Northern Farmer

Glory to God! The small grains harvest has officially begun today on this farm! Started swathing oats this afternoon and got an eighteen acre field down and just got in a few minutes ago. And when I got in there was a delicious chicken and dumpling supper waiting. Of coarse I had to shower first cause when your doing small grains such as oats things get a tad bit itchy! The oats is running about average I’d say from swathing the stuff. Not to tall, but no disaster like the last few years. None was knocked down by the recent storm winds we had earlier this week so swathing was a breeze, (once I got the durn thing running), and the rows are nice and neat, easy for the combine to do its job on. Plus got thirty eight second crop hay bales baled up today, the big rounds. Good day, all in all, but them homemade dumplings were the kicker to get me in a praising mood. Something about them things! Old style Polish dumplings with cabbage and onions and enough butter to support a big dairy operation!

This next week will be a crusher here, harvest time and when its harvest time a person harvests. The way its laying out there should be no work on Sunday but after that things will pick up steam in a hurry. I’m hoping to get it all done this coming week and get back to just making some hay and doing some odd jobs around the farm. Never a shortage of jobs, especially when its a full time family farm, but I’m hoping that there will be a few catch up weeks before chopping silage. Then when that’s all done things will get much easier. We got a New Idea two row corn picker this week. I forget the model, but its one of them Super Pickers. Five hundred bucks and in mint shape. To me this is a true find. Heck, I bought a barrel of gas this week and it cost a thousand, so for half that price we got us a beautiful corn picker, ready to go! That thing should last as long as I do if a person carries a grease gun and this just goes to show some equipment doesn’t cost and arm and a leg. I always liked picking corn over combining it anyhow. No drying costs or anything like that. And if a person grinds up the whole cobs for the cattle a better treat can’t be found for them. Something about the cobs makes it far superior to shell corn and healthier too!

I just can’t wait for fall this year. I always feel that way when its hot and humid! This year should be different than the past few because there doesn’t look like any feed worries to worry me for nine months. Just feed em till they’re good and fat and can take anything a Minnesota winter can dish out! Oh Lord, will it be good! And I ain’t forgetting where the goodness come from either. God is good! And you know, eating them dumplings tonight kinda reminded me of an old circuit riding preachers life story where his favorite food was some good old homemade dumplings, with some old fashioned farm chicken on the side, (not broilers). Gets me in the mood to go preach the Gospel just eating that stuff! And Lord, when the silage is in, that’s what this old farmer will do to anyone who listens! Ain’t no higher privilege than to spread the Gospel, both in word and in deed. I’m hoping that I can do both somehow, don’t know how yet, but the Lord can take care of that detail. There’s a need for this in the countryside and I guess if there’s a need then that’s what I’ll do when the crops are in and the house is warm during the cool months.

Well, its Sunday evening and all is going pretty good around here today. A beautiful day once again and the week looks like a good one coming up! Get started on second crop hay in earnest and knock down the oats later in the week. There’ll be allot of work the next couple of weeks, besides the day to day stuff, but I can’t detect any major heat waves coming so that does make life a little bit easier. I heard today that the little town where we go to church got some videos on You Tube and I gandered over there and yup, there’s a bunch! Just rural living, for real, and I was so surprised to say the least. So over on my other blog, Healing Waters, I posted one video that’s a small piece of last years Memorial Day parade with a bunch of old tractors going through town.

And as usual I’m kinda tired tonight with the weekend coming to a close. Just can’t seem to get my precious farmer naps in on the weekends. I’m looking foreword to the week as I always do. Get allot done and just generally enjoy life. Gotta bring home the hay I baled Saturday and a few other jobs tomorrow, take care of a multitude of beef inquiries also. Things are sure moving in that department! I’ll cut this post a tad bit short and hope to keep posting regular now that things are returning to a more normal way around here. get a little Bible reading in this evening yet and call er a day!

Its cloudy and really humid outside today, we received 3/10s of an inch of rain this morning and that put the stop to any thoughts of hay making today. No big deal, there’s always another day. Besides I was a tad bit tired out from church last evening and got me a nice farmer’s nap at noon time after a good dinner. Kinda habit forming those naps but the days are long enough the way they are and I feel very little guilt because of it. Just was weeding in the strawberry patch and the weeds come out easy with the moist soil unlike the last few years where they held on tight.

