Our journal of what we pray is our sojourn of life along the narrow way, even the old paths, submitting to the Bible as a light unto both.
Our tractor and truck recently both wouldn’t start, the tractor with a hay spike for moving hay rolls, and the truck as a backup using a chain to drag them out. And our cows were an hungering, so with some help from the neighbor boys, we did it old-school — rolling it out by hand!
And we take you along for the ride in this video:
We thank the Lord for able bodies to even do this and help from friends, and we thank Him for all His provisions, both temporal and spiritual!
— David
We are very thankful to the Lord for granting our 8th chick hatching of 2020!
We found this mommy in the barn on a bunch of eggs, and moved her into the brooder barn, and by God’s granting she did her job, and hatched out quite a few! I’m not sure exactly how many there are, although we did lose one a couple of days after it was hatched, but the rest are still going strong!
And here’s their video. Watching the new life here reminds me of this verse:
John 11:25 – “Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live:“
Once again, we thank God for His provisions of these new chicks, and we pray they’re used for His glory and the benefit of others!
— David
Sue & I just finished recording the next set of Psalms, 85A-89H, from the psalter we use, as always so we would have something to hopefully help us learn them better, and maybe help others learn the Psalms as well.
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.)
Ps 150:6 – “Let every thing that hath breath praise the Lord. Praise ye the Lord.“
— David
Previous Psalms singings:
It was that time of year again, to put our male goats and females together for mating season. We wait until now to try to get any offspring being born in April, when most of the cold weather is typically over.
This year, we had kept two of our female goat kids in order to increase the herd, but didn’t want to breed them this year as we feel they are just a little too small still.
And so, we moved them to their own field, and put the billies and nannies together, and here’s the video of all that fun and frolicking adventure!
We thank the Lord for His continued provisions, and pray He might grant the offspring next year, according to His will!
— David
Just catching up on the garden this 2020, after our Spring-time update. The Lord has been very, very gracious in what He has granted this year…
The zucchinis were coming in fast and furious, and we needed a way to preserve them, so we decided to lacto-ferment as much as we could. That meant lots of shredding, so to help Sue out so she didn’t have to hand-grate everything, we got this nifty contraption that worked just great!
And here are some results!
We had some help from the neighbor children too!
And Sue made some yummies from it all too!
Zucchini muffins:
Breaded zucchini:
Zucchini cake:
Here’s some okra. We did get a few beans, but those just didn’t work out:
For the okra, we’re storing them in cheap apple cider vinegar. This works great, even over a long period of time. Before we eat them, Sue soaks them in a bowl of water to remove some of the tartness, and that works well too.
Here was the garden back in early August:
And then October before our first potential freezes. We tried to get the zucchinis and okra through (a little spooky on the okra 🙂 ):
And here are the Goji berry plants, with a bunch of berries!
And this is the garden after the freeze. After we took off the blankets, we ended up getting hit with a freeze on a night that it wasn’t supposed to. It did hurt the zucchinis:
But, with a freeze, it was time to go get any sweet potatoes out of the ground God might have granted, and here they are, including supervisor William making sure everything is copacetic!
And the final haul inside for curing, and then eventually wrapping in newspaper for long-term storage:
Finally, this is the garden as of today. Not much left:
But, some of the zucchini plants actually started to recover from the freeze, grow new leaves, and one put out it looks like one more zucchini for the road!
As I said, the Lord was very gracious this year. Here are the final jars of preserved zucchini and okra. The jar on the left is the top-numbered pint jar, the counting of quart jars in the middle picked up after that number, and then the jar on the right is our final-count okra jar:
We are humblingly thankful to God for His most gracious provisions. It’s such a blessing to see Him work His direct providence in the garden, watching Him apply the water and nutrients to plants to produce fruit. We pray He do the same in our hearts, producing the fruit of the Spirit, for His glory and maybe the benefit of others!
— David
I took piano lessons from age 5-15, and so music has been a good part of my life. But if you think about it, what is music actually? We all sort of know about it, understand it exists, participate in it when we sing or hear a song, but what’s going on “under the covers”, so to speak?
I would suggest that it is all God’s specific doing, and that it is inherent and literally built in to creation by the Creator. Let me try to explain…
Sound is based on waves of vibrations in the air, like a Sine wave, where the wave starts at a mid point, goes up to a point, and goes down below the midpoint an equal distance, and this repeats over and over. The characteristics of the wave give the distinctions of the sounds: the higher the wave apexes from the middle, the louder the sound is, which is called amplitude, where we get “amplify”, or make louder; the closer together each wave is to the next one in the cycle, the higher the sound, which is called frequency (ie. how many times a wave happens per unit of time). If we were to pipe sounds into an oscilloscope, you could see these represented, and watch the changes as the sound changed.
This in itself shows a constant in creation. But there’s more…
Most believe it was Pythagoras (yes, that Pythagoras) that discovered an interesting “phenomenon”. Two different tones together could be categorized mathematically in 2:1 ratios (ie. the frequency of the upper tone being 2 times that of the lower tone) and 3:2 ratios (the frequency of the upper tone making 3 vibrations in the same amount of time that the lower tone makes 2). Then, if you crawl up tones using the 3:2 ratio, on the 12th iteration, you land basically, with some slight mathematical variance, on the 7th iteration if you had crawled up using the 2:1 ratio, thus ending the cycles of each before starting a new round (this is where we get the 7-note scales and the 12-note chromatic scale, for you musically-inclined folks).
(More details are in lots of places on the internet, but here’s a starting place if you would like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_tuning. And for anyone interested, the handling of the mathematical variance mentioned above in tuning instruments in more modern times is discussed in equal temperament or well temperament.)
