Heady Ideas & Eclectic Thoughts

I will be posting a new series of blogs soon, as research time allows, concerning a variety of issues pertaining to Agrarianism, The Green Movement, and the involvement of the Church in these areas. Because I am new to blogging, I will apologize in advance for the formatting and rambling. I will try to keep things in as cohesive a manner as possible.

It is my hope to better understand some of my brethren, (sisters too!), and offer some additional thoughts to our mutual discussion of living a proper existence while here.

This is quite an undertaking for me and I am very alive to the fact that there are so many folk out there doing this sort of thing. Some quite well, and others...that I pray for.

My main focus will be on a Reformed view of Holiness/Separation, and Industrialization/City-dwelling. It is a subject that has been well covered by many others, but I feel a deeper need to understand the arguments. So as a result, I will be seeking answers from some of the more "experienced" folks out there to help clarify these issues.

Please pray for me as I undertake this task. It is my hope that it will lead to a greater unity among the many Christian's out there as we properly define the meaning of Agrarianism for the next generation.

Just a hint! Some of the subjects that we will be tackling are as follows:

Reconstructionism vs. Separatism

Is Urbanization unwise...or Sinful?

Is your garden eschatology sound?

Plans,Providence, and Priorities

Nothing is going as planned.


I am growing accustomed to this. I never planned on leaving the Appalachia I love so much to come back to Florida. My wife surely did not. I never planned on having a small home plumbing business during the 2nd Great Depression, with 9 children. I certainly didn't plan on blowing a few discs in my back 4 months ago, being unemployed, unable to rest at ease in the comfort of unemployment or work comp., ( small business owners can't afford comp, and unemployment is not allowed for injured folk!), or many of the other things that are happening in my life at present.
In fact, there are quite a few things that I did not intend to take place in my life. But they have.
I had been telling myself for some time that I would be more involved in the Garden next time. Just like the countless self-exhortations to do more of the training in our homeschool, and leading Family Worship when I got home from a hard days work. Again and again I told myself that things had to change. That I had to get back to our original vision of homesteading, and training the children to a consistency with their own spiritual duties. It was easy to see that my wife was overburdened with doing her job and mine while raising up a large family, homeschooling, training in the Scriptures, grinding wheat, cutting hair, learning to sew and make soap, etc.,... Yes siree, I was going to get back in the saddle and start being the Old Me...soon. Little did I know how God would answer my and my wife's prayer. It wasn't that stupid waste of a dollar they call Lotto. Nor did I find that perfect "Hobby Farm" listing. You know the one. Where some older couple with no kids and a ton of extra land just wanted to "bless" a family like mine with a little piece in exchange for the upkeep of their farmstead! And, of course they would live in an area that was inhabited by many like-minded Saints of God who we could fellowship and worship with according to our understanding of the Word!
No, that is not what happened to get me back on track.
Instead, I was forced, kicking and screaming ( mostly from the pain of a few herniated discs) to quit working away my life away from my family. Never, in a lifetime would I have chosen this way. But, I now think that was my problem. Never in my lifetime would I have chosen any way.
Sure I wanted to be at home with them. I really did pray and seek a way that I could be more involved in their daily education and training in righteousness. I searched out all the opportunities that I could see to figure a way for a modern father, with a large family and no money, to get things "right". I yearned, and still do, to find a meaningful way to fulfill that most sacred duty, raising up godly seed, that any father has! But I could not figure it out because all I could see were the Giants in the Land.
I had my plans certainly. I would continue to work hard and save every spare nickel...when there was one, and SOMEDAY, I would find that perfect place with little money down and orchards bursting with fruit just waiting for a fellow like me to step into it! That would solve all my problems! After all, I would be working on our homestead. We would put up a few large canvass surplus tents, hand dig a nice well, and start felling trees for the cabin! Surely, I knew it was a long shot. But the Lord knew my heart and I could always hope for a little help from Him.
On THAT day things would finally be alright! I would be home and involved in making sure the children had a proper worldview. We would rise early and begin with long prayer and thanksgiving on our way to the milk shed. There was even a chance that some of my children would still be young enough and receptive enough to give me their heart and let me show them all the lessons that I had learned, about how God wants us to live for Him, and to set our affections on the things above and not on the things of this world!! I really thought that the key to giving up my desires was to simply have some of them...well, o.k.... the majority of them, fulfilled! Then it would be easy to let go of the gut wrenching need to obtain my dream of independence, right?
Could it be that I am the only misguided, self-seeking, lover of my covetous dream-farm, christian out there? Am I the only person who has started out with a fire for the things of God, ( only to discover that somewhere on the way my will replaced His?), and a vision for the next generation, and a zeal for seeking His pleasure and a real need to know that He feels love in return from me as gratitude for that day? You remember that day... when the light was changed to darkness, and life was breathed into your dead corpse for the first time, and suddenly you realized that you were taking your first real breath of fresh air, ever, in your lifetime? What happened to that day? Where have those feelings gone? Why is it so hard to even remember the unexplainable joy that came and raised us up like the men in the Valley of Bones, that suddenly grew flesh and became Living Beings!? We swore we would never forget it! We became fools to all who knew us as we prattled on and on for endless hours about this incredible New Birth! Oh, our hearts did burn within us!
And somewhere along the way of our journey to that City whose builder and maker is God, on that path to the Celestial Kingdom that is not made by any Man's hand, our vision was somehow blurred and the visage became more temporal, and we changed the Glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like unto corruptible man. For some in was land, for others... new skills learned, and hobbies fulfilled, dreams of butter-milk and a skep full of bees, or some homemade soap with hyssop from the herb garden! After all, we all know that milk and honey and... well hyssop is in the Bible somewhere, too! And we know that there really is value of sort in the things that we seek. It really will be a better upbringing for our children, and their really is a great need to watch over them and keep them pure and unspotted from this world. This world. We see daily what is happening in this world. Wars and financial melt-down, and scandal and corruption, and genetically modified food, and Humanist Zealots tracking down the peaceful children of God for wanting to be seperate and clean and taking their land and their liberty, and on and on...and...before we realized what was happening, the need to grasp whatever security we could find overwhelmed us and became... our trap.

