Then I Thought of Home

I'm meeting with someone from the Indiana Department of Environmental Management tomorrow. They do routine checks just to make sure all farms are running as they should be. It's our turn now. Of course I'm a little nervous. I always want to be sure I have everything just as it should be. I know there is a lot of negative talk about farmers today. Talk about how we abuse the land, the waterways and even our animals. While I can't say that never happens, I can say it hardly ever happens. As with every type of job there are some who don't do a good job, you find that everywhere. I don't deny that sometimes happens in farming. I don't defend poor farming practices. What I do want to do is promote the good farming practices that the vast majority of farmers use. There are all kinds of laws and protections put in place to see that our land and the surrounding land is in no way harmed because of our farm. We know the exact amount of litter/manure tha...

It seems everyone likes to read about a simple life. It's an idea that comforts us and makes us think that there is something better out there. We may not know how to have it but we like to think of those who do. Often we think a simple life involves a little piece of land, maybe some woods and a garden spot. We may think it means living off the land or having very little in the way of  worldly goods. We tend to think of the, "Walton's" or "Little House on the Prairie" or even the Amish  when we think of the simple life. What was it or is it that makes us think they had the simple life? I'm sure Charles Ingalls and John Walton didn't feel they had a simple life.  They had a hard life. They had to work from sunup until sundown to take care of their families.  At times they had bills they couldn't pay. The Amish women work  hard, lots of them still cook on wood cook stoves, They can only take a bath once a week.  What we look at and th...

Have you ever been in a group, a study or a class where you were asked to tell what you thought you were good at or what your gift might be? I have and I'm always so uncomfortable with that question. I've always felt like to say what I might be able to do would be bragging, boastful or even prideful so I always just hem haw around when it's my turn. While preparing for a recent Bible study it occurred to me that I don't have to feel like saying what I'm able to do or gifted to do is bragging or taking credit. It's not because of me that I can do it. If I say I can bake a good pie, I can only bake a good pie because God made it so. If I say I can teach it is really saying, God has created me to teach. To say I can't do what I'm gifted to do or to take the  credit for it myself  is really stealing honor from God. Our gifts are meant to help our families, ours communities, churches and well, even the world. Don't be afraid to embrace y...

I can't believe it but I've been blogging for just over a year. Time really does fly doesn't it. I love sitting here and going back and reading about our time together over the last year. It's like I take whatever day I'm reading about out and live it over again. I love to think about how alike we are, about how your family is like my family, your thoughts are like my thoughts, your home like my home. That's why we connect, that's why we laugh  together and cry together. We're all pretty much alike under it all, we have victories and failures. We have days we don't like our spouses and days we think they hung the moon. Days we think we've been good parents and days we wonder what in the world we could have been thinking while we were raising them. Sometimes we adore our in laws and sometimes we want to move away. Thankfully if we're honest with ourselves, don't think to highly of ourselves and keep the right focus we f...

I know I'm running the risk of making you all think I'm a persimmon freak by my daily mention of them. But what can I say, the season is here. The time is now. The fruit is ready. My friend Colleen and I have been talking back and forth about persimmons and of course last night our conversation moved on from the harvesting of persimmons to the making of persimmon pudding. I have always adored persimmon pudding. Both sides of my family made it but it is mainly my maternal grandmothers that I remember the most. When Mark and I married I learned to love persimmon pudding in a whole new way. You know how it is, you think everything your family does is the best and then one day you try something and there is nothing to do but cry, "Uncle." His people have one upped your people. Their way really is best. So I did what we all do when faced with a hard fact of truth, I accepted it, I embraced the Gray way of making Persimmon Pudding. My mother-in-law a...