Cattle Drive, Farm to School, Mere Christianity
Quite possibly the most beautiful week of the year. Peak color in the mountain leaves. Crisp cool mornings warming into the 70’s throughout the day. Good living.
Early Saturday we loaded up the truck bed with coolers for the Abingdon Farmers Market and the the Suburban with coolers for the Marion. Our biggest meat delivery day of the month. The whole family went to Abingdon, then I left from there to go to Marion. After the market, we hauled 8 more hogs from the woods back to the barn that will go to the processor in a couple weeks.
I moved the remaining pigs in the woods to a new paddock. We have another group of 14 growing pigs I moved to a new paddock behind the barn.
We emptied the remaining chicken shelter and brought the egg layers back to the barn. We’re willing to part with some of them if you want some egg layers for your back yard. They should start laying any day now.
Moving the chickens wasn’t as big a task as moving all the chicken shelters, lids, feeders, waterers, buckets, and hoses. The shelters are set aside for winter, and the field is cleared for winter cattle grazing.
Speaking of cattle, I interrupted Amy and the kid’s school morning on Wednesday for them to help me with a cattle drive. We rounded up the momma cows and moved them over a half a mile down the road to some stock piled forage on the other end of the farm. The dry spell this summer obviously stunted the grass growth. We have plenty of grass for now, but not as much in reserve as we’d hoped for this time of year. 12 baby calves on the ground.
Our hay supply is not as much as we’d hoped either. Our first cutting wasn’t as abundant as years past, but fortunately we carried over some leftover hay from last year. Not sure if we’d be able to get in a second cutting or not, with a clear forecast, I spent Tuesday afternoon mowing a 15 acre hay field. Feeling like I’m always spinning in circles with countless things needing to be done, it was therapeutic to get on the tractor and mow in circles. Everything else aside, and just mow hay.
Yesterday while Amy was teaching the kids, I delivered over 1000 ORVF hamburger patties to five nearby Smyth County schools. Today Smyth County schools are eating a local lunch with farm fresh foods provided by local farms. We thankful for the opportunity to participate.
Our internet is back which has made life at least a little less stressful for Amy. She had a full week as usual, teaching kids and helping with cows, pigs, and chickens. A Knoxville delivery early in the week. She made more broth in the on farm kitchen and filled orders and coolers for tomorrow’s Abingdon Farmers Market. She’s leaving this morning for her annual “girl’s weekend” with friends from college, dropping the kids off in Knoxville at her parents’ house. She deserves a much needed get away. I think she’s a little nervous about leaving me to run the market tomorrow. I’m nervous about it too. Ha. Hopefully I won’t mess things up too badly.
More wood cutting to fill in the gaps throughout the week. On the tractor mowing hay, I started listening to “Mere Christianity” by C.S. Lewis. I read this one probably about 15 years ago. I remember it having a foundational impact on my faith. It was even more solidifying this time around.
“When I was an atheist, I had to try to persuade myself that most of the human race have always been wrong about the question that mattered to them most… As in arithmetic, there is only one right answer to a sum, and all other answers are wrong, but some of the wrong answers are much nearer being right than others.”
“Comfort is the one thing you cannot get by looking for it. If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end. If you look for comfort, you will not get either comfort or truth, only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin with and in the end despair.”
“Temperance is unfortunately one of those words that has changed its meaning. It now usually means teetotalism, but in the days when the second cardinal virtue was christened ‘temperance,’ it meant nothing of the sort. Temperance referred, not specially to drink, but to all pleasures. And it meant not abstaining, but going the right length and no further. It is a mistake to think that Christians ought all to be teetotalers… One of the marks of a certain type of bad man is that he cannot give up a thing himself without wanting everyone else to give it up. That is not the Christian way. An individual Christian may see fit to give up all sorts of things for special reasons: marriage or meat or beer or the cinema. But the moment he starts saying the things are bad in themselves or looking down his nose at other people who do use them, he has taken the wrong turning.”
“That is why Christians are told not to judge. We see only the results which a man’s choices make out of his raw material. But God does not judge him on the raw material at all, but on what he has done with it.”
“Or as they would say, ‘hate the sin but not the sinner.’ For a long time I used to think this a silly, straw splitting distinction. How could you hate what a man did and not hate the man? But years later, it occurred to me that there was one man to whom I had been doing this all my life, namely myself.”
“Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you will get neither.”
Have a good week.
Will