The Sun in the Sky And Homemade Pie

 

From the rising of the sun unto the going down of the same the Lord's name is to be praised.  Psalm 113:3 KJV

Coming out of the garage looking due east in the morning, a few things catch your eye.  First, the sunrise really stands out.  The sun's rays at first yield a pinkish hue and then, as if to catch everyone's attention and announce, "It's morning.  Get a move on!" The yellow-red beams shine brightly.  They light up a bazillion acorns that have fallen overnight from the live oaks overhead.  It is amazing how many acorns are on the ground.  

The squirrels are going to be SO fat.  There are two less squirrels in the population.  My neighbor popped two out of the live oaks in the front.  It's squirrel season and we'll be thinning out their number.  I'm okay with them eating acorns, but when they get in the pecan trees, that's another story, entirely.

The Toyota Tacoma is in really good shape for a 2000 model, but it is in dire need of a polish.  We've done it before, but it seems to fade quickly.  That's my project for the fall.  I'm going to watch some You Tube videos on how to make your paint job come alive again and I'll use compound and a rotary buffer and then wax to make it look like new again.

It was my birthday on the 12th.  Tricia asked me what kind of cake I wanted.  Instead of a birthday cake, I chose a birthday pie.  There is nothing like homemade pie and a cup of coffee.  She asked me what kind and I answered, "Chocolate pie with meringue."  She surprised me with two pies!

The first is chocolate pie with homemade crust and meringue.  Look at the peaks on it!  It was so doggone good.  We finished it up tonight.

The second pie, the lagniappe pie, was a homemade pecan pie.  The pecans were from our trees and they were harvested before the squirrels got them.  So good and the crust was buttery and flaky.

In the late afternoon, I took a walk to check the mail at the mailbox and kept walking out into a field in front of the house and took a photo of the painting that God was doing on the canvas of the western sky.  Breathtaking!

We are so blessed.  We may not have everything we want, but we have everything we need.  Yes, from the rising to the setting sun, His Name is to be praised.

For Every Time, There is a Season

In the late afternoons, Tricia and I try to get our steps in.  We have a step counter and the goal is 10,000 steps each day.  In our 3 acre pasture, if we don't cut corners and walk the perimeter, each lap is about 700 steps.  We walk, we talk, and we enjoy the sights and sounds of a country afternoon.  We are both in our mid-50's and, though we are active people, it helps to have some sort of an organized fitness routine and hold each other accountable (because I like to eat!)

The neighbor that lives in the house bordering our pasture hollered at me last week.  He said, "You're walking as I'm about to go inside and eat McDonald's," as he held up a brown paper bag.  On our walks, Tricia and I talk about our kids, goals, to-do lists, hypothetical situations and what we'd do.  It's a nice time.  We watch Belle run like wild in the pasture.  The cows, taking advantage of the relative coolness of the afternoon, munch on grass.  We can hear the crunching as they pull the grass with their tongues.

Time is fleeting, though.  Since we passed the Summer Solstice, the days are getting shorter.  In fact, for our zip code, here are the average sunrise and sunset times for the next six months:

July                 6:20 am    8:13 pm

August            6:38 am    7:50 pm

September      6:56 am    7:15 pm

October          7:14 am    6:39 pm

November      6:37 am    5:15 pm

December      6:59 am    5:14 pm

Look specifically at the sunset times I've highlighted over the next several months.  Notice that just as the sunset is getting earlier, the sunrise is getting later.  The days are shortening.  For egg production, this is a bad time of year.  A hen's reproductive cycle is based on daylight hours.  It begins and picks up in spring when daylight hours reach 14 hours per day.  As the days get shorter, the amount of eggs the hens lay are reduced.  

We've pulled down our "Eggs For Sale" sign down that we keep posted by the road.  We have loyal customers and all are on the honor system.  We have an outdoor fridge in the garage and they pick up the amount of eggs they need and leave money in the butter dish in the fridge.  We're picking up only a dozen a day max right now and that's not enough for us to eat AND sell.  Our principle is to "eat all you can and sell the rest."  Right now, there's none left over to sell.

