Here lately the idea of blogging has taken the form of a few short snippits akin to the twitter realm. I am toying with the idea of merging with my other blog and trying to meld my reformed leanings with my agrarian bent...Radical thoughts me thinks...
Hopefully soon there will be something worth reading.
Finally got high speed but now realize that my 6 year old E-machine is NOT going to get better with another defrag and revamp of the registry.Sorry E-machine,but I really tried to paint your product as the frugal choice in my mind.
I will be looking at a new system within the next 2 months and maybe I will be able to get at least 5 words typed per minute.
Seriously.
This machine is the worst product I have ever owned. Loads of wasted time and money trying to upgrade.
I finally figured out that it will not matter as long as that 2nd string vowel is still on the tower.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Saturday, December 3, 2011
Coming Soon
It has been quite some time since we have bothered updating. This has not been because of a lack of interest or desire, but rather ability. Since moving to these parts we have been pretty isolated. This is one of the great things about living in a 'holler of West Virginia. Life really does move a little slower here.
Even so, we are glad to say that by the end of the month, we will have a high speed connection that will finally enable us to begin doing a little update on the blog. It has been an amazing journey since coming here and I can't wait to share some of the things that God has done in our lives. Be prepared to be amazed.
Until then...
Even so, we are glad to say that by the end of the month, we will have a high speed connection that will finally enable us to begin doing a little update on the blog. It has been an amazing journey since coming here and I can't wait to share some of the things that God has done in our lives. Be prepared to be amazed.
Until then...
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
What a year!
It has been a long time since I have had either the time or ability to do something as frivolous as blog about my little dreams of getting to the country. It still will be a while before I am able to do any serious catch up since there is nothing but dial-up in this part of the world. Still, I hope that I will find the time and inclination soon. For now it will have to suffice to say that we are alive and well in the wilds of our new land. If there is still such a thing as a modernized society with all the neat gadgets like electricity and computers around next month, I may try and play catch up....
Looking forward to sharing how God took a family of TEN with ZERO income and moved them out of the city and into a bountiful estate by His grace and our earnest prayer. I encourage those of you still on the fence about the how and when to get out of Babylon to PRAY. Really. Don't just think about it, but pour out your heart's desire to the Lord for His mercy in helping you get as far away from the coming crisis as possible.
For my confused and confessional friends, please do not think I am suggesting giving up our mission to proclaim the gospel in all the world. I am not. I am saying that you should wisely consider getting your family safe from the influence of the world system and then teach them how to evangelize like they are in the days of Noah, with an Ark ready to be used of God for the protection of His children. The plain fact is Preterism is just wrong and Futurism is just as bad, but the absolute greatest danger to the Church right now is the Post-Mill fallacy that is abounding in Protestantism.
So much for the diatribe. See you soon, Lord willing.
Looking forward to sharing how God took a family of TEN with ZERO income and moved them out of the city and into a bountiful estate by His grace and our earnest prayer. I encourage those of you still on the fence about the how and when to get out of Babylon to PRAY. Really. Don't just think about it, but pour out your heart's desire to the Lord for His mercy in helping you get as far away from the coming crisis as possible.
For my confused and confessional friends, please do not think I am suggesting giving up our mission to proclaim the gospel in all the world. I am not. I am saying that you should wisely consider getting your family safe from the influence of the world system and then teach them how to evangelize like they are in the days of Noah, with an Ark ready to be used of God for the protection of His children. The plain fact is Preterism is just wrong and Futurism is just as bad, but the absolute greatest danger to the Church right now is the Post-Mill fallacy that is abounding in Protestantism.
So much for the diatribe. See you soon, Lord willing.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Country Roads, Take me home!
After many months of questionable preparation and self-doubt, we have finally decided that West Virginia is going to be our new home.
In actuality, we decided some months ago but with all the excitement in our daily lives I simply had no time for something like blogging about my move. Now things are different. We are excited!
And we are leaving very soon.
July 5th is the day when we will roll up the rugs on the old homestead and pack the wagon down Florida Hill-billy style for the long trip across the Blue Ridge Mountains and seemingly back in time a hundred years, to the still very Wild and Beautiful mountains of West Virginia!
Near to the inlet of the fertile Ohio Valley is where we are headed. However, being a man destitute of all of the means and ways of this world's fortune, we will be stopping a bit short of that rich, loamy land long known for it's tendency to triple even the most haphazard labors of it's blessed inhabitants. Instead, our little caravan of pilgrims will end our trek while still within the Gilpin-Upshur laden range of the Allegheny foot-hills, where man's best efforts to yield his daily bread are most assuredly, by the sweat of his brow!
The locals call the sloping mountain-side of slip soil that I am stopping upon a holler', but being ever the romantic optimist, I prefer to describe it as a hamlet-on-high! It is nearly 11 acres nestled between two peaks of a very long and expansive ridge. The road of sorts, that leads up to the entrance of my property was at one time the access point where mule driven well-men climbed to the ridge top to travel along an odd shaped, winding path in the forest heights in order to reach the various wells of natural gas that still dot the area. Of the several times that we have gone there to prepare our little cabin, most afforded motorized entry to the actual living site. A few occasions where too wet and slippery, and resulted in a rather long and steep walk to get to the shelter among the trees where our beds are housed! This is something that we hope to correct in time, but is perfectly in keeping with the one, most prevalent difference between the aforementioned Valley of ease, and our given plot of life's toil...MUD! If there is one thing that we know about our new life, it is the sure and certain fact that we will never again have to worry about sand getting tracked onto the carpet. In fact, we are glad to announce that the whole expense of carpeting is another thing that we will be able to fore-go in our new domicile.
What an adventure!
I will be updating as often as possible once we get there, via the local Public Library computer since we are 100% off-grid and about 10 country miles from town and I expect that gas will still cost money. We will be working tirelessly to get a water catchment system up and running, along with finishing the Atlas Ram Pump which I plan to build. As you can imagine, water is pretty important, even in West Virginia ;), and we have none coming to the property by the "normal" venues. My long term goal is to have a deep well drilled and attach a solar outfit, coupled with a 10,000 gallon cistern which will gravity feed the property just like a water tower used to do in towns across the country. This runs between $4-$7k from what we have gathered in our research. Research is about the only part we have gathered....I am still disabled and show no improvement from all the latest medical wisdom that I have received this past 12 months. I had a period where it seemed that the spinal injections and my inversion table seemed to be working, so being a father of a large family I figured that, if these things were working, I should be too! That lasted about a week and I ended up pushing around my old rolling walker, and making nightly visits to the local E.R. because of the pain. End result...another disc herniation and a few new neurological twitches that I have learned to deal with. Lesson learned: Degenerative Disc disease is a part of me. I am learning a new argument for my quiver-full theology! Large families are very practical, AND are always mentioned as a blessing of God! No complaints here. We are amazed at the goodness of God in supplying this estate to us! Until we get the well system, we plan to make use of the Ram pump by utilizing the huge seasonal spring volume on the property. It is enough to provide 100% of our needs when things are wet. We have figured out a few ways to deal with the changing locations of the wet-weather springs and to "trap" the run-off into a few main areas for use. This will involve a week, or two with a ditch-witch trenching machine and a few hundred feet of concrete in places, but is still doable for around $1200 we figure. I got the idea while driving through beautiful Virginia along the Interstate. They really do a better job of managing the water run-off by the roads there, and I noticed that they did this by installing long sections of concrete lined ditches right down the side of the mountains! The idea is to find several areas where a lateral ditch is cut that will catch the whole mountainside at the foot of each landing, and then cutting in several main branches for the water to escape, thus forming a man-made drainage system that can easily be converged at some points to provide a usable flow of several gallons per minute, and VOILA! You now have enough water to pressure a Ram-pump for cistern storage. I have walked the land and drawn the plans. This is a very achievable system and I can't wait to be able to start. All in the Lord's time and provision. One thing that I have learned, is that God delights in answering prayer. I can't wait to see how He answers these!
What an adventure!
God has blessed in so many ways and through so many people as we prepare for this new chapter in our pilgrimage here below. We look forward to the next few years of learning new skills and developing a fuller Christian understanding of the agrarian lifestyle.
I am not calling it "Christian Agrarianism" anymore because this title has become a stumbling block for some of my brothers, but I will still say that we are consciously and joyfully seeking a life of simplicity and one with an agricultural basis as part of our understanding of living an obedient Christian life in this current time. Not that some wealthy, city dwelling brethren may not be able to properly prepare for the next 20 years where he is, I am just saying that for a financially destitute individual like myself, it seems that the wisest path for me, is to develop a comfort with sustenance living now, rather than having it forced upon me after years of soft living and fattening up on the Food stamp system. I have had that most of my life and will be well prepared if American Socialism pulls-one-out-of-the-hat and we all get free EVERYTHING over the next 20 years. I will need little survival training to figure out how to choose a PIN number and load up the grocery cart with frozen Chinese food and potato chips! BUT, if things don't exactly turn out that way, and the next few years begin to look like the facts of today indicate instead of like the Information Bureau, ( News Agencies), suggest, I will have absolutely zero real knowledge of how to survive even a few months without the current system of industrialized food and travel unless I start preparing now.
God has forced the preparation upon me by bringing me into poverty. I praise the God who has always cared for me.It will be exciting to see what He does in our lives over this next year.
May we be found faithful. In lean times, or richness.
What an adventure!
In actuality, we decided some months ago but with all the excitement in our daily lives I simply had no time for something like blogging about my move. Now things are different. We are excited!
And we are leaving very soon.
July 5th is the day when we will roll up the rugs on the old homestead and pack the wagon down Florida Hill-billy style for the long trip across the Blue Ridge Mountains and seemingly back in time a hundred years, to the still very Wild and Beautiful mountains of West Virginia!
Near to the inlet of the fertile Ohio Valley is where we are headed. However, being a man destitute of all of the means and ways of this world's fortune, we will be stopping a bit short of that rich, loamy land long known for it's tendency to triple even the most haphazard labors of it's blessed inhabitants. Instead, our little caravan of pilgrims will end our trek while still within the Gilpin-Upshur laden range of the Allegheny foot-hills, where man's best efforts to yield his daily bread are most assuredly, by the sweat of his brow!
