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Hi Everyone,

               Every season of the year has its own beauty: the frost on the pansies in winter, the woodlands full of white lilies in spring, storm clouds in summer with the lush green grass blowing in the wind, and the colorful leaves of autumn. We had a father and son come on Saturday to look at some heifers and they were so captivated with the beauty of the farm and the peacefulness of it. They recently left the city and moved to the country and one of the first things they noticed was all the stars that can be seen in the evening sky when there are no city lights to block out the beauty of the stars—especially the Milkyway. Yet, with all the beauty all around us there is One who is fairer and One who is brighter and that is the Lord Jesus Christ. It is in Him that we can have perfect peace—even when all around us is chaotic, and the hymn writer says it well in the hymn “Fairest Lord Jesus”

Fairest Lord Jesus, Ruler of all nature,
O Thou of God and man the Son,
Thee will I cherish, Thee will I honor,
Thou, my soul’s glory, joy and crown.

Fair are the meadows, fairer still the woodlands,
Robed in the blooming garb of spring;
Jesus is fairer, Jesus is purer,
Who makes the woeful heart to sing.

Fair is the sunshine, fairer still the moonlight,
And all the twinkling starry host;
Jesus shines brighter, Jesus shines purer
Than all the angels heav’n can boast.

All fairest beauty, heavenly and earthly,
Wondrously, Jesus, is found in Thee;
None can be nearer, fairer or dearer,
Than Thou, my Savior, art to me.

Beautiful Savior! Lord of all the nations!
Son of God and Son of Man!
Glory and honor, praise, adoration,
Now and forevermore be Thine.

Farm life has its ebbs and flows—there is either grass to mow or none, or the garden is majoring in weeds or vegetables. Summer usually encourages a plethora of weeds, especially crabgrass and Spanish needle. In order to get the garden ready for the fall planting we have to eradicate a lot of unwanted greenery. On Monday while Steve mowed the grass around the garden (with the newly fixed push mower), Clayton and I worked on cleaning up the East Tunnel and spreading chicken compost on the rows. Tuesday found us back in the garden finishing up the compost and beginning on a section in the Mid-West Bed, where to our dismay it looks like the deer returned and finished off the green beans. While we were weeding Mom mentioned that a friend of ours had figs on his fig tree that were ripe for the picking. Clayton said that it sounded like we needed to have a field trip—and we agreed. As soon as we were done packaging eggs and making yogurt we loaded up and headed to our friends fig tree. There were not a lot, but we got to eat more ripe figs off of his fig tree than we did off of our fig trees. We also brought home enough to dehydrate for Mom to make some fig cakes—they are scrumptious! Once we were done eating and picking figs we headed to town to run a few errands—for Papa asked us to get the ice since we would be in town.

There are more ways than one to flood an area: the first way being too much rain, and the second being a broken water pipe. Wednesday morning when Steve arrived at the broiler houses he found the little two week old chicks close to swimming and water boiling out of the ground at the water spigot. Papa had to leave for Jacksonville to make the deliveries, and therefore he had no time to fix a broken pipe until Thursday. So as soon as the milking was done, the orders packed and Papa and Clayton on their way to Jacksonville, Mom and Steve headed up to rescue some chicks. They loaded the chicks into some cardboard boxes and then quickly pulled their pens to high and dry ground and put the chicks back in their pens. The water was ankle deep in the low area, and a good two inches of rain that night sure didn’t help matters any. When Papa finished his chores Thursday morning he was able to dig a hole around the pipe to figure out where the leak was coming from. Thankfully the pipe had not broke, but had just come unglued at the joint. So when lunch was done Papa turned off the water on the whole farm and then he and Clayton headed up on the hill to fix the pipe. Mom and I headed over to pick up some ice cream which we had some fellow farmers make for us with the last batch of cream of the season. When we got home I headed upstairs to sew Mom a new jumper—for rags were becoming the fashion around here. That night for dessert I baked an apple crisp so that we could top it with our fresh ice cream.

Thursday morning when Clayton and I were finished milking the cows we headed to the garden to weed in the raised bed garden. We got two 10 x 10 beds completely weeded around the gazebo and I think that I may plant herbs there this winter. In the past we have had flowers there, but with the new garden design on the other side of the garden I think that we shall have plenty room over there for tons of flowers—for it is supposed to have a four and a half foot flower bed all the way around the border of the garden bed. While we were in the garden, Mom was busy in the yard riding around on the mower mowing grass that hasn’t seen the sun all summer—because the lawn mower was in the shop. You could tell a difference from the grass that has been mowed all summer with the push mower (it was green once it was mowed) and the grass that hadn’t been cut all summer (it was yellow once it was mowed). Once the grass was mowed, then Steve raked it up and piled it in the truck—and there was a lot of it for the grass was a good two feet tall.

Friday morning was different than most mornings, because we were processing chickens later that day—but no one thought to tell Clayton the morning schedule on a butchering morning. Usually at 7:00 I head to the milk house to set up for milking and everyone else heads to the kitchen to cook breakfast. On the days that we process Mom and Papa head outside at 6:20 to gather the chickens into the trailer, and then Mom usually moves the heifers to a new field. So when Clayton entered the kitchen to help cook breakfast—not only was no one in the kitchen, but no one was in the house either! Instead of standing around wondering what to do, Clayton proceeded to do what he did every morning. He realized that we needed bread and eggs—so he headed to the “grocery store” (our walk in cooler and freezer) to get the needed items. He put away dishes, cracked the eggs, put toast in the toaster and got out more butter—yep, he had everything under control by the time Mom finally got back inside and was ready to start breakfast. It is nice to have someone who can see what needs to be done and does it.

While the morning may have started off smoothly, it wasn’t long before we had shipwrecked. It seemed that we had taken a detour through “Pooh Corner” as a friend of ours calls it when he arrives and finds us and our surrounding all covered in cow poo. Some days we can make it all the way through milking without even one cow going poo—but other days it seems like they all go poo and some go poo, pee and poo again. Friday was one of “THOSE” days! I lost a good thirty minutes of milking time just cleaning up my area from a cow that just had to go and go and go. When the milking was all done I headed inside and was glad that I had a few minutes to spare before we had to start processing chickens—a few minutes for me to unwind by drinking a glass of kombucha, eating a few dried apricots and brazil nuts, checking emails, etc. Then I was ready to go on and spend the next few hours processing chickens. We were not scheduled to process chickens last Friday, but nothing has been on schedule with chickens this year. In the spring and early summer they were growing so fast that we had to process them at seven weeks instead of eight. Then we had a batch arrive dead—all but 13 that is. That batch we mixed with the next batch that arrived two weeks later, because who wants to set up the poultry kitchen to process just 13 birds. Well, those birds were scheduled to be processed next Friday, but when we checked them Wednesday night we realized that those 13 chickens would never make it another week (for they were already 9 weeks old and huge). So we decided to butcher the 13 and a few other of the biggest chickens from the batch they were being raised with—a total of 30 in all. Since we didn’t have that many chickens to do we got done early which gave me some time to go upstairs to the sewing room and sew another jumper for Mom.

Well, that is all that I have to say in August—I will tell you more next month.

Serving you with Gladness,

Tiare