"There are obviously two educations. One should teach us how to make a living and the other how to live."
James Adams, from his essay "To 'Be' or to 'Do': A Note on American Education", 1929
We're a Canadian family of five, farming, home schooling, and building our own house. I'm nowhere near as regular a blogger as I used to be.
The kids are 18/Grade 12, 16/Grade 11, and 14/Grade 10.
Contact me at becky(dot)farmschool(at)gmail(dot)com
"If you want a golden rule that will fit everybody, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."
William Morris, from his lecture "The Beauty of Life"
"‘Never look at an ugly thing twice. It is fatally easy to get accustomed to corrupting influences."
English architect CFA Voysey (1857-1941)
"The world of books is the most remarkable creation of man. Nothing else that he builds ever lasts. Monuments fall, nations perish, civilizations grow old and die out; and, after an era of darkness, new races build others. But in the world of books are volumes that have seen this happen again and again, and yet live on, still young, still as fresh as the day they were written, still telling men’s hearts of the hearts of men centuries dead."
Clarence Day
"Anyone who has a library and a garden wants for nothing."
Cicero
"Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtile; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend."
Sir Francis Bacon, "Essays"
"The chief aim of education is to show you, after you make a livelihood, how to enjoy living; and you can live longest and best and most rewardingly by attaining and preserving the happiness of learning."
Gilbert Highet, "The Immortal Profession: The Joys of Teaching and Learning"
"Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment."
Walter Wriston
"I'd like to give you a piece of my mind."
"Oh, I couldn't take the last piece."
Ginger Rogers to Frances Mercer in "Vivacious Lady" (1938)
"No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem."
Booker T. Washington
"Please accept my resignation. I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member."
Attributed to Groucho Marx in "The Groucho Letters" by Arthur Sheekman
"If you can't say something good about someone, sit right here by me."
Alice Roosevelt Longworth
"If we bring a little joy into your humdrum lives, we feel all our hard work ain't been in vain for nothin'."
Jean Hagen as "Lina Lamont" in "Singin' in the Rain" (1952)
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Please do not use any of my words or my personal photographs without my express permission.
Farm School, Farm House 
Depressing, yes. But, on the sort of kind of bright side — in that bailout of the Big 3 auto makers, Ford has said “no thanks.” I think it might be one of the smartest marketing moves they could have possibly ever made. I know I’ve got my eye on an Escape Hybrid. I’ll probably never be able to afford it, but they made it just *that* much more tempting.
Mind boggling. I can just see me walking into the bank and saying “I REALLY need this money, but I’d rather not tell you what I’m spending it on.”
Of course, the bigger problem is that the whole damn economy runs on debt and if the banks stop lending the whole thing really does go down the pan.
And I have spent many hours in the past week figuring out how to deal with the regulations around the funds allocated to help cities and counties deal with vacant and foreclosed properties. At the meeting on Monday I asked if people though the banks were sitting around puzzling thru regulations. I’m going to try the “I’m not going to disclose it.” And see what happens.