Visit with Cousins

Cousins are so much fun!  Sophia, James and Caleb are all adorable, and they have such a good time here with our little guys and all the animals :)  We always enjoy it when our "Aunt Gie-Gie" is able to come down and visit for a week.  Here are some photos Savana took of our visit with them.

Sweet Miss Sophia

 I love the sequence of these pictures of Farrah with James in our garden.

"Oh no, what am I supposed to do here?"

"Hey, whatcha doin'?"

"Oh, you're getting seeds?"

"I'm ready for some!"

"Thank you..."

"You missed one!  Let me get it..."

"So this is what you do with them..."

"This is fun!"

 Meanwhile...

The rest of the little guys were having a good ol' time in the mud.

 

 After playing in the mud all morning, everyone had to take a "front step bath"- i.e. get a hosing down and hair-washing on the steps of the porch.

That water is sooo cold!
(Screenshot from a video.)

It's fun getting a "front step bath" though!  (Another screenshot.)

Isn't James cute lying on the rail of our deck like this?
(Screenshot.)

(Screenshot.)

Sophia playing with Kep.  (At first she was rather afraid of him, but now she likes him a lot.)
(Screenshot.)

We love our cousins!

Another oat recipe~ Bo's (raw) Granola

Here is our (alright, my little brother's) recipe for granola.  This granola, unlike most others, is wheat- free. There is no flour in it, so it's much more crumbly than traditional granola, especially when raw.  We originally would bake it and eat it with milk, but then my grandmother discovered how good it is raw, and so now I like it far better that way.  Enjoy!
(By the way, in case you can't tell, this is the mega batch version we make for our family (for the curious, it lasts us about three and a half breakfasts).  Of course, you could cut it down to a smaller size if you'd like, but it keeps quite well on the counter, even when raw.)

30 c. uncooked oats  (two 15 c. containers)
2 c. honey
7 prunes (my grandmother didn't put any in hers)
1 T. vanilla
1 T. cinnamon
1/2 c. dry coconut, optional
Raisins or Craisins  (The latter are really delicious in it.)
2 c. coconut oil
Walnuts, optional
Sliced or chopped almonds, optional

Mix all ingredients together, first blending the prunes until fine.  Now, you have a choice- you can bake it and eat it with milk, the traditional way, or you can just leave it raw, and serve on top of vanilla yogurt.
As with the raw cookies, my reaction was something along the lines of "who would ever want to eat raw granola".  But my grandmother, who originally discovered how good it is raw, convinced me to try some, and I've loved it ever since.  (Be careful- this is so good it gets addictive!  I think I like it even better than our yogurt banana split.)

Hope you enjoy this cool and convenient breakfast/ snack/ treat! Granola is capable of endless variations, so if you come up with some good ones, please share them in a comment!  I'm looking forward to hearing from you!

Also, I meant to mention this sooner, but Shannon Fitzgerald is hosting a giveaway on her lovely blog A Bright Light in a Dark World.  Sorry for the late notice, but the giveaway doesn't end until 12am, so there's still time to enter.   Even if you don't enter for it, her blog is still very lovely and encouraging, and the link to it may be found on my "Lovely Links" page.

2 Recipes: Healthy Oatmeal Cookies

I'm sorry it's been so long since I've posted on here... seems like it always gets crowded out somehow.  Anyway, here is a recipe which Mama found in a raw desert cookbook-  Raw Oatmeal Cookies.  When LilyAnn excitedly told me that:  "Mama's making oatmeal cookies- and they're raw!", my initial reaction was something along the lines of "What?!  Raw oatmeal cookies!  Yuck!".  But that lasted for about 1 minute- exactly how long it took for me to wash up from being outside, walk into the kitchen, and spot the little cookies, appealingly dressed in their pretty pink paper mini cupcake holders, dusted in cinnamon or cocoa, and with an almond perched on top.  Mama promptly offered me one, and the last trace of disgust vanished immediately afterwards.  (Daddy's reaction, I may add, was similar to my own.)  So, without further ado, allow me to introduce you to the healthiest, quickest, easiest, oatmeal cookies ever- which also happen to be remarkably tasty.

