Pictures of the Past Week

We got into a little fight. The boys had made themselves swords, shields, and axes, and Catherine and I ganged up on them with bean poles and foam noodles (a little one-sided you'd think). We even got Elizabeth to join in after a while; we're going to have to get another foam noodle for Claire, though.

Full armor.
















I think he's got a problem with the camera.
Great. Catherine! They're charging!











Well! He almost looks scared!
















Oooh, that's why.
















A vicious attacker.
The fight ended with both sides declaring victory, and we were about to eat a delicious dinner!

Great picture, Kyle.
One night we built a fire and ate ruebens while enjoying conversation.
We got the berry patch in order on day.
Trying to get more kinks worked out in another jam session.

Claire, Kyle, and I (and probably the chruch) are so thankful that y'all helped us last Monday night! We just couldn't have done it near so well without y'all.
Yesterday I got placed on the Poop Squad. Yep. The men went around with pitch forks picking up cow patties. I got the good job (thank you, Mr. Brothers!): I drove the Mule behind them. Once we got a good load we went back to the compost pile and they spread it on.
After doing this for a while they became real manure connoisseurs.
"I personally think the dried ones are best for this time of year."
"No!?! I believe you're saying that just because you don't want to pick up the heavy, wet ones."
"......Not at all *grunt* see?!"
"Whatever!" *all laugh*
Next we tackled the garden. We took down the tomato cages, t-posts, and stakes.
Mr. Brothers tilled our beds, and they look just superb! THANK YOU!!!










At lunch.
















After lunch, the boys went out to do more trench digging.















Benjamin helped too!
After dinner something very purple and smelly came out. A hand waxer thingy! Most everyone tried it out. The babies didn't; the heads-of-household didn't; Kyle didn't, and I didn't. Everyone else did.
I just couldn't do that to my hands. Besides, they're not dry!
Even Elijah joined in "Just to see how it felt."
Sorry, Elijah. I just had to do it.

Don't let it keep y'all from coming back as soon as possible! We got so much done, and we had great fun! You know, we need to practice on those songs too! Your pose here looks like you could reach the higher notes.

In Compliance with a Certain Request...

I will now record the happenings of this past Saturday. Well, we slaughtered our steer.

Going to watch Ribeye be shot.












He's Down!











Well, almost.











Dragging him to the barn.












On the gambrel.











Tractor operator.












Skinning.











Still skinning.

And here we ran out of memory. Really. We did have a disposable black and white camera that we started using, but even that didn't get us through to the end (Claire had control of the camera). Everything really went quite smoothly; it took us about 3 hours from the very start to the very end.

State Forestry

This had to be one of the hardest competitions I have ever been to! Still, Coffee County performed very well. The scores were very close! Our A team will go on to the national competition. Of course I am disappointed that I cannot go, but I am very proud of my brother team. I got 155 points, and that was only ½ point away from the fourth high individual! My score was also only 5 points away from the first high individual. I am already being pressed to come back next year, but I don't think I will. Still, when I get the call, I will probably be very tempted to go back.

More broilers!

We now have another batch of broilers! We got them this morning, and they are in the basement waiting for the next processing day when they will be moved out to the chicken tractor.

Some Things Just Make Me FEEL

Good. Like this!
I almost can't stand to think of how beautiful the cities were before they became big cities or even developed at all! I do not hate cities, but I sure do dislike them when there is the beautiful countryside to compare.





Or not so good. Like this.





Good.

















Not so good.













Good.















Not so good.












Good.

Good Tidings!

"For unto us is born this day in the 'city' of Viola a calf, which is number 30!"

Sorry, felt festive! No pictures yet.

This is good!

Signs that you have watched Pride and Prejudice too many times when...