And the weekend coming up looks free, nothing going on and that’s fine by me also. Something always comes up anyhow, but right now the slate is clean and there’s not a pressure in the world to worry me. About time too! Get back to farming and getting some stuff done around here. I’m more than impressed at the growth rate of our little ducks! If chickens would grow that fast it’d really be something! And with very little feed to boot in comparison to the chickens, well at least it seems that way. I wished there’d be a market for ducks because I sure could be a duck farmer! Something about them things that I like.

Got the silage pit cleaned out this week and that’ll be ready for silage now, although that job is still a few weeks away, but time goes fast and being this is the dull period is the time to get er done. And with things looking good for once I have brought back the age old question to myself that I have for the past few years about either getting a couple goats or a cow for family milk. It was always put on hold because of the severe drought the last few years and that was always that for that. But it looks like we’re going to be in abundance around here this next year and the temptation is coming back. Heck, I got plenty of room for just about anything I’d want and now with the feed…. But I will hold back on the decision till the silage pit is plump full with about a three foot crown on the thing before I finally go one way or another with the family dairy project. Pretty soon will be time to get us some more hillbilly hogs for the place. I’m hoping to get some within a month or so. That way we can go a long, long ways feeding them with garden scraps. And with the corn crop coming up they should be some good doing hogs! And I figure I’d hate to see a year where we didn’t have at least four hogs for ourselves. And we do go through four hogs without any problem! The pepper bacon and the jalapeño bacon we have made three miles away is just out of this world! I was going to make some of our own, but three miles away is the midwest champion bacon maker so that’s where it’ll get done for now. Gotta take advantage of our location here in the heart of home butchering country. And there’s so much home butchering around here I think folks in other parts of the country might not even begin to believe it! There’s butcher shops and folks that’ll do on the farm slaughtering everywhere. We do our own hogs but I have a guy come to slaughter cows and steers. We cut and grind our own cows but have the steers done at the local processor three miles away because they hang in their locker for two weeks before cutting.

The preaching last night went forty five minutes and I still can’t hardly believe that I made it! I was so nervous before the service I thought I’d keel over and that would take care of that. But a funny thing happened, as I started all nervousness went away and it went fairly smoothly. Of course it was very, very unprofessional but those folks in that little country church have to be the most understanding folks in the world to listen that long to a farmer preaching. But once the dust has settled I feel at ease with it all. There’s an incredible difference when a person is up in front of church looking back compared to the other way around to say the least! Will it be habit forming? I haven’t the slightest idea and I ain’t going to worry about it. I know some folks were praying that I’d survive it and I want to thank those folks right here and now because when it all started it was flowing good! I’ve written about farmer/preachers many times in the past, a subject I truly love, and I can sense a little bit of how they lived now. Working full time farming and then taking off to some little country church to deliver a message. Then the next day back to work on the farm doing what they had to do. Years ago the majority of preachers fit this bill, but nowadays its fairly rare. To be truthful I think the countryside would be blessed big time if this became common again.

These last couple of days have been the most picture perfect days that I have seen in many a year. Just all out perfection. Sunny, very little wind, and only about 80 degrees with cool nights for sleeping. It don’t get much better than that. There’s some concern by big ag radio that the corn will have more moister in it this fall thus costing more to dry. But that don’t bother me none, most will be chopped for silage and the pickin corn can stay out in the field till its dry enough to pick and crib. The growth of the corn just amazes me as it gets taller and taller daily. This week I still won’t be in any field, kinda a week off from field work, but I figure next week to start on hay again, second crop. And around the same time the oats should be ready to swath, lookin good and none down this year so we’ll have easy swathing.

After all of that will be a lag time, if there is such a thing on the farm, where the major jobs will be rare until silage chopping. Could do a little fishing cause I still haven’t got out to do that no matter how hard I try. Could take a couple days off and head up to the North Shore and relax up there and a more beautiful place has yet to be found in Minnesota. Don’t really know what I’ll do but I should do something out of the ordinary cause I so rarely do. But if that all falls through no big deal, I’m happy right where I’m at, don’t need to go trying to seek happiness somewhere else. Plus I was thinking about retirement today, yup I was! I was thinking I ain’t ever going to retire! First of all, what’s there to do if I retire from this. I was thinking about how folks spend their whole life working, saving up money for retirement and then a couple of years after retirement they die. I figure allot of times its just from the shock of inactivity. Now if I was to retire, (which I won’t in the normal way), I thought why do people waste their time the way they do. Now I’m talking supposed Christians that retire. I think the greatest honor any retiring Christian could ever have would be to work for the church. By that I mean live life for Christ’s church, not some golf course and RV park in Bullhead City, Arizona sittin around doing basically nothing all day. Hmm, this got me thinking now! In the last 100 years or so this is about the first time in the history of the human race that there was such a thing as the retirements we know today. And it looks like it is the result if industrialism tearing apart the families and nothing short of that. The kids basically don’t give a rip what the old folks do as long as there’s plenty to inherit after they are gone so the kids can make a small dent in the massive mortgage they have that doesn’t look like it will be paid in their lifetime, plus the kids gotta start preparing for their retirement too so they can do the same thing. Nowadays in the churches this is all considered very good and they act like this way has been around since Adam and Eve, but it hasn’t been. There’s allot of them little houses on farms around here a little ways from the main farm house where the old folks used to live with the main family in the main house. Now I suppose some could say that they all should have lived in the main house, but them little old folks farm houses came in kinda handy if the old folks were a tad bit on the growly side. Besides, most families a few decades back had so many kids that even the big houses were packed full to the brim!