Raw Oatmeal Cookies

1/2 cup coconut oil

1/2 cup honey

1 cup almonds or peanuts (we used almonds)

1 t. vanilla

dash of salt

Blend together all of the above until smooth.

2 cups oats, divided

Nuts, raisins, cocoa, cinnamon for garnishing.

Blend 1 cup oatmeal until it becomes fine flour.  Mix it and the other 1 cup of oatmeal with the rest of the ingredients.  Shape into balls and garnish by dusting with cinnamon or cocoa, and placing an almond or raisin on top.

     Here's another recipe we discovered recently- this one in an email and not quite so "radical" sounding since it is baked.  We love these cookies!  They are really good.

Healthy Oatmeal Cookies (with Honey)

Ingredients:

Dry ingredients

· 1 cup whole wheat flour (a pinch more depending on the moisture of the mix)

· 1 1/2 cups of Large Flake Rolled Oats (smaller flake is ok too)

· 1/2 tsp baking soda

· 1/2 tsp baking powder

· 1/2 tsp salt

· 1 Tbsp Cinnamon

· 1/2 tsp Nutmeg (optional)

Wet ingredients

· 1/2 cup honey

· 1/2 cup oil (corn, grapeseed, coconut or olive) * you can also use some applesauce to replace some of the oil if you wish*

· 1 Tablespoon Molasses

· 1 egg (beat with 1 Tbsp Water)

· 1 tsp Vanilla

Yummy ingredients

· 1/2 cup raisins

· 1/2 cup walnuts

Preparation:

1.    In a large bowl, mix all the dry ingredients together.

2.    In a medium bowl, mix all the wet ingredients together. Hint: when measuring out the honey, spray the measuring cup with oil or baking spray--your honey won't stick).

3.    Mix the wet stuff with the dry stuff. Add the raisins and walnuts and mix. If the mixture seems too wet, add a bit of flour. If it isn't binding together very well, you may wish to add an egg white.

4.    COOL the mix for 20 minutes in the fridge.

5.    Preheat the oven to 335 degrees (lower temperature due to the honey in the recipe which will burn more easily).

6.    Drop by teaspoonfuls onto your baking sheet. Press down with a fork to ensure even cooking.

7.    Bake for about 15 - 20 minutes or until golden on the bottom of the cookie. The cookies freeze very well and make a great snack! Enjoy.

Cancer and the God-given Cure

     Cancer is one of the biggest killer diseases in North America, and other places around the world.  My family and I have been learning about the natural cures for cancer, and the FDA's suppression of the knowledge of these cures from the general public.  There are natural cures for cancer- cures that work- but you will probably not hear this from a government educated and paid doctor.  Why?  There is no money to be made by big drug/ medicine companies by selling the natural remedies such as intravenous vitamin C, or apple seeds.  You don't have to be licensed to sell herbs, thus the big companies can't have a monopoly of the business, and they don't make the big bucks.  Besides, why would they want people to be completely cured?  If they don't get sick, they don't come back to get more drugs.  Now, do you know who are the major funders for the "cancer research" and the drug licensing agencies?  The big drug companies.  At least one also is owned by an even bigger corporation which owns:  NBC.  So is NBC going to show all the real cures on their nightly news if those cures take away business from themselves?  Of course not.  And who runs the major medical schools?  The government which is lobbied by the big drug companies ( hereafter referred to as BDC).  So, in other words, the doctors learn what the government teaches, and the government is paid by the BDC.

  Exodus 23:8 says:  "And you shall take no bribe, for a bribe blinds the discerning, and perverts the words of the righteous."  Lobbying is pretty much bribing, and if the Bible states that even righteous people can sometimes lie, or ignore facts when tempted, how much more those who are not righteous?  Of course, not every person connected with the FDA (Food and Drug Administration), AMA (American Medical Association) or the BDC is a "bad" person, willing to sacrifice thousands of lives merely for personal gain, but they have been indoctrinated and deceived as well, and the fact is, there are some people out there who would do that.  To quote from a gentleman who was interviewed on this subject in an excellent documentary we watched, (FOODMATTERS):  "You can be sincere- and you can be sincerely wrong."  (Just like everyone who thinks there is another way to God besides through Jesus.)