• Six hours no longer seems like a long time.
• You begin to wonder why all movies are not six episodes long.
• You have memorized where the commercial breaks come as well as the order of the commercials in each break.
• You watch the movie all the way through non-stop - then rewind it and start all over again.
• The movie just keeps on getting better every time you watch it.
• On a recent visit to a local lake, you were inspired to dive in and go swimming fully clothed.
• Your relatives and friends no longer think that you are strange for asking them to call you "Lizzy".
• You sing along with the background music.
• You find ways to quote Pride and Prejudice in daily life: "That shirt is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me."
• After hours of studying the dance scenes, you held a party and forced all your friends to learn the dance steps so that you could pretend to be Lizzy at the Netherfield Ball.
• You are saving up money to go to England to visit the filming locations.
• You made a special trip to England last year just to visit the filming locations.
• Your itinerary includes a special trip to Pemberley where you plan to stand at the window and say, "Of all this I might have been mistress" - and you are devasted when you find out that this is not possible since the Pemberley interiors and exteriors were filmed in separate locations.
• You think of time in terms of the number of Pride and Prejudice episodes you could watch in that amount of time. For example: "I’ll see you in four episodes" = "I’ll see you in four hours."
• You have pets and stuffed toys named Lizzy and Darcy.
• You name your first two children Lizzy and Darcy.
• Right after you splurged and bought the P&P video boxed set, you made two copies of it. The original videotapes are now in your display case (along with all your other precious objects and silverware), one copy is at your relative's house in case of a fire, and the third copy is for your daily viewing.
• Others refuse to watch P&P with you because they find your habit of reciting the whole movie in unison with the actors annoying.
• Even though you have never lived in Britain, you now regularly speak with a British accent.
• You find yourself often saying that you are "excessively diverted", "quite put out" or "most seriously displeased".
• You dance along with Lizzy and Darcy every time you watch the Netherfield Ball scene.
• You have played the whole movie in slow motion to prolong the ecstasy of watching the movie. (Unfortunately, the music and the sound doesn't work on slow motion so you don't do this very often.)
• You commonly use the "frame-by-frame" advance function on your VCR so that you don't miss any miniscule detail of your favourite scenes.
• Upon discovering that some characters wear their costumes more than once in different parts of the movie, you were inspired to draw up a large table in order to search for possible correlations between the costume worn and the mood of the character.
• You have drawn maps and layout plans of the rooms and the buildings in the movie.
• You special ordered a CD so you can listen to "Mr. Beveridge's Maggot" (over and over again) even when not watching the Netherfield Ball scene (eg. in the car, on the bus, while washing dishes, on the airplane, while taking a walk, while going for a jog, while vacuuming the house, while painting a fence....)
• You own two copies of Pride and Prejudice - one for the bedside, and one for downstairs reading.
• You own three copies of The Making of Pride and Prejudice - one for the bedside, one for downstairs reading, and an extra copy in case either of them gets lost.
• You giggle whenever you see Mrs. Bennet or Mr. Collins, before they even open their mouths.
• You find yourself constantly quoting your favorite lines from P&P and you feel sorry for your family and friends when they give you confused looks since they have only watched P&P once (horrors!) and can't recall the lines.
• You start thinking of excuses to wear muslin dresses in the Regency style so you can look like Lizzy and Jane.
• You spent the past five months researching Regency fashions so that the "Netherfield Ball" dress that you will be wearing to the next formal occasion is historically accurate.
• You no longer need an excuse to wear Regency style clothing - you now wear it everyday as your own personal fashion statement and as a indication of your progressive sense of style!
• Your family and friends put a limit on when and where you can talk about P&P because, unbelievably, they are just so sick of it. (For example, Tuesdays and Thursdays are designated P&P-free days.)
• The above happens and you resort to saying lines that you hope they won't notice are from the movie (such as: "no, no, the green one.")
• You searched everywhere for a script of the movie and finally wrote your own (by studying each scene in detail) when you couldn't find one. With your new script in hand, you often recruit all your friends and force them to be a part of your P&P play while you simultaneously star as Lizzy (or Darcy) and direct it so that it matches the movie exactly.
• You have a complete list of all the differences between the book and the movie.
• Your list of differences is cross-referenced to the script of the movie that you wrote earlier.
• Every time you open "The Making of P&P" book, you immediately have to start watching the videos all over again!
• Saturday night finds you and your best friend putting your hair in buns and curling your bangs into ringlets in an attempt to imitate Regency hairstyles.
• You start referring to your ex and his new ditzy girlfriend as Wickham and Lydia.
• You realize everyone in your life fits a character in P&P, and you start desperately asking your "Colonel Fitzwilliam" if he has any cousins.
• When your friend declares a dislike for P&P, you seriously consider and re-evaluate the basis of your friendship.
• You have written your own stories to conclude the lives of the other characters in the movie.
• You are very proud of your most recent story, called P&P: The Next Generation.
• You tape a picture of Lizzy (or Darcy) to your ceiling so it's the first thing you see when you wake up in the morning.
• You download pictures of the movie from the internet to put in picture frames in your living room.
• As an excuse to watch P&P more often, you contact every friend and acquaintance you can think of and offer to loan them the P&P tapes (the backup ones, of course) with the understanding that you need to be there for the viewing.
• You can relate to most or all of the signs mentioned above!

No, I am not so obsessed!

