Meanderings Through Home and Pasture

There is a young man who lives in our home now. He sits across from me at the dinner table, shoveling more food than seems humanly possible into that growing body of his and I often mistake him for a grown man out of the corner of my eye.

Though he is nearly as tall as his Mama and has far surpassed her in strength and stamina, he is still that serious little man who hugs me like he means it and tells stories as if he is writing his very own Little House on the Prairie saga.

Like all of his siblings, he is smitten with his baby sister, whose moniker Joy seems to be aptly suited to her general disposition.

Can we talk about laundry for a minute? If you have any number of little people living under your roof, perhaps it takes up a great deal of your brain (and corner) space too? Since Hannah was about six weeks old, we have mostly been washing it all by hand. And by we I mean all of us because I do get a good deal of help in this area and, frankly, am certain that I am not capable of being that mother in the history books who spent hours per day at the washboard with all of her children in pristine clothing and clean faces with well-combed hair, a freshly scrubbed floor, and a pie in the windowsill.

I sorted the laundry and got less than half of it done last week and really, truly was astonished and grateful at the headway we made.

I sometimes forget we live on a homestead. Not because the roosters don’t wake me up nearly every morning – if the baby hasn’t yet – long before sunrise. Not because there aren’t morning and evening chores that bookend our days, peppered with garden tasks and animal emergencies in between. And not because I didn’t jot this list down on Monday and only get one of these things done:

• Separate Calf
• Soak Seed and Plant Peas
• Clean up and Seed Meat Bird Run
• Seed Calf Pen Area
• Fix Pig Fencing

Perhaps it is that I forget that not everyone lives the homestead life. Not everyone can say a hearty “yes” when their three-year-old asks for a warm glass of milk as I pour it through the strainer. Not everyone goes to town with chicken feathers stuck to their coat. Not everyone washes more mason jars and pots than plates and forks every day. Not everyone hears “The pigs are out!” in the midst of fraction subtraction.

And not everyone has to check their footwear (and the floor and the hem of their dress) when someone asks “What is that smell?”

But I do, and that’s alright by me.