Hannah Hagarty: Cultivating Home

[akinom]

Anyone else follow Hannah Hagarty? If I had a gateway fundie it was probably her. Her blog is at cultivatinghome.blogspot.com, but she is mostly active on flickr/instagram these days.

 

when I started reading her blog, they lived in a gorgeous old house in upstate NY, which they were fixing up, and had four kids or so. They had chickens and bought their meat "on the hoof" from local farmers and processed it themselves. Hannah sewed clothes, baked, canned and all the rest. Her husband Sean was self-employed (I think in real estate but I'm not sure) and seemed to be doing well.  They were planning to go to Germany as missionaries, but after years of saving money, teaching the kids German etc, decided to stay home instead.

 

Hannah is a nurse but only worked as such for a year or two after college. She is now rather into the woo - kids aren't vaccinated, they use herbal remedies, chiropractor stuff, at one point they ate gluten free without being celiac sufferers etc. I think the last five kids were born at home with midwives, but don't quote me on that number.

 

Now they have eight kids, three girls and five boys. Hannah once stated on her blog that they are not quiverfull, they use barrier methods to space children. They are anti-abortion. Years ago they had a second blog about "biblical discipline" and Hannah wrote a lot about how much trouble their second son was. Later on she hinted that she had a change of heart when it came to discipline but I don't really know what that was or if they still spank. All the kids are homeschooled and the eldest is taking some college classes this autumn (real college).

 

The Hagarty family sold their NY house and moved to Florida last autumn. I think they seem to have relaxed their modesty standards a bit, and wear normal swimwear, tank tops, shorts etc. They live on a smaller piece of land so they aren't doing as much self-sufficiency stuff but still have a garden and poultry (quail). Hannah and Sean love fixing up houses and do it rather well in my opinion. 

 

Some things I don't know:

- what Sean does for a living now

- what denomination they are

- if they still eat gluten free

- if they plan to stay in their new home or sell it and move to another fixer-upper

[klynn]

I read a few of the blog entries.  One was where she was talking about Debi Leonard and her children at the public pool.  Debi is the mother of Lucas Leonard, who was beaten to death (along with brother, who survived) by members of a cultish church in Oneida County, NY.  Google Lucas Leonard if you're interested.  Was this family members of this church?  It's the Word of Life church in New Hartford, NY.  Several members were indictided over Lucas' death.

[akinom]

No, I think the point of that entry was that the Leonards weren't the right kind of Christian.

[klynn]

Ah, that makes sense then.  After I posted that, I thought more about it.   Considering how...batshit....that church seems, it would seem unlikely they'd let members just up and move. 

[Shiny]

This family is definitely my gateway fundy. I followed this blog from the beginning when I was a new, young wife to a born again christian (who thankfully considers himself an agnostic now). When she started relaxing her modesty standards I was really surprised. Hannah was SO damn preachy, but you could tell a lot of her beliefs are just for show. I don't follow the blog anymore, especially after her True Scotsman argument about Debi. 

[artdecades]

Wow, that house was stunning. I am so used to terrible fundie homes but that is gorgeous.

[SolomonFundy]

Hannah was my jam back in the day. I found her blog around the time her last daughter was born, and followed intermittently over the years. She was the type of fundy that it was fun to check in on once in a while, but I was never a daily reader (though it's been a while since she posted that frequently). Some of my favorite hits over the years:

* She has serious, lingering regrets over wearing a 2-piece bathing suit AT HER OWN HOME during a pool party with other young marrieds when she and Sean first wed. She later found out that one of the guests had a porn addiction (how do you find out that kind of shit?), and she was overcome with regret that she may have tempted him into sinful thoughts.

* She is convinced her eldest daughter is a dead ringer for Taylor Swift. Annaliese (sic?) is a beautiful young girl, but other than being white, young, and female, she doesn't bear much of  a resemblance to Taylor. This has always charmed me, because Hannah has been drawing comparisons between the two since her daughter was very young. 

* She waved the self-sufficiency/preparedness/stockpile flag FOR YEARS, including posting on many occasions about how God just kept pointing them back to a larger farm in upstate NY as soon as they could sell their home. This went on for ages, and was a constant theme. Then, suddenly, they bought a vacation/rental property in Florida. Then, they moved into it. I am still scratching my head over that one.

Sean's lyme disease was the major factor behind them selling the farm and relocating. To my understanding, he didn't sell his business. He still seems to be tied in some way to Utica Systems inc., at any rate. Hannah has become just another suburban mom, give or take the game birds. They are seemingly just slightly crunchy homeschoolers now, not the paragons of baby-making self-sufficiency they were just a few years ago.

If anyone goes down the rabbit hole, the best I can say is that the Hagartys are a good example of how fundies are made, and broken. They went from anti-vaxing home-birthers closetted on a remote New England farm, to a Floridian family with two members dependent upon long-term medical care from non-witch doctor sources. (Sean's health was precarious for a while due to the Lyme disease, plus one of the older sons had major medical issues at birth that created some drama for a few years after.) Hannah has always seemed to be the one driving the fundymobile in that family. That probably goes a long way toward explaining the ease with which they all dropped the act.

[akinom]

Oh yes, I remember them looking for a farm! I could never make out whether Sean's Lyme disease was real or if he was one of the self-diagnosed chronic Lyme sufferers, but I'm glad to see he has been treated by real doctors!

 

oh, and one of my highlights from days of yore was when Hannah and Sean went out for Thai food and the restaurant owner shared her story of being a refugee. This amazing woman then built a new life in the US for herself and her child, now runs her own restaurant. Hannah's take on it: So sad for this lady who hasn't found Jesus! We must pray for her to be saved!

[Hannahhagarty]

Ahahaha...clearly I've been hiding behind a fundy rock to not have known about the inside scoops on fj.  But since inquiring minds must know, yes, lyme is medically dx and Sean carries half the gene for celiac, yes we wished for Germany and wished for a farm but family comes first and all your well wishes for my husband and son are overwhelmingly kind. Never stockpiled or prepped but, yes, we gardened and raised meat and canned because nine months of NY winters and big family! Lol. So that pantry, yep, we ate through it regularly and it made us able to eat well. We've always worn jeans, shorts, tanks but I love vintage/boho styles. NY offered slim months for those and lovely FL the opposite. Anthro is my shopping crush. We didn't live in the middle of nowhere or New England, though those don't matter, we've always attended non denom churches, and I was surprised to be lumped in here, more of a hippie and not a very good fundie having never drunk the fundie juice. Loved chatting with Debi and dont think she was the wrong kind of christian, just drank bad cult koolaid about all the things she ought to do to make Jesus love her, when He already did. I lean heavily on grace and hope you all grasp that beauty too. Merry Christmas!