It feels good to have this year’s hay baled up. I finished rolling the last bales Friday afternoon. About 30 seconds after backing the tractor in the shed, the clouds opened up, and it started pouring. Couldn’t have timed it much better. A good rain after a good hot week. 

The second cutting made almost as much hay at the first round, especially where the chickens had been marching across the field and fertilizing it this summer. I wouldn’t mind having a couple hundred more rolls in our hay inventory, but I feel better now about going into winter.

Amy’s parents came up for the weekend. Her mom helped with the kids and the Abingdon Farmers Market while her dad wired up lights for the wood shed and did some insulating and remodeling at the pump house to hopefully prevent our water from freezing this winter. 

With only about three weeks of chicken season left, Amy and I did some chicken sorting and inventory over the weekend. We definitely under shot our chicken production this year. We’re in pretty good shape for the chicken shares, but our remaining chicken inventory likely won’t last much into the winter months. 

Aside from the norm of making the rounds and moving animals, most of my extra time was spent moving hay bales off the field and mowing around the barnyard. 

On Wednesday BellaJane came up to help move chickens and do some freezer work. We sorted beef that morning while Amy and the kids were having school. After lunch, we all went to the barn to fill beef and pork herd shares for September along with extra orders. More freezer work today as we get coolers packed for the Abingdon Farmers Market tomorrow. 

One of the benefits of homeschooling is the freedom and flexibility to take the kids on field trips when and where we choose. We usually start the school year with a long list of ideas and places to go, but by the end of the school year, few of those places end up getting checked off the list. Yesterday afternoon, however, Amy and Ms. Desiree took the five of them to the Museum of the Middle Appalachians in Saltville. Close to home and filled with lots of local history. At dinnertime talk, the consensus was divided as to the best part of the day. Some said it was the museum, while others felt strongly that it was the ice cream that followed. 

Lots of time for audiobook listening while moving hay and mowing. I most enjoyed AS A MAN THINKETH written by James Allen in the early 1900s. Not long but deep. Almost every line was quotable. Here’s a few:

“A man is literally what he thinks, his character being the complete sum of all his thoughts. As the plant springs from and could not be without the seed, so every act of a man springs from the hidden seeds of thought and could not have appeared without them… Act is the blossom of thought, and joy and suffering are its fruits.”

“Just as a gardener cultivates his plot, keeping it free from weeds and growing the flowers and fruits which he requires, so may a man tend the garden of his mind, weeding out all the wrong, useless, and impure thoughts and cultivating toward perfection the flowers and fruits of right, useful, and pure thoughts.”

“Thought and character are one.”

“Justice, not injustice, is the soul and substance of life. And righteousness, not corruption, is the molding and moving force in the spiritual government of the world. This being so, man has but to right himself to find that the universe is right. And during the process of putting himself right, he will find that as he alters his thoughts towards things and other people, things and other people will alter towards him.”

“Men imagine that thought can be kept secret, but it cannot. It rapidly crystalizes into habit, and habit solidifies into circumstance.”

“Circumstance does not make the man; it reveals him to himself.”

“Men are anxious to improve their circumstances but are unwilling to improve themselves. They, therefore, remained bound. The man who does not shrink from self-crucifixion can never fail to accomplish the object upon which his heart is set. This is as true of earthly as of heavenly things.”

“A man cannot directly choose his circumstances, but he can choose his thoughts and so, indirectly, but yet surely, shape his circumstances.”

Have a good week.

Will