A Call

"Peter replied, 'Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off-for all whom the Lord our God will call." Acts 2:38

Peter goes on to say one thing and I would say this TO ALL OF YOU! " Save yourselves from this corrupt generation!" This is a message throughout all the ages. Jesus Christ has never changed. There is no new idea and theories on the Christian life. All of these books professing the answer to the Christian life and the steps to success, and the way to peace. Jesus said, "I AM THE WAY THE TRUTH AND THE LIFE!" The only answer is Jesus. Period. Try all of your psychologies to get you somewhere. To quote the title of a book, it's more like, "Psycho Heresy". I might seem a little harsh today, but if you think I'm harsh maybe you haven't cracked that ol' Bible open in a while. Jesus was a name caller. "Brood of vipers, whitewashed tombs, unbelievers!" I say this all in love. I want you to know the fullness of what God has for you, and that is salvation through Christ and a filling of the Holy Spirit. So repent! Bow the knee and rend that heart like it says in Joel.  Don't be deceived by the latest fad. Stand fast in the way of truth. Keep the faith in Jesus! I so plead with you not to be won of by every whim of the world but stand firm in the knowledge of Christ. Once you have tasted the goodness of God, how could you ever turn back?

When you come to Christ, you are dead and buried. The old person is gone and the new is here. Come to Christ! Come to the one! There is one message, one man, one way for all of time... through Jesus Christ. Paul pleaded that we all preach the one message, that of the saving oh so goodness of Jesus. I bet you're thinking, geez, how many more times is she going to say Jesus? I will never stop! So repent! Be filled with the Holy Sprirt!

I leave you with a request for prayer.  "Pray for us that the message of the Lord may spread rapidly and be honored, just as it was with you. And pray that we may be delivered from wicked and evil men, for not everyone has faith. But the Lord is faithful, and he will strengthen and protect you from the evil one. We have confidence in the Lord that you (the church) are doing and will continue to do the things we command. May the Lord direct your hearts into God's love and Christ's perseverance." 2 Thes 3:1-4

Remember: Repent! Be filled with the Holy Spirit! Keep the faith!

The Fishes

 My fish tank as of today. The plant bed slides to the right. I can roll it off to look in the tank.

 In the bottom of the picture is my other plant bed. I prepared this one today. There is composted soil on the bottom, wood shavings with rabbit, chicken, and duck manure on top of that, feed bags cut in half and laid flat over that, and finally some good compost wonderfulness on top of that. So when I plant I will cut a small x in the bag and plant right into it. This takes care of weeds and keeps the soil moisture up. Twice a month I have to do a ten percent water change in the tank. I plan to drain that off into 55 gallon barrels and use that water to water my plants in this bed. This way the water we change out doesn't go to waste, but it will be recycled! I love it!

On a sad/happy note. This is the steer I loaded up and took to slaughter on Friday, but we will have some tasty beef now on the farm! I hate dealing with the steers more than anything on the farm but they can be pretty cute sometimes.

Fire Ants

Well, I experienced my first fire ant today. I am building a plant bed over by my fish tank, but there were yucca plants growing in it. I transferred the yuccas into our landscape beds in front of our education building. About the fourth plant I put in, I uncovered thousands of ants. The were climbing up my legs, my arms, and in my gloves. I got bit about four or five times. People were right... it does hurt. I also have poison ivy right now. That's no fun.

I have a project I'm going to do or at least try to pull off.  I want to build this awesome chicken tractor for the farm. For those of you who don't know, a chicken tractor is a mobile coop.

 

It would cost $200 to build it new and maybe $100 if I used some stuff from the farm. Sucks I can't just build it. I want to design it so it can fit over our plant beds but also be wheeled anywhere on the farm. We are going to try and find parts from the farm to put something together but we don't want to just throw something together and hope for the best. Kind of frustrating sometimes. Guess that's the life of small scale farming. 

You Pig!

We got the pigs today! 5 handsome boys. Black and white and one brown and white. They are so cute! Brings back lots of memories from the pig farm we had when I was a kid. Of course I just remember loving on newborn piglets and hating the smell. I'm excited to see how it goes for Nathan and his family to raise the pigs. I hope it is fruitful and can benefit the farm and be educational to all involved.

 I love that in the picture you can see the one pig's face buried in a pile of pig. It's great. A friend from home visited today. It was great to share my love and passion for agriculture with her. I didn't realize it til today how thankful I actually was for the farm and the people here. I've finally found my niche in life, a place where I feel the most comfortable...farming wise. I've had some spiritual struggles here but I can be thankful for all that because I'm learning so much. I've always felt a little out of place, because let's be honest, how many young ladies in their early 20's who are devotional passionate about small scale farming that live in Watseka, IL do you know? I'm guessing probably zero. Now I'm surrounded by a group of ladies who are strongly passionate and interested and excited about farming and I LOVE IT! I can go up to one and tell of an awesome farm thing that happened and they get it and share in my joy with me. If I did that at home, I'd get a reaction, but just not the same. I'm so happy here with my job. I do work I love every day. I get to grow things and raise animals and I thank God every minute that I'm not in an office, but that I have the sun in my face and the consist reminder that I don't control anything. I also learned today I am a completely different person then when I left 3 months ago to move to Texas, drastically different. I got her to milk a goat... sorry no pictures. It was great. She bought some fresh eggs and some mild goat sausage (my favorite) to take back to the hubby. I hope the really enjoy it. It is so rewarded to stand with a friend and look out and say, I love this, let me tell you about it and for them to listen and engage. Couldn't have asked for a better gift.