Our hens roam free on the 3 acre pasture, eating bugs, worms, grass, frogs, and whatever else they find to eat.  The yolks are rich and dark yellow.  The solution to increase egg production in the shortened days would be to put lights in our henhouse.  That's what the big egg production companies do to maximize production.  We decided not to do that early on.  Just as we need a break, the hens do, too!  We let them rest in the fall and winter.  They'll pick back up in the spring.

Riding off into the Sunset

Image Credit

Riding off into the sunset evokes a feeling of finality.  In other words, "my work here is done, it is time for me to go."  Happy trails to you... and all that.  As I was gathering my thoughts tonight for the blog post, the visual of riding off into the sunset came to mind.  Not because anything is ending.  As a matter of fact, a new beginning has occurred as I posted about IN THIS POST. 

The reason the riding off into the sunset imagery comes to mind is that that is exactly what I'm doing now in my new job.  An old friend from when I was the Business office manager at the Jennings Hospital told me that his cardinal rule for accepting employment is that his workplace must always be located west of where he lived.  I didn't understand why that geography played such a determining factor in his employment decision until he clarified and told me that if you live east of where you worked, well then on your morning commute, the rising sun would always be at your back and consequently, the setting sun would be at your back on your commute home in the afternoon.

That makes perfect sense, doesn't it?  I violated my former coworker's rule and now I see why that was an important factor to him.  I have been getting my money's worth out of my sunglasses - that's for sure!  The commute to work to my new job is exactly the same mileage as the commute to my old job, but it takes me between 5-10 minutes less to get there, because it is primarily all Interstate 10 miles (with no red lights or school zones.)  But in the morning... Yep, the sun is right in my eyes. Same thing on the way home.  It is as if I-10 is the runway for the sun.

How is the actual job itself?  Well, I'm the General Manager of a Restoration Company and I have zero knowledge of construction, so my learning curve is quite steep!  I have been learning new computer systems and new policies and procedures and just a whole new line of work.  With the flooding damage in the area, we're busier than a mosquito at a nudist colony.  It has been only three full days on the job, but I can see that it will be months before I am fully trained and comfortable in the new job.

Because of the shorter days, it gets dark faster and there's not a lot of time to get things done around the house when I get off in the afternoon like earlier in the summer.  And I have a lot of garden work to do!  Until I have an opportunity on weekends to get out and about and get some things done around the homestead like till, pull up rows and plant the Fall 2016 garden, I won't have many photos or stories to share with you, but I'll do my best to keep my ramblings going as much as I can.  It is not time for me to ride off into the sunset yet in that regard - just on my way home from work.

A New Day Dawns…

So Monday of this week I submitted my two week notice at work.  I would like to be able to tell you that at 49 years and 10 months old, I am able to retire and live off the land on our little homestead farm.  Alas, that is not the case.  I wish I could announce that, but I cannot.  I’m going to pursue a job doing something that I don’t have any experience doing.  Sounds like an adventure, doesn’t it?  So at the beginning of September, a new day will dawn for me.

But that’s not really what I want to talk about today.  I’m a creature of habit.  I get up at a certain time, go through the same morning rituals and glance at the clock to gauge my progress.  I know I need to be out of bed at 5:30 am and back inside the door from morning milking and feeding by 6:10 am at the latest in order to shower, shave, dress, grab my lunch and a coffee and be out the door by 6:30 am.  Most days that puts me turning off the road and pulling up on the on ramp of Interstate 10 heading west at 6:36 am and arriving in my parking lot at the office at 7:21 am.

I changed my morning routine the other day and instead of hitting the blacktop road, I made a circuitous route down some gravel roads behind the house to check out results of the recent flooding.  There was a big “Road Closed” sign up across the road as I tried to drive westward, so as I looped back, I was driving due east down the road that runs right by our little church.  The sun was just rising in the eastern sky and if I had my camera versus my old phone camera, this would’ve been a nice picture.