Matthew Chapter 6:
25Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? 26Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? .....

31Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? 32(For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. 33But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.

In the morning, my son's and I are adding more compost to the garden. And my wife will cut our hair after she grinds the wheat. And we will all gather in the evening to prepare ourselves for the Lord's Day Sabbath.

My plans for my homestead have changed...in ways that I did not expect.

And I am thankful.

Spring Prep

While I have been an avid reader of several blogs over the last few years, I have little knowledge of Blogging itself. But, like most things in life, I am sure that I will find a good how-to-book out there somewhere. In the mean time, I hope anyone who finds this little journal will bear with me as I try to properly categorize the site and learn the etiquette of blogging.

Now that the disclaimer is out of the way I thought that I might share a ray of hope with some of the northern folk out there.

We are gearing up for the Spring push! That's right, here in the Sunshine State we don't have much of a Winter. Now don't get me wrong, it is usually February that catches us off-guard. It is the coldest month of our year, with some freezing weather and the occassional 20 something dip at night. For the most part though, folks around here can work in the garden for 10 to 11 months of the year, if they desire to. The big time to start transplants is next week and within the next 10 weeks we will have nearly everything in the ground, the Lord willing, of course. Can't wait!

The last couple of years have been a real trial because we got started late and lost nearly everything to bugs and heat stress. These are both huge problems in Florida and when mixed with a soil that is 90% sand you really have to work to get some canning done! I am going to try and post a pic of the square foot garden that we did when we started out a few years back.

I am not sure how I did it, but I got a partial shot of one of the children's "plots" up there.

Did I mention s-a-n-d? Boy, I forgot how bad it used to look! Alot has changed since then and I will be sure to get some new pics up soon that tell the story of what organic composting can do for sandy soil. Until I figure out how to import them I will just let you know that it really does help. We started with soil that had never been worked and after a little time, we have what most folk around here would consider black gold! It was just a matter of implementing what I had read for so long. Save everything possible for the compost stack and work it accordingly, and you will be rewarded. In fact, that is what the next several weeks will consist of. Turning a season of carefully prepared compost into the beds so they will be ready for the planting. I really do hope to figure out how to get some recent pic's up because they tell the whole story of the wonder of organic methodology. Here's what we did:

First, we went online to order one of those Compost Tumblers that make magical stuff in weeks.

Then, we laughed, and choked, and laughed some more at the price of one of those things!

Next, we looked into building a three bin system that all the "farming" books show, and figured out we couldn't afford that either, so... we starting doing what my Granny's people have always done when pressed to solve a homestead problem...we looked out in the yard to see what kind of junk we could use.

That's when we saw those 12 tires that someone had left here, back before we came to this place, and remembered somewhere reading about a simple "tire stack" compost system.

Voila! 3 stacks of tires, each 4 high, and we had the beginning of a real soil-building machine.

