This picture was taken in March of 2013, one day before his graduation from boot camp.
We would like to ask anyone who is willing, to pray for Kyle on a regular basis. He and his parents are very grateful for any and all who are praying for his physical and spiritual protection.
If you know Kyle personally, hopefully that will help you have a greater appreciation for ALL our servicemen and women who are helping to keep YOU safe today! As Trace Adkins sings in SEMPER FI; "ain't no bullet holes in the side of my SUV; cause the kid next door just shipped out overseas".
Below is a You-Tube link to Trace Adkins song "Semper Fi". If you've never watched it please take about 3 minutes out of your schedule to watch this. Then say a prayer of thanks for all who pay the price for the daily freedoms we enjoy. As Ronald Reagan so aptly said, "freedom isn't free". There are many who are paying the price today!
THE GARDEN
Gardening season is underway! ! Last week I tilled the garden. Usually, I mow the tall rye grass first and then rototill but this year the mower wasn't yet in working condition so I just tilled the tall grass in. Was kind of like plowing and making hay at the same time!
Picture to the right is a raspberry plant. I planted about 12 or 13 of these plants last year. No berries last year but hoping for a good crop of nice red berries this year.
Red raspberries remind me of my great-uncle Tim. He always had a wonderful raspberry patch. I loved going to his farm as a kid and seeing the long rows of raspberry plants with the big red berries hanging full on the plants. He also had a "cement pond" (literally) as Jethro of the Beverly Hillbillies use to call it. This was somewhat unusual for farmers in those days, but a welcome relief from the summer heat in a time when pools were not that popular.
by Wendell Berry
1. That agriculture may be understood and dealt with as an "industry".
2 That a sound agricultural economy can be based on an export market.
3. That the "free market" can preserve agriculture.
"The "free market" - the unbridled play of economic forces - is bad for agriculture because it is unable to assign a value to things that are necessary to agriculture. It gives a value to agricultural "products", but it cannot give a value to the sources of those products in the topsoil or the ecosystem or the farm or the farm family or the farm community. Indeed, people who look at farming from the standpoint of the "free Market" do not understand the relation of product to source. They believe that the relation is merely mechanical, because they believe that agriculture is or can be an industry. And the "free market" is helpless to suggest otherwise. The "free market" values production at the cost of all else. And this exclusive emphasis on production, in agriculture, inevitably causes overproduction. In agriculture, both high prices and low prices cause overproduction. But overproduction leads only to low prices, never high prices.
It could perhaps be said, then, that on the "free market" agricultural productivity has no direct or stable relation to value. When this is so, agriculture overproduces, and the surplus is used as a weapon against the producer to beat down prices, either in the service of a "cheap food policy" for domestic consumers, or to make our agricultural produce competitive in world trade."
I am neither an economist nor an agricultural economist so I will admit to being "in over my head" on this one. But one thing is clear to me. The "agricultural elite" (the USDA, and all those who set the agricultural "policies and parameters" that farmers must play by) on the one hand insist that all farmers must compete and be profitable in the "free market" but on the other hand they slant the playing field in favor of the corporate agribusinesses by subsidizing them to the tune of millions of dollars per year. Seems like hypocrisy of the highest order to me..
"And He (God) will love you and bless you and multiply you; He will also bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground, your grain and your new wine and your oil, the increase of your herd and the young of your flock, in the land which He swore to your forefathers to give you.
Happy Gardening ! !
Todd