Several years ago our friends Eric and Colleen started working out a vision of a new work farm / intentional community in West Virginia. Though Chicago natives, they had both served at Nazareth Farm and were modeling many of their ideas around their time spent there. Five years ago, all of their planning and praying and networking and connecting and money-saving and falling in love with WV paid off, and Bethlehem Farm was born. Their first baby.

This September they will welcome Miriam or Isaiah, their second “baby” and first child. Kelly and I took Hazel and Xavier down to the farm over the weekend for a blessingway for Colleen, to fit in a much needed break from reality, visit with the ones who are the friends – you all have these, right? – who seem to Have It All Figured Out And Do Everything Exactly Right And In The Simplest Possible Way. There is nothing these people do without first contemplating how it will affect their immediate community, the earth, and humanity in general. They know the origins of – if not the actual hands that grew or made – practically every morsel of food that passes their lips. They are humble and gracious and really stinking smart. Eric is a master gardener in every sense of the word, and Colleen makes quilts that could be sold at Tamarack. They are the epitome of People Who Have Their Shit Together. I’m pretty sure that, among other things, it has a lot to do with how little time they spend facebooking (or something like that). If I didn’t love them so freaking much I’d be insanely jealous and probably a little bitter. Which reminds me that, also, they are way better at our religion than I am… clearly. In sifting through photos to share I realize that I did not take any of THEM. Fail. Here they are with Kelly, PJ, and a freshly baptized Xavier. I miss PJ’s huge beard. Eric’s beard is not that huge these days, either, unless it’s just blending with his plaid shirt and looking bigger than it really is – neither is my brother in law’s. There is some kind of beard recession going on.

To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter; to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird’s nest or a wildflower in spring – these are some of the rewards of the simple life.
~John Burroughs

The first week of August hangs at the very top of the summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color. Often at night there is lightning, but it quivers all alone. There is no thunder, no relieving rain. These are strange and breathless days, the dog days, when people are led to do things they are sure to be sorry for after.

(I’ve been thinking about a childhood favorite all summer, and then Erin posted this – this is why we’re friends.)

Music music music, tiny family, far-away friends, cramming into tents to wait out downpours, ice-cold beer, dancing, happy kid, her “I love my life” and everyone else’s “I love mine, too” while passing around a jar of moonshine and bobbing in the coldest swimming hole in Fayette county (at least…)

…bliss that you could cut with a knife.

We’re all stuck in here together like a big family… let’s drink.

Here is where my schoolhouse-living fixation began: about five minutes down the road from my parents. I have driven by this place a thousand times in my life and never thought too much of it until someone started renovating over a year ago. They have gone really really slowly, little things here and there. The light fixtures are new since the last time I drove by. I don’t even know who these people are or where they live. The other side of the building has amazing rows upon rows of windows, but I didn’t want to walk around through the snakey, tickey weeds to photograph it while my mom sat in the car with the sleeping kidlet.

Dear people,

Please do not get rid of that old ceramic doorknob. I love it. The new light fixtures are perfect. Also, I think the glass bricks are weird. The rest is awesome – keep it up.

love,
emily

“I don’t expect things to ever be as good as they are at home – I’d say that’s an impossibility. There will never be family, crickets, darkness, stars, campfires, or quiet in this city. Someday there might be music and drop-in friends.

Something monumental needs to happen on this side of the border. The drive back gets longer every time.” -July 2007

A month later we found music. Monumental. And we get to see whole bunch of those folks in just over a weeeeeeeeeeek at clifftop!

Anything’s impossible ’till it ain’t.

I have this recent obsession with living in an old schoolhouse – I *love* this one.

My mom has a list of trees around home she wishes she could transplant to their yard. This knotty, holey dude is on it.

Out of commission.

Random aqua paint seemingly applied after the house started falling down – win.

July 2008

Several years ago our friend Mike made these shirts. They are really nice quality American Apparel shirts – soft & comfy, haven’t deformed, faded, or otherwise worn out after years of constant wear. He’s doing another run in new colors – preorder yours here!

It was their fourth try to find the four miners missing since Monday’s explosion killed 25 others in the nation’s worst underground disaster since at least 1984. During the previous rescue attempt, searchers were forced to withdraw by dangerous gases and the risk of fire or explosion.

Before that, apparently over Easter weekend, he wrote a letter to his mother, his fiancee and his 19-month-old daughter, telling them that he would be looking down from heaven if anything happened to him.

Story here.

If I had the money to do more than just feed them
I’d give them good learning, the best could be found
So when they growed up they’d be checkers and weighers
And not spend their whole life in the dark underground

People in West Virginia had hoped that on Monday night we would gather around televisions with family and friends to watch our beloved Mountaineers face Butler in our first chance at the men’s N.C.A.A. basketball title since 1959. Men working evening shifts in the coal mines would get to listen thanks to radio coverage piped in from the surface. Expectations ran high; even President Obama, surveying the Final Four, predicted West Virginia would win.

Then, on Tuesday morning, we would wake to triumphant headlines in sports pages across the country. At last, we would say, something good has happened to West Virginia. The whole nation would see us in a new light. And we would cry.

Read more »

This and this.

When the whistle blows each morning
And I walk down in that cold, dark mine
I say a prayer to my dear Savior
Please let me see the sunshine one more time

When oh when will it be over
When will I lay these burdens down
And when I die, dear Lord in heaven
Please take my soul from ‘neath that cold dark ground

I still grieve for my poor brother
And I still hear my dear old mother cry
When late that night they came and told her
He’d lost his life down in the Big Shoal Mine

When oh when will it be over
When will I lay these burdens down
And when I die, dear Lord in heaven
Please take my soul from ‘neath that cold dark ground

I have no shame, I feel no sorrow
If on this earth not much I own
I have the love of my sweet children
An old plow mule, a shovel and a hoe

When oh when will it be over
When will I lay these burdens down
And when I die, dear Lord in heaven
Please take my soul from ‘neath that cold dark ground

Yeah, when I die, dear Lord in heaven
Please take my soul from ‘neath that cold dark ground

- lyrics by Dwight Yoakam, performed in the above link by Gillian & Dave Rawlings