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Garden – Spring 2010 – Update I

January 24, 2011 / David & Susan Sifford / 1 Comment

You may be wondering why I’m talking about our 2010 Spring garden now instead of several months ago. Well, our garden seemed to have a mind and time line of its own this past year; and I just recently finished processing the last of our tomatoes. I plan to write a separate blog post on those but am just now getting down to chronicling the rest of the garden in an update. I figure for us gardeners, what better time to dwell on Spring, gardening, new growth and warmth than in the thick of Winter!

Onions

Believe it or not, these onion plant blossoms are from our 2009 Spring garden! But they have faithfully kept producing, so we decided not to pull them and continue to let them grow. The underground onion bulbs are rather small, but I have been able to pull and use them in many meals over the past couple of years:

I clipped the plants down to the ground but left the bulbs in case they would continue to produce green onions (which they have as of this update). Here is a bowl full of the blossoms I am saving to plant again in our Spring 2011 garden to see if they will reproduce:

I cut up and dried the stalks in our solar food dehydrator, but they came out unusable in my opinion. I let them get too fibrous and leggy before picking them. Note to self: Don’t do that!

Zucchini

Due to a drought and large numbers of grasshoppers, our zucchini harvest was a fraction of the size of years past; but I picked these last few:

I decided to go the quick and easy lactic fermentation route and made some zucchini pickles and relish. I can’t believe how easy it is to preserve by lactic fermentation. You just add about two teaspoons of canning salt per pint in alternating layers with whatever vegetable you are using; fill the jar to about 1/2″ head space with water (preferably not tap water but distilled or filtered rain water); close with lid and move to a cool, dark place to ferment and develop those wonderful bacteria and enzymes for your gut and digestion. Once done, I put the jars all down in our root cellar. Due to our interest in zucchini, we traveled across the globe (ie: to the other side of our RV) to see the eighth wonder of the world, “Zucchini-Henge.” We were startled when we witnessed a rare sighting of the gargantuan feline monster on the left!

End of the Garden Pickles

Here is our last harvest of green beans for the season. Since there weren’t that many, I decided to experiment with lactic fermentation with two pint jars full of beans, water and salt, combining the rest with other garden vegetables to make some “End of the Garden Pickles” from the recipe in the Ball Blue Book of Preserving:

Here are the green beans all washed, cut and ready to go:

Can you find our freshly picked garden carrots in this picture packed with all things orange?!

Here are all the ingredients ready to go for the “End of the Garden Pickles” recipe. In this batch I included green beans, zucchini, carrots, peppers and onions:

And here are sugars, spices and vinegar combined and ready to be mixed in with the vegetables:

I brought the liquid to a boil and then added the vegetables and brought it to a boil again. Then I turned down the heat and let it simmer for about 15 minutes:

It was then ready to be ladled into hot jars and pressure-canned! How easy is that!

Tomatoes

Here are some tomatoes given to us by a neighbor. As I hinted at above, our own tomato crop didn’t produce until November, so we were very thankful to have received these:

I decided to make some Sweet Yellow Tomato Chutney out of these tomatoes. All my chutney recipes so far are taken from the Ball Blue Book of Preserving. I think these recipes are top notch and delicious. A friend suggested putting some tomato chutney in with pasta sauce. I have done that many times and find it adds a delicious “tangy twist” to traditional pasta sauce:

Bread and Butter Pickles

Lastly, I honestly can’t remember where I got the cucumbers to make this batch of “Bread and Butter Pickles” (page 47 from the Ball Blue Book of Preserving). The cucumbers from our garden just did not do well, but someone must have given these to me, or I got them on sale or something. Another delicious recipe!

Thanksgiving

We are thankful for this late harvest from our garden, and once again are very careful to thank our Creator for His direct provision. It is now Winter, and we have accessed and incorporated much of the above from our root cellar into our meals. We are also looking forward to the opportunity to do it all again this Spring, Lord willing!

Susan

Our First Fellowship Betrothal

January 2, 2011 / David & Susan Sifford / 8 Comments

Well, it has been a few years since several of us started living here on the land. When we first got here, all of the children were just that — children. But, after five years, as you would imagine, that’s not exactly the case for all of them any more. In fact, one of our young misses just recently became betrothed — our first betrothal on the land!

