Today I’m sharing an article that my wife wrote for a magazine about homeschooling. She covers our journey and her day to day with the kids.
It’s powerful.
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Without further adu, Miss Farmer
You’d have to be living under a rock to not be aware that our children are under attack. Woke culture is pushing a narrative of abuse and moral degradation and it’s infiltrating our schools, public and private. Our students are failing, the quality of teachers is appalling, school security is lacking, kids are angry, lashing out at teachers and each other, being taught to put their value into material things, turning to drugs and alcohol, self mutilation and the list goes on. Social media is raising a whole generation of self seeking narcissists and there’s simply no value in the importance of nature, love for self and others and the meaning of real health and happiness.
2020 was the year we started to question everything. We had an eye opening experience with the global pandemic that sent many of us down multiple rabbit holes. What is happening to us and how did we get here? We reevaluated everything and made some major decisions. One of the biggest decisions we made was to teach our children at home.
In the years preceding this, homesteading had become our top priority because the food industry is corrupt and we knew we needed our own source of reliable nourishment. We were growing our own food and preserving what came from it. We put up fences and raised cattle for grass fed beef and had a steady supply of raw milk from our goats or friends' jersey cows. We raised chickens for eggs and began making soap from the excess of goat milk our dairy goats were producing. We maximized every inch of our land and quickly branched out into honeybees for pollination and honey.
We asked ourselves, why are we, as parents, so quick to send our babies to school and away from the comfort of home? Who made this decision anyway? Who decided that anyone else knows better than us what’s right and good for our children? We grew them in our wombs and nourished our bodies to give them the ideal environment to grow and thrive. We birthed them and taught them to walk, to eat, their first words, colors, shapes, numbers and letters. Why did we stop and say, well, that’s all for now, off you go! How could we ever get to a place that we could release them to a world of strangers in a building that looks like a prison and think, this is good?
So when the time came and the decision was made to homeschool our children, it felt like the most natural and sensible thing for us. It was easy to pull them away from the rat race of life and bring them home to a place that was safe and gave them all the freedom they could ever need to just be. I was already a stay at home mother working towards our small business. My husband had a steady job. The decision was made.
The first thing I did was research homeschool groups and co-ops in our area. We found one that was a little drive away but joined anyway. I met an amazing group of homeschooling mothers and used them as mentors to guide me along. They were thrilled to see another homeschooling family join their ranks and were so helpful from the start.
Homeschool has changed drastically over the years. It’s not just getting out your workbook and doing your work at home. There’s an entire plethora of models of schooling and curriculums you can choose from. Any style you can possibly imagine is now easily accessible to you. No longer does the stigma apply that homeschoolers are weird and unsocialized. In fact, I would argue that homeschool children are some of the most socialized of all children. They’re interacting with all age groups. Going places and doing things. Constantly asking real world questions about what we’re doing and what this and that is for.
After reading a book suggestion, The Call of The Wild and Free by Ainsley Arment, I found a local group of homeschooling mothers that followed along with the theme of that book that I resonated strongly with. To call forth homeschooling parents of all types to foster the natural wonder of childhood in outdoor exploration, creativity and discovery. To facilitate and nurture their innate ability to learn because they want to not because they’re forced to. We take the children on weekly field trips to natural areas that are free from playground equipment to encourage nature play. We make crafts. We play with dirt and mud. They build forts and make up stories and act out characters in their games. They problem solve and learn to work out their differences in a safe way. We allow them the freedom to explore. To hike trails, to climb trees, to roam, to walk creeks and pick up rocks, bugs, to identify plants and so on. And let me tell you, it is a beautiful, beautiful thing.
We jumped around with a few homeschool programs looking for the best fit and finally found and fell in love with The Good and The Beautiful. It’s virtually open and go. It’s all in one and focuses on family, God, nature, and high character. It has apps and games that make it fun for them and the kids really enjoy it.
Each morning we wake up, have breakfast, do their lessons and out we go. My kids gather eggs and feed the animals. They assist in the planting and harvesting of the garden. They help with the canning process and freezing. We forage blackberries until our hands are purple in summer and harvest elderberries until they’re black in the fall. They wear child sized bee suits and enter the hives with us, cradling tiny bees in their gloved hands. They’ve witnessed births and deaths on the farm and cried at both. Watched baby chicks hatch in the incubator and hand milked goats. I’ve shown them how to make cheese and basic animal care. They get to bite into fresh pieces of honeycomb dripping with honey straight from the hives. They care for the cows and watch as we load them up to market. They see where their food comes from and that it’s where our animals are loved and cared for.
More than anything though, they play.
One day a week we meet with our Wild and Free group. Another day we go to Storytime at the library and have a playdate picnic after. They play soccer and love it. If they get older and decide they don’t like it at any point they can choose something else.
We are free to travel, camp, go on field trips, whatever we choose to do. If we choose to wake up and go camping we most certainly can because why not? We are not tied to anything. We are truly free. That’s what I want you to understand. The freedom.
We do understand that not everyone lives like us and we are not your typical family. We work very hard and are busy year round. There are some circumstances that would make this very difficult to manage. I'm not saying this would work for all but I will say that our children have only one childhood. We didn’t want them to have one like ours that we had to heal from. We wanted to give them one that’s full of wonder and exploration. That nurtures their creativity and encourages curiosity.
Our goal is to raise strong, resourceful young adults that have a full understanding of how the world works and the confidence to be a light in the darkness. That it’s ok to go against the vast majority of brain dead zombies drifting along through life following orders. To know and to realize that the true worth of a person is not where they learned but what and how they learned and to understand that the real key is to never, ever stop.
So much peace and love my friends. BowTiedMissFarmer
Enjoyed this one! We are part of a W+F group too, big fans. It's such a joy to see my kids wake up and enjoy life. The genie is out of the bottle for us, there's no way we could switch to the standard path.