[Mephibosheth responds to Youngman] 1/29/09 Greetings! > Thank you for the advice about e-cards, the internet, growing your own > food, > and a homestead. I am praying the things I learned that the Lord would > bless > them and allow me to do them. The principles are so simple, so wonderful. > The idea of having chickens and eggs and milk fascinates me. The very idea > is refreshingly wholesome. [models] We have models of what we want (house, barn, each animal--including fish which are easy to keep, a cat to kill the mice, a dog for protection and help. We'll all be there eating and living together.) One model set is located here at home and another at our small office. As you mentioned, it is a sublimely simple and elegant system, beautiful in form, intriguing. [prepare] The God that we worship is the God that calleth those things that are not as though they were. He has placed in us a longing for a homestead and we believe that he will give us what we desire. We are therefore preparing. We are culling out the things that we do not need, organizing, growing food, learning. Once you've sat down to eat a meal that you have grown by yourself, please write and tell me so that we can rejoice with you. [chickens] Chickens need very little space--a company called eglu sells a little chicken pen that can fit up to four chickens in it. They'll even send the chickens, though I desire heritage breeds for our homestead. With two chickens you can have a dozen eggs a week. They love weeds and worms, table scraps, dead mice that your cat killed, Japanese beatles, houseflies, etc. I'd like to try out the eglu for my current situation--I am in an approved agricultural zone, but my home owner's association (HOA) forbids it. I don't like that. Is this my property or not? Do they get to tell me what I can eat and what I can't? [goats] I've also identified a minature goat--the Nigerian. It is supposed to be a good dairy goat--and it is little so it doesn't eat much. I think you can get a few quarts a day from them. I have room for a couple of them too. I'll probably write to my HOA about this next year. This year I want to focus on my garden and canning up enough produce for the winter months. I also want to tend to perennial plants that I put in the ground last year. With perennials like berry bushes, fruit trees, and nut trees, you plant them once and they will give you lots of food for years and years! This year I want to get my perennials established. [honey] >Honey also comes to mind. How did John the > Baptist get his honey? We are also interested in bees. We have a plastic bee in our model. The Bible says that John the Baptist ate wild honey, so it seems that he knew of sources where he could attain it--whether a hollowed out log, a tree trunk, etc. People have used different means to attract bees. Have you ever had raw honey? It is thick like peanut butter (not as thick peanut butter) and delicious. I've been off of sweets for many months now, but honey is certainly a weakness for me. I love grains, creamy milk, and smooth, delicious honey in any form (though I do not care much for buckwheat honey). People like the colonists and pioneers used a skip to attract bees to live in it. A skip is basically an upside down basket. Their beekeeping methods necessitated that they kill the bees when they were ready for honey, but I don't want to do it that way. There are people in so-called third-world countries that work with their bees while wearing shorts and t-shirts. I don't want to wear some head-to-toe get up. I've been stung before. It hurts, but I believe that I can learn techniques to minimize my stings. Maybe I'll get the net to protect my face and a smoker. I have identified a place out back to keep bees. I went to a beekeeping meeting once (though it was more like a kkk meeting) but they used chemicals in their beekeeping. I do not want that. THE POOR BEES ARE NOT MAKING IT IN THIS COUNTRY. THEY ARE EVEN HAVING CONGRESSIONAL HEARINGS ON IT. THE CHEMICALS ARE DESTROYING THEM AND THEY ARE SWARMING FOR NO APPARENT REASON. THE FRUIT GROWERS ARE IN TROUBLE. THEY HIRE BEEKEEPERS TO BRING IN THEIR BEES IN ORDER TO POLLINATE THE FRUIT TREES. In managing your bees you'll want food for your bees all year long. They'll love to pollenate your fruit trees and your garden plants meanwhile provide a delicious, nutritious source of food for you. There is a way to manage for their food needs while meeting your own... [homestead location] When you get a homestead you want plenty of upland, you don't want to be downstream. People are dumping all kinds of pollutants into the water. I've started compiling questions that I have about a potential homestead--neighbors, previous uses, etc. the is taped to a wall in the classroom. I add to it as I think of something. > I have read the School in Session poem several times now. It has been very > enlightening for me. [Biblical Scholarship for writing textbooks] What if this poem were in a fifth grade mathematics book under a section entitled, "Keeping a Proper Perspective"? Could someone grow up knowing this information from a youth? Would they ever desire that bondage? We have a section like that in our homemade series, "Counting with Father & Daniel". We also have problems where use of the atlas is required for a REAL destination. Biblical scholarship results in real teachings...how far back can we take them in the lives of our