The locals call the sloping mountain-side of slip soil that I am stopping upon a holler', but being ever the romantic optimist, I prefer to describe it as a hamlet-on-high! It is nearly 11 acres nestled between two peaks of a very long and expansive ridge. The road of sorts, that leads up to the entrance of my property was at one time the access point where mule driven well-men climbed to the ridge top to travel along an odd shaped, winding path in the forest heights in order to reach the various wells of natural gas that still dot the area. Of the several times that we have gone there to prepare our little cabin, most afforded motorized entry to the actual living site. A few occasions where too wet and slippery, and resulted in a rather long and steep walk to get to the shelter among the trees where our beds are housed! This is something that we hope to correct in time, but is perfectly in keeping with the one, most prevalent difference between the aforementioned Valley of ease, and our given plot of life's toil...MUD! If there is one thing that we know about our new life, it is the sure and certain fact that we will never again have to worry about sand getting tracked onto the carpet. In fact, we are glad to announce that the whole expense of carpeting is another thing that we will be able to fore-go in our new domicile.
What an adventure!
I will be updating as often as possible once we get there, via the local Public Library computer since we are 100% off-grid and about 10 country miles from town and I expect that gas will still cost money. We will be working tirelessly to get a water catchment system up and running, along with finishing the Atlas Ram Pump which I plan to build. As you can imagine, water is pretty important, even in West Virginia ;), and we have none coming to the property by the "normal" venues. My long term goal is to have a deep well drilled and attach a solar outfit, coupled with a 10,000 gallon cistern which will gravity feed the property just like a water tower used to do in towns across the country. This runs between $4-$7k from what we have gathered in our research. Research is about the only part we have gathered....I am still disabled and show no improvement from all the latest medical wisdom that I have received this past 12 months. I had a period where it seemed that the spinal injections and my inversion table seemed to be working, so being a father of a large family I figured that, if these things were working, I should be too! That lasted about a week and I ended up pushing around my old rolling walker, and making nightly visits to the local E.R. because of the pain. End result...another disc herniation and a few new neurological twitches that I have learned to deal with. Lesson learned: Degenerative Disc disease is a part of me. I am learning a new argument for my quiver-full theology! Large families are very practical, AND are always mentioned as a blessing of God! No complaints here. We are amazed at the goodness of God in supplying this estate to us! Until we get the well system, we plan to make use of the Ram pump by utilizing the huge seasonal spring volume on the property. It is enough to provide 100% of our needs when things are wet. We have figured out a few ways to deal with the changing locations of the wet-weather springs and to "trap" the run-off into a few main areas for use. This will involve a week, or two with a ditch-witch trenching machine and a few hundred feet of concrete in places, but is still doable for around $1200 we figure. I got the idea while driving through beautiful Virginia along the Interstate. They really do a better job of managing the water run-off by the roads there, and I noticed that they did this by installing long sections of concrete lined ditches right down the side of the mountains! The idea is to find several areas where a lateral ditch is cut that will catch the whole mountainside at the foot of each landing, and then cutting in several main branches for the water to escape, thus forming a man-made drainage system that can easily be converged at some points to provide a usable flow of several gallons per minute, and VOILA! You now have enough water to pressure a Ram-pump for cistern storage. I have walked the land and drawn the plans. This is a very achievable system and I can't wait to be able to start. All in the Lord's time and provision. One thing that I have learned, is that God delights in answering prayer. I can't wait to see how He answers these!
What an adventure!
God has blessed in so many ways and through so many people as we prepare for this new chapter in our pilgrimage here below. We look forward to the next few years of learning new skills and developing a fuller Christian understanding of the agrarian lifestyle.
I am not calling it "Christian Agrarianism" anymore because this title has become a stumbling block for some of my brothers, but I will still say that we are consciously and joyfully seeking a life of simplicity and one with an agricultural basis as part of our understanding of living an obedient Christian life in this current time. Not that some wealthy, city dwelling brethren may not be able to properly prepare for the next 20 years where he is, I am just saying that for a financially destitute individual like myself, it seems that the wisest path for me, is to develop a comfort with sustenance living now, rather than having it forced upon me after years of soft living and fattening up on the Food stamp system. I have had that most of my life and will be well prepared if American Socialism pulls-one-out-of-the-hat and we all get free EVERYTHING over the next 20 years. I will need little survival training to figure out how to choose a PIN number and load up the grocery cart with frozen Chinese food and potato chips! BUT, if things don't exactly turn out that way, and the next few years begin to look like the facts of today indicate instead of like the Information Bureau, ( News Agencies), suggest, I will have absolutely zero real knowledge of how to survive even a few months without the current system of industrialized food and travel unless I start preparing now.
God has forced the preparation upon me by bringing me into poverty. I praise the God who has always cared for me.It will be exciting to see what He does in our lives over this next year.
May we be found faithful. In lean times, or richness.
What an adventure!
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Been a while
Glad to be home from the hospital for the moment. Look forward to catching up while there is still a grid around...
Seems like the Lord is being very gracious with all the warning shots lately.
Hope to update soon on the West Virginia happenings and some related news.
Seems like the Lord is being very gracious with all the warning shots lately.
Hope to update soon on the West Virginia happenings and some related news.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
December 16th,2009
As some of you know I have gone through a series of spinal injections in recent months that has left me in fairly bad condition. Lately, the bad effects have started wearing off and I have even wondered if the shots might actually be doing some good. But, as each day brings the same thing i am more convinced than ever that these injections have permanently damaged some new areas of my nerve centers in some way. Still, they say that the vast majority are greatly helped by these procedures and that I am one of those 'few' that 'do not respond well'.
For me it has been a nightmare of paralysis and pain in the lower portion of my body. Thankfully, i have regained use of my left leg but the weakness is pronounced and the p-a-i-n is bad stuff. Several nights were spent in local emergency rooms getting sedated that I might rest some. The last few days have been a needed break in the cycle and I am very thankful to the Lord that I am still able to think and remain free of the constant influence of narcotics. This has been a serious concern as I have entered into official training as a ministerial candidate within denomination. I continue to seek God's will in these matters and have filed for S.S.D.I. as a result of being out of work for almost 2 years now. it is not the best situation and I certainly tend to rant against abusive watse of programs like S.S. but I have little choice at this time. I am seeking to keep my family afloat and our nearly $16,000 mortgage from defaulting. actually, this is my Pastor's motgage and that is all the more reason i want to fight and save his property. His land was paid for and free until I was hurt and he bought a mobile home for my family to move into. The guy has paid my lights as well, every single month since my injury. Well, except for the blessing I received last year from the Piper family which kept us afloat for over 6 months!
Just continue to pray that God will help the SS process a fast one as healing seems unlikely at the moment.
We are not wanting to complain alot as there are too many pro's out there doing that now. Rather, we hope to convey our trust in the Lord and our gratefulness for the mercy we have been shown. Most any one else would have been sent to a homeless shelter a long time ago. We even had some one buy us an 8 month supply of toilet paper about 7 months ago! It is amazing what you become thankful for in hard times!
I think many more of us will have to learn this in the coming days as our judgement continues nationally. We will pray for one another and fulfill the law of Christ.
For me it has been a nightmare of paralysis and pain in the lower portion of my body. Thankfully, i have regained use of my left leg but the weakness is pronounced and the p-a-i-n is bad stuff. Several nights were spent in local emergency rooms getting sedated that I might rest some. The last few days have been a needed break in the cycle and I am very thankful to the Lord that I am still able to think and remain free of the constant influence of narcotics. This has been a serious concern as I have entered into official training as a ministerial candidate within denomination. I continue to seek God's will in these matters and have filed for S.S.D.I. as a result of being out of work for almost 2 years now. it is not the best situation and I certainly tend to rant against abusive watse of programs like S.S. but I have little choice at this time. I am seeking to keep my family afloat and our nearly $16,000 mortgage from defaulting. actually, this is my Pastor's motgage and that is all the more reason i want to fight and save his property. His land was paid for and free until I was hurt and he bought a mobile home for my family to move into. The guy has paid my lights as well, every single month since my injury. Well, except for the blessing I received last year from the Piper family which kept us afloat for over 6 months!
Just continue to pray that God will help the SS process a fast one as healing seems unlikely at the moment.
We are not wanting to complain alot as there are too many pro's out there doing that now. Rather, we hope to convey our trust in the Lord and our gratefulness for the mercy we have been shown. Most any one else would have been sent to a homeless shelter a long time ago. We even had some one buy us an 8 month supply of toilet paper about 7 months ago! It is amazing what you become thankful for in hard times!
I think many more of us will have to learn this in the coming days as our judgement continues nationally. We will pray for one another and fulfill the law of Christ.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Time flies when your busy
Well, today we are packing for our return trip to WV and I still haven't posted the first trip! I guess I'm a pretty unreliable read, but I will try and get better when we return.
I plan on doing some study on blogging to learn a bit more about it, so hopefully it will have been worth the wait.
Also, please continue to pray for my health situation. The doctors are now leaning away from surgery and have recommended full disability. As you can well imagine, this doesn't exactly fit into my worldview. While many of my countrymen would be thrilled at the idea of getting a disability check from the govt. I am not one of them. Here we stand on the very end of the Empire, and they are trying to encourage me to sign on for a bigger role in the pillaging of my fellow man before they finish their song!
I am hoping that a modest adjustment can be made that will allow me to live and work on our land without the need for drugs. And without the governments involvement with any part of my existence. Please pray with me about these things as you have opportunity.
Many thanks, and see you in a few weeks.
I plan on doing some study on blogging to learn a bit more about it, so hopefully it will have been worth the wait.
Also, please continue to pray for my health situation. The doctors are now leaning away from surgery and have recommended full disability. As you can well imagine, this doesn't exactly fit into my worldview. While many of my countrymen would be thrilled at the idea of getting a disability check from the govt. I am not one of them. Here we stand on the very end of the Empire, and they are trying to encourage me to sign on for a bigger role in the pillaging of my fellow man before they finish their song!
I am hoping that a modest adjustment can be made that will allow me to live and work on our land without the need for drugs. And without the governments involvement with any part of my existence. Please pray with me about these things as you have opportunity.
Many thanks, and see you in a few weeks.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
The pause before the storm
We have made it back from our recent trip to WV but we won't be home long!
We had a very productive time during August and most of September as we did some serious preparation with some seriously raw land! There will be quite a few photo's and tid-bits about logging, saw-milling, and chiggers...LOT'S of chiggers....coming soon!
My hope is to post a bit over the next couple weeks because we are returning to WV for the month of October so that we may complete a pole barn and 2 16X12 foot rooms on our humble abode!
The Lord is always gracious, and there is a lot to share with this new adventure and the things we are learning.
