Heres a happy pig. Dirt to root around in, grass to eat. A healthy dose of garden scraps, milk and grain for breakfast, lunch and supper.
His “pig house” also makes a good “backside scratcher”.
I can’t believe how fast little guy is growing. We’ve got plenty of extra milk and they really thrive on that. I can hear the bacon sizzlin’……
Pastor Bret McAtee has penned a “New and Modified Declaration of Independence” that I would happily sign! It begins…..
When in the Course of God’s Providence, it becomes necessary for His people to cast off the unrighteous political shackles which have been foisted upon them, and to install again, among the powers of the earth, Governments that are reflective of the Kingship of Christ, thus taking to themselves, for God’s Glory, the separate and equal station to which the Law of God requires of them, a decent respect to the curiosities of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to pursue Reform…..
Read the whole thing Here
We who live off the land live by and with the seasons. They are part of our very fabric, you can’t seperate them from our lives. The modernist knows that there are such things as seasons, but they only effect their leisure activities not the whole of life. I’ve noticed over the years that this is one of the biggest differences between us and our “city cousins”. Those who don’t live close to land live in endless drudgery when it comes to work. Same work day in and day out no matter what the season. Here on the farm, where we work at survival and providing the basics of life, every season brings a new task and a variety to life that can’t be found in the concrete jungle. When the blackcaps are ripe we drop everything and pick. Wait to long and they be gone, and they won’t be back till next year. When beans are ready we drop what ever we are doing and pick beans. Once they are picked they are canned, a job which requires the help of every member of the family. When the weather cools down its time to butcher hogs and beef so they can hang and age proper. Its also the time to harvest a fattened whitetail or two. Come early spring its maple sap and the evaporator to fire up. Spring turn out on the pastures is anticipated all winter long. When the sun shines, you make hay. For every task they is proper time, from cutting firewood to planting the potatoes to canning tomatoes. The seasons provide a rhythm to life that is part of God’s created order. To choose a life that ignores these seasons is a choice to deprive yourself of some of the most basic blessings life.
Blueberry season is in full swing. Yesterday, Leah and I and my Mom and Dad and the 3 boys picked for a couple hours. We ended up with about 65 pounds of berries. The folks have been freezing their share and ours have been going into jam and some into the freezer. We’ll have to go picking at least one more time to have a winters worth, we use a lot of blueberries. We need to freeze more and I’d like to make some syrup to help stretch out the maple syrup. Blackcaps are about done. We have a good store of them made into jam. Blackberries are just now getting ripe so we’ll be heading to the woods as soon as we get these blueberries finished up.
If you’ve ever wondered what the best way to eat blueberries is, I’ll tell you my favorite. Its very simple and extremely good. Fill a bowl with blueberries. Sprinkle sugar on them. Pour fresh heavy cream on them (the more cream the better). This is a part of my award winning “Farmers weight loss system”. The secret is lots of heavy cream, butter and pig fat. Then you ballance that out with hard labor. Works for me.
Anyone who has ever milked a cow or two or 30 knows that flies at milking time can make life miserable. The stomping and kicking, milkers flying off or pails getting spilled and the old tail in the face trick turn the happiest job into one of torture. This summer we have less free range hens running the place and we also have more flies this year than we did last year. Being an Organic dairy we have to be mighty picky about what we use to control flies and we ordered some oil based spray from our favorite organic supply house. No Fly is available from Crystal Creek and we started using it on the cows at milking time this week. It works well. I’m pretty happy with it and thought I’d share it with ya’ll. Whats in it? Well, I’ll tell you…
No-Fly
(Oil Base Concentrate)
Inert Ingredients: White Mineral Oil, Vanillin (natural source).
