From the Homestead Table Category: Old-Fashioned Favorites There are days in the kitchen when the scent of something baking pulls more than just your appetite to attention — it pulls your memory. This morning, as I slid a pan of old-fashioned sweet bread into the …
There’s a certain rhythm to spring on the homestead.It doesn’t arrive all at once.Not here. Not where the winters hold on a little longer, and the ground takes its sweet time waking up. We still have a few mounds of snow lingering in the shadows …
(From the Hearth)
The story was passed on to me, not in a book or a museum — but over kitchen tables, worn photo albums, and memories shared with soft smiles.
Jim and Marge were already well into their married life by the early 1920s.
They lived on the edge of a small-to-medium-sized town, on three acres where town thinned into farmland. It was still a time when keeping a cow for milk, a horse for a buggy, or a few chickens for eggs was as normal as breathing — and nobody thought much of it.
It hadn’t been that long, after all, since nearly every back fence had a hen scratching under it.
Jim and Marge had raised two sons, Jim Jr. and Dan, both now grown and chasing dreams of their own. One had even made his way to the city, full of big hopes and bigger plans.
Their childhood rooms in the old farmhouse still looked much the same — the beds neatly made, the walls still holding the memories.
Life had been humming along in its quiet way until the Great Depression hit.
When the markets crashed and the world tilted sideways, it was the big cities that bled first.
Jobs vanished.
Dreams shriveled.
And letters began to travel back home.
Jim Jr., now with a family of his own, and Dan, struggling to find steady footing, packed what little they had and came back to the one place that still had room for them — their childhood home.
Jim and Marge didn’t have much money themselves — few did.
Taxes loomed, repairs were forever needed, and every penny mattered.
But what they had was land — and with land, there was life.
They worked what they had, growing nearly everything they needed:
a huge garden, chickens for meat and eggs, a few pigs for the butcher block.
When hard times came, they bartered with neighbors or sold extra produce in town — sometimes to buy animal feed, sometimes just to keep the lights on.
Food wasn’t abundant, but it was enough.
One of the first things they did when the family came home was take one full acre and plant it — half in potatoes, half in pumpkins.
Potatoes for hearty meals that could stretch a long way.
Pumpkins for canning, baking, feeding livestock, and filling the cellar shelves with jars of golden pulp.
That garden grew hope as much as it grew food.
With mouths to feed once again and work enough for every hand, simple meals became family treasures.
One of the household favorites was Marge’s potato pancakes — crisp, savory, and fried in lard.
Marge would always make a great pot of mashed potatoes a day ahead.
The first day’s meal would be simple mashed potatoes, piping hot beside whatever meat could be stretched that week.
And the next day — oh, the next day — there would be a towering platter of potato pancakes.
Made with a bit of flour — often bartered from the small town store — fresh eggs from their hens, and mashed potatoes, those pancakes filled bellies and hearts alike.
Jim Jr.’s son — Jim the third — though older now than his grandparents were then, still remembers it all as clear as if it happened yesterday:
The togetherness of a close-knit family
The endless hours in the garden, hoe in hand
The bittersweet work of butchering animals you cared for
The family table, crowded and worn smooth with years
The church pew warmed on Sunday mornings
The Wednesday night prayers offered in hope
And the smell — oh, the smell — of Grandma’s potato pancakes sizzling on the stovetop, filling the kitchen with more than just the scent of lard and flour — but with love stitched into every crack and corner.
Nothing fancy. Nothing wasted. Everything treasured.
“They didn’t have much, but they had enough. Enough faith to plant seed in uncertain times. Enough love to stretch one acre into hope. Enough hands to turn a crowded farmhouse into a sanctuary.”
And sometimes, enough potatoes to remind us — even generations later — that God’s provision often comes not with grandeur, but in the humble beauty of a meal shared around a table full of gratitude.
