Homemade Meals + Handmade Quilts

I spent the first few days of my break at my grandfather's house in Olney Texas, otherwise known as Praise the Lord Farm.

I love this place. There's always sure to be at least a gallon of Blue Bell ice cream in the freezer. The stargazing is unparalleled. It's a place where you wear jeans and boots because they're practical, not stylish. When you wake up and go to bed is much more dictated by the habits of the sun than it is in other places where "progress" has conquered. Where, at the end of the day, you're dirty, tired, and content, and you think that's how you ought to feel at the end of a day. Where the wind blows cool in the summer, cold in the winter, dogs bark, and the old house groans and creaks every now and then, but all else is quiet. It's the one place remaining in my life that still houses my earliest memories. The older I get, the more detached from one particular place I become. My patria loyalties are divided between house and college, both tugging at my heart to be called 'home', but neither with the prospect of permanency. Perhaps that's why my love and appreciation of this old, unchanging house has grown so much. I've always loved it, but I haven't always known that. 

I come back a few times a year and each time I am more strongly reminded of the beauty of a simple, quiet, pure life. We are so often tempted to dress life up with unnecessary distractions; we push silence away and refuse to be still. This place, Praise the Lord Farm, is buried away outside a small town; it has no fanciness and it doesn't need it. There's a certain constancy here. People grow up, things change, the house is certainly quieter now than it was in its hey-day, but even so, there is always that sense of familiarity when you bump over the cattle-guard and start the drive up that dirt road, the blue house growing ever nearer and nearer. The barn and shop are still out to the left, with the old red tractor that Pa taught all of his grandkids how to drive sitting between them. There's always some hay bales out to the right, and a dog barking at you as you walk to the back door (has the front door ever even been opened?). The last time anything in the house was updated was in the '80's--which is rather unfortunate given the style of the time, but I love those jewel toned carpets and curtains nonetheless, because that's the way the house has always looked to me. I have deep roots here--memories going back as long as I can remember: fishing in the tank, jumping on the trampoline with as many cousins as we could fit on it at once, riding the zip line, building something out of wood in the shop, climbing up to the loft in the barn to catch a glimpse of the owls. But even more, my family has deep roots here. Pa can tell you the story of how Gran fell in love with that little blue house they passed every week on their way to church. And how he eventually bought it for her, loaded it up and moved it all the way to where it sits now. And how they added on to it to accommodate their growing family. It's where my dad grew up; where he learned the values of honesty and hard work that he eventually passed on to my siblings and me. It's where he brought my mom home to for the first time to meet his parents; it's where I spent some of my earliest Christmases, though I don't remember them well. The house has seen so many firsts--first steps taken, first words uttered, first days of school, first laughs and loves...And many lasts as well. The rooms are full of stories, the very rafters shake with history. Families grew and split, sadly, and the footsteps that once ran all over the house are but quiet, echoed memories now. But I still love this dear, old place--for the memories and family history it holds, but also for what it gives me now--a place to get away from the world. A place where life is slow-paced and simple. A place quiet enough to think and remind me of who I am. This--what I feel here--is what's at my core. Other things may catch my eye, momentarily, but at my heart, home-cooked meals and handmade quilts (and all they encompass) are what will define any home of mine because that's what I grew up knowing and learning to love.