So now the lifetime is spent setting up retirement accounts and putting away money into “investments” that the culture of death takes and invests in destroying the family and the very fabric of the remnant of Christian culture. We pride ourselves in our investment and its even talked up as prosperity in churches, but all that folks are doing is fueling the culture that wants everything good destroyed and replaced by evil. What ever happened to the days when folks were more interested in laying up their treasures in heaven? Oh, it sounds nice, and it’ll get a nod from most all Christians, but are we doing it. The answer is no we are not. If Christians would live like Christians this world would be Christian pretty durn fast, but the sad thing is the vast, vast majority of Christians just give lip service if that. What ever happened to the people that would change the world for the Glory of God? There ain’t many around. Now its just full throttle in this society and give that worthless lip service so we look good to the other person that gives lip service.

Is there any hope? The answer is always yes no matter how dark the times look. Dark even though most people can’t see the darkness because of the deception. Around two hundred and fifty years ago England was going through dark times like we are now. It was for the most part godless. The ruling class had taken over everything, including Christianity and the masses were left with basically nothing. A typical day in London if a person was traveling thru they’d see a dozen or so fresh hung people at the gallows as they walked along on their business. And a good percentage of the executed were little children would were hung because they were stealing food because they were starving to death. The church was totally corrupt, its only aim was to please the rich and the people were left in a godless society and it was even pretty much forbidden at that time to even preach the Gospel to the poor. That was reserved for God’s chosen, the rich and powerful. When the Gospel was taken to the people in the open air, because they were not allowed in the churches, there was quite a stir. But the Gospel did go out and it changed the society like no one could have imagined. There were orphanages started for the first time, there was compassion for the poor and helpless for the first time. God was on the move through His people that had the guts to go against the system.

But the system don’t give up that easy and with industrialism the system had a way to make slaves out of people that thought they were getting ahead in the process. And here we are today, slaves in a system. Oh some might say, we have freedom to chose what we want to be. But I say, there’s very little freedom if you want something that doesn’t fit in to the industrial system that wants it all. The freedom folks think they have is the freedom to chose what kind of slave they want to be. So that way you can work and save your money, investing it so when the day comes when you are released from daily bondage, and your money is taken in the investment and put into corporations that’s only goal is destruction of the Christian culture and to enter into a new age of paganism. The investments parade abortion as a choice, a freedom. They take the investment money and parade about a gay agenda and call it good and put it in the schools and everywhere while we wait for our retirement money to grow so we can live a nice quiet Christian retirement somewhere separate from our family. Oh what a tangled web we weave!

I’d like to see the days come back where there weren’t people afraid to go out and preach the Gospel again. Because its exactly the same as it was a few hundred years ago, except that most folks don’t know how deep in bondage they really are. They are so taken in that I can listen to sermon after sermon and can just see how this has crept in and they call it normal, they call it good. But it isn’t and there will be a reckoning. This is a challenge to say the least, but it can’t be said that its a boring one! When all looks lost, that’s when God moves the most! I think I’ll close with my favorite saying:

“Give me one hundred preachers who fear nothing but sin and desire nothing but God, and I care not a straw whether they be clergymen or laymen; such alone will shake the gates of hell and set up the kingdom of heaven on earth.”

