Neighbors Helping Neighbors

We attend Cornerstone Baptist Church located outside of Jennings, Louisiana.  We're a loving little church with people who love to serve.  During Hurricane Harvey this year, as everyone knows, the storm sat over southeast Texas and dumped torrential rains over our neighbors to the west.  We were spared much of the damage over in our neck of the woods, but the effects of storms are not foreign to us.  Our pastor, for example, lost his home to the flooding in Denham Springs, Louisiana in August 2016.  The rain had barely stopped falling when our pastor mobilized a response team from our church.  One team went to Orange, Texas several weeks ago and a second group of nine people went last weekend.

We left before daylight and signed in a little more than an hour later at North Orange Baptist Church where we were assigned a home and given breakfast and coffee.  Our work orders showed that the home received floodwaters and the original team cut out 18 inches of sheetrock and insulation.  Our job was to go ahead and remove 4 feet of sheetrock and insulation, pull nails out of the studs, remove cabinets in the kitchen and remove two showers, a vanity and toilet.  We also pulled the flooring from the master bedroom.

The weather was crisp and cool - perfect for demolition.  We called the homeowner and introduced ourselves.  Mrs. Judy showed up with two coffeepots that she promptly brewed strong coffee to fuel us.  She was a really nice lady who worked alongside us with a big smile the whole day.  Her husband, L.G., was a Viet Nam veteran who will be having heart surgery next week.  We circled and held hands and prayed for this family and then we started to work.  The youth began pulling the cabinets in the kitchen.  In the photo below you can see how the original crew cut out 18 inches of sheetrock.  You'll see how we pulled 4 feet in later photos.

The work went well.  Some of us pulled the sheetrock, some removed nails, others cut the insulation with a utility knife, while others swept and picked up debris.  We worked room by room, working hard, but smiling and joking and enjoying working with one another and getting to know Mrs. Judy better.  Despite the damage to her home and her husband's health, she had the biggest smile on her face the whole day. 

Once the sheetrock was removed and insulation cut out, the house "opened up."  We wore masks as the sheetrock dust from all of the demolition got very thick.  We had two wheelbarrows that were constantly moving, carrying debris to the roadside where it will be picked up by the city.

As the nails were pulled from the studs, they were dropped on the floor.  One of our team stuck one in his boot but fortunately, it did not go all the way through and into his foot.  We had a magnet that we swept back and forth from then on to gather all loose nails.

The pile by the roadside grew and grew.  We noticed a next door neighbor across the street was flying the flag of Israel.  We all thought that was pretty neat.

Despite one slight problem with a water leak that slowed us down a little bit, we got a lot of work done and cleaned up the work area and took pictures and hugged Mrs. Judy and prayed with her again.  Here she is with me and my two boys.

Here is a photo of the crew in front of Mrs. Judy's home.

And here is another photo of the Cornerstone Hurricane Relief Team in front of the home.  We were tired, but it felt good to serve a sister in Christ in her time of need.

As we packed up the trucks and trailer for the journey back home, we were amazed by the amount of work we were able to accomplish.  The pile of construction debris was a testimony to the work day.

We pulled out of the driveway and Mrs. Judy got our contact information as she wants to invite us to a house-warming party when she moves back in.  We met a new friend and had a fantastic day.  As we drove off I thought about Acts 20:35 that says:

In everything I showed you that by working hard in this manner you must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, that He Himself said, 'It is more blessed to give than to receive.

It is so true.  Mrs. Judy was SO grateful, but as we left, I felt that WE got the bigger blessing.  In fact, we can't wait to go back and help out again.  We held a meeting before church Sunday evening and are planning a return trip to Orange, Texas on November 11th.

Gifts From Above

Our preacher was giving a sermon in which he was making the point that often times we don't look UP to give God thanks for the many blessings we have in our lives.  He told the story about some hogs that he has in a pen under some oak trees.  He said he was watching them and as a fat acorn fell out of the tree, they would run over and gobble it up, never looking up to see where it came from.  Many times we're like that old hog.  When we are showered with blessings, we don't look up and thank God.

