December 25th

Weather/Nature

A frosty week, our longest stretch of cold weather with four mornings in a row in the low 20’s. Milder weather here now for Christmas. The longest night of the year now behind us, we are finding a winter routine of lots of reading, wood fires, and the occasional basketball game on the radio.

Erica and I went on a walk around the property and stumbled across a deer antler, recently shed by a buck. It seems a little early from what I’ve read, but I don’t know. Pretty neat though, and makes a nice bookshelf decoration.

Down On The Farm

More wood chopping, stacking and organizing. We are learning to stage wood from the woodpile on the porch for easier access. It seems like kindling is always in short supply.

We got those corral panels up and secured this week. Now we are just waiting to get the call that our Jersey milk cow, Daisy, is penned and ready for us to pick her up. We have the hay in the barn to get her through the winter, and in our first year I hope to have our hay pasture custom baled by a neighbor since I don’t have any equipment. We are thinking through whether or not we want a perimeter fence, and what material would be best.

Best Thing We Ate

Christmas Dinner of ham and all the fixins. Close second was Quinn’s breakfast cinnamon buns on Tuesday.

From Family Worship

We’ve been listening to Handel’s Messiah this Advent season, taking a new section a few times a week. There’s a book we have that explains what to listen for in the music to help get the most out of it, which is helpful. What a masterpiece.

Other Happenings

On Monday night we went to a basketball game where our local Clay County Bulldogs took on visiting Hampton High School in the Clay County Christmas Classic. Our local small town team, the Bulldogs, won the state championship last year led by Grant Strong, named Mr. Basketball. There’s a buzz about him and the team in this little town of 1,500, and the parallels to the great movie “Hoosiers” are hard to miss. And he did not disappoint, scoring 46 with 12 rebounds in the win. Great gym and a great atmosphere. They take their basketball seriously here. Pleasantly surprised to see the Ten Commandments still hanging up in the school.

After 6 weeks of using folding tables and flattened cardboard boxes for countertops, our “real” countertops finally got installed this week, along with our kitchen sink. While we very much appreciate these things, their absence reminded us how adaptable people can be when needed.

Other evening projects this week included putting up some lattice on the porch nearest the road to provide some additional privacy, and caulking tubs, sinks, toilets and trim. Now we’ll turn our attention to the master closet.

Christmas Eve was quiet and enjoyable, but we missed the long-standing tradition of gathering at my grandma’s house with the family. Phone calls had to suffice. Christmas morning was the usual wonderful flurry of seeing if Santa came, stockings, presents and general mirth. We are blessed beyond the telling.

I’ll post Christmas pictures next week once I get them from Erica.

December 18th

Weather/Nature

Rainy and warm this week, but temps are dropping now, should be in the 30’s most of the day tomorrow. There’s still a lot of talk about last week’s tornadoes, and understandably so. The local paper reported we had straight line winds here in the neighborhood of 55-60 mph, and the more we get around the more we see trees down but only minor damage. A poultry house with 10,000 chickens on the west side of town was destroyed by a small tornado – what a way to go for birds kept indoors and unable to fly.

Speaking of birds, our bird feeders haven’t been visited much, but there are lots of birds around. At this point I’m sure they’re all winter residents and that migration is a thing of the past. Carolina Chickadees, Song Sparrows, Tufted Titmice, Yellow-Rumped Warblers, Carolina Wrens, Cardinals, Blue Birds and Blue Jays make up the usual suspects in the underbrush, and we think they’re all getting full from the seed and mast that is still around from the bounty of fall. We’ll see if they visit the feeders in the winter. Overhead we see Red Tailed Hawks as the dominant hawk species, which is exciting – in FL it was the Red Shouldered Hawk. Lots of American kestrels here too, which are one of my favorites, and at night we hear the familiar Barred Owl asking, “Who cooks, who cooks for you?”

Down On The Farm

John and I embarked on a trip towards Nashville to pick up a number of used corral panels that we found on Marketplace. After learning that SR 52 was the main east-west highway before I-40 was built, it was interesting to take this road through small towns, now largely forgotten – very similar to taking 301 in FL instead of I-75. We eventually made it after getting a flat tire on our trailer and having to change it on the side of the road. How many travelers of the past had to stop on SR 52 to change their own flat tire in the rain?

The reason we need the corral panels is because Daisy, our milk cow, will be ready to come home soon and we need a temporary pen while we decide how we want to fence our property. These panels should work out well.

On Wednesday after work, Quinn helped me forage some free firewood, cedar and box elder, courtesy of last weekend’s storms. She is a hard-working girl.

Best Thing We Ate

The winner this week was an exquisite shepherd’s pie made by Samantha on Tuesday night.

From Family Worship

One of our readings from the Psalms this week touched on the idea of God’s faithfulness to all generations. This got a good discussion going about how each generation is like a link in the chain of God’s people, unbroken since the beginning of time. Only three or fours “links” are alive at any given time – those links who have gone before are at rest, having run their race, and those links to come are unknown to us. That God is faithful to maintain this unbroken chain of generations is a comfort to us, and the reality also adds weight and significance to our daily lives. What seems mundane at times is incredibly profound.

