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.
Once again, the Lord granted us another calf this year, another little bull calf from our cow Amistosa! We’ve given him the name Mateo, which means “gift of God.”
Here are a couple pictures of him — he has the grey coloring from his daddy:
And here’s a video of him, and him with the other two calves we’ve done blog posts about before:
We are always grateful for these gracious gifts of God. We pray they’re used for His glory, and the benefit of His Church!
— David
With our wood burning cook stove in place, it was time to try it out on things other than just keeping the house warm.
It has a water trough on the back to heat water, and David will talk about that in the second part of the blog post, but it also has an oven, and we thought Susan could take you along for the ride of her first foray into baking with it! …..
“Go Ahead, Bake My Day”
I had grown fairly comfortable with cooking and heating things on our newly functioning wood burning stove top, but the oven seemed like this intimidating metal monster with its steely stare saying “Do you feel ‘lucky’ punk? Go ahead, bake my day.” Well, I figured I didn’t have much to lose in that our propane oven had been broken for a time, so I overcame my hesitancy with this opportunity to bake again. And if it was edible – bonus!! I couldn’t go “too” far wrong with simple cookies, right?
So, while I still had the courage, I hurriedly prepared my snickerdoodle cookie dough, took a deep breath, walked ten paces towards the oven, nervously opened the door, quickly slid our inaugural cookies onto the baking shelf and closed the door yelling “Bake THAT!”
Well, we soon found that 375 degrees F are not the same in different ovens, according to how quickly these were baking:
I’m still not sure which oven has the correct temperature, but I was thrilled something had actually gone from soft and doughy to hard and crunchy! Practice makes perfect, so I attempted to disarm the metal monster by singing “Getting to Know You” to it…..
My attempt at making a new friend must have had some impact. Here is my second batch after adjusting the temperature and baking time. Much better!
I don’t have to tell you which batch is which. 😉 They were all very tasty, though! (Clarification: I didn’t personally eat them all, but I did take the liberty of sampling the heck out of them):
I figured I’d keep going and strike while the oven was hot, so I made up some dinner rolls and shoved them into the metal monster’s mouth, as well:
You’d think I would have learned from the cookies, but I still needed to fine-tune these batches. I’ll let you guess which was batch number one. 🙂 But it was all edible, thanks to God! Another monster slayed; another friend made! Hopefully, my baking in this new stove will get better over time. Thankfully, I have a wonderfully understanding, patient and supportive husband:
We are so thankful to have this method of baking that doesn’t rely on anything we need to buy. I realize women have been baking this way for hundreds of years, but now I’m one of them!! With God’s help, if He wills it, I hope to continue to improve in my baking and utilize this stove for many years to come.
Susan
Wood, Ashes and the Hot Water Trough
We’re still a little unorganized with our wood piles, but here is some of it stacked inside where the kitchen counter will, Lord willing, go one day. I do plan to build an indoor wood pile stacker:
And here is the staging area outside next the house entrance:
This is where we’re collecting our ashes. This fairly large, handy galvanized pail works great!
In our first wood-burning attempts, we didn’t really know how to get the ashes to burn all the way down, so some charcoal was left over. I’m thinking after wiping off any ash these could be crushed up and used as activated charcoal:
And here is a video of the hot water coming out of the water trough. It works great! Not that the water is really potable, but I figure the animals’ health won’t really be compromised by using the hot water once in a while when their water is thickly frozen on top and it dilutes with the water already there:
We are thankful once again to the Lord for granting the provisions of the wood burning cook stove and some successful oven and hot water trough usage!
— David
Back in October or November, we planted a wheat crop for this year. Since we had decided to try to keep our inner field in the native grass that had started to grow last year, I thought I’d take one of our goat fields and use it for a crop, figuring it would be a more manageable size (I think they’re each about 1/2 acre, while the inner field is something like 3 1/2).
There are some places where Winter weeds have grown in, especially where the chickens ate the wheat down in the south east (front right) corner, but we thought we would just post a quick mention about it, and show where it is after the majority of the Winter weather has very hopefully passed. 🙂 These are from mid March:
And here is the latest look at it (a few days ago), after some warmth and gracious rain from God:
We pray the Lord might grant provisions from this, and we thank Him for the growth He has granted!
— David
Back around the second week of February, the Lord granted us our next calf for this year! A little bull calf from our cow Adelina! We decided to call him Amadis, which means “to love God.”
Here’s a picture of him — he’s the tan one to the right of the red calf in the middle, and his dam Adelina is to the left:
And here’s his video:
We thank the Lord as always for His graces and mercies in granting this healthy new little provision, for the safety He granted in the delivery, and for the continued safety and provision He has granted the entire herd!
— David
We’ve had two straight weeks of cold fronts lately. And for us thin-skinned California-raised folk, that feels like two years! However, the Lord was very merciful in that there was one day in the middle of each week where the sun came out and it was warmer; just enough time to come out of the cave and get to town for some essentials and back again before the next wave hit. We were spoiled in January with some very mild, beautiful weather, and then the other shoe dropped hard at the end of February. Well, one morning last week I came out and was treated to some farm levity that I thought I’d share with you. This short video captures some sights, sounds and slips on our icy homestead. Hope it makes you smile 🙂
Susan
With the growth of the fruit trees the Lord granted in our orchard last year, I figured it was about time I get out there and start to prune some of them, especially the big ones.
And so, I watched a few videos, and here are a few interesting things I learned:
So, I got out there with the loppers and pruners, and started in.
