Exploring the wonderful world of God’s creeping things.

This year started out with a great desire to grow in prayer.  I designated our pantry closet as my prayer room.  I spent precious intimate hours with the Lord there.  I learned to trust and wait in the Lord once again, something we continually must cling to.  Destiny liked to rise up earlier then everyone else and join me.  What a blessing!  This pantry closet is where a lot of one to one discipline happens and lots of prayers of forgiveness with my children.

Mornings Family Worship. Here is Liberty when she cut her own hair.

Making tamales with the Pyles on New Year’s Eve.

Our Christmas decorations we gather from our backyard trees.

Merry Christmas!

Liberty maneuvered her way into piano lessons.  Even at the piano recital, she was ready to play her “piece” even though she was not scheduled to play.

Liberty loves to enjoy the outdoors.

Our edible gingerbread house. We weren’t done decorating when Nathaniel starts to eat it. It didn’t last very long.

Destiny making ginger cookies.

Growing up in the homestead is a blessing for the children.  I especially enjoy the nature around.  It is also true that a farmer’s work is never done.

Working outdoors is more fun with wheel barrow rides!

Morning chores are full of surprises and adventures. Danielle finds the goats water turned to ice. We don’t get really cold weather in Gilroy. So finding ice chunks is rare.

These pilgrim children helped gather walnuts from our walnut grove. They cracked and sold them to help their family’s economy.

We found banana slugs while hiking Mt. Madonna

God gave us the opportunity to take a tour around Lake Tahoe on the Dixie! It was a gift from a couple who was leaving the lake

Whether summer or winter, mud is always a part of these children.

Our homestead grew by the acquisition of Freya who freshened in early May.  It was a Sunday and Liberty was sick so she stayed home with me while the rest were at church.  That morning I knew Freya was giving birth that day.  As I went to check up on her, she had just had one cure little buckling.  I ran back home to gather some supplies and Liberty ran out with paper towels and immediately began to clean Newt, as we called him, and carrying around.   Well, Freya became too strong for children to manage and for me too.  Newt seemed to be part boar goat so I sold both for $300.   What a deal!  I discovered that I could have easily gotten $800 for both.

Here is Freya whom we sold because she was too strong for us. But she was a good mama to her kid.

I wanted a cross of guernsey and nubian because of the rich sweet milk of the guernseys and quantity of the nubian.  Also, I was specifically looking for a polled or disbudded buck and a doe like Faleen.  God gave us what I asked for and we acquired Beric and Amelia.  In June, Faleen freshened with two kids.  She miscarried so the kids died after a week.  I cared for them day and night for 4 days, but they didn’t make it.  It was a sad experience but I learned a lot about caring for goats and kids.

Little Beric.

We prayed for these two cutest little kids, Beric and Amelia.

How about our chickens?  All was well, until mischievous naughty neighbor dogs attacked them and killed 12 of our best layers.  Others were left wounded.  The egg sale at church stopped and we only had enough eggs for our family for the rest of the year.   We learned about treating the bugs in the coop and chickens without the harmful chemicals of course.  The children would go all around gathering wood for a bonfire.  Then they would catch the chickens and I would bathe them in the ash.  Later I would just throw it in their bathing holes and they will bathe themselves.

At the Gilroy Gardens for Liberty’s birthday.

A big project we undertook in October was organizing our church’s Reformation Night.  We had a great amount of fun.  We made this huge castle entrance out of cardboard boxes.   I sewed costumes, put together a couple of plays and the program with the help others in decorations, food and games.  It was a great evening.  The only downside is that the time was so short to really enjoy all that was planned.  We put together a couple of trailers.

Lady Jane Gray

Wiliam Wallace and Robert DeBruce

Praise God from whom all blessings flow!