     There are many good resources of information about this available.  Both on the Internet and in books, in documentaries and occasionally on television.   There has been a massive amount of research done on this subject, but most of the findings have been completely ignored.  BDC, the FDA, and the AMA all refuse to admit that vitamins, herbs, fruit seeds, and other natural remedies can prevent and even cure cancer.  More than this, they resolutely suppress this knowledge.  The company producing Cansema is a good illustration.  Cansema is an herbal salve which is produced in slightly different forms to kill different types of cancer.  It was being produced in the United States and was helping many people to cure their cancer- that is, until the FDA shut them down.  The Wikipedia article about Cansema is very misleading- mixing fact with fiction and adamantly stating that it does not work, that the FDA had very good grounds for shutting it down, and the article openly called it "quackery".  Thankfully, Cansema is still available, but it is now produced in Ecuador where the FDA can't touch them.  Mama and Daddy have both used this salve on spots which they suspected of being skin cancer, and it acted on them exactly in the way predicted by the Cansema company.  It is safe to use, even on places which are not known to be cancer as it will only react with the actual cancer cells, while leaving the healthy cells untouched.  So if it is not really cancer it will not do anything beyond possibly irritating the skin slightly.
 
     Last night we watched an excellent documentary on the subject of nutrition, and cancer.  I highly recommend it to any person interested in this subject, to anyone diagnosed with cancer, to anyone overweight, to anyone with heart problems, to anyone needing encouragement about eating right, and in short, to anyone reading this!  (Note:  This is not a Christian documentary.  There is not a single word about God in it, and at least one of the men interviewed seemed to be strongly New Age (and maybe a little overboard on the raw superfood type thing too).)
     We already were aware of most of the information in it, but it definitely clarified some things, such as the way the FDA has changed the meaning of "cancer survivor" (meaning that they survived 5 years from date of treatment), or that it isn't just eating a little better that helps- it has to be mega- dose nutrition to help.  The name of this documentary is Foodmatters.  We got it from the library, but of course it is available for sale online.

     The BDC are making billions of dollars per year off their chemotherapy drugs, which are themselves, in many cases, carcinogens.  And almost everyone knows that radiation is a primary cause of cancer.  (What do you wear sunscreen for if not to block radiation from the sun?)  And how does surgery help if the cells causing the problem are still in the body?

     Of course there are many kind, loving people in the cancer medical area who truly think they are doing the best thing for people, but they've been educated by the schools paid for by the BDC.   The Bible tells us that the love of money is the root of all evil.  That would include suppression of life-saving truth, causing the deaths not only of many people from the actual cancer, but also of 106,000 in the USA alone from normal, expected side effects from the drugs which were supposed to cure the disease.  On the other hand, most of the people who have thoroughly researched this are not trying to sell you anything.  In a court room evidence is sometimes discarded due to the parties concerned being too deeply biased to one side or the other.  Wouldn't billions of dollars a year be a pretty strong reason for the BDC, FDA, AMA and other agencies to be biased?  And people are still dying.  The "cures" don't seem to work very well.  I think that alternative, natural, and cheaper cures are at least worth a little personal research.

     Here are some good materials to check out for both cancer treatment and nutrition:
     Food Inc.  An excellent documentary focusing mainly on the production of meat in America.  (Note:  It does contain footage of slaughter houses, meat packing plants, etc.)

     Foodmatters: You Are What You Eat   Another good documentary addressing proper nutrition and it's relation to cancer and heart disease.

      Cancer:  Step Outside the Box  An excellent book about cancer, the suppression of natural cures, and stories of real people who were cured by them.  Written by a Christian man.  Well written and very insightful.

     King Corn  Another documentary.  This one was made by a couple of college students showing how corn is in practically every processed food and drink in America.

     Food Inc.  This documentary focuses primarily on the meat and poultry industry in America, showing how the conventional farming methods are harmful to people and the enviroment.  (I am not an enviromentalist, but people are to care for the earth and not use methods which are known to be harmful.  To read an excellent article by Doug Phillips on this subject click  here.

Introducing: Mabel, Queen of Goats

Well, the name may be a little pretentious, but she is the queen of Feldman goats (of course though, she's the only one).

