Cultivating Faithfulness

I was recently challenged to think of a time that I felt God had spoken some specific word to me.  I instantly recalled that as we were getting ready to move to the property here, He graciously "gave" me Psalm 37:3-6:

"Trust in the Lord and do good; Dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness. Delight yourself in the Lord; And He will give you the desires of your heart.  Commit your way to the Lord, trust also in Him and He will do it.  And He will bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your judgment as the noonday."
NAS

As I looked back over these verses, it occurred to me that though I can tell you off the top of my head how to cultivate carrots or cucumbers, I had to think a bit on how exactly one should go about cultivating faithfulness.   Further reflection showed me that the answer is in the rest of the passage.

"Delight yourself in the Lord"

 First, we delight in the Lord.   Think for a minute about what delights you?  For me it is my family, growing things, beautiful places in the great outdoors, to name a few.   When I am delighted with someone or something, I want to stay nearby, soaking it in, learning more.  To delight in the Lord , then would mean to spend time soaking up His presence: time in the word, time in worship, time just sitting silently in His presence so He can talk to me.  Continuing with the "cultivation" metaphor, I think of delight as the feeling I get on those first few warm spring days when I can finally dig in the garden and plant seeds, or when I bring home a new plant from the garden center and  nestle into just the right spot in the garden.  Delight is the "fun" part, and it is crucial because it is that delight that motivates us to cultivate in the first place, but there is more.

"Commit your way to the Lord"

If all I ever did in my vegetable or flower garden was to scratch a few seeds into the ground on a pretty April afternoon and forget about them, not much would grow.  To really grow a good crop of anything requires a commitment to weed, water, feed and protect. The word "vigilance" comes to my mind, and I think about how what was so fun and easy to plant can sometimes be so hard to actually grow.  It takes commitment to get out there in the heat of July and hoe corn or hill potatoes, or weed the flower beds.  It is easy to just give up and sit inside in AC.  Look around at most everyone's vegetable garden in August and you'll see that this a very common temptation.

 Recently I have been tempted to just "give up" in some areas of my life.   The growing season has been long and hot, and I feel as if the harvest is never going to come for these particular "crops".   I've been tempted to quit cultivating and let the weeds take it!  Thankfully, the Lord is faithful even when I am not, and He has sent others and His word to encourage me to hang in there and keep cultivating.  He assures me the harvest is coming, in His time, if I commit my way to Him. 

"Trust also in Him"

Ultimately though, whether we are talking about silver queen corn (my favorite) or spiritual blessings, it is God that gives the increase.  Having done all,  I need to trust Him with outcome.  I have been recently reminded of the truth that the harvest comes in His time, not mine.  Some things I have been praying over and "cultivating" for a long time may not bear fruit for years, maybe not in this lifetime.  Can I trust Him anyway, even when I don't see anything growing above ground?   The passage assures me that I can because "He will do it". 

And He will bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your judgment as the noonday."




Ok, I am not completely sure what that means, but it sounds good.  It sounds like someday all our delighting and digging, our commitment and cultivation, they're going to pay off.   There are a few gardens around here that always make me slow down and stare--they are so beautiful or so bountiful or so well-tended that I am blessed just to see them.  I want my life to be like that: beautiful, bountiful, well- tended, a blessing.  Not for my own glory, but for God's and for the blessing of others. 

And so to that end, I will continue to "dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness."

One of the raised beds in our vegetable garden, early March.  In this photo, the first lettuce plants are just coming up.

Spring Babies

We have this thrifty custom here in my neck of the woods.  If we have something that we want to get rid of but that might be useful to someone else, we take it and sit it beside the dumpsters. I don't know what the local sanitation department thinks of our redneck recycling, probably not much, but it's a system that works.

 Now, just to be clear, I am not really into dumpster diving per se, but on a couple of occasions, I have happened along at the right time and scored something I could put to good use.  Today was such a day. Someone had put a bassinet by the dumpster, and I happen to have some babies on the farm that could use it. 

It's getting a little crowded in there: 20 barred rock chicks and 4 khaki campbell ducks.  They will be moving out to brooder as soon as it warms up again a little.

And many thanks to the neighbor who left the bassinet.





Good Fences
Saturday dawned bright and sunny just as predicted, and I did indeed put in a full day on the fences.  I removed and replaced old strands and broken clips and hacked blackberry briars off the line for the better part of the day.  The last thing I did was to reconfigure the pony pen, lowering the wires and attaching it to Pico's stall.  Now he has a a large area for exercise which also serves as training area that will better acquaint him with the electric fence.  I think he already gets the point though.
 I have read, and it makes sense, that animals should be trained to avoid the electric fence in a small area before assuming they will avoid the the perimeter fence.  So far, so good. The fence now has a good charge again and Pico is staying where he is supposed to.
Folks who don't understand electric fences may think them cruel, but fences are necessary and electric done correctly is among the most humane.  Our chargers put out a pulse, not a steady shock, at a level that trains the animal to stay away but not so strong it does any damage.  I have touched them myself many times accidentally, and I would describe it as more of a "surprise" than anything else.  There is definitely something about the zap that makes you want to avoid it, though.  Animals are very sensitive to electromagnetic fields anyway, so it doesn't take them long to learn to stay away from the fence.
So Saturday was a full day of hard work (and I am still paying for it even today with sore muscles and lingering tiredness).  I rewarded myself by piddling in my garden on Sunday, planting chard, beets, carrots, more lettuce, and scallions.  I also set up my brooder because the chicks and ducks are due to arrive at the end of the week.