We actually made it through a month of no running water, and no electricity, with 9 children and 4 adults covered in chiggers and poison sumac for most of the time! We are talkin' serious lessons learned about WV wilderness living!
Thankfully, no bears have been encountered and everybody left with the same body parts they came with. And that, after dropping some 30 large diameter trees along with a hundred scrubs and bushes.
Yes indeed! We have much to be thankful for!
Well, as you can imagine there is a ton of catching up to do before we turn around and do the whole thing again! We also have two children that we will be teaching to read over the next few weeks, so ...busy, busy.
I promise that I will try and steal enough time to share some of the amazing times that we have had lately.
P.S., Did I mention our week long trip to Monticello and the surrounding area!!!
Hope to share soon.
Grace and Peace, Bob
We had a very productive time during August and most of September as we did some serious preparation with some seriously raw land! There will be quite a few photo's and tid-bits about logging, saw-milling, and chiggers...LOT'S of chiggers....coming soon!
My hope is to post a bit over the next couple weeks because we are returning to WV for the month of October so that we may complete a pole barn and 2 16X12 foot rooms on our humble abode!
The Lord is always gracious, and there is a lot to share with this new adventure and the things we are learning.
We actually made it through a month of no running water, and no electricity, with 9 children and 4 adults covered in chiggers and poison sumac for most of the time! We are talkin' serious lessons learned about WV wilderness living!
Thankfully, no bears have been encountered and everybody left with the same body parts they came with. And that, after dropping some 30 large diameter trees along with a hundred scrubs and bushes.
Yes indeed! We have much to be thankful for!
Well, as you can imagine there is a ton of catching up to do before we turn around and do the whole thing again! We also have two children that we will be teaching to read over the next few weeks, so ...busy, busy.
I promise that I will try and steal enough time to share some of the amazing times that we have had lately.
P.S., Did I mention our week long trip to Monticello and the surrounding area!!!
Hope to share soon.
Grace and Peace, Bob
Sunday, August 2, 2009
A brief update and needed pause
I wanted to let my vast readership know what is going on in my little slice of the world.
Since last blogging, our new baby girl has been doing well and the family is adjusting to the new pecking order! Her father ( that's me!) however, has taken a turn for the worse. My health has become much worse than we anticipated. Mostly, it is related to general pain and the need to take large doses of really nasty medicine. For those of you who are not familiar with pain medicines let me tell you that they cause as many problems as they solve.
The upside is that they have completed a few successful, albeit, painful tests that have determined the level and extent of the nerve damage. This will allow them to see exactly where and how the spinal cord is injured and come up with a long term treatment plan. For this, I am very grateful.
For the past month I have been in a virtual whirlwind of pain and/or delirium from the medicine and the associated problems. I am planning a few blogs on this whole process and what you can expect from our new socialized health system, since that is what I have been on for the last 12 months to get to this point. A very long year to get a few answers that could be achieved in a few days if the right procedures are applied! Anyway, that will have to wait because I will be out of commission for the next month as we are planning to leave for a trip to the mountains for the month of August. We were originally planning on going back to West Virginia and felling trees and saw milling them into lumber for this whole month but my health has changed our plans! Instead, our gracious hosts will be taking us on a tour of our national landmarks and do some general resting. The day before leaving I will get a spinal block that is supposed to numb all nerves in my injured areas so it will be a pain free/drug free month!!!!! I will post the updates in the second week of September, just before my expected surgery dates.
All prayers are appreciated and I thank you for your patience in my delays answering your comments. There have been few lucid days lately and I look forward to being pain/drug free as soon as possible.
Until then...
Since last blogging, our new baby girl has been doing well and the family is adjusting to the new pecking order! Her father ( that's me!) however, has taken a turn for the worse. My health has become much worse than we anticipated. Mostly, it is related to general pain and the need to take large doses of really nasty medicine. For those of you who are not familiar with pain medicines let me tell you that they cause as many problems as they solve.
The upside is that they have completed a few successful, albeit, painful tests that have determined the level and extent of the nerve damage. This will allow them to see exactly where and how the spinal cord is injured and come up with a long term treatment plan. For this, I am very grateful.
For the past month I have been in a virtual whirlwind of pain and/or delirium from the medicine and the associated problems. I am planning a few blogs on this whole process and what you can expect from our new socialized health system, since that is what I have been on for the last 12 months to get to this point. A very long year to get a few answers that could be achieved in a few days if the right procedures are applied! Anyway, that will have to wait because I will be out of commission for the next month as we are planning to leave for a trip to the mountains for the month of August. We were originally planning on going back to West Virginia and felling trees and saw milling them into lumber for this whole month but my health has changed our plans! Instead, our gracious hosts will be taking us on a tour of our national landmarks and do some general resting. The day before leaving I will get a spinal block that is supposed to numb all nerves in my injured areas so it will be a pain free/drug free month!!!!! I will post the updates in the second week of September, just before my expected surgery dates.
All prayers are appreciated and I thank you for your patience in my delays answering your comments. There have been few lucid days lately and I look forward to being pain/drug free as soon as possible.
Until then...
Thursday, June 25, 2009
A healthy home-birthed baby girl!
Praise the Lord, for He is good!
We are happy to welcome our new daughter into the family! Mary Elizabeth wass born @4:10 am on Thursday in the comfort of our bathtub. 9lbs 2oz, 22" long and a head full of hair!
We are pleased..and tired.
We are happy to welcome our new daughter into the family! Mary Elizabeth wass born @4:10 am on Thursday in the comfort of our bathtub. 9lbs 2oz, 22" long and a head full of hair!
We are pleased..and tired.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
The Lord is gracious and we are thankful.
It is a wonderful thing to look outside and see a couple of young dairy calves grazing in the yard!
Yes, as unbelievable as it seems to us right now, there are a pair of Jersey bovine in our back yard! The Lord is good to His people at all times, but sometimes we have a special blessing that really reminds us of that fact. Our friends recently surprised us with this 4 week old Jersey heifer calf and a 5 week old Jersey mix bull calf! We have always dreamed of our own Jersey milk cow but at around $1000.00 a piece in these parts, we did not expect to procure them this soon. We are overjoyed at the kindness the Lord has shown us!
This is Bessie! Our future little cream maker!
And here is Buddy! Proud future Papa!
It turns out that there is a Dairy farm about 50 miles south of here that uses Jersey cows. Usually they seem to use Holstein cows in our neck of the woods. Holsteins are copious milk producers, but there is not enough butter-fat content in the milk to make a good supply of cream products like cheese and butter. Jersey cows on the other hand, produce less milk but the most cream of any cow. This means that a Jersey would be a good homestead cow in most situations.
The really odd thing about the dairy industry here is that they will almost never let any heifer calves go for sale. One farm that I contacted in the past even said that they would cull, (kill), the heifers before selling them because it would be hurting themselves to have people keeping their own milk cows! The bulls are not so hard to come by. Bulls are a burden on a dairy farm so they are usually glad to sell them for $100-$150 just to get rid of them.
As it turns out, this heifer was nursing from an older cow that was once a regular industrial milk cow but had recently been moved to the 'nurse' cow category. The mother cow was not only rearing this calf, but had 2 other orphan calves that it was feeding. A week ago we had a huge storm system moved through the area and the venerable nurse cow was killed when lightning struck a tree that she was under! This left all three calves without any milk. The farm had planned on culling them, but a worker asked if he could have them as bottle calves to try and save and the farmer said yes.
The worker bottle fed them for a week and then decided to go into the cattle business himself and placed them up for sale. He was planning on making quite a pretty penny of the two heifer calves and a modest $150 on the bull. Apparently though, there was little interest in the calves and he was stuck rearing them and buying milk to feed them!
The fellow posted a couple ad's offering to sell them for $150 each to the first comer. As soon as our friends heard of it they came and got us to go look at the heifer. The thinking is that this will be a good investment for our future homestead in West Virginia.
Upon our arrival the fellow said that he was willing to let the bull go for $75 if we bought a pair. He even dropped $25 on the heifer! So, in all we got both calves for $195 !
Our friends paid the man on the spot but since we were all crammed in our vehicle it was decided that I would come back with my little pick-up the next day and get them.
Saturday morning had me and the two older boys loading old hay in the back of my truck bed and setting off for a 100 mile round trip to get our new little blessings! We were thrilled to get them loaded up and back to their new home. The only thing wrong was that we had no where to shelter the animals and more rain was coming.
We have been told that rain could kill new calves because they just stand out in it from pure ignorance without a mother cow to teach them. We needed a cheap shelter and quick!
Enter the many purpose pallet! Recycled pallets were the obvious choice to build a little barn for the protection of our new beasts.
Below are the photo's of our new two stall calve 'barn' done Poor Man style! I think that you will agree, they came out even better than my chicken tractor! That is a 16oz waterproof canvas tarp on the roof, and it was a gift also. In all the building cost $129 with the $100 tarp and nails and feed. Pretty good for a two stall barnette!
Here is a good shot of Bessie's new room! The open slat walls are perfect for the hot Florida weather! Here we never worry about warmth or snow. It is the lack of cross ventilation that kills all the livestock here. Also, having the inner/outer wall keeps the rain out very well.
Here you can see how we made the 'doors' by driving in a trio of free fence posts to allow for the pallet doors to be slid in and out! We even got his and her milk buckets hanging on the posts to dry!
I told ya that the Lord is good and kind!
Yes, as unbelievable as it seems to us right now, there are a pair of Jersey bovine in our back yard! The Lord is good to His people at all times, but sometimes we have a special blessing that really reminds us of that fact. Our friends recently surprised us with this 4 week old Jersey heifer calf and a 5 week old Jersey mix bull calf! We have always dreamed of our own Jersey milk cow but at around $1000.00 a piece in these parts, we did not expect to procure them this soon. We are overjoyed at the kindness the Lord has shown us!
This is Bessie! Our future little cream maker!
And here is Buddy! Proud future Papa!
It turns out that there is a Dairy farm about 50 miles south of here that uses Jersey cows. Usually they seem to use Holstein cows in our neck of the woods. Holsteins are copious milk producers, but there is not enough butter-fat content in the milk to make a good supply of cream products like cheese and butter. Jersey cows on the other hand, produce less milk but the most cream of any cow. This means that a Jersey would be a good homestead cow in most situations.
The really odd thing about the dairy industry here is that they will almost never let any heifer calves go for sale. One farm that I contacted in the past even said that they would cull, (kill), the heifers before selling them because it would be hurting themselves to have people keeping their own milk cows! The bulls are not so hard to come by. Bulls are a burden on a dairy farm so they are usually glad to sell them for $100-$150 just to get rid of them.