Webster’s 1828 dictionary defines “betroth” as the following:

BETROTH’, v.t. [be and troth, truth, faith. See Truth, and Troth.]

1. To contract to any one, in order to a future marriage; to promise or pledge one to be the future spouse of another; to affiance; used of either sex. “The father betroths his daughter.’

2. To contract with one for a future spouse; to espouse; as, a man betroths a lady.

“Betrothed?” you might ask? Yes, betrothed. The ideas of “romantic love” and engagement, or even “courting,” are foreign to the Bible; not that there can’t be romance, but it is not the main driver or motivator behind relationships; and in fact, betrothal is what is prescribed in the Bible. Why might it be important to have betrothals instead of typical engagements? First, the Bible prescribes it as the only pre-marriage methodology; and second, it was set up as a picture or “type” of the relationship between Christ and His bride-to-be. In this current reality of time, Christ’s chosen bride, the elect from the foundation of the world, is not married to Christ yet — that happens at the marriage supper of the Lamb (Rev 19:6-9). His chosen is betrothed, or espoused, as expressed in 2 Cor 11:2 – “For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.” God instituted the “type” of betrothal to show the unbreakable bond of His chosen bride to Himself based on His volitional, self-sacrificing, and unconditional agape love.

A betrothal would usually include the father of the daughter making the original offer to potential groom, and if he accepted, the father and man would form the contract for the man to marry the daughter, with various other agreements between the father and the man. Although not absolutely necessary in the strictest sense, since an older and hopefully wiser parent, with God’s help, should be able to determine which man would be good for a daughter to marry, the father might first allow for the daughter’s approval of the gentleman in question, and ideally she would. 🙂

And I believe these are the things that occurred in our first betrothal here. 🙂

Lastly, the following is a video from the evening of the betrothal party day, after gathering for a time of celebration, fellowship, and a meal, which includes a discussion about the betrothal ceremony and some important parts of the ceremony itself (please forgive the quality of the video as our camera doesn’t film well at night):

We are thankful here on the land to be able to be a part of a couple joining in the way the Bible prescribes. We pray for many more, as the Lord wills, and that He continue to grant us understanding of His revealed will as described in the Bible.

— David

That’s Berry Nice!

December 26, 2010 / David & Susan Sifford / 4 Comments

It was about 25 degrees outside this morning, so I thought no better time to think of the warmth of the sun and our trip to a blackberry farm last Spring!

Most of us from our community one day drove in a caravan to a local pick-your-own blackberry farm in Cottonwood, TX. Neither Dave nor I had ever been berry picking of any kind before, so it was a new experience for each of us. Here are some of our community leisurely strolling down one of the rows picking blackberries as they go:

I was pleasantly surprised at how relaxing it was. Some of the bushes, however, didn’t relinquish their berries without brandishing their thorny weapons; but I prevailed and took the valued treasure with just a little blood shed (ouch!) But it was well worth it: 🙂

After a couple of hours, we had filled our buckets; and the farm owner and his wife weighed our haul and charged a very reasonable fee. Apparently, they also open their farm at other harvest times (eg. pecans, black-eyed peas, other fruit trees, etc.), so we look forward to perhaps returning again:

Afterward, many of us stopped at the farmer’s little picnic area and had a nice time of food and fellowship in the cool shade:

When we returned home from our lovely outing, reality set in; and it suddenly occurred to me that I had no idea how to make anything from berries; and we would probably get sick if we tried to eat them all before they went bad. Dave recommended doing something with them in the solar food dryer; and sometime just previously to that, one of our neighbors had suggested making fruit leather. Capital ideas!! So I did a little research online and gave fruit leather a try. First, I pureed some blackberries:

Then I poured the pureed mixture onto two sheets of waxed paper and shaped it into a thin layer on each sheet:

Then I placed the sheets out in the solar food dryer:

I can’t remember exactly how long it took but not long (a matter of a couple of days in the hot sun), and the consistency of the blackberries was a bit sticky but dried where I was able to peel it off of the sheet. I then broke it up into small pieces to store in glass jars. It is December now, and I ate a piece yesterday that tasted fresh just like when I first stored it!

