble. I will grow and process my food, my meat, knowingly intimately the realness of what I feed my family. I will make my simple clothes and continue in learning about covering my head in submission to my Lord and my husband. I will create real things, useful things. I will teach my grandchildren and try to provide an example for my daughter. I will venture to town as little as possible, finding ever newer ways to provide for the needs of those I'm responsible for right here on this homestead. I will praise the Lord for the love growing in my home; my good and competant husband, my precious child and grandchildren; the roof over my head; the fertile soil and the gentle animals that keep it so; and for His grace in saving one such as me to a glimpse of heaven such as this.

This is life, as real as it gets.

May you all share the blessing,
Judy