July

This morning I went out to tend the animals and check the garden. I toted my iphone along to snap a few photos of the first of July. Welcoming another hot hot Summer month in the South.

I posted the following sunflower picture to Instagram along with the caption, "Happy July."

What I didn't post was a picture of the dead hen I found in the chicken pen. I don't know how she died, all I know is that it was a very unexpected portrait opportunity of death that I was not willing to document. I don't share a lot of the things that go wrong when raising animals or plants for that matter. For all the gorgeous garden pictures there are a thousand I could have taken of half eaten plants, flooded gardens, sick or dead livestock. But I don't and you probably don't either. People want to see the pretty. They want to keep that ideal of homesteading, tiny farming, large scale farming, CSA, etc. etc. etc. in their head. So we fill our Instagram and blogs and Twitter with the lovely filtered view of living in the country or wherever we have chosen to eek out a simpler way of life.

Just remember that the screen provides a pretty narrow view of reality.