(Journal from the Homestead) For decades now, we as people have been trying to fill a void that only Jesus can fill. We work harder.We decorate better.We schedule fuller.We perform, and impress, and strive — believing that if we just do enough, have enough, become …
🧹 Sweeping the Floor, Sweeping the Heart (Scripture in the Ordinary) There’s something about sweeping that has never lost its place in daily life. It’s one of the oldest tasks there is—gathering the dust, brushing away the crumbs, clearing the path with nothing but a …
Submitted to The Biblical Homestead
Dear friends,
I’ve been meaning to write for some time now.
I suppose part of me felt a little silly—sending a letter to folks I’ve never met in person. But after reading your blog and watching your videos these past few months, I don’t feel like a stranger anymore. In some ways, I feel like I’ve stepped right onto your land and sat down for coffee. Your words and ways have been such a comfort to me, and I thought maybe I’d share a little of my heart, too.
You see, I’m in my sixties now. My husband and I are what you’d call “debt-free,” but not exactly land-rich. We have a good home and steady peace between us—but not the acreage we always dreamed of. It’s funny how prices rise and time slips away. We thought about selling and buying something with a little land, but these days even an acre outside town costs more than the whole house did back when we bought it. And building? Mercy. You’d need a banker and a lawyer just to put up a barn.
So instead, we’re settled. Not unhappily—just settled.
We’ve got a few raised beds tucked along the back fence and a small clothesline where I still hang laundry when the weather’s fair. I’ve got herbs in pots on the back porch and a good sourdough starter that behaves most days. I’ve canned what little our little yields, and I’ve learned to find joy in what’s within reach. Still, when I watch your family tending goats and walking your land in the snow, I feel something stir. Not envy, exactly—more like kinship. It’s as though the dream lives on through you, and I get to borrow it for a while.
Sometimes I’ll sit with my tea and just close my eyes while your videos play, letting the crackle of the fire or the hum of the goats take me back—not to my own homestead, but to my grandparents’.
They lived in a white clapboard farmhouse just outside a little town called Lavergne—not much more than a few roads and a post office back then. Their home sat on four acres, with wide fields that ran down to the edge of a woods I was never quite brave enough to explore.
The house was old even when I was young. It had those big, carved doorframes and tall baseboards, painted over more times than you could count. The floors creaked in every hallway, and the stairs moaned like they had something to say. The front parlor had an old settee with carved wood arms and dusty green upholstery, and on the walls hung floral prints in dark, carved frames that probably came from a catalog in the 1930s. A corner shelf held a glass figurine of a girl in a bonnet, and the lace curtains always smelled like starch and cedar.
But the kitchen—that’s what I remember most.
The scent of percolated coffee, bacon grease kept in a tin on the stove, and homemade rolls always tucked under a towel. There was a floral oilcloth on the table and a bread box that squeaked when it opened. My grandmother wore aprons every day of her life, and my grandfather had a quiet way of praying before every meal that made you lower your eyes without being told to.
When I stayed with them, I went to church every Sunday—no exceptions. I remember climbing into the back seat of their big Buick, my hair curled and bobby-pinned, clutching my little white purse. They took me to a tiny white church with worn pews, hard fans, and a hymnal that smelled like old paper and perfume. That was where I first heard “Come Thou Fount” and felt something stir in my heart I couldn’t name.
I didn’t know then that it was the beginning of everything I still hold dear.
So while I don’t live on a homestead, and probably never will, I keep those memories close. They shape the way I hang my laundry and knead my bread. They guide my prayers and remind me that a quiet life is still a rich one.
Your blog and your stories have stirred all that up in me again. Not in sadness—but in joy. You’ve given voice to a way of life that still matters. And even though I may be watching from a small backyard in Tennessee, I feel connected to something much bigger—something older and deeper.
So thank you for sharing your life with people like me.
Please know your stories are being read with great care and gratitude in a little house with herbs on the porch and laundry on the line.
Warmly,
Lorene B.
Lavergne, TN