Other Happenings

New skill for us to learn this week was using a pneumatic brad nailer. This handy little air-powered tool shoots a very skinny nail (brad), which we used to attached 3/4″ trim to the edge of the birch plywood shelving in the girls’ closet. After a couple of poor attempts, I turned it over to Riley who made it look easy and who even came back and used a nail set to sink a few brad heads that weren’t flush.

Today marks our 17th wedding anniversary, and we went to downtown Cookeville for a nice lunch and a little shopping. Erica and I marvel at God’s goodness to us over the years.

December 11th

Weather

I had written some thoughts Thursday about this week’s weather, but that’s dwarfed now by the tragedy of last night’s tornadoes. We got the tornado warning around 4:00a and had a decent amount of time to watch the radar and make the decision to use our cellar/storm shelter. I’m glad we did. We only needed to be down there for about 20-30 minutes, and it was kind of a fun adventure at the time, but when we learned the devastation in Kentucky we were quickly sobered. We were here for a vacation in March 2019 when nearby Cookeville, TN was hit hard by tornadoes, so there’s no doubt in our mind now that we’ll use the shelter when there’s a warning. We’re cured of any complacency we had about ignoring the warnings.

There were no tornadoes rights where we are, but we had some trees down on the road, and when I was in town running an errand I heard there were some small tornadoes just west of us maybe 20 miles away.

Down On The Farm

We got our friend Rick to bring his tractor over and use our two-bottom plow to turn the garden and orchard area. Now that turned sod can rot over the winter before Rick comes back in the spring to till the whole area with his tractor. Satisfying to watch the rich brown earth peel open for the garden we’ve so long planned.

Riley has taken an interest in tending the wood stove and we’ve learned the perfect stove temperature to keep the house just right on the cold days. Easy to let it go out or get too hot in the room.

Riley and I designed the closet shelving for the girls’ room, and on Sam’s farm shift with me she measured, marked and cut the shelf boards from 4’x8′ birch plywood, which cost us dearly but should turn out nice. They’ve all been busy sanding and staining the boards.

I learned how to make an “H-Brace” which allowed me to hang our driveway gates straight.

Best Thing We Ate

Samantha has officially taken over our daily bread making, and her newest sourdough loaf is a real winner. On a side note, I did a little community research this week and went to the local diner to try out their fried chicken lunch. I was not disappointed.

From Family Worship

Our Old Testament reading in morning worship at church this week was Isaiah 33, and my eye caught on verse 6, “And He will be the stability of your times”. We discussed this at length as a family and took much encouragement that during this time of change and upheaval in moving to a new place, it is God who is the only safe and true source of stability. We recognized that we often limit ourselves by looking to the lesser, temporal things to bring us stability, when we should first and foremost look to the giver of these gifts; the Creator instead of the creation.

Other Happenings

We were invited to an English country line dance one evening this week and had a good time. I embarrassed myself, the girls and Erica were graceful, and John ran around with a pack of boys, a la Wendell Berry’s short story, “Turn Back the Bed”.

December 4th

Weather

No rain and milder temperatures made it a beautiful week. The leaves have all been off for a week or so now, which dramatically changes the landscape: greater visibility and a wintry feel.

Down On The Farm

More wood splitting, with Paige being the first kid interested in the task. It is one of our priorities here in TN to see our children learn skills along with us, including things that involve some risk. This tests my cautious nature, but is good for all of us.

We are building shelves in the mud room this week to house our future bounty from the farm. We have quite a few canning jars, but we need more. It’s satisfying to build these basic shelves and fill them with our empty jars in the hope of being well provisioned here someday. This good feeling of having plenty of food put up is central to our view of being deeply nested.

Best Thing We Ate

John makes breakfast on Fridays, and this week he made (with just a little help from Mom) sausage biscuits, which we all agreed were very good.

From Family Worship

After family worship in the evening I have started reading aloud John Paton’s autobiography. John was raised in Scotland in the mid-1800’s and spent his life as a missionary in the South Pacific. Of the missionary biographies I’ve read, his stands far above the rest. To me, the best parts aren’t the harrowing tales of his life in Vanuatu as a missionary, but the early chapters recounting his upbringing in Scotland. His retelling of his father and mother’s love for Christ and their humble Christian home is alone worth reading the book.

Other Happenings

We ventured out and visited a nearby Amish community just over the Kentucky border that we had heard much about. It fascinated us to see how they live, and we admire much about the way they farm and raise their own food. The have a market open to the public and we picked up a few items including honey with the honeycomb, cracklings, popcorn and coconut cookies.

Payne Hollow Journal is Harlan Hubbard’s account of living a homestead life on the banks of the Ohio river in Kentucky with his wife Anna in the 1950’s and 60’s. His daily journal entries have fascinated and influenced me for a long time, and I realized last week that I ought to share this with the family. So, I have started reading that day’s entry each morning at the breakfast table. Their weather and seasonal changes largely follow ours and hearing his observations on weather and nature help sharpen our senses to better observe our place.

Homeschool is back in full swing now that we are settled in. It’s been good to get back into that rhythm and see how the kids take to different areas of the house or property to get their work done.