Theological Debate

Ahasuerus or Xerxes?

This is just for me

I don't want to have to search for this whenever I want to watch it.

YouTube Fun

Josh Turner is awesome!!!

---

I love this song! The harmonies are great!

---

Another group with outstanding harmonies. For some reason, I remember listening to this song for years! We've always had great fun with it as a family.

Yesterday

What a day we had yesterday!!! We took a couple of little steers from our neighbor to the Carpenters, but along the way we had quite the adventure!

Everything went wrong from the beginning (thankfully not all the way to the end!). Daddy didn't hardly sleep the night before, so he went into work around 3:00 am! Then, when he came home to get some sleep before we had to go to the Franklin/Leiper's Fork area, the phone rang more times! I think we got more calls that morning than we have all day today! After lunch Daddy, Kyle, Luke, and I went to load the steers into our neighbor's trailer. That was much harder and way longer than Daddy was expecting, but we did get them loaded! Once we went back to the house to pick up Mama and Claire we were off! Well, after a few more bathroom breaks.

We made it, without any stops, all the way onto the interstate. Luke was finally asleep, Mama and Daddy were conversing, Claire was working on math, and Kyle was reading. Suddenly a truck pulled up along side us and motioned for us to get over (he was quite panicked). He pulled over to tell us what happened. One of those little steers had leaped out of the trailer!!! We quickly scanned the area for something to block the other steer from getting out. We didn't find anything, so we had to use some straps that happened to be in the back of the suburban. Someone else also pulled over to tell us that he had "seen it all, and the cow was back at that T-Rex place."

Once we got the straps on as well as we could quickly we turned around. We made our first stop at the co-op, which happened to be at that exit. We switched trailers to one of the co-op's that happened to have a flat tire, so we switched to a different one. We left the remaining steer in the other trailer, and went to the T-Rex place.

When we got to that place we pulled out the camera a got a few shots of the community coming together in an emergency. A policeman and a constable were already there kind of guarding the little fella. The man who originally pulled us over came along and helped us; I don't think they could have done it without him. Anyway, after a while of chasing that steer through the field across the road, that man decided they needed a 4-wheeler! The constable took him to his house, and he brought the tool that quickly finished the job. That man was great!

There were no more problems for the rest of the way to the Carpenters! They were all very excited to get the little guys, although Kyle, Cole, and Logan had to lower a pile of dirt so the steers didn't jump over the fence! Mrs. Carpenter and Peyton fixed an excellent dinner, and we got a tour of their house. They have a lovely place! I believe we left around 9:00 pm.

Here are some pictures of our day:

---

Then there was today's experience. I don't particularly feel like going over it at the moment, but Mama posted about it fairly accurately and eloquently. Just ignore the "boring" part of it; I haven't said that in quite a while!

A WEEKEND TO REMEMBER by Claire B.

Saturday Afternoon, September 1st, 2007
Drove to Coble, hauling Daddy's handiwork - the Lovetts' new table.


Saturday Night, September 1st, 2007
Walked to our weekend home - okay, Mr. and Mrs. Stouffer, Sr. were in Florida and kindly let us stay in their house. Thank you, Stouffers! There we enjoyed a bit of Alton Brown and Iron Chef America. After we went to bed (quite late) Laura and I enjoyed the almost forgotten game of hogging covers. I hear I'm good at that.
Note by Laura: She definitely won!

Sunday Morning, September 2nd, 2007
Drove a mere 20 minutes to church. We enjoyed the service, as always. We were also very glad to see the Logan family walk in as well as, with them, a couple of men from the Williams family.


Sunday Afternoon, September 2nd, 2007
Enjoyed some fellowship with our extended community at their meeting place. We had a fun and interesting Psalm/Hymn Sing. I've decided not to sing tenor except at church - there we only have two other tenors.


Sunday Afternoon, Evening and Night, September 2nd, 2007
We went back to The Holler (or whatever we call the Stouffers' and Lovetts' place), this time with a couple of other families, and enjoyed more fellowship and more great food. The 4-wheelers came out too. Oh, yes, we also enjoyed the privilege of getting to help get a few goats back into their appointed area.


Monday Morning, September 3rd, 2007
Woke up late (Luke kept falling off the couch onto me during the night) and enjoyed a pleasant drive to Cane Creek with Mrs. Stouffer, just the two of us. What a great way to begin the day! Mrs. Stouffer is so nice to be with.