Then I took the remainder of the berries we hadn’t eaten or dried and followed a simple blackberry syrup recipe using very little sugar:

I was able to make several pints, and went ahead and pressure canned it (I forgot about the water bath option because I’m so used to pressure canning – oh, well 🙂 ). But it turned out fine anyway:

And we were able to have it on our whole wheat pancakes soon after. Delicious, and what a healthy change from the “faux” maple syrup sold in stores these days. It was more of a topping than a syrup but still delicious:

There is one thing I would do differently in retrospect. I was just trying to go the easiest and quickest route, and I didn’t take time to extract the seeds. The fruit leather and syrup taste fine but are obviously a bit “crunchy.” So I would definitely recommend removing the seeds; and I plan to do it next time, Lord willing. But we are thankful for such a wonderful opportunity to capture and learn to preserve more of God’s harvest bounty.

Susan

Fred and Wilma, and New Chicks

December 19, 2010 / David & Susan Sifford / 2 Comments

Just wanted to give a quick animal update on some of the new animals here at the homestead:

Pigs

In exchange for taking care of the Bunker’s boar Wilbur for an extended period of time, we were given one of their males to be the mate of the one piglet we kept out of the last litter of piglets the Lord granted out of Wilbur and Missy, our gilt. We kept the smallest female (in hopes of having her and her offspring of more manageable size: in just dealing with, and in feeding and butchering them), who was also quite feisty — she never had a problem getting in to suckle amongst the rest of the larger piglets.

And so, in honor of her sire Wilbur, we decided to call her Wilma. And given that, we’re calling the male Fred. In this picture, Fred is on the left, and Wilma is on the right. If you’ll notice from the above piglet blog post, Wilma looks just like here “daddy” too:

How romantical!

New Chicks

Also, we were able to find a local man who inherited an egg incubator and has been hatching out and selling bunches of chicks. We bought 20 from him and have kept them in the mini chicken tractor until they’re ready to run around the chicken pen area (which is our staging area for the main chicken tractor coop). They are all still alive, with thanks to God.

And here they are:

As always, we are grateful to the Lord for allowing us these provisions; and we pray they are all productive resources for the homestead and community.

— David

The Great Black-Eyed Pea Adventure

December 12, 2010 / David & Susan Sifford / 0 Comments

Our neighbor, Mr. Bunker, planted his large field (about 5 acres) in black-eyed peas this past Spring. It was no small amount to purchase the seed and pay to have the ground plowed and planted. He had every right to keep it all to himself for his family and to have a cash crop. Instead, he graciously opened up the field to our community to come and tend it and reap its harvest together along with his family. We greatly appreciated his offer and spent many hours over several weeks in the Summer sun weeding and then picking the beans when they grew to maturity. It was a great opportunity for our community to learn what it means to come together for a common cause and share God’s bounty as a group. It was also the first major crop for the community to cultivate, so this was a new experience on multiple levels.

I learned many things through the experience. The women and children devoted several community work days towards weeding and tending the field, which turned out to be rich times of work, fellowship and getting to know each other better. Working in the field introduced me to the joys of blisters from the Blister Beetle; and I received my first wasp sting, not to mention the potent burning sting of the Stinging Nettle plant. It also forced me personally to come out of my own little homestead world to focus on a larger cause, and required additional discipline to go out into the field even when I didn’t “feel” like it or when I was really busy with other things.

