Cows Escaped, Freezers Restocked, Christmas Bundles
We had cousins in over the weekend for Thanksgiving who helped block the road to get cows, and then they helped get pigs in the barn to sort and load for Monday’s trip to the processor.
I went to check Amy’s broth Tuesday morning while it was raining to find over 100 cows in the barn lot where much of our hay is stored. They must’ve rubbed the gate open. Or maybe I didn’t latch it good the day before. Hallie didn’t mind the break from school to help me get them back in the field. We went ahead and moved them to another section of stockpiled pasture.
Wednesday we got meat delivered to the farm from our processing trip a couple weeks ago. Our freezers are restocked! Plenty of beef and pork options. Amy put together some Christmas bundles for anyone considering gifting ORVF meats to family and friends for the holidays.
Yesterday Bella Jane, one of our faithful helpers on chicken processing days in the summer, came back out to the farm to help us fill this month’s beef and pork herd shares. With no big hogs that will be ready for harvest next month, we went ahead and filled a couple months of pork shares.
I started feeding a little hay here and there, but most of our cow herd is still foraging grass. We’re keeping plenty of bedding down for the pigs. With a couple inches of snow from last night, I’ll do some hay feeding before and after making the quarterly delivery to NC today. I haven’t yet decided what I’m going to listen to on the ride.
Earlier in the week I did finish listening to PARADISE LOST by John Milton. The world God made was good. Paradise was lost, not because of something God did but because of our rebellion, even if perhaps deceived by Satan and justified by our own good intentions. We are capable of decisions that deviate us and the world around us from the perfection that God originally desired for us from the beginning.
Our decisions have consequences. Our decisions destroyed paradise. Now God is left with the decision. What would he do about us? Destroy us for destroying his garden? Start over? The beauty of Christianity is that God chose to suffer the consequences of our disobedience in order to restore us with our Creator, in order to restore paradise not just for us but through us and within us. Here’s the Son’s response to our rebellion:
“On me let death reek all his rage. Under his gloomy power I shall not long lie vanquished. Thou has given me to possess life in myself forever. By thee I live, though now to death I yield and am his due. All that of me can die, yet that debt paid. Thou wilt not leave me in the loathsome grave his prey, nor suffer my unspotted soul forever with corruption there to dwell, but I shall rise victorious and subdue my vanquisher… Then with a multitude of my redeemed, shall enter heaven long absent and return, Father, to see thy face, wherein no cloud of anger shall remain but peace assured and reconcilement. Wrath shall be no more thence forth, but in thy presence, joy entire… And from thee receive new life. So man as is most just shall satisfy for man, be judged, and die. And dying, rise. And rising with him, raise his brethren, ransomed with his own dear life. So heavenly love shall outdo hellish hate, giving to death and dying to redeem. So dearly to redeem what hellish hate so easily destroyed and still destroys in those who when they may, accept not grace.”
A couple more fitting the the Christmas season we are entering:
“Virgin mother hail, high in the love of heaven, yet from my loins thou shalt proceed and from thy womb the son of God most high. So God with man unites. Needs must the serpent now his capital bruise expect with mortal pain? Say where and when their fight. What stroke shall bruise the victor’s heel?… Dream not of their fight as of a dual or the local wounds of head or heel… not by destroying Satan but his works in thee and in thy seed.”
“Only add deeds to thy knowledge answerable. Add faith. Add virtue, patience, temperance. Add love, thy name to come called charity, the soul of all the rest. Then thou wilt not be loathed to leave this paradise but shalt possess a paradise within thee, happier far.”
Have a good week.
Will