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Archive/Correspondence/SEP2023 Letter.md

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+ It's been a month out here.
+
+This is the most beautiful place to pray. Perhaps it's just the nostalgia - but to read the Gospel facing the rising of the sun illuminating all - all the work for the day - is marvelous. The stars adorning the night sky and the moon still reflecting the sun's radiance - glorious. The splendor of God is most decidedly on display here.
+
+Harvest has begun. We've only been at it a few days. I'm still trying to figure out the best use of time - there's ample downtime given in five-minute bursts. I'm realizing it's actually pretty conducive to reading and writing, at least for me. A captive audience, and an excuse to put down the book or keyboard after a few minutes.
+
+It's refreshing - but a bit despairing - to take up this work of machinery maintenance and operation. Being at the whim of what some engineer decided was a good idea - like, for instance, mounting a hydraulic motor _by a rigid coupling_ with a wear plate to react the torque. It looks like something an intern came up with and nobody design-reviewed. Maybe it was...
+
+I baled hay for the first time in my life - so I'm officially a farm kid now (if I wasn't before). Beats the in-cab experience - much more formative. There was a real beauty in it.
+
+A few weeks ago was a bit of an 'apple week'. We picked some 20-30 bushels from our tree. Mom made applesauce and the like, and I made cider. I've got a few gallons fermenting in the basement. I'm very excited for it to be ready in a few months' time. Fresh garden veggies and eggs make a difference.
+
+We've cleaned out the shop massively. I've made room for some of my own equipment, so come winter we'll have more time, space, and ideas for projects. Already back at the icons...
+
+I got roped into teaching 1st grade CCD at the parish. That just began; hopefully it will bear fruit in time. The whole culture out here is... markedly different. I'm struggling to figure out the way in which it is, but there seems to be an amplification of the rural-urban divide, in part borne out of a resentment for what the industrialized farming has become - not something idyllic. Add suburban sprawl on top of that, the outflowing culture from the colleges, and nearly 200 less years of history... and you've got a much less rooted people (except sometimes in the small towns - and even then - the desire to flee is there). I'm not sure what to make of it. It's in need of conversion, sure - but how to light the fire, and from where?
+
+Pray for the continued conversion and healing of my family. There are pains here which need healing, and I'm not sure how other than by the grace of God.

Archive/Correspondence/Slattery.md

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+Hi Father,
+
+- enjoyed book
+	- vision of the New Jerusalem vs disembodied heaven
+- also been reading on Regen Ag more and more
+- obviously, something needs to change
+- attraction to the priesthood:
+	- what
+- attraction to farming:
+
+
+My reaction is the same as that of the physicist Niels Bohr...: "You probably think these ideas are crazy," ; Bohr replied: "I do, but, unfortunately, they are not crazy enough."
+
+"The machine imagination of reality dominates" - no room for the immaterial/spiritual
+
+What's most relevant?
+- I am attracted to the message you preach
+	- The vision of the New Jerusalem
+
+======
+
+I am grabbed by the conception of the Heavenly Jerusalem.
+
+The most compelling and astonishing thing you write is on page 120:
+
+	Firstly, we must try to get our heads around the fact that the Creator intends to heavenize Planet Earth — yes, the biosphere, and not just humans. I can empathize with your astonishment. We moderns don’t think of the end of history in this way. Our imagination is of an otherworldly, ethereal, “spiritual” hereafter with Earth thrown on the junk heap of history. We plan on going “upwards” to Heaven, abandoning the ship of this world. Far from our thoughts is what John describes: “the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God” (Rv 21:10), a fact which he repeats in Revelation 22 to make sure we get the message. Even the visionary was apparently so hurled into numbing perplexity by what he saw that the angel had to assure him that what he was viewing was reliable (see Rv 21:5) and to urge him to start writing (Rv 1:19).
+
+	Our personal destination is the Heavenized Earth via Heaven. Although in the intermediate state between our death and the Second Coming of Jesus, God’s plan is for us to “go up to” Heaven — this is not the final place of arrival. It will be a stopover. Heaven at the end of history will be amalgamated with Planet Earth, utterly transforming it. Therefore, salvation is, as N. T. Wright, explains it, “not rescue from the present world, but rescue and renewal within the present world.”447
+
+Paul Kingsnorth recently gave [a talk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3hMSZqatHI&t=1690s) at First Things titled "Against Christian Civilization" that is quite compelling, and I might (hastily) summarize his point: Christian Civilization should not be a conscious goal to strive towards (when it is, it ends up being weaponized), but at its best, is a natural outflowing of striving to adhere to the commandments that God has revealed to us. The Q&A afterwards was particularly interesting; with the final crux: The Heavenly Jerusalem is given, not built by us; the New Jerusalem comes down to meet and save us - it is not us reaching upwards.
+
+I don't think this is contrary to what you write. But so much talk about civilization and the fruits of following God can tempt us into idolatry of these things - whether this be created human culture, or even nature-worship.
+
+I ponder what our role is here, ultimately. We live in exciting times. Just as you write about new developments in physics that better align with God's ways, it appears that this growing sphere of "Regenerative agriculture" better understands and interacts with land, biology, community, economy in Godly ways:
+- Understanding that everything is interwoven and interconnected
+- Understanding that the complexity of the world is far beyond our understanding
+- Recognizing that there is an inherent goodness in the given biology of the world that we are to shepherd, not just dominate and extract value from
+
+For all of this I am still left wondering where I fit in to everything. I grew up on our farm. I went to school for engineering. I do have a 'knack' for design. I worked in industry for a few years. Everything felt wrong. I came back here to the farm. The prescriptive machine thinking prevails here just as much. I am growing out of it intellectually, but unsure how to materialize this.
+- I may be able to steer our farm away from current practices towards biological ones
+- I may be able to build something new within our farm's shell
+- I may leave to start a different farming operation
+- I may find more engineering work that helps this regenerative agriculture sphere
+- I may abandon it all for a life of religion
+
+This last option confounds me. It comes up to me in times and places. But mostly when I'm "fed up" with the world.
+- I enjoy wrestling with and discussing ideas, especially philosophy and theology
+- I believe I possess most basic seeds for such a calling, although wise judgement / discernment seems to be a weak point of mine
+- I enjoy "roughing it" and desire to live in a radically different way
+- I am, when I have clear direction, energetic
+
+Back to Kingsnorth. What is our role? Is it to build something that emulates God's ways here and now by obeying His commandments? Or is it to prepare ourselves for the coming down of the New Jerusalem? Are these the same thing?
+
+Do I re-attend to the garden here and now? Or wait for the new one to come?

