Ben Hewitt - Home Grown: Adventures in Parenting off the Beaten Path, Unschooling, and Reconnecting with the Natural World

In this fine and eloquent and moving book, Ben Hewitt takes a principled stand for the unconventional childhood, for the intellectual and emotional and soulful nurture of nature.

Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods and The Nature Principle

Ben Hewitt walks you along the lanes of his small family farm right into the heart of parenting. He does not judge the new normal of lifes fever-pitch pace but fills you with the courage to follow your hopes, which may well transform your family.

Kim John Payne, MEd, author of Simplicity Parenting, Beyond Winning, and The Soul of Discipline

ABOUT THE BOOK

In this most personal of his books to date, Ben Hewitt shows us how small, mindful decisions about day-to-day life can lead to greater awareness of the world in our backyards and beyond. In telling the story of his sons unconventional education in the fields and forests surrounding his familys northern Vermont farm, he demonstrates that the sparks of learning are all around us, just waiting to be discovered. No matter where we live, Home Grown reminds us that learning at any age is a lifelong process, and that the best education is never confined to a classroom.

Hewitts story will inspire you to reclaim passion, curiosity, and creativity, not only for your children, but for yourself.

BEN HEWITT is the author of Saved, The Town That Food Saved, Making Supper Safe, and articles for magazines such as Bicycling, Discover, Gourmet, Mens Journal, National Geographic Adventure, Outside, the New York Times Magazine, Yankee, Taproot, and many others. He and his family live in a self-built, solar-powered house.

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An imprint of Shambhala Publications, Inc.

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2014 by Ben Hewitt

Cover photograph by Tara Reese

Cover design by Daniel Urban-Brown

Illustrations 2014 by Janet MacLeod

Grateful acknowledgment to Jennifer Bickart for the poem The End by Jeff Bickart in Chapter 6.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Hewitt, Ben, 1971

Home grown: adventures in parenting off the beaten path, unschooling, and reconnecting with the natural world / Ben Hewitt.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

eISBN 978-0-8348-2995-4

ISBN 978-1-61180-169-9 (paperback)

1. Home schooling. 2. Non-formal education. 3. EducationParent participation. 4. Parenting. 5. Nature study. 6. Outdoor education. 7. Experiential learning. 8. Sustainable living. I. Title.

LC40.H56 2014

371.042dc23

2013050554

Contents

More so than anything else Ive written, this book belongs to my family, and my gratitude to them is boundless. Without my sons, ever-generous in the sharing of their wisdom and delight, it could not have happened. Without Penny, whose commitment to our family and the land endlessly inspires me, it could not have happened. Generosity and commitment are acts born of love, and I am humbled to be the recipient of such gifts. I only hope I can return at least a fraction of what I receive.

I also wish to thank my editor, Rochelle Bourgault. Only Rochelle truly knows how much this book has evolved from its early drafts, and if I can ask just one more favor of her, itd be to keep that little secret between us. In return, I will loudly and repeatedly let it be known that without Rochelles guidance, insight, and enduring patience, this book would be merely a shadow of what it has become.

Finally, thanks to my friend Janet MacLeod for generously contributing the art that adds so much to these pages.

FIN HAS MADE A BOW. It is gorgeous, long and slender and burnished, its surface silken to the touch. So many hours with his hands on that one length of wood, carving and sanding, or merely for the pleasure of feeling, and it occurs to me that he knows this piece of wood in a way that no one else ever will. In some unspoken way, in a language older than words, he has come to understand its intentions, even as he has communicated his.

Watch this, he says. He pulls back the string and the bow bends. It seems to me as if it should not be able to bend so far without breaking. He slowly releases the tension. Its my best one yet.

How many bows has Fin made? Thirty? Forty? Certainly more than I can say, more than Ive kept track of. The first ones of simple sticks, short whips of red maple or yellow birch, notches carved into each end where a string could be wound. The arrows were sticks, too, straight-ish but not straight, capable of a dozen feet of wobbly, slow-motion flight, like a fledgling leaving the nest for the first time. And now, this: a bow hewn of black locust, not merely made but crafted, exactingly tillered for even draw, micrometers of wood fiber shaved at a time until the top and bottom halves flex in perfect symmetry. It is the evolved embodiment of all its predecessors, some long ago broken and fed to the fire, more simply forgotten, abandoned in a corner of the barn or basement. I stumble across them but cannot quite bring myself to discard them. They are evidence of my older sons studied persistence, an immersion into whatever wild corners of his heart and mind have given rise to this passion. For that reason alone, I leave them where they lie.

My children do not attend school, and often when people hear of this, I am asked how my sons (Fin and his younger brother, named Rye) learn, or how we teach them, or some combination of the two. And I struggle with my reply, probably because I feel as if the answer being sought will never satisfy the assumptions inherent in the question: that children must be taught to learn. That learning is something that happens primarily in isolation from other aspects of their lives. That teaching is best left to specialists. But of course children neednt be taught how to learn; they just do. It is as natural and obvious as breathing, as necessary to their spiritual, emotional, and intellectual beings as food is to their physical manifestations.

Like so much of what my sons know and do, Fin did not learn how to craft a bow because someone told him he should learn to craft a bow. He learned because he had no choice but to learn, because his innate curiosity and desire to learn simply could not be overcome. In the same way that you cannot stop children from learning to walk, or to talk, you cannot stop them from learning anything they set their minds to.

That is why I say that learning is my childrens nature, just as it is every childs nature. I am reminded of this when I see Fin bent over his bow, rubbing it again with an oiled cloth, so intent on the task that his world has folded in on itself. What does each pass along the bows spine teach him? What does it tell him about the bow, about the tree, about the process? About himself and his place in the world? And I am reminded of this on late-winter mornings when I look out the window above the kitchen sink, the stars still visible in the brightening sky, and I see Rye tromping through the snow, laden with the implements of tapping sugar maple trees in preparation for the seasons first sap run: a cordless drill, a hammer, a small bucketful of taps. Like his older brother, my second child is drawn to tasks that involve the hands and that yield something tangible.