A new day

I changed the blog today. It started years ago as a place to record the developments of my final journey into motherhood. It evolved with my life, and has become a journal not only of my children, but of our farm, our sometimes haphazard movement toward a more wholesome life, and a celebration of the successes we have rejoiced in along the way.

Liam and Théa and their impact on my life are still at the heart of it all, though. It's really all about them. In their lifetime, the world is going to change. We aren't going to be able to ship strawberries from South America to the Last Frontier because the cost will be too high, both to our environment and our pocket book. So it's perhaps not a bad idea to know how to grow one's own, or at least have a general appreciation for what a strawberry plant looks like. It's also time to leave behind the model of food production that we were born into and taste a tomato that tastes like a tomato again, without pesticides or modifications that make it store-perfect but nutritionally inferior.

It's also about building a life that puts family dinners ahead of a bulging pocket book, that puts music and art in their proper lofty place, and relishes the simple pleasures of sitting around a campfire and enjoying the company of others, friends new and old. It's about the joy on my daughter's face when she returns from the hen house clutching a freshly-laid egg in her hand. It's about living a wholesome life, living whole.

I believe it matters now, and it will matter a whole lot more in coming years. This is my gift to my children, passed on to me by my own parents, who were pioneers of sorts in their own generation. When they left behind the opportunities presented to them in exchange for a more wholesome life, they shaped mine forever. It took a long time to understand why, but I get it now. This is my chapter in the story I inherited. And I'm pretty excited about it all.