I’m going to try and get back in the saddle here, been hectic around here lately with a few more days of it coming and then it should settle down to just plain old farming and just generally enjoying life. Yesterday we had us the surprise of a lifetime, or at least the surprise of the last few years and had us an inch and a half of precious rain that didn’t have any lightening or thunder with it. The corn is stretching, much higher than I can reach and still has a long ways to grow. The corn grounds are shaded out with the lush growth and now the fields can retain the moister they have much easier than the last few years. The gardens are just down right beautiful, everything is thriving like I haven’t seen in a long time. Tomorrow evening we’ll pick the last of the peas and there sure was a bumper crop of em this year! The taters are ready for the table and the early sweet corn is just starting to tassel, all is well. Tomorrow I think we might clean up the silage pit being that we had such a good rain. The big weeds will pull right out of the pit sides being the ground is moist. Life is good!
Plus I’m busy figuring out what to say this for this Wednesday evening’s church service. Got all the speaking to myself, (gulp), and I kinda got it figured out what to talk about, but we’ll see where that all leads when the time comes. Never done the full service before but gotta start sometime I guess. I gotta admit though, in farming its sometimes different than the “regular” world. I look forward to the weekends being over, just the opposite of the regular world. The weeks go much easier even though the work can be such a crusher sometimes, but when I get into the work mode the days just fly by and I’m much more content, can sleep better and all that.
The small grains are starting to ripen and the crop in that department looks real good. They came along fairly good with the cooler first half of June, and in fact I really don’t think we had us any big heat waves yet this summer. Sometimes the temps jump up to around 90 but then the nights cool off and there’s some real good sleeping weather to be had. The cows are looking great, the calves are healthy and growing, yup its hard to beat this year so far!
This year I haven’t been keeping track of any issues related to farming, or politics or anything really. The nose has been kept to the grindstone and I haven’t had much time to look up and all around. I guess it really doesn’t make a hill of beans difference anyhow as far as what’s happening in the world as a whole. All I can do is try and affect the small world around us and that’s about it. Try and help out at church, in the neighborhood and where ever there is a need that I can help with. And there’s not all to much of that during this season anyhow. Traditionally this is when the work has to get done, now or never. There’s no time to be running here and there except for church and such because that is an important part of our lives. In fact beyond immediate family the little country church is the most important thing we do. And its all the time! An easy week is just Sundays and Wednesday evening. But like this last week we had us an event on Friday night with the younger kids camping out in the backyard of the church, which is pretty big, and had us a campfire, some fireworks and games and stuff. It was really good, but I didn’t stay all night, gotta work bright and early on the farm, so I headed home at midnight and got a very few short hours of sleep. My better half stayed for the duration and that can wear a person down! But all is well and over with that kid’s event. Pretty good turnout too!
Life is simple out here when you get right down to it and I’m in no mood to complicate it any more than it is already. The remainder of the summer will be busy getting ready for winter. Bringing in the crops and hay as it comes ready. Once early fall is done things will slow down considerably, with no feed worries for the winter and all the other miseries that go with that. I’m really looking forward to that time for once and this year will be special because we will have more time to do the things we want around the area here. That’s helping to spread the Gospel in the region. And after studying how they did it in the days of old I feel pretty comfortable with the way it will work out. In the months of heavy farm work, get the work done and get it done well. When the work is done on the farm except for daily chore, making wood and those few other seasonal jobs, well just do like in the days of old and spread the Gospel. I was just thinking about that doing some stuff outside a few minutes ago, how its such a privilege to do the Lord’s work. It ain’t a job, it’s a privilege! Read the Word till its in the very marrow of our bones and can’t be contained any longer!
So after Wednesday comes and goes I’m hoping that things will finally return to normal around here and I can blog like I used to. Its amazing I even blog as much as I do considering all that goes on, but I do love it, (most of the time). I’d better get preparing for Wednesday evening now. The Bible text I’ll be using is Matthew Chapter 25, verses 31 thru 46. It should be a good one.

