Breaking News!

It is with a thankful heart and beer in hand that I report this breaking news story. Arhen Lea Imperial Elsie is now EX 91 at 14 years of age! We also had 2 new Excellents, Ter-View Top Prize Sondra and Ter-Veiw Choise Mia. Sondra is just fresh with her 2nd calf and was scored for the first time, she was to fresh the first time around. Mia was raised from VG87. Ella, my favorite Counsellor daughter was raised to VG87 as well. We did some 2 year olds today with the lowest one being 81 and the highest being 85. All in all it was a very good day. With the "big day" out of the way, I hope to get back the blog and answer some emails.

A Cold and Windy Night

Well, I've boarded up all the cracks and have a good pile of wood stacked up in the house to feed into the stove tonight. Snowing a bit and the wind is blowing hard. I was over loading the inlaws outdoor furnace and the drifts are waist deep and just happen to be right over the only wood left on the place. The weather has been goofy this January, cold for 3 days and then warm for 3 days. Between the barn cleaner screwing up, fresh cows and baby calves, some frozen pipes, a busted pipe and a small fire in our bedroom one night, I've been a little to busy to blog. Yesterday we had some cattle customers out looking at cows. I got to spend the morning doing one of my favorite things....talking cow families, bulls and bloodlines. Its always nice to sell cows to people who are breeders, folks who plan on continuing all the hard work you put in to devoloping a maternal line. I don't care to sell stock to folks who are just looking for more connon fodder for the industrail dairy machine. I perfer to sell to folks who love cows as much as I do and will put some thought into what they mate them to and will have them scored every year. We have had some positive devolpments on the soap making front. I think this may turn out to be something we accually make some money with. I'm starting to think about maple season a little bit. As I get stuff cleaned up and set up, after 2 years of setttin' idle, I promise to get some photos up for everyone that has asked in the past. Matt has quite a bit of hard cider made up and the boys from church have decided we should make some apple brandy. I'm going to dig out the still this week and clean it up. If we ever get started on this project I'll let you all know how it turns out. We made one of our rare trips off the farm and into the concrete jungle this last week. We have a new covenant child in our congregation!!!! Dave and Michelle had a little boy named Timothy and we had to go welcome the little guy as soon as he was born. He is fine looking youngster who I trust will grow up to serve King Jesus. I can't wait for the baptisim, and the feast that will follow.........I'll provide the meat, Dave...if you provide the brew!

What Happened to Christian Stewardship

The last year or so, I have been thinking about what caused the church in America to lose sight of basic stewardship values considering creation. I mentioned this was on my mind in my last post post, which got this response from the Missouri Rev....

I look forward to the discussions as to why “the church as a whole has abandoned
the concept of covenantal stewardship and why they have a negative view of
creation in general.” Covenant means boundaries and sacred obligation, for which
our autonomy worshipping culture despises and mocks. I believe the Lord’s people
have, to a greater extent then they would admit, bought into the false
neutrality of “American freedom” where they can pretty much do as they please
when it comes to earning a living, using earth’s resources, planning for the
future, investing, and all the other things common to daily living. After all,
“the Bible really doesn’t address these things in detail and, besides, we live
in the age of grace where such archaic “Old Testament” practices as covenantal
faithfulness and obedience to commandments are no longer required.” There is an
arrogant ambivalence that permeates American Christendom that assumes, because
of short-term, live for now thinking, that the economic system that runs our
nation today is biblically based and, thus, condoned of God. “Just look at all
of the prosperity and opportunity we have compared to other nations.” This
carnal worldview is based upon subjective comparisons and not the Word of God
which emphatically states that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every
word that proceeds from the mouth of God. This carnal “Christian” worldview also
involves ungodly compartmentalizing where no associations are made between
covenantal faithfulness and God’s blessing and covenantal unfaithfulness and His
curses. This form of secular tunnel vision leads to a blindness which refuses to
see that the brazen, overt paganism that has taken our nation captive is
directly related to the ungodly economics that we embrace, in covenantal
unfaithfulness, for the mother’s milk of a pagan culture is pagan economics. The
same is said for the ungodly agrarianism that is destroying our nation’s created
lands and resources. Oh well, there is my two-cents worth of musings; perhaps it
will spark some discussion.

Needless to say, I agree with the good pastor's thoughts. I was thinking some more about it during milking. What follows are some random thoughts I have....

