I just wanted to address a special note to our friends on Facebook…

I really appreciate the “Networked Blogs” feature that allows me to publish all our blog posts to our Facebook news feeds, so you always know when there’s something new to read.

But I wanted to ask you a favor:

When you leave a comment here, it is archived in my database, on my server, logically linked to the post which inspired it.

If you leave a comment on Facebook, it will soon scroll off the bottom of the page and simply be gone forever…

We enjoy hearing what you have to say, and many of your comments contain ideas that we’d like to save.

So, please, leave them here where I can keep them!

There are a number of different trees growing up on the Holley property.

Wolf plans to thin out a bunch of the pines near the house area, since they are the favored habitat of ticks and other nasty critters.

There are also plenty of hardwoods around, so things will still be plentifully forested.

But I also want to plant some food trees.

We’re planning to buy the biggest ones we can manage (financially and logistically), since we hope to not have to wait ten years for a mature, fruit-bearing tree. And we are hoping to start planting now, so that they have these couple of years before we move up there.

So, what would the ideal small homestead “tree farm” contain?

Here’s what we’ve been thinking:

• Apples. Good for eating straight, applesauce, cider, etc., etc.
• Sugar Maple. Syrup and sugar – the old-fashioned way.
• Pecan. Nuts are a good food. Pecan is not necessarily our very favorite, but I know it grows well in the climate there.

I also want to plant a couple of non-fruit-bearing pear trees, which has the most beautiful, sudden bursting into flower in the springtime, and allowed me to fall in love with Mississippi.

So, how many of each kind of tree? Just one, because how much can we eat? Two, for pollination, and you can sell surpluses? Three, because you want two and that way there’s a spare?

And what other food trees should we consider?

Now begins the quest for a simpler life.

My wife and I have been wanting a simpler lifestyle more and more over the past few years. We are both used to the big cities of California.

She has come to long for a simpler life for us and our children. I was born and reared in northeast Mississippi and hunted and fished and heard stories of farming and having animals.

We felt that if we could ever buy a decent-sized plot of land with running water it would be a dream come true.

I grew up spending lots of free time at “the farm”. My uncle had purchased upwards of 80 acres of land outside of town. After he died in the Air Force the land went to my grandfather, and when he passed away my dad got the land and eventually built a house there.

My father passed away on August 16th, 2010 and my brother asked if I had any desire to move onto the land when our step-mother moved away. She will stay for a while, but eventually retire to the town further north where her family lives.

I thought about the 80-plus acres with a creek running through it.

I think our dreams have just begun to come to fruition.

Our plans are to have an essentially self-sufficient life on a small homeplace. We have planned out little bits and pieces of it over the years; we have lovingly come to call this place “Contentment” after Paul’s description in the Bible.

I plan to document and pass on the things that work and the things that don’t.

The journey will begin now for me and my wife Tiffany (in our 40’s), oldest son Nick at 16, Jewel at 5, and R.T. at 2 years of age.

The following months or years will be planning and preparing the land.

On some undetermined date in the future we will move to the homeplace and start our new life … one step at a time.

So, here we go … on the road to Contentment.

This is my belated post and wish:

Happy Independence Day! Happy Birthday, U.S.A!

This Fourth of July, we went to see the fireworks show that was being put on by the Homestead Air Reserve Base for its personnel and guests.

They had also done dinner, music, and who knows what other fun stuff during the evening. But given the late hour, our Littles’ attention spans, and the mosquito problem, we opted to just swing by for the show.

Jewel got to bounce in a bounce house for a few minutes before they wrapped up, and we all enjoyed free cotton candy and watermelon.

Then came the fireworks…

I must back up and explain the weather. July 3rd brought thunderstorms, and overnight Wolf and I had some concerns about the severity of the storm, being in our flimsy little RV trailer. It subsided, but continued to rain off and on all day on the 4th.

It dried up in the late evening, allowing the foreworks show to proceed as scheduled.

God provided an amazing show, with lightning in the clouds providing additional *flash*!

It’s hard to take pictures of fireworks.

It’s hard to take pictures of lighting.

It’s really just about impossible to take pictures of the intersection of the two.

Here’s the closest we got:

In the bottom right corner you see the very light/bright brownish tinted smoke from the fireworks.