Every other Saturday, the boy's rake the hay out of the chicken coop and run, mix in the rabbit droppings, (excellent quick fertilizer, can be used immediately), throw a scoop of wood ashes from the fireplace or burn pile in, take all of Mother's kitchen scraps, and mix it up and throw it into the first stack. After 2 weeks, you simply take one tire off at a time, and move the mix to the next bin. That's really all there is to it! As you get to the 3rd bin the stuff is so broke down that there is plenty of room for more.

I can't stress enough the importance of building organic matter into sandy, well draining soil. Without it you will never beat the nematodes here, much less the heat. We have gone to double dug, wide beds and are very pleased. In 4 years of gardening we have gone from a speck of beans to nearly 60% of what we would normally buy at the store, and my wife is a fabulous cook with a wide variety of menu's.

We neglected a fall garden this year but can still do carrots and brocolli until the last week of January if it is a quick variety. I really wanted to have the beds rested and ready for this spring.

I geuss that will do for now until I can get a few pics up. We will be doing some rabbit butchering as we move into the next couple of weeks so I will try and keep things updated.

Why Filial?

My dear wife was quite adamant that my new blog title was not clear enough in description for the average person to understand. Alas, I have learned over these years that in most cases she is ...well, right. Still, I am comfortable enough that I will be able to explain why I have chosen this particularly pithy title as the conduit of yet another man's journey to simple living and humble musings about what there is to learn as we try to escape the mundane existence of slave-wage living in modern Babylon. It is my hope that I will post an acceptable explanation soon. For now, it will be simple enough to say that the idea of "fine" is self explanatory to anyone with access to a dictionary. I have even included Webster's Original at the top of this blog.

You see, we are not yet free from the slough of this modern muck. I speak in the temporal sense of course. We are not off-grid, earth-sheltered, or even owners of land. We live on a small piece of property that is rented from a local reformed minister, ( my minister ), in a part of Florida that is semi- rural and therefore semi-restricted as to usage. Even so, we are busy carving out our sustinence lifestyle while praying for the day that we might get a little "further out". Hardly the picture of Agrarian expertise, we still feel the call to do what we can ,where we can. This, I believe, is the missing ingredient of so many in the trap of modernism. They are waiting for that lottery ticket to come in before making the needed adjustments to their daily living... " if I only had _______," they say, "then I could start to live more independent of the system!" Alas, they grow more dull to the call day by day. It is kind of like the character Christian in Bunyan's classic, The Pilgrims Progress, as he lies down to take a rest in that enchanted place, unaware that the sleep he enters is his trap. Our fine property is what we have been given in our station of life, so this is what we will use.

As to the Filial nature of our existence, it can be illustrated by the events of this very morning. Our property backs against an old pasture that is owned by a wealthy northener. This Northener is keen to sell and has gone to great lengths to have his parcel rezoned for a commercial sale. Still, times being what they are, he has taken to allowing various local folk to keep cattle on this acreage that he might benefit from the Agricultural exemptions. Well too!, say's I, not being a particularly tax friendly individual myself. The problem is, that the cattle baron is seldom around to tend his stock and more importantly, to mend his fences. So, for weeks on end I have had the daily experience, ( nightly too), of herding his 15 or so younger cattle out of my gardens and back across my repeatedly mended fences into his property while trying to keep them from turning toward the nearby highway on the front of his unfenced property. This highway is a newly 4 laned monstrosity that is heavily travelled by the unattentive soccer-mom's and other Babylonian types, who are busy with their lives. Numerous attempts to reach the owner have yeilded no results, so I do what must be done to prevent harm to either party and try to keep ahead of the little devils while dreaming of larders full of fresh young steer meat!

Until, this morning that is.

