Sometimes daily journal of the life of a Christian Agrarian Separatist trying to homestead and live in Christian Community by God's grace in the center of the Republic of Texas.
9.28.2006
When it doesn't rain, it pours, 2nd try
9/28/06 - 5th Day - Before Supper. I wrote this long journal entry for today, then my computer crashed and it got lost. Now my blood pressure is up and this probably won't come across very well.
Ok, so usually September 1st is when we start healing from the summer drought in funds. This year the term "drought" has taken on a deeper meaning. Clearly, the drought ain't over. The year usually goes this way:
In September we start getting donations after a very "skinny" summer. This is usually the "good" time until the middle of December. Since we do not celebrate krismas or any of those pagan holidays, nor do we manipulate people emotionally so they will feel guilty during the time they celebrate the supposed birth of their "god", donations virtually end in the middle of December. Most worldly ministries make about 80-90% of their budget in the last two weeks of December. This ministry survives through those two weeks off of stored food.
Usually about the 2nd week of January, things pick up a little and stay fairly steady until after Spring Ranchfest. Then they die for the long "dry time" of the Summer until Sept. 1 again. I don't know why things usually happen that way, but apparently HAARP is also affecting our wallet, because this year has not gone that way at all. It started lean and got worse. Usually we get our biggest burst of funds the month before Ranchfest, for food, supplies, materials, etc. Not this year.
I suppose it is me.
So, the truck has been acting up, and I think it is the transmission. Go figure.
Don't go to a hospital unless you want to die, or unless you have no other options. I have said that a lot, and I said it again the other day. Well, today my cousin died in a hospital. She went in to have a pin taken out from a wreck she had some time ago. She came out of surgery alright, then just died. They say she "threw a clot", which is hospital speak for, "we probably killed her, but it was an accident".
I have been working with Pita, and we are still working on the root cellar. God will provide. Ranchfest starts next week.
9/27/06 - 4th Day - Mid-Afternoon. So we have now had about a day and a half of working to train Pita. It is not going bad, though I think we started her a bit later than we should have. She is big and strong, so it takes all I have to keep her under control. She is doing fairly well though. She has "whoa" down pretty good, and will stand still and not try to bolt. She does "Giddup" alright, so long as it is in a direction she wants to go. If I am going another direction, then it is really brute force so far, although it is getting better. We will probably start Pedro here in the next week, since he is quite a bit smaller than Pita, and should be easier to handle. I have been reading about training work animals, especially oxen, so I am hoping to learn this over the next couple of years. I don't think I will ever own a tractor, so I best get my animals trained right now. It would be great if someone here knew how to do this. I read a lot on the internet and in books, then try to go out and do it. Which, come to think of it, is how I've learned most everything I know how to do.
Last night we had a sermon. Galatians the 6th Chapter. It feels good to get another commentary under my belt. Now I turn my attention back to finishing Isaiah and Revelation. I am also studying Genesis, because that will likely be the next commentary I start.
The people at the State Park said we can no longer take water from the park, so we have made a deal with the lady at the Texas Ranger Motel to get water until someone here at the land gets a well. The dryness has set in again, and we are in need of rain. The two inches we got this month are a memory now that it has been dry for two weeks. The weather is literally hot and cold. We have several days of cool weather (mid 70's to 80) and then a day or two of hot weather. Yesterday was nice and cool, and today it is currently 97 degrees. It has been as low as 48 in the mornings, though this morning it was in the high 50's. Tomorrow is supposed to be in the high 70's.
Looking forward to Ranchfest, the prognosticators say we should have weather in the mid 80's during the day and high 50's to 60's at night, so it ought to be great camping weather. It will be funny if it rains during Ranchfest... though we would still welcome it.
We are really looking forward to all the new folks who will be moving down over the next year. We just passed the one year mark for David and Susan, and Danielle and the children will have been here for one year in early November. If the Lord wills, by this time next year we will have a good and populous community going. So much can really be done in one year, and we are a testament to that.