Saturday, the 11th, I was blessed to finally find the goat I'd been looking for.  She is an American Nubian, which basically means one step down from the highest grade of ADGA registered goat.

     Mabel is actually not her registered name, but is a bit of a play upon my middle name, and Farrah's (May and Bell.)  It is also an old name, and I like old names.
   
     She is supposed to be giving 3 quarts a day, but is at about half that right now, probably due to the stress of being transported, new home, no other goats, new stanchion, new feed, and even a new name.  LilyAnn will be taking care of her along with me, and she's been doing a great job so far.  She's milked her completely by herself the last couple days, and has made sure that she's had food and water.  She's also helped her to remain somewhat calm during the first days of tethering, when poor Mabel would become very distressed and run back and forth in the hot sun at the end of her line.  LilyAnn would go out and sit near her, and gradually accustom her to being left tied to a stake in the ground.  Now, although it's been only since yesterday morning that she's been tethered, Mabel is much calmer, and is eating grape leaves and grass, which she was too distressed to do before.
     Here are a few pictures I took yesterday morning.

Washing Mabel's udder...

Drying it.

Milking.

LilyAnn and Mabel.

William petting Mabel.

Proverbs 27:23-27

Be diligent to know the state of your flocks, , and attend to your herds;

For riches are not forever, 

Nor does a crown endure to all generations.

When the hay is removed,

And the tender grass shows itself,

And the herbs of the mountains are gathered in,

The lambs will provide your clothing,and the goats the price of a field;

You shall have enough goats' milk for your food,

For the food of your household,

And the nourishment of your maidservants. 

The broiler project

Chicken is one of the most eaten meats in the USA, in fact, one statistic I read placed it as the second most consumed meat in 2005.  Unfortunately, most of that chicken is raised in nearly or totally dark "broiler houses" with about one square foot of floorspace per chicken.  The birds are Cornish X Rock, an extremely fast growing, heavily built bird.  They are fed highly processed food, laced with antibiotics to keep them from dying in the bacteria infested houses.  One of the first responsibilities of the farmer in the morning is the "dead walk"- i.e. walking through the broilers and picking up the ones which died in the night from the ammonia fumes from the manure on the floor.  When the birds are about five to six weeks old they are picked up at night and carted off to a butchering/ packing plant, and thence to the store.
     Many of the farmers would like to get out of this business if they could, but it is often their only way of making a living, and so they have to stay in it.  You ask "Why don't they just raise the chickens differently?"  The answer:  they have contracts with big companies like Tyson, and if they don't produce them the way the company wants, they lose the contract, and then can't pay for the big new broiler house the company made them build.  Now this isn't always the case, but most of the time, this is the environment that the chicken sold at the store comes from.

    For several years now my family has known most of this, and we always wanted to raise our own chicken, but were never really able to, until this year.  Daddy gave Farrah and I permission to purchase and raise 25 broiler chicks, and after shopping around to find the best price, we settled on Hoover's Hatchery.

     The chicks arrived in the mail on March 23rd, and we put them into our "big black tub" (a rubber watering tub for animals).  We started them out on some old rags on top of their bedding (sand) so that they wouldn't eat the sand instead of their food.  After a few days we pulled out the rags.  We kept chick starter in front of them  24/7.  Their tub was heated by a 40watt clip- on desk light.

     After about 2 1/2 weeks of tub life, we started moving them into a chicken tractor (open- bottomed movable pen) during the day, and at four weeks or so started feeding scratch grains and cracked corn instead of chick starter.  By this time they were living in the tractor full- time.

     Well, they were supposed to grow to butchering size in 6-8 weeks, but it took ours until last week to even get close.  This is because we A) didn't feed the commercial broiler ration, since we know that it's laced with antibiotics, and we don't know what other scary, unhealthy other ingredients are in it, and B) because most of them escaped their pen every day and free- ranged with the other poultry.  Finally though, some of them were considered big enough.

    We chose the seven which seemed the fattest, and locked them up for a day before butchering.  This was so that their crops, intestines, etc. would be relatively empty, and thus less likely to be broken and ruin the meat.

