This is our journal of what we pray is our sojourn of life (Hebrews 11:8-10) along the narrow way (Matthew 7:14), even the old paths (Jeremiah 6:16), submitting to the Bible as a light unto both (Psalms 119:105). It is our prayer that these documented moments in our earthly time benefit whom God might choose to edify, but ultimately that God glorifies Himself through them.
Initially, when we had our west tank (that’s Texas for “pond”) dug last year, the Lord saw fit to stop the process before we had planned to finish by filling it up quite full — too full to continue.
Since then though, we’ve been in one of our worst droughts since we’ve been here. Since it was dug and filled as it was, there had been very little substantial rainfall. The tank lasted very well though, although it was getting lower, and was the only ground water available at the time for the cows.
But, God in His mercies and graces, saw fit to drop a decent amount of rain here, runoff rain, back in early June. It wasn’t a whole lot, but it was enough to put a lot of water in the other tanks on the land, and, for the first time, cause our west tank to overflow!
Since it was dug, I wasn’t sure if the water would make it around the bend without having to flood the entire area, but the expert diggers felt it would, and sure enough, it worked great!
Here’s looking back at the pond from the overflow side:
And then it overflowing (the top image shows it too):
And we recorded a video of it too:
The Lord granted a decent amount of grass to grow as a result also, which has taken some of the burden off having to feed the cows manually, and we have been thankful, although there hasn’t been any more rain since, and we are around 100 (give or take several degrees) every day.
We do pray God might have mercy on us again and bring rain soon, as we look to Him as our Provider, but until then, we wait, hopefully patiently, knowing He is good and faithful regardless of what we might see around us.
This is group 2 for 2022. We usually put 12 eggs under the broody mommies, and she either hatched out them all, or close to it…I haven’t done a count yet, but there are quite a few! They are in the image above, and this one:
And here’s group 3. She actually hatched out 5 more, but I think she ended up killing them as she tore apart her nest after she lost her broodiness. Sigh. But, she still has these 4 going strong!
And here is group 4. Originally, these eggs were under a mommy under our house. We grabbed her and her eggs and put them in the mini-chicken tractor shown here. However, about 5-6 days short of the 21 required, she lost her broodiness, and tore apart the nest, and sent eggs somewhat scattering. We even found one dead not-quite-complete chick, I guess perhaps just broken out of the shell by her maybe?
Anyway, we gathered up the rest of the eggs and re-set them in the nest, and tried putting on them other broody hens we had that weren’t sitting on eggs (we pull their eggs if we don’t have a safe place to let them hatch out chicks). Well, finally, I believe it was the 3rd mommy attempt which stuck, and she did bring it home, hatching out these 2 little ones! She’s still acting quite broody, but I have a feeling the other eggs are not going to hatch. And at least, her little ones are apparently figuring out how to drink and eat regardless:
And lastly, here’s the video of all 3 groups:
As always, we are grateful to God for granting these new provisions, and we pray He glorify Himself through them, and that they might benefit others as well!
With the extreme drought happening here, everything is very dry. And, around here, that often makes for severe fire potential.
Well, recently one got very, very close to our “backyard”, and it was a little unnerving to say the least.
Above, and these following, is what it looked like from a road about 1/4 mile (maybe a little more) behind the south end of our overall land area. It was pretty windy, which made things difficult. Apparently, 9 fire departments were called in:
And from our homestead:
And from the roof of our house that first night (the flames are not on the ridge directly behind us; it’s probably the next ridge back). So, you maybe see why we were a little concerned. It did slowly dwindle as the evening rolled on, and I sat on the roof until 2:25am, and by that time thankful the glow essentially could not be seen:
By the next day though, with more winds, the fire picked up again. And by the time we got back from Lord’s Day services, the forestry service had a helicopter working on it, one that could suck up water from ground-water tanks and dump it, and by later in the afternoon, multiple planes flying over dropping bright red, we believe, flame retardant.
Their goal was to keep it from jumping that back road I was on when I took the above pictures. I went back there again and asked one of the firefighters if he thought they could keep it from jumping the road, and he said it was iffy. For us, if it jumped the road, it was nothing but forest up the hill, over the ridge behind us, and then down the hill to the back of the land, where there are multiple homesteads.
They worked on it all afternoon, and were still working on it into the evening. Everyone here had already prepped for evacuation if necessary. With all that continued firefighting effort, I was pretty worried.
However, as I watched the smoke billows from the windy roof of our house through the evening, I spent some time with the Lord in His presence in prayer, not just asking for His mercies, especially for the homesteads in the back, which were most vulnerable, and working through making sure I was submitted to His complete will in this situation (especially if it was to be that everything burned down), but just spending it in His presence…just a time alone with Him, even with the winds howling at times and fire somewhat bearing down on us. It was a special time with Him, and one I pray I won’t forget.
As the evening continued, one of the volunteer firefighters from a nearby town who we know some was able to contact our county’s fire chief, and he indicated that they were able to get it settled down for the night, and that it apparently wasn’t going to advance at that point. And so, we didn’t have to evacuate.
