Emily van Lidth de Jeude

We had a beautiful moment, yesterday, when two young women who grew up next door to us brought us a jar of honey in trade for our chickens' eggs. They're just visiting their parents' house, as they both moved out years ago, now, and it was lovely to catch up a bit, and chat about what flowers the bees were drinking from. Here's how it works: Both my and these young women's parents bought land, when it was affordable, here. Our parents grow and tend to a plethora of flowers, fruit trees and vegetables. Their parents keep bees that drink from the flowers in both of our yards (and pollinate the veggies and fruits we grow, as well!) and we keep chickens, who not only fertilize our veggie garden, but provide eggs and meat that we can trade for this gorgeous honey... made partially from the nectar of our own flowers. The neighbours on the other side of us grow corn that for some reason we can't grow just a couple hundred feet to the west, so we delight in fresh corn, ...

You can only get pushed and pushed and pushed to a certain point, and then it becomes easier to take a leap to somewhere else. That happened to us with our first child, as we tried to find his place in the landscape of school options, and nothing--just nothing--felt good to him. We had heard about some mysterious people who just didn't send their kids to school at all: unschoolers. Terrifying. But after some research, I timidly told our son's Kindergarten principal that we'd be joining the unschoolers. And to my shock, he agreed it was a good idea for our boy! I was scared, but we jumped. And suddenly we felt so free. So the thing about jumping is that you do get this feeling of freedom, but then you have to land, and land running. I guess we've mastered that, now. We embraced the landing of our unschooling choice, and took step after stumbling step over the next ten or so years, until we discovered our kids (because our daughter chose to unschool as well) were fully ca...