By Lighthouse Farm family
Posted December. 29, 2006
Greetings!
We are in the beginning stages of becoming a full-time family business - which we named Lighthouse Farm (www.lighthousefarm.com). This is something we have longed for, prayed for and worked toward for a number of years. We tested some of our business ideas while living on our small acreage in Indiana. We offered workshops on gardening, home canning, and chicken butchering as well as tours of our homestead to homeschooling families and had a delightful time! In case anyone is wondering, those who participated in the chicken butchering workshops had the opportunity to have a hands-on experience, and the majority of attendees took us up on that offer! At the beginning of each of our butchering workshops, John opens up God's Word to give folks perspective on why we eat meat. This has been greatly appreciated by participants and helped alleviate queasiness.
Earlier this year, John left his job at the university as a county extension director to respond to God's call to move our family to Minnesota in order to purchase and resurrect his parents' (his boyhood) farm. The farm is still in the resurrection process. We joke that we will have no excuse for boredom for quite some time! Traditional farm animals (cattle, sheep, pigs, chickens and dairy goats) are raised organically and sustainably on our farm, the way the Lord intended animals to be raised. We do not confine our animals in crates and on concrete in buildings. They have access to sunshine, fresh air and pasture which contributes to their health as well as ours. In addition, we do not have unfavorable odors around this farm - not even from the pigs! We enjoy having the opportunity to provide healthy food for our local community.
We so enjoy our way of life! While we have never worked harder together, we feel like we're on vacation at times, for we are all together! We have many opportunities to learn and practice team work and cooperation. When the cattle escape from their fence, it gives a whole new meaning to the term, "field trip" as we make a very rapid "trip" through the "field" to prevent the animals from taking a trip down the road! What a sense of accomplishment there is when we realize the triumph of raising enough tomatoes to make salsa, ketchup and tomato sauce to last a year! In addition, there are endless opportunities for study, learning and mastery on the farm covering many subjects of life - physics, math, economics, electricity, meat science, biology, ecosystem management, nutrition, agronomy, etc. This is definitely learning with a purpose. This is not a game or simulated/virtual learning. This is real life learning that our children will have the opportunity to pass on to their children.
Currently, some homeschool families make up part of our customer base for our meats, and once we get things set-up around here, we hope to be offering workshops and tours once again. In the meantime, we are close to releasing the next best thing to being here and learning first-hand, with the release of our how-to DVD's that we have recorded here on the farm, as well as lectures on CD. We are very excited to have this in the line-up in order to reach more folks. In the meantime, we have published some e-books which The Old Schoolhouse has graciously offered to sell on their web store. The ebooks are stories based on our family's first experiences with chickens and goats. We share the Scriptures that became more meaningful to us, as well as pictures of our journey. The reader will have the opportunity to read of a family that works together and cooperates together to put food on their table. This is sadly in stark contrast to what we typically see in today's world where few families sit down to even eat meals together.
John has been invited to speak at a homeschool convention this spring about agrarian-related subject matter into a home education curriculum. He has been invited to develop an online college-level curriculum in agronomy, animal husbandry, gardening, farming, food production and agricultural economics He enjoys speaking about these taken-for-granted subjects that cry out for God's perspective and redemption. What we are finding is that there are more and more families across the country, both urban and rural, who are becoming interested in and concerned about these subjects as well.
What better education can a child receive other than to know where and how his food is and should be raised, as well as how to raise it himself? Even Thomas Jefferson thought this was a very important topic to know. As a matter of fact, he wrote a letter to one of his daughters, "Do you know how to make pudding, cut a beefsteak, sow spinach or set a hen?" A true Jeffersonian education included one in which the practical production of food was mastered. To put it another way, we take the importance of families eating meals together to another level (why stop there?). What about the importance of producing the food that makes a meal? The benefits that stem from a family working together, cooperating together, learning together and producing something that is worthwhile and necessary for life are priceless.
We close with a few thoughts…
To give a man a meal will feed him for part of a day, to teach him how to produce his own food will feed him for a lifetime.
Sure, a child of today may know how to kick a soccer ball or play Nintendo, he may even know all the declensions and conjugations of Latin (which we are learning as well), but does he know how to put the essential, valuable and practical necessity of food on his table??
-"He who tills his land will have plenty of bread, but he who pursues vain things lacks sense" (Proverbs 12:11).
Thanks so much for allowing us to share!
Blessings from the Lighthouse Farm family!!
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