Archive/Correspondence/farms.md

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+# Local Farms
+
+### Prairie Creek Pastures
+https://prairiecreekpastures.com/
+Mennionite Family (Steiner)
+Tremont
+Grass-fed AND FINISHED beef, chickens, etc.
+https://prairiecreekpastures.com/contact form
+309-431-1846
+
+### Little Blues Farm
+
+### Fifty-Four Farms
+Grass-Fed, Grain Finished
+Chestnut, IL
+https://fiftyfourfarms.com/contact
+217-816-5716
+
+### Meadow Haven Farm
+100% Grass-Fed beef, Eggs, Pastured pork
+Sheffield, IL
+meadowhaven@gmail.com
+815-303-6223
+
+### Dearing Country Farms
+This is a whole bunch of stuff - just about everything; exact details are unclear
+https://www.dearingcountryfarms.com/
+classes: https://www.dearingcountryfarms.com/book-online
+
+farms@dearingdesigns.com
+309-963-4932
+
+### PrairiErth Farm
+Just vegetables
+PrairiErth@gmail.com
+HansBishop@gmail.com
+
+### The Table Farm & Workshop
+bad web presence
+veggies and chickens
+815-209-6695
+
+### Funks in the grove?
+
+### Epiphany Farms
+Crazy bougie farm-to-table
+CSA

Archive/Correspondence/sep2024 letter.md

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+This past month has been a handful. The ewe lambs I acquired are settling in, and pretty well acquainted. Still learning lots about them and just getting a feel for it.
+
+Finished a few biggish projects. Our statue of St Patrick blew over in a windstorm and some other parishioners repaired and repainted it - I put a really good clearcoat on and some much better concrete anchors.
+
+We installed some stations of the cross at the cemetery. This ended up being more of a project than I wanted... but I found some really great finishing techniques, particularly for the steel posts.
+
+The prototype cultivator actuators I've been developing debuted at the Midwest Mechanical Weed Control field day. They worked like a charm and grabbed a lot of attention, and helped demonstrate the adjustability of the cultivator.
+
+This past weekend I was in Greensburg, IN at the Catholic Land Movement conference. More social than informative, but inspiring to hear from a lot of people trying to get back in touch with the created order of things, and coming up with some creative economic solutions to help in this (like zero-interest loans, community land trusts, different ways of raising livestock on a smaller scale). Mass was really beautiful.