Merry Christmas 2024

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.  Isaiah 9:6-7

Christmas Eve.  We gathered at Mom & Dad's home like we traditionally do.  Lots of smiles with Christmas carols playing in the background.  Lots of food, too.  Many things were similar.  Dad traditionally gets his Bible and opens to Luke Chapter 2 and reads the Christmas story - what Christmas is really about.  It runs counter to the commercial, glitzy, rushing, busy, consumerist hubbub we're surrounded by.  Suddenly, there's peace, quiet and a satisfaction in our souls.  Truth.

There are many differences, too.  Some good and some bad.  The family has grown.  The family is way larger and now includes a brand new generation and we smile as we look at her wide-eyed wonder and expectancy.  Some of the family is not able to be here - in cities far away, and our grandmothers and grandfathers have passed away, and we miss them.  We talked of Christmas' past and funny stories that made us all laugh.  We made a big circle, holding hands and asked blessing of our food, and then we feasted.  

In years' past, the calm photo you see above, previously patient kids, after hearing the Gospel, would turn the room into a flurry of torn wrapping paper, bows and boxes.  Over the years presents have diminished somewhat and we try to focus on the presence.  Each other's presence.  As we age and circumstances of life occur, we become more aware of our mortality and the fact that we should enjoy all the time we have with one another.  

We are also thankful for His Presence.  We are thankful for His watchcare over us and the blessings that we have.  Sure, we all have things that aren't perfect in our lives - things we wish would be different, relationships we wish were stronger, deeper.  We long for simpler times, more innocent times, but we trust Him.  In His time, not ours, and we move forward.  

Merry Christmas!  God sent His Son.  He was born in a manger in a simple stable, but he grew in stature.  He died and shed His precious blood for us, that we might live, if we only trust Him!  Wishing you and yours the very best...

Decomposing (Mulch Time Lapse)

The crews that are maintaining electricity right-of-ways are back in the area.  The crews consist of a bucket truck that has a wood chipper behind it and a supervisor in another truck.  Limbs that overhang powerlines are trimmed back by a man in the bucket with a chainsaw.  Guys on the ground pick up the branches and feed them into a wood chipper.  The chipper shoots the wood chips into the back of the truck.  Once it is full, they are looking for a place to dump it.

That's where we come in.  Over the years we've taken (seriously) about 100 loads of mulch.  Tricia seeks them out and gives them our address and they come.  We've received two loads so far in the last couple of weeks.  One morning this week it was in the upper 30's.  I walked outside and saw steam coming from both of the recently delivered mulch piles.  This is evidence that the pile is decomposing.  Beneficial bacteria are breaking down the mulch pile.

These piles of mulch are a couple years old.  They don't steam anymore, but they are about half the size that they used to be.  A lot of the decomposition has already taken place.  If you scrape off the top layer, you'd see that the bottom of these piles are pretty well broken down.  Mushrooms grow in the pile, too.

In the back, I scraped off the top layer of a mulch pile from three years ago.  A three year old mulch pile has pretty much been transformed into topsoil.

I mix composted chicken litter with this and use it as a planting medium.  It's great organic matter and helps your soil retain moisture and reduces compaction.  If you see those crews working in your neighborhood, I highly recommend you going to talk to them.  It is a little unsightly to have piles of mulch in your yard.  If you have an HOA, I guarantee you it's not allowed.  Free mulch that turns into topsoil is something you want.  We'll keep taking it until we no longer have room.

Timber!

Last year we had a drought.  It's a strange thing in Louisiana to not have rainfall, but it happened.  We lost a magnolia tree in our yard.  I really hate that because the fragrance from a fresh magnolia blossom is a scent that is wonderful.  The drought caused fish to die in people's ponds.  Many older trees, which were weakened anyway were finished off by the drought.  Such was the case with two old pine trees at our church.

Since the drought, the trees began losing limbs, dropping pine cones and bark.  It was only a matter of time before they fell.  We couldn't hardly afford that since at least one of the trees was dangerously close to LA Hwy 26.  Saturday morning was a beautiful and crisp fall morning.  A perfect day for felling a couple of trees.  Bro. Jerry brought his mule.  We were going to need that thing.  Jerry will be 89 years old on January 1st.  I hope I'm still dropping pine trees when I'm approaching 90!

The mule's winch is pulled tight

We guessimated the height of the tree to ensure Jerry was far enough away.  We aren't professionals, so I went home and came back with two extra chains that we connected.  You can see the embankment for the highway to the east of the tree and why it was important to have the tree fall toward the mule and not toward the road.

The other tree that was farther from the road was already down along with one side of the 'double' pine tree.

Dwayne got his chain saw and climbed the ladder to cut the tree.

As he cut, I held the ladder to keep him from tipping over.  I also told him when he hears the tree pop, that we were going to run.  I think I mentioned for him to keep an eye out for the "widow makers" (rotten limbs) that were right above us.

