It was February, 15 years ago, when I began to write this, a cold misty day – my favorite weather, but I was ignoring it. My heart had attached itself to a small, glossy package of seeds entitled “Little Marvel Pea.”
Oh, how we love these, the best food every created! Each year my children searched store aisles with eager-eagle eyes and then the begging would begin and it would not end until I bought at least two packages.
That had happened in January and the seeds had sat on the table by my back door for over a month, proclaiming marvelousness each time I passed.
They are marvels because they have taught my children to love digging, planting, weeding, and sweating. Sowing and Reaping, the Parable of the Sower, and endless other lessons have been planted in young hearts because they will do anything for “Little Marvels”, briefly simmered and buttered, the earlier in the year, the better.
I’m so glad for what God can do through the simplicity of humbly acquiring real food for our tables.
I’ve been discussing pickles, though, with my friends, lately. Someone asked, “How do you make little, sweet, whole “Gherkin” pickles? My kids love them . . . ” There is such potential for blessing here.
Mom, teach those little ones also to love the simple act of acquiring them!
The answer is that first you buy cucumber seed. You will never find the right cucumbers at a farmer’s market. For the very small pickles you will need many more plants than usual because each plant sets only a few flowers a day. To get enough tiny cucumbers to bother with would take many days and the first-picked ones would wilt . . . so you need enough to be able to pick around 2 quarts at a time.
To accomplish this, plant about 25 seeds.
Now your neighbors will tell you that is too many, but they will really react when they see your whole cucumber patch in one neat row with no weeds.
Yes, plant those seeds in a row, about five inches between plants. Yes, ten to twelve feet of row would be just right. (Forget the neighbors!)
After they sprout, it is time to “subdue” them. Train each vine to follow the line of the row in which it is growing. At the far end, there will be vines trailing where none were planted, so plan a space for that. The concentration of leaves will shade out nearly all weeds and keep the soil moister and cooler. Also, the row scheme lets you walk, weed, hoe, till and harvest with ease.
Once the plants are in full production, pick them every morning. They’ll not be as uniform in size as “store bought” but will cost less. You may save them in an airtight container, refrigerated for a day, but not much longer. This will help you work around your busy summer schedule and provide for a bigger batch to work with each time you heat up your kitchen.
Any decent tool deserves to enjoy decent upkeep and your freezer is no exception. There is a right way to take good care of it and make it last longer.
First, you should defrost it once a year. It eventually will not work right if you do not. Even the frost-free types need an annual warming, rinsing, and drying, to get ice out of the insulation and remove frozen spills from the interior.
To defrost a deep freeze, you may want to choose a time when it is closer to empty, such as very early spring, but it does not really matter when.
Here is the procedure:
Take out all the contents. Place on a table or counter the things that are okay to thaw, such as bread, flour, etc.
Put everything else into a good thaw-proof place. The little freezer in your refrigerator is good. Your neighbor’s deep freeze is also good. You could use a large cooler. But if these options are not available, try this: Put all the frozen food into a laundry basket which is inside a couple of sleeping bags. No kidding, it keeps. Our family has moved frozen food that way on trips that take 10 hours. Sugared fruit might soften some, but it does that even in the freezer, sometimes.
As the freezer thaws, the lid or door should be open.
Please resist the temptation to chop or pry at clumps of frost.
A fan blowing toward the inside of it will greatly speed thawing.
The lid or door will likely be drippy, so be ready with several old towels. Better yet, take it outdoors to sit in the sun. When empty, it is not very heavy, just awkward. You’ll need help, but I have moved mine using the help of only three older children.
Once the dripping stops, the freezer is probably finished thawing. Bail out any standing water. Wipe the whole freezer, inside and out, with mild soap or baking soda water. Wipe completely dry.
Check for rust, inside and out, and very carefully remove rust with steel wool. Cover these spots with clear or white nail polish, or with car paint.
If the box seams are caulked, check for gaps and re-caulk, if needed, with a product suitable for freezing temperatures.
Now you are ready to plug it back in and let it freeze. Once cools, reload it.
Doesn’t it hum differently, now, as if it is happier?
Another freezer care-taking chore is to keep it dusted. Wipe the exterior at least monthly, including the sides. You should also wipe off exterior dampness during humid weather. Try to keep the dust from under it, as well.
