I held my hand out in the moonlight as I walked into work this morning. It was so bright I thought I might could read if I'd had a book. Within a half hour the eclipse started and it felt so strange, how darkness fell. It was such a fine warm fall morning and the sky was perfectly clear for viewing. I called my husband and had him wake the kids up. I could see the moon through the parlor door as I milked, and I ran outside at full eclipse to see it really well. It was spectacular---the best one I've ever seen. Apparently the kids and their dad were on the side of the road by a neighboring pasture watching too. Our girl snapped a picture about half way through.

 

"I see the moon and the moon sees me and the moon sees the one I want to see."

Strung together. I love him.                                                                                        
image:RWR                                                                                                           

When pigs come running, a large group of pigs, and they are all trying to get close and rubbing against one another, their skin touching makes a sound like sandpaper. As with every other aspect of farming I've encountered, pigs are less trouble and smell than rumored. I won't say they don't smell. But they prefer to keep themselves clean. They do their best to confine their manure to one area of their pen and sleep as far from that area as possible. With no way to lick or paw themselves, they still manage to keep their bodies tidy. They are smart, their needs are simple, and they aren't aggressive so much as opportunistic. I used to be afraid of pigs---you hear such horrible things. But pigs are no problem, as long as they are setup well. The smell for which they are famed, as with chickens, is the result of feeding unnatural foods and poor housing. Pigs don't smell so much as human mismanagement smells. Pigs have a kind of dignity and unique beauty which is no longer recognized in our society, save for fairy tales and a few children's stories.

The perception of dignity and beauty on the farm is lost in our society in many ways. In the dark mornings when the cows follow each other in a silent line moving from pasture to parlor, I think of them as priestesses, keepers of important information about how to live that humans keep forgetting. Human cultural memory is astonishingly short. The most cursory reading of Little House on the Prairie shows us Pa's discontent with the crowded conditions of life in the United States in the mid 1800s. He felt the loss of wildlife and intrusion of society keenly. Pa's wild life with bears, cougars, Anasazi, and elemental rhythm is so long past its nearly mythical now. And it only took 30 years, one generation, for society to almost completely forget how to deliver babies, hand milk a cow, or handle any one of many lovely dignified useful life skills.

I had to hand milk a cow yesterday, for the first time since I took this farming job. My boss is so impressively strong and capable it would be absurd to compare the two of us. I am a pudgy housewife who bumbles along in her wake. Except for the skill of hand milking. I would guess there are probably less than 1000 people left in the United States who are skilled at getting milk out of a cow without machinery. I can do it in about 20 minutes, which is pretty fast. Hand milking was a nostalgic pleasure for me, yesterday. I think my boss was maybe a bit surprised? She offered to take turns, to help out with the task---something truly difficult and kind of onerous for folks who don't know how. It wasn't her considerable strength that mattered then, but my skill. It took me about 7 minutes to fully strip her dear old cow, a job she expected to require both of us and take "a while."

The life in and around that farm, flourishing more despite human intrusion than cultivation, is charming. I told the owner its a bit like Charlotte's Web around there. I hear not just owls and coyotes, but the subtle conversations of animals almost no one gets to hear anymore: cows singing for grain in their deep harmonic tones, pigs softly grunting to themselves, the voluminous and meaningful silences between all the animals that convey peace and rest. I've seen not just the profusion of spring frogs who show up to help with summer flies but the byways and creative paths of creatures in unexpected places like the mice who travel farm fences for safety and speed and the snakes who shelter in the farm clutter. Even our mechanical systems can offer unexpected beauty. The smell of the dairy parlor in the morning takes me back to banging through a well salted screen door at the beach just before the baking sun resumes its work, when the iodine tide has washed the sand, the oats in the dunes, and the warm soft air clean for another day. The parlor smells beautiful to me, surprisingly like the ocean, the two places society consistently harvests the most nutrient dense calories available for food in our culture.

Teenagers having fun.                                                                                                          image: RWR

Yeah, someday I will get around to reading John Holt, at least.

A while ago....actually, every so often....I get a call from a schooling parent who is frustrated and considering homeschool for their children. We talk. I say all the things I've said here. I try to be a good listener, and usually they send their kids back to school anyway. Which is fine, of course. Only parents know what is best for their kids. But sometimes I am deeply struck by the dissonance between our differences.

One mom had a miserable teenager---just very very unhappy in high school. So we chatted. I explained that homeschoolers can graduate at 16 and go directly to college, if they like. They can do this in the traditional way, if they are academically exceptional. And some do. Or they can enroll in the local university as continuing education students. Or they can proceed to community college and begin working on the first two years of general university requirements there, in a smaller and MUCH less expensive situation before transferring to university. Of these, I'm encouraging my kids to do the later. Its a great deal, if you're interested in higher education. A lot of homeschoolers choose this route. Aunt Katherine, who was Dean of Students for two different colleges, most recommended this last choice. And she was referring to "college ready" kids. Imagine being 18 with two years of college credit done and arriving on campus as a junior. Or taking a break then. Pretty sweet choice.

When I ran down the list of common options, this mother balked. Her son is already taking A.P classes and is "on track for acceptance" at the local university. And there I heard it, the dissonance. I understood her words and her reasoning, perfectly. But I also heard what she couldn't. There is no win, no special ticket, no extra points for getting into college in any specific way. Life does not care, universities do not care, employers do not care. You get nothing for how you arrive in college. You only get a reward for graduating. The whole kindergarten to college assembly line is a mirage. It, by itself, counts for exactly nothing. And trudging dutifully through it all, start to finish, wins exactly zero. If school is working, great. If its not working, you get nothing but pain for your trouble.

Here is a true, rather sad, thing. Many of these choices are made out of ego. Ego and denial, because admitting the situation at school isn't worth following through might mean admitting one hell of a lot of time and life have been wasted---not only of your children's but of your own. That's a pretty big thing to confront and most simply won't. Not even to help their children find another way.

Harvard, Schmarvard; Why Getting Your Kids Into College Should Be the Least of Your Concerns:
Let me tell you something -- college acceptance does not make a person succeed, nor does it say one thing about your parenting.
You know what does speak volumes about your parenting? Ask yourself the following questions:

• Does your child have a compassionate soul?
• Does your child have a healthy dose of intellectual curiosity?
• Is your child resourceful and independent?
• Is your child happy with who she is?
• Can your child creatively problem-solve?
• Is your child passionate about anything?
• Can your child sit with himself and enjoy his own company?

I've never read any books about homeschooling. Not about theory and not about how. I keep meaning to get around to it. The kids are 14 and 15. We've been homeschooling since 2005. Maybe soon?