A Meditation on Work, Family, and the Rewards of Real Living.
There was a moment of pause just now before I began writing . . . just long enough to realize I didn’t want to send a typical newsletter.
I thought instead I would let you into something more ordinary . . . and more sacred.
This week, we are preparing for Easter: concert practices for all the children in their choirs, time given to considering the message I will bring.
But there is also another kind of preparation underway—food preparation—and that is what I want to write about: our preparation for the Easter meal.
Not with an order from H-E-B. Not even with a phone call to a butcher.
But with a walk down to the paddock.
My fourteen-year-old son, Sean—who, in many ways, already carries the responsibility of a man—has been managing our flock of 130 sheep almost single-handedly. This evening, he went with me, along with his younger brother Aaron, to select the lamb that will be our Easter meal.
There is no casualness in that moment.
To take the life of an animal is always weighty. But it is especially so when the animal is not anonymous, when it has been watched, tended, protected . . . when its life has unfolded under your care.
And yet, if we are going to eat meat, then we ought to face what that means honestly.
Better an animal raised on green pasture, moving freely, feeding on diverse forage, living a life that is, by any measure, good, than a life spent in confinement, transported, processed, and abstracted beyond recognition.
No trucks. No feedlots. No fear-filled corridors.
Just one clean moment. One short crack of a .22.
As dignified an end as one can give.
We loaded the lamb onto the bed of the borrowed Ranger and brought it up to the house. Under the header of the garden gate, we hung the carcass. Beginning as I have been doing since I was Aaron’s age (mostly on deer), I began again.
The boys stood nearby. Holding the light. Asking questions.
I slipped the point of my knife beneath the skin at the hind legs and drew it upward—like unzipping a garment. Slowly, deliberately, we worked the hide down, peeling it away. Then the gutting. All contents are carefully placed into a plastic trailer positioned beneath to be carried straight to the community compost—nothing is wasted; everything returns.
The yearling lamb, now dressed, was washed from neck to tail, every stray hair removed.
Then Beck and Sean brought out a barrel of brine: water, kosher salt, and spices. The lamb went straight in, never touching a table, and from there into the cooler.
And there it will rest.
Through the slow process of osmosis, that salt will move inward—fiber by fiber—until by Sunday morning the meat is seasoned all the way through and ready for roasting.
When that day comes, I will fill the cavity with onion halves, whole garlic bulbs, rosemary, cinnamon sticks, and slices of lemon. Black pepper. Coriander. Layer upon layer of fragrance.
Then I will wrap it tightly in foil—completely enclosed—and place it in the oven directly on a rack with a pan beneath to catch drippings. It will barely fit.
Eight hours.
No rush. No shortcuts.
Just time and heat doing what they do best
By the end, the meat will be tender enough to fall apart at the touch of a fork. We will set it on a great platter over a mountain of saffron rice—golden, studded with almonds and dried fruit. Around it will be yogurt sauces, mint chutney, and chimichurri—bright, acidic accents to balance the richness.
And then folks will come.
More than eighty of us—family and a few friends gathered across generations—filling the porch with noise, laughter, stories, and gratitude. Eating food that was raised on the same ground beneath our feet.
This is work—farming, feeding, protecting, harvesting, cleaning, preparing, cooking.
It is tiring. It is not clean. It is not convenient.
But it is participation.
Participation in life, not the curated version, not the sanitized version, but life as it actually is. Including the parts that are tough, and heavy, and unpleasant.
And I do not want to outsource such living.
I don’t want my children to inherit a world where everything difficult has been handed off to someone else, where the cost of living is hidden behind packaging and badges and distance.
Because somewhere, someone still bears that cost.
Only likely, those doing the dirty work must bear it daily. Mechanically. Disconnected from meaning. A nine-to-five that deals in death without the context of gratitude or family or celebration.
So instead, we step into it—together.
The effort.
The discomfort.
The responsibility.
And the reward.
And this is why we live as we do—rurally, deliberately—why we home-school, why we often home-birth, why we link together in community.
We want more than a life kept behind glass and handed back to us in sanitized plastic packaging. We want the duty, the difficulty, the grit, and the grace. We choose the challenge . . . and the reward. We opt for the more weighty privilege of becoming heirs of real living.
Spring has come. And it’s calling us again into the rhythm of things—to the soil, to the work, to the table.
A time to take hold of what has been given.
To recognize the yield of our labor.
To count, not in abstraction, but in substance, the blessings of life’s great Giver.
And to share the bounty.
It is springtime.
And it is a time to be grateful for an abundant life.