children? Things are happening fast in society. How soon can we teach them to read? Where are the books to get them reading before they are out of diapers? Biblical scholars can write them. I saw a video of wildebeast calf being prompted by its mother as soon as it was born. I think that they can start keeping up with the herd in 30 minutes. The calf has blood on him and there are packs of hyenas, jackals, wild dogs, lions, cheetahs, and who knows what else out there that is interested in him. Well, in this waste, howling wilderness, there are powers that want every child. We need them up and running asap--but only supplying the message here a little, there a little in an engaging way. Because our school, a lot of the framework for this has already been done, but there is still some honing to do. If we take complex understandings back and introduce them little by little, our scholars grow up with a proper perspective on who they are and where they find themselves. They learn to know God and avoid the world--they choose this for themselves because God and his reward is so far superior to anything else that can be name. [line upon line] >I have begun a little notes collection where I print > off my thinking and research and scriptures into various subjects. I love > this. The Lord opens up a matter and there is a conclusion to it as > well. This is so true. And then there are those well-defined questions, that stay there in the background waiting for any answer that may come along. I started compiling a list of scriptures about wind, air, firmament, etc. in response to your discussion of ether. > Things that we learn from Him are given to us in bits, units that have a > clear beginning and end. Then they stack together. It's wonderful, > refreshing. It is not the "much study" we find in Ecclesiastes when > the Lord > leads it! How true. It is refreshing, stimulating in the highest degree. [fasting] > The fast I took yesterday quickened my spirit, so that by the end of the > day, I was receicing so much clarity in my spirit that I didn't want to > eat. > I haven't been the same since. Yesterday I was learning the power we > have in > the Spirit over the the flesh and its enticements, how to hold fast. Amen. [boldness] > Today, > I have been learning boldness. The scriptures are coursing through my mind > and being like running waters now. I don't care about offending people, > I > speak the scriptures and let it speak for itself. > > Proverbs 28:1 > The wicked flee when no man pursueth: but the righteous are bold as a > lion. Speak on. > I am going in the direction of learning to be a mighty man of valour. This > was what I was created to be. It is interesting how being a mighty man of > valour begins with complete weakness to self letting Christ take over > and > rule. Self--the great enemy. Conquer that one and the way is clear, the sky is the limit. I talk as one on the sidelines. [husbandry] > I want to grow a plant, especially something that bears fruit, like the > tomato plant you suggested. Where is a good place to get good seed? I have > read that many commercially-available seed packets have been genetically > modified so they do not continue to bear seed. I have found the seed from Underwood Gardens to be good. I really liked the Rosalie Paste Tomato (200 year old heirloom seed). It drops its fruit easily so you have to stake it well early on. I am going to focus on the Rosalie this year--it is not too juicy, firm in texture, delightful. Very nice. Take your best tomato and leave it on the vine to get overripe. Take it off, take out the seeds, put them in water to soften the jelly-like substance on them, lay them on a screen lifted off the table, let them dry completely, put them in an envelope and you'll have next year's seed. Buy dried navy beans in the plastic at an store (better yet, buy organic at a health food store), plant them, get green beans, but leave some on the plant to mature and dry out. Keep the best beans for seed, sod and eat the rest. Not only are the seeds being genetically manipulated, the animals are too. Most chickens have already lost their mothering instinct from growing up in cages, but they are tinkering with them genetically so that the instinct will be erased completely. There are only a few breeds left that will sit on eggs. I want my homestead while I can still get these heritage chickens and goats. The following book is a **********MUST HAVE********* Encyclopedia of Country Living by Carla Emery. Another good one (out-of-print but can still be found...homestead kind of man had suggested it to me)-- Back to Basics by Reader's Digest. Carla Emery (above) also wrote a haunting book (out-of-print) about criminal hypnosis and its use by the government. I believe that it is little known, but it is a horror beyond belief. You read a little and you can feel the darkness. Apparently, she was a victim of criminal hypnosis but I don't know who did it to her. The cover has people sitting there watching all these televisions. It's too dark for words to adequately describe it. I do NOT counsel you to buy it. There is too much on which to stumble. I've read very little of it but I do have it...I have a cadre of a few books like this...one is called, The Underground History of American Education. I do not counsel you to buy it, but I plan to use this information in recording the times. Well, I'll sign off for now. Mephibosheth