by A Farm Girl | Oct 23, 2024 | Family, Musings, Uncategorized
” And God saw that it was good.” (Genesis 1:10c) This is how the book of Genesis describes how God saw His work at the end of the second through 5th days of creation and midway through the 6th day. He saw what He had done and it was good. Like the wonderful example that He set by giving us a day of rest, He gave us an amazing example about pacing ourselves and seeing and valuing our work.
God didn’t do everything in 1 day. He certainly could have, but He didn’t.
This is such a helpful reminder to me. I don’t have to try to do everything in 1 day either. Just do something. Just make forward progress. I can be satisfied with the work that I have accomplished and don’t need to stress about the work that wasn’t.
The second part of this verse snippet that is so reassuring to me is that is says “it was good.” It never says “good enough.” If I am striving to serve the Lord, my family, and anyone that my life touches with love, then it is good. I need to stop judging myself by the endless list of work that is never done. There will always be more dishes, more laundry. more school to teach the kids, more housework, more gardening, more farm work, more posts to write, more ways that I could serve, more outreach opportunities, more, and more, and more. What I have to remember is that what I can do today is good.
You are in the same boat, dear tired mamas and daddies out there. Let this echo within your hearts weary single parents working multiple jobs to keep your family going. Loving caretakers of ill or impaired family members find peace in this. What you are accomplishing is good. Don’t let the burden of “enough” hang over you and make you feel worth less that you are. If you are serving in love, you are doing good. Your work is good. Find hope and peace and rest from the business that our society places on us all. Breathe in the realization that “it is good.”
by A Farm Girl | Sep 25, 2024 | Family, Farm Life, Homeschool
I have really wanted to use gardening as part of our homeschool for as long as we have been homeschooling. Both my kids are outside and helping around the farm just about every day, so why shouldn’t our gardening time also be life skills and biology. My biggest problem has been finding a way to structure it so it’s not just me hollering “Okay kids, were going out to the garden again to pick things, weed, and water,” or another lesson in seed saving from tomatoes while we are saucing them. Has anyone else ever felt this way? Most days the kids are bored, frustrated, and/or overly energetic – aka they don’t learn anything, because I don’t have any kind of plan.
Enter The School Garden Curriculum by Kaci Rae Christopher. (This book is amazing by the way! It gives full 8-9 week plans of gardening lessons for Kindergarten through 8th grade for fall, winter, and spring, complete with several downloadable worksheets per trimester. Each year focusses on a different topic – things like seeds, soil, etc.) The problem was that it is designed for classroom use at a school where all grades are working in a community garden on different projects that all work together. Each year builds so my next question was “where do I start?” In addition, they were growing some things that we don’t typically grow. (Since we have a home garden instead of a community garden, we only grow what we eat.) Here I was with a lot of great plans (which I really needed) but some confusion over how to adjust them to fit my needs.
I read through the book again with unit studies in mind and found a lot of things that either I have really wanted to start as projects around here or things that I thought the kids would really have fun with. My conclusion was to try to just pick a unit for each season and be fine if we jumped all over the book. I reached out to the author and asked her for her advice on how to augment her book for our homeschool. She had a similar idea.
I handed the book to my kids and asked them to each pick a fall unit, a winter unit, and a spring unit. They both picked the same fall unit (win!) and on their own compromised on the other two (double win!!). This year, we are doing the 3rd Grade fall unit, which is all about the garden as an ecosystem, and the 1st Grade winter and spring units, which are mostly about seeds. The spring unit just happened to fit perfectly with our main science program this year, so yay!
I worked up a lesson plan for these 3 units and printed the corresponding worksheets. We are going to try to do 1 lesson each week from late September until we finish., probably on Fridays, which are usually our more relaxed day each week. Some lessons may need to get moved around depending on how different things in the garden are progressing – for example, I don’t know when my sunflowers will be ready to harvest seeds on and that is the second fall lesson.
I will try to post about our adventure regularly. Time to dig in and get our hands dirty! 🙂
by A Farm Girl | May 6, 2021 | Family, Musings
A couple of months ago, I tried to take a realistic look at my schedule and everything that I was trying to get done in a day. I ended most days feeling like a failure because I had listed out everything that needed to get done and I never seemed to get it done. DH would look at me like I was a dragon with 3 heads when I expressed my feelings of failure, because to him, I was knocking it out of the park. I was getting worn out by the constant feelings of failure and the burden of always feeling in “catch-up” mode. So I gave myself a big kick in the rear and started to think about things from a different perspective.
