Homestead Herbs

FOR TODAY AUGUST 11, 2008…

 

 

Outside My Window… my Haflinger, Lady is grazing in the pasture and is trying to ignore our dog, Shea, who is trying to play with her!

I am thinking… of all the projects I need and want to accomplish and organizing them into my week.

I am thankful for… a loving and supportive church community and sick days

From the kitchen… I see a dishwasher on the brink, full of dirty dishes I’ve got to get out and wash

I am wearing…a red dress, my hair is up in a french braid and I’m barefoot

I am creating…dissarray in the dining room as I’m packaging up old herbs to mail out

I am going…to the mail box to weigh and ship the herbs later on

I am reading… “Making Your Small Farm Profitable” by Ron Macher and “Esther and Ruth” a reformed expository commentary by Iain M Duguid.

I am hoping…and praying that those ill with whooping cough get healed soon and that their mothers get some rest and comfort. Also praying that we’ll find a buyer for the house.

I am hearing…the washing machine start it’s spinning cycle

Around the house… it’s quiet. I’m home alone. I’ll put on some classical music in a while to fill the house

One of my favorite things… is to sit out on the porch in the early morning and feel the day start.

A Few Plans For The Rest Of The Week: Go back to work, mow the grass, trim the edges, start organizing the fall garden, take Lady for a drive, complete one of my projects

Here is a picture thought I am sharing…

I would like to sell this wood cookstove. It’s been sitting in my garage for a few years. Not sure how to go about listing it!

To read other dayposts, please visit The Simple Woman

The affected families at St. David’s will be receiving a bottle of St. David’s Whooping Cough Syrup to aid in the comfort and healing of those with the nasty cough. (Forgive the photo…some of us don’t have fancy cameras to take closeup photos!)

It is time to rejuvenate the stash of herbs. This afternoon I went through all my herbs, and checked the dates and quality (scent, taste, bugs) of all the glass jars. I keep them in half gallon glass jars in cupboards (so as not to get sun damage).

A colleague in one of my herb groups announced she was doing the same and was willing to give the older herbs for free for the price of shipping. I joined in and offered my old herbs too. I’d rather give them to someone who may use them instead of throwing them away/composting them. I’ve bagged them and will be shipping them. There are alot of bags!

As I went through all of the herbs, I was inspired to make some recipes I haven’t made in a while. Our church has had a round of whooping cough go through some families, so I’m going to make a cough syrup for them.

I’ve just found an article on Biblical Economics available on the internet. I haven’t read it thoroughly, but from my quick glance, the author makes some good points.

A Reformed Approach to Economics: Christian Reconstruction

Enjoy the read and post your thoughts if you’d like. I’ll be posting something more concrete after I’ve read it completely.

Tropical storm Eduardo is supposed to hit land in Galveston tomorrow.  We expect to see the brunt of it around noon and will probably see winds of 40-50 mph and hopefully lots of rain. We’ve seen worse around here. Flooding will be a concern. Not necessarily for us, as the house sits up high. but the only road to the house has a tendency of flooding. 

Everything that could be a projectile missile has been put away. The heavier, bigger stuff is sitting against the wall on the west side of the house. We’ve got jugs of water stored. Our oil lamps and candles are ready. We brought in the camping stove to cook on. We’ve got cards and games. We’ve got the inverter so we can charge up laptops and cell phones from the car! We’re as ready as we’ll ever be!

There is always a time in one’s life when one has a picture in one’s head of what life ought to be like, or more precisely, what one want’s life to be like. Personally, I didn’t have that picture defined in my head for a very long time, which lead me to go places where I should not have gone. The picture was hazy and undefined. The picture became clearer and has adapted as time moves by. I went where I should not have gone and learned the consequences, and now I know where I want to go and I am learning the consequences. In both situations lessons were learned, and are being learned. The character and the lifestyle are being molded.  I “count it all joy” (James 1:2) “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose. For whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.” (Romans 8:28-29)

Fruits of the Earth by Robert Duncan. She’s tending the garden, while he’s in the field plowing with the horses. She’s probably barefoot. The kids are all doing their chores. The painting gives you a feeling of happiness and provision. Her garden looks green and abundant. To my minds eye, she’s smiling. She probably doesn’t have to worry about getting the air conditioning in the car fixed again, or her commute into the corporate job the next day, or how long it will take to sell the debt away. She let’s him worry about it all! And she knows the He will take care of all their needs.

L’Angelus by Jean-Francois Millet. The potato harvest was meager this year, and husband and wife are both praying for His provision. The starkness of the painting, the few potatoes in the basket, and their heads bowed down in apparent prayer all paints a different picture than the Fruit in the Fields picture. Both are touching.

Two benefits of going away, is the fun one has while away, and coming back to one’s home! It’s been a busy week for travelling (Granbury TX-fun and Nashville TN-work), so I haven’t had much time at home. While I was away, the creative juices flowed and art was created (or at least an attempt at art!). I learned about glass fusion and felting, and about more impressionist painters.

Glass fusion is the process of putting different colored glass together and melting it to create one piece. I made a pendant and a tile. The pendant remained in Granbury as I commissioned a friend to make a necklace to hold the pendant. I’ll post it when I receive it. The tile is displayed below.  The bubbles were not part of the original idea, but I like them anyhow!