Today Tricia and I walked outside underneath the live oak trees.  There was a constant crunching under our feet from stepping on gazillions of acorns.

We don't have hogs, but we do have goats - four of them, to be precise.  The majority of the live oaks don't stretch above the pasture, so the goats don't have access to most of the acorns hitting the ground.

Tricia got a rake and a #10 can and filled it up several times, pouring hundreds of acorns over the fence.  The cows and goats came a running.  The cows sniffed around curiously, but they don't eat acorns.

The goats, however, were a different story.  They feasted.  All we saw is their lips moving rapidly and heard the crunching of hundreds of acorns being devoured.

Unfortunately, like the hogs in the preacher's sermon, the goats didn't look up and give thanks for the 'showers of blessing' in the form of acorns.

The Best Part of Waking Up

The best part of waking up... (sorry Folgers), is Community Coffee in your cup.  Tricia and I switched from Dark Roast to Coffee and Chicory a while back.  We like the extra "bite" of the coffee.  Each night before bed, we get the coffee all prepared and the water ready and in the morning on the way out the door to milk the cows, I'll turn the coffee maker on.  When I come back inside, the aroma in the kitchen is wonderful!

We have a regular "Mr. Coffee" type coffee maker, but on weekends and special occasions, we will brew the coffee in a french press.  Coffee in a french press always tastes richer.  I've been told that it's because in a regular drip coffee maker, flavorful oils get trapped in the paper coffee filter, but I'm not sure if that is true or not.  Away from home, I'll drink it black, but at home, I'll add some fresh cream from our cows and a teaspoon of honey from our friend's bees and it is delicious.

This morning I fixed a big thermos of coffee as I headed out the door.  I was driving to Baton Rouge for work today.  Baton Rouge is about an hour and a half away and is due east on I-10.  I sipped on my coffee as I drove and observed night gradually becoming day.  On the Atchafalaya Freeway the rising sun glimmered on the water in Henderson Swamp.  It was a chilly morning (53 degrees) and water vapor was rising off the water, shrouding the cypress trees - a beautiful sight.

The Atchafalaya Basin Bridge is almost 19 miles long and is the third longest bridge in the United States.  As I exited the Atchafalaya Basin Bridge, I finished my thermos of coffee and could see the Louisiana State Capital building due east, perfectly framed in the eastern sky with the trees on either side of the Interstate.  It wasn't long before I was on the Mississippi River Bridge heading into Baton Rouge.

Traffic soon came to a standstill on the western side of the bridge in Port Allen and I could see light smoke wafting across the bridge.  At first I thought there was an accident and then I remembered!  I quickly unrolled my window and breathed in deeply.  Sounds weird, right?  Let me explain.  Community Coffee has a roasting plant on the western side of the Mississippi River in Port Allen, right near I-10 where they roast coffee beans.  At certain times from your car as you ride over the bridge, you can smell the great aroma of roasting coffee beans.  Looking on the bright side, being in stalled traffic on the bridge, I could at least enjoy the soothing aroma of roasting coffee right from my vehicle.  Aroma therapy, you might say! 

Hiding From the Hawk

We have a happy flock of hens and roosters in which there is great diversity.  The predominant breed is Barred Rock, but we also have Rhode Island Reds, Black Stars, and Aracaunas.  In the morning, Tricia throws them a bucket of rough rice, milled rice and laying pellets and the happily scratch and peck until they've eaten it all.  Then the hens lay eggs for the rest of the morning.  Finally, they roam on three acres for the rest of the day, broadcasting their "fertilizer" all over the pasture.

Yesterday I was home during lunch.  It was a cool day, with blue skies overhead and a crisp north breeze blowing.  Tricia and I sat in the St. Augustine grass in the backyard and had a picnic.  We were enjoying watching the cows and goats grazing and the chickens pecking around at bugs in the grass. All of a sudden, something caught our eye.  A large red-tail hawk coasted in on the breeze with his eye on the pasture.  Tricia told me that it looked like he was dropping.  I began clapping to startle him as I didn't want him to grab himself a chicken dinner.  He soared off.   By this time, though, the chickens had seen the bird of prey and they skedaddled.