The first thing that I did was list out everything that ACTUALLY had to get done in a day and how long that each would take realistically considering my family and their needs and personalities. Here is what I came up with:
- Sleep – 7-8 hours
- Morning Bible study – 30 min
- Meals – 2.5 hours
- Daily hygiene – 1 hour
- Cooking – 2 hours
- Morning farm work – 1 hour
- Afternoon farm work – 1 hour
- Kids’ bedtime routine – 1 hour
- Dishes – 30 min
- 2-3 loads of laundry start to (hopefully) finish – 1 hour
- Cleaning up the kitchen after meals – 30 min
When I totaled everything up, it came out to about 20 hours out of my day! That gave me 4 hours to do EVERYTHING else. That includes structured school time for the kids, working the horses, tending the garden and orchard, farm projects, cleaning the house, house projects, mowing the always growing 7 acres of grass, etc. I started to think about those hours as my fluid hours. I realized that if I had 4 fluid hours in a day, I could really only plan for about 2-2.5 of them being usable, because inevitably someone would have a meltdown or get hurt or decide to take twice as long doing the morning farm work because we had to stop and study a micro-habitat that exists under a water trough that we were supposed to be scrubbing or kiddos get into a huge fight over who was supposed to brush their teeth first after breakfast which resulted in a 30 min discussion about treating each other with love and respect. You get the picture – life happens. 🙂
As soon as I realized how much I was actually getting packed into that tiny span of time and how much I was getting done out of necessity without thinking about it, I started to feel much less like a failure. I also started making much, much shorter to-do lists. I made loops for everything that needed to fit into those hours: school subjects; fun activities with the kids; barn work; etc. Whatever doesn’t get done today, just get’s moved to tomorrow. I have let go of having a clean house for now. When the kids are older, they can help more. For now, we farm and school and live in our house. It’s never going to be perfectly clean, let alone Pinterest-worthy. I celebrate the days that when I go to bed, the dishwasher is running and the kitchen is clean. But most nights, some dishes are soaking or there may be a stack on the side of the sink. Often, DH and I have some quality time and laughs watching something silly while we fold the day’s laundry that’s stacked on our bed.
I still have days when I feel like a failure, because I haven’t lived up to my expectations. But they are getting fewer and further between. I wrote the phrase “Remember, you only have 4 fluid hours in a day, so only plan for 2-2.5 of them.” in big letters on the rub-away board by my kitchen table. I see it multiple times a day. It is sinking in. My 4 fluid hours realization is freeing me to be in the moment with my family, because I’m not feeling the constant pressure of that to-do list of doom that was always unachievable and setting me up to fail.
by A Farm Girl | Sep 27, 2019 | Family, Musings
We all know the normal way of doing laundry – sort everything according to color: whites, lights, and darks. Years ago, I found it somewhat frustrating to be folding a load of laundry and have to run the folded items to six different rooms. I started thinking about the fact that few, if any, of my clothes ever bled their color and those that did were usually washed separately or with a color catching sheet (one of the best inventions to hit the laundry world). What if I did my laundry by location instead of by type?
I tried it and it worked wonderfully! I now have hampers in various parts of the house and, when those get full, I wash a load for that area. Folding and putting away is much faster because I simply carry the basket of folded items to one place. The kids have a hamper in their bathroom, and all their clothes and towels go into it. When it’s full, I wash a kiddo load. We sort their clothes as we fold them into piles depending on dresser drawer that they go into. Each one has their own small laundry basket, and we stack the piles in the baskets. Then they carry their baskets upstairs and put their clean clothes away themselves. I have a hamper in the kitchen for kitchen towels and bibs (which the kids still ask to wear when dinners are especially messy). The kitchen load gets carried into the kitchen straight out of the dryer and put away as it’s folded or whichever kid is on laundry duty that particular month folds it on the sofa and puts it away Our (meaning the grown-ups) laundry gets split up into a couple of different hampers: delicates (anything that needs a cold, gentle wash and needs to be dried on low); normals (mostly farming clothes that require a heavier wash and can get dried on high: jeans, t-shirts, etc); towels (including the ones from washing the dogs – which happens frequently around here); and the load that we endearingly call “stinkies” (DH’s sweaty undershirts, etc that seem to need hot water and vinegar to come out of the wash smelling fresh). All of our hampers are labeled and in our bathroom closet. I have one more hamper labeled “other” which is a catch all for random things that need washing, like dog blankets and cleaning rags. I wash all of out bedding on Fridays or Saturdays a couple of times each month. I just strip the beds and throw the bedding into the wash, so that doesn’t need a hamper.