On another note, the newborn twin girls are doing so well now! They have healthy appetites and are running and playing with the other kids. It's exciting to see them doing so well and I'm encouraged that I did something right!

Tomorrow I'll be herding our brown steer into the dairy barn so we can load him up Friday morning to take to slaughter. It is going to be a very stressful time. Steers are so unpredictable and frustrating and SCARY! Pray it goes well and everyone remains safe! If you don't hear from me again, the steers got me.

Update

I have been working everyday with some crazy long hours getting ready for farm day. I do my regular days work then I work on my intern project afterward. Let's start with farm day. We do two farm days a year with one in the spring and one in the fall. Basically we do tours, there's a petting zoo, booths that people sell stuff at, etc. My job was the petting zoo of course. I just needed to make sure kids didn't kill animals. I also did a milking demo every hour. I talked for two hay ride tours. It was a fun day but a lot of work went into it. Now I'm vegging out for two days doing a Dexter marathon. I watch an episode then I go do some work.

My ducks are doing well. They are a week and five days old now. They are getting bigger and bigger. I just changed all their bedding and they are super happy quackers.

Now for the very exciting part of the farm for me. I started an intern project that is completely my own with the help of a man named Jeff Sharpe. I got connected with this guy through Neil Miller, the executive director of the farm. Jeff is a mushroom grower and is looking to start a fish farm. I am really interested in aquaculture farming so Neil had me come to a meeting with Jeff and since then we now have a complete system set up outside the dorm. Jeff and I built it all besides the tank itself.

So as you can see, there's the tank below that holds the fish and then on top is my plant bed that hold water. So, water is pumped from the tank up into the top tub that is a filter. It goes through lava rock and into the next filter and then travels down that white pvc pipe into the plant bed and the water falls through four tubes back into the tank. Fish wast is ammonia and when it goes through the lava rock, by some chemical reaction, turns it into nitrate which is plant food. The plants clean the water for the fish. I planted it today. It has cilantro, dill, basil, red basil, lettuce, salad burnet, swiss chard, celery lettuce and a few leaks. It is going to be really awesome. We should have tilapia in it by the end of the week. 

I had twin girl baby goats born on Monday. I had to take them from their mom right away because she has CAE and I can't even let her lick her babies. They ended up becoming really sick. I gave them two shots each of vitamin B and vitamin A & D. Then I gave them probios and sulmet orally. I've been giving the probios and sulmet every day for five days. They are doing really well now. They are both eating a healthy amount now and no more dirty squirties. Makes me feel great that they are doing so well.

My family was here last weekend and it was a blast. They got here Saturday. We went to the Dr. Pepper museum in town then to a restaurant called Buzzard Billies. It is built hanging over the river and when you go on the deck there are 50 or so turtles swimming around and the biggest catfish I've ever seen in my life.

Then we sat around for a cook out at the farm. Grandpa played some of his songs and played guitar with another guy on the farm. We had a pretty long day on Sunday. I made breakfast for the kids of our fresh eggs and goat sausage. They really liked the goat. I went up to check on the goats because I got a phone call about a sick baby goat. I went up and Olive was laying in the pen and looked like she was in a lot of pain and in respiratory distress. Her stomach was sloshy to the touch and she couldn't move her limbs or control her head. She died in my arms with the family watching. It was awful. Come to find out she had floppy kid syndrome. After that traumatic experience we all went to church together.

We ate at the famous Whataburger after that and then me and the kids hung out on the farm. Later me and my family did the afternoon milking chore. It was awesome to watch the kids be so excited about learning and to watch my grandparents milk goats. At one point Noah was doing the udder wash and the goat grunted at him and he said, "This is uncomfortable for me too." HAHA! Even Taylor jumped right in. All three of them did really well at milking and all gained a rhythm by the time they were finished. They loved it! It felt great to share something with my family that I'm so passionate about. I love farm life and to see Taylor, Noah, and Jenna be excited about it was so phenomenal.

Then we went to a birthday party for a girl on the farm. Lots of junk food! They left the next morning after the kids helped with morning bottle feeding and milking again. They couldn't get enough. The whole family even tasted fresh warm goat's milk, even Grandma! She is hard to convince to try new things.  I said goodbye to them very quickly and had tears streaming down my face as the drove away. I miss them all so much already. I do however get to see a face from home on Wednesday. Olivia will be here and I'm super excited to see a familiar face.

Another thing I did last week that was new for me. I butchered a goat. Matt held it and I just cut its neck and blood sprayed everywhere. It was really quick. Then we hung it up and skinned it and removed the guts, keeping some of the organs. Jonathon took the skins to make stuff with. We could have also kept the fat to make soap but no one had time to do it. It was a really hard experience and I can't believe I killed a goat. I learned a lot. The picture is of Matt Hess, education director, sawing through bone on the first goat that was killed.

 Well, It will be another exciting week. I'm going with the boys to pick up the pigs for the farm on Wednesday. I should have the fish in the tank before next week. Lots to do and work on. I've got a long list of things to get done. Did I mention we had camels at farm day? I had to give a few nice pics so I don't leave you with that gross one. Until next time.