So I apologize.

My storytelling and cropping of details might make a simple little family farm seem glamorous.

It’s not.

Our homesteading journey has been full of mistakes…

The difficulties–most due to my own mess ups and inadequacies–have been tough.

There was the day many young, beautiful hens died in a matter of minutes, all because of my avoidable mistake.

Then there were the incubated eggs I completely messed up and lost.

There was the sweet barn cat we lost due to my ignorance.

And there are never-ending mistakes we make and projects we start that go unfinished with our 200-year old farmhouse.

I mean truly y’all I’ve never really felt “legit” at this homesteading gig.

Some of our homesteading days have been messy and scary…

Yes, homesteading is messy and hard and disorganized and even downright scary some days. Last Thursday was the scariest.

The day our stable burnt to the ground was the worst…

I had gone out to gather eggs and realized there was horrible smoke billowing up from the area of the stables. 

When I ran to the edge of our barn, where the ground dips down for a full view of the stables, I saw a stable engulfed in flames. The roof was nearly collapsed, I almost fell to the ground myself in despair. The thought of our two sweet cows trapped inside sucked the air out of my lungs.

Bill dashed past me to survey damage that I couldn’t bear to approach. He was more level-headed than I and gave me direction as I stood there, numb and bitter with worry. 

He yelled up to me to call 911. I had an odd sense of relief that there was something I could do. Before I reached the porch door, his voice bellowed and cracked up again, “The cows are alright!”

Scout and Selah, usually very curious and eager to greet any guests to the farm, kept their distance from all of us in the hours that followed. Hours of smoke and sirens and hoses and firefighters.

And now our field is a mess of twisted metal roofing and debris.

I’m so grateful for the weekend’s fresh snowfall to help me not focus on the ugliness quite so much.

We’ve lost more than a building…

The stable that has stood on our homestead for possibly a century is gone. The stable that housed more farm animals than I will know is gone. The stable that was once home to Flaxie Checker, cousin to Secretariat, many decades ago is gone. (I learned this fact from a neighbor who knew sweet Flaxie.) The stable that Kayla looked at in shambles many years ago and decided it had worth and could house a dairy cow or two is gone. The stable where Logan and Kayla spent a long hot Saturday, designing, hammering, and leveling an interior wall to home the little calf that we eagerly awaited is gone. The stable that became the birth place to a large precious litter of barn cats whose momma preferred bovine company to the barn is gone.

It’s gone. And charred mess remains. 

So no, I don’t mean to make simple living romantic, it’s poopy and crazy hard.

And I don’t know what clean up is going to look like in the days and weeks ahead, and I doubt we can keep our cows, which makes my heart ache, but I do know that God is good. And I am blessed to be on this daily adventure of life, even on days when despair sucks the air our of my lungs. Because “Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed [way worse than a stable fire, no?], yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken.” (Isaiah 54:10) 

But yet there is joy…

But the part of the day that I will never forget–the day that took our stable and left our cows homeless–is how it began. Habakkak.

Yes, Habakkak. A minor prophet of Israel. 2500 years ago. Not a place most days begin, right?

But exactly where this day needed to begin.

Kayla–my cow-whispering, Jesus-loving, gardener extraordinaire–was leading a Bible study of homeschool teens. Like she does every Thursday. And she was explaining why she loves the verses in Habakkak that talk about where our true joy needs to lie. She’s always loved them because she’s a farmer, in her core, since her toddler hands planted her first tomato plant. And Habakkak pointed out–in a very agrarian society mind you–that even when all crops fail and fields are barren he would have joy.

In an agrarian society, where crops and produce were inherent and vital, Habakkak says he will have joy when the trees no longer bud and the fruit no longer ripens. And, yes, Habakkak even says there can be joy with no cattle in the stalls.

Because his joy was founded in only one source–in his Lord alone.

I cried when I realized that possibly the very moment my lungs felt like they would not work and my knees were giving way under me because I was witnessing the total destruction of my sweet Kayla’s stable… the stable she saw worth in when no one else did… the stable she rebuilt… Possibly at that very moment she was reading these words:

Other Homesteading-related Reading & Podcasts:

Listen in to the Old Fashioned On Purpose podcast when I share why homesteading matters & why I initially had a difficult time with the transition from suburbia.