A little later I walked out by the barn and saw this:

The chickens had all run for cover.  There was lots of nervous clucking.  No doubt they were discussing their close call.  In the past they've seen some of their fine feathered friends get devoured by hawks and they have wised up.  When they see a hawk, an alarm goes off and they all run into the goat barn for safety or at least get around it under the trees.

This time there were no casualties.  Hopefully in the future, they'll continue to keep a watchful eye so as not to become a meal for the hawk.

A Nice Saturday of Food, Fun, & Fellowship

Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!  Psalm 133:1 KJV

On Saturday, we had a Church Family BBQ at church.  The fires were lit in the bbq pits around 9 am and seasoned chickens and sausage went on once the coals were ready.  People brought all sorts of side dishes and desserts and we all sat down and enjoyed some great food and fantastic fellowship.

While waiting for the food to be ready, we had several washer boards set up, horseshoes, bean bag toss game, and we threw the football.  Everyone was enjoying themselves.  After we ate, the games continued outside and then there were some Bible trivia type games in the fellowship hall.

For the youth, we had a frozen t-shirt game that they seemed to enjoy.  We got two t-shirts soaking wet the night before and folded them up, twisting them into a ball and then put them in the freezer overnight.  This resulted in a rock hard t-shirt the morning of the church social.  Teams were picked and each team was given a frozen t-shirt, with instructions that the winner would be the first team to thaw out the shirt and have someone put it on.  You cannot use any water and you can't use any tools beside your fingers.  Start pulling!

Each team began trying to pry out a small part of the shirt to get something to pull on.  It was very slow going at first.  They moved out into the sun to perhaps speed up the thaw.

I kept going back and forth between the teams.  It was an evenly matched competition with both teams running neck and neck...

Pretty soon a portion of the t-shirt was pulled out and they found a little leverage to start unraveling it.  You could hear the ice cracking.  The pulling was hard and resulted in the t-shirt getting a little ripped in places.

The team with all boys seemed to make more progress at the end, as the other team watched on, trying hard to catch up!

It was too late, however.  The team with all boys got the frozen t-shirt on first and won the game!

Team 2 with two girls and one boy weren't far behind though.

We all had a really nice time.  Psalm 133:1 that is at the top of this post is certainly true!  It is truly a blessing to have a church family where everyone is unified and loves one another.  We all left at the end of the day vowing to have another church social soon.

Outen The Lights

The switchplate cover that is on the main light switch in the barn is an interesting one with some history.  Each morning before daylight when I switch the lights on, I reach in through the gate, having to feel around until I locate it in the dark, and flip the switch on.  Over the years, most of the coloring has been worn off.  The Pennsylvania tulips originally were red and green and yellow.

It is at the very least 40-something years old.  When I was just a boy, we took a family vacation all the way up the east coast to the Pennsylvania Dutch country.  We drove through and saw the Amish riding in their buggies being pulled by a horse.  If I'm not mistaken, while touring the Amish country in Lancaster County, we purchased the above switch plate as a souvenir and I ended up inheriting it from my grandmother.  I promptly installed it in our barn.  The Amish people have always interested me.  I like their simplicity, devotion, and tight family units.

We can always tell when someone is in our barn out back because we can see the lights through the two barn windows that face north.  "Outen the Light" is from the Pennsylvania Dutch English dialect and simply means, "Turn out the Light."  Despite the admonition on the Amish switch plate, sometimes I forget to "outen the light" after walking back to the house with a bucket of milk.  Fortunately, you might say, the way we get electricity to the barn is by using 3 long extension cords.  What started as a temporary (and cheap) way to run electricity, has lasted for about 7 years now!  This electrical arrangement allows me on those forgetful days to "outen the light" by pulling the extension cord out of the GFCI outlet in the garage.

