Akeret ha-bayit

Hi, Ladies! Sorry this is so last minute, but this week has been a bit crazy mentally-speaking with Michael taking the bar exam yesterday and today. I finally did come up with an idea for us all to meet at a nearby farm, but it looks like we’ll have to save that plan for another week with the weather not looking so good tomorrow. So unless someone would like to offer their house as “host place”, we can meet here again at my house. Hope that’s ok for everyone. I guess the summer does make it a bit harder to plan things. Anyway, just drop me a line if you think you’ll be able to make it.

Thought for the week:

In the Torah women are called akeret ha-bayit, the foundation
of the home. That doesn’t mean washing dishes. It’s educating our
children in everything we think about life. That’s the nature of what a
mother is. – Chaya Sasonkin

Has anyone been able to read the New Harvest newsletter I forwarded two weeks ago? Tomorrow’s discussion will center around the first three pages of the newsletter. Let me know if you need me to send it to you again. Looking forward to seeing everyone again!

Crystal

New Harvest Homestead

Hi, All! Last week at Wagon Hill Farm was fun and very peaceful – what a perfect day to have been outside letting the kids run around in the fields. Thanks to Jean for forwarding pictures of our group – they were great! We shared with each other about how we met our husbands and fell in love. It was so interesting to hear each one of us talk about God’s orchestrating our love stories so clearly and artfully. And they were so fun to hear! We’ll definitely have to share more personal stories like that in the future.

We’ll be taking a small hiatus this week as most of us for one reason or another will not be able to make it on Friday. I’ll be attending a homeschool conference for the weekend and won’t be around, however if any of you are really wanting to get together with those who are able, I hope you’ll take the initiative to contact others and set something up for Friday morning. We’ll all meet again as a group on Friday, July 21st – location TBD. (Isn’t this summer going by so fast?!)

Our next topic of discussion will be on a newsletter that I’m forwarding along to you. I discovered an interesting website called www.newharvesthomestead.com. I received the free introductory issue of the newsletter and would like to offer it to you to read as well. If you could read even just the first three pages to really get a sense of what it’s all about, it would be helpful as we’ll discuss it at our next meeting. (If you don’t have adobe reader or just can’t access it, let me know and I’ll copy & paste it into an email for you.)

I will email everyone the location of our next gathering sometime next week. Until then have a very safe and enjoyable week!

Crystal

What is your love story?

Hello, Kajijis! It’s been a beautiful week so far and hopefully, it’ll stay that way for the weekend also. Since I only heard from a couple of you regarding meeting in public places, we decided we’d try to meet outside again this week (like at the farm) since it was such a success last week. We’ll be meeting tomorrow morning at Wagon Hill Farm in Durham, NH. We’ll choose a spot to set up chairs and blankets and bring snacks for yourself and your kids. Emery Farm is just across the road where there’s goodies sold and also a few animals for the kids to watch and pet. If the weather doesn’t cooperate, the default location will be my place. (If it looks like rain, check your email just before you leave or call me to see if we’ve changed plans.) Please let me know if you’re planning on being there so we can watch for you.

As far as our topic of discussion this week, I think it would be great to occasionally delve into more personal territory and really get to know each other. I do have a list of topical questions that we can discuss such as “what are your discipline philosophies?” or “how do you instill confidence in your children?”, but I think this week I’d like to ask a more personal, getting-to-know-you kind of question. So…how did you meet your husband? Tell us your love story. Do you believe that God orchestrated the two of you being together and how do you think He did this? I really look forward to hearing all of your stories.

See you tomorrow!
Crystal

Cohousing

Dear Kajiji Girls,
What an unbelievable morning we had yesterday at Michelle’s family’s farm! Thank you so much for inviting us, Michelle! It was one of the most fun gatherings we’ve had. Of course, now we are trying to eat up all these strawberries which are very yummy. My family’s planning on making strawberry ice cream with them. For those of you who couldn’t make it, we’re sorry to have missed you on such a lovely day. I intentionally left the floor open for discussion of any kind as I wasn’t sure how the morning would play itself out so we ended up talking about the topic of cohousing. I don’t know if any of you are familiar with the term, but it’s a unique way of living in which a community of people create and design a communal neighborhood based on a shared vision/mission. It’s intriguing and appealing in many aspects. If you’d like to learn more about it, visit www.cohousing.org.

Erin took some great pictures yesterday at the farm and is able to share them with us – thank you, Erin! There are some really cute pictures…

I’d like to put a question to all of you: What do you think of meeting in public places during the summer? Ideas could be the beach, a playground, a park, a farm, etc. We could either have someone volunteer to bring the food to wherever we meet or we could pack our own picnics. The advantage to this would be not having to impose on anyone as hostess, and everyone would know in advance where we’d be meeting. The only concern I’ve heard about this idea is it may be a lot harder to carry on conversations with each other if our kids are running all over the place. Would meeting in a public location distract from the intimacy of our group? Please let me know what you think.

With that said, we’re looking for a hostess for next Friday so if anyone is willing to host the meeting at their house, that’d be great. And if I have no volunteers and a bunch of you liking the idea mentioned above, we may just decide to meet someplace completely different. So let me know as soon as possible. Thanks!!

Crystal