The pig is growing good. I am estimating that we should be able to take him to the butcher in about a month. That should give us some good meat for winter. I look forward to the day when we can take our first cow to the butcher, but that might have to wait until we finish the root cellar and we have more room for storage.
9/26/06 - 3rd Day - Before Breakfast. Ok, you might think "he has really slowed down his posts to this journal. This is hardly a 'daily' journal", but that really isn't true. I mean, it is true, but it doesn't seem to be true to me. Like yesterday, I got on here and thought about everything I wanted to write. Then something occured to me in my mind and I ran off to do that, and talked about the stuff I was going to write with a few people via email, and it just seems to me like I wrote in the blog, but lo and behold I didn't. So this morning when I sat down to write, it really shocked me that I didn't blog yesterday because it seems to me like I did... Maybe I have Bunkinsons Disease. I have the same problem with my wife. I talk to so many people about so many things, that it seems to me like I talked to her about it too, but then she says, "you never told me about that, I had to read it online". So she says she finds out everything about me online, which may not be good.
Ok, so we have been trying to catch Pita our oldest calf for about a week, because we want to loosen her halter and because we want to start training her, but we had not been successful. She is VERY smart. She is VERY fast. She has gotten very big and she is very skittish. I have no idea why she is skittish, but she knows what is going down long before the other cows do. If she sees us grab the lariat, she is GONE. She is the most skittish of all the cattle, and she does not cooperate by doing stupid things like the other cows do (like running into the corral to get away from us). So we have been on this mission to catch Pita. Here is a list of the things that make it difficult, despite the things listed about Pita:
1. We are not practiced ropers. In fact, we are not very good at all.
2. We don't have a horse or even a 4-wheeler.
3. The pasture the cows are in is pretty big.
These things conspire to make catching Pita a pretty hard task. So yesterday I told the fellas to take the pickup and one of them get in the bed and the other drive and see if you can rope her and bring her in. Well, I see them tearing around the pasture for a good thirty minutes stirring up dust with no success, so I decide to go help. By this time the children and just about everyone else are lined up on the fence line yelling "Pita! Pita! Pita!". I had told the guys, the least you can do is run her until she gets tired and just stops. But we learned... Pita DOES NOT STOP. So I got in the bed of the truck to try to rope her. I don't think a single throw got within 10 feet of her. Part of that was because I am a poor roper, but part of it was because Mark is a very poor cutting-truck driver. So then I retired myself to driving. I am a very good cutting-truck driver, and we had done this once before years ago, so I kept her running while the guys tried to rope her with no success. So our new plan became...
Y'all wait until she gets tired and slows down, then jump off the truck and try to tackle her. I mean, we had been running her for well over an hour and she was showing little signs of tiring. She would slow down every once in awhile, and Mark and Mihai would launch themselves off the bed of the truck and try to snag her, but each time they did this, she would have a burst of speed and be gone. This went on for another 20 minutes until finally I started cutting her away from the herd while trying to drive her into a corner or into an angle where both guys could jump out and try to pin her. Several times the fellas jumped off the truck and Mihai dove to tackle Pita, but she would break free. She is a large, very muscular calf and she is fast! The cheering section for Pita is now growing tired, and the sun has set and we are chasing this cow in a Dodge Ram pickup truck by headlights. Finally we trap her in the entrance area to the corral. This time we ALL dismount, and I go diving out of the truck like a bad episode of cops. We finally pin her against a fence and Mihai dives in to tackle her, but she is breaking free because she is sooo strong. So I jump on her head and get hold of her halter while Mark comes diving in on top of Mihai to stop her from struggling. Pita is ours! A smattering of applause rises above the dust from the crowd gathered at the fence line. We finally caught Pita. We got her roped off in the corral, and will start some training with her today.. Lord Willing.
9/22/06 - 6th Day - Mid-Afternoon. We've had our hands full with a few more crisis. To read about them Click Here.
Things are going well and we are continuing our work here. We pray that others are edified by our lives here, and that God is glorified by them.
The Sabbath comes and we are grateful for it. We always prize and look forward to the Sabbath. We ask that you continue in prayer for rain for us, and that you pray that God will send us what we need to get a water-well.