So there you go. It’s a new spin on laundry management. Try it and see how it works for you.
by A Farm Girl | Feb 12, 2019 | Family
Today is my 26th cancer-free anniversary! I am a survivor!!!
Yep! 26 years ago, God took my leukemia filled body from being 95% cancerous to remission within just 8 days of diagnosis! He is so good!!!
Yesterday, I started thinking about how I have spent so much time being worried and stressed. I don’t believe God saved me 26 years ago to spend my days being weighed down by stress. I have been having a “next 30 years” (like the song by Tim McGraw) couple of days thinking about how I don’t want to spend my next 26 years under the load of worry and stress that I have had for most of the past 26 years.
I don’t want to feel hurried anymore. I want to slow down and simplify my life so that I can enjoy all of the ways God has blessed me without feeling like I am already running late for the next thing on my never ending list of things to do. I don’t mind being busy, but I am tired of feeling rushed and not getting to be mindful and enjoy whatever activity that I currently doing. I want to show my kids that life is a blessing not a never ending, stress filled, worry inducing to-do list.
Okay, so easier said than done – I get that. I am still going to try to find greater joy in this life that God has given me. I am going to try to show more grace to those around me and especially to myself. I am going to try to listen and look for the positive and let the negative run off my back. I am going to choose to embrace the crazy and the chaos when the choice is laughter or stress. I am going to try to reduce and simplify my schedule so that I have time to play and rest – so I am not always scurrying from one thing to the next without even being able to enjoy them.
I am a survivor! I want to start living like it!!
by A Farm Girl | Feb 8, 2019 | Family, Homeschool, Musings
Have you ever noticed how, when kids get tired, they go in a downward spiral from bad to worse. This can be especially true if they refuse to nap or have had a very long busy day (like lots of errands, appointments, activities). It’s not just true of preschoolers, either. School age kids and teenagers suffer from this problem too. Even grownups suffer when we don’t get to rest.
Have you ever noticed that, when you don’t take a break, EVERYTHING seems harder? Our work load seems bigger and more overwhelming when we are tired. We get less done because we are stressed. The less we get done, the more stressed we get. It keeps snowballing until we have this avalanche of being completely overwhelmed and overloaded. Chores pile up. We yell at our family, are melancholy with our friends, and get so worn out that all we want to do is cry.
Why do we do this to ourselves?
Why? Because we are trying to be superwomen. We try to do everything and be everything for everyone all the time. We don’t stop. We don’t rest
But rest isn’t just important because we need a physical recharge. God actually commands that we rest. The 3rd commandment says, “Remember the Sabbath Day and keep it holy.” Now God thinks that this is so important that He put it right after the 2 commandments stating that He is to be our only God and nothing should come before Him.
Hebrews 4 talks about how the Israelites were disobedient in the wilderness and God said that they would never enter His rest. The Israelites could have had 40 more years of enjoying the Promised Land but instead they wandered around in the desert for 40 years. 40 years! All those who had been disobedient died. Their children received the promised inheritance.
We have got to stop resisting and give in to the need for rest. We all need to give ourselves a Sabbath. For our sakes. For our kids. For our spouses. We don’t want to fall under a curse like the Israelites and wander around in a wilderness of stress, grumpiness, and being completely overwhelmed and stress paralyzed for 40 years. We need to teach our kids the importance of rest. With today’s world of go, go, go and packed schedules, it’s so easy to get caught in the flow of doing all the time.
I challenge us all to stop and take a day, or a couple hours, every week to focus on our Creator and cherish our families. I also challenge us all to take at least 30 minutes every day to stop and rest and recharge. Drink a cup of tea or coffee (while it’s still hot!) and eat a snack (I don’t know about you, but I forget to eat most days then get really hangry around 4 PM.) Listen to a praise CD and worship the Creator and thank Him for knowing that we need rest. I know it can be hard, with kids, schedules, work, life, etc. You may have to be creative and find a way to work it in. If you are stuck, pray. Ask God to show you how to find a time of rest in your day and in your week. He will show you where. He blesses those who walk in His ways. He may ask you give up something, but it will be worth it. Things always are when we are walking in obedience.
Recent Comments