12 Wednesday Sep 2018
Posted in Projects
…wonder what we’ll be writing about today? It’s still a mystery to me. Although, it is Wednesday so that means a short report anyway. It’s never that nothing is happening, more that there’s nothing of import going on. Well, maybe not even that. Maybe more like the stuff going on is more mundane than anything. Not really the stuff of great posts. We’ll just do a quick overview and see what tangents we follow then. Continue reading
10 Monday Sep 2018
Posted in Co-workers, Projects
Well, we don’t think you can ever have too many eggs – but sometimes we can have too many orders for eggs! Right now, Tom the Baker is ramping up for the holidays. He’s wanting to start back up with 10 dozen each week. 10 dozen! We were able to fulfill that order today, but we had to wait until Sunday evening in order to get that many. We didn’t sell any to anyone else all last week so that we could get to 10 dozen by today… and we just barely made it! After we took the 10% out, we had exactly 10 dozen. When I dropped them by this morning, I said, “Just let me know what you need later this week…” and he said, “10 dozen.” All I could say was that we’d do our best. We have orders in from regular private clients as well. We don’t want to forsake everyone to make sure Tom gets 10. Especially those that purchase from us because they have allergies or are dealing with cancer – so they’re trying to eat more cleanly. What’s a body to do? We’re coming up on that time when they are really going to slow down for the winter. We’ll just do the best we can! Continue reading
07 Friday Sep 2018
Posted in Uncategorized
It’s a wild Friday night for someone, somewhere, I’m sure. Here – everyone’s a bed, but us. Sue’s catching up on the vlogs that she likes to follow and I’m taxing my brain with trying to come up with some type of cohesive thoughts for tonight’s blog. That brain thing just hasn’t been working lately. Suffice it to say, we’re not into wild Fridays around here. We’re not into wild weeks, or weekends either… just give me calm, quite, peaceful days and I’m happy. Thursday and Friday seemed to fall into those areas I guess. Continue reading
05 Wednesday Sep 2018
Posted in Co-workers
Who knew that there was such a thing as chicken drama? Well let me tell you, we’ve been playing chicken switch for several days now to try and help squelch the drama. This chicken here, these there, whose going to try to take over as head hen? It’s just been amazing. Up until now, our flocks have been relatively calm and basically trouble free. Well, ok – at the very beginning when we had way too many roosters in the original coop, there was some stress. Once we processed those guys, there was immediate calm in the flock. It was amazing. But, lately, whew – we’ve had some trouble. Continue reading
03 Monday Sep 2018
I have a friend by the name of Wes Ellis. I love this man and his family. I don’t know if he even knows this, but he and his family, and their quiet and unassuming love helped get me through one of the more difficult times of my life. He is currently the Associate Pastor of First UMC of Tom’s River and I tell him, periodically, that he is still pastoring me from afar. We don’t speak very much, but I do follow him on Face Book and via his (occasional) blog “Searching for God in all the Wrong Places”. The other day I ran across this FB post from him, “Avoid pessimism. But avoid optimism too. Choose, instead, to be hopeful.” I read that and thought, “Wait! I’ve been trying to be so optimistic!” Even when you’re not – fake it till you make it – right. And here he is saying, just be hopeful. In the comments, he goes on to quote Jürgen Moltmann, “Genuine hope is not blind optimism. It is hope with open eyes, which sees the suffering and yet believes in the future.” To which I further thought, “Pffft. What the heck does he know? I’m just going to continue to be optimistic. It’s so much grander than simply hopeful.” At that point, I was thinking about my life and where it was going, but tonight I’m thinking of more mundane matters. This really isn’t all that theologically oriented – as his post perhaps was, but – I ended up putting optimism into play when I last talked about how many trees we were going to get into the ground this weekend. I believe I said, “most, if not all.” Seems I should have been hopeful, rather than so optimistic. Continue reading
31 Friday Aug 2018
You know, we decided to start this blog so the people at home – our friends, family, church members – who kept requesting that we “let them know what we were up to”, could indeed see what we were up to. We now have over 100 followers on social media of some type… I realize that this is not huge in the grand scheme of things, but for us it’s amazing. 102 people follow us on Face Book, a couple dozen people follow this blog by having it e-mailed to them, and 30 some just follow it directly on WordPress. I just want to thank family members, who indulge us by reading – because they have to, and friends, old and new, who have supported us in this adventure. It’s always such a great feeling knowing that you are following along and rooting for us; rejoicing when we get something right, and sympathizing with us when things go awry. Thank you so very much! Now… on with our regularly scheduled programming. Continue reading
29 Wednesday Aug 2018
Posted in Uncategorized
Monday I said that I was going to be gone; I’m in Phoenix at a workshop with the Arizona Association of REALTORS®, so I was holding back on what happened over the weekend. I’m sure you’re all wondering how it all went. Well, even if you’re not, I’m going to tell you anyway! We learned some things, we remembered some things, and we decided that we’d make some changes before we processed the RR#2’s. It was a really long day and we were just both so happy when everything was done and over. I won’t get into the nitty gritty of everything because we’ve already done that once and you can look it up on earlier posts if you want. There is still going to be some talk about the process, so if you’re sensitive to that sort of thing, you may want to just skip this post. Continue reading
27 Monday Aug 2018
I’m not going to do the weekend update until later. I’ll be traveling Wednesday and want to have something that I can talk easily about while I’m gone. I’ll be leaving for Phoenix tomorrow afternoon for a workshop over a couple of days. I’ll be back Thursday afternoon, but will definitely have time in the late evening, Wednesday to post. So I am not anticipating losing a day. Anyway, let’s talk about today and why these goats really, really, really want to come through the gate. Continue reading
24 Friday Aug 2018
Posted in Uncategorized
So, today was preparation day. Tomorrow is processing day. Not a favorite day, but a necessary one. We’ll be processing 15 birds and Sue spent some time today setting up the accoutrements – as much as she could, out of the weather. It was rather a drizzly day today and you can’t leave the plucker and the scalder out in the weather – both electric, right, so just wouldn’t do. She’s got them set up in the car port and tomorrow we’ll put the kettle on for the scalder, lay down a tarp, hang up a tarp, gather some chickens and say some prayers. Continue reading
22 Wednesday Aug 2018
Posted in Uncategorized
Someone asked me recently, “What are the chores that you’re always talking about?” So, I guess if you’re not familiar with farm life, you might not know what those entail. So I thought I’d just talk about what makes up chores here. When I was growing up, my brother and I shared in the chores. I remember that we fed the dogs and cats, when we had horses, we fed teh horses and cleaned their stall, we fed the rabbits, we may have fed the cows occasionally, but mom was usually milking and she would feed them at the same time. I think as I got older I would strain the milk and put it in bottles. Our chickens and ducks were in an aviary, so I don’t think we had to put them in, and I don’t really remember feeding them – but we would sometimes collect eggs. Mom kept track of what to do and when… if we had baby cows, mixing up the formula and giving them their bottles where often on the list. We didn’t do chores in the morning, unless it was the weekend, only in the afternoon/evening. For me it went: piano, homework, chores – then more homework if necessary. It’s different for us here though. Continue reading
Wing and a Prayer 