9/21/06 - 5th Day - After Breakfast. Once again I have fallen behind in this journal. The weather remains seasonal, but we did have a couple of very cool mornings this week. We had about 1/4 of rain over the weekend, and got a few sprinkles this morning. Today is the first day of fall, and after this long, hot summer I am looking forward to fall and winter. Things are still pretty green and we have had some mosquitos for the first time this year.
We have been getting good quantities of milk, and I have been very pleased at the way the milk cows are behaving this week. We have been getting enough milk for ourselves and for cooking, and still some left over for the pig, which is good. I would love to go get the other pig, but I will have to wait until I get some money for it. Danielle is still picking up some milk and butter from her "milk ladies" friends, which will give us some more milk for fattening up the pig.
The fellas and I have been working on the root cellar and the fall garden. We got the second wall up in the root cellar, and the third should go up pretty quickly. Then we can begin to work on supporting the roof, etc. This has been a long process, and it is still a long way from being finished, but it has been very educational and rewarding. Right now the fellas are preparing some of the garden rows for me to go and plant lettuce and spinach, etc. Then we have to head to Coleman to get some lag bolts for the third wall in the root cellar. Today is Danielle's laundry day, so she will be gone most of the day.
David is putting together the plans for his new barn, which we should be raising during Ranchfest in October. September is almost gone... wow.
I also want to try to finish Galatians either today or tomorrow. God Willing.
9/17/06 - Lord's Day - Before Breakfast. Well, after a week of trying to get the cows back milking regularly, we finally had a normal morning. The arrival of the pig a week ago really threw things off. The pig freaked out the cows and they would not come down to be milked for several days. Then only Holga would come down... Ami wouldn't. So we milked Holga for two days and on both days she threw a fit and wouldn't hold still. We did manage to get a single quart from Holga yesterday. So last evening we got them both down and into the corral on time, and this morning they both lined up and were patient while the milking process happened. It started to sprinkle toward the end, but it all went well enough.
We had a great sabbath. I have been reading and studying in Genesis and also reading the John Gill Commentary on Genesis in hardback. What a great book, and it is so prophetic too. Our neighbor Homer came by and said our hay field is looking really, really good, and if we can get some rain we should get another cutting in a month or so. He said hay is going for $75 a round bale, so this looks very good for us. We pray that God sends enough rain to make this another profitable round of hay cutting. It should (DV) also provide us with enough hay to get through the winter.
Depending on if we get any rain today, we will have to go to town. Money is very, very tight, but we are out of fuel for the generator and we have some supplies to get. They are calling for rain on and off today. We didn't get much this morning, just some sprinkles though.
We are excited about Ranchfest coming in a few weeks. It looks like we should have a pretty good showing, with several different families coming down to visit.
Gas prices are dropping prior to the election, just like I said they would. I am hoping that they go WAY down so we can stock up if we get the opportunity. Expect them to go back up after the election in November.
9/15/06 - 6th Day - Before Dinner. This is an Agrarian journal, and I try to keep it somewhat separate from the other things I do, but sometimes when I spend a couple of days doing ministry work inside, my frustration may boil over into the more peaceful Agrarian side of my work. I hope that that isn't the case too often. I am constantly being attacked, usually from without but sometimes from within, and sometimes I understand completely why. But sometimes it baffles me why people do the bizarre and senseless things they do. I do know that the world hates this way of life, and when someone is a vocal proponent of it (and especially the separatist and holiness aspects of Christian Agrarianism) then that person is going to get the brunt of the attacks. So be it.
So I am continuing my experimentation with Mesquite pods/beans. I started a bottle of Mesquite something. I don't know whether we will drink it as wine, a malted beverage, or if I will make it into some type of other alcoholic beverage. I am jokingly calling it Mesquitequila or Mesquila. I think I wrote that I made Mesquite syrup the other day. We haven't made pancakes to try it out yet, but the process went well.
