I Work for a Big Life—Not Big Dollars.

These days, the internet is full of women who glamorize a rustic, rural lifestyle. They live on farms, bake sourdough bread, pick fresh strawberries, milk cows—and even make all-natural Starbursts from scratch—then post about it on social media, captivating the rest of us.

Perhaps the most famous, Hannah Neeleman a.k.a. Ballerina Farm, has 10.4 million followers on Instagram. When you’re sitting on the subway, commuting to the office, it’s soothing to watch women like her gently stir batter or usher some chickens around a yard.

But part of our fascination is fueled by a misconception: that hard work is an ugly symptom of soul-sucking corporate culture—something to escape from in favor of a more peaceful life, deep in nature.

When the truth is, rural life is incredibly hard work. That’s what Tara Couture emphasizes, in her book Radiance of the Ordinary—which is out September 2. We’re delighted to be publishing an exclusive excerpt today.

On her farm in Ontario, where she has no Wi-Fi and uses a woodstove, Couture and her husband raise or grow nearly all the food they eat. Their days are fulfilling, she writes, but not because they’re easy. In today’s essay, Couture describes her choice to dedicate herself not to big dollars, but to a big life. It is an ode to hard work, and to earning one’s pleasure—a fitting piece for Labor Day. —Jillian Lederman

I wouldn’t leave this humble little farmhouse for all the riches in the world.

I found it while looking through real estate listings online eight years ago. It was on 100 acres in Ontario, Canada, and it had a real stone foundation that was around 170 years old. Maybe it was falling apart in real life. Maybe it was caving in and crumbling. But I had a feeling, a strong intuition. We’re supposed to have this house, I told my husband, Troy. “Call the realtor and see if we can go look at it,” he said.

Look at it we did, that very afternoon.

The moment we stepped inside, we felt something profound. It was beyond the aesthetics or the square footage. The materials in it held echoes of lives past.

We moved in four months later. We put in windows to let in the sunshine. We painted the tired walls. We sanded her floors and oiled them. We warmed her with wood and filled her bones with the real and the worn: antique farm tables and wool, sheepskins, and furs. There are old ceramics and crocks, tarnished brass and copper lanterns. Our world is lit with beeswax candles and oil lamps. Our furniture is solid wood because it’s old, and that’s how furniture was made back then.

It’s taken me decades to collect these things with which to surround ourselves. All of it loved and used by others. Our home is full of spirit. Human hands touched and crafted what is here, not machines. I’ve lived in machine houses, and they never were home. This house wanted us. This house had been waiting for us.

It’s a simple life. We start our day at 5 o’clock. When my cookstove is hot, I put on the kettle. While it heats, I grind the coffee beans. There are no lights on yet. We are mindful of the dark, keeping the inside of our home in alignment with the outside. So we move by the shadowy light of oil lamps and candles. It’s all warm and silent save the shuffling of our woolen slippers.

Sourdough bread is toasted and slathered with liver pâté. Eggs are poached. A jar of summer peaches is opened and poured into bowls, topped with a heap of homemade yogurt. Some moose sausage from a successful hunt snuggles up to the eggs.

Into the black coffee the dollops of slightly warmed cream go, and together we walk in a procession to the living room—Troy and me followed by our border collie, Tinder. He successfully herds his humans to their spots on the couch. When we get there, he lies down at our feet. Surely, in his mind, he is holding us in our places.

I light more beeswax candles. The oil lamp creates an orbit of light that includes us. The winter chickadees and blue jays are still sleeping, wrapped in their feathers for warmth. There is no noise at all except the crackling fires. It’s comfortable. It’s peaceful. Everything where it should be.

We eat our beautiful food and savor our strong coffee, and then we read together. Every now and then Troy says, “Listen to this,” and I put down my book and listen. Then we talk about it for a while. Sometimes we stare off into the fire, contemplating an idea or dreaming up a new adventure. We stay like that until the sky is tinted with the halo of the rising sun. I get up and he gets up and we blow out candles and wind down the oil lamp. It’s time to go outside. Time to do our part to welcome the dawning of the new day, the rising of the life-giving sun.

It’s all lovely, yes?

It’s as lovely as we’ve crafted it to be.

In this time, in this world, we are inundated with images of endless pleasures. Our culture sells us on the idea that hard work is beneath us, or out of reach. That entertainment is our highest calling. That strife and disappointment are wrong, frustration something to run from, discomfort something to avoid at all costs. None of these things are true, and they keep us locked in a perpetual chase with no fulfilling destination. And because of that, I need to pull us out of that warm wintry nest of pleasures and into the reality of what makes it so profoundly and deliciously pleasurable—and that reality is work. Hard and demanding work.

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