In a sense, one thing that happened was a case of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. When the godless, pagen leftism of the 60's made creation itself a golden calf, the church responded in the ussuall reactionary way she has done before. She threw the baby out with the bathwater and proceeded to smash the bathtub with a 9 pound sledge. In my younger days I had this half witted to enviromental issues. I took the stance, "Anyone remotely censerned with the enviroment was a closet commie."

Bad Theology...... America is largely comprised of a theological system that is only a couple hundred years old not very biblically sound. Dispensationalism and premillenialism have created a "why polish brass on a sinking ship" mentality that may take generations to reverse. Why bother conserving or improving "the late great planet earth"?

Quasi-Gnostic Amillenialism. I'm sorry to have to say this but, a good portion of the reformed world is plagued with some strange kind of "christian gnosticism". They will deny it if confronted but they hate all matter and anything remotely "earthy". Only the invisible and spirtual have any value. Sorry folks, God made it all and proclaimed it was Good!

There you have it. Chew it over and tell me what you think.

Has it Been a Year?

This morning I noticed that Homesteader Life just had a birthday, I think they call that a blogaversery. It doesn't seem like its been year since I started this crazy thing. Looking back, I have to laugh, I never thought anyone would read it(much less take it seriously)
and within a years time it sort of took on life of its own. I had no idea that there were other Christians who had the same thoughts and ideas that I did. People were stopping in here, not because I was a gifted writer or that I "had all the answers", but becouse they were just plain thrilled to see that they were likeminded folks out there. They found a place to hang out where they we not treated as bonified nut cases but valued contrbutors. Frankly, the quality of the stuff I've been doing here the last few months has slipped a bit. I've been taxed for time and energy, as of late. The beauty is it don't matter anyhow becouse most of my origanal readers and commenters have started their own blogs and they have far surpassed this one in many respects. The whole idea of distinctivly Christian Agrarianism has come a long way, and our merry little band of bloggers has played a role in the advancment of this cause. I'm looking foward, Lord willing, to continuing the battle of ideas in this new year. One thing I would like to tackle is how the church as a whole has abondoned the concept of covenantal stewardship and why they have a negative veiw of creation in general. Stay tuned.

I'm Still Here, but older

Wow, today was a heat wave. It was 51 degrees and the snows almost all gone. Fear not, the temps should drop into the teens by tomorrow night, boy thats going to feel chilly. Today I turned 31 years old, and this evening I feel like I'm 65. I spent most of the day cutting, splitting and stacking wood with my boys. One log was a big old maple, oh I hate splitting maple! That snarly ole stuff takes the steam right out of ya. We had a nice calf born yesterday, a Deluxe daughter. Very big, very dairy, very stylish. We really like the Deluxe calves and heifers, we sold one at the Top of the World sale in Madision last year. I got some neat stuff to listen to for my birthday from Wordmp3.com. If you've never been on the site be sure to check it out. They had some stuff on sale this week. I'm a big fan of James Jordon and Peter Leithart. I was thrilled to see their Knowing the Scriptures Confrence was only $5. I thought this looked interesting and it to was only $5. This was the icing on the cake, if you will. Now that I've shared my gifts with you, I'm sure there a few people smiling and more than a few making a mental note to pray for me tonight :)


Emily has a blog. She writes,

"We have taken a road that is perhaps not uncommon to the world in general, but in our respective families it is. Some would call us oddballs but we consider ourselves blessed. Our politics are conservative and our faith is Reformed. We are a one-income family. We homeschool, homebirth, doctor ourselves, and do not vaccinate our children."

I look forward to hearing more from her. We at Homesteader Life welcome all Reformed Agrarian Oddballs. Its nice to know we're not alone!