As it turns out, this heifer was nursing from an older cow that was once a regular industrial milk cow but had recently been moved to the 'nurse' cow category. The mother cow was not only rearing this calf, but had 2 other orphan calves that it was feeding. A week ago we had a huge storm system moved through the area and the venerable nurse cow was killed when lightning struck a tree that she was under! This left all three calves without any milk. The farm had planned on culling them, but a worker asked if he could have them as bottle calves to try and save and the farmer said yes.
The worker bottle fed them for a week and then decided to go into the cattle business himself and placed them up for sale. He was planning on making quite a pretty penny of the two heifer calves and a modest $150 on the bull. Apparently though, there was little interest in the calves and he was stuck rearing them and buying milk to feed them!
The fellow posted a couple ad's offering to sell them for $150 each to the first comer. As soon as our friends heard of it they came and got us to go look at the heifer. The thinking is that this will be a good investment for our future homestead in West Virginia.
Upon our arrival the fellow said that he was willing to let the bull go for $75 if we bought a pair. He even dropped $25 on the heifer! So, in all we got both calves for $195 !
Our friends paid the man on the spot but since we were all crammed in our vehicle it was decided that I would come back with my little pick-up the next day and get them.
Saturday morning had me and the two older boys loading old hay in the back of my truck bed and setting off for a 100 mile round trip to get our new little blessings! We were thrilled to get them loaded up and back to their new home. The only thing wrong was that we had no where to shelter the animals and more rain was coming.
We have been told that rain could kill new calves because they just stand out in it from pure ignorance without a mother cow to teach them. We needed a cheap shelter and quick!
Enter the many purpose pallet! Recycled pallets were the obvious choice to build a little barn for the protection of our new beasts.
Below are the photo's of our new two stall calve 'barn' done Poor Man style! I think that you will agree, they came out even better than my chicken tractor! That is a 16oz waterproof canvas tarp on the roof, and it was a gift also. In all the building cost $129 with the $100 tarp and nails and feed. Pretty good for a two stall barnette!
Here is a good shot of Bessie's new room! The open slat walls are perfect for the hot Florida weather! Here we never worry about warmth or snow. It is the lack of cross ventilation that kills all the livestock here. Also, having the inner/outer wall keeps the rain out very well.
Here you can see how we made the 'doors' by driving in a trio of free fence posts to allow for the pallet doors to be slid in and out! We even got his and her milk buckets hanging on the posts to dry!
I told ya that the Lord is good and kind!Hope you get some ideas for cheap building too!
Monday, June 8, 2009
Poor Man's attempt at a chicken tractor.
Or perhaps, a man's poor attempt would be better.
After much procrastination, I am publishing my recent project for the Missouri Rev, and all the world to ridicule!
Since I have been forced to put up these photos I might as well share the story of just how this contraption came to be.
If you have read the previous post about my new bath-tub brooder chicks , then it will be obvious what motivated the need to get my new little chicks out of my wife's birthing tub!
Unfortunately, the Lord has chosen to keep me humbled by literally breaking my back about a year ago, which means that I have no job and no income for the purchase of material to build a 'real' chicken tractor like the one's all over the Web! Hence the need for my innovation.
A fellow that I know, had recently contracted to clean up an old nursery business that is now closed down. He told me that there were lots of pallets and old 4X4's at the site which needed removing. This fellow said that I could have the material if I would pick up the pallets and dig the 8 foot 4X's out of the ground. Voila! Prayer answered!
My strapping 14 yr. old and 12 yr. old quickly 'volunteered' to help old Dad gather the material! So with shovel and sweat, we soon hauled a goodly supply of new, (to us), construction material back to the junk pile that my wife allows me ;) to keep in the back yard!
This 'tractor' was the first of a few projects that I had dreamed up for my little homestead. It was a crude endeavor but if you tune in later this week, you will be quite amazed at what some old pallets, and a gracious God, can do when you have needs.
So without further excuse....I mean ado, here is my infamous chicken tractor done Poor Man style!
This is an overall shot showing the open front 'coop' along with a run made from my rabbit cage wire roll. The wire will be used to build more cages after it is done working for us here. The run design was from my 14 year old. He used some pallet wood and some old lumber salvaged from an old headboard we threw out last year. There wasn't enough wood to box the thing out properly so it was a little wiggly, but it did fine work for the time it was used.
Next, is a pic of 'siding' we used to attach to the 4X4 pole frame. We tore these pallets all apart and reused the decent pieces to make a building. As you can see, the wood was a little rough and we couldn't drive new nails without splitting it to pieces, so we had to pull the old nails and beat them straight before nailing them back in the old holes. This worked pretty good since we didn't have any new nails anyway! We did find an old box of screws that I had though, so we used some of them where needed for extra security.
Everyone knows that chickens need to roost, so we cut out a few stair runners, and measured some limbs from our yard! Don't listen to folks who say that chickens can't roost on round limbs, or pipes. They have done so since creation, and do just fine.
The runners split in a couple places because the wood was so brittle, but we just pieced it together on the wall and ran some screws in to hold it together.
This was the tricky part! We had to figure a way to keep the run fairly secure to the box so chickens didn't escape, yet it had to come apart for moving around the yard because there wasn't enough quality wood to build a movable, sturdy frame that could be permanently attached to the coop. What we decided on was to jigsaw the pieces so they would interlock without having any metal latch. The idea came from some old Amish furniture that I had seen where they used the wood to bind some bunk beds together without fasteners. It worked great as it had the added benefit of giving a little needed stability to the run by forcing the sides to stand up straight. You can also see how we used the wood to sandwich the wire for attaching the support legs. We just used small chock blocks of wood on the outside and nailed through them, past the wire, and into the wood leg. This kept the 'legs' attached to the sides pretty good.
Here is how the poor man was able to , in clear conscience, use the term 'tractor' when describing this little experiment! 
After much procrastination, I am publishing my recent project for the Missouri Rev, and all the world to ridicule!
Since I have been forced to put up these photos I might as well share the story of just how this contraption came to be.
If you have read the previous post about my new bath-tub brooder chicks , then it will be obvious what motivated the need to get my new little chicks out of my wife's birthing tub!
Unfortunately, the Lord has chosen to keep me humbled by literally breaking my back about a year ago, which means that I have no job and no income for the purchase of material to build a 'real' chicken tractor like the one's all over the Web! Hence the need for my innovation.
A fellow that I know, had recently contracted to clean up an old nursery business that is now closed down. He told me that there were lots of pallets and old 4X4's at the site which needed removing. This fellow said that I could have the material if I would pick up the pallets and dig the 8 foot 4X's out of the ground. Voila! Prayer answered!
My strapping 14 yr. old and 12 yr. old quickly 'volunteered' to help old Dad gather the material! So with shovel and sweat, we soon hauled a goodly supply of new, (to us), construction material back to the junk pile that my wife allows me ;) to keep in the back yard!
This 'tractor' was the first of a few projects that I had dreamed up for my little homestead. It was a crude endeavor but if you tune in later this week, you will be quite amazed at what some old pallets, and a gracious God, can do when you have needs.
So without further excuse....I mean ado, here is my infamous chicken tractor done Poor Man style!
This is an overall shot showing the open front 'coop' along with a run made from my rabbit cage wire roll. The wire will be used to build more cages after it is done working for us here. The run design was from my 14 year old. He used some pallet wood and some old lumber salvaged from an old headboard we threw out last year. There wasn't enough wood to box the thing out properly so it was a little wiggly, but it did fine work for the time it was used.
Next, is a pic of 'siding' we used to attach to the 4X4 pole frame. We tore these pallets all apart and reused the decent pieces to make a building. As you can see, the wood was a little rough and we couldn't drive new nails without splitting it to pieces, so we had to pull the old nails and beat them straight before nailing them back in the old holes. This worked pretty good since we didn't have any new nails anyway! We did find an old box of screws that I had though, so we used some of them where needed for extra security.
Everyone knows that chickens need to roost, so we cut out a few stair runners, and measured some limbs from our yard! Don't listen to folks who say that chickens can't roost on round limbs, or pipes. They have done so since creation, and do just fine.The runners split in a couple places because the wood was so brittle, but we just pieced it together on the wall and ran some screws in to hold it together.
This was the tricky part! We had to figure a way to keep the run fairly secure to the box so chickens didn't escape, yet it had to come apart for moving around the yard because there wasn't enough quality wood to build a movable, sturdy frame that could be permanently attached to the coop. What we decided on was to jigsaw the pieces so they would interlock without having any metal latch. The idea came from some old Amish furniture that I had seen where they used the wood to bind some bunk beds together without fasteners. It worked great as it had the added benefit of giving a little needed stability to the run by forcing the sides to stand up straight. You can also see how we used the wood to sandwich the wire for attaching the support legs. We just used small chock blocks of wood on the outside and nailed through them, past the wire, and into the wood leg. This kept the 'legs' attached to the sides pretty good.
Here is how the poor man was able to , in clear conscience, use the term 'tractor' when describing this little experiment! While it was not easy, it did work. We were able to carefully slide the contraption to a new patch of grass when needed. There were a few escapes during moving due to the run separating from the coop, but nothing major. We still have the same amount of chickens we started with!
The chicks are now in the big chicken yard and this coop has been converted to a nice dog house for our new American Bulldog puppies that are waiting to be sold. The run wire has been modified to give the pups a yard while allowing the mother to jump in and out to feed them.
In all, I am very pleased with my chicken tractor. Yes, I can proudly call it a chicken tractor! Though I am sure we will not be featured in Mother Earth News anytime soon, I am very satisfied that we did our best to be good stewards over the little flock that God has given us! And that, is my chief goal as an agrarian, and as a Christian.
Hope you enjoy the laughs, and do stay tuned for the next project. I think you will like it.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Some changes I am making
I have decided that I will be adding 2 new blogs. This blog will focus more heavily and less frequently on homesteading and Agrarian Economic Theory, as I learn more about the subject.
I am separating most theology on a new blog titled Eternal Truths Applied and most news/political commentary on a blog called The Pundit's Folly which already has one post for now.
My reason for running 3 blogs is simple. I am not at all organized enough to run 1 blog properly!
What I mean is that I have tried to plan a couple of series that really pool all the current debates about Agrarianism into one concise yet systematic standard of confession. This is a daunting task for a learned man to accomplish properly, and I am not learned in these matters.