The Lord did a little weeding of my own heart during this process as well. The Bible says we are to mortify (kill) the flesh (Rom 8:1-13), the carnal (non-spiritual) man of sin, which means we need to examine ourselves for sins of the flesh. At times when I was tired or really hot and sweaty wanting to quit, I had to reel myself back in and remember to be thankful for this opportunity and provision, and to work for Christ’s sake and as unto Him and nobody else. Just as with God’s grace, this provision was being offered undeserved as a gift; but I still had to beat down the flesh and submit myself to what was required to persevere to the end (the harvest). The field was so big it felt very overwhelming at times, when the weeds were growing so fast it was impossible to keep up with them. I could usually only get through one half to one row in a one to two hour time period. During the times when it was just me in that big field, my flesh would say, “It’s just too big. You’re not making a bit of difference. The weeds are going to take over this field, and there won’t be any beans left to harvest.” It was easy to forget that other members in the community were out there at different times doing the same thing, and we were all in it together. I also found myself at times to be even a little resentful that the entire community couldn’t put in more time and were jeopardizing the crop and some deserved more than others because of the different investments of time. The Lord had to remind me (strongly) that this was a REALLY good opportunity to step outside of myself and practice meekness and selflessness. I had to repent of that and remember it was not for myself but for the good of the community. I was saddened and surprised at how quickly my flesh had wanted to take over my spirit.

When it came time to harvest, there was plenty for everyone; and I learned the beans that weren’t picked could be turned back into the soil to nourish it. So no part of the whole process was wasted — another reminder that even when I don’t see the big picture, God does, and is in control and all knowing of every aspect of the situation. I believe the spiritual weeding of my heart truly paralleled the physical, and I praise the Lord for His patience with me to teach me these things. It was a valuable lesson in so many areas of my life, and I’m grateful to Mr. Bunker for his personal sacrifice in order for our community to grow spiritually and physically on individual and corporate levels.

I had not eaten black-eyed peas much growing up in California; it seems like more of a southern food. But I am now sold on growing them to harvest and preserve. Did you know it is a three-for-one crop: in that the first harvest produces long, tasty green beans; the second when they are a little dry, the moist bean could be shelled and preserved; and then at the end of the harvest when the bean pods have all dried up, you can go through again and pick the dried pods to shell and keep the black-eyed peas as a dried bean until you’re ready to cook them, or use them to re-plant. Wow!

Here are a couple of five-gallon buckets from the first green bean stage harvest:

I was able to pressure can over 20 quarts:

And here are the dried beans we harvested. It doesn’t look like much, but this represents a lot of food for the two of us:

We thank the Lord again for His direct spiritual and physical provisions and lessons from the experience of this first community crop. I hope I will have grown in spiritual maturity the next time, Lord willing, and pray for God’s blessing on Mr. Bunker and his family for their sacrifice and love for the community.

Susan

Tough Tractorin’

December 5, 2010 / David & Susan Sifford / 3 Comments

One thing we’ve lacked in our plowing “arsenal” is something with which to deep plow. In trying to sell some of our cows, our teacher came across a fellow who wanted to trade a large chisel plow for some cattle; and he forwarded the information to me, as he wasn’t interested. I took a look at it, and it seemed to be a pretty nice plow, and one that would suit our needs well. I set up the deal with the owner, he came and got his cattle from us, and I went out to his place, about 190 miles away, with the neighbor’s flatbed trailer to get the plow.

Well, when I got there, I found out just how big and heavy it was. The owner had to use a front loader to get it on, and we had to remove the wheels for it to fit. Here are a couple of pictures of the plow:

When I got back, six of us men here tried to lift it enough to slide it off the back of the flatbed trailer, but to no avail: it was very heavy. In fact, our neighbor Homer graciously came and lifted it off with the plow chained to his big John Deere tractor’s front loader.

I had to put different tires on the plow, as they had been replaced with ones that were too wide; but one of the local tire shops traded me straight across for ones that would fit, except for the typical mounting fee. I also had to replace one of the hydraulic hoses; but once that was done, I was all set. I even tried a small test plowing to see if it would work, and everything worked great. I was now ready to finally tear up some of the land around here that hadn’t been plowed in many years, to help with our crops and any other land cultivation we might endeavor upon!

Tearing It Up

The big day came where I was planning on plowing some of our neighbor’s land; and then I was going to do our inner area where our goat pens and barn are, in preparation for planting a Winter crop (wheat, oats, or something). I headed there and started in. The ground was quite hard, especially in this one area, even to where the rear wheels of the tractor were spinning in the ground; and I sometimes had to lift the plow out of the ground to be able to continue plowing. I thought though, “This Farmall 806 has 94 horse power, and it’s not like I’m dragging a 24 foot wide disk plow behind me…I should be able to just barrel through this ground. What I need is more power!” And so I throttled up and plowed on, waiting to see how our tractor would handle its first real plowing test (I’ve disked fields with a small tandem disk plow, but I’ve not really done anything that has ever really strained the tractor).