As we were preparing ourselves for the Public Assembly next door at the House Church that we attend, we heard the sound of sirens and the loud speakers of our local Deputies in the distance toward that afore-mentioned highway. By the time that I got clothed and outside I was greeted by the stampede across my yard. and right through my fence and gates, and the bewildered look of several deputies whooping and waiving "Su-eee!" across the loud speaker system. I did not have the time to stop and explain that the universal hog call of these parts would never attract a band of young cattle, especially when seperated from their herd and lead cows. Cattle you see, like all herding creatures will follow the lead animal almost always unless, as in this case there is no lead animal. You must first try to "bunch" them and either help establish a leader or become one yourself. Unfortunately, these animals were now in quite a frantic, and they were stampeding in erratic directions, what with the constant sirens and squelch horns being blared from all directions and several of the lawmen trying to gain order by randomly speeding directly into the center of the herd with their vehicles revving and lights flashing! All this , right through my little property and with only 30 minutes before our Congregation was scheduled to start arriving! As I was looking at the ruined fencing and the great mud ruts that the derby deputies were churning up in our grass parking area, I noticed that my family dog was now escaped from the fence and nowhere in sight. That is when I called the deputies over and instructed them to stop and let me get the critters back where they belong. All lights went off, all sirens were ceased and I calmy called my 13 year old son to the road and told him to get them back in their property so we could find our dog. 3 minutes later with no more than a small pole and an 8 ft rope-cord attached, he had used his makeshift "cracker" whip to herd the bunch some 15o yards straight through a 3 ft wide break in the fence and back to their 40 acre parcel! Amazing young man, if I do say so myself!

It was then that we became worried because our dog is a well known cow dog and surely would have been near too herd these animals. I asked the deputy if he had seen what happened to the dog that ran out when my fences were broken and he informed me that another herd was up at the highway and he might be there. My heart sank as I called the heel command and heard no reply. I looked at my boy and told him to get the shovel and start me a goodly sized hole under a shade tree as I got in my truck and headed for the highway. 6 years this dog had been a part of our family. He had foiled 2 burglars after the hurricanes a few years back by pinning them to the house while I retrieved some persuasion. Then, there were the coyotes that had come to raid my chickens and met a mongrel that fought like it was an holy calling to save my stock! 8 of my 9 children had rode his back, hitched him to their homemade wagon and dressed him in villianous costumes for impromptu battles. Never did he fail to heed a command with the utmost submission and sorrowful gentleness and yet he was all Alpha in his realm. Nightly he would be found lying in the spot between the driveway, the livestock shelters and our doorway. Rain was no deterrent. He shunned the dog house we provided, but would be always found lying down with his head erect and scanning the 3 domains of his realm. As I pulled onto the highway I was met in the median by a deputy near the valiant beast. He began to explain that he was only trying to get the cows back across the road, ( as was the dog, no doubt), when the rushing of his car had caused them to turn again on the dog who quickly dodged out of the way and into the traffic. He geussed the fellow was doing about 60mph, so it went quick... 60 mph, on a 50mph highway in broad daylight, with 7 cows and 3 cops with lights flashing spinning every which way across all 4 lanes!

No sense in going in that direction though, the matter at hand was the dog. I pulled up just ahead of the faithful beast and and got out and raised the topper while dropping the tailgate. The deputy, looking a mixture of perplexion and disgust, asked what on earth I was doing?! I explained that I was loading up the animal to get him out of the median when he quickly interupted me and said, that there was no need for that because he was gonna call the garbage folks and they would come by, usually the same day, and throw him in the garbage hopper. I looked at the deputy in a manner that must have given him some insight into the workings of my mind, and he dropped his head slightly and softly said. "Oh, you gonna bury him up then, I see..."

Yes Sir, I responded, he is my dog, and therefore my resposibility, I am going to bury him.

Slowly, I drove into the yard, now filled with church goers who had pulled in from the highway as I was loading up my animal. There too, were my children, standing back at our property and waiting too know. As I came in, I told them all to stay back and called off the boy at the hole digging and told them all to attend unto their Lord's Day and I would follow soon.

Now less you misunderstand, we do not worship nature, nor animals. We eat most any that we can palatably prepare. Family dogs being excluded, of course. And not a tear was shed during this ordeal. Not even by the little ones. It is not that we are callous, far from it. In fact, I am quite sure that many tears will flow, even from my own eyes after the numbness wears off. The point that I am making is that misplaced critter love had nothing to do with my actions, nor with my tears.Rather, it was a result of the simple command that my Heavenly Father has given me to take dominion over all living creatures. And with that dominion, He has further commanded that I consider the beast of my field, and study to know the state of my flocks. It is filial duty, to care for this animal that so faithfully obeyed the right order of nature while under my care. It is this same duty that teaches my children that an animal missing food and water at chore time results in the same for the chore-person. Not because those animals have even a small percentage of our worth, but rather, because we are given a command from our Father that we are to care for our flocks and that failure to do so properly is a grief to His heart, and the evidence of an uncaring and unmerciful wretch.

This is not a complete explanation of what I wanted to convey in my new blog title, but it is the explanation that Providence has provided. We seek to be faithful in whatever little thing that God entrusts to us in our place and station. Oh that my neighbor had felt the same....