Thus far, I have said very little about homeschooling in regard to this concept of liturgical homesteading, but after doing some reading and reflecting over the weekend, I felt that perhaps it was time I write a little on the subject.

If you are not familiar with me or the site, I homeschool our 8 children, we homestead, and we have been learning a lot about liturgical living as a way of deepening our Catholic faith life and practices. Our journey to liturgical homesteading began with homeschooling. Long before we thought about homesteading, and long before we came to understand our Catholic faith, we were thinking about homeschooling. Prior to getting married, I had decided that I would like to homeschool my children. When we became pregnant with our oldest, we started to discuss the idea, and before our oldest was old enough to be shipped off to preschool, we made our decision… homeschooling it would be. At the time, we were planning to take it one year at a time, though I always hoped to do it all the way through. As of 2027, our oldest will be graduating from our homeschool!

As we began our homeschooling journey, I read through the Wisconsin Parents Association (the name has since changed to Wisconsin Homeschooling Parents Association) handbook that went through all kinds of important information that really got us excited to homeschool. We attended the annual WPA homeschool conference and were further inspired for our journey. At the time, we were neither homesteading or living out our Catholic faith, though homeschooling ended up providing an avenue that may not have otherwise existed for us to engage in both ways of living (Catholicism/faith, and homesteading).

Homesteading was the next obvious path for us at the time. We were on a tight budget, and I was always looking for was to help cut down on expenses. I became particularly interested in the idea of gardening as I was looking for ways to reduce our grocery bill. We had 3 kids at the time, but the grocery bill was continually expanding, and I felt that I couldn’t really afford to buy healthy food for the family. My husband and I watched the Back to Eden documentary featuring Paul Gautschi, and were really encouraged to start gardening. We realized that gardening was really actually a practical idea for our family, and wasted no time in getting started.

Gardening was exciting, not just because it could someday help us to reduce our grocery bill, but because it would serve as a natural learning opportunity for our children, from the science of seeds and soil to the math of canning and preservation. What I hadn’t anticipated was how much gardening would help me to reconnect with God. I had gone through a spiritually difficult season, and just wasn’t as connected as I knew I should be. We were living in a small town, and for the first time in my life, we had neighbors right next door. It was experience I didn’t enjoy. I grew up in the country, and it was there I felt closest to God. I saw His fingerprints all over nature, and getting back to the soil reminded me of those connections. The other thing I didn’t anticipate is that it would lead us to homesteading, though it is a natural segue.

While our children were learning along side us through gardening, my faith was growing, and my desire to do more with the land was growing, as was my husband’s. Just prior to deciding we needed to move, we were investigating the rules of chicken-keeping in town, and talking about the possibility of buying the neighbor’s house that had just been foreclosed on. If we could gain that land, we could do so much more. But God’s plans were so much bigger and better than our limited vision, and within the year, we ended up on our homestead.

From the time we moved to the homestead, we started to be encouraged to return to church. We had protestant friend trying to convince us to attend services with them, and one of our Catholic friends was encouraging us to return. It took a year, but eventually, we made our way back to the Mass. The very first step we took towards liturgical living (without understanding what that phrase meant). We started to observe our Sunday obligation. We came back to the Church because we knew it was right and what God was calling us to, though we really didn’t totally understand why, so we still didn’t take our Sunday obligation seriously. It took us a bit. Having little kids, we always had some reason to miss if we didn’t really feel like going… we were exhausted, somebody was sick… Until we recognized that we needed to stop finding excuses and commit.

Months later, we committed to making Sunday a day of rest. We were running ourselves ragged, between my husband’s job, homeschooling the kids, trying to maintain the house, and all of the projects and work on the homestead. There was always something to be done, but we needed rest. Finally, it clicked. God commanded this. Life became less stressful, though it was still plenty chaotic. I finally began to settle into a routine with homeschooling and we were able to stress a little less about the homestead.