The Old Homeplace

When I was a young lad, we lived on 100 acre little farm in western NY. My dad managed a farm for some cattle dealers. They bought and sold cows and heifers and also had a 30 cow dairy. Dad ran the day to day operations for the dairy and the satalite heifer farms. This farm we lived on came with the job. They grew some corn and hay there, but the barn, house, and pastures were ours to do what we pleased with. This is where our present herd was built. The house was an old jeffersonian farm house. The barn was a gable roof barn with a 9 cow stable and lots of box stalls and such. It was kind of a 3 story set up. It had one poured concrete silo that we pitched out by hand. When we got there the farmstead was all over grown and the house and barn were in very poor shape. We fixed it up over the years and it eventually was quite a place. This is where we bred and devoloped our French Alpine goat herd, which is now just a memory. We milked about 40 goats there and fed the milk to veal calves. Those were the days when veal was a good money maker. We latter sold off most the goats and milked cows there, again putting the milk through veal and hogs. The soil in that area was great and we grew huge gardens there that feed us most of the year. Dad also built and devoloped huge perrenail flower gardens on that farm. The farm was divided off with stone walls. They were crumbbling from time and neglect but I always marveled at those walls. Someday I will build some of my own. What I rember most about those walls were the fossils I'd find in the rocks. That and spending a deal of time, at one point in my childhood, crouched behing the walls with a stick that resembled a rifle. I was fighting back the advancing northern agressors from destroying my beloved home. Yup, even as a boy I had a love for the Confederacy and there agrarian vurtues! I once, in the 4th grade I think, wrote an essay; that was not reqiured, defending the south and there culture. I rember sitting on that stone wall , at 11 or 12 years of age, already noticing that evrything I loved had been under assualt for many years before I was even born. Those surrounding woods were also my playground. I killed my first coon, squirrell, possom, woodchuck and fox there. My old friend Dave came out last weekend for a visit. The converstaion soon turned to the good ole days we had on that farm. "Best woodchuck huntin' ever" Dave remebered. Us kids could spend a whole afternoon shooting chucks back there. Run out of shells before we ran out of chucks! At one time we even resorted using a shotgun, to make it more challenging. We ran our first traps there on that farm as well. Sold my first $50 coon from that line. I was young enouph to catch the end of the last great fur boom. When I look back, that land....the soil, the buildings, the trees....all had a tremendous amount of influence on my life, for good and bad. The sad thing is, its all gone. The farm was rented from an old lady who eventually went to be with the Lord. Her kids sold it to the highest bidder. The highest bidder built $500,000 cookie cutter houses. The old hay field, the one with the woodchucks, was the first to fall. Some yuppie parks his car were us kids used to pitch our tent when camping. It slowly moved throught the farm like cancer. Dave told me they finally struck the final blow. The bulldozed the farmhouse down, its gone forever. They can't destroy the memories though.

Short Saturday Post

Wow, I haven't been a very faithful blogger lately. We are keeping busy out here and the weather has been better than average. It cooled down last night pretty good but they are forcasting temps in the high 30s again for the upcoming week. We've used a lot less wood the last few weeks and for that I'm thankful. The pile is shrinking and I'll have to cut more before spring, thats for sure. The website project is going well. In case you hadn't figured it out, the very talented Valerie is doing our work. She has set up a shopping cart thing-a-ma-bob for our soaps. I've been playing around with that the last couple of days, with the little spare time I've had, instead of blogging. Since I can not think of anything of substance to write about tonight, I'll just give you a few links to click. Papist Pete tipped me off on an interesting article on agrarianism that you might like reading. Kelly Klober asks the question Avian Flu: Pandemic or Mass Hysteria? Bret McAtee shares the Banking Catechism over at the Backwater Report.

Thoughts on the New Year Ahead

Well, I've lived to see the coming of another year, which is no small accomplishment on the mountain named Hunger. Last year had its ups and downs like an other year and I figure this next one will too. We are making progress in the journey to be less dependent on the "system" and more dependent on the Lord and our fellow saints. Whats on the plate for 2006 you ask? We plan to extend the garden every year. This year we hope to get enough new ground tamed to start market gardening. We plan to have a new chicken coop this year. We are going to try a hand at growing some pole beans with sweet corn, small plot this year to see how it works. I'd like to start a pair of oxen this spring, but it will depend on few things. Dad has agreed to look into the possibility of marketing some raw milk from the dairy. Another thing we're working on is website for our Heritage Hill products. We have been very blessed to enlist the help of fine Christian lady who has agreed to do some website design work us......more on this soon. We are having good results selling soap. The soap will be our first priority for the future website. I plan on offering a few E-Books this year. This is something that has been in the works for a while, but had been put on the back burner for spell. So we head into the new year with some projects to keep us busy. We pray for all the fellow Christian Agrarians out there, that you will make progress in the journey toward your goals and that would grow in the Grace of Jesus Christ. Let us continue to encourage one another as we advance the Kingdom and build a culture that honors God and His laws.