While driving in the car the other day my lovely daughter says "Mom, I would like to learn to hunt". Now for any of you who have seen me, I do not in any way resemble a mom who goes hunting. I respect hunters and I respect the sport it is just not something that I have gotten into in the past. Nor do I think that it is something that I will do a lot of un the future. However I have made it a vow to make sure that my children are able to learn whatever skill it is that they want to aquire. So I guess I should start looking for someone to teach her how to hunt.
My mother then turned to me and said "You know, when the world falls apart. Aeryn is going to be okay"
I have been thinking about this statement for a few days now. And you know what? She was right. Aeryn is going to be okay. For the most part she is a very level headed child. She wants to learn how to farm and how to live off the land even though she knows that it is much easier to just go to the grocery store. She knows the importance of eating well. Which includes eating foods that are not loaded with preservative and other additives. She would rather eat meat that she knows has been treated humanely throughout its life even if it means saying goodbye to a friend in order to fill our freezer. (Not something that we have had to deal with yet. But we know it is coming and she is looking at it with an open mind) She understands that within a couple of weeks Delicious will be turned into bacon. And she realizes that without the sacrifice of Delicious's life, we would not have bacon.
This has gotten me to talking more with my child about other things she would like to learn. She wants to hunt and fish. To have a garden and be able to can vegetables for the winter. She would also like a cider press.
On her list of animals to learn about she would like chickens and sheep. Chickens for their eggs and meet and sheep for it's fleece. Apparently she thinks that if she owns a sheep than she will get more warm, knitted wool items from mom and grammy once they have knitted said fleece.
I could easily picture her living her own life without being forced to interact with so many negative parts of society. Now it is a struggle to get her to interact with the positive parts. She would much rather be outside learning what she needs to learn in a hands on manner than being locked in a classroom. I don't blame her but stress the importance of having both classroom learning as well as hands on learning. She realized a benefit of this recently when they were reading a story about a man who was logging with horses and was able to give her the input of actually doing it. It gave her so much more incite into the matter to know what it was life first hand.
She also enjoys being able to share her experiences when she is around groups of people. Aeryn understands that what she is doing is not a normal thing for chilren in our day and age. Not that there are not a lot of other children having the same types of experiences, it is just not the norm. She loves to answer questions and talk about the things that we do. I am pretty sure that I am going to encourage her to go into some of the public speaking events that the 4-H program offers. Aeryn would be an amazing advocate for farm children everywhere. And she is prood that you do not need to live on the farm to get the farm kid experience.
So my mom was right. When the world goes to the crapper, my kid is going to be just fine.
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