 

Must Be March
It was in the sixties earlier this week and the weatherman says it will be again by Saturday, but you'd never convince me of that right now.  As I sit here writing and looking out my window, the wind is whipping snow and sleet a dozen directions at once and the wind chimes on the porch are sounding off wildly.  But this is March, the month of contrasts, the month of hope and delayed gratification, of  new seedlings and killing frosts, of sunshine and snow.  We can be thankful that there are no extreme temperatures associated with this cold front and that it will be exiting soon.
Today, though, as I sank into the muck at the barn and slid down the hill trying to walk Pico, I thought to myself that this might be one of those days that make folks like the "idea  of  farm" so much better than the actual thing.  It's easy to romanticize farm life on sunny spring days when the forsythia blooms, the grass greens and new life pops out all over.  It's easy to forget that there are an awful lot of days, and sometimes nights too, not nearly so nice, but which still require the tending of animals and plants.  I say all this as a way of adding balance to this blog, which probably does tend toward optimism concerning all things "farm".  I guess I should write more about slogging out in the cold after an already long day at work to feed or pen up some animal.  Or maybe I should tell you how they get sick and have to be vetted at great expense and inconvenience.  Or perhaps I should recount midnight trips to the barn waiting for a doe to kid or a mare to foal, or stories of losing all the peaches to a late frost, or of scorching August days in the kitchen trying to keep ahead of a sudden glut of tomatoes and cucumbers.  That's all part of it. The good with the not so good.  It's a total package deal. Kind of like March. Kind of like life. You don't get sunshine and daffodils without cold winds and mud. 
Meanwhile, Pico's training continues.  We walk the perimeter of the pasture every day.  I think Pico has accepted me as his new master, and he seems to like me.  He is learning (or maybe re-learning. I don't know) to sit on command.  He is adjusting to the horses and chickens by pretty much ignoring them which is what he is supposed to do.  Every day he seems glad to see me and eager for our permimeter check...but today he was a little less so, and I quickly figured out why.  When I looked in on him, I saw that he had an absolutely huge piece of greenbriar stuck in his coat all along his body and dragging behind him.  Greenbriar.  How in the world?  It wasn't there when I left him yesterday of course. My first thought was that maybe somehow the horses had thrown it in there on him.  I could sort of picture that.  Sort of.  On further inspection, though,  I saw that he had managed to loosen the wire grid which I had tacked over his access door to keep him in.  He'd loosened it, slipped out, did who knows what, gotten tangled in the briar and let himself back into his stall.  Hmm. Maybe we should call him Houdini.  Or Rascal.  He was trying to act all innocent but with the tell tale six foot long briar attached, he was not pulling it off.  I re-tacked the wire grid, but I don't have much confidence it will stay.  My plan is to really check and reinforce the electric fence on Saturday so he can be let out of the stall to do his job.  Hope this works.

Meet Pico
Pico is a 4- year -old, 130 lb.,  Great Pyrenees.  He was the pet of a dear lady whose circumstances dictate that she find him a new home.  So she spoke to a friend, who spoke to my friend, who called me, and so today we brought Pico to Pleasant Places for a trial period, to see how this former sub-division dog takes to farm life.
The 45 minute drive was a little unnerving for him, but once back on the ground he seemed to calm down.  We walked the pasture perimeter and then I put Pico in a stall where he...

Had a snack...

Howdied with the nosy neighbors...

and lay down for a well-deserved rest.

We hope Pico, whose name means 'peak' or 'mountain', adjusts well and becomes our new farm guardian. In the next few days, I will walk the perimeter with him daily, showing him what he is to guard.   Hopefully his instincts will kick in and he will be able to make the transition from household pet to a working dog-- or at least one who stays in the fence and deters predators by his massive presence.











No Dig Garden Beds

I am going to try gardening again in the bottom land.  It is so flat and fertile I just can't leave it alone despite my misadventures with trying to garden so far from the house.  This time though, I am taking another approach.  First of all, I am not going to have it plowed again.  The more I read, the more no-till methods make sense to me.  And secondly, I am going to plant something that most wildlife will leave alone: pumpkins. 
Pumpkin planting time is months away, but the time to prepare no- dig beds for them is now.  The method is simple.  Lay down a thick but biodegradable first layer and pile up 6-8 inches of available organic matter on top.  I am using what is readily available to me which happens to be a layer of cardboard topped by old hay and horse manure.  Some of the beds will probably have chicken bedding and manure instead once I get around to cleaning out the hen house again.
I did two beds in two hours today and that included having to scoop up the manure and hay from various places around the barnyard. The organic matter will have 3 months to break down and then I should be able to dig down, cut a hole in the softened cardboard, perhaps add some potting soil or  compost to the hole and plant my pumpkins seeds.  The rest of the bed will continue to decompose over summer and help feed the plants.  I will post updates as this project progresses.