Welcome to Books, Ballads, & Bites, a bi-weekly newsletter of all things artsy and bookish with an agrarian flavor. Here I share my recent reads, pass along musical finds and favorites, and give you a seasonal recipe to enjoy. The full newsletter is available to paying subscribers. As always, thanks for reading, and thank you for supporting my work here on Lady Agrarian.
Let us begin with a lamentation —
Writing lately has not been coming as quickly as I’d like it to. I have several topics that my heart and soul is bursting to share, but I can’t quite flesh out with words yet, and I don’t want to share something that’s not well-developed. It’s not for lack of dedication — when I have the time to sit down and write, that’s when all my words feel trite and useless. For all my efforts, I am being held back. And that, I can concede, is perfectly okay. It’s good for me to be forced to go slowly. But it’s still not ideal.
In many ways, it has been a theme in my life as a Christian and a woman to have to go slowly, to be faithful, and sometimes to just wait.1 Fighting against this did not work; I tried, for many years. These days, sometimes it’s pleasurable, sometimes not, but I am learning to see that it is a gift.
Good things take time. Fermented foods, sourdough bread, hardwood trees, good wine — all are better with age, if you just wait until they have taken the time they need.
Slow living can be seen as just another fad or search keyword. But slow living has become more to me than that. It’s a philosophy that informs my food choices, how many social engagements I say yes to, the kinds of clothes I buy, and the ways I use my time. This philosophy has also helped me accept times of rest as necessary and good.
I worked on a dairy farm several summers ago, and those were the longest, hardest, most wearying days of my life. I was not operating with a slow living mindset. I was probably not working as hard as the family who ran the farm, either.
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