It was doing pretty well until I got to that difficult part again. It stopped the tractor again, but I thought I’d see if it would “bull” through. Well, it did — right through the right rear axle. I heard a loud pop, stopped for a second, tried to go forward again, and the rear wheel started to cave in on the cab area. Uh oh. I hopped off the tractor to take a look. The axle casing was cracked wide open, fluids were coming out, and the axle shaft itself had sheered like a sheer bolt.

Here you can see the wheel angled in:

I can imagine the look on my face at that moment, as I believe I was in a bit of a state of shock. I couldn’t believe what had happened. I sort of just went and set on the front tire of the tractor, kind of dumbfounded. This was major mess-up, and I figured that I had just totaled our tractor.

I was pleased though that it appears the Lord has worked on my heart in relation to things that “happen” to us, in granting more of a trust in His sovereignty and perfect will, as my initial reactions were, at a minimum, better than they almost certainly would have been just a few years ago; and for that I was and am thankful. Also, the neighbor came over and suggested there was a spiritual lesson in there somewhere, which is true.

I’ll admit though, it weighed on my mind for the next week, during which time there were better times of keeping proper perspective, and some not so good times, of which God graciously granted that I not hold on to any bitterness for very long and granted repentance for my improper heart condition concerning the situation. I had to let go of all of the plans I had had for the tractor and plow; trust Him in the situation; and instead of just thinking about the situation and wondering what I was going to do, eventually I asked Him for help to figure that out and maybe even help to get the tractor fixed or help in going maybe another direction (as in, maybe now would be the time to look into a horse team for plowing).

In trying to understand what I was actually going to be faced with in regards to repairs, I went and talked to the local tractor repair place; and they suggested with parts and labor it was going to cost a bundle to get it fixed, and that they’d put their money in getting a new tractor instead; but they also gave me some information on tractor salvage places, in case I wanted to try to find the parts.

Shortly after, one of our neighbors, Mr. Gillis, who has done some other plowing work for us, saw or heard about the tractor. Well, come to find out, he worked in the past as a professional tractor repairman; and given his friendliness toward and willingness to help us, it wasn’t long before he was out here taking everything apart to see to what extent the damages were, and to hopefully get it to a condition where, if we were able to get the parts, we could repair it.

Mr. Gillis and some of the guys were able to get the big rear wheel off using our neighbor’s engine hoist, and you can see Mr. Gillis starting to take things apart:

This is a close up of the axle and casing attached to the tractor:

And here is the piece of axle that was still in the wheel:

Now, mind you, we’re not talking a 1/2 inch hex bolt here; we’re talking 3 1/2 inch thick solid steel that sheered away. I figure that probably the stresses on it over the years just finally got to it. Here’s a picture of it next to my shoe so you can get a size reference:

And here is the part of the casing that went with the wheel:

With a little help from me as best I could, Mr. Gillis got it all apart, including the other pieces, like the gears and breaks:

And so, there it sits, broken, but now apart and ready for replacement parts. As this situation with Mr. Gillis arose, I thought perhaps the Lord was being gracious in answering my prayer for help through the situation, maybe even to being able to fix the tractor (although I’m still keeping an open mind about perhaps going another direction). I’m in the process of trying to find parts, and perhaps, Lord willing, I’ll have an update to this time of tough tractorin’.

I am thankful to God for His graces and mercies in granting some apparent growth in trust in Him, although I am woefully pathetic in that area still; but I pray for a continued increase in measure of those graces that only He can grant and provide. And I pray for anything else He might teach us from this situation.