What I have learned about myself is that there are some core interests and areas of experience that I have, and I would like to share them.
These areas include homesteading and the need for modern families to consider this as an alternative to the current system which keeps Dad away from home
Agrarianism may be an economic outgrowth of this primary goal of re-uniting families.
I cannot yet say that it is the only biblical model.
I see much of the problem with modern industrialism to be misuse and sin within the component parts. Not exactly the whole system being inherently evil.
I know that many will disagree strongly. I am not getting all snuggly with the 'world' here. Rather, I am sincerely attempting to be a faithful steward of God's word in these matters.
I will post more on this later.
For now, I hope to establish 3 basic blogs dealing with the 3 things that most interest me;
1. Homesteading and the return of fathers to the duty of training their children full-time as the scriptures require.
2. Speaking out against the apostasy of our leaders in church,state, and culture.
3. Edifying and exhorting the Church to holy living.
I pray that God may be pleased with my efforts to Glorify Him in these things. I also hope that they are a help to others.
I am separating most theology on a new blog titled Eternal Truths Applied and most news/political commentary on a blog called The Pundit's Folly which already has one post for now.
My reason for running 3 blogs is simple. I am not at all organized enough to run 1 blog properly!
What I mean is that I have tried to plan a couple of series that really pool all the current debates about Agrarianism into one concise yet systematic standard of confession. This is a daunting task for a learned man to accomplish properly, and I am not learned in these matters.
What I have learned about myself is that there are some core interests and areas of experience that I have, and I would like to share them.
These areas include homesteading and the need for modern families to consider this as an alternative to the current system which keeps Dad away from home
Agrarianism may be an economic outgrowth of this primary goal of re-uniting families.
I cannot yet say that it is the only biblical model.
I see much of the problem with modern industrialism to be misuse and sin within the component parts. Not exactly the whole system being inherently evil.
I know that many will disagree strongly. I am not getting all snuggly with the 'world' here. Rather, I am sincerely attempting to be a faithful steward of God's word in these matters.
I will post more on this later.
For now, I hope to establish 3 basic blogs dealing with the 3 things that most interest me;
1. Homesteading and the return of fathers to the duty of training their children full-time as the scriptures require.
2. Speaking out against the apostasy of our leaders in church,state, and culture.
3. Edifying and exhorting the Church to holy living.
I pray that God may be pleased with my efforts to Glorify Him in these things. I also hope that they are a help to others.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Help needed
It has been an unusually long absence from the web for me. It has been a profitable break with a lot of learning. I am updating my small holding series later this month and researching some new possibilities for a better blog format that will be a little easier to manage. I am also right in the midst of researching several different review papers and study guides for the training of my children on various subjects ranging from the differences between a Revolution and an Independence movement to Covenantal faithfulness in their own future child-rearing. Did I mention that my wife is having our 9th child in 5 weeks and I just returned from an impromptu trip to the flood-ravaged regions of West Virginia, harvested 55 pounds of potatoes, built a new poor man's chicken tractor, a few new rabbit hutches for the 17 kits (bunnies) that were born and am helping our little Millie whelp and care for her new 12 hog catching champion American Bulldog/Pit pups that were born a couple of days ago, steam cleaning the chair that she tried to have them in, and getting ready to can about a gazillion Amish Paste monster size tomatoes for the first time ever! Yeah, life here is just as smooth as peaches and cream!
Today what I need is help! We have a very good crop of various dry beans that are close to early production dates for harvest. Right now the Pinto beans are the closest at 63 days and have 60% yellow mottled pods with large seeds. Just right for getting ready to dry. The problem is that we have torrential rains moving through this past 4 days and no signs of it slowing for the next 10-15 days. After a season long drought we are thankful for the Florida of our youth to come back around and look forward to the effects that the rain will have on our Aquifer system, but it looks like the dry bean project is in dire straits. This morning I had the older two boys pick a good bit of the yellowing pods from the Pintos and am going to attempt drying them in the pods somewhere inside. I have never done dry beans before and am needing a little direction from some of you veterans. My primary questions are as follows:
Today what I need is help! We have a very good crop of various dry beans that are close to early production dates for harvest. Right now the Pinto beans are the closest at 63 days and have 60% yellow mottled pods with large seeds. Just right for getting ready to dry. The problem is that we have torrential rains moving through this past 4 days and no signs of it slowing for the next 10-15 days. After a season long drought we are thankful for the Florida of our youth to come back around and look forward to the effects that the rain will have on our Aquifer system, but it looks like the dry bean project is in dire straits. This morning I had the older two boys pick a good bit of the yellowing pods from the Pintos and am going to attempt drying them in the pods somewhere inside. I have never done dry beans before and am needing a little direction from some of you veterans. My primary questions are as follows:
- Can I pick selectively like my Roma's, or do I need to rip the whole plant up and sacrifice the smaller, younger pods?
- Is it safe and wise to pick now, in the middle of this rain, or should I just wait an extra couple of weeks and hope that the weather clears before all the beans are ruined?
- Is it better to dry this way in the pods, or should I shell them?
I am not so much interested in getting a harvest for consumption this year. Our main goal with the dry beans has been to plant the little that the Lord allowed us to purchase and harvest as much seed as possible for replanting a much larger crop next year. I am hoping that we will, at the very least, have about 5 times as many seeds for future gardening as what I bought this year. Is this a reasonable goal?
Any help from the more experienced will be much appreciated.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Using a small -holding to maximize your productivity
Of late I have been putting a lot of thought into what a fellow can do to maximize his stewardship. The simple fact is that many of us do not own, or have use of, enough land to build an ideal hobby farm. We simply don't have the square footage available to make our own bread AND wine! So what are we to do?
Are we to simply give up the fight for better stewardship and turn our attention to increasing revenue production, in the hopes that we will outpace the inflation/deflation cycle of the Federal Reserve?
I have been in that rat race for too long! No thanks.
While there is some truth in the old adage that, "it takes money to make money", I do not want to spend the rest of my life slaving for a dream that I will be to old to build upon when I finally get there! I want to start now! By God's grace, I want to do everything that I can to maximize my stewardship of the trifle that I have been given.
Not so that I can amass more and then 'buy out' the neighbors...that is only falling back into the same old trap of modern 'gimme-gimme' anti-Christianity. There is no lasting hope or peace there. As Paul told Timothy when counseling him , "But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out." 1Tim 6:6-7
No, I am not interested in stirring up the covetousness of this world in my children. I am not interested in teaching them to stop craving new sports cars and designer clothes, only to replace that with the sin of craving more land and cattle than we can have reasonable use for.
Not that there is anything wrong with a large estate. I pray that God may be pleased to train and equip me for the right use of one some day. It is the place and station of some to have all these things and more. And it is their responsibility to realize that they have it for the relief of the brethren... It is fitting that God has given much to some men, that the needs of the Church might be met. " But by an equality, that now at this time of your abundance may be a supply for their want,..."2 Corinthians 8:14 . That is really a great passage to think on some time. It clears up the whole debate over how we can best minister to one another without becoming communists, or envious of a wealthier brother. The false teachers today have misused this passage greatly to scam the flock and this has hurt us all. If you look up these verses, you will see that the 4 or 5 verses before it, teach that a man is never to be so charitable that he enriches a man into being a gluttonous bum while making his own family destitute! Good stuff in that old book.
The thing that I am seeking is not so much 'more', for the sake of more. But, stewardship in all that I have been given. Becoming a profitable servant, both spiritually and physically, by utilizing what God has given to the absolute best end that I am able and equipped for. This is an extremely important issue that has been twisted and nearly lost with most today. Redeeming the time has a lot to do with it. Not just because bad days are upon us, but because God exhorts us to this lifestyle at all times throughout history. I want to be a frugal, wise, charitable, and diligent servant, along with becoming a holy father and husband!
It is with this in mind, that I am starting a series on Small Holdings . This will be a rambling series of what we have done in our little place to try and maximize our potential. They will be rather 'raw', in that I am by no means an expert on all things agrarian! There will be sad looking pictures of crudely built animal houses and an ever- present back drop of junk in the yard! Sorry. It's not from a lack of concern for our animals, or from laziness. It's just really hard to build stuff with no carpentry skills, left- over scraps, and 9 children running to and fro with all my hand tools scattered between them;) Add to that the fact that we never really had the foresight to plan ahead for exactly when, or if the Lord would supply some additional material, and you have a kind of build as you go approach that utilizes stuff as it comes!
I hope that some of it will be informative. Some through my trials, and much through my errors...
Are we to simply give up the fight for better stewardship and turn our attention to increasing revenue production, in the hopes that we will outpace the inflation/deflation cycle of the Federal Reserve?
I have been in that rat race for too long! No thanks.
While there is some truth in the old adage that, "it takes money to make money", I do not want to spend the rest of my life slaving for a dream that I will be to old to build upon when I finally get there! I want to start now! By God's grace, I want to do everything that I can to maximize my stewardship of the trifle that I have been given.
Not so that I can amass more and then 'buy out' the neighbors...that is only falling back into the same old trap of modern 'gimme-gimme' anti-Christianity. There is no lasting hope or peace there. As Paul told Timothy when counseling him , "But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out." 1Tim 6:6-7
No, I am not interested in stirring up the covetousness of this world in my children. I am not interested in teaching them to stop craving new sports cars and designer clothes, only to replace that with the sin of craving more land and cattle than we can have reasonable use for.
Not that there is anything wrong with a large estate. I pray that God may be pleased to train and equip me for the right use of one some day. It is the place and station of some to have all these things and more. And it is their responsibility to realize that they have it for the relief of the brethren... It is fitting that God has given much to some men, that the needs of the Church might be met. " But by an equality, that now at this time of your abundance may be a supply for their want,..."2 Corinthians 8:14 . That is really a great passage to think on some time. It clears up the whole debate over how we can best minister to one another without becoming communists, or envious of a wealthier brother. The false teachers today have misused this passage greatly to scam the flock and this has hurt us all. If you look up these verses, you will see that the 4 or 5 verses before it, teach that a man is never to be so charitable that he enriches a man into being a gluttonous bum while making his own family destitute! Good stuff in that old book.
The thing that I am seeking is not so much 'more', for the sake of more. But, stewardship in all that I have been given. Becoming a profitable servant, both spiritually and physically, by utilizing what God has given to the absolute best end that I am able and equipped for. This is an extremely important issue that has been twisted and nearly lost with most today. Redeeming the time has a lot to do with it. Not just because bad days are upon us, but because God exhorts us to this lifestyle at all times throughout history. I want to be a frugal, wise, charitable, and diligent servant, along with becoming a holy father and husband!
