It's a BOY!

Ronan Henry Evan ***** born a week ago today, 7 pounds, 3 oz.
That makes me two times a daddy, and more than twice as proud! Nothing is more important to me than my family, and my kids.Just a thought, for you fathers. Do you know what your kids want from you more than anything else? TIME.
Hey, you didn't think I would write about a new baby, and not put up a picture, did you? This is his first real outdoor experience, at about 5 days old. He's just now starting to open his eyes more and more, but he still (thankfully) sleeps a lot, but on the downside, he eats more than I do, which is to say, about every 1.5 hrs.


I'm not sure why we never did this before. Our property is perfect for kite flying, so I dragged our little kite out of the top shelf, and gave it a test run. I think I had it up to 200 feet in the air at one point. It wasn't really that windy, just some steady breezes from the south. Carrigen demanded that we do this again tomorrow, which I think is a fine idea!

I've been on "vacation" for a bit more than a week now, although I had to go to court yesterday. Most of my day is spent lounging with the family, cleaning dishes, occasionally fixing something, cleaning, cutting wood, and of course, garden building. I've actually been slacking a lot, I only really put in about 1.5 to 2 hours per day building my garden beds, which means I'm not going as quick as I would like. In my defense, however, there is a lot of work to do, and digging is hard on my shoulder joint!
I've decided to bite the bullet, and rent the Bobcat right away, or soon anyway. It'll really save me a bunch of time, and it will be tax deduction too. We need to landscape around the house, put down some gravel, and fill the garden beds with soil. I need to move around some giant piles of dirt, make some room for stuff.

So far, I've got 2 4x16 beds built, and the framework for another 4x32 footer. I want two more 4x16's, and 1 more 4x32 for this year. That's not including the greenhouse, which will be 10x32 (for starters) and the tire garden, which I've now gotten filled with soil, and just needs manure and maybe some other amendments. That gives me probably the equivalent of a 4x32 planting bed. If I can, I want to do another tire garden, they are pretty easy to build, and I've got a lot of tires left!

I've got a tray of broccoli seeds started, some are looking pretty decent. This week, I need to start some Roma tomatoes, peppers, and maybe some melons. Once they reach a decent size, I'll put them into clay pots, and just bring them inside when there's an overnight frost expected. By the time the risk of frost passes, they should have a month or two head start. It's the best I can do without a greenhouse right now! The baby's room will probably be used as overnight pot and tray storage, but he doesn't really care anyway, he's a baby!

I'll be back to work tomorrow, but just for one day. Yippee.

Food security

Most of my posts up to this point have been little vignettes about our little lives here on our little homestead, and I've been pretty restrained about world affairs, but I read something today that made my blood boil a little, and I thought I'd share it, and tell you why the author is wrong.

On occasion, I read from a site called www.thetrumpet.com, which is a Christian site dedicated to articles about the disintegration of our world into chaos, and probably soon, the so-called "anti-Christ" in Revelations. Most of these articles are very good, and report on the rise of China and Russia as new world powers, the fall of the US from it's coveted position of "reserve world currency", and the ongoing economic world depression.

As with most Christian sites, they have a "bent", or to put it more bluntly "a theological motive" based on the writing and teaching of some guy named Herbert W. Armstrong, who was supposedly a prophet of God, and predicted all sorts of our current events, and some future events. You might wonder why I say "supposedly", well, I'm extremely skeptical about anyone who is bold enough to label themselves a "prophet" and claim to have access to future information. 99.999% of these guys are complete frauds, and most are looking for fame and money.

The real test of a prophet can be summed up in this. 1. Do 100% of his predictions come true? Not 99% or less. A real prophet is never wrong, because he actually speaks for God, who of course, is always right. 2. Do his teachings line up with Scripture? If not, he's a fraud, or at best, very, very arrogant.

The article in question is found here:
www.thetrumpet.com/index.php?q=6767.5292.120.0
and starts off sounding very smart and practical, when it reminds us that we rely on technology, electricity, and oil to sustain every single aspect of our lives, from water to food, to heating our houses and getting to work. Without oil, our economy would flatline, and people would starve to death in droves.
Some of the sensible people among us see this problem, and we say "Well, lets reduce our dependence on the "system" and start providing for ourselves, at least in energy and food." So, we have gardens, solar panels, wood stoves, and we put some food away for emergencies. We also trust in God, who provides rain and sunshine, and is keeping the tornadoes and hailstorms at bay.

Mr Armstrong has this to say, and I quote
“Do not spend extra money on foodstuffs above your normal supplies and perhaps some ‘staples’ which could carry you through a few temporary food shortage on a vastly curtailed and reduced diet, in a severe and temporary emergency, for only a few WEEKS! … If you ever store more food than the normal laying up in summer for winter—you’re hoarding, and God Almighty may well withdraw His protection from you!”

