A New Place-A New Blog!

A lot has transpired since I last posted!  Ed had a heart attack, triple bypass surgery, then a stroke and three brain surgeries all in the months of May, June and July of last year.  Needless to say our lives have been busy.

God is an awesome God and has kept Ed through all of this and is healing him day by day.  The prognosis is he will recover.  God said He is restoring Ed to even better than he was before.  We are so thankful for our family and friends who have been with us on this journey.  You know who you are.  Thank you and God bless you richly for your support and help.

My dear Mother also passed away suddenly a few weeks after we got Ed home from the hospital.  Yes, it has been a trying of our faith this past year.  But Mother is in heaven with Jesus now and is no longer suffering the afflictions of a broken body.  She is no longer in a wheel chair and is free to worship the Lord for eternity.  I am so thankful to have had a godly mother who taught me so much in the natural and in the spiritual.  She always held God's standards no matter what the rest of us may have been doing.  I still miss her so much, but I know that one day we will be reunited for eternity.

Through all of this the Holy Spirit has been teaching me how to trust in God and to know that no matter what happens, He works all things together for my good!  I have seen evidence of this over and over.  

After we went through all of this I started praying and seeking the Lord on what to do.  Where we were in Oregon there was absolutely no advanced medical care available to us.  There isn't even a cardiologist in the entire county!  Let alone a Neurosurgeon.  

Before this happened we had thought to move to Idaho.  Where we had been looking it was even more isolated than where we were in Oregon.  So with Ed not being able to do the things he used to do, that option was out.

Finally I felt I had heard the Lord say to pack up and go to Spokane.  Here there are many advantages.  For one there is a wonderful Church we are attending, we have family here that has been so supportive, and there is advanced medical care available.  There are many other resources here that have greatly benefited our family. 

The best thing is knowing I am being obedient to the Holy Spirit.  Others have judged me and questioned this decision, but they don't understand the spiritual aspect of our lives.  That's okay, Ed and I pray for them every morning.  : )

God has answered a prayer of mine that I have been asking for a long time.  I needed help with the girls' education.  Just last night that answer came!  I now have a tutor who has a bachelor's degree and has done a teaching internship, she will be coming to our home every week.  Super qualified!  I'm super blessed!  This person is my sweet niece Jessica! Someone much smarter than I now will be guiding the education of our daughters.  God's grace and provision for our family is wonderful!

I am going to start a new blog about our new life here.  We are so blessed and are looking forward to what God has in store for our future!  I'll post a link soon.

Oh and our Bountiful Acres little farm is still for sale if anyone would like to buy it!  ; )

God bless!

FOR SALE BY OWNER

Bountiful Acres Homestead is up for sale.  We are feeling lead to move.  Once we sell I will post a link to our new property blog and continue blogging about our experiences and share how the Lord is working in our lives.  Hope to "see" you all there!

God bless and keep you all.

December

Gee November came and went before I knew it.  We had a nice quiet Thanksgiving.  It was flooding during that time.  I think that is the earliest we have had a flood since we have been here.  Then we got flooded again!  I pray this is it for this winter.  That we got that nonsense out of the way for the winter......

We have been having a great December so far.  We started doing an Advent devotion on the first of December with our girls.  Plus we made a cool Advent garland complete with candy and scriptures.

We have decided to really concentrate on celebrating the birth of our Savior this year instead of being pulled into the commercialism of the season.  We are putting more focus on keeping Christ in Christmas and less focus on "getting gifts" and we are having so much more enjoyment!  

I got out the calendar at the beginning of the month and planned out two weeks of things to do.  One day we do crafts, one day we do baking, some days are movie days, and of course we throw in a day of laundry and house cleaning to keep things nice!  We also have been decorating, looking at Christmas lights in town. We are also going to sew a couple of gifts for family members.  I am going to help the girls sew pajama pants for Ed for Christmas.  They are so excited about that!  Shhh, don't tell Ed!

I am having a stress free holiday.  I am really enjoying spending this time with my girls and Ed.  We are having so much fun with our activities and devotions.  This is what it should have been about all along......not me rushing around stressed out trying to make,  or hunt down lots of gifts and baking and planning and shopping, feeling bad because I couldn't get everyone everything I wanted.  Yes, I am truly enjoying this year!

I have lots of things to write about and share after the New Year begins.  I have been taking pictures and mentally writing on my blog all summer and fall.   

Happy September!

This summer has just zipped by!  Here it is September already. That means we are in the middle of harvesting, canning and putting up our yearly supply of food.  Sure makes it nice not to have to buy so much at the grocery stores. Below are some pictures taken here this past month.  We bought 100 lbs of fresh tuna and canned and smoked it.  Of course we had some fresh too. 

 

I have been canning lots of pickles, fruits, green beans, and just about anything I can put in a jar!  I will be posting pictures of our apple cider day which is tomorrow.  We are renting the cider press and will be making cider from the buckets and buckets of apples we have.  Harvest blessings to all!

Tuna!

