Kinfolk - Children: The Ant & The Grasshopper

     

A Grasshopper frolicked while an Ant stored food for the winter. When winter came the Ant was comfortable; the Grasshopper not so.

    The weather shifts back and forth every few days. Is it winter still or is it spring? This is the time you wonder if the last frost was the last frost. 

    Like all the animals, we race to the new greens - oh! fresh greens! - and replenish ourselves with vitamins and minerals as we grow and forage food, bring in the eggs, milk the cow or goat. There's so much life and food, and we are enchanted by this fairy world of fertility and abundance. We work. Hard. But we also dance and forget silence and boredom. 

    So here we are, aerating the beds and raking compost onto them, letting the chickens free-range again, and starting to plant.

    Piglets, lambs, and kids may be arriving if you have livestock. And the hens are laying. Boy! Are they laying! 

    And you'd think the work of spring has everything to do with beginnings, but in reality, it's all in preparation for the moment autumn gives way to the dormancy of winter and a long-deserved rest. 

    On a homestead, spring is just the opening act to winter. 

String drying mushrooms next to the wood stove today

    Of course, the bounty is going to be heartily enjoyed as it ripens but also preserved. Winter is already our silent companion, reminding us that we'd better be prepared. 

    Teaching homesteading children this cycle is imperative. There's an Aesop fable called The Ant & The Grasshopper that tells the story of a happy grasshopper who eats and fiddles his way through warmer seasons while the ants work hard to prepare for the coming winter. When winter snows come, the poor grasshopper finds himself out in the cold, without food or company. He finally takes his refuge in the ant colony who have plenty and plenty to share. Aesop does not share a happy ending. 

    There are plenty of children's books that have retold the story so that the ants invite the grasshopper in and share their abundance. They teach the same moral along with the values of generosity and kind-heartedness.

    The point is still the same: There's a time for work and a time for play.

    Luckily, even homesteaders who grow all or nearly all their own food and meat are not ants. We know that even in a single day, a work-filled and exhausting day, there is always time for a fiddle tune, a card game, a meal cooked together. Play is not everything, as it is for the grasshopper, but it is as nourishing as the work done to prepare for winter.

    To teach children the magic of spring as the beginning of the homesteading year does not mean winter has to be a frightening spirit overshadowing the joy. It simply means children can be aware of the entire cycle of life, all life. Not just play and not just work, but a work of joy.

The Ant and The Grasshopper - An Aesop Fable

One bright day in late autumn a family of Ants were bustling about in the warm sunshine, drying out the grain they had stored up during the summer, when a starving Grasshopper, his fiddle under his arm, came up and humbly begged for a bite to eat.

“What!” cried the Ants in surprise, “haven’t you stored anything away for the winter? What in the world were you doing all last summer?”

“I didn’t have time to store up any food,” whined the Grasshopper; “I was so busy making music that before I knew it the summer was gone.”

The Ants shrugged their shoulders in disgust.

“Making music, were you?” they cried. “Very well; now dance!” And they turned their backs on the Grasshopper and went on with their work.