Mr. Kimball's Contributions

Hats off to Mr. Herrick Kimball, the Deliberate Agrarian.

First of all, Keith can't say enough good about Anyone Can Build a Tub-Style Mechanical Chicken Plucker. He says it is one of the best manuals he's read, and that even a non-techy could build a Whizbang plucker from the instructions. I tried to make him think really hard about that, to make sure he truly believes his words: "So you think that even I could build one from this manual?" And after slight deliberation and actually no hesitancy, he said that I could. High praise, indeed.

I know I said over two months ago that the children and I were going to use Mr. Kimball's most recent book, Writings of a Deliberate Agrarian, as a read-aloud. And we did--at least, we started it. As with so many other things, I got somewhat sidetracked. Not completely; we read it occasionally, mostly during casual lunches. But I was too easily distracted by other things and wasn't consistent with it at first. I've been very poor at sticking with read-alouds for quite awhile--which I don't understand, because we all enjoy it--except the 3yo, who wants only "his" books (you know--lots of pictures, etc.). This may be why I've gotten so bad about it, but he needs better training in this area, too.

And so for the last couple of weeks, we have immersed ourselves in Writings and have thoroughly enjoyed it. We didn't want to miss a word. But we did miss some: I couldn't finish "Life and Death of a Good Dog," and barely made it through "My Mother."

We read most of the stories on the backporch after chores during casual breakfasts and lunches. This provided wonderfully appropriate ambient sounds from the woods behind the house, the rooster in the chicken yard, the occasional bark of a dog or call of a hawk. It was a nice way to read them.

We finished the book this morning after breakfast, reading the final three "ramblings." I had a bit of a hard time getting through "The Old Photograph," about Mr. Kimball's grandfather, who was born the same year as my grandmother. She died in 2002 as she was approaching her 106th birthday. She was quite a woman, and a wonderful example. Mr. Kimball's story has prompted me to make sure I have pictures of all my children with each of their grandparents. Although they may have only a little appreciation for it now (and really not like the process), one day they will be glad.

I'm not sure how God has brought us to this point in our lives. We certainly had little or no early training that would lead us to Christian agrarianism. Regardless, He has brought us here, for which we are grateful. Mr. Kimball and other Christian agrarian bloggers have provided a great deal of wisdom and encouragement for us over the last year or two. Mr. Kimball's book is a great synopsis of many of our thoughts and feelings about life in general, and about Christian agrarianism--which is a way of life. And he is right in his Afterword when he states that "agrarianism apart from Christianity amounts to nothing special."

Mary Susan