how we love Spring

Just a few pictures this time. We are super busy around here, what with the sun shining every day. Really! Every day! It's the best Spring tonic ever, but it doesn't have any interest in sharing me with the computer.

So I thought I'd update with a few pictures of all the outside stuff we've been doing that has kept me away.

Jeff built me a small greenhouse out of old windows. Yay! My new seedlings hit the greenhouse after just a few days under the green lights, and they appear very happy. The greenhouse faces due south, so you never know...we might just have winter-long veggies this year. Next to the greenhouse, you'll see our cedar cuttings set up for staking our peas. And on the side, you'll see the two half barrels of roots - one all orange carrots, the other half purple carrots, half beets.



Here is a view of our strawberry patch in the foreground (where we planted 70 strawberry plants this year) with our cut garden space in the back. All that cut space will become planted gardens for our CSA work with Allways Farm Collective within the next couple weeks. There's about twice as much more on the side of the house. It's so amazing to see it cut, since it's finally starting to take on its future form. We can totally imagine it all planted with vegetables and melons now.



Here is a close-up of the empty side of the strawberry patch, where I took advantage of the soil improvements we made to plant a small hill of potatoes.



This is what makes all the work out here worth it....growing organic children with organic food! Sydney and Mazzy are such good friends already, which is amazing with their age difference. Syd has wanted a little sister so badly, for so long! Here, she tries to teach Mazzy ballet.



The two of them played "ballet teacher" for a good 15 minutes while I admired yet again, more sky.



And this is how we roll these days when Mama gets to do work. I drive the John Deere while the girls ride along behind me. I just can't physically do what I could do 3 months ago. But the countdown is nearing. I have about 9 weeks left now until we should be welcoming our third little bitty into our life.

vow of poverty

Here's some heady stuff I've been gnawing on lately. The more I sit with it, the more comfortable it feels, and the more exacting my thoughts have become. After writing this over a month ago, I'm finally ready to share it.

The conclusion to this post occurred to me this morning: the only way to become free and spiritually whole in our consumer-driven society would be to take a vow of poverty. Preferably, as a family, or at least as the heads of the family.

Now, like those movies that show you the last scene before getting into the juicy parts, I'll backtrack. First off, why poverty? And second, why an actual vow?

There are so many reasons to choose a lifestyle of poverty as opposed to a lifestyle of chasing wealth, it's hard to pinpoint just one. More than anything, focusing on achieving wealth as the measure of our success shifts our focus onto ourselves and our achievements as the center of everything worthwhile. We spend the majority of our time thinking about how to acquire more....more money, more assets, more things.

In the Bible it's written, "It's easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven." I think this is absolutely true. If you think of your soul as something you cultivate throughout your life, like a well-loved garden, it's easy to see how greed and the love of money would make your soul a vast, brown wasteland like the GMO corn fields beside us, needing a constant application of money, achievements, and nifty things like the corn needs its Round-Up.



Greed corrupts firm principles into weak idealism. Greed becomes the definition of success. Greed permits you to do things you know are wrong because "I have to - it's my job" or "I work hard - I deserve it." Greed holds you down to a life you aren't purposefully choosing, in a job where the greedy person above you can make a nice dollar off your time - you know, your time...that finite substance we all have only so much of, but spend the majority of it doing what we "should," what the experts tell us is best.

Experts have great expertise in broadcasting their opinions and convincing others to believe them. Experts self-promote their "expertise." In reality, they have an opinion, just like you, just like me, based on their own particular worldview and their own particular goals and measure of success. By the way, if you're talking about an expert in America, their opinion is always that wealth = success. You may throw out any expert opinion with wild abandon if you don't happen to share the same definition of success. Even the most popular self-help, Zen, figured-it-all-out author on Oprah at any given time is there because she made a bunch of money selling her book. Can you really be all that Zen when you're drowning in royalties?

A life of poverty begets a life of self-discipline. Or is that the other way around? If I were writing my own set of spiritual truths, I would certainly include this one: "It is easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than for an undisciplined person to enter the Kingdom of Heaven."

A life of poverty begets a life of self-denial, and although it's extremely counter-cultural in our times, please hear this: self-denial is not a bad thing! Really! Self-denial leads to ingenuity, creativity, new skills and often, a greater sense of meaning and community.

If you were to decide not to buy any more clothes, for example, what would you wear? Perhaps you would learn how to sew. Perhaps you already knew how to sew and you would further your skills by designing your own clothes. Perhaps you would accept outgrown clothes from others, increasing your feeling of friendship and sharing in your community. Or perhaps you would downsize your existing clothes even further and make clothing entirely simplistic for yourself. None of these side effects could have been achieved without first denying yourself the convenience of buying more.

But a vow? Really? Isn't that rather old-fashioned, simplistic, monk-like even? Isn't it our responsibility for our children to provide well for them and leave them a legacy to help them succeed later in life?

I ask, isn't it our responsibility to ensure that our children are creative, disciplined, principled, and generous? Isn't our primary responsibility to raise our children to be spiritually whole? Shouldn't our last priority be to raise little camels and then try to push them through the eye of a needle?

In America, this is the status quo. From all directions, we are told that success is measured by wealth, that monetary success is of utmost importance, and that your financial class is a huge component of your worth as a person.

It's extremely difficult to counter these incoming messages unless you do something drastic. Something like making a purposeful decision, now and forever, that this is not the path you choose. Something like a vow of poverty.

"I vow that my time will be used to serve God, my family, and those in hardship. I vow that my time will not be used to acquire and hoard wealth. I vow that if wealth comes my way, I will use it to serve God, my family, and those in hardship. I vow that I will strive to be satisfied with what has been given to me and not constantly seeking more. I vow that I will vocally and adamantly oppose and bar from my home any cultural practices that promote the acquisition of wealth and consumerism over generosity."

When you choose poverty over wealth, you can free yourself to tune out the messages that surround you. They can buzz around, making themselves heard, like the swarm of flies that they are, but not gaining entry into your foothold. For our family, they can share the same buzzing, swarming space with all the other expert opinions we don't buy into.

Hospitals are the only safe place to have a baby.

Schools are the best place to educate and socialize children.

Food additives are perfectly safe.

Genetically modified plants help feed the hungry in third world countries.

Your investment portfolio is important.

The government is looking out for your safety.

In this country, we seem to have "the gift of too much." This is no gift at all, but a constant burden to bear. For me, overcoming this burden is a constant struggle, but a fight worth fighting. I hope that the "legacy" we leave our children is the message that they are worthy from the inside out, that they are free to spend their finite time on pursuits more meaningful than chasing wealth and comfort, and that building their bank accounts is the easiest way to degrade their souls.