The next day, the winds picked up again, but from then on, the crews were able to keep it from moving any further. While we continued to smell smoke, and I think I saw smoke flare up at one point, the Lord mercifully granted it essentially to come to an end. And we are not aware of any loss of human life, most thankfully.
Later that week, we drove by to see how close it got to the road, and you could see burned trees not far in from the road. And here’s a map showing just how close it got, the top of the fire heading toward us. I think part of the reason they were able to contain it was because the forested area actually narrowed down between two fields, which probably helped them isolate it:
Finally, here’s a video of some of the events, including a little more from that Lord’s day evening, and drop aircraft (please forgive the wind noise):
We thank the Lord for His mercies to the firefighters, to other folks, and to us. May we always be submitted to His will in all things.
We had a broody turkey mommy next to a hay manger in the barn goat stall. One day she had a hatchling showing itself with her. But, it looked funny for being a turkey, and that was because, it wasn’t a turkey! A chicken egg got in with her clutch, and she hatched out a little chicken chick!
But, turkey eggs need a week more of sitting than chicken eggs, and so we were worried she might stop sitting on her turkey eggs. Well, sadly, that sort of did happen, although 3 sort of hatched out. We actually tried taking them and all her eggs and putting them under a broody chicken, and 2 more tried to hatch out, but in the end, all 5 turklets didn’t make it. 🙁
However, this little one — I think now it’s a rooster — is still alive today and doing fine!
Here’s another picture of it with its “mommy” in the barn:
And then a video. I had to use a flashlight to try to get light on them:
Even though it didn’t go as we had planned, we are thankful to the Lord for granting this provision of the new chick, our first for 2022!
We just finished up recording the next set of Psalms from the psalter we use, Psalms 99A-103D, in the hopes they might help others learn them if anyone wants to!
And here they are:
(If the above player doesn’t work, or if you would like to save any of the files locally to your computer, you can click the Download link below, or right click it and click Save As in the popup menu.)
The last time we did a cattle update was when a little heifer was born back in 2015! I’m not sure why I haven’t followed up more…I think once I got behind, it just kept being pushed off because of how long it might take to do.
But now, without further ado, I thought I’d try to get everyone up to through last year (note that not all the cattle shown were/are Sue and mine personally)…
2016
At this point, our very kind and generous neighbor was letting us run the cattle on his land…some 400 acres! And so for those years, we didn’t have to buy hay, which was really nice! And so, here they are…
Here’s the herd sire who wasn’t ours personally, Manolete:
2017
We didn’t apparently take many pictures this year, as they are all of cattle headed off somewhere:
2018
This is Mateo who eventually became the herd sire after Manolete in 2019, which you can see as a little calf on this blog post:
While over on our neighbor’s property, we finally put up a somewhat decent corral to be able to…well…corral them for loading into trailers. 🙂
2019
Well, early in the year, our neighbor said he was turning his place into a wildlife reserve, so he graciously gave us about a month to get our land ready, which involved shoring up fences, etc.
And here they are back on the land. It was nice to have them back, actually:
We moved the corral to our place, and here they are during “cube” time:
Ummmm….yeah….
One day, Amistosa, our best looking Longhorn as far as pure Spanish traits, came strolling up really skinny. I thought to give her some special feed, which I had given her before when she had gone down just before one of our worst cold spells here (which you can read about in this blog post), because it had worked before, and I did, but I guess I had given her too much, as she ended up extremely bloated.
We shoved a bunch of baking soda down her, which helped some, but over the next several weeks, including a vet visit, she never quite recovered.
One morning, when I was out of town, Sue found Ami fallen over in a little ditch that led to a small watering hole in our inner area, which is where we were taking care of Ami, and she was just struggling and rolling around, and just looked in a bad way, so Sue made the executive decision that she just wasn’t going to make it, so Sue solicited the help of a neighbor here, and he graciously helped to put her down.
When I got back home, we wanted to move her to a final resting spot under some trees in our north field, and so we hooked up a chain around her horns and towed her up there:
…and then said a final goodbye…goodbye Ami…you were one of our first group of cows for us. We thank the Lord for all the offspring He granted from her…
2020
Continuing on, it indeed was nice to see the cows around the house:
…and out our front porch:
2021
And finally, onto last year…
Here’s herd sire Mateo again, a little older now. However, he started going through and jumping over (after fixing the “going through” the fence”) to our neighbor’s property, the gentleman who let us run our cattle on this land those years ago. He was nice about it, but I couldn’t control Mateo anymore, so I sadly had to dump him at the sale barn. Bye, big guy!
But now lastly, to close this blog post off, here’s the compilation video across the years (I was wrong in the video with the 2 fighting bulls in the back of the trailer about how old they were…it was actually 1 1/2 and 2 years old):
We are always thankful to the Lord for His provisions of the cattle, the meat He’s granted from them, the sales to be able to pay for hay over the winter, and the provisions on the land He’s granted to feed them through the growing times!
Heb. 11:8-10 - "By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went. By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise: For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God."
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