Tuna after filleting

Tuna fillets

Tuna after being cleaned and cut to put into jars

Pints of tuna

Smoked Tuna!

Ed unloading the  canner

Three bean salad

Bread and butter pickles

Shelled peas for the freezer

Saka

Applesauce and apple juice

My Dahlias

A shot of the orchard

August update

Our apple trees are loaded this year!

The first jams of the 2012 canning year.

We are in garden mode once again.  We have been keeping busy pulling weeds in the gardens.  The vegetables are just starting.  We have had our first batch of green beans, the zucchini are in production now, the beets are nice sized and ready to eat or be made into pickle beets.  We have had some nice peppers, lettuce, spinach and lots of kale from the gardens already.  There have been a few peas and we had some new potatoes.

The main garden last month

The new boat

Our most recent project is a boat we bought.  It is a fixer upper, but we are working on it.  We plan on going crabbing and fishing on Ed's birthday with it, Lord willing.


I am planning on doing a better job of posting on my blog this year.  I haven't been very good at keeping it up the past several months.  We have a desk set up with the computers now since the girls use them for school.  It is much easier to sit down and write a bit now.  I am always taking photos with ideas of things to write about, now I just have to follow through.  :)


I will be sharing our boat project for sure.  Next time I will post before photos of the seats.


God bless!

Farm girls and such

How do girls who live the farming life play Barbies?  I know that is the top question everyone has been thinking, right?   Just in case you ever wondered about that let me share with you. A picture is worth a thousand words so look at the following photos and I will give the details about them.

Here is the horse and the invented plow.

Here is a close up of the plow.  They have used a wooden spoon from their cooking toys to make the plow. That dark piece is a Lincoln log and then they used lots of twist ties and pony tail bands to hook it all together.

And here we have Barbie ready to plow up the garden spot, or the back 40.  !  When I asked them why they decided to make the plow, they said " because we don't have a tractor and they had to plow up the ground somehow!"  The horse is a motorized one and it actually pulls the plow and Barbie.  

So that is how farm girls play Barbies..  Great imaginations right?  Beats having their faces stuck in a video game or cell phone.

How Prepared are You?

How many times have we heard about being prepared for an emergency?  Most of us listen to advice about having a few supplies on hand for an emergency with our eyes glazed over.  We think we personally won't have any reason to be concerned, or we think we ARE prepared to handle what ever comes our way.

We had a little wake up call here at Bountiful Acres, recently.  We live in the flood plain and we get flooded every year.  We know when it is coming and we buy supplies and get ready to ride it out.  We have never lost power during the floods or lost our water supply.  Well this year has been something different for sure!  First off we didn't get the flood during November/December like usual.  We thought we had been spared a flood.  We did get a big flood in late January.  Then we thought okay that is it for this season......  Wrong!  In March we had two more floods!  We had one day to drive out to re-supply between them.  We also had our water get mirky.  We had to use bottled water for drinking and cooking, of which we didn't have nearly enough.  During this last flood, (which we are still trapped by as I type,) we also lost power.  We ran out of chicken feed because of the length of this flood. As a result the chickens are eating my wheat and corn from the pantry.  Thank heavens I had those stocked up!

So why am I sharing all of this for?  So that you might think about being ready for some unexpected event in your life concerning you and your family.

Here are our notes from this experience. 

We are more humble now, we found out we weren't so prepared as we thought.  We had become so sure that things would always continue the way they had in the past.  We were a bit arrogant you could say.....

This is a list of things we learned:

1. We need a water purifier/filter.
2. We need some sort of alternate power for small appliances.
3. More animal feed stocked up.
4. A way to get our water without the electric pump if needed.  We do have one gravity flow spigot that we can use.
5. More firewood!
6. Buy more solar lights for night lights.
7. Keep the laundry always done up and the dishes done before bed.
8. Keep bread baked ahead.

When we lose power, we don't have water to the house as we have an electric pump. We can't use the oven on the propane cookstove.  I can use the burners by lighting them, but the oven has an electric digital control to run it. Of course we won't have power to run any appliances like my flour grinder or bread mixer. The girls won't have a night light without power. Obviously without power we can't wash clothes either. Using the machine anyway.  :) 

That is the reasoning behind our plans to get better prepared.  With the crazy weather patterns these days and everything else going on in our world it makes sense to be sure you can take care of your family and yourself for an extended period of time.  We are told to have at least 72 hours worth of food and water in case of emergency. 

 I would say at least a month would be best!  We are going into day 8 of being flooded in. We were prepared for a few days, but not for this long. 

What would you do if you lost power for a period of time, or your water supply was cut off or you couldn't get out to go to the store?  How would you and your family fare?  Something to think about.

We also are going to put a kit in our vehicles in case we get trapped by a disaster that prevented us from getting back home.  Things like water, a way to make fire, flashlights, food and blankets.  It is much better to be safe than sorry in that situation.

If you need some ideas for being more prepared click on the Emergency Essentials link at the right.  I don't usually go for advertising on my blog unless it is a personal friend, but after our recent experiences I thought this one would be a good idea.