     I knew that I wanted to get everyone involved, so got them all revved up and ready to butcher some broilers for a couple of days before.  (That lasted until the time came to pluck them.)

Sometimes we do things rather primitively here...

     Evan was the executioner, for which I was thankful as it meant that I didn't have to be, and Farrah was to oversee the scalding, and help Savana and her team of William, Justice and Emaline pluck the chickens.  I had Bo and LilyAnn to help me clean the chickens.

Farrah dipping the bird in very hot water to loosen the feathers (scalding).

Farrah skinning one of the chickens. I don't remember why she didn't just pluck it...

William bagged a few of the chickens.

LilyAnn was one of the best helpers.  She is really good helping out around the farm.

    When the dead chickens showed up at the butchering table to get plucked, all three of the little pluckers went on strike, and eventually left.  That wasn't a real big deal since this is their first time, and chicken butchering is a messy business.

     Surprisingly enough though, what everyone wanted to do was to gut the chickens... even the little ones who left just at first.  Maybe they thought that was easier than plucking.

     In the past it has always taken us quite some time to do a chicken.  The record was half an hour for one rooster.  This time it took us only 1 hour and 15 minutes.

    The next night we had chicken noodle soup.  It was so good!  And of course, the best part was knowing exactly where it came from.  Those broilers lived happy, though comparatively short lives.  They had plenty of room to run around, grass and bugs to eat, milk pretty frequently to drink, and some tasty scraps every once in a while.  This way of raising chicken is much closer to the way God intended it to be than the conventional way, though ours wasn't completely natural either.  It was lots of hard work though, especially at the end.  But hard work is good.  That is one of the things I love most about our farm- it gives us constant opportunities to work hard and be rewarded by the fruits of our labors.

Success!

In all labor there is profit, but idle chatter leads only to poverty.

Proverbs 14:23

Sausagina

Well, the Feldman Family Farm now has a new occupant- a pig named Sausagina.  As you can tell by the name, she's not a pet, but she is fun to watch.  This is our first pig, and we were totally unprepared for her when she was given to us on Saturday by Mr. Flannagan, the man who runs the local farmer's market.


     When we got home, we knew that the top priority was going to be building a pen for that pig, so Evan and I set to work right away.  We hauled the cattle panels from my movable goat pen to the corner of our pasture, and also brought some 5 1/2 foot posts there.  Bo and LilyAnn dragged over some ten foot posts for the corners, and we set to work.  The panels were originally 16' long, but had been cut in the middle, and then I'd wired back together so that they were about 15 1/2 feet, and hinged, so the pen could be twisted into almost any shape needed.  They had smaller squares (rectangles really) of wire on the bottom, and larger ones toward the top.  The problem was, when I wired them together, I hadn't been careful to put them right- side up, with the smaller openings on the bottom, so three of the four panels had one half with the small openings on the bottom, and the other half with them on top.  Now we un- wired two of them, flipped them over, and wired them back together. 

Next, Evan planted the corner posts.  We were able to use some of the fence posts on our pasture fence for one side of the pen.

Then, we started digging a trench so that we could sink the panels about 1 1/2 feet down so the pig couldn't dig out.

Then, we set one of the jointed panels in the trench and filled it up.  Evan sank a 5 1/2 foot post in the middle (where the joint is) to strengthen it.

We dug another trench along the pasture fence, set the panel in it, and filled it up.  Before filling the trench, we nailed the panel to three of the fence posts for strength, and to hold it steady while we filled the trench.  We repeated the process for the first side on the other two sides of the pen.

When we eventually released Sausagina into her new pen, we were unsure whether it would hold her, as we thought she might be small enough to squeeze out through the squares in the wire.  So we put a collar and rope on her to test it out first.  Well, she was so busy rooting around that she showed no interest in escaping, so we eventually took the collar off- and had to catch her twice the next day.  Once in the barn as she gulped dogfood, and then rooted up the stanchion area, and once a quarter of a mile away on our neighbor's property about 150 yards from the pond my grandfather's pigs used to wallow in when they escaped.  So, to curb her escaping propensities, Evan and I attached some much smaller wire fencing around the bottom 12" of the pen, and then spent the rest of the day in a fine sense of security that whatever happened, the pig was securely imprisoned in her pen.