Timber!  We heard the tree crack and it fell exactly where we needed it to fall!

Thank the Good Lord!  I was a little worried for a minute there.  We cut the trees all to pieces and used the mule to drag the trees to the back with a chain where we'll have a bonfire later on.  The mule also has a bed that dumps, so we piled branches, bark and pine cones in the back and got things pretty much cleaned up for Morning Worship today.  We left a big piece of the stump standing on one of the trees.  I told Dwayne to start practicing with his chainsaw and maybe he could make a chainsaw sculpture.

The Rock Tumbler

As I was walking tonight, my mind drifted off to thoughts of what my favorite gift was when I was a child.  My mind went this way and that and finally settled on what was unquestionably, undoubtedly the favorite gift that I ever received.  It was an electric rock tumbler!  I'm pretty sure that this was the one right here:

I had so much fun with this thing.  I believed that every child needed to experience the joy, the expectation of the results in due time from the rock tumbler.  We purchased our kids a rock tumbler and they were able to experience just what I'm trying to describe.

In case you're not aware, it works like this.  In the kit is an electric motor that turns a cradle.  It makes a noise that drones on and on.  If I close my eyes right now, it doesn't take much imagination to hear that sound in my ears.  Now, in the kit are some very ordinary looking stones.  They are dull.  You might even call them ugly.

You put the stones in a little barrel.  It has a rubber o-ring to keep anything from dripping out.  Along with the stones, you add water and some coarse abrasive powder.  Then you tighten the cap of the barrel, lay it in the cradle and plug it in.  The noise is somewhat maddening and it goes on day after day, night after night for a prolonged period of time.  

After so many days, you stop the machine, open the barrel, wash off the stones and abrasive powder and then...  You add a finer abrasive powder and repeat the process.  If I recall correctly, this whole process goes on for weeks.  The next time you unplug it, you wash off the stones and this time you add a polish.  The process is repeated for a week or so and the next time you open the barrel and wash off the stones, this is what you have!:

What a transformation has taken place!  It was so exciting opening up the barrel after waiting for all that time!  It was so nice to finally go to bed at night in peace without the sound of the electric motor droning on in your bedroom!  The process taught you patience, for sure.  The ugly stones became 'beautiful gems,' but it didn't happen magically.  It was a process.  It is a process that imitates what goes on in mountain streams.  I remember hiking in the Great Smoky Mountains and wading in the streams, picking up perfectly round, smooth stones.  Stones that resembled the ones that David put in his sling to bring Goliath down.  Those stones weren't always smooth, though.  At one time they were jagged and rough.  Over time, with water rushing over them and having other stones bump into them, all the rough edges were smoothed out.

Have you ever thought about the fact that people are like that?  Life has a way of tumbling us against abrasive things (even people?) over and over again.  No, let me be more clear.  I think that God, over a period of time, uses harsh, abrasive things, people and experiences to smooth out our rough edges in order for us to be useful for His Glory.  It doesn't happen overnight.  You don't see the results for a long time.  The "noise" from the tumbling and polishing process nearly drives you nuts, but the end result is worth the wait.  It is often painful to be 'tumbled.'  

Sometimes even when the process is done, you might still feel like a dull, ordinary stone, but know that God washes you off and looks at you as a beautiful gem in the palm of His Hand.  He molds us and makes us, forms us and shapes us.  If the Good Lord ever gives us grandchildren, I know what I'll buy them - a rock tumbler!

Photos of the Season

Just a short post tonight.  I love fall.  It was still 80 degrees this afternoon as I sat on the back patio shelling pecans.  I'm going to shell all the big ones we picked from the neighbor's trees and will bring all the small pecans from our tree to the feed store for cracking.  Then I'll shell those.  As the sun was lowering toward the horizon, I heard the unmistakable honking of geese and looked overhead.  There was a solitary line of geese flying west to east.  You can see them flying directly into the palm tree in the center of the photo below where the lowest green fronds are.

Pecan leaves are always the last to bud out in the spring.  Their leaves have held on until this week and now we're seeing a nice change of color as they turn yellow and fall to the ground.  The pecans have already fallen and we've already picked all we're gonna get.  That's a good thing as it is hard to find them once they are buried underneath a thick blanket of pecan leaves.  I usually mow the leaves into a pile and bring them to the compost pile in the back of the garden where they'll me amended into the soil.

We harvested the first of the fall broccoli.  It's either been unseasonably warm this fall (it has) or I planted the cole crops a little earlier (I did), because all of our fall crops have a head start over last year's crop.  You just never know.  When it stays warm you have a rough time with pests.  Army worms ate all the leaves off of my three rows of beets.  They are starting to come back now.  Hopefully, they'll make it.  I have a few carrots that can start being pulled, too.

