Our Old House

While up in Illinois, we HAD to drive by our old house just to see what it looked like. This was the house we bought back in 1983 and I would give my eye teeth for this house again! I for one was rather disappointed that they owners have repainted it a green since we had heat stripped the house from roof peak to foundation and had it painted a 2 tone brown with the same colors of trim. Also, the fence has now been removed on 3 sides and even though I love plantings, the place now has a rather over grown look to it. Oh well, it IS their house now but still.....I'd change things back if I could own it again!

Road Trip!

This past weekend, we made a road trip back to Illinois to attend a wedding and I FINALLY remembered to take my camera to get a picture of this sign. We have seen this sign on I-65 in Kentucky a few miles past Cave City for years and I've always wanted a picture of it since most people don't believe me when I tell them about it. Having grown up in the mid-west in a small farming community, this has always tickled me and I even though I understand the meaning of the sign, I have to wonder how many people look at it and wonder what they were used FOR! (Don't forget to kick the hooves before buying!)

New Discovery

During the time our youngest grand daughter was hospitalized, Susie and I were able to care for our other 2 grand kids here at the farm. One of the nice things about being out here instead of in the "city" is discovering weird critters! I have to admit that when they found this thing, I didn't have a clue what this was. We were able to do a little investigation and found that this is actually the caterpillar for the Luna moth. The Luna moths are one of the summer times great pleasures for me. I don't remember ever seeing them growing up in Illinois and the first time we saw one down here I kinda freaked out! They are a BEAUTIFUL large green moth with cool wings that love to fly around our windows at night. One of these days I will attempt to get a picture of one and post it. Until then, just imagine this flying around gracefully!

Lessons In Perspecive

Another reason for the length between postings is some of the "life lessons" we have encountered this summer have been rather intense. Besides the lack of rain, the unreal heat and humidity, a plethora of financial setbacks, a less than ideal work situation that has gotten progressively worse since the beginning of the year, and a number of health and dental issues with Susie and myself, we recently dealt with a life threatening situation with our youngest granddaughter. On August 27th, we were here at the farm working on the gray sweater project (STILL!) when we got a call from our son asking for prayer for Liberty, our 10 month old granddaughter and his youngest child. Liberty had been fussy and this fussiness had been attributed to an ear infection and teething but when she had gotten sick that morning and became very lethargic, they took her to the pediatrician who in turn sent her to the local hospital. At the hospital, they noticed that she was having a difficult time breathing and even though x-rays didn't show any problems in her lungs, she continued to not respond. The decision was finally made to call in the Vanderbilt Life Flight helicopter to transport her to Nashville. Prior to transport, they decided to insert a breathing tube which we later found out probably saved her life. During the flight her breathing stopped and the EMT's had to manually give her air. Once in Nashville her blood sugar level was found to be at 440 so the initial diagnosis was infant diabetes. Liberty ended up staying at Vanderbilt Children's Hospital for 10 days and is now home and well on her way to a TOTAL and COMPLETE healing and we believe it will be a healing that eventually will mean one without the need of daily insulin shots!

Having said all this, the "perspective" lesson we learned was that even in the midst of all this stress and worry, the little 3 year old girl in the next room was dealing with cystic fibrosis.....ALONE! Her father, we learned, was a patient at the other Vanderbilt Hospital and her mother was hours away having to take care of other children. Even alone though, she had the sweetest spirit and stood in the doorway and waved at everyone going past her room. This little girl was really able to put "life" into a perspective that touched our hearts and we pray daily for her healing as well. What I've learned is the truth in the old saying that no matter what your dealing with, someone has it as bad or worse. We've had work issues....but I am at least working! We've had financial issues, but we still can pay our bills! It's been hot and dry here, but we have not dealt with what Texas and the East Coast has had to deal with! All in all, regardless of what it may look like, things are really not that bad!

Romans 5:3-6

More over (let us also be full of joy now!) let us exult in triumph in our troubles and rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that pressure and affliction and hardship produce patient and unswerving endurance. And endurance (fortitude) develops maturity of character (approved faith and tried integrity). And character (of this sort) produces (the habit of) joyful and confident hope of eternal salvation. Such hope never disappoints or deludes or shames us, for God's love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit Who has been given to us. While we were yet in weakness (powerless to help ourselves), at the fitting time Christ died for (in behalf of) the ungodly.

