(LifeSiteNews) — EWTN’s recently aired series “On Good Soil” explores the growing popularity of homesteading, discussing how the lifestyle helps us better connect to nature, to our families, and to God.
The five-part series, available for free viewing online, intersperses host Jason Craig’s faith-based insights into homesteading in between interviews of Catholic homesteaders across the country who explain why they were drawn to farming and how it has bettered their lives.
Craig points out that getting on the land is not about “running away” from society but rather comes in part from the desire to “run towards what is real.” He noted that most people today are born into an environment that is “hyper-artificial,” since we are immersed both physically and mentally in the artificial from our lighting and indoor temperature to our entertainment and perfumes.
If we then become “too distant from creation,” we can become cut off from reality and fail to experience God through His creation. Craig cited St. Bernard of Clairvaux’s counsel to “read the book of nature” before you “read the book of God.” He also highlighted philosopher Joseph Pieper’s warning that those disconnected from reality can become “indifferent or hostile to truth.”
The 21st century presents a heightened danger of such disconnection because our devices can keep us constantly amused and distracted, steering us away from the “depth of thought that leads to prayer, which leads to God.”
A few of the families Craig interviewed spoke of the desire for a more contemplative life as one of the reasons they were attracted to a life on a farm. Longtime homesteader Jim Curley told how despite being busy on the homestead it affords him the ability to stop and “smell the roses” in a way he couldn’t while he worked an office job.
“I couldn’t just sit and contemplate my place in life, nature, God,” Curley said.
One family, the Sullivans, told how while living in the suburbs they “longed for a more contemplative life.”
“All these things in town were vying for our time and it was kind of intense,” Mike Sullivan said.
Multiple fathers also talked about how they felt compelled to live on the homestead to spend more time with their families, or even to form their children in an ideal manner.
Craig Taffaro was spending 10 to 12 hours a day working at a large bank before he made the switch. “It wasn’t enough for me to just leave the home so I could buy things (and) food and experiences for my family. Instead, they needed me. And that’s actually more challenging … to be present with my children in ways that can be frustrating, like when you’re trying to plant a row of corn and your children are picking the corn back out,” Taffaro said.
“We as a family are going to grow in virtue and holiness, not just as individuals but as a unit,” he added.
Curley not only praised homesteading for allowing him to spend more time with his family but also for what it offered for the formation of his boys.
“They really want to do things that matter. Little boys really want to be little men. They want to do things that men do,” Curley said. “Yet I had no way to give them that. I worked in front of a computer all day … I really didn’t feel like they were going to grow the way they should.”
Craig suggested that homesteading allows for the proper ordering of the family and economy, because the economy is supposed to serve the family and not the other way around. Social commentator Robert Nisbet has observed the family is “more cohesive” when it is working together as an economic unit, Craig said.
One couple suggested that the problem-solving work their children engaged in together on a homestead helped bond them to each other so that they maintained strong relationships into adulthood.
The series explores other moral, social and physical benefits of homesteading from character-building and physical fitness to the illumination of Christ’s many parables referencing planting and growing.
Watch the “On Good Soil” series here.
Shawn and Beth Dougherty’s homestead was also featured in an LSNTV original here.