One important fact that few people know: The deep freeze resents having items sitting on it, especially insulating things such as a pretty quilt or a pile of laundry. I am not sure why, but I have heard it traps warmth near the top of the box instead of letting it escape. I suppose this means the 25 degree “warmth” cannot escape from the 18 degree box, or something. I do know placing such things on my freezer causes moisture to form on it every time.
Last, but not least, I have prepared a short list of tricks and recipes for tomorrow. See ya!
Motivations regarded most important for homeschooling among parents in 2007. Source: 1.5 Million Homeschooled Students in the United States in 2007 Issue Brief from Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. December 2008. NCES 2009–030
Every summer, it begins again: Some people must check it out — Are we really supposed to be doing this home schooling thing? Really? Are we sure?
There is a reason for that: They worry about their children’s futures. Of course, this is the function of parents, but because home schooling is so “new”, many are unaware of what the future holds.
With that in mind, I submit the following long post. Hope you enjoy it.
I have to say there is definitely a future for your home-educated child. Many predict that is impossible. They don’t understand.
I know, because I have been to the future.
My husband and I, together with what were to become some of our dearest friends, began home schooling about 30 years ago. Can you believe that? I almost cannot. It was nearly unheard of, back then. There were no home-school web sites, no support groups, no magazines, no newsletters, and almost no other people to . . . well, I guess you could say we are antiques.
Some thought we were breaking the law.
Our families would not speak to us.
We did not know where the adventure would go, but we did know where WE would not go. Home schooling cost us in many ways (but not much, monetarily) and we knew we could never throw away such a costly advantage.
That was enough to keep us going, back then.
Now days, though, people are seeing fruit. We’ve been there and done it and some of us have written the books. In some cases, we literally have helped the colleges rewrite their admissions policies to accommodate us. Our children have gone to college, passing CLEP tests, and earning scholarships. I relate this to show that entering college is much easier for home scholars, now, because schools court us.
Yes, in these days of crumbling social skills, the colleges still know how to woo parents.
Does this startle you? It should not.
Think for a moment: The national study that delineates what causes improved learning reads as if someone had been watching our home schools. Everything that home schooling parents do, from start to finish, is in that study. Unknown to us, or to them, ours is the only set of circumstances deliberately designed to enable the teacher to do everything right.
So, of course, our children are set up to succeed.
Then, surprise, surprise: another study, one that investigated who was doing best in college, found that it was not the public, nor the private schools, but home scholars, all grown up, crunching the books.
No wonder people want our kids.
Mention homeschool and you get the job. Have you noticed that? We have. In any imaginable field, what we are speaks so loudly, they do not need to hear what we say. It is the life-style, the diligence, and the discipline, which make us attractive.
People wish they could be like us.
Lacking that, they hope to hire our children. It is as if they are casting a vote for our way of life, by helping our children along. In this wrong, wrong world, they have found something that is dependably right, RIGHT, RIGHT, and they like it. So many people are so glad simply to see a clean, healthy young person who does not have a chip on his shoulder—it just makes their day, gives them hope, eases their worries a little.
It should.
You see, somewhere, deep inside every person, is the witness that the Lord’s ways are altogether good and right. Some people will never acknowledge that, but they cannot help but be glad when they see something they can recognize as good and right, whether they acknowledge it as coming from the Lord or not.
They have seen plenty of the other results, of the world’s ways.
There is not a person on this earth, I hope, who thinks it is good that children are murdered at school. No one thinks that the children should be blowing up the schools. Who, in his right mind would approve of drug dealing in the hallways?
So we agree that we should go on with this home-school idea, although we do not feel like it, maybe. The days come, though, when we don’t think that we can do it, right?
Why not?
Some of us are undisciplined.
I have heard it so often: “I don’t have the patience (organizing skills, energy, time, or whatever) to home school.” We have always answered with, “Neither did we. But we wanted to acquire those skills, and home schooling taught us how.” Actually, though, it was the Lord teaching us new heights of self-discipline. He wants to do that for all of His children.
We need a new perspective on life in general, and on home schooling in particular. If God has given us children, for their sakes we must begin to concentrate on the after effects of our actions with them. We dare not come to the end of our schooldays saying,
“I just did not have my act together.”