So... what is this "Process" Driven Life? I've written about it quite a bit, but the "process" driven life (as opposed to the stupid and un-biblical "purpose" driven life) recognizes God's sovereignty over all of creation, and denies that man is capable of achieving any purpose outside of God's will (secret, decreed, or declared), and that all man is called to do is be obedient and not look to "ends" which are out of his control, or to anything other than the process of obedience every day. For example, we, as the people of God, are commanded to take dominion over the earth, and to till the ground, and to work and manage God's creation. This is a "process" over which we have control (only) over our obedience each minute and each day. We cannot bring about results, because results are in God's hands. If God chooses to prosper our way, He may do so. If God chooses to chastise us as children, and bring to naught our labors, then we only pray that He be glorified in it. The Bible says that we have no power at all to turn one hair white or black. We cannot control our next breath, and there is no way that we can bring about any "end" that is outside of the eternal purposes of God for His world and creation. Everything is done with this understanding... IF THE LORD WILLS. You will also often find me using the initials DV (usually in parenthesis like these). DV means Deo Volunte which means, "If the Lord wills", or "Lord willing".
For we who are Christian Agrarian Separatists, we pray that God keeps us mindful of HIS purposes, and that He keeps us process driven. May we be obedient day by day, not looking to ends outside of the glorification of God and the divine honor of Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior.
9/14/06 - 5th Day - After Breakfast. I apologize for being away from the blog for a few days, I was out of town. This will be a quick update, then maybe I will blog some more later.
I ran up to the old house in Smyer for a couple days to pick up some things and to see what work needs to be done for us to sell the house. The panhandle of Texas has had quite a bit of rain, and the grass/weeds were tall and green. Gas is cheaper up there too. I paid $2.34 a gallon at Sam's Club in Lubbock, then paid $2.13 a gallon in Abilene on the way home.
I picked up some fencing materials from our old barn (not the sword-fighting kind, but the keeping animals in/out kind), our big antique dinner bell, our lawn mower, some gas cans, and about 10 boxes of books and other things.
Getting the pig has really upset the cows. They spent about 2 days staring at the pig pen, and they wouldn't come anywhere near that whole area of the pasture, including coming down to the corral where we need to milk them. So the two milk cows wouldn't come down for 2 days. Yesterday we got Holga to come down and we locked her up overnight and milked her this morning. Ami still wouldn't come down, but we are hopeful that she will tonight. They seem to be getting less afraid of the mysterious presence in the pig pen.
9/11/06 - 2nd Day - After Lunch. This morning was another of those picture perfect mornings. Ami was really giving up the milk, and I felt certain we were going to have a record day. Holga stepped right up when it was her turn, and things were going well so I turned the reins (teats) over to Tracy. Well, Holga moved and stepped right in the bucket, ruining the milk. Argggh. So later in the morning we called some neighbors who had posted a sign at the Santa Anna grocery that they had some pigs that would be weaned in a few weeks. I called them and it turned out they had two hogs each at about 130 lbs. that they wanted to sell too. I bought one for $75 that we can fatten up for about 30-45 days, and I think I am going to buy the other one too if I get some money. We'll probably keep the second one as a hog for mating purposes.
So we drove over to these folks ranch (about 3-4 miles away) and picked up our new pig. He is already named "Bacon". How unimaginative. When we had our first pig we at least named him "Sir Francis Bacon". Anyway, this hogs name is just Bacon. So we got Bacon into the truck (we had a goat cage in the back) with some struggling and much screaming. He is a good, tame pig, but didn't like being manhandled into the truck box. Our pigpen, built months and months ago for this purpose, is now being used for the purpose for which it was built. I didn't buy any of the piglets, because the guy wanted too much for them. I still hope to find 4-5 good piglets at a good price, and soon. So we thank God for His provision once again.
So now we have 2 cows and 2 calves, about 50 chickens, 1 blind goat, 1 crazy goose who thinks he is a dog or a person, and a hog.
We had a great Lord's Day, with good fellowship and good singing. The sermon last night was on Matthew 12 (Devils), and I hope to get it uploaded fairly soon.
