Prayers

I am weary with my sighing, every night I make my bed swim...
...the Lord has heard the voice of my weeping.  The Lord has heard my supplication.  The Lord receives my prayers.
Psalm 7:7-9 


Life has been hard the past nine months since Bill died.  There have been many trials, and they are not over yet.  I admit sometimes I am scared, and I have fought a lot of depression.
Nights are the worse.  My mind runs and runs.  In order to turn it off enough too sleep, I take Valerian Root and Kava Kava, although I have heard that Kava Kava is hard on your liver.  Sometimes it works, usually it does, sometimes it doesn't...

Depression creeps up on me in the afternoons, when I start to get tired.  It can escalate by the night hours.

I know this is not God honoring, and I really do trust God.

Yesterday afternoon, I pondered how easy it would be to just give up.  I thought how much easier life might be.
'Might be' is the clue.  That's Satan talking, and I know it. Life would be a terrible thing to face if the Lord was not with me.  Things would not really be better if I gave up being a Christian.  But in a weakened state, it's easy for Satan to hit the target with his darts.

So I prayed a lot.  I told God there was no way I was going to give up.  But I really, really needed encouragement.  Could he show Himself to me?  I know it's not good to be asking that all the time, but once in a while, was it okay to ask, when we really needed it?

He had already been good to me a few hours earlier through his people.  My car had had a flat tire the day before, and a man from our church, who owns a tire shop, fixed it for me.  When I asked for the bill, he told me it was already paid.
That's humbling, friends, when you know you don't deserve the kindness people are showing, over and over.  My children deserve it, but I don't, especially when I spend too much time in the "slough of despond" (if you don't know what that means, go read  Pilgrim's Progress).

So I went to bed last night after taking my Valerian Root, and I "made my bed swim" and I prayed the hours away.

Then I got up this morning...

And I walked outside in the bright morning Texas sunshine...

And I knew God had heard my supplication, because I saw His glory everywhere I went...

First in the farm newborns:

And in the rooster that considers me a threat to his ladies, and tries to spur me everytime I walk near him, and thank you God that his spurs are not big yet, because I still haven't taught him who is boss even though I try to remember to pick up a stick whenever I see him:

In the goats that run to the fence to say good morning.  At least, that's what I tell myself they are doing.  Probably, they are trying to see if I have the feed bucket in my hand.
I really like this goat:

And in Samantha the goose, still my most faithful farm yard friend:

The Bible tells us that a man's life is threescore and ten.  I am 61.  Whose knows if I will live 9 more years, and reach threescore and ten, or if I will even reach the end of this day.  The women of my family do seem to have long lives, my fathers mother died just before her 95th birthday.  My own mother is 81 and very healthy, and her sister, my aunt Joy, just turned 88 and has hardly slowed down.
Even so, I thought if I do have a few more years, now is the time to try and do some of those things I always wanted to do.  I had better not put it off any longer.

I really want a fiber farm.  I want to learn to spin, and I want to raise animals that will give me wool.

I had the Angora Rabbits, but I wasn't doing much with them, so I bought a "husband" for them.  He is absolutely gorgeous, a rare white rabbit with blue eyes, and the beauty of this animal could only come from God.  It's hard for me to believe this gorgeous rabbit is considered "pet quality" rather than "show quality":

My spirits greatly lifted in my rabbit house this morning.  I had spent the last days cleaning it and moving air conditioners into it.  It's still a mess, but I am trying to do a little every day to get as much out of it as I can.

Yesterday, I picked up this beautiful rabbit that I am in love with, and also picked up some Jersey Woolies I got a deal on - buy the baby buck and get two older does for almost nothing.  I was pretty happy with the seven week old buck:

And one of the does, who the lady assures me is pregnant with at least three kits:

God shows himself and His glory in all His creation, including the human ones.