I’ve added another favorite painter to my impressionist list. Camille Pissarro, especially his Cafe au Lait. The photo doesn’t do it any justice at all. The original does a fantastic job of bringing all the different small brush strokes in different colors to create a very pleasing look.

I spent the morning weeding, cleaning up the garden and harvesting some vegetables. Considering how late I planted them, the eggplant, cucumbers and zucchini’s are producing wonderfully. For lunch, we had cucumber sandwiches with our cherry kombucha- scrumptious! Squash casserole is on the menu for this evening. Not sure yet what I’m going to do with the eggplant.

The beds- sweet potato in the foreground, peppers and zuchinni behind that, eggplant and cucumbers, and then strawberries and melons.

The edging and trimming needs to be done and we’re waiting until it cools off a little. In the meantime, I think a siesta is in good order!

Getting the house ready to sell, I went through the bookshelves and removed the books that were double shelved to ‘declutter’ as the realtors advise. Doing this, I found Biblical Economics by RC Sproul Jr on my shelf. I had purchased it with all the intentions of reading it, but hadn’t gotten around to it. Now I’ve gotten around to it!

Sproul Jr’s book is an easy read for an economics book. There were a few instances I would have liked for him to explain himself a little more, but for the most part, Sproul Jr. does a good job explaining the basics and how the United States’ economy has reached the point it has.

“Our economic problems today are not based on some natural boom and bust cycle, but they have their root in lawlessness, the lawlessness of an ever-tampering, ever-hampering, ever-inflating, overgrowing government. Economic predictions are easy: As long as the government interferes in the marketplace, one can expect economic problems.”

Sproul Jr. emphacizes:

• The key to a country’s prosperity and wealth is production with profit, not consumption.
• “Bad money that is produced from cheap materials causes an economy to go “thud”. Bad money not only drives out good money, it drives prosperity away.”
• inflation is not higher prices. It is an increase in the money supply. The government is printing paper money backed by the order of the government (versus the backing of the gold standard) and nothing else.
• Our economy cannot prosper if the government interferes all the time.
• If our government would stay within the parameters of the Constitution, many of our current concerns would be eliminated
• Our only hope for economic change is to educate the people and our children so that they can influence and revert to an economic worldview more in line with those who wrote the Constitution and with those who are grounded in scripture.

Given my economics education (not that everything stuck!), I personally found the chapters on government and money the most interesting. As in most issues, it’s all a matter of what perspective one is looking at the problem. When you’re taught to look at it one way, and then another perspective is presented, it takes a little mind grappling to get on board.

I’m taking a break and reading a commentary on Esther and Ruth, but I’ll post on this topic after I read Gary North’s book.

Before I begin my post, I’d like to let my readers know that my post(s) on biblical economics are still in the works. I’ve been sidelined from my reading and still mulling what I’ve read over in my head to make some rational sense of my thoughts.

Now to my post….

Although I have my home and land for sale (and there have been quite a few lookers but no good offers), I have some close friends who have very clearly stated that they don’t want me to move! Some have even come to me with some suggestions on how I can stay where I am and make use of the land and pay off the debt. I am loved and blessed by a covenant community who is looking out for me.

One such proposition is a community supported agriculture (CSA) program. There is a sizeable coop who order organic produce/food and purchase raw milk, but all that they purchase is not local. They spend quite a bit of time and money transporting these items. This group is interested in having me provide some of what they need. I am to meet with them in a few weeks to hear what they have in mind, and have me tell them what I realistically can do for them.

The spokesperson for this group (my friend) and I have discussed several alternatives. We both like the idea that it be more than one product. Something more like a farm coop/share. The members would get available produce, eggs, chickens, and milk (if I can persuade my neighbors with the dairy cows to offer us milk) as the season allows.

I am working with another friend, who is a whiz at numbers, to work on how I would price the CSA and have it cover my fixed and variable expenses. Originally we aimed at having me work full time on the farm, but my fixed expenses are too high, so it appears I would have to continue working and pay off/reduce the fixed expenses and hire someone to manage the farm/CSA until I am in a position to stay on the farm.

In the meantime, I’m gathering as much information as I can find on CSA’s and how best to manage them. One comment I received from an ex-CSA member was that it would be good to allow the members to take advantage of the abundance of produce (as they also share the drought/non production aspect of farming) by not selling the extra produce to third parties/farm stand/farmers market.

So, we’ll see what lies ahead: sell the home and land and payoff debt and retrench, or stay in place and start a CSA.

BTW, there are two new Christian Agrarian blogs. Please visit http://theoldpaths.wordpress.com/ and http://hillsalive.christianagrarian.com/ and wish them welcome.

The Mississippi River flooding so many farmfields, and the high fuel prices, and the impending high grain prices and food prices brought to mind a favorite song by Nanci Griffin.

 (Nanci Griffith & Rick West)

You’ll be the mule I’ll be the plow
Come harvest time we’ll work it out
There’s still a lotta love, here in these troubled fields

Here’s the song performed by Maura O’Connell and Nanci Griffin.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8l87JpWkbI0