But just above that, you can see the glowing blue-tinted clouds that are actually God-illuminated! This was just a remnant of the bright flashes that lit up the sky around the fireworks show.

So with fireworks provided by the U.S. Air Force, and lightning from Heaven, it was truly a once-in-a-lifetime show…

I often wonder if I am the only person in the world who is, well, like me. It’s lonely.

I have a lot in common with mamas in the “Attachment Parenting” community. I believe in extended breastfeeding and child-led weaning, co-sleeping, babywearing, and cloth diapers.

But I often find that I have trouble forming deep friendships with these women… We are just too far apart in terms of our religious and political views.

I am typically the only one at the breastfeeding support meeting who is a Christian, a conservative, or a fan or Ronald Reagan.

So I turn to my church “family” looking for companionship. There are people there who share my devotion to Christ, and are typically at least on the same side of the political spectrum.

But so often I am still set apart from this set of women, this time because of (of course) our parenting philosophies.

I’m not sure why.

It seems rather obvious to me that since God designed our bodies to nourish our babies, that is what we ought to do.

Christ’s example of sacrificial love, combined with numerous scriptural exhortations about the responsibilities of child-rearing, are to me a clear guideline that we should be there for our children as long as need be, without saying that “we want our body back,” or “we need some time away,” or “we need to get back to our career to feel fullfilled.”

Although I have met some like-minded souls online, I am (these should always be read with the understanding that Wolf and I are of one mind on these issues) consistently the only one at church who doesn’t leave their baby in the nursery, and would like to have a family worship area that was baby-friendly.

As I mentioned, I have met a few “crunchy” Christian mamas online, and I’m sure there are others out there. Thanks to the Internet, maybe we can find each other!

I’d like to help spread the word, too.

Famous (infamous?) Christian child-training author Debi Pearl explains that it’s a “no brainer” for her, too, in My Two Cents.

What other resources are out there on attachment-type parenting from a Christian perspective?

John MacArthur is one of my favorite Bible teachers, and the topic of this book is something that Wolf and I feel very strongly about, so I was really looking forward to reading it.

Meek and mild. Politically correct. A great teacher. These are the popular depictions of Jesus. But they aren’t the complete picture. Maybe because it’s uncomfortable, or maybe because it’s inconvenient, Christians and non-Christians alike are overlooking the fierceness of the Savior, His passionate mission to make the Gospel clear and bring people into the Kingdom of God. A mission that required he sometimes raise his voice and sometimes raise a whip.

My favorite point, summing it all up:

Truth doesn’t defeat error (or lies) by waging a public relations campaign.

The reality of the book, though, was somewhat disappointing.

I think part of the explanation may be found in the Acknowledgements – MacArthur thanks all the staff who have recorded, stored, and organized his sermons over the past forty-plus years. He gives special notice to his assistant who, “compiled, combined, adridged, and edited the material in this book, translating it from those hundreds of sermons to about 250 pages of prose.” Sounds like he should have a joint author credit!

My first issue is obviously not unique, as I found it eloquently spelled out over at token lines suggesting rhythm:

However, he explicitly addresses much of his biblical interpretation and personal criticism to a narrow group – those emergents and postmoderns who have hijacked or misinterpreted the Jesus of the gospels or who have selectively emphasized the “nice” side of Jesus. While these are not bad to criticize, and MacArthur does a good job of showing the fuller picture of Jesus’ hard teachings, his frequent jabs and applications to postmoderns grows tiring. More general application would have been beneficial.

I think my bigger problem, though, is that this book seems to lack a “voice” – and again, I think this may have to do with the fact that it is (or at least started life as) a compilation of MacAthur’s sermons edited by someone else.

* For a layperson or casual reader, the book is probably quite dense and boring. If you’re looking for Max Lucado, forget it. But for someone interested in a serious in-depth study, the book also falls short.

* Many areas seem repetitive and/or redundant, while other times he mentions something tantalizing then says “of course we don’t have the space in a book like this for an exhaustive study of that, but let me just point out…”

* The book is very impersonal. The title says that “I” can’t ignore Him; the subhead tells me that the books tells, “What [I] must learn from the bold confrontations of Chirst”; the back cover text carries a message about how our view of Christ colors our whole life… But the book did not speak to me. In part because it was largely slanted against the Emergent and Postmodern Evangelicals (as discussed above), but I think also in part just because of an overall lack of focus and direction.