It is with this in mind, that I am starting a series on Small Holdings . This will be a rambling series of what we have done in our little place to try and maximize our potential. They will be rather 'raw', in that I am by no means an expert on all things agrarian! There will be sad looking pictures of crudely built animal houses and an ever- present back drop of junk in the yard! Sorry. It's not from a lack of concern for our animals, or from laziness. It's just really hard to build stuff with no carpentry skills, left- over scraps, and 9 children running to and fro with all my hand tools scattered between them;) Add to that the fact that we never really had the foresight to plan ahead for exactly when, or if the Lord would supply some additional material, and you have a kind of build as you go approach that utilizes stuff as it comes!
I hope that some of it will be informative. Some through my trials, and much through my errors...
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Finally, West Virginia
About 6 months ago our mid-wife finally brought her husband along for a visit to meet our family. She has been our midwife for awhile now, but up until now we had never met her husband. During our previous pregnancy he had come along but refused to leave the vehicle as a standard rule to ensure patient privacy and HIPPA regulations. We had understood at the time and made sure to keep him company in the yard with tea and cookies while the ladies talked inside. We had no idea at the time that we had made any type of impression on him. The practice that our mid-wife owns is one of the largest in our State and they see many families. We figured that we were just another patient as far as he was concerned.
It was not until this meeting 6 months ago, that we realized how the Lord can use normal acts of every day kindness to soften the hearts of men and make allies for His children where least expected.
Our mid-wife had been around during some of the times when our former landlord, Ms. T had come around, and she had heard the gracious offer that we had received. She also heard much of our discussion about how concerned we were that a dying lady with only months to live was trying to make her peace with God in this manner. Our mid-wife said that she understood our concerns, but that an offer like this was too hard to pass on. We then became very close to our mid-wife as we explained that the importance of a good name was more important to us than any amount of land. We spent many weeks discussing this with her and explaining to her the situation with the children and the certain accusations of 'spiritual manipulation' that they would make if we accepted this offer. As related in the post on that subject, that is exactly what happened to the person that eventually accepted the offer. Thankfully, we have been in a position of speaking with one of the children involved in the estate battle, and because of our refusal to accept, we have been able to give a clear testimony of only love and a clear conscience to that child. After much prayer and reflection, our mid-wife said that she understood our decision. Little did we know that she had been sharing some of these issues with her own husband, and that he had finally decided that after 15 years of never entering a clients home, he would break this rule to meet the family that had turned down what turned out to be a multi-million dollar estate in a commercial zone!
So, we finally met the husband of our dearly beloved mid-wife and had a wonderful time hosting him for a few visits. Shortly after these visits, he called and told us that he and his wife wanted to invite us to their home for a dinner and discussion of a personal nature. We were excited and a little nervous, thinking that perhaps they wanted to ask us some 'religious' questions about our unorthodox life-style. ( Note: Our life-style is unorthodox only compared to main-stream evangelicalism, we are a poor example of puritanical followers of Christ, though we strive to be).
I will speed up to the present now, or I'll never tell you about W.V.!
At this meeting, we were shocked to learn that Mr. &Mrs. B (Husband and Mid-wife), owned land in rural West Virginia that they planned on retiring to soon, and they wanted us to move there as neighbors! They had not been Church goers in many years, but professed faith, and were so glad to see real Christianity in action that they wanted to be near it more! They then told us that they wanted us to consider allowing them to give us 2 acres of their land to homestead and that they would even pay for us to go up and visit the area for acceptable churches if we were willing to consider it!
Wheels within wheels! That's all I could think of folks! Who could imagine that in the space of a year, a man with no money and a broken back, (no prospects), could be offered, NOT 1, but 2 estates! For free!
We were shocked to say the least! They went on to explain that they understood how important our Church family was to us, and how 'peculiar' our doctrine was, and that they had been in touch with a few locals in West Virginia that were keeping up an old abandoned church building from the 1800's who wanted a Pastor that could come and take it over! This old church is a local landmark in the hills there and still provides a hand powered well-pump for a few local families to haul there water from! The locals, had upon the testimony of this couple, agreed to allow me to come and begin a Church there whenever I wanted to!!!
Now, to be clear, I am not an ordained minister of the Gospel. I was formerly a 'Youth' minister in an Arminian church, and attended a Bible college along those lines in our old home. I am currently seeking the training needed in my denomination to become ordained, but we have one little hurdle....Financial Accountability. We are not spendthrifts mind you. But, we do live at the charity of my Pastor since my accident, and he has personally paid for our light bill while allowing us the use of an extra home he owns. Not the picture of most Presbyterian theologians out there... The Church, rightly so, wants men who are above reproach. And while I have been assured that I fit all spiritual and moral qualifications, the financial issue is a stopping point right now. I will not comment on this further now, except to say that I am trying to be careful in my study of past 'poor' preachers, to make sure that no resentment builds for my denomination. My Pastor is in general agreement with this thinking and he has shown himself to be a man of exceptional wisdom and a deep desire for the purity of the ministry. I yield to the godly example that he has set forth. I have witnessed it first hand.
Still, we were thrilled at the possibilities that now lay before us! If we can gather a 3 family minimum of like-minded believers that are indigenous to that area, we can request our Presbytery to send a minister that is already qualified by their standards, and establish a new congregation there!
My Pastor is not very excited about this prospect. He has made several good points about this still being above my place and station, as I cannot live upon an open field with a family. Very true. However, as the Lord continues to work there, we met a neighbor that has just purchased an adjoining 30 acres with his young family. He is planning an off-grid homestead and is a faithful father, demonstrated by the behavior of his wife and children. He informed us of a local Amish group that will build us a 2 story, 24 by 24 gable roof house for just under $10,000! Yep, that's right folks! If you are looking for cheap land under $1000.00 an acre, and a 2 story 1200 square foot house for under 10K, then check out West Virginia! ( I have the contact info for any that may be seriously interested). So, now we are just wondering how in the world the Lord is going to do this next part! I know that it is nothing to Him, but from our side it might as well be 10 million... It is just another reminder of a great adage that I read in the biography of John G. Patton, Missionary to the New Hebrides..."Duty is ours, Results are God's"! We will wait on the Lord, and stuff the penny jar!
Further, it seems that in West Virginia, I will not be barred from trying to use my Plumbing license to scare up work. Here, in Florida, I am forced to comply with VERY stringent Work- Comp laws to 'protect' myself and my gimp back. The State of West Virginia will approve my Comp-exempt license and let me go out and take the risk of my back upon myself, ( I trust in the Lord, and work s-l-o-w-l-y), so that I can actually move toward our home-stead dream!
Well, just pray that the Lord will continue to make His will known, and that He will motivate the local Taco Bell to call so I can start supporting my family and saving some treasury bills before they are worthless! Really, I applied at Taco Bell. Duty is ours.....If this is the Lord's will, I know that He will provide. There is actually a 16 by 16 off- grid cabin there now that I have full use of, but convincing my Pastor that this uninsulated shed is acceptable housing for my family isn't really working right now;) Pray, pray, pray, my friends! We will do the same for you.
Here are a few shots of our week in off-grid West Virginia..
This is taken from one of the acceptable building sites on 'my' land. Down in the ravine on the left there is a 4 foot wide creek. We saw many deer drinking there, and over 35, (no joke), on the road to this property.
This is a poor picture of our friends cabin that we all stayed in. If you look hard, you will see the white pop up building, (privy and shower area), and the blue 'kitchen area on the right. Just behind was the sleeping quarters. It is an uninsulated 'shed' that we heated with one open flame propane stove burner! It snowed 2 days and rained a chilly 35 degrees for a few days! This was a great day of around 65 day temps! Perfect.
This is a shot from about 20 feet in front of my building site, looking at my truck. Believe it or not, that was as close as the truck could get because of the incline. 3 different 4X4's got stuck on that hill. It is a quarter mile drive from the road to this point. Can you say, Off-Grid!
This is a small spring, one of over 15, on the property that we saw. It measures about the same as each of the others...2 gallons per minute! That's 800 gallons a day...per spring!
This is the ridge that separates us from our 'neighbors'. The large dead walnut tree just right of center was cut down by us while there. It was nearly 4 feet thick at the point we felled it at, and that was almost 4 feet high! Loads of firewood were chopped and stacked by my boys.
This is a shot of my wife and two of the children heading down to the creek area to hunt for some wild rose hips. They are high in vitamin C and make a superb tea. There are loads of wild roses all over the hillside!
This shot does not really do justice to the scene. If you will notice the evergreen trees on the ridge ahead, you may be able to pick out the tombstones underneath! That is an old private cemetery from the late 1700's. The entrance to my property is just over that hill! The cemetery access shares an easement with us, so every time we come in or out, we drive right by it! Pretty neat to me. You can also see the clay churned up into mud at the first drop through the valley between us. My two wheel drive Suburban made it fine, but the 4 wheelers got stuck and we had to dig 'em out! We have laid $1500 worth of large gravel there now that our friend purchased. I also cleared a large garden spot down under that slope in a spot that gets the full day sun. We cut down many 100 foot walnut trees to make way for it. There are hundreds of walnut trees here! It took the better part of a day to get the fire wood cut and brought up to camp. Several chords are stacked for next winter.
The Lord is gracious and kind, He has pity for His people....
The Lord is gracious and kind, He has pity for His people....
Until next time
Thursday, April 16, 2009
The Road to West Virginia
Alright, I am back on the trail of exactly how the Lord has led us to the point where we currently are.
In the last post on this trip, I left off by telling you that I would share the story of how a sweet lady had offered our family a 81=/- acre farm in Northern Florida about 2 years ago, and why we felt constrained to turn that lady down.
As unbelievable as an event like this seemed to us, and probably to the majority of you, we were sure that it was only a test of the Lord to see if our real desire was to live a life that was faithful to His calling, or if we just simply were interested in worldly security and prosperity.
The lady in question was the mother of our landlord, and she was quite a real estate tycoon by most standards having amassed several large properties in different regions that she was using to secure an inheritance for her children. It seems that she was quite taken with the 'picture' of our little family that she had witnessed in the various meetings with us. This is an important point because, as you will see later, those pictures soon faded when the reality of our lives began to intersect with that of her own family.
