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nissag
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An article I wrote explores the value of just one acre of farmland. Interesting list of facts for you to explore further with your kids!
Article here.
Enjoy!
Blessings,
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Nissa
Deacon's wife, mother of eleven, farmer, teacher, creator, cook.
At Home With the Gadbois Family
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cvbmom
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Let me know when your Farm School curriculum is available. Do you have any samples?
Thanks!
Christine
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nissag
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I'll announce it on my weblog when it's ready, Christine. I don't have any samples I can make available at this time, but I'll upload a sample lesson with the announcement.
HTH!
Blessings,
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Nissa
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At Home With the Gadbois Family
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Cay Gibson
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Bless you, Nissa. We live on two acres of land and my bil/sil live next to us live on another two acres (outside city limits).
That family garden plot I wrote about will soon become a reality. My bil is getting our neighbor (who has a tractor/tiller) come out and till up the land.
The economy situation and my bil's soon-to-be retired stance (also he no longer works in Houston but works locally and is home every day now) has our family jointly serious about this project.
I would love to see the curriculum and help support your cause at the same time. 
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Cay Gibson
"There are 49 states, then there is Louisiana." ~ Chef Emeril
wife to Mark '86
mom to 5
Cajun Cottage Under the Oaks
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missionfamily
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Nissa-We are working on the concept ourselves here...a bit scatter shot, I admit, but still...we have just a bit more than acre if you count our wooded area. We have ten chickens and are producing our own eggs...and 350 square foot of raised garden beds for veggies, plus a smaller bed for herbs. Our next projects are a composting system and a goat for milk.
Ideally, we'd like to someday get to five acres, where we feel we could be totally self-sufficient. But it is fun figuring out how to maximize what you have for real use, isn't it?
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nissag
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Awesome! Make sure your goaty gal has a companion. They're really sensitive to loneliness. A dog will do, or a wethered goat boy, if you have the space to feed him.
Scatter-shot isn't a bad way to begin - especially on small acreage. There is often a lot of trial and error until you get the mix that works best for your family and your land.
We are going to be gutting this 1.5 acre parcel after we move to our new place (which is 73 acres). We are planning to put 1 acre into grapes, with the balance in herbs and flowers. The place will be stewarded by a family until one of my children is ready to take it over.
The larger farm will support a much bigger, and more diverse operation which will feed dozens of families, including the poor in our area through tithing our crops/inventory to church-run shelters and food pantries. We will also have classes run by us, as well as local families, to teach various family-centered skills such as cooking, baking, sewing, knitting, woodworking, repair, etc.
We're hoping to be in a position to purchase Brian's family's homestead (80+ acres) after his uncle passes in order to do more of the same, plus offer temporary housing and work to the refugees who come to our diocese and are cared for by a Deacon family.
But it all started with this little 1.5 acre plot... You never know where it might lead you - and what a gift to leave to the next owner/occupant!
Blessings,
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Nissa
Deacon's wife, mother of eleven, farmer, teacher, creator, cook.
At Home With the Gadbois Family
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Bookswithtea
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Nissa, count me in as one of those people interested in your curriculum. We have 2.6 acres and are hoping to do a little bit more with it each year. We took on meat chickens in the fall, but are hoping to do both meat and layers this year. I am still hoping for goats, but it may have to wait a bit, until we can afford the fencing. Dh has lots of dreams for gardening as well (he is the gardener, I am more interested in the animals).
I am very very interested in finding a way to live this kind of lifestyle in an organic way (not the food sense, although that's how we will garden)...Everything needs to be glued together and feel like one thing flows into the next. I can't do a full school format and raise a ton of animals and garden, kwim? So something (or several somethings) have to go. If your curriculum turns farming into school and vice versa, then I am allllllllll ears!
Oh, and I saw you mention heritage breeds, too. Everyone I've talked with locally recommends raising meat chickens in a humane way, but that its just too expensive to raise heritage chickens for food (feed conversion rate and size of final chicken). That said, even though our almost 50 chickens were pastured and reared humanely (and taste fantastic, I might add)...boy could I tell that God did not make chickens this way. Watching them, they seemed...well...sort of crazy, if that makes any sense? If you have any thoughts on this, I'd love to hear them.