Is it a good book, with tons of good information? Absolutely.

Is it compelling, life altering, or profound? Sorry, no.

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Wolf and I have a lot of funny conversations… It never ceases to amaze me how the Lord brought us together, across the country, in the midst of a culture that is so different from us!

It all started when he had worn down the heels on his favorite pair of cowboy boots, and also worn out the sole of his Redwing work boots.

I was shocked how hard it was to find a shoe-repair shop. Wasn’t there always one on every corner, one in every mall?

Wolf and I began to speculate on the decline of shoe repair as a symptom of the rise of consumerism and the disposable mentality. Can’t you just hear it now:

After all, if I’ve worn these flats for, say, a year, and they get to the point of needing new heels… They are hopelessly out of style, and I should just throw them away and buy myself a new pair! I deserve it, right?

We laughed when we asked our Facebook friends where to find a Shoe Repair shop, and someone said almost exactly that!

Needless to say, I did find one, and both pairs of boots were restored to their former glory. Both have years of use left in them, and would only have been replaced with identical (and costly!) new ones…

I got to thinking, later, that there are a lot of things around the house that we use longer than many people might. We don’t throw something away simply because it starts to look worn.

Some things can simply continue to be used until they wear out totally. Other things can be repurposed or converted, and then used until they wear out totally.

Here are a few diapers that we are still using, for instance, as they disintigrate…

Shortly after taking this photo, that top layer fell off entirely. As thin an scraggly as it was, I couldn’t think of a use for it, and it did get thrown out. But the diaper is still in use!

A friend made this diaper for me, and I had no idea it had a red layer underneath…

This diaper was a lovely, soft bamboo velour. Amazingly, once all the “fuzz” wears off it is a thin grid, and you can see the underlayers right through it!

This diaper was actually retired shortly after this photo was taken. After a certain number of layers wear away, and the elastic loses it’s spring, it just doesn’t do its job anymore.

The first step! The end of the elastic wore through the casing, and came loose.

This is a “diaper service quality” prefold. Heavy-duty. The top layer is disintigrating…

…and a close-up…

Yeah, that flat-in-patches fabric is terry cloth – the loops just plain wore off!

And I’ve already mentioned where worn-out socks go in our house!

It just doesn’t make sense to discard and replace things that have plenty of life left in them.

Whether we do it because of laziness, carelessness, pride and vanity, or some other reason… It’s neither “green,” nor good stewardship.

Random.org decreed the winners of the Homestead Blessings DVD Giveaway to be…

#9 and #10

I have already talked to both Jerri and Valarie, and their DVDs are probably already on the way from Franklin Springs Family Media!!

And the winners of a Bondi Band of their choice?

#1 – Lisa, and
#6 – Shelly!

These two lucky ladies just need to respond to the email I sent, and they’ll be enjoying their goodies in no time.

Thank you again to our generous giveaway sponsors, as well as to all of you who participated!

Are you a fan of Amish fiction or Christian romances? Pick up this pleasant read from Kelly Long!

If not, this book should probably not be high on your summer reading priority list.

Like most in its genre, this book is sweet, predictable, and paints a vivid picture of Amish life.

I was a bit exasperated by the use of a “language guide” at the beginning of the book for the Pennsylvania Dutch phrases, rather than the accepted pattern of translating them as they are used. Long’s portrayal of the Amish sense of community was very compelling, however, and her use of Sarah’s garden as part of the story was a refreshing twist.

You know what you’re getting from the cover. You know if you should read it or not – you don’t need my advice!

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Just a reminder to click over and leave a comment to enter to win in each of the two drawings we have going on right now!

You can win one of TWO copies of the new Homestead Blessings: The Art of Quilting DVD (ends tomorrow, 6/26)!

And you can be one of TWO winners of a Bondi Band of your choice (ends 7/3)!

Plus, you earn an extra entry in each drawing, just by entering the other one (make sure to leave a comment to let me know!)… Pretty easy, eh?