Saturday, July 19, 2014

Proverbs 27:23
Be thou diligent to know the state of thy flocks, and look well to thy herds.

Last June I spoke with my boss about reducing my hours from 60 per week to about 30.  I told her I needed more time to manage my home and family.  She agreed to give me a school bus run and move me to the garage that is closest to my home, less than 10 minutes away.  So, for the last school year I have been driving a school bus 25 hours a week.

This allowed me time to begin to pretty much purge my house of most unnecessary clutter; clean areas of neglect; plan storage solutions and organization.  It's overwelming what can happen in a home that's being heavily lived in but only lightly managed.  This job is far from finished because I do have vision for it.  However, I have made some seriously good changes.

Now that I have the summer off I have actually had time to envision what I need the end result to be and devise small project plans for many areas of the house and land.  Some of these small projects should have been done many years ago (like the bathroom closet that still has old wallpaper from when it was a hall coat closet with makeshift flimsy shelves) and for whatever reason didn't get finished.  Then there's major things like renovating the kitchen.

Anyway, it is summer now and our attention is directed to the outdoors.  We were recently gifted 21 chickens.  Four adults (two are roosters) and seventeen 2-1/2 month old chicks.  One of the adults is a very good brooding hen.  As I contemplate what sort of future business I can conduct from home, I suppose one source of income will be the selling of chickens and eggs.  Small scale of course since our property is under one acre and a couple of miniature goats are in our future.

Our old coop, what I call our chicken barn, is future housing for the goats so we are building a new "coop" and run.  Recently I found a guy on youtube that has been a homesteader for 30 years and has given up some time to post informative and creative tips, projects, procedures for many things on the homestead. This link is to a structure that can be made into a greenhouse, chicken run, shed, and can be built for many other uses.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DKlXs8iov0

He also created a misting system for the greenhouse:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwT9BBrDtbI

So, on Thursday while I was spending time with the Lord, I felt I needed direction.  Like, where do I go from here kind of direction!  Proverbs 27:23 - 27 is where He took me.  Instantly I had peace about what we're doing and where we're headed.  Further study on this verse 23 led me into Bible study on money management.  Being on top of what you owe, earn, own and spend.  It's short and sweet but to the point, just the way I like things :)   I'll share that soon.  I know that no matter what comes our way, we are in God's Will and that's all that matters.

I need a new camera card and battery which I can't afford right now, but when I can upload pictures I will. I'm about to harvest my first zucchini.  The first plants I grew didn't survive because it was too cold to plant out this year.  I had to start over.  My early tomatoes got some frost and growth was stunted but I did start to harvest a few.  I'm really watching for the plum tomatoes because I will can as many as possible.  We use so many.





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