— David

David’s Digest: Faithful Friend

November 26, 2010 / David & Susan Sifford / 0 Comments

I wrote the following some time ago, in light of some things I noticed with Gary, our gander. Well, for some reason I never decided to put it out at the time, but later thought that I might if Gary ever died. Well, you can guess then why I’m posting it now. Yes, Gary died yesterday, which interestingly was one day short of being two years to the day (which is today) since I started writing the post below. He had some kind of sickness over the last month or more: he had some fluid in his lungs; he just generally slowed down; and in the end, he didn’t really seem to be eating, and was very weak. His lungs seemed to get clearer over this last week, but whatever it was apparently was just too much for him, or was terminal.

I am thankful for the fun and brightness Gary brought during these first years of our homesteading, and thanks to the neighbors for letting us have him. I’m also thankful that Sue and I were able to be back from a few-day anniversary trip to be here when he died, and that he wasn’t a burden to those watching our place while we were gone. And I’m thankful I was right next to him when he took his last breath, and that he didn’t seem to suffer.

Even though at the time I wrote the below post he was still hanging around me, he did eventually prefer Gigi over me (good call, Gary!); so I’m glad he had a goose mate for the final chapter of his life. Thanks again to Mrs. Judy for giving Gigi to us.

The Lord has graciously begun to grant me a better perspective regarding affections toward animals. I am sad and will miss having Gary around, and he will be fond in my memories; but I am thankful the Lord granted some time with the farm animal “character” that was Gary.

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If you have been following this blog at all, you will know about Gary the goose (or really, Gary the gander, as we’ve since learned). When I introduced him on this blog, he evidenced an interestingly loyal dedication to whom he considered his “mate,” which since we brought him up to our land has been me. Even after introducing a female of his own kind to him, he has resisted leaving my side.

While he has some often interfering quirks (like “Gary vs. the Bucket” shown in his introduction post above), this type of latching on, even to a human, is apparently a common characteristic of geese; but it has also offered me an opportunity to observe fierce loyalty. No matter where I go, generally, he follows. If I leave the land in the car, he will walk up and follow the fence line to, what appears to be, stay in visual contact. If we are separated for a brief time across a field, if he feels it is time for him to come beside me, he runs up to do so.

In the past, my friendships have usually been about myself and how they benefited me, even if it was just to feel a sense of friendship. In community here, I pray my friendship is not that, and more in line with being a brother to the others.

But perhaps, I can take a few lessons from Gary in his devotion to, what seems to be, the object of his affection (so to speak). I would like to chase after Christ the way Gary runs up to me when he might first see me. I would like to follow Christ as persistently and as consistently as Gary follows me around. I would like to befriend Christ and His brethren here on earth in the way Gary stays with me wherever I go.

Here are a couple of places where the Bible describes spiritual friendship. I’ve included the Puritan expositor John Gill’s comments on these verses:

Prov 17:17 – “A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.”

A friend loveth at all times,…. A true, hearty, faithful friend, loves in times of adversity as well as in times of prosperity: there are many that are friends to persons, while they are in affluent circumstances; but when there is a change in their condition, and they are stripped of all riches and substance; then their friends forsake them, and stand at a distance from them; as was the case of Job, Job 19:14; it is a very rare thing to find a friend that is a constant lover, such an one as here described;

and a brother is born for adversity; for a time of adversity, as Jarchi [says]: he is born into the world for this purpose; to sympathize with his brother in distress, to relieve him, comfort and support him; and if he does not do this, when it is in his power to do it, he does not answer the end of his being born into the world. … [T]his may be understood of the same person who is the friend; he is a brother, and acts the part of one in a time of adversity, for which he is born and brought into the world; it being so ordered by divine Providence, that a man should have a friend born against the time he stands in need of him. To no one person can all this be applied with so much truth and exactness as to our Lord Jesus Christ; he is a “friend”, not of angels only, but of men; more especially of his church and people; of sinful men, of publicans and sinners; as appears by his calling them to repentance, by his receiving them, and by his coming into the world to save them: he “loves” them, and loves them constantly; he loved them before time; so early were they on his heart and in his book of life; so early was he the surety of them, and the covenant of grace made with him; and their persons and grace put into his hands, which he took the care of: he loved them in time, and before time began with them; thus they were preserved in him, when they fell in Adam; were redeemed by his precious blood, when as yet they were not in being, at least many of them: he loves them as soon as time begins with them, as soon as born; though impure by their first birth, transgressors from the womb, enemies and enmity itself unto him; he waits to be gracious to them, and sends his Gospel and his Spirit to find them out and call them: and he continues to love them after conversion; in times of backsliding; in times of desertion; in times of temptation, and in times of affliction: he loves them indeed to the end of time, and to all eternity; nor is there a moment of time to be fixed upon, in which he does not love them. And he is a “brother” to his people; through his incarnation, he is a partaker of the same flesh and blood with them; and through their adoption, they having one and the same Father; nor is he ashamed to own the relation; and he has all the freedom, affection, compassion, and condescension, of a brother in him: and now he is a brother “born”; see Isa 9:6; born of a woman, a virgin, at Bethlehem, in the fulness of time, for and on the behalf of his people; even “for adversity”; to bear and endure adversity himself, which he did, by coming into a state of meanness and poverty; through the reproaches and persecutions of men, the temptations of Satan, the ill usage of his own disciples, the desertion of his father, the strokes of justice, and the sufferings of death; also for the adversity of his people, to sympathize with them, bear them up under it, and deliver them out of it. …

