Radiance of the Ordinary

From the author of the popular Slowdown Farmstead Substack, a collection of stories about cultivating authenticity in an age of great pretend—through our work, our homemaking, our food, our relationships, and our willingness to engage with life’s pleasures and hardships alike. For most of her youth and early adulthood, Tara Couture had a deep fear of death. When her mother left the house, Tara would beg her to stay, certain that death was right around the corner. As the threat loomed in her mind, distraction in its many forms became her only relief. In her twenties, determined to manifest her long-time dream of owning a farm, Tara worked alongside a cattleman, Richard, whose perspectives on life and death would come to transform her own. When Tara found herself in the passenger seat of Richard’s truck out on the Alberta prairie, in search of the bison herd from which they would harvest an animal, she could hardly believe what she had signed up for. But even more surprising was the realization that experience awakened in her: that life and death are inextricably connected. When we shield ourselves from death—or from any of the hard things in life—we close ourselves off to the beauty and richness of a life fully lived. Radiance of the Ordinary is a collection of stories about leaning into that beauty and richness—through the work we choose to engage with, the way we steward the land and make our homes, the food we put into our bodies, the relationships we cultivate, and the attention we pay to the ordinary moments. After all, we never do know how many of those precious moments we have left to savor.