Radiance of the Ordinary

When Tara was a girl, not quite a teenager, she had a conversation with an older woman that has stayed with her into adulthood.

“…she told me a secret about getting older: While people would see me as older—as Tara at twenty or Tara at forty or Tara at sixty—on the inside I would remain the same person I had always been. To young me, that was a stunning revelation.”

- Tara Couture, on p171 of Radiance of the Ordinary

I still marvel at this.

I did not know Tara at twenty, or at forty, and neither of us is quite yet sixty, but I am grateful to know her now, and to bring to you this week a taste, just a taste, from her new book.

Some of you will be familiar with Tara’s exquisite writing from Slowdown Farmstead, and some will remember Mila’s Story. Whether you read her every week, or had not heard her name before just now, I assure you that you will discover the unexpected in her book. For oh, it is a good and glorious book.

Tara, by her own admission, likes finding her weak spots. In so doing she reveals strength. She explores the world and meets it as it is, but also asks questions of it, and strives to improve that which can be improved.

Life grows bigger. And then, life grows smaller.

- p76, in the chapter called Motherhood

Radiance of the Ordinary: Essays on Life, Death, and the Sinews that Bind was published by Chelsea Green Publishing this month, and the following chapter is printed here with permission from the publisher. Couture’s book arrives in three parts: Harvest, Home, and Evermore. This chapter is from Home.

Of Blood and Butterflies

In the autumn it is time to harvest our animals. They are fat and slick from a spring and summer of feasting on sweet grasses and forages. They are at their prime, thick with health and joyful with their lot in life. I walk among them, bringing pails of apples for their dining pleasure. Some of the old cows come right up to me, asking me to pop the apples right into their mouths. Others are shyer and will only take the apples if I lay them on the ground at their feet. I know who’s who. Some, like my oldest milk cow, Bea, prefer a nice, deep