Armed with Bones, More Piglets
Lots of meat deliveries this week. Amy went to the Abingdon Farmers Market on Saturday while I delivered herd shares and pre-orders to Marion. We got cows in and hogs loaded after church on Sunday. I made the haul to the processor Monday morning, getting back in time to load Amy’s coolers for her trip to Knoxville to deliver ORVF meats. We made the Bristol and Kingsport deliveries together yesterday afternoon with date night #8 for the year afterwards. We need to do a lot more dating in the next few weeks to meet our goal of 12 for the year.
Farm wise, still see keeping the cows moving. We bought a few more piglets this week. The egg laying hens are laying more frequently. We’re getting about 4 dozen eggs a day and climbing. Amy made more beef bone broth in the on-farm kitchen.
A couple more loads of firewood. The kids helped for a few minutes then took off exploring to Hasten’s secret spot. Over an hour later they returned armed with old cow bones. With pelvis bones as a breastplate and rib bones for swords, they were all four engaged in a fierce make believe battle. Not sure who the battle, but they were sure having fun.
More of John Milton’s PARADISE LOST. Satan tempts mankind with an appetite for knowledge, to become equal with God and desire to know everything that God knows. God warned Adam and Eve in Genesis 2:17 - “but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.” Was God talking about Adam and Eve individually? Or mankind as a whole? With smart phones and endless information at our fingertips, with the rapid growth of Artificial Intelligence, will our appetite for knowledge be the death of us?
Satan: “Do they only stand by ignorance? Is that their happy state, the proof of their obedience and their faith? Oh, fair foundation laid whereon to build their ruin. Hence, I will excite their minds with more desire to know and to reject envious commands invented with design to keep them low whom knowledge might exalt equal with God’s. Aspiring to be such, they taste and die.”
Satan continues, “Knowledge of good and evil. Of good, how just? Of evil, if what is evil be real, why not known, since easier shunned? God, therefore cannot hurt ye and be just. Not just, not God. Not feared then, nor obeyed. Your fear itself then of death removes the fear. Why then was this forbid? Why then but to awe, why but to keep ye low and ignorant, his worshipper. He knows that in the day you eat thereof, you eyes that seem so clear yet are but dim shall perfectly be then opened and cleared, and ye shall be as gods, knowing both good and evil as they know… For good unknown sure is not had, or had and yet unknown is as not had at all. In plain then, what forbids he but to know, forbids us good, forbids us to be wise… Here grows the cure of all this fruit divine, fair to the eye, inviting to the taste of virtue to make wise. What hinders then to reach and feed at once both body and mind?” So saying, her rash hand in evil hour forth reaching to the fruit, she plucked. She ate. Earth felt the wound, and nature from her seat, sighing through all her works, gave signs of woe, that all was lost.”
Adam wonders. His questions led to a taste for knowledge. If evil lurks, wouldn’t knowledge of such evil be a good thing? If good is available, is it actually good without knowledge of it? They justify eating the fruit. Though their eyes are opened, what is revealed is not what they thought they’d see.
“Since our eyes opened we find indeed and find we know both good and evil, good lost and evil got. Bad fruit of knowledge if this be to know which leaves us naked thus, of honor void, of innocence, of faith, of purity… Thus they in mutual accusation spent the fruitless hours but neither self condemning. And of their vain contest, appeared no end.”
Have a good week.
Will