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Blessings,
~Books
mothering ds'93 dd'97 dd'99 dd'02 ds'05 ds'07 and  due 9/10
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nissag
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For us, school must be organic - fully integrated into life. I just can't do a school at home style, or a totally separate curriculum. It has to flow together.
I'm not sure if the curriculum will meet your needs exactly - but every family is different and you modify to suit your life and needs.
For us, the most important thing we learn, after a knowledge and love of our faith, is how to live. Academics happen incidentally for us. I'm no longer a proponent of standard achievement type learning. What I want to raise are faithful, functional, and learned people.
By learned, I mean that I surround my children with good literature (thousands and thousands of books in our home library), and lots of experiences, and lots of interesting people.
Makes em nice and rounded. 
Blessings,
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Nissa
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JennGM
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Very interesting, Nissa. My first thought when I opened your post was that it was along the lines of the "Have-More" Plan by the Robinsons. I posted here in a previous thread about that book. They did a whole plan of a homestead on 2 1/4 acres, but included ideas on how to do it on an acre. Always intriguing to me.
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Jennifer G. Miller
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Bookswithtea
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Jenn, I don't know how I missed that thread the first time, but thanks for reposting. I will be digging into those links during the winter.
Nissa, what does school look like at your home, and how old are your children???
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Blessings,
~Books
mothering ds'93 dd'97 dd'99 dd'02 ds'05 ds'07 and due 9/10
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MarilynW
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nissag wrote:
For us, school must be organic - fully integrated into life. I just can't do a school at home style, or a totally separate curriculum. It has to flow together.
For us, the most important thing we learn, after a knowledge and love of our faith, is how to live. Academics happen incidentally for us. I'm no longer a proponent of standard achievement type learning. What I want to raise are faithful, functional, and learned people.
By learned, I mean that I surround my children with good literature (thousands and thousands of books in our home library), and lots of experiences, and lots of interesting people.
Makes em nice and rounded.
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Ooh Nissa - how wonderfully expressed - I am just going to have to quote you on my blog . You know - it has been on my list for almost the whole of 2008 to contact you and ask you for information and resources on the Benedictine way of life, on self-sufficiency etc - I am always admiring your family and your lifestyle - and I know that you have achieved so much even with chronic illness. Hah - at least I am asking you at the 11th hour of 2008!
I have a dream that we will have a similar lifestyle some day - I so want to move out of the suburbs and the typical No Va mentality. Just not sure that my dh and I - a couple of city slickers who have never really ever got our hands dirty (hey I even kill zucchini!!) - will ever be able to make it. We have made many transitions to be being more self-sufficient in repairs and cooking and home products and using local farms and coops and avoiding big retailers - but we have a long way to go.
OK - I will try to pm you later so that I do not totally hijack your thread 
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nissag
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School looks like real life. As I said, we have lots and lots of books in our house. 4 floor-to-ceiling cases crammed with books, and more loose ones awaiting more cases.
I combine various elements of several approaches - very earthy-crunchy. I organize the kids' materials around Liturgical and astronomical seasons. We have a seasonal activities basket, a seasonal literature basket, and individual baskets with core "subjects" for each school-aged child. On the top shelf of that table, we try to put displays - which often walk off in the chubby hands of my tots. 
We keep a daily routine that is based around the Rule of St. Benedict (modified for use in a family), we have duties (based upon the titles and jobs of obedientiaries in a monastery) and chores to be done. All of that information is organized on a corkboard.
We've been fairly lax of late with all of the flux in our family - new partnership for Pa, heavy publishing schedule for Ma, new farm, new baby... It's OK. I think it's important for kids to live life as it comes, learning how to deal with bumps. It'll help them handle it in later life.
We have quiet time in the afternoon following luncheon. That means naps for the wee ones, free time for the older kids. Absolutely NO talking, no music out loud...
We have blocks of time set aside for baskets - my older ones take turns letting each other get focused work/help done and watching the wee ones. They are expected to organize something stimulating for the tots (counting, sorting, singing, etc.). It teaches them parenting, patience, and more.