Finally, I want to show you the neatest idea.  My sister-in-law came in from New Orleans for Thanksgiving and brought a creative centerpiece.  We put it on the island where we served all the feast buffet style.  She found a colorful pumpkin/gourd, cut out the top and inside and then placed herbs still in the pots into the empty pumpkin.  She used lemon balm, thyme, and rosemary, but of course you could use whatever plants you wish.  Then she got some Spanish moss and wove that around the herbs and top to hide the pots.

Isn't that the coolest idea?  We kept it in the kitchen until earlier this week when the pumpkin softened.  I took it out and composted it in the garden, but we'll have to remember this idea.  It makes a festive little gift to bring over to a friend or neighbor during the holidays.

Feeding the Bees

Even though it was 80 degrees today on December 16th, it is still considered autumn and coming up on winter.  The population of the bee colonies are diminished as the queens' egg-laying has significantly slowed.  With winter on the way, there'll not be much pollen or nectar.  We've learned that the remaining bees will huddle around the queen and beat their wings to keep the colony warm.  They will feed on stored honey in the honeycomb to sustain them until spring.

Many, if not most, beekeepers feed their bees throughout the year, but especially in the fall and winter months.  This is not really a necessary thing.  Bees don't need humans to feed them.  They do just fine on their own.  A couple of points, though.  If beekeepers have robbed most of the honey and not left them a sufficient amount to last them over the winter, it might be a good idea to do so.  

The real reason that most beekeepers feed the bees is to stimulate egg laying.  They set out jars of a sugar-water solution near the bee boxes.  The bees will find it and bring the sweet stuff back to the hive.  The queen, seeing all the 'artificial' nectar coming into the hive is fooled into thinking that the flow is on.  The flow is when Chinese tallow trees, or White dutch clover, or privet, etc. is flowering.  When the flow is on, the colony needs more workers and thus the queen begins laying eggs to support the work at hand.  In doing this, the colony has a maximum amount of workers to begin working when the REAL flow begins.  Thus, in feeding the bees, your colony is ready to go and you gain a headstart and make more honey quicker.

We can see the points on both sides of the argument, but we like to do things more naturally.  What if you could feed the bees naturally?  When we pulled honey this year, we rendered wax from all the cappings.  This left a good amount of "honey water" left over.  We froze several gallons of this.  This weekend, we poured some of this to feed the bees with their own honey.  Check it out by clicking on the arrow below:

We had two places that we fed them.  The video above is on our back patio and the photo below is on a 5 gallon bucket lid closer to the bee boxes.  They all gather and get the honey water to bring back to the bee boxes.

Some of them actually fall into the sticky honey water and drown, so we constantly go out there and rescue bees that are in distress.  Tricia got stung while playing lifeguard.  At first there was just a few, but then they go back and tell all the workers and they all come.  Pretty soon, you've got a regular party going on.

To reduce the amount of drowned bees, Tricia arranged floating 'rafts' for the bees to sit on while they drink.  She also placed sticks in the trough feeder so that they might climb in and out of the honey water in a safe manner.  It is amazing how fast the bees drink all the honey water.  By the end of the day, this is what our honey water feeder looked like:

They completely cleaned it up.  The next morning bees came to clean up any honey that was left on their fallen comrades.  Then the feeding was over.  I'm very curious to go see all this honey stored in the honeycomb in their hives.  We do have another gallon of honey water to feed, but we'll wait until mid-January before we feed them again.  We like that we are able to feed the bees naturally.  It's their honey.  We're giving some of it back to them, even if it's only a by-product of beeswax rendering.

But Wait, There's More!

The title of this post sounds like an infomercial doesn't it?  In the last post we showed you how we made some fresh mozzarella from LuLu's milk.  Once you are done with that, you are left with a big pot of whey.  Normally with whey, we use it to lacto-ferment cabbage, cucumbers, carrots, and other vegetables.  Sometimes we feed it to the chickens.  They lay more eggs after drinking it.  But today, we'll show what else you can do with your whey.

You can make homemade ricotta cheese.  To your pot of ricotta, add some whole milk.  We added a pint.  You'll heat this up to 200 degrees F.  While stirring, you pour in 1/4 cup of apple cider vinegar.  Turn off the heat.

We pour this into a colander that's been lined with muslin cloth:

What you'll notice floating in the whey is some tiny particles of protein.

We tie the muslin cloth in a knot and hang it over a bowl to catch the whey.  Tricia has rigged this apparatus with chopsticks.  Don't laugh, ha ha.  It works.

After several hours open the muslin cloth.  The cloth will contain ricotta cheese!

We put it into a bowl.  It is tasty.  You can add salt and herbs, if you'd like:

What can you do with ricotta?  Well the perfect thing to to after adding your herbs and salt is to make lasagna.  We've also grated the mozzarella into the lasagna as well.

We plate our lasagna beside some fresh picked snap beans that are still producing as the frosts have evaded us thus far.

Delicious!  And it's about a close to farm to table as you can get.