July 2, 2022

Weather/Nature

We got up to 19 hot days without rain before finally getting a nice shower, about a half inch of rain. It was welcome, and I think the corn grew a foot in the couple of days after the rain. We’ve noticed that in the summer here we’ll still get an occasional high pressure system that brings drier and cooler air, which is also welcome.

Down On The Farm

The harvest continues. Our broccoli is all in now, and we are continuing to bring in cucumbers, kale, and now cabbages. We’ve blanched and frozen most of the broccoli, and the cucumbers are being pickled and canned. Sauerkraut will be the next big project.

We started to keep a record of the retail value of the harvest, because our hope has always been to actually buy fewer groceries as a result of the farm’s produce. It isn’t a perfect system, but we’re able to lookup the cost of produce per pound online and get a rough estimate. This doesn’t account for our cost to produce the veggies, but that is trickier. Would we just include the cost of the seed packet or seedlings, or also count the cost of the deer fence, tools, or even the land itself? There’s more than one way to track it, so I’ll work on that later.

We’ve also had a broody hen that we let sit on five eggs and 21 days later three of them hatched! She’s doing a good job protecting her chicks.

Best Thing We Ate

From Family Worship

We’ve been reading a chapter of the Gospel of John each night, and it has led to some great discussion. Last night we reach chapter 8 and considered how differently Jesus deals with people depending on whether they are humble or proud regarding their sinfulness before God. The woman humbled by her adultery is treated with the tender mercies of Christ, while the proud-hearted Pharisees who think they have it all together are confronted and condemned boldly by Christ. The application is not hard to draw, “for God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble”. 1 Peter 5:5

Other Happenings

We had our friends, Al and Carolyn, visit us from Bradenton on their way to Massachusetts for the summer. To come here was way out of their way, and a big encouragement. Al and I served together as deacons at Providence OPC in Bradenton, FL and he and Carolyn became our good friends. A real treat to see them. And that dog in the picture? That’s Presby, the newest farm addition…more on him next week.