Seeking freedom….

In our journey here on the farm, we have been seeking freedom…freedom from relying on others for things that we can do for ourselves with God’s help. I have seen this mentioned on several blogs lately so it seems that other hearts are being stirred as well. Just when we begin to congratulate ourselves on achieving freedom in an area, we are brought up short (isn’t God faithful!) and shown another area that we need to work on. It has amazed us how many times this has happened!

For instance, when we began raising chickens for eggs we felt independent….but we still buy feed…. When we began raising our chickens for meat and butchering them ourselves we thought “freedom!”….but we were buying the chicks. When we bought some calves and raised them for meat we felt “we did it!”….but we still bought the calves. We began raising our own veggies several years ago but realized we were still buying the seeds. And the list goes on…

God was gently showing us that we weren’t as free as we thought! We have been taking steps over the years to change this where we can. Will we ever be completely free? I don’t know…I hope so. Each year we try to walk a little more in that direction with God’s help.

Historically, this seemed an achievable thing…in fact it seemed to be the normative lifestyle for most agrarian folks. If they needed something that they didn’t raise they were able to barter with someone else to get that item. Surely this is achievable again….

Last year we started taking eggs and incubating them and raising our own chicks….it was very successful. This year we robbed eggs from a guinea nest and raised the young ourselves. This year we will breed our milk cows to a black angus bull and raise our own meat.

We began saving seeds several years ago. Do we produce all of our own seed….no…..but each year we get a little further along. We learned a lot about seed saving and why every farm should be doing this ….it goes much deeper than the cost savings, the independence issue or the desire to disengage from “Big Ag”. But, that is another post for another day.

We aren’t “there” by any means but each time we do a little more for ourselves there comes a satisfaction that is hard to explain. I believe it comes from fulfilling God’s original intent for our lives. Each step on this journey takes us a little further towards our goal…greater freedom from the world and it’s system and a deeper reliance on God. We praise Him for this great journey!