Wednesday, March 24, 2010

A warm spring day around the farm


In the barn loft

A neat hiding place
Too bad it isn't deeper, but still fun



Hannah's favored baby

Our milk goat and couple of kids



First batch of chicks for the summer are in. Aren't they adorable
little puff balls?

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Spring Fever!!
This time of year gets me itching to do SOMETHING! I get so wearied of long, dark days with no sunshine & early bed-times, so when we get a few warmer, sunny days like we had recently, I'm so ready to be outside! Ronnie cut up the garden & tilled it, so all we have left is to row it. Maybe I can plant this week. (This was the original reason for spring break in schools, to get the garden in!)
I was in Wal -Mart one day in Feb. when I noticed they had the twenty cent seed packs that get bought first, so I just had to stock up. I also bought a couple boxes of the soil pads for seedlings to sprout in my seed tray.
I'm out of the gate, let me go! I have thought so much of Pastor John these past few weeks as I planted my seeds in hope. He sows the seeds of the gospel in our hearts every week, hoping as I do, for tiny seedlings to pop out of the dirt & reach for the Son. I tenderly water my little seed pods, as he does with the water of the word of God. It was so exciting when my first seedlings, the Cactus Zinnias, popped out about only five days later.


These remind me of Amy Howard. These 'newborn' seedlings are so tender in need of great care. So many 'dangers' for them. It doesn't seem like it took that long for the gospel seed to take root in the soil of her prepared heart & shoot up, looking for the Son. When I first met her, she said the whole God thing was like the piece of a puzzle that had been missing all her life and she'd finally found it. I can so relate. When you've walked in darkness, with very little light around you your whole life, when God flames your dungeon with light, all things become new. The warmth of the Son of Righteousness is so welcome after the long dead winter of sin & death that once reigned. What a vast contrast in her and others we've poured so much of our hearts, prayers, & lives into, never to see a tiny green leaf pop out from under the soil. Sadly, not even a disturbance in the soil, like a breaking up of the promise of something underneath coming.


Then again, some seedlings take only a few days, and some take months to germinate. I'm trying to not to give up hope on some of the empty seed pods as I remember some of the germination times seemed like forever.
Some seeds have to pass through the digestive tracts of birds to be able to germinate. Isn't that weird?

And we all wait for the 'fruit.' I wait for the artistic beauty of God's flowers in these seeds & I will wait in hope for the nourishing food that will come from the seeds that we'll sow in the weeks to come.
I've heard it said if you want a squash it only takes 2 months, but if you want a good shade tree, it takes years. Water oak trees can take up to 73 days to germinate. I know it's at least 10 years to get a decent shade from them as we had a little seedling here on the home place when we married. It is now a very large shade tree. We experience this with the elders of our church. They remind me of this:

How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked,
Nor stand in the path of sinners,
Nor sit in the seat of scoffers!
But his delight is in the law of the LORD,
And in His law he meditates day and night.
He will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water,
Which yields its fruit in its season
And its leaf does not wither;
And in whatever he does, he prospers. Ps.1


They've weathered some storms. They've been tried & proved true. We have found a shade from the heat of adversities and the wiles of the evil one underneath their oversight. Our children play & enjoy the protection they offer.

How we should marvel at the variety of seeds God made, each one producing after it's own kind, so many truly a blessing. Hannah just planted her medicinal herb seeds. We hope they will make it, as a variety of disasters killed the ones planted last year. (Blue the cat & Macrae the baby in the house & then outside the chickens and dogs knocked them over. :-P)

Some seeds are a dread. Like the ones that came to our farm years ago in some hay bales from the feed store. Nasty thorny bushes that are impossible to pull up painlessly with your hands. They made their way into the barn floor, which is the basis for the compost pile, which feeds the garden. This year Ron spread that compost with all those dreaded seeds onto the garden. Oh, how I wish I'd made the trip to the garden to get the hoe to kill those first few little thorn bushes that are now almost out of control, and that will give me a head ache this year in the garden! It will take wariness & diligence to get them all hoed out, so we won't have to deal with their spread next year. We abhor stepping on those seedlings or brushing by those bushes, which are a lot like sin in our lives. They must be weeded out before they come to a seed head, only to spread their nuisance further. God says, "You will know them by their fruits.."
"No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. Each tree is recognized by its own fruit. People do not pick figs from thorn bushes, or grapes from briers.Jn. 6:44 One nourishes & heals, one cuts & wounds.
If God is your Abba Father, your Master Gardener, He'll work in the garden of your life to "produce a crop, thirty, sixty,or even a hundred fold what was sown." He prunes us, His children, so we'll yield the peaceable fruits of righteousness in the spiritual realm. We wait for the fruit of God's Holy Spirit "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires."Galatians 5:22
May we, by His grace, be a life giving work of art for our Father in the building of His artistic garden of life.

In the grip of grace,
Heather
John 10:27My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. 28I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand. 29My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all[d]; no one can snatch them out of my Father's hand. 30I and the Father are one."

Naked I came into this world, naked I'll depart


I you, too

This may seem shallow to some of you who've never been close to animals, but a small tragedy has struck our house early this morning. Our family milk goat of seven years died in agony in my lap this morning about 2:30 am in front of the fireplace in the old living room. We've been anticipating her birth for months now. Oh, the joys that come from new baby goats and back into the habit going to the barn for yummy, fresh milk twice a day . No more hormone laden, vitamin D added cow's milk from the grocery store. (Guess where that Vitamin D that is added comes from? Even in the organic milks. Do you really wanna know?)

Last spring we down-sized our herd so we could have a garden from the fruit of our own labors to eat this winter. Cheese making, milking, and a large garden don't go together well. Each one can be a full time job, so we sold all except one, our best milker. Of course, they all had a great personality since we hand fed them all since their birth on our farm. Do you have any idea how intimate it is to receive milk from your animal? It's an unique relationship. She gives life from her body and we receive like one of her own she loves and trust to be there. We've had goats almost a decade now and she has never made the cull list. She's always been one of the two 'keepers' all these years, from the first day of her life.

Anyway,they've always given birth first thing in the morning after morning milking. This year things went haywire. White Socks, (newly favored with a new nick-name of Whitley since she was the only dear left, went into labor in the middle of the night without our supervision. Never good. Hannah who'd been joyfully looking forward to playing mid-wife to her birth, set her alarm for 5 am so she could be there before Whitley woke up. When she got there, the two babies had already had been born, but one was dead. There was one placenta to be found, but that was not surprising as our barn cat often finishes off things such as that. That was yesterday. By last night, she was going down rapidly. More than likely, a retained placenta from the dead kid. Ron gave her a penicillin shot and later (too late) some Oxytocin to expel the rest we now know must have been the problem. Hannah brought her home from the barn last night to tend to her more closely to help her hopefully finish this disastrous labor. She kept vainly trying to push out the poison of her pain. Just wasn't meant to be, even though I begged for pity & mercy from my Daddy, who is in control of all things. Such a small inconsequential thing, to save a family pet. I told Him before we tried various painful things to relieve her of her burden, to guide us and give us wisdom. I told Him I didn't expect Him to be our Genie in a bottle and He was not. "The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the Name of the Lord." In His sovereign will, He said, "No."
Her last night with us.

Hannah's perspective of Whitley's visit to the house last summer for an afternoon milking.

http://adventurersinzion.blogspot.com/2009/09/most-convenient-milking-i-have-ever-had.html
"for death is the destiny of every man;
the living should take this to heart." Ecclesiastes 7

In the grip of grace,
Heather

John 10:27My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. 28I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand. 29My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all[d]; no one can snatch them out of my Father's hand. 30I and the Father are one."