And here are a couple before and after shots. I noticed that I became a little less timid from the first tree to the latest done: 🙂
I believe just about all, if not all, of creation has type and shadow in it of spiritual realities. The Bible talks a lot about fruit, and that there must be not only fruit, but good fruit, being beared by ones who take the name of Christ, which evidences good works brought forth in their hearts by the Spirit (Eph 5-22:23 – “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.“)
Even pruning is discussed in spiritual terms:
John 15:1-2 – “1 I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. 2 Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.“
Here is what Puritan commentator Dr. John Gill says about verse 2, which regards two types of people who say they are Christians:
Every branch in me that beareth not fruit
There are two sorts of branches in Christ the vine; the one sort are such who have only an historical faith in him, believe but for a time, and are removed; they are such who only profess to believe in him, as Simon Magus did; are in him by profession only; they submit to outward ordinances, become church members, and so are reckoned to be in Christ, being in a church state, as the churches of Judea and Thessalonica, and others, are said, in general, to he in Christ; though it is not to be thought that every individual person in these churches were truly and savingly in him. These branches are unfruitful ones; what fruit they seemed to have, withers away, and proves not to be genuine fruit; what fruit they bring forth is to themselves, and not to the glory of God, being none of the fruits of his Spirit and grace: and such branches the husbandmantaketh away;
removes them from that sort of being which they had in Christ. By some means or another he discovers them to the saints to be what they are; sometimes he suffers persecution to arise because of the word, and these men are quickly offended, and depart of their own accord; or they fall into erroneous principles, and set up for themselves, and separate from the churches of Christ; or they become guilty of scandalous enormities, and so are removed from their fellowship by excommunication; or if neither of these should be the case, but these tares should grow together with the wheat till the harvest, the angels will be sent forth, who will gather out of the kingdom of God all that offend and do iniquity, and cast them into a furnace of fire, as branches withered, and fit to be burnt.And every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.
These are the other sort of branches, who are truly and savingly in Christ; such as are rooted in him; to whom he is the green fir tree, from whom all their fruit is found; who are filled by him with all the fruits of his Spirit, grace, and righteousness. These are purged or pruned, chiefly by afflictions and temptations, which are as needful for their growth and fruitfulness, as the pruning and cutting of the vines are for theirs; and though these are sometimes sharp, and never joyous, but grievous, yet they are attended with the peaceable fruits of righteousness, and so the end of bringing forth more fruit is answered; for it is not enough that a believer exercise grace, and perform good works for the present, but these must remain; or he must be constant herein, and still bring forth fruit, and add one virtue to another, that it may appear he is not barren and unfruitful in the knowledge of Christ, in whom he is implanted. These different acts of the vinedresser “taking away” some branches, and “purging” others, are expressed by the Misnic doctors
It behooves us to examine whether we bear true spiritual fruit of the Spirit or not.
May He grant us His fruit, which is only brought forth by the work of His Holy Spirit in our hearts; and then may He grant us extra faith, strength of heart, and courage during times of His pruning.
Temporily, we pray for a successful pruning of our fruit trees in the Lord granting us provisions from them, according to His will.
— David
With the ceiling sealed in and still needing to get insulation in the attic, I also needed a way to provide an access portal into the attic. I figured having it above the closet of our bedroom was probably best, so that I could stand on top of it to be able to more easily get into the attic without having to have a taller ladder to reach the greater than 11 foot ceiling height.
After some planning and obtaining some supplies, I delved on in…
This is the panel I chose. Besides being above the closet, I wanted to use one of the half-panels so I could more easily remove and install the panel without assistance:
Here it is removed. Before removing it, I first had to remove another small panel so I could get into the attic and mark out lines where the trusses ran along the access panel, which would help me know exactly where I would need to cut:
Once the panel was down, I drew the cut lines that would make the access door. The plan was to have one side of the door be the original side of the panel and close onto a truss and cover half way, thus requiring only three cuts. The opposite side (shown top here) would lay half way on the other truss, allowing the panel to be re-attached to the truss and for the door to cover the other, exposed half of that truss when closed:
And here is the cut panel:
And then back into place in the ceiling:
Here is the view from the attic, showing the cross pieces in place. The cross piece that was to hold the door hinges I put flush with the ceiling panel cut, and the other side, where the latches would be, I put exposing half of the cross piece, which would allow for that side of the closed door to cover that half of the cross piece:
Then, it was on to making the door…
Here are the door frame pieces. They needed to be cut to length so the hinge side would be flush with that edge, and the other three sides would show about one inch of panel, which are what would cover the exposed halves of the trusses and cross pieces when closed, plus a little gap to keep the door frame from hitting a truss or cross piece when actually closing the door:
These are the pieces made into the door frame:
And then installed on the door:
Here, the door hardware is installed — two hinges and two bolt latches:
And close-ups of each:
This is the fancy way I held the door in place to attach the hinges to the ceiling and cross piece: 🙂
And here the door is closed and latched into place! One side of the bolt latch on the door didn’t have a door frame into which to put screws, so the ends of the screws were sticking out and preventing the door from completely closing; so I drilled out little holes into the cross piece where the ends of the screws would fit into:
And here is the original ceiling panel showing the new attic access door installed:
And with it open:
From the back side:
And front side:
I was amazed it actually worked. It was almost anti-climactic in that there was no “drama” with it, which there usually is in my building projects. 🙂 But, it was nice to have it work out as well as it appears to have worked.
We’re thankful as always to the Lord for granting the provisions and continued progress on the house, and I’m thankful to Him for the idea and plans for making this bit of the project seem to work successfully.
— David
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