The day was brand new.  There was no traffic on the country road and it was quiet outside if you ignored the roosters announcing the arrival of dawn.  There was a fog rising off of the dew-drenched landscape.  The air was clean and a little cool in the shadows of the new day, as if it was holding on stubbornly before succumbing to the humid, sweltering August day that lay ahead.  A new day awaits.

Regardless of the mistakes made yesterday, we have an opportunity to wake up and try to make things better.  The goals set that we didn’t reach yesterday can be sought after again.  There is hope that the trials, pain, stress, and uncertainty we faced yesterday will be gone or reduced in this brand new day.  It is as if the slate has been wiped clean and you have a new start.  A do-over.  We have 1,440 minutes or 86,400 seconds to get it right this time.  Unlike in the Olympics, there are no starting blocks and no blast from the starting gun to alert you to get things underway.  There are really no markers to let us know that we are on the right course.

It is up to us individually.  Except it is not.  A new beginning awaits, but we are not alone.  We put our faith in Him to lead us and we pray that we have the good sense to follow Him.  A new day dawns…  And He is Faithful!

Lamentations 3:22-24

²² The Lord’s lovingkindnesses indeed never cease,
For His compassions never fail.
²³ They are new every morning;
Great is Your faithfulness.
²⁴ “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,
“Therefore I have hope in Him.”

At The End of the Day

Ecclesiastes 1 New American Standard Bible (NASB)

1 The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.

² “Vanity of vanities,” says the Preacher,
“Vanity of vanities! All is vanity.”

³ What advantage does man have in all his work
Which he does under the sun?
⁴ A generation goes and a generation comes,
But the earth remains forever.
⁵ Also, the sun rises and the sun sets;
And hastening to its place it rises there again.

The repetitive cycles of the seasons and the days always intrigue me.  Each morning the sun rises in the eastern sky and each evening it takes its place in the west slowly dipping beneath the horizon until all that is left is a brilliant tableau of God’s handiwork.  I like to walk out across the land during that time and just observe and listen as everything around me – both man and beast – prepare to rest after a full day.

It is not only the sun that moves in a predictable pattern.  Animals have set routines as well.  Each of our (oh, I don’t know 70, maybe?) chickens has their own personal roosting place where they sleep at night.  Some roost in the hen house.  Some roost out in the chicken tractors.  Some roost atop the woodpile.  And there is a new group that has taken a liking to roosting on top of the hay ring.

Settling in for a long summer's nap

These four birds – three barred rocks and an Aracauna, are settling in for the evening and I really like the silhouette of them against the painted sunset.  These old girls probably gossip a bit about scandalous barnyard happenings before closing their eyes and dreaming about whatever chickens dream about – worms or bugs, maybe?

A balancing act

How in the world do they sleep balancing on the top pipe of the hay ring?  Anyway, they sleep there until around 5:30 the next morning when they hear the creak of the gate latch as we sleepwalk into the pasture with our milking buckets.  Then they hop down and follow us to the barn, eagerly anticipating the hearty breakfast that we’ve prepared for them – a bucket of fermented grain and laying pellets.

As I walk back to the house this evening, I hear the sound of cars and trucks passing by on the road home, neighbors heading back to their own “roosting spots” after a full day and I take another look at the sunset.

Before I walk inside to see what Tricia has cooking in the pot for supper, I take a last look out in the pasture and take in the stillness of the evening and capture a full moon rising up over the barn, illuminating the landscape.  The cows are appreciative of the moonlight as they’ll take advantage of the lighting to eat grass out in the pasture past their normal bedtime.

A Full Moon on the Rise...

As for me?  Well, I’ll go inside and eat a nice meal and enjoy my own routine until bedtime, and then we’ll get up and do it all over again tomorrow.  The sun also rises tomorrow...