Prov 18:24 – “A man that hath friends must shew himself friendly: and there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.”

A man [that hath] friends must show himself friendly,…. Friendship ought to be mutual and reciprocal, as between David and Jonathan; a man that receives friendship ought to return it, or otherwise he is guilty of great ingratitude. This may be spiritually applied; a believer is “a man of friends”, as it may be rendered; he has many friends: God is his friend, as appears by his early love to him, his choice of him, and provisions of grace for him; by sending his son to save him; by visiting him, not only in a way of providence, but of grace; by disclosing his secrets, showing his covenant to him, and by making him his heir, and a joint heir with Christ. Christ is his friend, as is evident from his visiting him at his incarnation; and in a spiritual way, by the communication of his secrets to him; by his hearty counsel and faithful reproofs; by his undertaking and doing for him what he has; and especially by suffering and dying in his room and stead. The Holy Spirit is his friend, which he has shown by discovering to him his woeful estate by nature, and the way of salvation by Christ; by working all his works in him; by acting the part of a Comforter to him; by revealing divine things to him, by helping him under all his infirmities; by making intercession for him according to the will of God; and by making him meet for eternal glory and happiness: angels are his friends, as is plain by their well pleasedness with the incarnation of Christ for men; and which they express at their conversion; by their ministering to them, their protection of them, and the good offices they do them both in life and at death; and saints are friends to one another: and such should show themselves friendly to God, their covenant God and Father; by frequently visiting him at the throne of grace; by trusting in him; by a carefulness not to offend, but please him; and by a close and faithful adherence to his cause and interest: to Jesus Christ their Redeemer, by a ready obedience to his commands; by owning and using him as their friend; by taking notice of his friends, and showing them respect, his ministers and poor saints; by cleaving to him, and renouncing the friendship of his enemies: and likewise to the Holy Spirit, by not grieving, quenching, and despising him; but by making use of him, and giving up themselves to his influence and direction; and by acknowledging him as the author of all their grace: also to angels, by speaking well of them, owning their good offices, and reckoning it an honour that they are come and joined to such a company; and to the saints, by Christian conversation with them, by sympathizing with them in all conditions, by hearty counsel, faithful reproofs and admonitions, and by helping them in every distress, inward and outward;

and there is a friend [that] sticketh closer than a brother; who is to a man as his own soul, De 13:6; and so are of one heart and soul, as Jonathan and David, and the first Christians, were; this is true of Christ, and may be expressive of the close union between him and his people; and of his close adherence to their cause and interest; and of his constancy and continuance as a friend at all times; and of his faithfulness and unchangeableness as such …

To me, Gary exemplifies an interesting example of faithfulness and friendship: In a way, I would like to have that which he shows to me toward Christ Jesus. I pray for God’s graces in faithfulness and friendship to Him and His family.

— David

The Sifford Sojournal

Page 73 of 93

Garden – Spring 2010 – Update I

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The Great Black-Eyed Pea Adventure

Tough Tractorin’

David’s Digest: Faithful Friend

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