Like a little girl who rides her bike to a neighbors house, and comes home with a kitten (yeah, THANKS Tammy...if I remember right, the mother of that kitten was one of ours who ran to your house to escape the very child you gave her offspring to this morning...)
Then when I tried to take her picture, three photobombers had to get in on the action:

And in a young girl who made her first dress yesterday, and was so proud.  And to make it even better for her, her first handmade dress matched one her mama has:

So, although my nights are sometimes hard, I purpose to take more walks outside my own house in the mornings.  Because the goodness of God is everywhere, all we have to do is open our eyes.  It won't be long before we reach the "Celestial City." (There's Pilgrim's Progress again, I got it out recently to read to the kids during school this year.)

May we be strong and of good courage.  Heaven is near!

Call to me and I will answer you, and I will tell you great and mighty things, which you do not know.  Jeremiah 33:3

Spring at my house

Psalm 24:1  The earth is the Lord's, and everything in it, the world and all who live in it.

The years go by, and I'm getting older.  Sixty years old is just around the corner.  A couple of my grown sons think I should sell my country place and move into the city where life will be less complicated and it will eventually be easier to "take care of me."  I counter that they are not taking into account that although I might be older, I live the life of a younger person, with young children still living with me.  Imagine poor Luke living on a city lot.  As my son Gage used to say when we would visit relatives, "You can't even hit a baseball without it landing in someone else's yard!"

This week, the warm weather makes us realize that spring has sprung.  And with spring, comes "a few of my favorite things..."
And makes it very plain the reason I never, ever want to move away from my little place...

I walked that pasture with an empty feed sack, making sure it was free of trash.  Then I mowed it.  For the entire 12 years I have lived here, it's looked horrible.  Some of the men of the house (mainly the ones that want me to sell) would not let me mow it with the riding lawn mower.  But they grew up and moved away, and I can talk Max into anything, so he taught me how to use it and for days, I mowed.  I have discovered that being on a roaring riding lawn mower is one of the most relaxing things you can do!  Add children running through the grass while you mow and it's a paradise.  I am so PLEASED with how it looks now!

And the bulbs Mary Susannah and I have planted are beginning to bloom.  She and I have decided to plant these all over, more and more every year.  It will be so pretty eventually and smell so good!!

It wouldn't be spring without a new litter of kittens.  This momma cat didn't have much luck last year; her kittens kept disappearing and the one that was left was wild, and eventually disappeared too.  So this time I put her in the breezeway.  She and the kitties are safe and the kids can tame them.  Which they are very willing to do.  Baby kittens = happy, happy children!

Today, I walked out to feed the bunnies and found three baby's on the ground.  This silly momma bunny had shunned her nesting box and given birth in the space behind it, which caused the babies to fall through the wire mesh.  I quickly gathered up the babies and all the hair I could find and put them in the box.  One baby was covered with ants and didn't make it.  The other two are lively, so maybe she will take care of them.  Hopefully, we will be seeing more baby bunnies in the next weeks.  They are all bred and fixed up with nesting boxes in a nice shelter...I will give daily pep talks about the importance of USING the nesting boxes.  I hope they listen!!

Baby chicks are hatching like crazy, much to my little ones delight.  Having a strong 8 year old son is quite a plus these days: he and I backed the truck up to an old empty water trough, loaded it up while Tommy and Selah sat in the truck bed and pulled on it, then we unloaded it in my "bird shed."  The baby chicks that have hatched and dried so far are settled.  We took 23 out of the incubator this morning, and we have lots and lots more hatching.  My only problem is trying to convince my children that it is NOT good for the baby chicks for us to open the incubator door and "check" on the progress every 30 minutes or so.  I am thinking of borrowing Cynthia's "beats" headphones and playing music really loud into my ears so I won't hear them beg anymore.  I could just walk around shaking my head to the beat of the music, because I know they will be asking me every time I see their mouths moving...

And those turkeys and geese whose pictures I showed you a blog or two back?  Well, they are getting BIG!!  And smelly....I will be so glad when I can move them outdoors!!

Last, but not least, sweet son Max surprised me one day with a raised garden bed.  I haven't gotten much in it yet, but I'm trying.  I hope to finish it up this weekend.  I am terrible with gardens, but maybe I can do it this time.  I even ordered those 'grow boxes' you can see on the left to try and keep my watermelon plants alive.  I could live on watermelon alone in the summer!

