Thundering Falls

We have gotten several (our rain gauge froze so I don't know exactly how many) inches of rain today and are proud of each and every drop. We are in the midst of a severe drought here in the Southeastern United States so the rain is very welcome. Our pond has been extremely low and it came up visibly today though not near full. On down the creek below the dam is a small waterfall that we call Thundering Falls. When I say a small waterfall I mean a small waterfall like less than two feet! It got it's grandeous name when the kids were real little and there was this show on TV about dinosaurs and they lived near a huge waterfall they called Thundering Falls so when we discovered our small waterfall it was called Thundering Falls and has been ever since. It's so funny when people come over for the first time and we say, not even thinking about it now because we have just always called it that, "let's go show them Thundering Falls!" I am quite sure people think we have fliped our lid when they see this two foot trickle that we call "Thundering Falls" :-)

What is an ox?

I have a friend who is a medical doctor and he shared an interesting piece of information that was farm related (he's a part-time farmer like me) so I thought I would post it here for your viewing pleasure. We read about oxen in the bible but do you ever see an ox farm? I don't and now I know why. As it turns out, any animal that pulls a farm implement can be called an ox! So if you hook up a plow to old Buster, he is by definition an ox. I know there is a specific animal in some parts of the world that are called oxen, but they look suspiciously like a bull to me!

Well those Golden Comet chicks we got back in April started laying in August (not september like projected which meant that I did not have the laying boxes finished in time!) and we have been collecting about two dozen eggs per day since Labor Day. We have enjoyed having "farm-fresh" eggs as well as selling a few dozen a week to friends and neighbors.

The 4H pullet chain project is also over. For this, one of our daughters had to keep a record of everyhing associated with the raising of the chickens and egg production. She received a perfect score on her record book and a blue ribbon for her "show chicken." She sold five chickens for $10 each. Wanna guess who bought them? Yea I bought my own chickens back. My wife sent me with strict orders that I had better come home with those chickens! I was glan ours went first too. By the end of the auction those chickens were going for upwards of $20 each!

Getting Ready for Spaghetti

Our Small Group is sponsering a spaghetti dinner after church this Sunday to help out a needy family. It is great to see how when everyone pulls together that it's not too much work for anyone and it all gets done.

Happy Birthday Noah!

Well today is my only begotten son's sixth birthday! We are officially out of the toddler stage of life. And we don't have a teenager yet so I say we are in the Golden Years. Life is good!

The chickens are laying two dozen eggs per day on a regular basis which is great. 24 eggs from 25 chickens figues out to be 96% production which is way on the high end. We have one that lays a "doublle yoker" most days.

The Twenty-eight eleven

The Twenty-eight eleven is the name of our farm. It comes from Deutronomy 28:11 which reads: "The LORD will make you abound in prosperity, in the offspring of your body and in the offspring of your beast and in the produce of your ground in the land which the LORD swore to your fathers to give you." We count on God's blessings for our life as we know it so we thought it appropriate to go ahead and give Him all the glory for anything good that we produce, be it crops, cows, or children. This blog will be a fun project for us to document what is going on at our farm and hopefully share some natural ways of farming along the way (as we learn too).