Some of us are just tired.
As your children age, guess what—you do too. Bones hurt, and muscles weaken and stiffen. What would you do if you worked in a public school and your joints were bothering you? Would you still get up and go to work? Of course you would. If you did not even care about the children who were depending on you to teach them, you still would think about the principal, school board, and superintendent and their responses.
Well, now your husband is your principal, your support group is your school board, and God is your superintendent. You can go on. Otherwise you must someday say,
“I just grew weary in well-doing.”
Some of us are afraid.
We think we do not have what it takes to teach higher levels. I want to encourage you by saying that although I only made “B’s and C’s” in high school math, I could remember what I had learned, thirty years later, well enough to help my children puzzle out their problems.
The moral is that if you ever learned it, it probably is still “up there” somewhere amongst the clutter of your busy mind.
Actually, what I found, was that from phonics to geometry to history and beyond, I never really learned much in the state institution that I went to, and am just now beginning to appreciate and retain these facts. I never learned to write until after all my formal schooling was over.
Maybe it is just that you learn more when you teach. I know the home school methods have been “officially pronounced” the best for actual learning. You actually, probably do have all you need to teach your older children. The parts you forgot are about to be remedied—something you have needed for a long time. It will not be good to come to the end of the school journey saying,
“I gave up because I was afraid.”
Some of us truly did not ever study some subjects.
Perhaps you were in an institution that emphasized sports or movies, or did not teach.
Maybe somehow you escaped or fell through the cracks or quit or just could not grasp it.
Perhaps you had or have a learning disability yourself.
Mother, please, please do not think you are excluded or disqualified from the joy of finishing your older children’s education. There are several ways to make it happen:
There are entire courses of lecture available on video or audiotapes. You do not have to know anything except how to pop in a tape.
There are your friends at the support group. Ask and discover who is good in English or math. Realize that they probably would be, and rightfully should be, very glad to support you in your endeavors.
There are the people in your community, who want to cast their vote in your direction, as I was saying. One of my best friends, a college math teacher who has remained childless, delights to answer my questions, although they usually are way below her level of expertise. I try not to wear her out, but if I am stumped (which happens in algebra II) I call her. She loves it so much and we have a good conversation to top it off.
You can find this type of help, too. You dare not send your child back into the same system that failed you. There has to be a better way. Learn with your child. Otherwise, all you can say, at the end, is,
“I didn’t try hard enough.”
Some of us fear that we will somehow harm our children.
As long as you realize this possibility exists, and as long as you dread it, you are precisely the person who should be teaching your children. People who think they can do no wrong do not approach children with a good sense of dread of error. They are the ones who lead them astray, use them for guinea pigs in psychological experiments, and just plain teach them wrong.
I will not tell you that you will never make a mistake.
I certainly could not tell you that from my own experience.
If you care this much about your child, though, casting him into the public arena is what you must NEVER do. This is nearly guaranteed to harm your child. Keeping him near the life of God in you is what he needs. Even if you make mistakes, he can learn from them, too.
According to Solomon, those who fear harming the children are the ones who should raise them and not any others who could not be able to care as much. Do not plan someday to say,
“God’s grace was not sufficient.”
I am past fifty years old and (at the time of the original writing) still have two teens to finish schooling. Sure, I am tired, some days. (Who isn’t?)
Yes, I have to look up things or reread the teacher book, some days. (The same for cookbooks.)
Of course, I have to find someone to help me, some days. (With plumbing, with doctoring, and with schooling.)
And, I have, I have made mistakes, missed the mark, some days. (In possibly every aspect of life.)
Nevertheless, there is one thing I do every day—I look into the eyes of my children and see clear-headed humanity looking back at me, not mass-produced confusion. That is life—true life.
Do you ever come to the end of the summer vacation with NO IDEA where the days went?
I have found a solution that we love, that worked several summers for us.
We kept a journal.
It wasn’t fancy—just some lined paper stapled between construction paper, but we made it more fun than it sounds. You may want to copy this idea.
After the children chose the color for their journal cover, they took turns adding decorations to the front. These usually were made with crayon and stencil, for ease and speed, but you could do some creative cut and paste and make the cover, itself, part of the event.