Active Ingredients: Soybean Oil 2%, Essential Oils Of: Cedar 0.80%, Peppermint 0.80%, Cinnamon 0.80%, Geranium 0.80%, Geraniol 0.80%, Lemon Grass 0.30 %, Rosemary 0.25%, Thyme 0.25%, Eugenol 2.0%
Last night we had such a fine meal, I thought I’d share it with you. Nothing fancy, didn’t even have meat. It was just good summer food and all of it was pick moments before it was consumed. We had summer squash and zucchini fried in butter in a big cast iron frypan. We had a big batch of broccoli side shoots and sugar snap peas cooked to perfection and drowned in a liberal dose of butter and sprinkled with sea salt. We had fresh dug beets, the finest tasting beets we’ve ever grown on the hill (its the kelp I believe). And to top it off we had the first cukes and first ripe tomatoes sliced and soaked in apple cider vinegar, water, and sugar with some fresh chopped Italian parsly. Moments like like that meal make you forget that your even poor. Good food is one of the great blessings of agrarian life. Not the greatest blessing though, that would be growing that food with your wife and children. Work that has purpose and work done together for the glory of God.
This year I’ve really been lamenting over the fact that we didn’t have a hog around. Hogs are one of the most important animals to have on a real homestead. They turn waste milk, table scraps, and garden scraps into fine tasting meat. Every time I saw waste I would say, “We really need a pig!” Well, the neighbor had another batch of piglets ready to go for $50 a piglet. Not wanting to miss out, the boys and I grabbed some corner posts and threw up a 2 strand electric pig fence and hooked up a charger. The whole family jumped in the minivan with a little dog carrier and $50 with hopes of finding a plump little piglet. I picked out a real nice one and stuffed it in the dog box and paid my money. We got home and turned him out into his nice little paddock. Porky looked around, ate some clover and then shot through the fence like a rocket ship. For the next 2 hours we worked at catching that little $50 dollar bill with 4 legs and a snout. We crossed cow pastures, went through brambles and golden rod, he covered some ground that night! Leah and I finally got him down in some tall golden rod and bed straw. He ducked down in there thinking I couldn’t see him, so I crawled on my belly and got within arms reach of his leg and snatched that little piggy right out of his hiding spot. He went back in the dog crate and we all went work building a better pig pen. My brother in law called on the phone and wondered what we were doing. I said, “The whole family is panting and sweating and sitting on a log right here in the yard among the orchard grass heads. We’re all staring at a pig in a crate and wondering whether or not to have a one really good dinner tonight or try build a new fence” Well, we threw up some woven wire and wrapped that with chicken wire and then added a third strand of electric wire. Then I went to the cow pasture and swapped fencers so I had the “BullDozer….Weed Burner” model that can knock a grown cow to her knees. I put in an extra ground stake and she lit up 4 lights on the tester! We turned Porky back out and he soon learned to stay away from the fence! He now is enjoying his new home eating all the things that would have been wasted. I can’t wait till butcher time.
We’ve been pretty busy of late and everytime I was going to take the time to post something here the wireless connection would be giving me fits. But its working today, so I thought I’d drop in and write something. We have been making hay whenever the equipment is working, which is not as often as we’d like. Haybine is down again, this time a $140 part that won’t be here till the middle of the week. Pastures are holding up pretty good. Peas are ready and the garden is always needing to be tended to. The deer are raising cain with my beans. They only took a liking to them after they ate countless pounds of lettuce. It will all even up this fall when we put a couple of them end up in the freezer. Blackcaps are ready and we’ve been putting up jam. I love blackcaps, I’ve written of my love for blackcap season many times on this blog. Pretty good crop of them this year, free for the picking. Of course my arms are sliced up from the thorns. Blackcap picking is always a good reminder of the consequences of our first parents sin. Thorns with fruit, dominion is hard work. That reminds me of something. The other day I heard a fundamentalist baptist explaining to a kid that work was part of the curse for Adams sin. Nonsense! HARD work with thorns and sweat was the curse. Adam was made to work, we are made to work. Thats part of being made in God’s image for crying out loud. Its no wonder there is no “protestant work ethic” any more with this kind of nonsense being taught. Anyway, didn’t mean to get off on that. Picked a few beets today and by the looks of the beans we’ll be doing green beans pretty soon. When the blackberries are ready I’m going to try making some blackberry wine. I’m thinking about tweeking the Up North Whiskey recipe and adding a few pounds of blackberries to the pot. I really think that would be good, a blackberry wheat wine. Jeepers, I’m making myself thirsty now. On another note, I thought this post at Iron Ink make a good point, one that I’ve tried to make in the past, Limited Atonement — An Inescapable Category makes case that everyone believes in a “limited Attonement” its really about who dose the limiting.
