Category Archives: Nature

Hay Prayer

Heavenly Father, as today marks the beginning of hay season here on our farm, I come before You and lay down our burdens. It’s so easy to become uptight as we fight the urge to dwell on all the unknowns. Help us to change our perspective to how You see things. Prepare us for handling the unexpected breakdowns or sudden rain showers. May we not condemn ourselves when we realize in retrospect we should have done something different. Instead, allow us to add that lesson to our walk – so that we can remember it in the future. Lord, I especially pray for my aging body in this season. Daily, I am reminded that You have not created this body to last here on earth forever. I accept that, and look forward to my new body in Heaven when You are done with me here. Until then, strengthen me physically to be able to help where I can, and strengthen me MENTALLY to know when I need to step aside and accept help. And Lord, when exhaustion sets in as this season progresses, and our patience wears thin, bring kind words to our tongues. May we be able to practice the grace You so perfectly have shown to us. We thank You for our hay harvest this year and pray for the animals who will receive it. May it richly bless them for whatever function they perform on our farm. I’m so grateful You love me & will listen to my pleas. Amen.

peas in

I know – there’s really nothing to see in this pic. But, since this post is as close to a “record” as we’ll get, I’m gonna post it. Every year I begin charting garden planting data on a calendar and then fizzle out halfway through harvest time. Figured if this blog is my “virtual scrapbook“, it might as well be our “virtual garden journal” as well, lol! ๐Ÿ™‚

[Planted 2-2/3 rows of Little Marvel (bush) peas.]

celery, broccoli, & cabbage in today

Originally, we started our own plants from seed, in newspaper pots. We had good success at first, but steadily declined from that first year.
We began with growing them in our basement on top of our chest freezer (just like my Grandpa used to do…) under lights. ๐Ÿ™‚ That worked well for the first couple years – until we started using our freezer more, lol. So, we switched to our heated garage under fluorescent lights. It worked well for a couple years – until our heater died… Then this year we used our milkhouse since it’s also heated. Once we started milking, though, we moved the plants to Mike’s parents’ heated garage. And just as they started looking really good, mice found them and ate off most of the tops! Grrrrr… Guess we just aren’t ready to start the amount of plants we need from seed!

How thankful we are for our friends at Skipper’s Greenhouse in Carrollton!! We picked our plants up this week & Lord willing, will be getting everything planted soon.

[Garden Journal: Today we planted 16 celery, 12 Red Acre cabbage, 16 Danish Ballhead cabbage, & 20 Packman broccoli.]

Sometimes it’s hard for us to admit we can’t do it all. But when the dust clears from failed efforts, the path becomes more clear. Thank you, Lord, for preparing us to be receptive to help, and for surrounding us with support & cooperative efforts. We pray for the “fruit” of these plants and our efforts. May the harvest be plentiful. Amen ๐Ÿ™‚

Hooray – kittens at last!

With only 2 female barn cats left to be “fixed”, there have been less kittens on the farm this year (much to the boys’ dismay)…

Our boys LOVE all the cats. And yes, each cat has (at least) one name + a story, lol! ๐Ÿ™‚

Just this morning at milking, the boys said they thought it looked like Cloudy might have been nursing babies. So, once their schoolwork was done this afternoon, they went on a “kitten hunt”. ๐Ÿ™‚

It didn’t take long & they found them! They were in a hay hole all the way at the top of the stack. One boy and one girl. Names are currently being brainstormed…

“Moonwalking”…

Grandma saw on the news that Saturday night was to be a “supermoon”.ย  She wanted to go on a “moonwalk” to watch it come up, so we did. ๐Ÿ™‚

It took awhile for it to come up above the treeline, but we had fun waiting.ย  (My phone doesn’t take the best pictures at night, but I think you’ll get the gist…)

Hummingbirds are back!

We noticed a hummingbird outside our dining room window on May 1st.ย  We normally have a nectar feeder out there, but didn’t have it out yet.ย  So, we whipped up a batch of nectar this week, and hung up the feeder.ย  ๐Ÿ™‚

Here’s what we do to fill a feeder our size:

Boil 3 cups water & pour into glass measuring pitcher.

Add 168 grams or 3/4 cup organic, evaporated cane juice (since we don’t buy white sugar anymore, the birds get what we get…).

Mix until dissolved, cool, add to feeder.

It usually takes “our” hummingbirds about one week to polish this amount off. ๐Ÿ™‚

Here’s a view from our dining room window.ย  A trio of bird seed, suet, and nectar!ย  ๐Ÿ™‚