So yes, I know, my house needs a LOT of work, but I love it.  I mean, I dearly love it.  I can't imagine ever moving from here.  And I especially can't imagine moving when spring rolls around!

the egg and I

First, I have to show you my latest garage sale find, a $5 clock:

I LOVE it!  It is supposed to play the Westminister chimes on the house.  You know, it goes "DUM dum DUM dum...dum dum DUM dum..."  Can you hear that?
Notice I said it's supposed to play it on the hour.  Because this clock is quirky, and it chimes exactly four minutes AFTER the hour.  At first, I didn't know what to make of that...Maybe I should take it back down and mess with it a bit?  Should I take my $5 clock to the shop and spend a lot more than $5 to get it fixed?

Nawww...

As Luke used to say when he was just a little guy, "I gike it!"  I gike that it chimes four minutes after the hour.  It fits us.  We are all a little quirky, from the dad down to the three year old.  None of us are perfect and that's okay.  When my clock strikes at four minutes after the hour, it always makes me want to smile...

Now, on to the eggs.

Long ago, when I used to dream about being a farmwife, I read the book "The Egg and I."  And I LOVED it!  I'm pretty sure when I was really little, I also saw a movie from this book.  This is the one that has Ma and Pa Kettle in it, but it was the wife in the book that I admired so much and wanted to be like.

Well, here I am many years later, and my life is consumed by eggs...  and more eggs...and MORE eggs...

See all those eggs in the buckets in the first picture?  They were gathered over the last week or so.  This doesn't count the ones we've eaten, the ones in the fridge, and the four eggs I give my kiddos each day to feed to the two dogs and two cats (whose coats are looking better all the time).
These are the eggs I put in buckets to refill the second incubator this week when it finished hatching it's latest batch of eggs, (the first incubator is in the second picture, completely filled with more than 200 eggs.)
But...the second incubator is an old one that I bought well used many years ago.  I had some trouble getting the fan working when I turned it on this spring, but after Bill messed with it a bit, it started turning.  But the trays would not turn automatically, so I've been running my hand over them once a day and hoping for the best.
But this weekend, it died.  It died completely full of eggs...Great...
Amazingly, some of the eggs did hatch, and I have gotten a few chicks, but they are kind of weak.  I stuck the rest of the eggs that were trying to hatch in the bottom of the good incubator.  The others are a complete loss.  Too bad.  I broke a few open, and there is an egg full of baby chick, but it's dead.

So now, I have all these new eggs, and no where to put them...

So I decided to sell a few hens.  I have so many.  Twelve sold yesterday, and I have two more people interested.  I don't want to sell a whole lot of them, because maybe, just maybe, I could get another incubator??  Sure I can...they cost about $600...

So, we keep gathering, we'll feed a few more to the dogs, we'll eat more ourselves.  Mary Susannah is making egg salad for lunch:

 
 I have three grandchildren staying with me, and the chickens are a great draw, especially for grandson Mikey, who likes to gather eggs for me.  Today, we got the few chickens who survived the broken incubator, and put them in the chick room along with the many chickens who hatched out a couple of weeks ago:

I'm not in a huge hurry to sell the baby chicks, they grow up and I get ten times more for them once they are laying.  So we keep gathering eggs:

Eating all we can, feeding the dogs all the can, selling a few hens so we won't drown in eggs.  This is what I dreamed of all my life, right? 

I sort of quit the chicken business when my Dad got sick.  I sold all the hens, and decided not to do this anymore.  But I guess I just love it too much.  I'd love to do more, but the lack of good fences stops me.  So I'll stick to chickens, and build it up.  I've got a bunch of little ones and grandchildren who love to help me right now.

One drawback to farm life, hornets...

Tommy's been so brave about the whole thing.  And my salve that I made last week seems to be keeping the pain at bay anyway!
He's still sweet, even if he doesn't want me to take his picture:

So we are off to the water park, camera in hand tonight, egg salad sandwiches to eat, cookies and desserts made with lots of fresh eggs.

I'm in the market for good egg recipes, if you have any!!