We are looking forward to Ranchfest, and are working hard on preparing the fall garden.
9/10/06 - Lord's Day - Before Breakfast. The Milking went good this morning. The weather has been near perfect, and the cows have been quite well behaved and accomodating. The Sabbath was a great blessing. We went to Santa Anna for breakfast with the Elder David and his wife Susan. Then we came back to the ranch and did some reading and study. It was a nice, quiet sabbath. I have been reading in Volume 2 of John Gill's Sermons and Tracts, and in Gill's Commentary on Genesis. I also started Thomas Shepard's The Parable of the Ten Virgins again. It never ceases to amaze me how the Lord will be teaching me on a particular topic, and no matter what I read, the reading focuses on that topic almost exclusively.
We are beginning to get prepared for Fall Ranchfest 2006. I believe we are going to be having a barn raising for Elder David, and we will have a few other minor projects here on the ranch. I look forward to it. There has been some good information on some local motels posted on the BiblicalAgrarianism.com forum.
We have the fall garden just about ready for planting, and will be back to work on it after the Lord's Day. I am looking forward to it quite a bit. One of the weather prognosticators I read regularly is saying we are entering into an limited "El Nino" event. This could mean a cold, wet winter for us here at the ranch. We desperately need the "wet" part, though I am not excited about the "cold" part. But I will take what the Lord gives, because we certainly need the moisture to replenish the land and the ponds.
Hunting season goes on (mainly dove now). It hasn't been as busy as the first weekend. We saw a few hunters in town, and hear the shotgun blasts every once in awhile. November 4 is the start of deer season, so we will see more hunters then.
The other day Danielle and the children went and got little Sarah Grace's new blind goat. Her name is "Helen Keller", or just Helen for short. The real Helen Keller was a goat too. This baby she-goat is funny to watch. Anyway, she does really well with the children, and she will walk at "heal" if she can hear your footsteps, and will follow you if you walk around. She hates to be alone, and when we stake her out in some grass or weeds to eat, she will bawl if she thinks she is there alone. I started to teach her to lay down and "stay" like a dog, because if you don't, she will walk around in circles and wear herself out and not take time to chew her cud. It is the cutest thing in the world to watch little Sarah (barely 3) leading Helen around with a short hand lead. She makes sure to have Helen on her right side and will walk with her until we tell her to stop. "The blind leading the blind" I say. Sarah has done really well with Helen, and is very excited to have her own pet at last. She informs everyone that Helen is blind and that she can "only see shadows". The cows and cats are fascinated with her, but Gary the Goose does not like her at all and he will go after her if we don't watch him closely.
Pedro (the bull calf) and Pita (the heifer calf) are doing really well. Pita is already very big, and we put a halter on her last week. She is a bit spooky and will not let you touch her usually. We have some work to do with her. Pedro is doing really well too, and he loves to run with Pita and Tiara (David's heifer calf). We have a good herd of Longhorn cows and I am well pleased with them. We are currently getting about 1/2 gallon of milk a day, which is plenty for our purposes, although we could use more if we are going to get pigs soon. We could get more but I do not want to pull the calves off of the cows, so we are only doing one milking a day.
I can feel that autumn is not far off, and it is coming up on a year since we have been living on the land full time. I came out here in June/July and began living out here in August I think. But the children and Danielle came out in October, so they are coming up on a year on the land. We have gotten a lot done in one year.
Anyway, it's almost time for breakfast so I must go. God Bless you all.
9/08/06 - 6th Day - Before Breakfast.We are getting more milk now, and it seems to be increasing daily. The two milk cows are now fairly well trained, and Holga waits her turn until Ami is finished, then Ami heads out of the corral and Holga steps up to be milked. Things went well this morning. I wasn't too shocked to see that the flies were out pretty thick this morning, and they keep at their job even early, early in the morning. Flies have very short lives, and they don't waste them.
