Wendy Alsup

Years ago, my sister took a class at Clemson University, a land grant college, called Animal Husbandry. Sustainable practices around breeding and calving, the term for cattle, and farrowing, the term for hogs, is an important focus of animal husbandry. My sister learned to distinguish various breeds of livestock and even sheared a sheep. She […]

Once or twice every growing season, the field around my farmhouse becomes a scene of delight to my boys and terror to me. I never have warning, just the roar of a plane engine over my house that signals that the crop duster has arrived. Because my farmhouse sits in the middle of the field, […]

When I used to lead women’s ministry at Mars Hill Church in Seattle, I helped organize our yearly Women’s Retreats. The men, however, never had Men’s Retreats. They had Men’s Advances. Retreats, as they saw it, were for sissies. Nevermind that the larger church adopted the concept of retreat from Jesus’s example in the Gospels. […]