Dear Mr. Youngman:

>
> 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.

Indeed.  The homestead is a sublimely simple and elegant system, beautiful in
form, intriguing.  He has placed in me and Hannah us a longing
for a homestead and we believe that he will give us what we desire.  The God 
that we worship is the God that calleth those things that are not as though they 
were. 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.

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 is model set
is located here at home and another at our small office.  

Chickens need very little space--a company called omlet sells little
chicken pens (called eglus) 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 agriculture zone, but my home owner's association 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?

I've also identified a minature goat--the Nigerian.  I think you can get a
few quarts of milk 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!  I want
to establish what we planted last year.

>Honey also comes to mind. How did John the
> Baptist get his honey?

The Bible says that John the Baptist at wild honey, so he obviously 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.  I do not
know if he did that or not.  

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 were all
about chemicals.  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--they call it Colony Collapse Disorder.

Have you ever had raw honey?  It is thick like peanut butter and delicious.  I've
been off of sweets for many months now, but that is certainly a weakness
for me.  Grains, creamy milk, and smooth, delicious honey in any form
(though I do not care much for buckwheat honey).

For your homestead, you want plenty of upland and you want food for your bees all year long. 
They'll love to pollinate your fruit trees and your garden plants
meanwhile providing a delicious, nutritious source of food for you.  There
is a way to manage for their food needs while meeting your own...

> I have read the School in Session poem several times now. It has been very
> enlightening for me.

What if this poem were in a fifth grade mathematics book under a section
entitled, "Keeping a Proper Perspective"?  We have a section like that in
our homemade series, "Counting with Father & Daniel"  where the lesson for
the day could be a scripture dictation, etc.  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.  How soon can they read?  Where
are the books to get them reading before they are out of diapers? 

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.
 He 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 of 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 named.

>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 you 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.


> The fast I took yesterday quickened my spirit, so that by the end of the
> day, I was receiving 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.

> 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.

> 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).  I am going to
focus on that one 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 (organic) navy beans in the at the healthfood store (or in plastic at the regular grocery 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 manipulated, the animals are too.  Through generations
of industrial farming, most chickens have lost their mothering instinct.  If that is not
enough, they are trying to genetically alter chickens so they won't mother.
There are only a few breeds left  that will sit on eggs.  I want my homestead 
while I can still get 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).  A homestead kind
of man had suggested it to me--

                           Back to Basics by Reader's Digest.

Carla Emery (above) also wrote a haunting book 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 small cadre of 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