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Bonding Through Work Instead of Play
Maremmas are incredible dogs. They’re smart, funny, and affectionate. They know their herd (in our case, our family, our cat Rex, and a growing flock of chickens) and they know how to guard their herd. They won’t do anything they don’t want to do, or rather, anything they don’t see as their job to do. They can be stubborn and sweet, obedient and obnoxious. In short, we love our Maremma, our “little” Luna. I noticed something different about training Luna from what I could remember about training the dog my family owned growing up, a Springer Spaniel named Daisy. Daisy lived a full and happy life, digging up rocks in…
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Abide with Me
This is a guest post from my husband, Brian. Brian works casual call as a nurse and does the majority of the work involved in taking care of our land and animals. In his free time, Brian enjoys planting trees, building things (like this incredible chicken coop), and singing hymns. We’ve been married for 14 years, and I’m happy to call him my husband. *** Change and decay in all around I see,O, Thou who changest not, abide with me. I’ve worked in a nursing home for the past 15 years. Recently, especially while at work, this hymn has been on my mind. It uses evening as a metaphor to…
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7 Good Mental Health Habits to Continue in 2023
I love making New Year’s resolutions. (Here’s a list of my past New Year’s resolutions: 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022). This year, however, I decided to set the goal of continuing some good mental health habits I started in 2022. The first group of my good mental health habits concerns food. I’ve posted a lot about my struggles with overeating, and I continue to fight against that sin in my life. Overeating, for me, is a spiritual issue. I understand the ideas behind methods such as intuitive eating, intermittent fasting, and diets like keto and paleo. None of this matters, however, if I choose to continue to eat foods I shouldn’t…
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Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence
This is a guest post from my husband, Brian. Brian works casual call as a nurse and does the majority of the work involved in taking care of our land and animals. In his free time, Brian enjoys planting trees, building things (like this incredible chicken coop), and singing hymns. We’ve been married for 14 years, and I’m happy to call him my husband. *** Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs A few years ago we did a short family presentation in which we each brought our favorite book. I brought a hymnal. The fact that 1,700 years worth of songs are filtered down to the best 700 or so and…
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My 2022 Book List & My Top Ten Songs
Happy New Year, friends and family! As I did in 2021, this past year I kept track of all the books I read, either as family read-alouds or on my own. (This list doesn’t include the books the kids asked me to read out loud to them–that would be a very long list!) As a family, we especially enjoyed Brave Ollie Possum by Ethan Nicolle, the Green Ember and Archer series by S.D. Smith, and the Nnewts series by Doug TenNapel. My favortie books on the list this year are The Princess and the Goblin and The Princess and Curdie by George MacDonald. The book that held my attention for…