Day 2 Ducks

Nothing much to report.  We didn't turn the eggs as frequently as we probably should have, so we'll work on doing better.

We transferred the nest to a larger box so it would be easier to turn the eggs.

The dogs have shown some interest in the eggs, but they haven't bothered them as of yet.

The Unexpected Duck Adventure, Day 1

Today, duck eggs came to live on our farm.  With any luck, in the next month or so, we'll have added ducks to our farm!

I'm going to blog our duck adventures as a means of actually keeping track of what happens.

We took possession of the eggs at 3pm.  Of course, the first thing we did was number and candle the eggs to see if we could see anything.  By my very inexpert judgement, these are pretty young duck embryos.  We think we saw some veining.  We definitely saw air sacs.

We put the nest inside a dog kennel and put it outside on the back patio a few hours later. 

At night, I put the heat lamp on the nest and turned them so the numbered side is facing down.

Good night duck eggs!

homesteading things I've learned today

Bananas and banana peels are a natural fertilizer for roses.  Add them to the hole when you plant a bush, or add them to the top layer of soil around an already existing plant.  They will add potassium that the plant needs.

Used coffee grounds are good fertilizer, particularly for plants that prefer acidic soil: blueberries, evergreens, azaleas, roses, camellias, avocados, and many fruit trees.  Scatter dried used coffee grounds as mulch.

Hair is a good source of nitrogen and repels deer.  Human or pet hair works.

source: https://thegrownetwork.com/15-simple-and-inexpensive-homemade-fertilizers/

gonna eat a lot of peaches

The countdown is on: one month to go.

A cold front!

It's true, a cold front arrived this weekend.  That meant it cooled off enough to go outside to have snoballs!  (If you're unfamiliar with that Southern term, snoballs are similar to snow cones, but the ice is shaved much finer.)

Incidentally, our snoballs came from Bob's Taco Station, which you may have seen on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives.

The impressive part is that everyone finished their snoballs, even after having had their fill of chips, queso, salsa and bean & cheese tacos.

It took a while, but they powered through.

Strawberry, Bubble Gum, Bubble Gum, Root Beer

For the record, if you have a strawberry snoball and subsequently suck your thumb, your thumb will turn red.  The more you know.

a soapbox of sorts

If you've been my friend for very long, you've heard me say that I'm not going to make my kids go to college.

Now, before you skip on by, chalking another weirdo idea up to the homeschooling freaks, check out this open letter to Mitt Romney from Mike Rowe.

(I promise, this isn't a political post.  But if you're interested in political posts, check out Boston Chai Party, where a couple of my sibs and I post political articles when we have something to say.) 

Mike Rowe expresses a perspective that I've also been thinking about for a while.  Politics of college education aside, I don't believe that forcing everyone into the same mold of "graduate high school, go to college," is productive for each individual or society as a whole.  We bemoan the death of American craftsmanship and the laziness of American society.  We mock the soul-sucking nature of cube farms.  We bring work stresses home and damage family relationships.  We fume over the insanity of the daily commute.  We spend money we don't have for an "education" that we may or may not actually use.

Why?

And we belittle the jobs that don't require a college education.  Yet, these jobs do require a specific, valuable skill set.  I guarantee there is none more valuable in Houston, Texas, in the dead of summer than the air conditioner repairman.

I already blogged about this, so I'm not going to repeat myself.  I just don't think that we have to continue to accept the way the game is played. 

You know you're entering a new stage in parenting when the behavior that needs addressed is that one child knocked out another child's tooth. 

It was a baby tooth.  Speculation remains about whether or not it was loose already.

chance chance

Do you believe in coincidence? 

I don't.

I think I used to, once upon a time. 

At the risk of sounding like a religious freak, I don't see coincidences anymore.  I see God at work.

For example:

I have an online friend that I met through the message boards for "Lois & Clark" fanfic.  (What a bizarre way to start, right?  Just wait!)

This friend has written fanfic in the past, but she is also a Christian fiction writer.

(Now, my feelings about Christian fiction are pretty much the same as my feelings about most "Christian" things.  If something is labeled "Christian," more often than not, I'm steering away from it.  My whole philosophy on this is better suited to a separate post.  Suffice it to say, I can't handle most Christian fiction.)

As a Christian fiction writer, this friend is naturally plugged into the Christian fiction world, which means she very helpfully posts links on Facebook to free Christian fiction books for Kindle whenever she comes across them.  This happens about once a week.  I always check out the links and read the reviews to see if the book is potentially interesting/well-written/could stand on its own outside the label "Christian fiction."  I have come across some good books this way.  I have also come across enough books (that I feel are worth downloading) to last me for quite some time because, you know, I have loads of free time to spend reading.

Incidentally, as we've been hanging out this summer, waiting for our house to sell, I've found myself with more free time than I've had since BC (before children).  What do you do in the dead of summer in a house where a significant percentage of your stuff is packed up and in which you're trying to avoid anything that makes a mess?  Why, you read, of course!

So I busted out my Kindle, and started perusing the number of books I had downloaded for free.  I read one series.  I read a few more books here and there.  I read the one free book I had from my very favorite Christian author, who is leaps and bounds beyond any other I've read.  Then I decided to just start with the oldest books I had downloaded.  (I like systems so much that sometimes I'd rather impose a system upon myself that dictates behavior than have to make decisions.  Screwy, I know.)

The oldest book in my list was Pearl in the Sand by Tessa Afshar.  I have no idea how long ago I downloaded this, but I know it has been several months.  (By my count, I'm up to about 4 "coincidences.")

Stop what you're doing and go read that book.  Seriously.  Go.  Don't even finish this blog post. 

Okay, I'll keep writing as long as you promise to go get that book as soon as you're done here.

Ms. Afshar has a blog.  Today, her post included this:

Most of us Christians know God reasonably well in our heads. We know the facts. We know the rules. We know the stories. We know the claims and assertions. But deep down inside, we haven’t quite caught up to that knowledge yet. We haven’t grasped in our core being that God is for us; He is on our side, and because of who He is, this is enough to make even a fallen world safe. We are unable to truly rest in the love of God. We struggle to live out of trust in the Father’s faithfulness. We slip, we strive, we wrestle with fear and control because at the level of the kherev we are not yet wholly God’s.

("Kherev" is a Hebrew word that means, in my paraphrase, the core of you, your very soul.)

Have you ever felt like this?  Struggling without understand why?  Without knowing how to make it better?  

How can we help each other to know God better, to know God like this?

What could happen in our worlds if we were so secure and so rooted in our knowledge of God?

Back to "coincidences:"

Pearl in the Sand is the story (largely fictionalized, though based in the Biblical account) of Rahab.  

Rahab was the mother of Boaz.

Boaz married Ruth.  Jesus comes from the line of Ruth and Rahab.

The women's Bible study at church (which I wasn't going to be part of because there's no point in getting involved in something if we're just going to be moving) is studying Ruth.

Ruth and Rahab have some interesting similarities.  Would Boaz have treated Ruth the way he did if not for the background of his mother and the way God worked in her life?  I'm guessing it wasn't a coincidence.

Feel free to blame me if you find yourself awake in the middle of the night to finish Pearl in the Sand.  But then tell me about so we can discuss it!