03746 - Cornish Flat, N.H.
Lara and Jonathan Mather, both 29 years old, are originally from Maine. They live in Cornish Flat with their children Grace, 6, Philip, 4, Bowen, 2, and Ezra, 1. The following is an edited interview with Lara.
I don't even think of the loads of laundry anymore. It’s worth it. Kids aren’t made to be indoors, they're meant to be outside.
If I could have my kids out in the garden making mud pies, getting totally dirty from head to toe, or inside playing a Game Boy, there’s just no comparison. One is helping them be fully alive while the other is numbing them to life around them.
We don’t have TV because I don’t want them watching commercials all the time, getting them to think that they need more than they have. I want them to be thankful for simple blessings and appreciate what they have.
It’s about living a simpler life, but it’s deeper than that. I don’t know how to convey it best. How do you describe that feeling when you’re in the garden or tromping through the field with your children around you? It’s too much to put into words.
When we first moved to New Hampshire, we were living in an apartment in Lebanon. Then I got pregnant with Grace and we wanted to have our own house. That’s when we started searching. I definitely had the nesting instinct; I wanted to be settled.
We looked all over for something rural. When we found this house we fell in love with it. The area reminded me of home. I guess you can’t look that far into the future, but we see this as being ours until we’re elderly.
We’re planning on getting some Belted Galloway cows. We have chickens, and my husband has bees now. He laughs and calls himself the Google farmer because he looks things up online and figures it out as he goes along. I’m sure old-time farmers just laugh at us, but you have to learn somehow.
When we were first here, we had just the acre the house sits on. There was a little patch beside the barn that was our garden. My husband sifted out the rocks to make a nice little spot and we worked it together.
I remember being out there in the garden, with the chickens pecking around, and thinking, "this is life, this is what it’s all about." God created us to be outside digging in the dirt, enjoying his creation.