Homesteading was such a natural fit to homeschooling. Many of the activities of the homestead could serve as a form of teaching. It opened more possibilities for educating our children. It was necessary for us to get the kids involved in chores around the house and outside, and they began to take on a lot more responsibility. I’d start exploring the history of something out of my own interest and share that with the kids. Like so many other homeschoolers and homesteaders, the Little House series was a great source of inspiration and encouragement, in addition to providing engaging reading material for school. One of the best pieces of advice I received early in our homeschooling journey was to let my children see me learn and do things that inspired me. My parents were “DIYers” before it was a term, so it was natural to me to engage with this advice. I’ve always loved reading, and there were so many things to learn and do… it became more of an issue of making sure I didn’t go too far off into my own stuff for the sake of the kids.

As I said before, through working with the land, I began to dig more deeply into my faith. Being an adult on the land, I started to understand so much more about Sacred Scripture. My prayer time increased greatly. And the more we prioritized God, the more I wanted to live the way He was really asking us to. The journey to our homestead was too providential for us to not question what it was that God was asking us to do.

As our children began to receive the sacrament of the Eucharist and Reconciliation, I was trying to learn more about our Catholic faith so that I could stay one step ahead of the kids. They’d come home from religion classes, and tell me all they learned, and I’d have to go research what they’d share, because I didn’t know what they were talking about. Eventually, I started to get ahead of them. My interests led me to read Maria Von Trapp’s autobiography, which led me to her book “Around the Year with the Trapp Family.” This was my first serious introduction to the concept of liturgical living in any comprehensive way. That book brought about a total perspective shift, and I began to engage in teaching my kids about the faith in a much deeper way. The one particular point that started to make liturgical living and homesteading connect was when she talked about eating a suckling pig for the feast of the Epiphany. Suddenly, I realized that our faith and the work of the land could intertwine in a way I had never noticed before.

In reading the book “The American Catholic Land Movement: Past, Present, and Future,” it really made me think about why homeschooling is such a good fit (and potentially such an important fit) for rural, Catholic living. As the book points out, rural Catholics have long faced a gap in opportunities for education: not enough Catholic schools, not enough religious education programs. In my own community, the local Catholic school closed several years back. We were homeschooling long before we returned to the Catholic Church, and I had no plans to send our kids to school, even parochial school. The cost alone was prohibitive, and our family does not support programs where the government helps fund Catholic schools, because it does impact curriculum and decisions made by the school.

I understand the financial issues the schools face, and am not unsympathetic to these struggles, but maintaining the faith within the schools is a struggle many of the schools in our area face as it is. Getting the government involved is only likely to worsen these problems. As seen with the influx of non-Catholics into these schools after the Covid-19 pandemic, I have heard from family and friends involved in some of these Catholic schools about the trouble that has been caused by the non-Catholic families. I understand that families seek a quality education, and that the Catholic schools are known to offer that, along with generally maintaining a certain moral standard, and I’m not opposed to Catholics and non-Catholics working together, but the faith of a Catholic educational institution should not be compromised by having non-Catholics involved. Unfortunately, this has often been the result.

During the pandemic, we opted to switch our children to an entirely home-based religion program. I admittedly felt that getting the kids to R.E. every Wednesday night was a burden, and while I appreciated what was being taught, I was also not okay with many of the Covid restrictions that were put into place and couldn’t in good conscience, comply. We did R.E. from home for about 2 years, and once restrictions were lifted, we were more readily able to participate on the community level. Taking the effort to teach my children from home during this period was incredibly beneficial for me, as I learned a lot in the process. It also opened my eyes to help me understand some of the things I was a little disappointed in from the program. I know that’s a hard thing for some people to hear, but it had far more to do with the understanding and enthusiasm of some of the catechists than taking issue with anything being taught. I eventually became involved, first, in helping to get an adult faith formation program started, then, in assisting with one of the classes, and after that, becoming a catechist myself.

While I absolutely feel that families need to educate their children in the faith at home, that they should live it out in their daily lives, I recognize what a huge gap there is in many of the families in their own understanding and dedication to the faith. I completely understand why the diocese has requirements for sacramental, catechetical education. I understand the complexities of the catechetical problem… as a parent who didn’t get it, to a parent who wanted to get it, to a catechist who has seen first-hand the relative indifference of parents.