Things are out of the ordinary around here this week. We had us some July rains, first time in three years! I’m so very thankful, the corn is bursting in growth, the pastures should start regaining in a short time and things are just generally different than the past few years. Maybe, just maybe this drought is busted for a few years! But for now I’ll be cautious. After these last few years some habits have developed, like being a super tightwad. No choice in the matter, learned how to make do as never before and I think we’re in the habit of staying that way. Which means there should be some prosperous times if this holds. Don’t matter what the markets are, just give us an inch of rain every week in July and the other stuff ain’t important! That’s an old saying in the rural communities. And it speaks much truer than a person might think.
I ain’t going overboard thinking about what we’ll do with “a crop”, something that’s been sorely lacking for a few years. But it has crossed my mind today while hand chopping thistles along the electric fences, what do I do with all this corn if this keeps up?? Looks like I’ll give the neighbor’s old New Idea two row corn picker a workout this fall because I sure don’t need seventy five acres of good OP corn to fill the silage pit if this holds. Then there’s the Amish, they want to buy seed from me if this season cooperates, something it hasn’t done for a while. I told them I’d set them up with some dependable MN 13 OP corn and the rest is up to them. Up to now, during the month long dry spell we had, the OP corn of ours far out preformed the GMO corns in the surrounding area. The ground in those fields got rock hard, just depending on sprays that killed the weeds after the weeds had taken every bit of moister out of the ground resulting in badly twisting crops, some of which will not snap out of the stress they were under and already could be declared a disaster. It is in my eyes anyhow. Went to St Cloud last evening and on the way and on the way back these farmer eyes looked at and observed every corn field the thirty miles there and back, when we got near home the field of Goliath corn of ours was by far the best looking corn of the whole trip. Feels good!
The oats is doing very well, all headed out and a deep silvery green. It’ll be turning gold shortly and will be a pleasure harvesting those fields! Lord, its just so good seeing things returning to normal! I still am having a rough time adjusting myself to the fact that we’re getting some crops this year. There’s one more meadow to bale up, was going to do that today but got a half an inch of rain that didn’t get any hay baled up but one goofy farmer dancing for joy the second time this week!
These next couple of weeks will also be very, very busy with church stuff. Funny how a little country church can keep a farmer so busy! But I love it! I believe I have to figure out something to speak about two different times so I don’t know what that will do to blogging. But whatever! Plus I have to take a bunch of rocks to church this Sunday to build a fire pit for the little kids camp meeting. No shortage of that resource on this farm, so I figure to drive out to one pasture we got on Saturday and pile a bunch on the flatbed and haul them off to church Sunday. Just another service we preform for His Kingdom. But if we can be trusted hauling rocks for church we can be trusted with a whole lot more I figure! Gotta start somewhere.
Still haven’t had time to post pictures, the daughter is down in Oklahoma and thus I’ve lost my computer expert for a while. But soon things will be back to normal here and we’ll see what we can do. Gotta load of farm photos but, well, I hate computers and that should explain allot.
There’s allot of joy as I write this tonight, couldn’t rant if I tried. Only another farmer, or someone that really wants to be a farmer could understand this reality of pure joy that I’m talking about. The enduring the disasters for many straight years and then the joy of seeing life return to the farm! I just gotta praise the Lord because its all Him!

So far so good this week except for a tad bit of a lack of moister around here. Getting back to the dry side but its not as bad as last year at this point yet. Spent the first two days this week cultivating corn and the last couple cutting deep meadow hay which is looking really good this year. And with the new rock guards on the haybine I only plugged up the sickle twice in the wire grass. Not bad compared to normal. Cutting is really slow down there with that tough old wiregrass but it sure beats buying hay because I’ve found out these last couple of years that our worst hay is better than the best hay I can buy. Funny how folks are so poor at making hay. Never fails to amaze me! I hope that’s a thing I don’t do much of in the future, buying hay that is, because up to the last couple of years I’ve never had to and I sure don’t like to.
