We are always grateful to the Lord for Him allowing us to gather together and sing the Psalms from the Bible! And this is the next set of Psalms from the psalter we use.
Once again, we thank Him for His Word, and allowing us to learn it and sing His praises this way, and may His praises be from our hearts out of love for Him! May He glorify Himself and benefit His Church through this.
I mentioned in our 2014 goat kid blog post that I’ve been busy with seasonal chores, which I hope to write about soon; but they have also kept me from work on the house. Not much has been done since the upper west siding was finished, but on this last “first Wednesday of the month” community work day, which actually ended up being second Wednesday so more folks could participate, the men came over to our place; and we continued putting up ceiling panels!
And so, here are some of the sights of that work….
Here, the guys are finishing screwing in the rough-shod, T-111-like panel. We’re using 1 5/8-inch Deskmate screws:
Then us getting ready for a panel:
And placing it. Although they’re lighter than other 4-foot by 8-foot panels, holding them over your head for any length of time gets a bit tiring. 🙂 :
And holding:
Here is the cutting crew…first measuring:
Then cutting:
And here is the west end of the house, with the main panels in place!
And here is the east side:
And this shows a bit of the library, which is the part that still needs to be done:
Here are the fellows relaxing at the end of the day:
We are thankful as always to the Lord for Him granting the resources to work on the ceiling, the safety He granted, able bodies to perform the work, and the community He has allowed us and the opportunity to work together. We always pray He glorifies Himself through these things!
At this point, this is our final hatching of the year — the eighth the Lord has graciously granted!
Here’s the mommy with her chicks! I believe it was four hatched out, and four still going strong, thanks to God! In the second picture, you can see a couple of them at the bottom eating an egg the mama had laid but they crushed as they were trying to get away from me when I was taking these pictures: 🙂
Weird story: one day I walked in to check on them, and one chick seemed sort of stuck to the cage fencing. As I examined closer, indeed it was — a strand of chicken wire had double-pierced through its little chest and was holding it fast! Wow! So, I pulled the wire through, sprayed with hydrogen peroxide, and prayed for the best. And the Lord granted it recover fine, thankfully. Still, that was a new one for animal experiences! 🙂
Here’s a video of them, including after moving all of the rest of the chicks out into the pen area this past Saturday night after dark. The fifth hatching had been there with their mama for some time, but I pulled that hen, and moved all of the rest of the chicks, including this eighth hatching, from the summer kitchen to join them, putting all of the mommies back into the main chicken tractor.
We are once again very grateful to the Lord for all of the chicken provisions He has graciously granted this year! May He glorify Himself in these processes and granting of these provisions!
We thought we’d give a little orchard update, since it’s been a while since our last one from last year.
We have continued the process of laying down around 8 inches of mulch covering the entire orchard area. When my brother, Kevin, visited in April, another thing he helped with, besides the barn loft and moving goat sheds, was helping lay down some of this mulch.
Here he is unloading it from the mulch carrier. One person would unload while the other person dumped, and then we’d switch jobs:
Here he is dumping some mulch around one of the fruit trees:
And here he is, apparently having way too much fun! 🙂
Once again, it was really nice to have him here to visit! This is burger lunch at the Owl Drug Store Soda Fountain & Grill downtown Coleman:
Back in the orchard, these are our first peaches of the year!
Since they all ripened around the same time, we decided to pull them all and dry them on our solar food dehydrator. We ended up with probably 30-35 dried peaches, thanks to the Lord granting them! The dehydrated fruit seems to be able to last for years in jars, as I recently ate some from a couple of years ago, and they’re not too bad!
And here are our nectarines. We had a couple of trees produce them, and since they’ve been ripening so slowly, we’ve just been eating them along the way. In previous years, we’ve had grasshoppers eat them down; but thanks to the Lord not this year.
If you haven’t experienced it before, I can’t tell you how neat it is to walk to one of your fruit trees, grab a fruit, and eat it right there. What a wonderful provision from God!
Yummy!