That lasted till this morning.  So now the little rascal has figured out how to jump over the small wire, and through the big wire, and so gain her freedom.  After all, the dirt is always blacker on the other side of the fence!
So we came up with a desperate plan- tether the pig in her pen until she's too big to squeeze, dig, jump, climb, or otherwise spirit herself out of there!

An article by Doug Philips that I thought was good...

I totally agree with everything written here- Doug Phillips has such good insight.  As Christians we should preserve the earth without worshiping it.

	A Christian Response to Earth Day

	For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse (Romans 1:20) A Christian Response to Earth Day All men are religious because all men have an object of worship. All men have faith in something. In the end, men will either worship and serve the creature, or they will worship and serve the Creator. But they will worship something. In the 18th century, many began to worship the mind. The religion of that day was rationalism. In the 19th century, this god morphed into scientism. But science failed to provide the answers to ultimate questions. The men of the 20th century looked for a more immediate solution to the problems of humanity — they chose to worship the State. This failed. Statism proved to be a harsh taskmaster. In the absence of any real solutions from rationalism, scientism, and statism, men fixed their attention on a new god — or rather, an ancient God that just needed a new facelift. That god is the earth. 21st-century men are earth worshippers. They are sanitized pantheists. Of course, they don't call themselves pantheists or earth worshippers, but religious devotion to the material world is the essence of this modern faith. This religious devotion to the material world as god comes in many shapes and sizes, but it has become ubiquitous in our culture. The new pantheism is at the heart of the green movement. It is reflected in the priorities of Hollywood, in the agenda of politicians, and in the curriculums of the government schools. It is found in the marketing campaign of Madison Avenue, in the reality TV shows of cable television, and sadly, even in pulpits across the nation. The worship of the creation has become a defining undercurrent in our culture, even as it is reshaping many of the cultures of the modern world. And this is one reason why this Friday, April 22, millions of people (perhaps billions) representing the countries of the United Nations will stop to celebrate the high holy day of this religion as they pay homage to the earth God. Of Earth Day, evolutionary anthropologist Margaret Meade once explained that: EARTH DAY is the first holy day which transcends all national borders, yet preserves all geographical integrities, spans mountains and oceans and time belts, and yet brings people all over the world into one resonating accord, is devoted to the preservation of the harmony in nature and yet draws upon the triumphs of technology, the measurement of time, and instantaneous communication through space. EARTH DAY draws on astronomical phenomena in a new way — which is also the most ancient way — by using the vernal Equinox, the time when the Sun crosses the equator making the length of night and day equal in all parts of the earth. To this point in the annual calendar, EARTH DAY attaches no local or divisive set of symbols, no statement of the truth or superiority of one way of life over another. Should Christians care about the earth? Not only must we care about it, we have a holy duty to engage the earth. The difference between the objectives of biblical Christianity and radical environmentalism can be found in the religious assumptions of both groups. Four Lies of the Radical Environmentalist Movement With Earth Day comes billions of dollars worth of environmentalist propaganda driven by their religious worldview. Some of the themes you can expect to hear repeated this year include the following: The Earth Is Our Mother: The very expression “Mother Earth” is popular parlance in our culture and reflects the old pagan longing to worship the physical world. Modern environmentalists, with their devotion to the idea that man is just another life-form to spring from the womb of the earth on the evolutionary journey of life, speak openly about earth being the mother of man. Human Life Has No Greater Intrinsic Value Than Animal Life: The notion that man is an insignificant blip in the universe and that our planet is almost as insignificant as man is an oft-repeated concept of the modern environmentalist movement. Radical environmentalists complain about the carbon footprints of humans, and the sin of “Speciesism” — man discriminating against lower life-forms. The Greatest Crisis Facing Humans is the Despoiling of the Earth: From the media campaigns of former Vice President Al Gore, to the film agenda of Avatar, radical environmentalists want you to believe that the single greatest problem facing humanity is the environmental destruction of earth. Absent a Radical Shift