Imagine raising six spirited kids on a grass farm. Today. That'll test any mama's strength.

Dorcas Smucker and her brood live out their days in full view in this collection of musings—picking blueberries while watching for bears, hoping for angels driving off the nearby freeway, moving into the "thousand-story house." Then there was the four-week road trip, which, Dorcas says, "My sister-in-law warned me would be like putting your whole family in the bathroom and staying there for three days."

There are no recipes here. But there is story upon story.

Dorcas has three daughters and three sons. And she has a voice—encouraging, doubting, entertaining, but never taking herself too seriously. Often slightly off-stride, and with disarming humility, Dorcas keeps finding resource in her life at home.