A prayer request and happenings around the homestead

Well first off I want to ask for prayer for my son Matt and his wife Traci, they will be driving home from Cheyenne Wyoming in two weeks - please pray that they have a safe trip home. It is about a 16 hour drive and as they are moving home for good they will have a U-Haul truck containing all their worldly possessions, and their own truck. Hopefully Matt's good friend Jay will be able to fly out to help them load up and drive home. Matt has served in the USAF for the past four years.

LORD HEAR OUR PRAYER

We are so excited that they will be home permanently in two weeks time!! Did I mention we are really, really excited!!

Yesterday we finally were able to take our steer, Jersey, into C & C Meats for processing, we had hoped to do it a few months ago, but due to all of the rain it was just too wet and muddy to drive a truck and trailer back to his paddock area. Jersey took some encouragement to get into the trailer, in fact our neighbor ending up picking up her Amish friend, Joe, and his son Jeremy to come and assist, once Dave, Joe, Jeremy, and our neighbors son Brian, were making the point that Jersey needed to get moving he took the hint and compliantly walked in.

The hard thing about raising a steer is that you do get attached to them, Jersey was such a friendly guy, everyday when I went out to feed him he would come over to the fence and let me scratch his nose and he liked to lick my hand, he would always come over if I called him, and if I ran alongside the fence he liked to race with me to the end of the field.

Most of our garden is now planted, just a few more things and we will be done. Sunday evening I spent about an hour to weeding in the blackberry patch, I have the wounds to show for my efforts, blackberry brambles are so spiteful! I have some herbs to plant out and some rhubarb, they are currently in pots on my front porch. We have potato bugs, YUK!I had to breakdown and purchase some Sevin, we are not organic, but we try to avoid pesticides unless absolutely necessary. Potato bugs are relentless and if left unchecked will eat all of the foliage on the potato plant resulting in a very, very low yield.

Good news on the chicken front, The Great Eight, have decided that they do like to go outside, they are still very cautious about food scraps, hopefully this will change, as all other chickens that we have had always loved to eat bread crusts, leftover pancakes, vegetable/fruit peels etc.

Thank you again for keeping Matt and Traci in prayer.