Here are a couple of pictures of the orchard now:
You can see the difference I believe the mulch has made, by God’s graces, from that last picture vs. a similar one from last year. It is amazing how much the trees have grown just this year! We’ve seen good growth from ones we got fully covered in the Spring time.
Goats love to eat fruit and nut trees. 🙂 Here is their handiwork on the left side of one of our peach trees. I do hope one day to put up a more permanent fence around the orchard, including chicken wire around the bottom to keep the chickens out so we might plant something perennial-ish in the mulch, like maybe sweet potatoes:
It’s also neat to have trees big enough where God has provided that the birds have a nice little place in which to hang out together. Here’s a little video of them in one of the trees, and them flying away when I got close enough:
We’re so very thankful for the growth of the trees and the provisions the Lord has graciously granted from them!
Once again, we had a hen go broody; and so we put her in the piano room with her eggs, and voila, by God’s mercies, she hatched out 8 more chicks! And here they are with their mama:
I took that picture and made the video below just last Thursday, and very sadly on Friday morning, I found one of the chicks had died. It’s always hard to know what happened when you just find them laying there — we did have some pretty boisterous storms come through Thursday night with some very loud thunder claps, and so maybe there was some panic in the cage area; or perhaps the chick was just ill; or maybe it got bit by something. But, the Lord is the owner of the chickens, so He can certainly do what He wills with them, although we always ask for help to take care of the gifts and provisions He graciously and mercifully grants.
Surprise!
One night, I heard some odd thumping going on outside. I tracked down the sound, and it was coming from under our 3-point shredder implement! Huh?
Here’s a picture of the shredder:
Well, I looked under, and there was a hen walking around with eggs all over the place. And then…..I saw a young skunk too! I was able to grab the hen, and eventually shoo out the skunk, ready to shoot it, but it got away. We pulled out all of the eggs from under the shredder, not sure exactly what to do, although I believe we were just going to put the hen in a cage area in the summer kitchen with her eggs. And then I noticed….one was hatching as I held it! Oh wow….ok, so we took it and all of the eggs, and indeed put the hen and the eggs in the summer kitchen.
And, well, that little chick made it! And here it is with it’s mommy:
Some days later, another chick started hatching too, although it was taking a long time; and so, I helped it a little, and it did finish hatching out, but never really could stand up to walk at all (it was able to stay upright unlike Tiny from the third hatching, but just not stand). We tried keeping it alive with goat milk, hoping it would get stronger, but sadly, it died a couple of days later.
But, even this single chick that made it was a nice surprise, especially given the circumstance of its incubation and what was happening while it was beginning to hatch!
Here’s the video of the sixth hatching, with all eight chicks at the time, and the seventh hatching:
We are very grateful to God again for granting these new chicks, and the general continued health and safety He has granted!
Recently one morning on my way to feed Penelope our pig, I suddenly strolled up on a snake in the middle of the road. Yep, it was a rattler! Well, Sue brought out the shotgun to me, and that was that.
And here it is after the fact:
And the souvenir rattle:
Sue got to carry it back, while it was still moving (they do that even without a head), and then I cut it up into 6-inch pieces for the chickens, although I think the ants had more of it than they.
Yes, rattlesnakes are one of the things we have to keep any eye out for, and I’m thankful to the Lord for His mercies in granting I see it before walking right up on it!
Well, once again, one of our Australorp hens got broody, and we put her in our mini-chicken tractor. Three weeks later….nothing. But, she kept setting, so we put another clutch of eggs under her, saying a prayer that maybe at least one would hatch so she would not be inclined to set another three weeks (although I was planning on trying to break her broodiness if that happened). But, indeed God did grant she hatch out some chicks — four more, all healthy, and still healthy, thanks to the Lord’s graces!
Here are a few pictures:
And their video:
You may wonder why we do so many of these “Perpetuation” posts, like for every hatching, but for us, each time some new animals are born or hatched out, besides the wonderful and joyous miracle they are, they are also part of our living provisions, and we consider each occurrence — even each chick — to be a kind gift from God.
Again, we are thankful to Him for these new chicks and their continued good health and growth!
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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