The Amplified Bible

FINALLY Another Posting!

I have really been meaning to post on here for over a month but, as usual, life just seems to move faster than I am able at times to keep up with. Like most of the nation, we have had to deal with a lot of bizarre weather this summer. This has been some of the hottest, driest weather I can remember since moving to Tennessee and I'd say the closest our spring had EVER come to running dry! Prior to some rain that we got September 4th, we hadn't had a drop in over 9 weeks! This was also one of the first times I've seen it so dry we weren't even getting any dew in the mornings. The plus side to this was that until this week, I hadn't had to mow our 4 plus acres in 2 months (which was fine with me). The problem was that the cotton, along with all the other vegetables in the garden, came close to dying. With the spring down to a trickle, we had to carry water to each individual plant in a watering can just to keep things alive. The growing delay means that we are just NOW getting tomatoes and peppers and while the cotton is looking really good, I'm going to have to pray that they develop mature bolls before frost. Since I still have never figured out how to add multiple pictures to this blog, I will be posting several more times today as I attempt to bring it up to date with whats going on. As you can see, the cotton is looking much better than back in July when I posted a picture of it before. Stay tuned for another update in a moment!

Summer Update!

Here you go....the 2011 Pima Cotton Crop to date! Susie counted and I think we have 33 plants (out of several hundred we planted!). Not what I would call a very good result but at least we have SOMETHING to look forward to! As of this date, they are still small but looking very healthy so only time will tell if they will mature enough to make bolls. Actually everything in the garden is still small so I'm not real sure just what the problem is but I'm guessing that it's time to apply a few tons of compost and fertilizer to the beds again and dream about large crops NEXT year!

Maybe a year ago....I can't remember when...I posted about a project we were working on that included a number of gray fleeces we've purchased. The project is a pair of matching sweaters for which we are blending 2 Shetland fleeces....1 mix breed fleece and 2 alpaca fleeces along with several pounds of alpaca top that I bought pre-processed into top. I'm glad to say that by the time the weekend is over, I will be down to only ONE alpaca fleece to work on before we start the math end of the project where we weigh out each separate fiber then figure the blend percentages...then start carding samples on the Super Carder for Susie to spin and once we hit upon a blend we like and works well on the knitting needles, the carding process will begin! This has been a much bigger project than I realized but hopefully we will be able to wear these sweaters before we retire!

"Life on the farm is ANYTHING but laidback!"

The year continues to be a weird and wild one! Our weather here has been from one extreme to the other with temperatures being way cold to over the top HOT! And of course, right in the middle of the hot spell, our 30+ year old window AC unit decided to call it quits! Every year we wonder if this is "the year" it dies and sure enough, this was it. Our daughter had a small window unit she wasn't using anymore that we installed to replace the old unit but try as it might, I don't think its big enough to help a whole lot. Really, out here in the woods the goal is not so much to cool the house as it is to take the humidity out of the air. High humidity and the problems accompanying it are more pronounced in the woods and hollars than when we lived in town. (At least the dehumidifier in the basement has held up and I'm doing "stair laps" 2 or 3 times a day to empty it!)

Snakes continue to be an ever present problem this spring and early summer which is not normal at ALL! Even the cats walk through the yard as if they are about to step on a mine. We usually don't have to be this cautious until later in the fall when they begin their shedding and get much more aggressive.

Most of the garden is in but for some reason nothing seems to be growing! I'm not sure what to attribute that too but we should be picking our first tomatoes by now and yet they are still only a matter of a few inches tall! The cotton is just sitting there and about the only thing that looks like it's doing anything are the lima beans. (While the garden doesn't seem to be growing the grass is growing JUST fine!)

On the fiber scene, I had a printing supply salesman stop in the shop a few months ago that I found out raised Alpacas. Last week he brought in 4 bags of samples from this years clip for Susie and I to look at and try out. I scoured them this past week and combed them last night so tomorrow I will take them back to the shop to weigh on the digital scale and see what percentage of loss we had. These are some REALLY nice samples and I'm looking forward to not only Susie spinning them up, but also driving over towards Nashville to visit this breeders farm. Maybe we will have to buy some more fiber....after all.....it's IMPOSSIBLE to have too much!!!!