REVIEW: Ben Hewitt's HOME GROWN

This isn't so much a traditional "How To" parenting book as it is a series of interconnected personal essays about childhood, school, and learning throughout various points of the author's life. But in these essays, Hewitt lays out the basic case against the traditional education system, and why his family homeschools.

"...the more freedom and autonomy I allow my children to follow their passions and to learn on their own terms, the more passionate and eager to learn they become. The more engaged they become. And, inasmuch as I grant myself the same freedom and autonomy, the more engaged I become. The more I learn."

Hewitt writes beautifully about his family, their farm, and all the things he has learned while enabling his children to learn. I adore this book, and my copy is filled with underlined passages and scribbled annotations.

"What if the point of an education is to imbue our children with a sense of their connectivity, not merely with other humans, but also with the trees and animals and soil and moon and sky? What if the point of life is to feel these connections, and all the emotion they give rise to? What then?"

Although I do not agree with everything Hewitt writes (and who would agree with everything someone else thinks?), the spirit of giving his children the tools and opportunity to live and learn for themselves is what I strive for in my very own children.

"We shortchange our children's sense of responsibility and confidence by 'protecting' them from the tools and activities that build these very qualities. To learn how not to bend nails, they had to bend some. To learn how not to pull up beets, they had to pull some."

Even if you don't live on a farm, or even if you prefer traditional learning systems, this is a great book for thinking about how much responsibility and freedom we afford our children.  Could not possibly recommend this book higher.

HOME GROWN by Ben Hewitt. 2014 Roost Books

Ben Hewitt also writes beautifully about farm life on his blog.

COMIC: Portion Control

COMIC: The Color Purple

COMIC: Lee's Inferno

COMIC: I Burn Easily

Farm Lesson #27: Never Underestimate A Chicken's Curiousity

Broccoli seedling doing well in one of our raised beds.

Unfortunately, the one thing we most desperately need these days is the one thing you can't grow on a farm: time.  I was already behind in the vegetable garden when our free range chickens discovered the tender young lettuce and broccoli seedlings. To preserve the plants we kept the chickens locked in their run this past week while I hustled together a 250 foot permitter fence around our kitchen garden.

Normally we only confine the chickens to the run once a week or so when we know that no one will be home all day to watch them, but it was preferable to loosing all our veggies.
It was my fault for assuming the chickens would have enough space to roam that they wouldn't venture all the way to the other side of our property where the garden is located. So all the time I could have been using to get our peas, cabbage, and rhubarb in the ground was spent on the fence. Not to mention the tidy sum of cash required for all those posts and that much chicken wire.

At least while I was throwing a fence together, Bethany was hard at work planting the 130 trees we received from the Missouri Department of Conservation.  We are in desperate need of a wind break on the hill where our house sits. I think Bethany is getting tired of picking up toppled rocking chairs on the porch.  Bethany also planted a heavy dose of native fruiting trees like choke cherry and service berry around the chicken coop to supplement their food in the summer.

Now that the garden fence is finished I hope to catch up on planting, but there's always things on and off the farm that require our attention. We'll do what we can when we can, and try not to curse time we don't have.

Spring Chicks

This weekend was the stuff of our farmstead fantasies.  After a momentary cold spell early in the week, our early Spring continued with weather warm enough to move 30 chicks out of the brooder boxes in our basement and into the coop with our older laying hens. The chicks spent the first day isolated in the run while we prepared a well-shielded and insulated brooder box in the coop to keep the young birds warm in the cooler nights. There are supposed to be 10 Barred Rock, 10 Buff Orpingtons, and 10 Rhode Island Red pullets, but it is notoriously difficult to sex young chicks and we might have a few cockerels in the mix (which would be fine as we have been without a rooster since our move).

These are the first chicks I have raised since I was a teenager, and I made ample use of Harvey Ussery's excellent poultry book in all decisions. Mr Ussery's book has been invaluable since we began keeping chickens 3 years ago, and we would certainly recommend his "deep bedding" method for the coops of anyone thinking of raising chickens.

Once the chicks were comfortable enough outside to begin pecking and scratching in the grass, we moved on to catching up with the garden. We finally transplanted our broccoli and onion starts into the garden, as well as planted potatoes, lettuce, and carrots. We were also pleased to see that 75% of the blackberry bushes we transplanted from my parent's farm survived the winter.

We still have six younger easter eggers in an indoor brooder box, and several varieties of tomato and pepper seedlings doing well. So far we haven't noticed any problems with the older hens picking on the younger chicks in any extreme way, but the chicks have been giving the older girls a very wide girth. We'll keep you updated on how they progress.

What have you gotten started in the garden yet?