So other than all out work around here there’s not much more to tell. Got 15 baby ducks yesterday morning at the co-op. I guess that’s big news around here! I always liked ducks, don’t know why, but I kinda like those critters. I always wear boots so the greasy lawn doesn’t bother me a whole lot either. We’ll just let them hang around the place, not a big fan of eating duck but times get tough they sure can turn into a good meal mighty quick! I was just paging through an old Foxfire book and it tells a little about how they made those old fashioned feather tick blankets from the duck flock on the farm back in the olden days and that reminds me of the one and only time I slept in a feather tick and that had to be the most comfortable thing I ever slept in during my lifetime! Plus them ducks get reused, just pluck em down and let em go to grow some more down. Can’t beat a deal like that! The old feather tick I slept in was at a friends place back in my teenage years when I stayed overnight there. An old farm house in Minnesota with only a wood stove down stairs and the upstairs was literally freezing. After a few minutes in that old feather tick I was toasty warm till waking up in the morning. Since that time I have never experienced a more comfortable sleep in conditions such as that. Funny how the old timers had it figured out and now we just get some blankets that a person almost freezes to death in if the temp is below fifty in the house. That reminds me, at the same house the oldtimer that lived there, he was born in the 1800s, he had a buffalo hide jacket. It was long and heavy, right down to the floor. And that thing would protect a person in the most brutal Minnesota winter weather unlike anything made today from petroleum products and foam. People think that folks got so cold back in the olden days, but they had it figured out much better than us. They’d bundle up and head to town, or a neighbor’s or where ever and they’d get there just fine in the cold, cold weather without some fancy car and heater. But anyway, funny how a person can get going on that just because we got us some ducks yesterday.
Tomorrow’s the Fourth of July and like nine out of ten years that means making or baling hay here. But when its all said and done we have us an invite to go visit, so visit we will! Not all to far away, eat some and have a great time of Christian fellowship that I always crave! Then in a couple weeks at church the younger kids are having an all night camp out, kinda a youngster’s camp meeting I figure, and rumor has it that there might be fireworks and they want me to light it up. Hmm, this could be interesting to say the least! But its all in a person’s duty to his local church so away we go! Fireworks used to be illegal around here, but they musta have modified the laws somewhat to allow lower level fireworks to be shot off. Being one who just about never pays attention to laws I really don’t know, but if they got em, I’ll shoot em no matter what the law says. And if I never return I will this blog to Jim V………..
Oh Lord, a guy can get tired out this time of year and I sure am tonight. Very little wind tonight and our state bird, the mosquito, is out in full force outside tonight. It was wet enough a few weeks ago to give them things a pretty good hatch and they must be hungry cause they were after me when I went to look at the little ducklings. But a mosquito means that there’s not many grasshoppers and between the two I’ll take mosquitoes every time. Nothing good comes out of a year where the hoppers are dominant. And seeing I don’t have the same tastes as John the Baptist I don’t really have any need for hoppers being around. I’ll take the honey though. All in all things are going well around here and I’m more than satisfied. Farm is moving along, our walk with God is doing fine, our country church is bustling with activity and interesting times. Nothing like a little country church I always say, that’s on fire for Jesus! Couldn’t even imagine life without it! When its time for me to cross that old River Jordan I must say that life was a thousand times better than I would have ever imagined it could be! Living life so different than what’s considered normal these days. I know many folks can’t even figure out what I’m talking about, or at least its hard to imagine, but its true never the less. Old fashioned faith out in the countryside! Glory!