Monday Afternoon, September 3rd, 2007
Enjoyed an interesting ride to Centerville with Mrs. Lovett, Kaliste, Jonathan, Mama and Luke.

(Details only available through visits)

Picked up tables and chairs from church for that evening. Yes, we would need all of them.


Monday Evening and Night, September 3rd, 2007
Logans, Keens, Boyds, and Carpenters all came out to The Holler. That made for a fun evening! We got to drive 4-wheelers (some of us for the first time); we played Bluegrass with a couple of Boyds and a couple of other friends every now and then; Daddy enjoyed conversation with Mr. Keen and Mr. Boyd while I believe Mama was talking to their wives. That made me remember the time, just over 2 years ago when we all laughed at Daddy for saying that he wouldn't be surprised if we ended up dining with families like these and those who are now our church family. And here we are!


So, late Monday night we returned to our home, covered in chert from head to toe.

Just a quick update

One hen started laying this weekend while we were gone. We've got a refrigerator full of milk, but letting Chuck stay on Clarabelle has been very nice. It enables us to go away for a couple of days without having to worry about milking her. Chuck is growing fast, but he's not the nicest calf. He's not mean yet; he's just stubborn and skiddish.

Claire said she'd write about this past weekend and post it here or on Mama and Daddy's blog. If she hasn't done it by the end of this week I'll try to post something about it.

Self-explanatory

Family worship

Kyle acted Agabus for us this evening.

¹⁰ And as we tarried there many days, there came down from Judaea a certain prophet, named Agabus.
¹¹ And when he was come unto us, he took Paul's girdle, and bound his own hands and feet, and said, Thus saith the Holy Ghost, So shall the Jews at Jerusalem bind the man that owneth this girdle, and shall deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles.

This is kind of neat

http://www.hickmanco.com/history_communities.htm

Processing Day

---

It wasn't too bad really. The birds were big, but we were done by lunch! Kyle caught and killed, I mean, processed. Claire ran the plucker. Mama, this being her first real experience, bagged and labeled. Daddy eviscerated. Luke wasn't much help this time, but he was there. I scalded. Everybody knew their parts, and everything went smoothly.

A Feast for the Pigs

---

We cleaned out the refrigerator.

Shakespeare

I've been trying to get through all of Shakespeare's plays. Perhaps I wouldn't feel like doing this had not the plays all been in one large book. For some reason I cannot make myself only partially read a book, whether it be a book of other books or not. So far, I've read over half of these famous plays, and I've understood them well enough (surprisingly!). However, lugging this book around the house with me is becoming tedious, and I will rejoice when I am through.

I found a quote I wanted to post on here, although I am not entirely sure what they are talking about in the context of the play. It can be applied to today's world though:

Sands: New customs, though they be never so ridiculous, nay, let 'em be unmanly, yet are followed.

That's from King Henry VIII, Act I, Scene III.

I think it's messed up

This has snow in the forecast for tomorrow! However, the low is in the 70's!

I want to go to...

Italy.

France.

Spain.

Greece.

Portugal.

Croatia.

Ireland.


Scotland.

In no specific order, of course. This is if I were to travel abroad. Perhaps I'll post about where I'd like to go on this continent later.

Link. Another Link. Those men are Greek. I think I like the Scottish kilt a good bit better!

Something I found in a magazine

Those promotional tactics- and hundreds like them- are funded by the Beef Checkoff Program. It starts at the state level, where $1 is collected on each head of cattle sold. The state beef council then sends 50 cents of every dollar to the Cattlemen's Beef Board for national beef promotion, research, and consumer education, and the other 50 cents is retained by the state. In Tennessee, that money is used in several ways.

"We work with local retailers like Kroger and Publix to provide them with beef signs, point-of-purchase promotional material, recipe racks, in-store demonstrations for new products, and sometimes even drawings for consumers to win steak knife sets or beef cookbooks," Bass says. "We also provide educational kits to teachers across the state free of charge, and we work with doctors and dietitians so they can provide nutritional information to their clients."

---

I have a bad feeling about this, although I don't particularly know why.

Stanchion Pics

Here's some pictures of our milking stall. It's fairly straightforward, I think. We have made a few improvements as we've used it, and we will probably continue to do so.

---

On the right Daddy built a shelf into the side of the stall so we would have a place to set our buckets and anything else that we may need it for. Right now it's holding a great deal of junk. We'll have to change that before too long. We have a roll of paper towels, a bag of plastic cups, and more junk in the plastic box. The trash can holds oats that we let Clarabelle snack on while we're milking.