in Private Practice and Public Policy, the Environmental Crisis Will Lead to the End of Life on Earth: Modern pantheists care deeply about the future. One thing is clear: Radical envioronmentalists have their own eschatology. They see the end of the world coming because of nuclear waste, global warming, the loss of rainforest in the Amazon, or any of a host of perceived environmental hazards. Four Christian Assumptions About the Earth The Earth is Witness to the Power and Authority of God the Creator Who Alone May Be Worshipped: The Bible teaches that the very existence of the earth is a reminder to all men of the eternal power and Godhood of Christ, so that they are without excuse (Romans 1:20). It reminds us that as long as the earth continues, the promises of God will remain faithful (Genesis 8:22; Deuteronomy 7:9). Significantly, the Bible warns us that the consequence for man rejecting the witness of creation is that he worships creation itself (Romans 1:22-25). The Earth Was Made for the Glory of God and the Benefit of Man Who Was Made the Pinnacle of Creation and of Infinitely Greater Value than Animals or the Earth Itself: Man is the pinnacle of creation and has more eternal value than the earth or any of the creatures who live on it (Psalm 8:5). Man is not a carbon footprint; he is the image-bearer of God. This means that the most "insignificant" human life (insignificant only in the eyes of man) is of inestimably greater value than that of a blue whale, a snail darter, a spotted owl, a mountain, or a tree. The Earth Has Been Placed under Man who Has a Moral Obligation to Subdue it and to Exercise Wise Stewardship over the Earth: Man is God’s appointed steward on earth, and his core mission is to be His agent of dominion over it. Toward this end, God has placed all things under man to be used for his benefit and to be carefully stewarded and cultivated for God’s glory. “Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet” (Psalm 8:6). The Earth is Not the Problem: The reason why the earth suffers is because of man’s sin that has plunged the earth into judgment. Man brought death and judgment to earth. In fact, the whole creation is groaning and waiting redemption (Romans 8:22-23). Despite the righteous judgment of God on earth, He is merciful and promises the continuation of the seasons and the fundamental stability of the planet until the end of time (Genesis 8:22), at which there will be a new heaven and new earth (2 Peter 3:13). Conclusion All men are religious because all men have an object of worship. In the end, they will worship and serve the creature, or they will worship and serve the Creator. But they will worship something. Earth Day, and the radical environmental movement that spawned this high holy day of pantheism, are at war with the Gospel because they perpetuate false worship. The Christian response to the idolatry of Earth Day might be reduced to this simple thought: Jesus Christ is the Creator, and He alone is to be worshipped. He created man as the pinnacle of creation and determined that humans would be the only part of creation to be made in the very image of God, and that man as the image-bearer of God would rule over the earth. On a practical level, this means that Christians need to stop allowing the radical environmentalist movement to define the issue. We must cease from being the tail and become the head on the question of our duties, privileges, and responsibilities vis-a-vis creation. The Bible has a great deal to say about our use of the resources of the world and our relationship to the earth. Of all people, Christians who honor the Creator should have a passion for creation. We are losing the debate through subversion, silence, lack of vision, and because of the Christian community’s fear of the God-ordained, perpetually valid, creation precept called “The Dominion Mandate.” This mandate directs man is to rule over the earth, subduing it and taking dominion over it for his benefit and for God’s glory. Implicit to the Dominion Mandate is the duty of man to cultivate, wisely manage, and carefully steward the planet. Finally, man’s problems will never be solved through the elevation of human reason, the power of science, or the interventions of the state. Nor will rescuing the biosphere of planet earth save man or ensure him a future on this planet. You cannot save the earth. But human beings can be saved. And the only hope of salvation is found in Jesus Christ — the Creator! It is this Creator through whom we live and breathe and who by the very power of His word holds the worlds together. He will someday establish a new heaven and a new earth and will bring all of His people into Glory. Doug Phillips recently returned from an expedition to the Amazon where he produced Into the Amazon, a study course with 7-part television-style episodes on the battle between radical environmentalism and biblical Christianity. To sign up for Into the Amazon, his exciting online virtual tour and study click here. To see the episode trailers, click here.

Busy, busy, busy- and loving it!