Its been so busy around here I’m having a hard time finding time to write anything nowadays! But such is life in summer on the farm. Busy cultivating corn today and its a little behind but looking pretty good although we’re getting short on moister again. So what else is new? I’d probably feel guilty if we ever have a summer again with ample moister, wouldn’t know how to act. Now if I could develop a OP corn that didn’t need rain in July and a strain of tasty grass for the cows that would do the same I’d be set good! But such is not the case so we’ll just see how this all develops as time goes on. The time spent today cultivating was a full eight hours and that’s not counting anything else done around the place like chores and getting fences put back up that the calves ran through. But it was a good time cultivating and I figure there’s one more full day of that and then I can go to the low meadows and start cutting wild meadow hay which is as high as my head when I’m sitting on the high tractor seat. So that’s telling me there’s allot of hay down there, about three days of solid cutting and I’d better make sure the old sickle on the haybine is good and sharp and the rock guards ain’t wore to much. Cause some of that lowland wiregrass is like cutting steel wire and everything had better be working perfect in order to even attempt to cut it. I always wondered about that wire grass, the cattle absolutely hate the stuff when its growing and they’re out there grazing. But put it in a bale and come winter the just love the stuff. Another mystery of life on the farm but I ain’t gonna lose no sleep over it trying to figure it out. There’s never a shortage of other stuff to worry about so why dwell on that!
Besides all the work that’s been going constant this is the season out in the countryside for small town festivals and different church events too. This weekend on Friday and Saturday evening we drove thirty miles away to the west and there was an old fashioned tent meeting taking place and that was pretty durn good to say the least. Saturday evening was cloudy and very, very windy and the chairs were blown over as the folks were standing up singing and during the preaching it looked like the tent was going to be blown to OZ and it looked like it should be stopped right there and then. BUt the people just yelled “preach it” and away it went and I might never forget that night as long as I live. Bragging rights you know. We didn’t quit and I think everyone was happy we didn’t either. I might have to write about that sometime. Your’s truly even got the privilege of of closing the service when it was all said and done with a closing prayer. It might be a classic prayer too! Thanking the lord for keeping them tent pegs solid in the ground because I think my faith was wavering when the wind gusts were hitting over fifty miles per hour. But I figure the oldtimers endured allot more when they went to brush arbor meetings, tent meetings and them huge camp meetings of yesteryear. They’d even bring along their milk cow for the week or two that the meetings were held and all those folks would put there milk cows together in a community pasture and keep right on going with the old camp meeting. They sure were a different lot of folks compared to nowadays. I think some of the weakest folks then were stronger than the strongest folks now when it comes to toughing it out just to praise and worship the Lord like they did year after year back then.
We think we’re so good and following the Lord so nice and everything, but it ain’t nothing compared to back then. I even am at my limit driving a car thirty miles to the meeting. Those folks years ago came from much farther than that, most of them walking, pulling a cart, leading a milk cow. Having their one set of good cloths safely packed away for the meetings. Many walking barefoot so their one pair of shoes would be clean and unscuffed for the meeting. And nowadays we figure we’re so high and mighty. We figure that we really have it together. We figure we’re so different from the world cause we can some food, raise a few critters, farm a little or homestead some. Some of us write on the computer telling some of what we do and believe. But no matter what, we don’t have what they had back then and it bothers me when I even think about what a genuine wimp I am compared to the faith those folks had back then. Bothers me allot. Now we’re all too busy, but in reality, no we ain’t. We just don’t want to live free and for the Lord like the folks did back then. Mention something about visiting and most folks have to check their calender, years ago they probably didn’t even have one!
I was just thinking. I hadn’t planned on writing about this, never do plan on what to write, but as far as myself goes, I have a long, long ways to go to have the peace and freedom those folks did. Sure a person can act like they’re living simple, but no we ain’t. We’re all sucked into this society hook, line and sinker. I think its just as important to throw away the calendar of our schedules as it is to raise a garden or raise some critters. I for one am getting sick and tired of having to have an appointment just to visit someone. What good does it do to act like a person is getting a simpler life, to write about it and all that stuff, but still live the modern life to the hilt as the testimony of our schedules shows? What good is any church stuff, what good is any faith matters if a person is a total slave to the schedules that we follow religiously?
Oh boy, now I’m getting growly! AT MYSELF! I can say, that we don’t have what they had! And no matter what we say we ain’t even close and it makes me sick! I always said that I wished I was born a hundred and fifty years ago, but that doesn’t count for much because I’m not back in that time and there ain’t all that much I can do about going back to that time! So I ask myself, what do I do to take care of this problem? To be truthful, its totally between the ears, no where else. It ain’t in how a person dresses, it ain’t in how they quote the Bible or church doctrine because all that means squat if what’s between the ears is totally in tune with society’s schedule and we race around totally in the world. Hmm, interesting. Maybe I should post this post private so only I can read it but then I would have to comment to myself and that ain’t normal no matter what kind of society one is in.
I’m gonna have to look at that more closely, deprogramming one’s self from the modern hustle and bustle. Even as simple as we supposedly live in comparison to so many there’s still that burden of the modern society dictating way to much in our lives. I’d like that freedom in Christ like they had a hundred and fifty years ago and earlier. Now religion is hand in hand with the modern breakneck and family destroying society, trying to “teach” us how to cope, how to make it OK in this mad pagan society. Well I don’t want to impress anyone in this mad society, I could care less, so why am I doing it?
I guess what I’m really trying to say, and it ain’t coming out to well, is that for all the things we supposedly do to live simple, to get away from society nowadays, we’re still deeply programed to march in step with it. And when a person starts chewing through that rope that binds us, that’s when the hope starts to appear. I heard at the tent meeting the other night during the powerful preaching, that what can society do to you if they hate you for following Jesus? Mock you, beat you up, imprison you. Well, so what, there’s rewards for that promised in the Bible. If they kill you there’s huge rewards instantly on the other side. But talking right from the Bible doesn’t sit well with a luke warm Christian population that is “programmed” not to make waves. That is programmed to be like society and to be indistinguishable from everyone else around them. This is the problem, do we deny Christ just to fit in to mainstream society. Folks, this ain’t some lunatic preaching, this is preaching right from the old fashioned tent meeting this weekend! This ain’t from some Christian Agrarian thingy, this is old school preaching that is almost extinct today. But let me say, it was being preached out in an open field in Central Minnesota this past week. People don’t hear the truth very much any more in mainstream churches and the like.

