I think it is easy, especially in suburbia, to ignore the weather and the changing seasons. We have roofs over our heads and air conditioning to keep us comfortable. Our lawns and gardens are respectable and controlled. Some of us spent years working in cubicles or office buildings, unaffected by the seasons except for the occasional ice storm. As homemakers, we no longer live this way. We should take note. Why? Because seasons and weather are gifts that do us good every day—yes, even the heat.

There are lots of different women held up as the ideal homemaker. Pre-industrial, Little House on the Prairie, 1950s, homesteader, trad wife, witch. Some speak to us, some don’t. For instance, I have zero attraction to the 1950s housewife. She doesn’t inspire me. The homesteader mixed with a bit of witch gives me plenty of “scope for the imagination.” We each have to decide which ideal inspires our effort. What we must not do is worship at the ideal’s feet. What we must not do is judge others by the ideal we have chosen. We are all here to make an effort, ladies, not earn our worth.

Ideals go in and out of style. When I was young, it was June Cleaver, the 1950s American, who was the ideal. Now it’s the homesteader/trad wife/pre-industrial. All of these have good and bad elements. They’re all flawed.

When our only goal is how quickly we can get something done and how easily we can do it, we stop caring about that thing. What does it matter if it is broken, destroyed, or trashed? When we haven’t poured any labor into something, we don’t care about what happens to it. And when we don’t care about what happens to it, we stop investing in it. It is like that rental house. The person who lives there doesn’t care. They don’t mow the lawn. They don’t beautify the property. It is an eyesore to the whole neighborhood. Or think about the difference between how you feel about the cucumber you harvested from your own garden vs. the one bought from the store. You probably don’t feel a thing about the one you bought at the store, but the one you harvested? You took a picture of it, crowed about it, and relished sharing it with family and friends. It matters to you because you put the hard work into growing it. This is true about raising chickens, too. Every egg matters because of the work you poured into that egg.

God is good, and He cares about His creation. Freya’s death wasn’t unknown or outside of His control. She wasn’t unknown to Him. Not many people may realize that a chicken makes a sweet companion, but God knows. He set Freya in my path a little over a year ago, randomly, humanly speaking, chosen by the Tractor Supply guy, and gave me a whole year with her. A whole year. I don’t know why, but I found it a great comfort to know that the Lord created her, loved her, and was in charge of her beginning and end and that it mattered to Him, she mattered to Him. He knows when the sparrows fall.

An important skill for the HearthKeeper is the ability to romance our lives, to view life romantically. This isn’t maintaining a giggle-bubble, the often-confused-with-love romance, but it does have a similar softening and gentleness. It is not so much the overused '80s filter that turned the man and woman staring into each other’s eyes all fuzzy. It’s more like the snow and petals constantly drifting about in Legend. (Watch it. You now have homework.) Romanticizing our life and work has a bit of grit and cleverness in the gentleness. It is a choice to be comforting and merry when we could be cold and harsh. It is a choice for beauty, not just utility.

As I got away from social media, I got more and more burnt out about social media. How am I getting more burnt out doing less? Is getting over the dopamine addiction to being noticed? I’m used to having my fingers in several different ‘pies’ that let me interact with the internet. I’ve grown used to likes, hearts, and such. Now that I’m not really on social media, I’m not getting that little rush that says someone liked what I had to say. I’ve pulled back to things that cost people: podcasts and blog articles. These aren’t short and quick for the listener/reader or for the writer/producer. They require time and thought.