Forestry Competition

As a member of the Coffee County Home-School 4-H club, I was invited to participate in Coffee County's forestry program about two years ago. I have since then tried to develop a thorough knowledge of every aspect needed to go to the national competition. I have been now, to three regional and two state competitions. At my last state competition we were beat by merely 5.5 points, but my team and I are going back one last time (for me) to try for the first-in-state position on October 14. We placed second in the regionals yesterday, the first place going to our friends in the Coffee County A team. We knew they would be our toughest competition because we have practiced together all along.

Being in forestry has taught me more valuble skills than just leaf I.D. and tree measurement, it has taught me how to deal with many types of people, has been a huge help in getting me over some of my painful shyness, but has also taught the necessity of holding my tongue even, or I should say especially, in the most trying situations. It has taught me the necessity of working as a team, and oh how I hope we will be able to do that come state! I will write about how state went as soon as I get over my disapointment in loosing or get over my ecstacy of winning it.

I guess I ought to give a farm update: we no longer have any laying hens, and we have still got some broilers though I don't know the exact number.

Apple Cider and Mama's Civil War Dress

Yesterday Daddy stayed home, and we made apple cider! We got somewhere around five and a half gallons, and it is delicious! Our new cider table worked great, only we had a slight problem with the tabletop coming off on the pressing side. Daddy fixed this defect though, and it works really well now! We also found out that we need not hurry. The disposal will overheat with such constant use, but it didn't do this to us until we were cleaning it out on our last batch! We had two different kinds of apple on hand, so we tried them both. The cooking apple's cider turned out sour, and the eating apple (we're not too fond of this type of eating apple) turned out very sweet. They mix really well. Alone, I prefer the sour one when they are at room temp, and the sweet one when they are chilled.

I have finally gotten to see Mama in her Civil War dress! She looks great in it, but she is going to have a larger hoop than mine. So, until she gets it, she cannot hem her dress. She did finish her hooks and eyes though! Yesterday she got a beautiful piece of fabric at Wal-Mart! We are all surprised because we can hardly ever find anything like that there! She says that if there is enough she wants to make Sense and Sensibility's Regency dress pattern (pardon the lack of a link, I don't feel like putting one in right now).

A Link

Daddy sent me this link the other day. Lovely pictures!
http://www.inaustensengland.blogspot.com/

Short Update

I am happy to report that my hoopskirt and snood arrived yesterday afternoon. A few days previous my cameo arrived too. I decided to get the 90" hoop so that I could still fit through our doors! I am still going to have to make some sort of over-hoop-skirt thing though. I am also going to have to hem it up a few inches (I think I may do it by machine, bad me). Mama is making great progress on her dress; I think she only lacks eight hooks or eyes (I don't know which side she finished already) and the hem. Claire wants short sleeves, and has been researching to figure out how to convert our pattern.

I am looking forward to this cool season. I have more and more ideas as to how I wish to convert my wardrobe into more dresses and skirts. This will really be the first winter that I wear almost exclusively feminine costumes. I have found that the costume patterns we like are, most of the time, meant for cooler weather, and I am looking forward to continuing my study in sewing. I was recently a bit frustrated at how sewing goes: By the time you have the spring and summer's wardrobe finished then fall and winter have rolled 'round! Still, the sewing we did for last winter is very definitely still wearable, and I will actually get to this year! And, perhaps, sometime this winter I will get around to making my newest pattern: Sense and Sensibility's 1910's Tea Gown! I love her Romantic Era Dress pattern (the jumper option really appeals to me)! The other day I saw this lovely medieval dress pattern, but I am just dreaming now so I had better stop!

Well...

Chickens continue to fall prey to some unworthy rascal. We have not seen this naughty predator, but I personally think we need to plan a stake-out some night. It would be progress if we just found out what creature is the culprit!

We have but one laying hen now, and who knows haw she has managed to survive! Something got into the "chicken tractor" last night, and killed four of them leaving us with about 17 broilers to hopefully have at the time of slaughtering.

Any suggestions as to what is getting our birds and how to rid ourselves of this menace would be welcomed. Also any volunteers for a stake-our would be considered. We will, of course, provide room and board, or whatever else is needed for your survival.

Another Broiler Batch

Last night, the Wiggin's brought over the batch of broiler chicks we are sharing. We decided not to use cornish-cross (a.k.a. frankenchicks), but we are doing a couple of different "breeds" of broilers. Right now I couldn't say what birds are what kind! The birds are several weeks old now. The Wiggin's started them, and we are finishing them off at our place so as to have them here for the slaughtering.

I am very satisfied with the results from the cornish-cross we killed. We just had to figure out how to cook them, but the last couple we have had have been very good! I hope these turn out as just as good. I have only been out to the "tractor" once, but I can already tell that they are not nearly as disgusting as the previous batch!

