Update

I know this month’s output has been light, but I hope some of you have tried my homemaker hacks (men can do them too!). Feel free to share yours as well, and we may post them.

We’ve been working on our house and will be, for the rest of the year. I will have to try to balance it all a bit better. We’ve been hiking as a family and spending some wonderful times together...and I’ve been working on my healthcare. These are always great and necessary things, but with the continued degrading of the state of the world, it seems more urgent than ever…to push forward, take advantage of opportunities while we still can, and stop and smell the roses. Geopolitical tensions are tighter than they have been in decades and there is concern about the upcoming US elections (or possible failure to hold elections at all, as some are predicting).

I would urge all our readers to print the “15 Points Preparedness Worksheet” (see link on Home page) and work on it with your family. Also, please print our “Eclipse Pilgrimage of Mercy” supplemental prayers. Included is Cardinal Burke’s 9-Month Novena to Our Lady of Guadalupe and a prayer for the United States.

I have also been getting ready for my trip to the Catholic Land Movement Conference at Our Lady of Martyrs Shrine in northern New York (about a 4-hour trip for me), this coming weekend! I’m so excited, it is my first time there. This is a traditional Catholic organization and the Tridentine Mass will be offered. These are the kinds of things I do as research and networking, to bring the knowledge I aquire, to all of you. I hope to share some pictures and some of what I will learn, in the coming days. It’s going to be like a retreat/agrarian/prepper learning experience all in one! There will be wonderful Catholic devotions and confession, along with workshops and social time. There is an optional farm visit, where animals will be slaughtered, which I will be attending. Some of the workshops I plan to go to are “Garden Planning at Home,” “Wells and Spring Development,” and a presentation of 2 faith-centered farms. I also hope to attend Chris Martenson’s Peak Prosperity Annual Summit 2024 in New Hampshire in September (the early-bird rate is ending June 30). I attended his conference last year in Massachusetts and it was life-changing.

Due to the fact that I will be away this weekend, our Month of July post may be a day or 2 late. God bless you all and your families! Chiara F Mathews:)

Traditional Priest is Doing Something Amazing in the Italian Alps!

Young Priest Turns Forsaken Farm into Paradise Homestead

I was blown away by the above video. Below are the notes provided by the video-maker, Kirsten Dirksen (she’s got a great YouTube channel, but this is not necessarily an endorsement of all her content). The video is 23 minutes, well-worth your time. We all need to be thinking this way going forward, due to the state of the world. This priest also has filmed 2 documentaries-link is below-I have not seen them yet, but I’m sure they are good…

Five years ago Catholic priest Johannes Schwarz left his parish to "withdraw for a few years" in the Italian Alps (in the shadow of his beloved Monte Viso). He bought an old "rustico" - stone farm building - for 20,000 euros and transformed it into his mountaintop hermitage.

Inspired by the early Christian desert hermits from the "200s and 300s when some people went into the deserts of Egypt and Palestine searching for a more rigorous life", Schwarz found something remote: he has only one full-time neighbor on the entire mountainside and in winter, he often has to snowshoe for a couple hours just to buy food and supplies.

To be as self-sufficient as possible, he makes his own bread and stores plenty of potatoes which he grows using Ruth Stout's "No-Work" gardening method. To grow much of his own fruit and produce, he terraced the steep hillside (using stones from the area) to create micro-climates. "You try to build walls that have southern exposure because they heat up during the day and they give off the warmth and can make a difference of several degrees." (Studies show differences of 27°F/15°C in the ultra-deep Incan terraces). He grows plenty of tomatoes inside his self-built recycled greenhouse.

For heating and cooking, he built a combination rocket stove and masonry heater by creating his own casts and loam coating. His refrigerator, which he transported up the hill on top of his bicycle, is kept in the unheated room, along with his food stores. He uses a tiny 30-year-old 3-kilogram washing machine and built his bathroom out of salvaged materials. To transport the lumber up the hill for his remodel, he got some help from a local farmer.

He divided the old barn into four small rooms on two floors; the living room/kitchen and pantry on the ground floor and a chapel and bedroom upstairs. His bedroom also serves as an editing studio where he creates videos on philosophy and religion.

He created a wooden-arched indoor chapel where he “celebrates the traditional Latin mass” alongside a wall he painted with Byzantine, romanesque and gothic styles in appreciation of "the symbolism of the ancient art."

Johannes’ pilgrimage films: https://www.reelhouse.org/birettballett