Reporting Live Ep. 3: “Have Baby 🐷 Now”
Last night a message came through on my phone.
“Have baby 🐷 now.”
That was all it said.
That was enough and we were out the door.
We walked down in the dark to the neighbour’s place, the night still and silent.
And inside the barn, life was arriving rapidly. We arrived to excitement. Two boys in their makeshift bed in the pen next to the excitement, while their parents delivered piglet after piglet.
We stayed until almost 11pm.
By the end of the night there were thirteen.
Our children excitedly, curiously watching.
Not through a screen.
Not through a video.
But inches away from real life unfolding.
They saw the umbilical cord still attached. They watched the piglets struggle to stand on brand new legs. Within minutes they found their way to their mother and began drinking milk.
The speed of instinct.
The intelligence of life.
Rosie immediately noticed the smallest one. The runt. She crouched beside it and decided right then what her name would be.
Rosa.
We held some of the piglets only minutes after they were born. Warm. Shaking slightly. Tiny bodies still figuring out how to exist.
It was wonder.
It was also truth.
One of the piglets didn’t make it.
No one rushed to hide that from the children. No one created a sanitized version of reality. They saw the sadness, and they felt it. The neighbor explained simply - sometimes this happens. Survival of the fittest. The circle of life.
Life. Death. Birth. Instinct. Nourishment.
All in one evening.
And in between all of this, we practiced our Spanish and they practiced their English. We laughed as we tried to understand each other. Words mixed together with hand gestures and smiles.
The Sacred Oak Way
One of the core ideas of the Sacred Oak Way is that learning begins with life itself.
The world is the classroom.
When children witness something real, curiosity explodes naturally. This morning, questions began immediately.
Rosie woke up and the first thing she wanted to do was go check on Rosa.
Is she okay?
Did she drink milk?
Is she still the smallest?
From this single experience, an entire arc of learning is opening.
We are going to get Charlotte’s Web in both English and Spanish and read it together with our children and the neighbour’s children. The story will suddenly mean something deeper now that they have looked into the eyes of a newborn pig.
We will study:
The placenta
The life cycle of mammals
Why some animals have large litters
How piglets find milk immediately
The role of instinct in newborn animals
Why some animals survive and some do not
We will create a farm study book in both English and Spanish.
Words will come alive because they will be connected to something the children experienced with their own bodies and senses.
This is the kind of learning that sticks for life.
The Sacred Oak Way asks us to stay responsive - to the land, to the moment, and to the questions rising in our children. Learning does not need to be forced when we are paying attention. Life itself keeps offering the curriculum.
The Morning After
Today the rhythm of the land continued.
We went to meet two horses that will become our new friends.
Rosie has chosen her horse. Her name, as best as we can spell it from how it sounds, is Ewazoo. Charlie’s horse is Cabos.
Next time we will bring them gifts.
Manzanas (apples).
Zanahorias (carrots).
Rosie is already planning a new project.
She wants to learn how to care for a horse.
So we will begin a new study.
She will create a Horse Care Book.
She will paint a portrait of Ewazoo.
We will learn how horses see the world - their eyesight, their blind spots, why they move the way they do.
Learning will move naturally from biology to art to language to responsibility.
This is how children build real knowledge.
What Learning Looks Like Here
When people imagine education, they often imagine desks, schedules, subjects divided into boxes.
But the Sacred Oak Way is different.
Learning unfolds through real experiences, relationships, and projects born from curiosity.
Last night the children learned:
Biology.
Language.
Empathy.
Death.
Birth.
Observation.
Responsibility.
Community.
Today they will learn about horses.
Tomorrow it may be plants, soil, building, painting, storytelling, or cooking.
The curriculum is life.
And when life becomes the teacher, children do not need to be forced to learn.
They are already leaning forward.
Rosie checked on Rosa again this morning.
The smallest piglet.
Still alive.
Still drinking milk.
A tiny life beginning its journey in the hills of Costa Rica.
The world as our classroom.