Notice anything about the numbers in the above description? 12 and 7? In the Bible, 12 represents God’s power and authority, or governmental foundation, or the number of completion; and 7 is the number representing completeness and perfection (both physical and spiritual).
Coincidence? These are mathematically built in to nature, and shows an extraordinary degree of order. If I had nothing else, for me personally, this would show some intelligence put nature together. This is absolutely amazing to me!
Further, the base structure when notes are played together is called a “chord”, and the base structure of that consists of 3 notes, and 3 in the Bible also represents completeness.
But now, looking beyond that, I believe there are many spiritual representations in music, and how it’s used.
First, God would have us sing to Him. Many, many verses, but here are a couple:
Ps 105:2 – “Sing unto him, sing psalms unto him: talk ye of all his wondrous works.”
Ps 135:3 – “Praise the Lord; for the Lord is good: sing praises unto his name; for it is pleasant.“
In fact, the Psalms are really songs. Sue and I sing them each night in family worship, using a Psalter (here’s the last set of Psalms we recorded to help people learn them: Psalm Singing – August 2020).
Usually in any song, there is the melody, or the tune we might all know, and the other parts sung with the melody that form chords which sound good together, which are called harmony parts, all working together to make the music, and to make it sound better. I think one can glean a couple things from this:
1 Cor 12:12-14 – “12 For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ. 13 For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit. 14 For the body is not one member, but many.“
1 Cor 12:15-20 – “15 If the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body? 16 And if the ear shall say, Because I am not the eye, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body? 17 If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling? 18 But now hath God set the members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased him. 19 And if they were all one member, where were the body? 20 But now are they many members, yet but one body.“
Another thing that I think can be observed: when an orchestra with multiple kinds of instruments, and multiples of those, play together, there is usually a conductor. His job is:
To me, this is similar to the Church, where:
Heb 13:17 – “Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves: for they watch for your souls, as they that must give account, that they may do it with joy, and not with grief: for that is unprofitable for you.“
2 Tim 2:15 – “Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.“
1 Cor 9:24 – “Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain.”
Heb 12:1 – “Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,“
Finally, here is a quote from Martin Luther:
Music is hateful and intolerable to the devil. I truly believe, and do not mind saying, that there is no art like music, next to theology. It is the only art, next to theology, that can calm the agitations of the soul, which plainly shows that the devil, the source of anxiety and sadness, flees from the sound of music as he does from religious worship. That is why the Scriptures are full of psalms and hymns, in which praise is given to God. That is why, when we gather round God’s throne in heaven, we shall sing His glory. Music is the perfect way to express our love and devotion to God. It is one of the most magnificent and delightful presents God has given us.
All in all, I believe music is a gift architected into creation by the Lord, thus revealing Himself in nature, and is to be used for His glory and means by which we worship Him, and which is also graciously something we can enjoy as we praise and give thanksgiving to so great a God!
— David
As built into the natural order, things decay over time. I believe this is a type or a picture of death, which entered the world through sin:
Rom 6:23 – “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.“
And so, we can learn to see God’s hand in all things, and be reminded of sin and what its due is — death: physical, spiritual and eternal, and then be reminded of Christ Jesus, the only savior from spiritual and eternal death! Thank the Lord for so great a gift! And for designing these things in the physical realm to teach us spiritual realities!
We see lots of decaying things around here, and some end up being beneficial, as in a compost pile. But other things aren’t as helpful as that, and one of those are wood-structures. Through time, they start to fall apart, and recently I went through and refurbished several items around the homestead…
Well Box
We actually did have a well dug on our place not long after arriving. It actually still does push out water, although we need a generator to use it, and it has a lot of, I believe, nitrates or nitrites in it. And so, we stick to our catch water systems.
In order to try to keep the well hose that comes out of the well head from freezing, I built an insulated box to put over it. Well, it’s been a while, and here is where we were with it:
Cats would come and go through the blanket holes; chickens would get in there sometimes too. And so, it was time to reconstruct the box.
Here it is uncovered:
And then disassembled:
Here’s what was underneath. Remember about the chickens? 🙂 (Actually, this is a re-stage of the eggs, because I forgot to take a picture initially, but it was basically like this.)
And then cleaned up, ready for the new box:
Here’s the well box frame. Last time, I had different heights on the ends to allow for water runoff, but with enough of a slant on the ground, I decided to just make it square this time. Also, I shorted dimensions to allow for overlapping the plywood siding at the corners, and also to have the top overlap the side plywood pieces:
I also decided to tack on what was left of the old footer to the new footer to let that rot on the ground instead of the new footer, hopefully buying us a little more time with the new box:
Then, it was caulk the frame before putting on the plywood siding:
And then add the siding:
And the insulation:
Put the box in place, ready to lower down:
And then set it in place over the well head, and caulk the corners, ready for painting:
And then paint it, and then it’s done and ready for hopefully another 10 or 12 years!
Well Hose End Box
Most of the well hose I buried way back when, but we of course needed part of it to stick out of the ground to attach a normal hose for the actual use of it. For that, I also built an insulated box, only just a mini version.
Here is what was left (this is a re-stage too, but it was basically like this, although not quite as cleaned out as here):
And so, here’s little brother — basically the same design:
And painted, and in place:
Generator Box
Once again, here’s what was left:
And the new box. I decided to forego the flat-board insulation I had used last time, to try to help sound proof it. Most if it was gone because the chickens like to peck at it :), and we really don’t need the sound proofing:
Here’s the lid:
And the new box and lid ready to go!
We thank the Lord for granting the resources and know-how to do these types of things! Again, may we learn to see and contemplate God and spiritual things from all the temporal things around us!
— David
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