Welcome to the Letters from the Homestead series where I share stories of our life on the homestead. I hope you can connect to these snippets from our simple life here in Wisconsin.
February 18, 2024
“Tears welled in Pa’s eyes as, together, we stood at the barn door watching the last truck leave. The once warm and friendly barn now stood cold and quiet…Pa would have liked to have lived out his life on the farm, but Ma had always wanted to live in the village of Wild Rose….with the farm sold to a non-farmer, the new owner soon divided up the one hundred sixty acres. Most recently, six families lived on the land. A Christmas-tree company owns about 40 acres; beautiful evergreens now grow where we planted corn and alfalfa.”
(excerpts from the book Every Farm Tells a Story by Jerry Apps [affiliate link])
There’s something about February that makes a person really think, isn’t there?
For me, it’s a time of deep contemplation. My mind is wandering, thinking…mostly about life and all the big questions that come along with it.
As we made the drive to my brother’s house this past weekend, we drove past big open fields and empty barns. All pieces of land that were once someone’s that now belong to someone else.
In my mind, my home, my land, our little farm- it’s all mine. “My house”, “my field”, “my garden”, I might say. But none of it really belongs to me, not really. Someday, someone else will dwell within the walls of this home. Someone else’s hands might take over the garden that I love, or they may not and the garden may turn back into the grass that it was before we created it. I don’t get to say what happens to this place that I love with certainty. All I can say with certainty is that someone else will someday be here in this place, just as I am here on this land that another had once called their home.
It hits me deeply to think about this. Deep into my soul. It humbles me back to the reality that the world does not revolve around me and my problems, and that nothing that I “own” is really mine.
One might go into a long rampage about how everything is meaningless in life (hello book of Ecclesiastes…) Or we could take this knowledge and think about how it can impact how we live today.
I think mostly that we have to remember that God has called us to be stewards of the Earth. When people were placed into creation, God took the man and placed him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it (Genesis 2:15). It was what we were created to do.
With this in mind, we can evaluate in our lives how we’re doing. Are we working and caring for the land that we’ve been given with its best interests in mind? Or have we been living under the façade that we are the only ones that matter; that nothing else matters beyond our own short life time?
What positive impacts can we leave upon the Earth, on this land that we call our homes? How can we leave behind something that will positively last from generation to generation?
One simple way, I think, is to connect with people. Allow yourself to build connections so that your memory continues to be shared again and again. Serve your family in love.
And another simple way is to take care of the land. Plant some beautiful perennials that will return years after you are gone, bringing joy and beauty to the next generation. Take care with what you put into the ground, no matter how pesky those weeds and bugs are in your garden. Teach your children to love nature and to recognize all that it has to offer. Remind them that the Earth’s seasons will continue to pass, whether we are here to see them or not.
Together, we need to find a way to get back to the basics of living, back to the time before convenience cost us community. Humans can do amazingly wonderful things if they want to.
Thank you for reading this long, soap-box letter. I’d love to hear what you think about it too! Don’t be afraid to leave me a comment below.
Read last week’s letter here.
Sadie what a great writer you are! Your words speak to me.
Thank you so much for reading and for your kind words, Kaye!