My kids are so no-nonsense.
You will need enough pages for the whole summer, say, ninety days. We eventually made ours simple as possible, but if you would like illustrations along the way, inside your journal, you will have to allow more pages. We would put two day’s of activities on each page, in a list form.
Some days’ activities were planned for us. We always shopped on Tuesdays, for instance. When green beans HAD to be canned, they just had to be, regardless of our wishes. Excess rains might mean an extra mopping chore. No matter. Whatever we did, we recorded.
The other minor rule we used was that we would do two note-worthy things each day. They did not have to be magnificent or impressive; they just had to be things we actually DID. Of course, the children preferred writing about the fair and the water park, but our goal was to realize where the summer went, and if it went to mopping and canning, then so be it.
In the end, we had a great little reminder of each day, plus a good grasp on where all those days went. Try it this summer, and see!
I found a quote that glorifies motherhood and debated whether it is self-glorifying. I decided it praises the office of motherhood, not any particular person, and is beneficial to consider, I think, so here it is.
I’ll be speaking at a home schooling convention this weekend and must finish my PowerPoint slides, iron, and who knows what else, these next three days, so you’ll excuse me if I’m absent, I know. I’ll likely have time to reply, but not to post. If you get too bored, do not forget to slip over to the new site: TheConqueringMom.com, and leave a comment or suggestion! Thanks!
“A mother…by her planning and industry night and day, by her willfulness of love, by her fidelity, she brings up her children. Do not read to me the campaigns of Caesar and tell me nothing about Napoleon’s wonderful exploits. For I tell you that, as God and the angels look down upon the silent history of that woman’s administration, and upon those men-building processes which went on in her heart and mind through a score of years;—nothing exterior, no outward development of kingdoms, no empire-building, can compare with what mother has done. Nothing can compare in beauty, and wonder, and admirableness, and divinity itself, to the silent work in obscure dwellings of faithful women bringing their children to honor and virtue and piety.” Henry Ward Beecher
Do you know any Japanese people? If you do, I’m surprised, because they’re an endangered people group.
The United Nations statistics show that, every day there are 720 fewer Japanese in the world. By the end of this year, Japan will be missing 200,000, and by the year 2050, Japan will have lost nearly a quarter of its population.
The reason? Embracing materialism and the Culture of Death.
Japan is invaluable to demographic scientists as a demographic laboratory because it is practically a closed system. She allows almost no emigration or immigration. It is a 99% ethnically homogenous population, and in that way can give a rare glimpse of the future of the entire world.
Japan’s problem is simple: Her women have virtually stopped having babies.
The total fertility rate (TFR) is the number of children each woman must have in order for a nation to have a stable population. For an advanced nation like Japan, where infant mortality is low, the TFR is a low 2.1 children per woman. However, Japan’s population was the first in the world to dip beneath replacement fertility half a century ago (in 1960), and its TFR has continued to plunge. It now stands at an astonishing 1.1 children per woman (half that required for replacement), and will continue to decline to 0.6 children per woman by 2050.
When women stop having babies, the result is unavoidable: the nation’s population briefly peaks, then declines. Japan’s population reached a maximum of 126.5 million two years ago, and is now one million less. This downward trend will spiral and accelerate until the nation is losing a million people a year.
A declining native population is not inherently a critical problem if a steady stream of immigrants is helping to replace the younger age groups. However, Japan has always been extremely reluctant to allow foreigners to live within its borders, and makes it nearly impossible for them to live and work there. Less than 1% of foreigners who wish to live in Japan pass the mandatory language proficiency exams.
The result is that Japan is severely pinched at both ends of the age spectrum. The numbers are stark in their ominous simplicity:
The number of Japanese children under 15 has declined for thirty consecutive years, from 24% of the population to its current 13%. Japan now has fewer children than it did a century ago, in large part to the forty million abortions it has suffered since it legalized the practice under the Eugenic Protection Law in 1949. Due to the strong government push for women to enter the workforce in response to the economic downturn, fully 70 percent of single Japanese women now say they do not want to be married. The Japanese “business first” mentality sees having a child as a career-ending decision.