Economics?

I am finding economics to make little or no sense at all! I spent yesterday afternoon watching (really just listening) to a three-part video on the Federal Reserve called "The History of the Federal Reserve." Yes, I spent nearly four hours listening to this, but it was very interesting! By the name of it, I assumed it was governmentally owned and controlled, but it is actually owned by a few very rich and influential people! This and the book Biblical Economics by R.C. Sproul, Jr., explains that we have a form of money that is nothing! How much is that $100 really worth when you take away its buying power? It ends up just being a worthless piece of paper! I thought Mr. Sproul illustrated this well:

If Rip Van Winkle had gone to sleep in 1962 with a fistful of dollars, he would have held in his hands a promise of an exchange for silver. In 1962 the U.S. dollar could be redeemed at anytime for silver. If Rip woke up today and headed to his bank with his old and wrinkled dollars, he would receive only a puzzled look when he asked for silver in exchange. Today our money bears the promise of nothing. Paper money is no longer a certificate of anything because it has no hard value behind it. Rip would now have to accept the payment of his debt in paper dollars.

Okay. So, we are buying groceries with worthless wads of paper? We are trying to budget our "money" so as to be out of the red at the end of the month? We are buying with and selling for a green piece of paper that literally has no intrinsic value. This does not make much sense to me. Why can't we go back to the old method of barter where the exchange was for the good of everybody involved? Alright, Mr. Sproul explains that too:

Although barter was a great breakthrough in the production of wealth, its power and scope were limited. One had to find someone who not only wanted what the first had, but also had what the first person wanted. The hunter grew tired of trading for spears. Sometimes barter could be arranged through three parties: The skinmaker wanted meat, the hunter wanted a spear, and the spearmaker wanted a skin. The hunter couldtrade his meat for a skin, then trade his skin for a spear. Everyone was happy, but the transaction took a great deal of time and energy.

Besides, barter neared its limits in the three-way deal, since it was almost impossible to come up with four or more producers with compatible interests and the time or desire to arrange such a complicated deal.

So barter may not be the most practical method of exchange, but is a worthless monetary system in the hands of a few rich folks any good either? or a monetary system in the hands of the government for that matter! What about gold and other precious metals? Do they have any true value? If we have another Great Depression or one even worse then gold and silver would not be of any worth. The most valuable things would be food, water, and a roof over your head. Gold, silver, and precious jewels have no value to the cold and hungry. How is it then, that we as humans place such value on truly worthless items? I don't understand it, and I probably need to stop thinking about it or I will only get more muddled!

I appologise if my thoughts are unorganized. I think they probably are, but I have no desire to go back over and fix them at this moment.

Slight Correction

I have a slight correction to my last post.

I guiltily admit that I left out a couple of families. It was not done purposely! The Lovett's and the Stouffer's also stayed a little while. Because the men had a meeting one night, Chris Stouffer kindly led our families in worship.

The only thing wrong with last week was that it was not long enough! Nobody stayed long enough! COME BACK Y'ALL!!!!!

This Past Week

This past week we spent with some very dear friends, the Brothers, who finally made it up after promising to come since December!





We had a lot of fun!
We also worked hard with them putting up a fence in our field. We are looking forward to helping them with their fencing!

The Lingo's made their way up Wednesday in time to help us with the fence, but we don't have any really good pictures of them.
Batman descended on us, too!
"Intelligent Batman!"
Hmmm...no shoes.
Batman to the rescue!
The next day we all enjoyed lunch in Columbia, Tennessee.
And dinner along the Natchez Trace.










After a rather late start, the men got back to work on the fence. Thanks so much guys!













Can't... quite... reach... it!
Thank you, Mr. Brothers!
Go, Jacob!
That evening, our barberess, Claire, cut Daddy and Elijah's hair, but we didn't get any pictures of Daddy.
Mrs. Brothers taking over to get the "sissy hairs."
Kyle was last. He just loved it!
All done!












We had a great time everyone! Y'all come back now, ya hear!

We do have Batman's knife which we will try to remember to get to him this coming Lord's Day, but you may only get it back by coming up again!

All pictures courtesy of somebody else. I take no responsibility for the quality or angle of the photos published in this post!

A Dilemma

Anybody who knows please answer the following question!

How do you keep chickens alive???????!!!!!!!!!!!?????????

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We are having quite a time with these brainless creatures. Seems our losses are averaging a bird a day! Down to seven now, we are. A certain group of people I know who are coming to visit had better not expect scambled eggs as second breakfast, possibly as first.