Home Grown
Adventures in Parenting off the Beaten Path, Unschooling, and Reconnecting with the Natural World
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
The charming story of one family's mission to build a deeper, lasting connection to land and community on their Vermont farm
When Ben Hewitt and his wife bought a sprawling acreage of field and forest in northern Vermont, they were eager to start a self-sustaining family farm. But over the years, the land became so much more than a building site; it became the birthplace of their two sons, the main source of family income and food, and even a classroom for their children. Through self-directed play, exploration, and experimentation on their farm, Hewitt’s children learned how to play and read, test boundaries and challenge themselves, fail and recover. Best of all, this environment allowed their personalities to flourish, fueling further growth.
In Home Grown, Hewitt shows us how small, mindful decisions about day-to-day life can lead to greater awareness of the world in our backyards and beyond. In telling the story of his sons’ unconventional education in the fields and forests surrounding his family’s farm, he demonstrates that the sparks of learning are all around us, just waiting to be discovered. Learning is a lifelong process—and the best education is never confined to a classroom.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In invigorating prose, small-scale Vermont farmer Hewitt ($aved) presents his family's parenting philosophy: more than anything, he and his wife want their two sons to have a "connection to place" and to understand how they fit in the larger world and ecosystem. To that end, Fin and Rye do not attend school, nor do they follow a homeschooling curriculum. Rather, they learn through "unschooling," a holistic process in which children pursue their passions and interests rather than a prescribed curriculum. The kids trap animals, read books, do chores, and ask lots of questions. But this book is about more than unschooling. There are musings on raising a windmill with a friend's help, home birth and midwifery, and debt, which no surprise, Hewitt is against. In the final analysis, parenting is Hewitt's vehicle for exploring a larger hypothesis: the more one sets aside societal pressures to become rich and accomplished, the freer one will be. Hewitt's meditations are sure to find a cult following among readers who yearn for simplicity.