The number of people over 65 has increased for sixty consecutive years, from a mere 5% of the population in 1952 to its current 23%, and is projected to increase to 43% by 2050. Japan is currently the oldest nation in the world, with an average age of 45, and this will increase to an incredible 60 years old by 2050.
Thus, Japan has the greatest percentage of people over 65 of any nation in the world, and the lowest percentage of children under 15 of any nation in the world.
The combination of a shrinking young population and an exploding elderly population inevitably has profound economic implications.
There are fewer and fewer workers supporting more and more retirees. In 1950, there were ten Japanese workers supporting each retired person. Now, there are just 2.5 workers supporting each retiree, compared to China’s 8:1 ratio. By 2050, each Japanese worker will have to support one retired person, the lowest worker/retiree support ratio in the world.
Japan’s inverted population pyramid (more elderly than young) means more pension and health care spending. Baby boomers are retiring now, and by 2025, 70% of government spending will be consumed by debt service and social security spending.
Fewer young people means less tax-derived income for the government. More spending plus less tax revenue means an increase in the public debt.
People concerned about the economy delay marriage and childbearing, and so a kind of demographic negative feedback loop, or “vicious cycle,” continues.
For SEVENTEEN YEARS, the Japanese government has tried everything to get women to have more babies, including greatly increased child care benefits, but without any result. In 2006, the “Year of the Dog,” former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi even tried calling for “lots of puppies” implying that labor pains would then be easy. The government has even gone so far as to pay for so-called “speed dating.”
But once you convince people to be addicted to things and tell them for decades that babies are a burden, that they interfere with your wants and your needs, and they are bad for the environment, your nation is doomed. No nation in history has EVER recovered from a total fertility rate as low as Japan’s.
The Lesson
What can we learn from the ongoing, slow-motion Japanese disaster?
1. Just as Japan is a closed system, so is the world.
2. Just as Japan’s population leveled out and began to plunge, so will the world’s, and very soon.
3. This will lead to gigantic economic consequences and human suffering on a scale never before known.
I wish a Happy Mother’s Day to those who value it!
That is why He told the disciples, “I am going to send you what my Father has promised . . . ” Luke 2:49
The promise was the Holy Spirit.
Let’s track this Holy Spirit from the beginning: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” Genesis1:1-2
You can’t go any farther back than that, the first page of the Bible. But there’s lots more.
Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit. Matthew 1:18-20
The HolySpirit appeared visibly at Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan. Luke 3:22
It was prophesied that Jesus, Himself, would baptize people with the HolySpirit. Luke 3:16
The old man, Simeon, recognized Jesus, by the power of the HolySpirit, when Jesus was a week-old infant. Luke 2:25-26
Jesus taught that the heavenly Father would delight to give His HolySpirit to His followers, even more than our own fathers would give us food. Luke 11:13
Jesus said His followers should never worry about what to say in His defense, because the HolySpirit would give them the words to say. Luke 12:12
Jesus taught that one of the purposes of the HolySpirit is to keep teaching us, because of so many things we must learn that we cannot grasp all at once. John 14:26
Jesus said He could not send His HolySpirit unless He went away. John 16:5-7
Jesus said, “Father, into Thy hand I commend my spirit,” when He died. Luke 23:46
Jesus promised power to be good witnesses after receiving the HolySpirit. Acts 1:8
Having the HolySpirit is how we get godly love. Romans 5:5
Righteousness, peace, and joy come from the HolySpirit. Romans 14:17
Our bodies are to be a temple of the HolySpirit. 1 Corinthians 6:19
Purity and patience come from the HolySpirit. 2 Corinthians 6:6
The HolySpirit seals us. Ephesians 1:13
The Old Testament was written by inspiration of the HolySpirit. 2 Peter 1:21
Jesus did an amazing thing after He returned to the Father. He sent His own spirit, the Holy Spirit, to be IN the disciples and IN us!
Without Him, we have no power over sin, the flesh, or the devil. Without Him, we are doomed to fail. We need Him every hour of every day and our Father wants us to have the Holy Spirit.
“If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the HolySpirit to those who ask him!” Luke 11:13
It was February, 15 years ago, when I began to write this, a cold misty day – my favorite weather, but I was ignoring it. My heart had attached itself to a small, glossy package of seeds entitled “Little Marvel Pea.”
Home's Cool! 