So, what are we to do? Well, I think first, that parishes need to be incredibly supportive of families who choose to homeschool. There is most definitely a trend that shows that the children most well-educated in the faith come from homeschooling families, and that these children end up taking important roles in parishes, including an influx of homeschooled priests. Homeschoolers tend to have larger families and take their faith seriously. These children are the next generation of the Church. If we want to see our parishes pulled out of complacency, we need to support these families. This becomes all the more important where access to Catholic education is either financially out of reach, or distance makes it difficult.

Second, homeschooling families need to stay involved in their parishes. I think there is a place for doing Religious Education at home, but I also see the diocesan perspective. We are a part of a community, and we should engage with it. If we don’t like something about the programs, what are we doing to effect change? How are we getting involved? As a mother of 8 children (going on 9), I completely understand how busy life is. Believe me, I get that there feels like there isn’t time in the day, and that we could do this during the day, at home. We want our children educated at home, and we don’t want to worry about what is being taught or what potential negative influences could be there. But could we give our time anyway? Could we serve as catechists or aids while our children are in classes? (As a side note, homeschooling families need to be as supportive as they can be of non-homeschooling families. No judgement, no negativity. Support those who cannot or don’t want to do what we do, for whatever their reasons.)

Third, we need to find ways to encourage true liturgical living within families. We have to bring traditions back to our families and homes. For those who live rurally, helping families connect the work of the land to the life of the Church is so important. Traditions are meant to serve as a form of catechesis. What I have really appreciated about the things I’ve uncovered in the past few years is that liturgical living doesn’t have to require a bunch of “prep” work. It requires commitment to change, but change can come incrementally. What are our parishes doing to help families bring worship into the home and their work?

I know that there are some that would argue with me on the appropriateness of this point, but I think for many of the Roman Catholics of the West, having brief announcements or talks at the end of Mass could make the world of a difference. I have been advocating for years that our parishes would have “testimonials” given at the end of Mass. When people leave Mass as quickly as possible after the closing prayers, when they don’t read the parish bulletin, when they won’t listen to the pleading of the priest, we need to do something to shake up their complacency. We need to capture their hearts and attentions while we have them within the walls of the church, because the people who leave so quickly after Communion are also most often the ones who never come to activities or events outside of Mass. It doesn’t have to be weekly, but it should happen from time to time, at least until things really begin to turn around. We have to get comfortable about sharing our faith. St. Peter says in 1 Peter 3:15 “Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope.” Do we do that, are we able to do that?

The laity who have a desire to see things change need to step up and donate their “time, talent, and treasure” to making things happen, and not simply complain about what isn’t happening. Buy prayer cards for St. Isidore and hand out at the end of Mass. Print out copies of the Rogation Day prayer booklet, and encourage others to participate in praying with you. Ask your priest if there can be a parish-wide blessing of herbs at the Feast of the Assumption. Bring traditions that matter to this rural way of living to the parish. If you have the ability, share what can be learned about our faith from these traditions. As homeschoolers, get your kids involved with you. Ask them which traditions they wish others would know about or partake in. Have them help hand out materials. Let them help you plan a special event for the parish. This is a part of their schooling, it’s a part of their faith, and it’s a part of the work they are involved in around the homestead.

I’m not sure why I am sharing all of this, other than I feel prompted to. I want to encourage you that this way of living is good! It’s not easy, but I’ve been seeing the fruits of it for years now. Homeschooling is a challenge, especially when you are juggling littles while trying to teach your bigs. Homesteading is a lot of work. Both ways of living make lots of messes. Living out our faith requires lots of sacrifices, but then again, when we homeschool and homestead, we already understand the value and importance of making sacrifices. Living out our faith as Christians, however we are called to do that is bound to be difficult at times, but it’s rewarding. The rewards we look forward to are not of this life, are not of this world. The children we raise aren’t just a part of our life, they are our responsibility, our vocation, our duty. These gifts from God are a serious responsibility… we are responsible for their souls. We need to be sure that we take that responsibility seriously.

Perhaps, above all, I want those of you considering this way of living… you are not alone! You are in my prayers!

In Christ,
Danielle