Reading, Writing & Pondering

  The Good Farmer and The Worried Donkey by Hannah E. Harrison is a beautifully illustrated and written picture book aimed at children ages four to eight. This sweet book tells the worried donkey's story. Charlie the donkey goes from working for a miller who sometimes got angry at him because he wasn't strong enough and didn't always do things correctly. The miller then sold the donkey to a farmer. Charlie worried about disappointing the farmer. However, the farmer is patient and caring and helped the donkey along the way in his new role. I think The Good Farmer and The Worried Donkey is a sweet story to help children see that God loves them--no matter what. Through this story, children learn that God is always there to help, even when they doubt themselves. They also can learn that God is patient and caring in the process.   I love the sweet watercolor pictures of both the donkey and the farmer--as well as all the farm animals and fields. The last page in Good Farmer a...

The Marvelous Pigness of Pigs by Joel Salatin might sound like a book about how to raise pigs, but it is not. Joel Salatin is a respected, successful Christian family farmer who shows readers how the Bible actually instructs us on how to eat, take care of the land, whether you are a farmer or not, and how to feed the world. Each chapter of The Marvelous Pigness of Pigs analyzes the different ways of looking at the natural world around us. Salatin debates ideas related to caring for the earth, animals, plants and each other throughout this book: abundance versus scarcity, biological versus mechanical, abundance versus scarcity, narrow way versus broad way and dependence versus independence, among other topics debated. To use more common language, Salatin talks about whether we should factory farm or free range our animals, whether we should use chemicals or not, whether we should eat junk food or whole foods, and other similar topics. I resonated with many of Salatin's ideas ...