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

raising bunnies

Job 35:11 Who teaches us more than the beasts of the earth, and makes us wiser than the fowls of heaven?

 I have decided that a riding lawn mower is the most stress relieving thing in the whole world.
I was up before 8 this morning, leaving the kids still sleeping in the house, riding and riding and riding.  My mind churned like it always does when I mow on a riding mower, thinking of the things I want to do with my little farm, and praying for all my children...

 

So, as I rode and mowed, a blog post came to my mind.  This one is a bit of a tutorial for raising rabbits in colonies, which means that instead of each rabbit being in an individual cage, the rabbits are raised in one large pen, usually, as in my case, with several does living with one buck.

I know people have lots of questions about that, but here are a few things I have learned since beginning my rabbitry:

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The buck will not harm the kits (baby rabbits) if you leave him in the pen with the nests.

It's not hurting the does to let them bred at will with the buck.  I have lots and lots of more nests this way, yes.  But the does are all fat and healthy and doing very well in colonies.

Rabbits can and will dig out every chance they get.  You MUST put something over the ground that they can not dig through.  Chicken wire is NOT a good choice, they tear right through it.  I learned this the hard way.

First time mama rabbits will sometimes give birth EVERYWHERE.  Picking up the kits scattered all over and making a nest for her sometimes work, but most of the time doesn't. Catch mama rabbit and pull hair from her tummy to make a nest.  That's what she does, it doesn't hurt her.  If a doe consistently fails to make a nest, it's time to cull her.  It happens sometimes.

The old wives tale that a mama rabbit will abandon her babies if you pick them up is absolutely not true.  We handle baby rabbits all the time, and I have never had a mother rabbit reject a nest because of it.

 It's no more cruel to butcher your rabbits that it is to eat a hamburger or chicken nuggests.  Yes they are cute and cuddly, but have you ever seen a doe eyed baby calf?  Or a downy newborn chick?

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Back to the riding lawn mower...

Rabbits were made to eat grass and plants in the wild.  I have 12 wonderful acres.  And it keeps the food bill down.  Rabbits do not have to eat only pellets, and at around $13 for 50 pounds, that's a good thing.  I pull grass all the time to feed them, but gathering cut grass after I mow is sure a lot easier.  So this morning, after I got a wire stuck in the mower and had to quit mowing until Luke woke up to help me cut it off, I gathered grass:

 

And yes, if you read my blog or facebook page, you are familiar with Samantha the goose.  She is a terror to everyone but me, but the children are bigger now and have learned if they throw their arms out and hiss back at her, she backs off quickly.  Samantha's sidekick the brown duck is my neighbors, or at least, it used to be my neighbors until it married Samantha the goose or something and came to live with us and follow her around all day long.

The bunnies LOVE the cut grass.  In fact, if I feed them grass and pellets at the same time, they will usually run to the grass first.

These are my "grow outs", which means I have removed these rabbits from the does.  I put them all in one big cage to finish growing up.  These bunnies are the ones for sale, or if they do not sell, they go into the freezer:

 These guys are getting big.  They have one more chance at a garage sale this weekend.  Anyone want to buy a bunny?

They love the cut grass, too!

This cage of breeders, the big white rabbits, always look so dirty, and I wasn't sure why or what to do about it.  But reading a rabbit blog, I learned that what I am probably doing wrong is cleaning the cage too often.  According to this blog, rather than clean the cages each week, I should be constantly adding hay and grass up to 12 inches deep.  Then clean it when it begins to attract flies or smells bad. The bedding of hay and grass absorbs the urine instead of letting it build up on top.  That means I have been doing a lot of work for nothing.  So I started doing that this week.  No improvement so far, but the bedding is not very deep yet, as you can see.  It's going to take a lot of grass to make the bedding 12 inches deep in this big pen, especially when they are eating as much of it as they can hold. I'm hopeful, though, and thankful to know I don't have to clean so much after all!

 

One more interesting note.  When I was out in the goat pen yesterday, I found a very small baby bunny.  No nest or anything, just a bunny laying in a goat pen in the corner.  I am not real sure where it came from.  I looked around for more, but couldn't find any.  We do have one bunny loose, one that was a pet of one of my children who doesn't live with us anymore, so rather than butcher it, and rather than keep feeding it since it's mama is one of those who doesn't care for her kits, I let her go to live in our yard.  But she is black, and this kit is white.
I gathered it up and put it into the youngest nest I could find, my Dutch bunnies who are several days older than this little one is.  She has lived for 24 hours in that nest, although she is not as fat and full looking as the rest of them.  I hope she makes it.

 

So that's it for my morning musings while riding the lawn mower. I am wondering where to go with my rabbitry now.  I'm not sure I want to continue raising the Dutch bunnies.  I may sell or butcher them soon, and stick with the meat rabbits and the fiber rabbits.  I am hoping to buy an Angora buck next month for my two does.

Let me know if you want to buy a bunny.  My grow outs will thank you! 

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!