This sweet lady, had seen my 'Amish-looking' wife and daughter, on several occasions, and had closely watched our family interact in both public and private on a daily basis. She was apparently attracted to some facets of our life and approached us one day with a cryptic offer to help us live the life style that she 'envisioned the Lord' calling us to. We later found out that it wasn't so much envisioning, as it was visioning. What I mean by that, is that this sweet lady was receiving 'visions' from God about our lives and what He intended for her to explain to us. She did not share these 'visions' immediately, but soon they were to become the backbone of much of our interaction with her and her family.
At first, it was an unexpected joy to think that God had heard our prayers to live a more sequestered and agrarian-sufficient life!
By sequestered, I mean a physically separated life that would limit the interaction that we, and our children had with the daily masses of Babylonians around us. By an agrarian- sufficient life, I mean a life that is lived in closer dependence on God, as we literally look to the blessing of increase from the land, mixed with our stewardship of it, as our chief means of living as the only alternative besides an unexpected inheritance!
A little more explanation, considering the current discussion surrounding agrarianism.;
I really want to pause for another moment on these two important parts of our understanding of Christian living.
For those of you who don't already know, I am theologically aligned with a segment of the Church, visible, that is very diligent in doctrinal studies, and takes great pains to root out any heresy, along with the false teaching that leads to heresy. I am in agreement with every major reformed confession, (by reformed I mean those that commonly arose during, or out of the Calvinistic reformation period), and I am an unabashed Puritan in my theology. That said, it is with the deepest and most sincere love to my brethren, that I state that, I am in almost universal disagreement with them on the issue of physical separation .
I am NOT speaking of spiritual separation unto personal holiness in our daily walk. This IS the primary lesson of many of Christ's teachings, and parables...internal righteousness, as opposed to only external legalism and a false sense of righteousness based on our own works. What I am speaking of is the need to get our children out of the bus ministries, and schools, and playgrounds of the enemy. It is a faulty theology that teaches us that we should send our wives and children into the hot bed of anti- Christianity as evangelists and teachers. We, as the men and women of God have a very difficult time standing against the modern age, and yet we willingly send our babies in to fight these battles. Please don't send a bunch of references about the chorus that 'the beasts of the wild shall be led by a child'. Tennessee Ernie Ford had a fine voice, but the theology of such arguments doesn't work out! If we would just take an honest look at the culture around us, we would easily conclude that during the greatest time of American so called 'evangelicalism', this nation has become the most perverse and debauched society in history. The examples abound and anyone that cannot see this just isn't paying attention. My fellow Presbyterians have been some of the worst defenders of an 'integrated' society. I can only assume that this is because we do strongly believe in biblical reformation of every part of civilization. We do not want a pure church alone. But, pray for a pure society at every level. Religious, political, education, economics, etc. We can point back to the great Puritan experiments in many places and prove that it can work! The problem here is that the people around us do not want it to work. The people themselves are not interested in living the Christian life. They may like Joyce Meyers, and even donate to the Osteen corporation, but they DO NOT have any interest in real Christian laws and government. They enjoy the shady bookstore at the edge of town. It helped revive the romance in their marriage. They have many 'gay' friends, and they are 'good people' who deserve respect.
Folks, this IS our country today. They HATE your Christ and His Law-Word. They love freedom and lawlessness. They choose it at the box-office and in their bedrooms. They even choose it in their legislators and magistrates. They have codified wickedness to ensure that they can live outside of the influence of the Gospel. Unless God chooses to send the Spirit of repentance to these people, our efforts to reach them have no meaning.
Therefore, I choose to remove my family to the safest physical place possible to train them for the battle that God may call them to one day.
It is not that I don't realize the potential mission-field in the urban areas of our land. I do. But, I am not interested in taking my children into a whore-house to hand out a gospel tract. That is not what God has instructed us to do ANYWHERE in His word! We are to set no evil thing before our eyes. Now, how can you take your child into modern day America and avoid that...
The only answer that I can find for my family is to physically remove them, as far as I can, and THEN make sure that I teach them the importance of heart-holiness, and reality with Christ as opposed to pharisee ism. For us, that naturally means trying to live as much of a self-contained 'farm' life as we can, while choosing wisely when and where to expose them to the bitter winds of this land. Perhaps God will surprise us and bring the harshness of this world crashing down upon some of our children before we have been able to fully prepare them, and then they will be like lambs to the slaughter... My only question to you is, do you pray for mercy against such a thing, or do you secretly accept the ultimate failure of purity in your life before you begin the battle?
O.K., sorry for the rant. It's a habit I am trying to break...
So, our new benefactor was now offering to us an old hog-farm of 81 acres with an orchard of 40 Jerusalem Apple trees, 20 Persimmons, 30 Raspberry bushes and two-houses and an underground fallout shelter complete with a bicycle powered generator! NO, I AM NOT JOKING! The only problem was, that of her 3 daughters and 1 son, they all expected that property for themselves!
You see, our new friend had terminal cancer and has since gone on from this world to what we truly hope is a better existence in Christ Jesus, where she will never have to rely on 'visions', or private communique again. We quickly learned that she had lived a pretty rough life up until shortly before the 'cancer' news, and now wanted to make sure that she did some things right before leaving this world. We could see the disdain in the children's eyes every time we were around them and knew that they were not happy. So, we decided to do what any Christian would, and abstain from even the appearance of evil, by taking advantage of a dying woman with a bunch of money-hungry children that would be sure to drag the name of Christ in the dirt after her death.
But we did not tell her that. We instead, accompanied her to the land. The land that she had purchased, it turns out, as her own personal Shangri-la. Not to be sold like the other property, but where she would grow old learning how to tend the garden and pick the berries. Before she knew she had cancer. While there, we labored night and day to transform the effects of years of neglect back into the once radiant place that had brought her a little earthly joy. We still have photo's of Ms. Stewart, (that's what I'll call her), walking through the 45 acres of berries with my children, and picking apples that she did not even know existed anymore. We even went down to the local nursery and bought a few annuals to plant around the door of the house so she could sit and enjoy her last few days here. Then, we told her that while we were very grateful, we felt that God wanted us to stay where we were. ( Another factor was that moving here would mean leaving our Church and there was not any Church around the Farm that was acceptable). We explained slowly and gently how God had blessed us so much by giving us a faithful Pastor and that we had prayed for years for a Church that did not add man-made worship into their teachings, and that raising up children in the Lord was our greatest concern.
We smiled and thanked her again by telling her that the love expressed in her offer made us the richest people on earth. She then slowly turned around....and left!
The next few days she happened to have another 'vision' of the Lord that involved 12 rusty folding chairs being set up in the house there and a female prophetess standing on the mantle of the fireplace yelling some gobbly-gook...There you have it, obviously! Why did I not see it sooner? God had really wanted her chain-smoking prophetess friend to divorce her sissy husband and move here to start a church that would call back the 12 tribes of Israel! ( In respect and sincere love to Ms.T, she had a very aggressive cancer that had encompassed her entire being), so that is what happened. Today the children are still in court fighting the prophetess, each other, and one of their own husbands for control of the estate.
Lesson:
Obedience to God, faithfulness to the Church, and kindness to dying old women are more important than lands, or riches. Even if it is a lot of land...
Next up, How our mid-wife came to offer us 2 acres in West Virginia. And our new dilemma...
In the last post on this trip, I left off by telling you that I would share the story of how a sweet lady had offered our family a 81=/- acre farm in Northern Florida about 2 years ago, and why we felt constrained to turn that lady down.
As unbelievable as an event like this seemed to us, and probably to the majority of you, we were sure that it was only a test of the Lord to see if our real desire was to live a life that was faithful to His calling, or if we just simply were interested in worldly security and prosperity.
The lady in question was the mother of our landlord, and she was quite a real estate tycoon by most standards having amassed several large properties in different regions that she was using to secure an inheritance for her children. It seems that she was quite taken with the 'picture' of our little family that she had witnessed in the various meetings with us. This is an important point because, as you will see later, those pictures soon faded when the reality of our lives began to intersect with that of her own family.
This sweet lady, had seen my 'Amish-looking' wife and daughter, on several occasions, and had closely watched our family interact in both public and private on a daily basis. She was apparently attracted to some facets of our life and approached us one day with a cryptic offer to help us live the life style that she 'envisioned the Lord' calling us to. We later found out that it wasn't so much envisioning, as it was visioning. What I mean by that, is that this sweet lady was receiving 'visions' from God about our lives and what He intended for her to explain to us. She did not share these 'visions' immediately, but soon they were to become the backbone of much of our interaction with her and her family.
At first, it was an unexpected joy to think that God had heard our prayers to live a more sequestered and agrarian-sufficient life!
By sequestered, I mean a physically separated life that would limit the interaction that we, and our children had with the daily masses of Babylonians around us. By an agrarian- sufficient life, I mean a life that is lived in closer dependence on God, as we literally look to the blessing of increase from the land, mixed with our stewardship of it, as our chief means of living as the only alternative besides an unexpected inheritance!
A little more explanation, considering the current discussion surrounding agrarianism.;
I really want to pause for another moment on these two important parts of our understanding of Christian living.
For those of you who don't already know, I am theologically aligned with a segment of the Church, visible, that is very diligent in doctrinal studies, and takes great pains to root out any heresy, along with the false teaching that leads to heresy. I am in agreement with every major reformed confession, (by reformed I mean those that commonly arose during, or out of the Calvinistic reformation period), and I am an unabashed Puritan in my theology. That said, it is with the deepest and most sincere love to my brethren, that I state that, I am in almost universal disagreement with them on the issue of physical separation .
I am NOT speaking of spiritual separation unto personal holiness in our daily walk. This IS the primary lesson of many of Christ's teachings, and parables...internal righteousness, as opposed to only external legalism and a false sense of righteousness based on our own works. What I am speaking of is the need to get our children out of the bus ministries, and schools, and playgrounds of the enemy. It is a faulty theology that teaches us that we should send our wives and children into the hot bed of anti- Christianity as evangelists and teachers. We, as the men and women of God have a very difficult time standing against the modern age, and yet we willingly send our babies in to fight these battles. Please don't send a bunch of references about the chorus that 'the beasts of the wild shall be led by a child'. Tennessee Ernie Ford had a fine voice, but the theology of such arguments doesn't work out! If we would just take an honest look at the culture around us, we would easily conclude that during the greatest time of American so called 'evangelicalism', this nation has become the most perverse and debauched society in history. The examples abound and anyone that cannot see this just isn't paying attention. My fellow Presbyterians have been some of the worst defenders of an 'integrated' society. I can only assume that this is because we do strongly believe in biblical reformation of every part of civilization. We do not want a pure church alone. But, pray for a pure society at every level. Religious, political, education, economics, etc. We can point back to the great Puritan experiments in many places and prove that it can work! The problem here is that the people around us do not want it to work. The people themselves are not interested in living the Christian life. They may like Joyce Meyers, and even donate to the Osteen corporation, but they DO NOT have any interest in real Christian laws and government. They enjoy the shady bookstore at the edge of town. It helped revive the romance in their marriage. They have many 'gay' friends, and they are 'good people' who deserve respect.