The last couple of days have been absolutely beautiful, with blue, clear skies and temperatures in the low 80's. The prognosticators are calling for a probability of rain this weekend and early into next week, and it would be a perfect time for it if we could get some. We have the garden pretty well ready to plant, and just as we got done yesterday we got a package in from an old friend and it was a huge box of assorted garden seeds. About a half-dozen of our tomato plants and pepper plants survived the drought, but everything else got plowed up and tilled. We still have some grooming to do on the garden early next week, then we should be planting.
I chopped some more wood yesterday, and we went to Brownwood to get a sharpening tool to sharpen the axes and other tools. Sharp tools certainly help make the job more enjoyable and easier. I also made Mesquite syrup. Hopefully sometime next week we will make some Mesquite pancakes and I will eat mine with Mesquite syrup. It will be interesting. Today, the fellas are going out to help Frank with his fencing, and Danielle and the children are going to pick up their blind goat. So I will be alone here for awhile and should be able to get some writing done. The Sabbath is upon us again, and as always, we look forward to it. I have been reading in the hard copy of John Gill's Commentary on Genesis, studying for my own Commentary on that book that (Lord Willing) will begin next year some time. I am also still reading in his Sermons and Tracts, Volume 2 (of 6).
Supper on Wednesday was grilled pork chops with green beans and handmade wheat biscuits (Danielle grinds the grain herself). Supper last night was a large salad with chopped brisket.
9/06/06 - 4th Day - Before Supper. We fellas stayed up too late last night and it was somewhat regrettable at 4:30, but we got the cows milked and after breakfast we went back to sleep for a few hours. In the long run the fellowship was worth it, but you sure feel your age when you do that.
We (the guys) went to the park for water and showers, then ran errands in Bangs and Santa Anna, including picking up about 9 bags of feed. By next year I pray (Lord Willing) we are growing most of our own feed, and pasture raising most of our animals and birds.
Danielle has been building a little "doghouse" for a blind goat she is getting for Sarah. Don't ask me, I just work here.
The guys have been working on preparing the garden for the fall planting, and I have been splitting wood. Once again, you stay up late and get up early and then split wood and you begin to feel your age. We want to have about 6 cords of wood split and stacked before winter to build up our emergency stash. A good part of that wood has already been cut and is laying in piles around the land. We will have a good mix of mesquite and oak wood.
I have had the children gathering mesquite pods for coffee, meal and other purposes. I am currently testing the "Mesquite Molasses" recipe that was posted yesterday on the BiblicalAgrarianism.com site. I will keep you updated on that, to see if it works out well. We might have a breakfast of Mesquite pancakes and Mesquite syrup sometime this week. It has kept the children busy when they are not doing their school work.
It is exciting to see the land so green, and to enjoy such cool temps. Today was a real blessing. It is also a great blessing to have close, like-minded brethren to work with and commune with every day. I look forward to Ranchfest coming up next month, it should be a great time.
Well, it sounds like Mihai is done with my axe and is back working in the garden, so I will go split a few more logs before dinner time.
9/05/06 - 3rd Day - Early Morning. Almost 6 a.m. The rains over the last two days have added up to about 1/2 inch; it doesn't seem like much to y'all, but it came slow and over two days and it really gave the ground a good soak. We have received about 2 1/2" over about 10 days, which is great. Maybe the drought is broke?
Milking two cows every morning now. Still not getting much milk, but enough for what we use. Holga is doing great. She has taken to being milked really well. She doesn't like the sweet grains as much though and gets distracted unless we give her some range cubes to eat. It was muddy and a mess in the corral this morning. The bugs are out in force with the rains of late, and it is easy to see how people might just get frustrated and say, "Hey, why not just get milk from the store or from the "milk lady"?" But we need to be milking our own cows. We are trying to get to where we support ourselves, and this is a major part of that concept. So we get up every morning and milk these cows.
The wet and mud has prevented us from doing much work the last couple of days. On the Sabbath we rested and read, and then that night we had live Q&A. It was really good, and we had some good questions. Folks stayed until well after dark and it was a great time of fellowship. On the Lord's Day we had singing at 10, then fellowship meal at around noon. Fresh smoked brisket, some great noodles, fried potatoes... hmmmm... I can say that you will never have a better meal than here on the Lord's Day. We were going to watch a movie that night, but several of us stayed up late on the porch talking, so we put off the movie until yesterday afternoon.