Shelling Ozark Razorback Peas

A whole lotta rain in August and then virtually none since then dealt a big blow to our southern pea crop this year.  That's a shame, too, because peas and rice is a favorite simple meal that we enjoy with some cornbread as a side dish.  Despite the poor crop, I did walk through the garden rows one afternoon last week and pick the (mostly) dried pea pods off the stalks.  I got a nice-sized basket of peas.

Shelling peas is a mindless pastime while you are watching TV or sitting in the kitchen visiting with family.  In no time I had one bowl of peas all shelled and then realized I misjudged and didn't get a big enough bowl.

I got out another bowl and filled it up, too.  Since these peas were mostly dried, they'll actually make a bigger meal than it looks like once we soak them and cook them, adding some smoked sausage to the pot for some extra flavor.  We have a cool front coming through next week, so a warm plate of peas & rice with cornbread will be satisfying comfort food.  Can't wait.

Harvesting Louisiana Purple Sugar Cane (Part II: Processing into Pure Cane Syrup)

In YESTERDAY'S POST we talked about our Louisiana Purple Sugarcane - both growing it and harvesting the first crop from our garden.  After cutting it, we put the cane in a wagon and hauled it to the back yard where we started processing it.  The first thing we did was to strip all of the leaves off of it.

As we finished, we dropped the purple sugarcane in a stack on the ground.

We used a rag to scrub the sugarcane clean.  There is a build-up of a black smut-like substance that must be cleaned off.  We don't want that or any dirt to get into our final product.

Once cleaned, we then use a machete to begin chopping the cane into two-inch long pieces.

We are going to be processing our sugarcane into pure cane syrup.  We also cut chunks into slivers that we chewed.  It was so sweet!  I can remember chewing cut up cane as a young boy.  It brought back good memories.  The more we cut, the more our pot began to fill up.

Before we knew it, we had 3 big pots full of cut up sugarcane ready to be processed into syrup.

I put the cane into our crawfish boiling pot, filled with water to cover and then lit the butane burner underneath the pot.

Pretty soon, there was sweet smelling steam emanating from our pot.  It boiled.  And boiled.  And boiled some more.

After about 3 hours, I pulled the basket of cut up cane out of the water and let it drain real good back into the pot.  By this point all of the sweetness has boiled out of the cane cubes and is now contained in the water as sugarcane juice.  The cut up cane will be trench composted into the garden.

We kept boiling the water/sugarcane juice as we watched the LSU football game and then went to vote in the election.  I'd say it boiled for another 2 hours while the liquid reduced due to evaporation.  I also skimmed foam off the top repeatedly.

Finally what was left in the pot was syrup.  I poured it through a fine sieve to filter out any pieces of cane and other particles.

After 5 + hours of boiling, not counting the time spent harvesting and chopping, we had a little less than a quart of homemade sugarcane syrup.  Okay, I'll admit it, from an economical standpoint, that is not a very efficient conversion.  It is much cheaper to just drive to the store and buy some Steen's Pure Cane Syrup.  But, I will also say (I'm biased, I know) that this homemade sugarcane syrup is delicious!  I love Steen's, but I think ours has a better flavor.

Meanwhile, we have more immature sugarcane growing in the garden that will be ready for harvest a little later.  I also planted two more stalks in the garden soil to keep our sugarcane crop producing next year.

It was a fun experiment to see if we could make our own syrup and we found that we could.  It was just a lot of work and time to do it and was a good lesson on economies of scale!

Harvesting Louisiana Purple Sugar Cane (Part 1)

Last year a friend of mine dropped by the house and pulled a gift for me out of the back of his truck.  You can read about that gift if you click here to read our post on planting purple sugar cane.  He had brought some stalks of heirloom Louisiana Purple Sugar Cane for me to plant in the garden.  He had some growing in his garden, but wanted to give me some to start in mine in the event that his sugar cane died and he lost it, he could get some stalks from me to re-start it.  Kind of like insurance, I guess.