We talk a lot about whatever - what Ma and Pa are learning at diaconate classes, current events and how we feel crises should be approached according to our Faith, etc. I allow my oldest two (16 and 14) to spend as much time on their passions as possible because I believe that this is the way God wants them to use their talents. My daughter Cate knits and writes (just finished the draft of her first novel), my son Jack is a woodworker, and is also writing his first novel.
My middlin's - Carrie 12, and William 7 - are helping more and more with the littles. We try to do more focused activities as time permits, but they learn so much from real life. We enjoy reading aloud - generally after tea time with Pa in the evening. Those books come from one of the baskets.
We listen to books and lectures on iTunes or tape while we're off to somewhere else. We enjoy going to museums, galleries, concerts (free on Wednesdays at the local theatre), or whatever activities we can. We like taking classes and field trips with other homeschoolers, and we enjoy our church family immensely.
Our kids spend a lot of time around clergy - a benefit of Pa's being in formation.
We just go with the flow. Each day has a real life to-do list (keeping house, making food, caring for critters, welcoming whomever might happen by, appointments, shopping trips, writing, etc.). That takes precedence over book learning. Somehow we find adequate time for the books and much more.
I've actually begun to write all of this down more specifically. It started as a way to help my engineer husband to understand how all of this works in case he wanted/needed to take over - at the very least so that he could be more involved. Then I started to think it might be helpful to my children as they grew to have their own families. I'm sure I'll get around to publishing it at some point - mostly because I can't help myself.
In a word, our school looks like multitasking. It all just sort of happens simultaneously. Not the preferred method of many families - but it keeps me sane. Well... as sane as it is possible for me to be.
HTH!
Blessings,
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Nissa
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At Home With the Gadbois Family
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Angel
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I haven't read this book, but when I saw the title to your thread I was reminded of it: One Acre and Security.
We got started by reading Five Acres and Independence. Although we own 15 acres, we're certainly not using all of it. Actually, my dh and I have been talking about that... how we could utilize our land better. (For the record, our garden is maybe half an acre -- maybe less -- and we have 11 chickens who free-range like they own the place.) There are quite a few small homesteads near us, though, that tuck in goats and chickens, geese, ducks, and a garden into a very small footprint.
I'd be interested in seeing your farmschool curriculum, too, Nissa. The chickens and garden seem to function as one big laboratory for us. This year we're planning for my 9 yo dd to take complete responsibility for raising some poultry of her choosing, and I'm hoping that my 12 yo will choose something, too. I've been doing some reading about Montessori's concept of "Erdkinder" (Farmschool) for ages 12-18, too.
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JennGM
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I love that you are "living it", Angela! The "Erdkinder" idea is so fascinating to me, too. It would require self-discipline to make it work, a definite virtue to glean in all of us!
I had posted a few reading links Continuning Theme of Cooking For Christ of books and pamphlets on the Catholic perspective of rural life and farming/homesteading.
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Jennifer G. Miller
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Cay Gibson
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Remember That Garden?
We're slowly getting the back acre of property (jointly between our two houses) ready for planting. 
The children are excited.
I'm looking forward to all the learning possibilities. 
We're starting small...baby steps...but at least we're starting.
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Cay Gibson
"There are 49 states, then there is Louisiana." ~ Chef Emeril
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Cajun Cottage Under the Oaks
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Bookswithtea
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Cay Gibson wrote:
| We're starting small...baby steps...but at least we're starting. |
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That's how dh and I are feeling too. We mapped out two areas in our little pole barn for chickens, 2 kids and 2 bunnies. And we've mapped out a garden area and where the fences will go for the kids and goats. There is so much more that we'd like to do, but for now, I am just *drooling* over seed and chicken catalogues.
We also had to make some hard decisions about extracurricular activities...making sure they are compatible with the time it takes to take care of animals, and I'm keeping it in mind too while planning for next year's school. It seems like they all have to be lined up for this to even have a chance of working. But I am so excited about the possibilities.
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Blessings,
~Books
mothering ds'93 dd'97 dd'99 dd'02 ds'05 ds'07 and due 9/10
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4Real Forums : Exploring God's Creation in Nature and Science
Topic: Just one acre...
