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Hi Everyone,
Christ the Lord is Risen to day! Alleluia! This is the number one truth that all Christianity is based on. If Christ is not risen from the dead then we have: no hope for tomorrow; and no hope for eternity, and no hope to escape the judgment of God for the sins that we have committed. BUT—because Jesus Christ rose from the grave we have hope for tomorrow because Isaiah 41:13 says, “For I the LORD thy God will hold thy right hand, saying unto thee, Fear not; I will help thee.” We have hope for eternity because John 10:28 says, “And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.” Then we have hope for our sins because Colossians 1:14 says, “In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins.” I think that Charles Wesley summed it up real good in this hymn:
Rejoice, the Lord is King!
Jesus, the Savior, reigns,
The God of truth and love;
When He had purged our stains
He took His seat above;
Lift up your heart, lift up your voice;
Rejoice, again I say, rejoice!
Rejoice in glorious hope!
Jesus the Judge shall come,
And take His servants up
To their eternal home;
We soon shall hear th’ archangel’s voice;
The trump of God shall sound, rejoice!
You see, we serve a risen Saviour, the living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy; (1 Timothy 6:17), and here on the farm last week there was much to enjoy. Monday afternoon Mom and Steve mowed the drain field for the milking parlor and cleaned the sludge out of the drainage ditch—and I headed to the garden. The tunnels are in tip top shape right now which gave me the chance to work in the Cottage garden (the raised bed area). It is beautiful in there right now as the roses are in full bloom and the daylilies are just starting to open. It is amazing how many different shades of green God created. There is the soft green of the apple mint and the bright green of the gladiola leaves. Not only are there different shades of green, but there are different textures too! There are the course leaves of comfrey, the paper thin leaves of lemon balm, the fuzzy leaves of mullein and the sticky leaves of cleavers. With all the plants showing off their spring green and their floral colors, the Cottage garden is a nice place to hang out in right now. So many of the beds have some unwelcome guests (aka weeds), so I meandered around from bed to bed pulling weeds and I also pulled the weeds out of the walkways—they like to grow in the cracks between the rubber mats and the wooden garden beds. I have to say that I was like a kid at a playground—I ran from area to area pulling weeds in this bed and walkway and then running over and pulling weeds in that bed and walkway. I would be working in one area, and then look up and see some weeds in another area and just have to go pull them. I wanted to conquer every single bed and walkway—well, the ones that actually have flowers, herbs or veggies growing in them (I would be tickled pink if the beds that are nothing but weeds would just disappear into thin air). This is the time of year that the Cottage garden shines and I want to enjoy it in all its beauty.
Mrs. Penny was able to return to work on Tuesday—her mother is very sick and needing lots of care—so for five days we had to help clean up all the milking equipment. With Penny back I was able to bottle the kefir and then Mom and I headed to the garden once the milking was over. I took a big push broom out to the garden and I worked at sweeping up the walkways. The oak leaves were piling up in the walkways and then I had been throwing all the weeds into the walkways and somehow dirt was starting to pile up on the mats. A flat shovel works to clean up the mats—but it takes lots of trips to clean a 3 foot wide path. So I grabbed the big push broom and could go down the walkway in one or two trips pushing everything into large piles that Steve could then easily shovel into the wheelbarrow and dump them in the pot holes in the drive lane. Thursday we made it back out to the garden and while Mom and I worked at weeding, Steve worked on clearing the walkways. Before I got around to weeding I started a fire in the fire pit in the middle of the garden so that we could burn all the branches that we had pruned off of the roses, pears, and crepe myrtle. We also threw in some of the dried out weeds. It is amazing how hot and crackly rose branches burn! I was cutting back the dead on the lemon grass and ended up pulling up the plants by accident. This ended up being a blessing because I was able to take the new little sprouts and divided them into more plants—so three lemon grass plants turned into eight.
Harvesting season is definitely arriving in the garden. It is time to start harvesting and drying the mullein leaves and the parsley. The celery is in so much abundance that we are eating the stalks and dehydrating the leaves. We are thinking about canning some of it into Cream of Celery soup. The second planting of carrots is ready and last Thursday we harvested the sweet onions. Last year we did a video on the onions and you can watch it here: Harvesting Onions. Once we pulled up all the onions we took them to the barn and hung them on the drying racks. How thankful I am that rats do not like to eat onions! When I listen to local farmers talk about growing sweet onions I get the idea that onions are heavy feeders--and it sounds like those farmers use a lot of chemical fertilizer to accomplish their goals. Not only do they want to grow an onion--they want to grow a whopper onion! We do not use chemicals to grow onions but how else do you grow a BIG onion? When the farmers say that the onion needs lots of fertilizer that is my key to use lots of composted chicken manure from our portable pastured chicken houses and I add a top dressing of wood ash for extra potassium. We harvested the onions the other day and I think that they were a success! All the onions are nice size, but the biggest one was a whopper six inches in diameter!
Last year we bought a new bull. He is a South Poll bull and his name is Jabez. He has spent his time here on the farm hanging out with our young Jersey bulls—Milkyway and Patriot. We couldn’t put him in with the Murray Grey beef cows until we got rid of our Murray grey bull. Billy bull was well over 12 years old, and it took us until February before we could get him processed for hamburger meat. We had some of the Murray grey cows that we needed to cull out and so on Friday we brought the herd into the panel pens and separated what we wanted to keep from what we wanted to sell. Then while I counted just how many cows, steers and young heifers we had—Papa and Mom went to separate Jabez from the bulls so that we could put him in with the Murray grey herd. Jabez has done his share of getting out in hopes of finding a girlfriend, and he has done his share of “belly aching” (mooing loudly) over the fence when the cows are up at the milking parlor—and Dijon, the Jersey bull, bellows back telling him “these are my girls.” So you would have thought that it would have been real easy to separate Jabez and put him in with the girls—but there was a lot of chasing from one end of the field to the other before we actually got him out of the field. Then he had to run after the girls who had stopped for him, but because he didn’t cooperate they left without him. Once down in the pasture the girls showed no interest in him, though he tried to make friends with some of them. You can see it all for yourself in our newest video: Jabez meets his girls! I am sure that it will not take too long before those ladies begin to like the attention he gives them.
One morning as I was fixing to head out to milk the cows Papa told me that he wanted me to go to the pond with him. Some people like to feed the birds—but Papa likes to feed the fish, and he likes to show off his fish from time to time. This time it was my turn to enjoy his fish. There must be hundreds of brim in our pond and Papa gets great joy tossing in a few scoops of chicken food and watching all the little fish scurrying around eating the feed. We have a Grey Heron that hangs out at the pond from time to time and once it learned that Papa was feeding fish in the mornings he would come to the breakfast table too, but not to watch and not to eat the chicken feed—his breakfast menu consisted of fish! Papa didn’t like that and had to start scaring him off. Right now we have a little flock of Whistling ducks hanging out of the pond and they are fun to listen to and watch.
I hope that you have a great week.
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare