February 5th, 2022

Weather/Nature

Warm up! We had some very nice days early in the week with Tuesday even reaching the low 60’s. That is something we took full advantage of and got some outside work done Monday and Tuesday. Yesterday and today are very cold again after a recent front came through. Looking ahead, we are supposed to resume more normal winter weather with highs in the upper 40’s and low 50’s.

When it was rainy and still warm on Wednesday night you could hear frogs start to wake up and make some noise. Being curious, we learned that these are chorus frogs and spring peepers. They didn’t have long to make their voices heard before having to head underground again, but it was a welcome sound.

Down On The Farm

With the weather nice early in the week, we took some time and planted out our entire orchard, finishing right before a nice soaking rain later in the week. We unwrapped the bare root trees, soaked them in water, and planted them out according to their needs. 73 plants/trees in total.

Our Jersey dairy cow (Daisy) was ready to come home after spending some time at a friend’s farm nearby to *hopefully* be bred to their bull. We also bought an angus steer calf from the same farm, so this little guy will be with us for the next 2-3 years.

The hardwood cuttings that Riley and I are attempting to get to root have been hanging out inside where it is warm, and we haven’t done anything except to keep the soil moist. This week we looked closer and saw that the Easter Red Bud cuttings have started to flower! This tree is one of the first to bloom in spring with beautiful pink blossoms. We’re hoping that the blossoms mean that roots are developing. No signs of life from the other three kinds of cuttings…we’ll see.

Best Thing We Ate

We were invited by a family who we are becoming good friends with to celebrate Chinese New Year with them. Three of their children are adopted from China and so we had a big time eating tasty Chinese food and celebrating the “Year of the Tiger”!

From Family Worship

We moved through chapters 4 & 5 of the Westminster Confession of Faith this week, considering Creation and Providence. In the Creation chapter, we considered the carefully written statement about the creation of Man made in God’s image, and considered how Adam & Eve were created with the power to obey the Law, yet were also capable of transgressing. God’s Providence, or his ruling and governing of Creation, will continue to be our study for another week or so. If God’s eternal decree (Chapter 3) is his blueprint for all of history, then Providence is the actual working out of his great plan.

Other Happenings

No time for much else this busy week!