The Art of Sustainable Living
Sustainable farming is defined as a farming operation that maintains a self-reliant ecosystem, thus minimizing the need to “go outside” the farm to purchase items that it may lack (like fertilizer and feed for example).
As we’ve been developing a sustainable farming operation called Family Friendly Farms, we’ve also been developing a sustainable family lifestyle here at Our Lady’s Ranch. Over the years, we have been creating a holistic family environment suitable to living in peace and to sharing it with others.
In this self-reliant ecosystem called Our Lady’s Ranch, we utilize the farm and its related activities to balance the four essential needs of our humanity which include the spiritual, intellectual, physical, and emotional components of our lives.
We have found that Family Friendly Farms provides many opportunities to live a balanced, sustainable life by including activities of praying, learning, working, and socializing together right here at home without having to “go outside” to meet our needs elsewhere.
And this fulfilling, peaceful, agrarian family lifestyle is what we call –
The Art of Sustainable Living.
We sustain our Spiritual Needs by making prayer a special part of every day by intentionally stopping at various times throughout each day in order to thank God for all His many blessings, while asking Him to help us with the many that we still need.
We sustain our Intellectual Needs by homeschooling our children in order to make learning an important part of every day for the kids, while making "life-long" learning a priority for the entire family.
We sustain our Physical Needs by considering work a gift from God to help us bond together with common goals, while receiving a wonderful satisfaction upon completing them, along with a healthy work-out to boot.
We sustain our Emotional Needs by receiving visitors here, sometimes engaging with them in farm tour discussions along with other social activities. We really enjoy watching the parents show their children the wonders of God's creation. In this way we get a chance to not only live in peace ourselves, but to share it with all of you :)
The farming work we do together has been instrumental in helping the kids mature in many skills at relatively young ages. They have learned to communicate with all ages of people in a variety of social settings, while learning many practical skills including articulating their thoughts, making formal presentations, cooking a variety of cultural foods, and building several types of landscaping and construction projects, just to name a few.
One of the most frequent questions we receive is, “How do kids learn to socialize in such a removed environment?!” By providing on-site farm tours and selling our products at farmer’s markets, our children quickly grew in their ability to communicate with people of all ages. And actually, that translated into their leadership roles within our parish community.
This model of family life has bonded our family together with children who are grateful, healthy, and happy…
We hope that you have enjoyed this little glimpse into our simple way of life that God continues to bless with…
The Art of Sustainable Living.
Blessings and Peace to You,
Philip J. Zeiter
Our Lady’s Ranch Ministry