The underlying point is "Don't put your trust in earthly riches, trust in God's provision!", but telling people not to have any food stored is about the same as telling them not to completely fill their gas tanks, because it's "hoarding", or not to have more than 2 shirts, and maybe 3 pairs of socks, because that's all you need for a couple of months, and we don't want to "hoard" clothes. Is God going to withdraw his blessing from me because I have 30 t-shirts, 4 pairs of shoes, and 7 pairs of jeans? Because I have extra gasoline stored in containers? Because I have some sacks of grain in my shed? Because I have canned meat and tomato sauce, enough to last probably 3 months? Should I limit my garden to only what my family can eat for this year? What about saving for retirement, does that mean I'm hoarding money? Am I allowed to store several days worth of electricity in my batteries?

Unfortunately for Mr Armstrong, this viewpoint is completely unscriptural, and quite ridiculous indeed. The word "hoarding" does not appear in Scripture, but food storage does. Joseph, when he was Prime Minister of Egypt, stored up 7 years of grain during some excellent growing years, which were used during 7 lean years. This was in response to a vision from God himself!

The so-called "Old Testament Law", which many people think is abolished now, told farmers that they must rest their land every 7 years, and grow nothing. Anything that grows on it's own just falls on the ground and rots. That means people had to have food stored for TWO years, to cover that year where nothing was harvested!

Even the storing of food from one year to the next is a major undertaking. I don't know of a single person who has an actual years supply of food. We don't, at least not at this very second. I'd like to, and we will soon, and I don't consider it "hoarding", because most of that food will be grown right here!

The whole idea of "hoarding" comes from socialism, and the concept that God will punish us for prepping is retarded, especially when you start applying it to other things that are more socially acceptable to store.

I store and prepare in case I lose my job, or something else happens to our family. I don't want to rely on government benefits to survive! If something does happen, and the "World Ends", well, then we've got some food to get us by!

Don't believe anyone who tells you that preparing for the future means you don't trust in God. Just don't be smug because you've got some food stored up. Remember Job, and that all you own can disappear in a tornado overnight!

When's that package coming?

So, basically, we're waiting for a bunch of things right now. Our baby was due yesterday, but there's only a week that they'll let go, and then they induce the labour. There's my tax return, which the Canada Robbery Agency has had for 2 months, and I have seen nothing yet. Last, I'm waiting for it to rain, which it looks like it might today. We really could use the moisture, and my garden beds need a good soaking!
I took a day of vacation already, to start getting things ready for the baby. I spent a good deal of time outside, taking advantage of extremely nice weather (+12 C) to keep working at the garden.

This is the front entrance to our house, which was previously an extremely ugly patch of lumpy dirt, that turned into a big mud pit when the snow melted. I stacked the blocks, and hacked off the lumpy dirt (which was actually really good soil), and made a flower bed. The grate will stop the muddiness.


This isn't finished yet, but it will be a big patch of strawberries, interspersed with some various other veggies, beans, onions, and some flowers. The strawberries will be sold at the farmer's market, and will hopefully supplement our summer income a bit, and provide us with fresh strawberries all summer long. The tires on the left are ones that I cut to open them up a bit. I want to be able to fit around 7 - 10 plants in each tire, for about 200+ plants. If each plant gives me a pint of berries, that's about $3 a pint (hopefully), and maybe $500 or so. If I plant beans in the centre of each tire, the beans grow up over the strawberries, but will not block the sun too badly. They will also produce nitrogen on root nodules, which will be used by the strawberries.This is the second of probably 4 raised beds that will be in a row beside the house. I've built a ramshakle fence to protect from the wind, but this is still the most wind-sheltered spot I've got so far. This is where my mini-greenhouse is, and I've got a couple broccoli shoots coming up from a 72 cell tray of seeds. They will be going into these beds when they are big enough.

The beds themselves are only going to be about 1/2 dirt, or less. The bulk of the "fill" will be llama manure mixed with straw, with a layer of soil overtop. I might even layer more manure, then put more dirt over that, possibly with some newspaper in between. I'm running out of places to put fresh compost, which for us includes toilet waste, which we are composting. After 2 years, toilet waste will break down into excellent compost, which I will be putting under trees and shrubs to feed them. For those of you who might think that using human waste for growing food is absolutely disgusting, what do you think happens to the sewer sludge after it's processed? I'll give you a hint, it doesn't disappear into thin air!
It gets sold as compost! Mmmmm, sewer sludge!

Hopefully my next post will be to announce the birth of a new baby boy, so stay tuned...