If you enjoy the photography on this blog, I’d encourage you to check out my Photography page, and the galleries nested underneath it! I update them periodically throughout the year, but often don’t share when I’ve updated them! The Beautiful Mundane and This is Ranching are my favorites.
It is almost magical, kind of like alchemy of the Middle Ages. But instead of turning lead into gold, my little cow turns sunlight, in the form of hay and grain, into glorious, cream-rich milk. And then I take that glorious, cream-rich milk, skim the cream, and make golden butter.
Does it get any better?
I have been noticing a persistent trend, and I love it, of women in particular realizing that society has trained us to accept that the little things we do at home are meaningless and unproductive. So I push back against that, relishing the days when I am doing laundry and bustling around the kitchen and milking my cow and gathering eggs and making butter and stockpiling butterballs in the freezer.
Let’s redefine productivity. It can’t all be measured.
It was just a laundry-doing, apple-drying, bread-baking, donut-making kind of a day.
I’m still wading through piles and piles of apples. It’s wonderful. We will be eating these forever.
Baking from Mary Jane Butter’s sourdough book, Wild Bread, is fantastic. My favorite recipe is so easy to double, so I can bake a month’s bread at one time, and freeze it.
Doing laundry with homemade laundry detergent is so satisfying. None of the nasty stuff that’s in commercial detergents, no weird fragrances, and just a sparkling fresh load of towels!
And I ate too many donut holes.
Basically, it’s a great kind of a day.
About two months ago, a yellow bobtailed tomcat showed up in our barn. We knew what was coming and actually were glad of it, since a tragic set of circumstances this summer depleted our cat population significantly…We knew we’d be needing some more mousers! Well, it very quickly became apparent that both Grey Cat and Yellow Cat (I didn’t name them. Brad did) were expecting.
Friday morning, we found Grey Cat in the barn cuddled up with a little squirming pile of three kittens, a dark yellow one, a cream colored one, and a bright white one. Boy, she was proud of her little family! And there was Yellow Cat, her maternal hormones just raging, trying to mother Grey Cat’s kittens. We finally resorted to locking her up in the tack room Friday evening, and Saturday morning she was mothering a single tiny little yellow kitten. We left her locked up all day yesterday, and I finally let her out last night. Grey Cat heard Yellow Cat’s kitten crying, since Yellow Cat was a little incompetent, and darted into the tack room and stole him, squirreling him away to her nest of kittens. Yellow Cat was unphased and sauntered over to join the group cuddle.
Well, this morning there was one extra kitten, another little yellow male, and the two cats happily sharing mother duties.
What a funny little family.
When I got engaged and left a budding career as a paramedic, the first question people asked me was “So what are you going to do now?” The implied question was what I was going to do for “work.” Um, be a wife. Build a home. Serve my husband. Keep a clean house. Do laundry. Cook nourishing meals. Reduce our food bill by gardening and food preservation. Help on the ranch (we’re re-siding and re-shingling right now). On top of that, I teach piano, do photography, and write for a handful of publications.
Yes, I am a homemaker. And I have never been busier! My countertops are overflowing with home-canned goods and baked goods and eggs and garden produce. My husband has clean clothes and good food to eat. The house is welcoming and pleasant, generally tidy though loved and lived in.
Somehow society has convinced women that it is demeaning and belittling to build a home and serve one’s husband and family and to actually enjoy doing so, but that it isn’t demeaning or belittling to enter the workforce and serve your employer (who statistically will likely be a man) and customers.
Women will say on the one hand how they’d be bored to death if they stayed at home as a wife, but then the next second they’ll talk as if it is “privilege” to be a homemaker. We’ve created a modern home life that doesn’t have to take a woman’s full attention, with washing machines and dryers, dishwashers, Amazon and Walmart and easy access to anything you need. But more than that, women have let themselves be convinced that the work within the home shouldn’t take their full attention, and is somehow “lesser” work.
As far as it being a “privilege”…I know that there are situations where a dual income is necessary, or where a wife needs to work outside the home. I also don’t for a second think that women can’t or shouldn’t ever work outside the home. But the prevailing attitude towards homemaking is so sad. The home used to be a woman’s pride. Now it is generally viewed as a cage, or a worthless pursuit.
What a sad lie.
I have never been so busy. I have never felt so needed and purposeful. I have never felt such passion for my work, whether it is hanging laundry up to dry or making coffee for days working cows or canning my garden’s bounty or feeding chickens or mopping the kitchen on hands and knees. I take pride in a clean home, but I take even more pleasure in a loved home, one that is welcoming and hospitable and safe and comfortable.
I have figured out where I’m needed. And it is beautiful work.
My hardworking hens have been enjoying some extra freedom lately. I had been keeping them locked up until noon, so they wouldn’t squirrel their eggs away, but I decided to give all-day free-ranging a try, and these hens are well trained, obediently returning to the coop to lay their eggs.
As silly as I’m sure some think I am, I love my little flock of chickens, and the joy in the colorful basket of eggs at the end of the day doesn’t wear off, or the satisfaction in feeding my family, or of being able to provide friends and neighbors with delicious, homegrown eggs. The hens all have funny quirks and habits, like racing down to the horse corral in the morning to try to get in on breakfast, or coming running when they see me walking down from the house with a bucket, and it is such a peaceful sight to look down at the coop in the afternoon when they’re all spread out across the yard scratching contentedly away.
After all, it really is the little things.
Song Dog Journal 