Wow, I finally got time to post on here... we've been so busy with different projects, and having people over that it's been hard to make time for my blog.  A brief synopsis of our last couple weeks:  The Browers spend part of an afternoon with us the day my great- grandmother is coming over to spend the night, she arrives, we have a lovely visit, she leaves, and we prepare for our next visitors- Mama's second cousin's family.  They come in the next day with their new RV, camp out Friday and Saturday, and we all go to church in the RV on Sunday.  Then we have a couple of visits from a family friend, and Farrah and I start spending some more time with our neighbor's horses.  That same Friday, the Saint family from church came out with their camper, and spent Friday night and Saturday.  I'm starting to feel like we own a campground!  But it's been great having so many friends over.

      On Saturday we (or at least I) got a scare.  This is how it happened...

Farrah, Savy, LilyAnn, and their friends Jessie Joy, and MariLou, and I all walked up to Mr. Lombardy's horses.  The younger girls all ran off to play on a huge fallen tree, and we petted the horses, and groomed them (or rather, tried to get them used to the brush and currycomb). On our way back we stopped at Mr. Lombardy's hose to rinse off the little girls' mouths, which were burning because they had sucked oranges (probably from pesticides on the peels). Farrah and I smelled smoke, and we scanned the horizon looking for it. Because there was a large pasture in front of us, and then ferneries and orange groves, we could see a long way from where we were standing.

“Someone must be burning,” I said to her.

“Maybe the Hutchersons,” she suggested.

“No, the wind is blowing the opposite direction.” (It was blowing strongly from the highway.)

We turned our backs for a moment, turned back to the horizon not ten seconds later, and there was a huge plume of smoke in the air- black, billowing, growing more every moment.

We started home, speculating about what caused the smoke. From the suddenness of it, the color and the smell (more like gunpowder than wood) we came to the conclusion that it was a wreck. We hadn't had rain for about ten days, and the wind was blowing 20 or 30 MPH, so for a while the firemen had a difficult time controlling it. I was beginning to get very worried for a while. I'd gone to take a shower, thinking that the fire would soon be put out, even with the wind blowing it straight towards us. Not long afterward, Farrah knocked on the door, and told me I'd better hurry. A few minutes later, she came back, and said that “Mr. Saint could see the flames in the trees, ash was falling all over the place, and everyone was heading down to the lake." I came out as soon as I could, and found that though everybody was not heading down to the lake, the smoke was much, much thicker, ash was indeed falling, and I later found that not only Mr. Saint, but also Mama and Bo saw flames. We became quite worried. We moved all the cows except Honey down to the lake, and began trying to catch the chickens, knowing that otherwise, if the fire came to us, they'd be blackened chickens.  It was pretty well impossible to catch them though. A little later Daddy and I drove up to the corner of Mr. Lombardy's pasture (the one nearest us) to see some firemen putting out a small fire started by flying embers which had alighted there. As this was only a short way from our own property, I was concerned. This whole time, while preparing for the worst, I had been in a state of disbelief. It seemed impossible that the fire could actually make it to our house. Thankfully it didn't. This was largely due to an excellent idea which someone had- namely to turn on all the sprinklers in the ferneries and orange groves.

     Yesterday Farrah and I saw where the fire had taken hold by the pasture.  There was a large blackened area in what used to be a patch of dried leaves and dead wood under a thick camphor tree.  We learned the cause of the fire on Sunday.  Our neighbor Mrs. Todd dropped by with a letter of thanks to the firemen for us to sign, and she told us what had happened.  There is a little Catholic church just a little ways on the other side of Hwy. 17.  The people there had been doing some brush clearing, and had a large pile which needed to be burned.  They got a permit, burned their brush on Friday, put out their fire and left.  That is, thought they put it out.  Well, they really didn't.  The result was the fire which nearly burnt one of our neighbor's ferneries, and was in a direct line with our house.  I'm so thankful God protected us from the fire.

Baby animals

Here's a few photos of some of the babies around our farm...

                     
                        I had to help this duckling out of the egg, and it was cold at first
                        so it had to stay in the oven for a little while.
                                It's doing fine now though.

One of Inez's puppies.  They always look like fat rats when they're born.

"Sailing, sailing, in the little tin tub..."

Abandon ship!