Husbandry 101 - 1st Edition

What "husbandry" even means, where it went, and why we need it back

Husbandry.

An old word.

I love old words.

Lots of old words in old books

So much more than its junior college definition of managing resources and caring for animals and crops, husbandry conjures images of old, of a simpler time gone by…

…like a dairyman on the emerald dales of England, walking his Shorthorn to the milking parlor against the backdrop of rolling stonewall fences and Hawthorn hedges…

Photo by Birmingham Museums Trust on Unsplash

…like the dutiful family dog curled up on the rug just inside the front door of a one room cabin on the Western frontier, keeping warm while the winds howl on the opposite side…

…like a February night spent in a drafty barn, laboring to deliver lambs so they may reach the green pastures of Spring…

…like the autumn harvest of the summer-fattened Tamworth, every hand in the family greased by the work of butchering, rendering, preserving, cooking, thanking, and feasting…

Bacon

…like warm eggs in the cotton apron of a rosy cheeked little farm girl…

…like stitching up a raccoon’s failed attempts on the life of a little red hen…

…like the mother looking up from her garden, sensing the chill of the season turning, resetting her gaze upon her kitchen as the source of nourishment and medicine for her family through the darker months.

Husbandry is stewardship.

It’s second nature - a habit.

It’s careful tending, nurturing, growing, understanding a creature and its purpose in creation.

It’s using the hands to fill a need that’s been sensed by the heart.

My lovely niece, Ella, hand milking her Jersey after tending to her udder wounds

But somewhere along the paths of time, we lost it. In the fields of raising and caring for animals, our crops, our households - we lost husbandry. Somewhere in the dust cloud of the factory plowing under the family farm, 3-minute meals trampling the larder, the pharmacy incinerating the home apothecary, universities blasting common sense from animal science - the beautiful art of husbandry was lost.

In the fray we lost husbandry’s sense of observation. We forgot what the normal, natural dog, cat, pig is supposed to look like, walk like, eat like, BE like. In our haste to get on to the next thing, we’ve misplaced our ability to watch, to feel, to know what right looks like so we are confident when it’s wrong.

Etching after Morland, Two pigs lying in straw in an outdoor pen

We’ve forgotten husbandry’s intimacy and connectedness with, immersion in, the natural world that is so necessary for a proper relationship with it. We’ve so cluttered our minds and lives with the chaos of this “information” age, that we’ve no room for the peace of simplicity, the quiet of just appreciating a creature for what it is, for what it was created to do, and for doing our best to provide for its needs so it may thrive in its particular created-ness.

So of course, this ultimately begs for the confession that - most injuriously to our own souls and stewardship - we have forgotten the Creator himself.

Alas, husbandry has been lost. Corporately.  Collectively.  Culturally.

But not individually.

Not completely.

There are those of us out here who still study the art and science of husbandry — and by God’s grace we work at it, sunup to sundown, season by season, saving seeds of experience for sowing at times such as these.

Echinacea

And if ever there was a time to sow, it is now.

So what can we achieve by planting these seeds?  By cultivating our senses and practices, habits if you will, of husbandry? 

I think it’s freedom.

Freedom from what, you ask?

Well my friend, let’s dig in to that tomorrow. Same place, any time that works for you.

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Thank you for reading! If you are enjoying Habit of Husbandry, sharing it would be so fantastically appreciated!

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