A close-up of the "stanchion" here. We had the sides of the stall in place before the stanchion was built, so all we had to do was take a few of the lower boards out to allow two milkers at once. We built in the opposite side. There is a piece of plywood with a hole in it for a (well, I think it was a chicken waterer at one time) feeder. It works quite well.

Claire got this picture with Kyle in the milking position. We could improve the milking stools. Let's see, where to start on this picture? Ummm... well, there is a hole with a heavy metal pipe to keep her from backing up. We've already changed that a little since we've started milking her again. All we did was move it closer to the 4x4 to push her closer. I'm not sure what to call the heavy kickboard/table we set the milk bucket on. It rests on the 1x6 (rough-sawn), and we put another pipe so Clarabelle won't kick or push it forward. The kick board thing (the plywood in back) works very well. She used to manage to stick her hooves into the milk bucket, and now whe can't really get her feet over. We've had to scoop out the middle of the plywood, now that she's calved, because her udder wouldn't go over the top of it if we hadn't.

---

I don't think I explained it very well, but I did the best I can for now. Little Chuck (Claire and Kyle kind of decided on that name for Clarabelle's calf) is doing very well, although he could be a bit better trained at the halter and bottle feeding. Not much going on around here. Everybody's a bit exhausted for one reason or another, mine is from having to get back on a schedule. I'm not forcing myself to get up at 5:00 am yet; 6:00 am is a bit of a stretch right now! We're getting very creamy milk right now, but it tastes very strong after many months off it. It will definitely take some getting used to again.

A New Face

Clarabelle calved!!! He's a little bull calf, and just as cute as can be. From the looks of her udder, we're going to have lots of milk! Clarabelle is a good mother, as far as I can tell. Her calf is clean and allowed to eat as much as he wants. She lets him stray quite a bit farther from her than our Angus cows let their little ones. Well, the Angus usually have a sort of sitter for their babies. One cow will stay close to the calves, and the others will graze farther off.

---

Quotes of the Evening

The first two here are from Luke; the last is from Kyle!

"I was gonna check email!" Excusing his extreme distraction during the discussion after family worship.

"My hair was like pig slop!" Talking about how he came in after picking the garden with Claire this morning.

"Well, if I knew big words, I'd like to use 'em!" During a conversation on vocabulary.

Hmmm...

MOLLER INTERNATIONAL LAUNCHES PRODUCTION OF JETSONS-LIKE GROUND-EFFECT VEHICLE

Moller International (OTCBB: MLER) has completed tooling and has begun producing parts for its Jetsons-like M200G volantor, a small airborne two passenger saucer-shaped vehicle that is designed to take-off and land vertically (see www.moller.com).

The M200G is the size of a small automobile and is powered by eight of the Company’s Rotapower® rotary engines. This vehicle is intended for operation continuously in “ground effect” up to approximately 10 feet altitude.

Dr. Moller calls the M200G, “the ultimate off-road vehicle” able to travel over any surface. “It’s not a hovercraft, although its operation is just as easy. You can speed over rocks, swampland, fences, or log infested waterways with ease because you’re not limited by the surface. The electronics keep the craft stabilized at no more than 10 feet altitude, which places the craft within ground effect where extra lift is obtained from operating near the ground. This lets you glide over terrain at 50 mph that would stop most other vehicles” he continued. While the Company does not foresee the requirement for significant training or licensing to operate the vehicle, it is prepared to offer demonstration sessions in Davis, California once the vehicle is ready for market.

Production on the initial six airframes started earlier this week using hard-tooled molds with the capability of producing one fuselage per day.

Depending upon engine production volume the M200G price could start as low as $90,000. The key component in determining the M200G production price is the cost of its Rotapower® engines. The Company is working with a strategic partner to produce this engine for a number of different applications in order to obtain the cost benefits of high volume production.

Persons interested in purchasing a M200G volantor may reserve a delivery position by making a refundable escrowed deposit.

---

The future?

I thought I'd post this just 'cause it looked interestin'. Kinda funny lookin' at my blog now! I've got a flyin' saucer post closely followin' a farm post! Well, you never know! Maybe one of these days someone will come out with a very affordable flyin' farm machine!

Another Name for Yoda

Luke comes through with something amusing once more! He didn't understand what they called Yoda when we were watching Star Wars the other night. He heard Soda and Theoda! There were other things he heard differently, but I can't remember them right now.