Yesterday, Danielle and I had to run to Brownwood to get chicken feed, since we were out and all the local stores were closed for "labor day". I guess I don't get the concept of taking a day off for "labor", when people do so little real work in the first place. I really hate the world's "holydays". Anyway, we needed feed, so we took the trek to Brownwood. I had $31 in my account, and it cost about $20 for two bags of feed and a bag of catfood for the cats.
As predicted I have been seeing more snakes about. The children found two on the Lord's Day (a garter snake and a yellow-bellied water snake). Then Danielle and I saw a huge dead rattler on the road coming back from getting feed.
September 1st is the beginning of hunting season, and this is really the hunting capitol of the world. The hunters are in town in force, and Santa Anna was full to the brim over the weekend. I can't help at laugh at people who will spend tens of thousands in lease fees, camo clothing, vehicles, four-wheelers, campers, gear, food, etc. to shoot enough dove for a few dinners. The shots were ringing out pretty regularly over the weekend, but pretty much stopped when the rains came. Thank God for rain. I suppose I should be glad that folks spend so much money in the area during hunting season. They're only around for about 5 months (actually only 3-4 altogether), and then they are gone for the rest of the year and things go back to normal. Hunting is good for the economy, and it keeps the wildlife in check, so I suppose the stupidity of the modern hunting mentality should be overlooked. The other day, we passed some hunters in a $60,000 Mercedes SUV and I couldn't help but laugh though. They were lined up in Santa Anna with their $45,000 pickup trucks towing trailers with $8,000 off-road camo golf carts. Funny. I asked the guys... "I wonder if there are any dove today who are dead because of camo? I bet I could get next to a good water tank with a flashing Santa suit and shoot 15 dove in an hour".
Ok, so the work is on hold because of money and mud. But, I should get some reading done, and will try to finish Galatians over the next couple of days.
9/01/06 - 6th Day - Afternoon. The last couple of days I have been catch-up days for me. I have been replying to emails, finishing the latest Q&A Friday installment, and today I started on the introduction for The Last Pilgrims book.
I am about to go work with Holga and Pedro since I hope to start milking Holga next week.
Here is how I made the Mesquite Bean Coffee:
I had the children gather a full, large bowl of ripe mesquite pods. Not the ones that have already dried and have become solid, but pods where the beans inside are still a bit gummy and moist. Then I had the children remove the beans from the pods and place them into a bowl. At this point they are quite gummy and they stick together. This is beginning to sound like I had the children do all the work, but what is leadership if it isn't delegation?
Then I had Tracy spread the beans on foil and place them in the solar oven for a couple of hours.
After a few hours they were quite browned and some were blackened. At this point, the beans smell AWESOME. Very much like sugar and cinnamon.
I scraped them into a bowl and then put a couple of good sized handfuls into my coffee grinder. The grinder tends to separate the bean hull from the insides. It powderizes the insides and just splits the hulls. I want both in my coffee because the "roasting" is on the hulls, and all the good healthy stuff is on the inside. So I dumped the whole thing into a camp coffee pot and brought it to a boil. As soon as it began to boil, I turned off the heat and poured it through a coffee filter. The next pot I didn't use the filter at all, I just did it the same way I cook camp coffee. I let it set for a minute, then poured a couple of ounces of cool water over the top and this causes the grounds to settle. Then I poured a full cup.
This is a robust, very flavorful "gourmet" coffee. It does take like real coffee, but with cinnamon and maybe some honey smell to it. I like it alot.
I am a writer, commentator, and the General Editor of several websites. I live with my family (6 of us) on 37 acres in a Christian Agrarian Community in Central Texas. We do our best to support ourselves from our land, and we raise Pure Longhorn cattle, goats, pigs, chickens, rabbits, vegetables, and other crops. Some of you have asked for my snail mail address, so here it is: M. Bunker 1251 CR 132, Santa Anna, Texas 76878
