After chores I head off to a church deacon project. Two other guys from church and myself are helping an elderly widow this morning. She has a few items around her house that are beyond her so we are there to lend a hand. It's a good trade. We bless her with our muscles and she blesses us with a meal. A hearty breakfast casserole, sausage, fresh fruit and an assortment of baked goods for desert. After that breakfast I wasn't hungry for another ten hours! !
When I arrived home from the deacon project Kyle and I get to work moving a pile of wood chips. I'm trying something new in the garden this year. In the walking path between the rows I am putting a 3" - 4" layer of wood chips. The hope is that this will help suppress most of the weeds that normally grow there.
This is another experiment so we'll see how it works. (Probably an even better approach would have been to lay black plastic on the ground and then cover that with the wood chips - oh well, there is always something that can be improved on! !)
By this time it was mid-afternoon and pretty warm outside so I headed inside to take a one hour siesta. By 4:30 I was up and outside again - on to the next project. This one not so pleasant but certainly necessary. The small chicken coop needed to be cleaned out and readied for the next batch of 50 chicks that will be arriving Wed or Thur of this week. These will be meat chickens that will find their way into our freezer for the year. Now that the perimeter fence is up these guys will be "free-ranging" from about 4 or 5 weeks old until they meet their demise at about 9 - 10 weeks of age.
After the chicken coop is cleaned out I return to the barn to do evening chores and collect the eggs - 5 dozen today. On my way to the house I decide to cut some asparagus, pull some weeds, water the raspberry plants and the newly seeded raised bed. Finally I call it quits after I hoe lightly the compost in the new mini raised beds. I walk into the house as the last light of day fades.
Marla is in OH this weekend with some girlfriends so I'm on my own for supper.
Fortunately she has made me some stuff I can heat up in the microwave while she is away.
With supper over around 8:45 I go to the couch and prop my feet up on the walnut and tiger maple bench I made a few years ago. Normally I read Lancaster Farming on Saturday evenings but tonight I get my Bible out and peruse the first few chapters of Genesis. I enjoy reading the accounts of God giving Adam the command to subdue and rule over all of creation (Gen. 1:28). Some believe this gives mankind the license to use and abuse God's creation in any way they chose. But of course Gen. 1:28 is not the end of all God has to say about our relationship to this physical world. He follows this command up a few verses later with another directive. In Gen. 2:15 He tells Adam (and all mankind) HOW to subdue and rule when He explains to Adam that He put him into the Garden of Eden to "cultivate it and keep it". These are not words of harsh domination but are words that reflect careful stewardship of all that God has made for us to enjoy. These are not trite words, nor are they words to be ignored as irrelevant by 21st century mankind. These are words to be reckoned with and lived out every day. May God grant us the grace needed to rightly live out the Dominion/Stewardship mandate He spoke into existence many millennia ago.
Around 11:15 I head up to bed. It's been a good day. It started by serving a sister in need, was followed by a lot of "by the sweat of your brow" (Gen. 3:19) and ended with some quality time in God's Word. It's been "my kind of day"! !
Stay tuned folks. BIG NEWS IS JUST AROUND THE CORNER! ! !
Thanks for stopping by. Many agrarian blessings to you my friends.
Todd