There is no denying the fact that the church in America has reached a low point. Our nation, settled by and built by Christians in 1600’s, has lost faith in the Triune God and we are reaping the wirlwind we deserve. Culture is religion externalized, the polytheistic idolatrous culture that we now have is only the fruit of our national religion exposed for all to see. God will not be mocked, he has given us what we deserve and turned us over to the wicked rulers that in our hearts we lusted after. What hope should Christians in 2008 have for the future? Should we try to rebuild the nation on Christian principles? Won’t we all be raptured up soon anyway?
First, the premillennial rapture teachings are a product of the apostate church. It is nonsense, plain and simple. The bible teaches no such thing but rather teaches that the Great Commission will be a success, that the knowlege of the Lord will cover the world as the waters cover the sea. It teaches that his kingdom is here now and that the gates of hell will not stand against the advancing army of God. Might sound crazy, but this is what Christians for the most part have always believed until the rise of dispensationalism in the 1800s. The bible dose not just give us hope in heaven but also hope on the earth. The bible tells us of such times when His people have turned away from Him and He always saves a remnant that is strengthened by correction and advances the faith. He calls us to repent and ask for forgiveness, then He says he will heal our land. Nothing short of real honest National Repentance can save America.
In preparation for the coming homeschool year, I’ve been working on the church history lessons for the kids. Reading and freshing up on our families over 2000 year history. The history of our brothers and sisters. The study of church history has been neglected by most American Christians. The current dominant theology has no use for history, they are nonhistorical. I can understand it, if I stood on the outside of Historic Christianity I would not find much value in it either. While again reading the stories of Polycarp, Athanasius, King Alfred, John Wyclif, John Huss, Luther, Calvin and Knox; I am reminded of this truth. Whenever the Church of Christ has fell into apostasy it has been followed by great reformation! God allows things to get just so bad and then His faithful saints make the stand on His truth and advance the cause of Christ. Brothers and sisters we are again at such a time in the Churches history. We are ripe for reformation. Our nation is ripe for repentance or destruction. Our duty is to do what is right and stand in our faith in Christ obeying His Word no matter the appearant consequences. We may not see the fruit of our labors, it may well not be seen for many generations. Many years from now students of church history will look back at our generation. Will they be inspired to make a stand for the Gospel, or will they be ashamed at our lack of faithful obedience?
I leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Robert E Lee…
The march of Providence is so slow, and our desires so impatient; the work of progress is so immense and our means of aiding it so feeble; the life of humanity is so long, that of the individual so brief, that we often see only the ebb of the advancing wave and are thus discouraged. It is history that teaches us to hope.
Thursday evening after milking the older boys and I took off for the first camping trip of the summer. We needed some good old “camp fire therapy”. It was fun, we got camp built pretty quick and gathered a good supply of fire wood. We ate, target shot, sang a few psalms and read an old Rocky Mt trapper’s journal by the fire before bed. I explained to the boys that what they were learning was something no one could ever take away from them. They can take your money, your house, your car, but they can’t ever take away what you learn. Every man ought to know how to live in the wild. My boys know how.
We could travel half way by golf cart, across pasture land. The rest of the way on foot.
Supper was cook your own with a stick.
If ya’ll come a calling, be sure to yell “Hello to camp” before getting too close. 