I’ve been busy dropping hay in the fields today, tomorrow will be the same, although if it would rain we’d gladly take it and never complain around these parts. The corn is finally starting to grow a little bit being that its warming up in these parts finally. Still no heat waves or anything like that but nice and comfortable days are the norm here this last week. I just wanted to put a link here that is of interest to me. Who knows, maybe I’m the last one to know about it but that’s the way it goes when a person is farming for real. There’s really not much time for internet or searching or anything like that.
In the mail today I received an Open Pollinated corn raisers news letter of all things. Never got anything like that in my life till now and it looks pretty durn good to say the least! Here’s a link that they had on the front page and after checking it out it looks like its worth a visit for anyone that’s interested in raising good corn. By that I mean corn the critters can eat and you can too! The outfit’s name is Seed We Need and I think it has allot of interesting stuff on it.
So with the hay making, corn cultivating and a bunch of stuff at our church to do, things are really busy around here. Nothing new about that!

As the week comes to a close there’s been allot of farm work accomplished around here. There’s a good start with the hay crop with around two hundred and forty round bales made so far, all without rain and in perfect condition. Monday will be the start of another week and I plan on spending Monday and Tuesday dropping more hay fields and maybe fit in a little corn cultivating around here too. I feel like some sort of a loner when I’m out there cultivating the open pollinated corn. Its impossible to really tell the difference at this point between the OP corn and the most modern corns when a person takes a gander at the fields. But I’m out there cultivating and I look around the countryside and never see anyone else doing that job any more. I figure it does the ground good cultivating it, opening it up so it can breath instead of just going through summer with that rock hard crust on the top of the soil. The corn seems to instantly take off growing faster when it gets cultivated also. The tractor is working at an idle so the fuel consumption is around a gallon an hour with the tractor I’m using. So far this year, so good. In a few days I’ll be posting photos of cultivating corn, cutting hay, raking hay, and baling hay, stay tuned, the photos are already on this computer, I just have to have some time to upload them and prepare some posts.
This summer is sure roaring by, we’ve been very, very busy as any reader of this blog might realize because of the few and far between posts. And I’m looking forward to tomorrow, Sunday, the Lord’s Day. Get the few chores I’ve got done bright and early, hoping no cattle decide to visit the neighbors, and come back in, have a second breakfast, clean up and head to our little country church. After that we’re invited to a get together in another very small town a few miles from here. Eat some Polish foods that they have for the event and generally have a good time.
There’s more stuff happening at our little church than I could ever hope to list here this summer. Thus that’ll be keeping me busy every spare moment I have also.But let me just say, I’d hate to even imagine life without that little country church. Funny, I used to figure that church took up so much valuable time, (I’m not talking about our little church that we’ve gone to for three years now), and I’d miss week after week because I was so busy. Now with the family going to an old fashioned Bible believing church it just seems like we can be more involved than ever and the farm work gets done better than ever even when so much more time is spent with church things. Twice a week minimum is spent at church. Sometimes more than that. But this is what the old timers did and that’s what we’ll do too. Nowadays it seems that every one is so “busy” getting no where that when I mention the fact that our lives are centered around that little country church most folks can’t truly understand how that all works out. They probably just figure that Tom got “religion” and is now a fanatic. Whatever, maybe they are right, who am I to say. But for thirty years I would read books about the old ways and the way we are living now is much closer to those old ways than it is to the modern ways. Sure we have cars and trucks. Sure we have a TV, (that only plays selected movies), sure we have a computer which basically is only an extension of our church life. Get rid of one or all, it wouldn’t really make a life or death difference when a person gets right down and thinks about it. I’d probably miss the computer a little for a bit, miss out on the faith matters a person can read about and also the fellowship of like minded folks. But in a few days that would be a distant memory. The computer isn’t used at all for our farming life. Selling direct has been by word of mouth, not cyberspace. E-mails are kinda handy but not totally necessary. We’d be able to live without it.
So much happening around here that I wouldn’t know where to start if I wanted to try and write it all down. So I’ll just stick to the basics as I write all tired out again. Keep on with the Bible studies later in the evening. Who knows where that’ll all lead, well I guess God does, but I have know idea, just keep on plugging. At church the kids call me pastor Tom, or preacher Tom, and so do a few adults and I just get all flustered and red faced, even more than the red face I have from being out in the sun and wind every day of the week. But truth be told, I love to preach and I love to minister, just like those farmer preachers from the old days and not so old days. I got blown away a couple of weeks ago when I found out that to be a preacher in our neck of the woods one doesn’t have to go a half a life time to a seminary or anything like that. I just listened and there was a big knot in my throat, “gulp”. But I’ve preached it for years, the fact that this country needs some good old fashioned farmer preachers that will work seven days a week farming and still pick up the Bible and preach a Sunday morning or an evening here and there during the week. That’s the way they used to do it and I believe there’s allot of room for that again. A bi-vocational preacher fits well out in the country. I don’t know where this will lead, if anywhere at all, but I can assure anyone that this will be more than interesting. I’ll leave it at that, there’s a whole lot more to it, but that’s all I’ll dwell on that for now. But me and my big mouth, or big two typing fingers will probably update on this as the months go by.