So I planted it and a year later, here we are:

It isn't a huge crop, but it is just the right amount for us.  Some of the sugarcane leans over and the leaves are very sharp.  You have to watch out not to get cut when walking by it.  I am not exaggerating when I tell you that the sugarcane is 10 feet tall!  It is appropriately named "Purple Cane," as it is very purple.  It has a nice size to it, too.  All of the commercially grown sugar cane around here that I see is green, not purple, and it isn't as tall as the purple cane is.  Isn't the purple sugarcane pretty?

A quick look on the Internet gave me some more details about our sugar cane.  The following FROM THIS LINK tells some interesting information about its history:

Sugarcane harvesting came to the U.S. approximately 200 years ago, with prosperous mills being developed in Louisiana. Sugarcane was first brought to Louisiana by Jesuit priests in 1751. Here, Etienne de Bore produced the first refined sugar from a sugarcane crop in 1795. His variety, named “Creole,” was one of many, including Otaheite, Louisiana Stripes, Louisiana Purple, and D74, to be developed in Louisiana.

What a cool new crop to grow in the garden!  This past Saturday, Russ and I harvested some of the mature stalks of purple sugar cane.  Commercial sugar cane farmers have expensive equipment.  For our tiny patch of sugar cane, we got back to the basics and used an 'old school' machete.  Russ chopped each mature stalk of cane down at the base and handed it to me.

Commercial sugar cane farmers have large cane wagons that are pulled by tractors and line the side of the roadways during harvest season loaded with chopped cane.  Here is our sugar cane wagon "loaded down" on the side of the 'field.':

During sugarcane harvest, the sides of the road are littered with pieces of sugarcane stalk that has blown out on its way to be processed.  We were very careful not to let any of our cane drop out of the wagon.  So what do you do with fresh harvested sugar cane?  Well, you process it, of course!  Tune in tomorrow where we will have our concluding segment where we show you what we did with it.  (Actually we did two things with it!)

Pickin' Up Hay

Each summer for about as long as we've owned cows, we've purchased square bales of good Bermuda grass hay to feed the cows over the winter.  We have a neighbor down the road who is in his 80's and always makes the cleanest hay and their hay baling is a family affair.  Everyone comes together to get the hay in while the weather is dry. 

Unfortunately, our neighbor who bales the hay had a stroke earlier this summer and is in the VA home here in town rehabilitating.  I visited with him last month.  Oh, how he wishes he could be out there baling hay!  We were called by his daughter letting us know that there would be hay ready for pick-up on Saturday.  We were thinking about Mr. Myers when we drove down the road a couple of miles to where his family was baling.  It was 1 pm and there were many bales already on the ground waiting to be picked up.

We hooked up the old cattle trailer to the back of Benjamin's truck and began loading it down with hay.  Tricia drove between two rows of square bales, Benjamin stayed inside the trailer and stacked, while Russ and I carried the hay and laid it inside the trailer.  We counted the bales loudly as we loaded to ensure that we kept accurate count.  It is on the honor system.  You tell Mr. Myers' daughter how many bales you picked up on the way out of the field and pay as you leave.

There was a tractor 'fluffing' the hay, followed by a tractor with a square baler that dropped bale after bale on the close-cut grass.

We were able to fit 46 bales in the trailer and 4 bales in the back of the truck and we drove back home.  Prior to getting the hay up into the hayloft of the barn, we waited until the late afternoon to do the job as it was hot!  We use a pulley system to lift the bales, one by one, up into the loft. 

Russ hooked the bales onto the rope with a bungee cord and I pulled the bales up.  Russ had his hands full as the cows wanted samples of hay to eat while he tried to get the hay out of the way prior to them eating it all! Every time he'd turn his back, they would knock down his stack of hay.

After I pulled the hay up, I unhooked it and slid it down to Benjamin and he stacked it neatly in the loft.  He had to really watch his step so as to not fall through the trap door in the floor.

With some good teamwork, we were able to get the 50 bales stored away quickly.  As we got ready to head back to the house for some supper, we were able to watch a peaceful sunset.

It's a nice feeling to know the hard work is done and the hay is in the barn.