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What does it look like to educate your children well when you're also milking cows, fixing tractors, and butchering chickens? In this episode, Noah sits down with Todd Smith — a former teacher and school administrator turned homeschooling, homesteading dad — to talk about integrating education and farm life instead of letting them compete.

Todd shares the vision of "domestic monasticism" that led three families to co-own an 86-acre farm in East Tennessee, and why a life shaped by prayer, study, and labor forms children who are thoughtful, compassionate, and hardworking.

In this episode:

• Why education is more formation than information — and what that frees you from
• Starting with the end in mind: defining who you want your children to become before deciding what curriculum to use
• Writing a family vision statement (and why keeping the whole list in front of you is a recipe for discouragement)
• Charlotte Mason's simple daily framework: something to know, someone to love, something to do
• Oral narration, commonplace notebooks, and copying Scripture — low-cost tools that actually build readers and writers
• A day in the life on St. Mary's Farm
• When the pigs get out and the tractor breaks: treating "distractions" as the curriculum, not interruptions to it
• An honest conversation about family roles, complementarianism, and how Todd and his wife divide farm, income, and education
• Practical first steps: choose one book, read it together, and make your child the resident expert on one part of the farm

Resources mentioned:

• Todd's packet of planning questions and skill lists for homesteading families 
• The Monkhood of All Believers by Greg Peters
• The Benedict Option and Live Not by Lies by Rod Dreher
• Charlotte Mason's educational philosophy
• The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

Connect with Todd:

• Instagram: St. Mary's Farm Tennessee
• Email: [email protected]

Until next time — be faithful, be humble, and keep redeeming the dirt.

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