Folks, this IS our country today. They HATE your Christ and His Law-Word. They love freedom and lawlessness. They choose it at the box-office and in their bedrooms. They even choose it in their legislators and magistrates. They have codified wickedness to ensure that they can live outside of the influence of the Gospel. Unless God chooses to send the Spirit of repentance to these people, our efforts to reach them have no meaning.
Therefore, I choose to remove my family to the safest physical place possible to train them for the battle that God may call them to one day.
It is not that I don't realize the potential mission-field in the urban areas of our land. I do. But, I am not interested in taking my children into a whore-house to hand out a gospel tract. That is not what God has instructed us to do ANYWHERE in His word! We are to set no evil thing before our eyes. Now, how can you take your child into modern day America and avoid that...
The only answer that I can find for my family is to physically remove them, as far as I can, and THEN make sure that I teach them the importance of heart-holiness, and reality with Christ as opposed to pharisee ism. For us, that naturally means trying to live as much of a self-contained 'farm' life as we can, while choosing wisely when and where to expose them to the bitter winds of this land. Perhaps God will surprise us and bring the harshness of this world crashing down upon some of our children before we have been able to fully prepare them, and then they will be like lambs to the slaughter... My only question to you is, do you pray for mercy against such a thing, or do you secretly accept the ultimate failure of purity in your life before you begin the battle?
O.K., sorry for the rant. It's a habit I am trying to break...
So, our new benefactor was now offering to us an old hog-farm of 81 acres with an orchard of 40 Jerusalem Apple trees, 20 Persimmons, 30 Raspberry bushes and two-houses and an underground fallout shelter complete with a bicycle powered generator! NO, I AM NOT JOKING! The only problem was, that of her 3 daughters and 1 son, they all expected that property for themselves!
You see, our new friend had terminal cancer and has since gone on from this world to what we truly hope is a better existence in Christ Jesus, where she will never have to rely on 'visions', or private communique again. We quickly learned that she had lived a pretty rough life up until shortly before the 'cancer' news, and now wanted to make sure that she did some things right before leaving this world. We could see the disdain in the children's eyes every time we were around them and knew that they were not happy. So, we decided to do what any Christian would, and abstain from even the appearance of evil, by taking advantage of a dying woman with a bunch of money-hungry children that would be sure to drag the name of Christ in the dirt after her death.
But we did not tell her that. We instead, accompanied her to the land. The land that she had purchased, it turns out, as her own personal Shangri-la. Not to be sold like the other property, but where she would grow old learning how to tend the garden and pick the berries. Before she knew she had cancer. While there, we labored night and day to transform the effects of years of neglect back into the once radiant place that had brought her a little earthly joy. We still have photo's of Ms. Stewart, (that's what I'll call her), walking through the 45 acres of berries with my children, and picking apples that she did not even know existed anymore. We even went down to the local nursery and bought a few annuals to plant around the door of the house so she could sit and enjoy her last few days here. Then, we told her that while we were very grateful, we felt that God wanted us to stay where we were. ( Another factor was that moving here would mean leaving our Church and there was not any Church around the Farm that was acceptable). We explained slowly and gently how God had blessed us so much by giving us a faithful Pastor and that we had prayed for years for a Church that did not add man-made worship into their teachings, and that raising up children in the Lord was our greatest concern.
We smiled and thanked her again by telling her that the love expressed in her offer made us the richest people on earth. She then slowly turned around....and left!
The next few days she happened to have another 'vision' of the Lord that involved 12 rusty folding chairs being set up in the house there and a female prophetess standing on the mantle of the fireplace yelling some gobbly-gook...There you have it, obviously! Why did I not see it sooner? God had really wanted her chain-smoking prophetess friend to divorce her sissy husband and move here to start a church that would call back the 12 tribes of Israel! ( In respect and sincere love to Ms.T, she had a very aggressive cancer that had encompassed her entire being), so that is what happened. Today the children are still in court fighting the prophetess, each other, and one of their own husbands for control of the estate.
Lesson:
Obedience to God, faithfulness to the Church, and kindness to dying old women are more important than lands, or riches. Even if it is a lot of land...
Next up, How our mid-wife came to offer us 2 acres in West Virginia. And our new dilemma...
Last of the update.
Here is a neat pic of the trial we performed with our Seedsaver Pinto beans. The row in the fore ground was simply planted right out of the package. The back row was from the same pack and was soaked in water for an hour before planting. Both are 20 foot, wide rows. Notice the better germination rate in the soaked bed. You can't really tell here, but the back row plants are almost double in size from the unsoaked bed. We'll be soaking all our bean seeds from now on.
Here is a shot of the labor camp here at the 'farm'! We try and get all the help we can get around here.
This shows some of the progress that a few willing children can make in keeping the homestead moving along. This is the 'army trench', aka; future underground root cellar in the making! In the background you can see one of our smaller tire compost stacker's doing it's job.
This is the bunny factory! All materials are recycled/scrounged/gifts, etc. The bunnies are attached to the inside of our chicken run fence, (also all free items). There are currently 8 kits fattening, and 2 pregnant does. We have an average of 12 bunnies per litter, so we are expecting to eat a lot of wabbit over the next few months. These critters breed back a week after dropping a litter and wean each set in 4 weeks. Obviously intended as food stuff! On top of the roof you will see my homemade version of an automatic watering system. It consists of buckets and drip hoses fitted to specially designed waterers. Before we watered twice a day...now once every 2 weeks!
And last, but certainly not least! We answer the question of where best to start that next batch of layers?! If you can read behind the 'plug' then you know that he's saying, "somebody bring the wash cloth over here! These rubber duckies are filthy!"
Thanks for letting me update the happenings here. We will resume the West Virginia trip next time.
Here is a shot of the labor camp here at the 'farm'! We try and get all the help we can get around here.
This shows some of the progress that a few willing children can make in keeping the homestead moving along. This is the 'army trench', aka; future underground root cellar in the making! In the background you can see one of our smaller tire compost stacker's doing it's job.This is the bunny factory! All materials are recycled/scrounged/gifts, etc. The bunnies are attached to the inside of our chicken run fence, (also all free items). There are currently 8 kits fattening, and 2 pregnant does. We have an average of 12 bunnies per litter, so we are expecting to eat a lot of wabbit over the next few months. These critters breed back a week after dropping a litter and wean each set in 4 weeks. Obviously intended as food stuff! On top of the roof you will see my homemade version of an automatic watering system. It consists of buckets and drip hoses fitted to specially designed waterers. Before we watered twice a day...now once every 2 weeks!And last, but certainly not least! We answer the question of where best to start that next batch of layers?! If you can read behind the 'plug' then you know that he's saying, "somebody bring the wash cloth over here! These rubber duckies are filthy!"Thanks for letting me update the happenings here. We will resume the West Virginia trip next time.Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Poor man's follow up..
More of the garden...
This is a pic of my wife training the main stalk by twisting around the twine.
Here are a couple prime beauties waiting to be canned!
This is a remarkable start of lettuce for so late in the year! Salad anyone?
And this is how to use bamboo that you acquire for 'free' when you help a neighbor clean the yard. Those are Edisto 47 heirloom cantaloupes growing at the bottom, and the netting was all tied by hand from some old twine we had. My son helped in the tedious webbing, and knotting of each square to be sure that they could support the heavy melons that will trellis on them.
A little more to come...
This is a pic of my wife training the main stalk by twisting around the twine.
Here are a couple prime beauties waiting to be canned!
This is a remarkable start of lettuce for so late in the year! Salad anyone?
And this is how to use bamboo that you acquire for 'free' when you help a neighbor clean the yard. Those are Edisto 47 heirloom cantaloupes growing at the bottom, and the netting was all tied by hand from some old twine we had. My son helped in the tedious webbing, and knotting of each square to be sure that they could support the heavy melons that will trellis on them.A little more to come...This road is full of turns; Garden update
Just a little update on the homestead events. I really do promise that I will finish, or start.. the West Virginia description soon! For today, I want to discuss a very important topic:
What can a poor man do with a small piece of rental property, and no income?
Well for starter's here is a short list.
This is our potato garden that we planted just a short time ago! They are now in about 25% bloom and should be ready for harvest of early potatoes soon. Next we will start working on some under house root cellar experiments to deal with the high temp and humidity here. We will be using recycled, ( scavenged junk), materials to house our harvest. The variety we used was Norkotah, from Ronniger's Farm. We are well pleased in that we had 100% of our seed sprout!
These are some beautiful St. Valery carrots that we got free from the fine folks at Baker Creek seeds when we ordered from them. I have never gotten carrots this far before, and am very happy to see a little late cool night weather here that is helping to keep them going. Winter is when we were supposed to plant these, so there is no telling if they will actually develop into some real roots, or just bushy tops! So far, we are lookin' good!
This one almost got me in trouble! My wife hates to have her picture snapped. It probably doesn't help that she feels REALLY pregnant right now! Still, I wanted to get a shot of our little bed of late blooming lettuce in the lower right corner. Paris Island Co. variety/ Baker Creek. You can also see my redneck tomato trellis system! We grew an indeterminate variety, ( Amish Paste/ Baker Creek), so we needed to stake them well. As you can see, we are VERY happy with Amish Paste Tomatoes! As we realized that we were going to soon need the trellis, we started looking around the homestead to find some material to build with. All we had was a few trees and some twine, so there you have it. We buried the side supports about a foot deep and used some cotton string to run down to the plants. My son cut 12" pieces of stout limbs to tie the bottom of the string to, and then buried those in the ground to give a nice 'anchor' to the string. Then you just keep the suckers pulled off and twine the main trunk around the string every few days. What you see is not a big, bushy, fruitless vine, but a massive wall of tomatoes!
For some reason I can only post 4 pic's at a time so following will be more of the Poor Man's Plan for making due with what the Lord has given...
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