Check out a dozen mistakes we’ve made on our homestead and how you can avoid them.

Think you want to own a little family farm? Ask yourself these 12 questions.

Then there’s 8 Things Wanna-be Homesteaders Need to Know.

He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. Colossians 1:17

Pin this for later!

Click on the image below to pin this post.

Find out why SoulyRested was considered to be one of the Top 20 Must-Read Homesteading Blogs of 2018 and then one of the Top Homesteading Blogs of 2019 as well.

Glance at my Resource Page if you’d like to get a glimpse of other supplies I use for maple syrup making (as well as gardening, homeschooling, homesteading topics, nature journaling, and more).

Many readers often ask what camera I use to take the images you find here on SoulyRested. I love my Nikon; you can read more about my camera and even purchase your own here.

I’d love to connect!

To find me in some other neck of the woods, just click any (or every!) icon below:

The post The Many Challenges of Homesteading first appeared on Souly Rested.

A Cherished Childhood Tradition

We released the ceramic animals from their blocks of styrofoam and arranged them under a rustic wooden stable. She had helped me with this coveted chore–unboxing the nativity scene–every December that she remembers. She was aiding me over a decade ago, when her sweet, pudgy fingers gave me no assurance that a sheep wouldn’t be dropped or a shepherd’s staff broken. Small, unsteady hands handling them through the years resulted in today’s precariously super-glued donkey legs and chipped Wise Men urns.

This nativity scene has been a cherished part of every one of her childhood Christmases (even those she can’t remember); she’s adored the characters, handled the animals, and cried over pieces when her eagerness led to their brokenness. 

Her words would have caught me off guard, except, I had already been thinking the same thing.

“Ya know what? It’s all wrong.”

With the Eyes of a Homesteader

This was the first time we had peeled off the styrofoam lid from the painted, ceramic Mary and Joseph since our family had become newbie homesteaders.

This was the first time she had pulled out the crude stable from its box since she had herself finished building the walls of her own stable.

This was the first time she released the cow from this taped-up foam fort since she herself had brought home her own cow.

And things weren’t quite right. We looked at our nativity scene with new eyes. With a homesteader’s eyes. With a farmer’s eyes. What’s wrong with the nativity scene? We realized our little nativity scene is a romanticized, sugar-coated depiction of a humble, dirty, smelly story.

What’s Wrong with the Nativity Scene?

Anyone who has spent even a little bit of time in a barn knows the hay that fills the manger is the same hay the birds perch in and, yes, poop in.

What’s wrong with the nativity scene? Well, anyone who knows a manger knows it’s not worthy of a newborn baby’s bed. It’s the food trough. Filled with, well, poopie hay.

Anyone who knows a farm, knows a nativity scene doesn’t include all of the common farm animals, like hens, who love to walk around in garbage (ours adore our compost pile), then roost up on a food trough and, well, poop.

Then there are the farm animals that are included in most nativity scenes, you know, the sweet, groomed sheep, donkey, and cows. We don’t have a lot of time to groom our farm animals, and Scout, our cow, loves to be dirty. I’m guessing bovines in ancient Bethlehem wouldn’t look as good as Scout, not alone as pristine as the ones in our nativity scene.

This year, why not make a gingerbread FARM with the kids and grandkids?

A Spiffy Shepherd?

Our ceramic shepherd adds to the deception. He looks like he checked into the Bethlehem Holiday Inn to spruce himself up in preparation for meeting the child king. He definitely doesn’t look like he just came in from the fields. Around our homestead, we wear a lot of muddy boots, and we don’t come in from the pasture looking too spiffy or smelling so great.

This post contains affiliate links. Go here to read the full (ultra fun) legal disclosure about that.

Wearing White?

Our nativity’s Mary is wearing white. And it’s, well, white. Nothing is actually white on our farm. And she and Joseph look so calm. (And did I mention clean?) Never mind that they just traveled 5 days, expecting a baby any minute, and knowing that their trip would lead to higher taxes next year. (Caesar would never call for registration unless he had plans to raise taxes.)

A Meager Salary and Higher Taxes

On that long trip, Mary probably thought long and hard about how Joseph’s meager carpenter salary would bring home less money next year. Yep, more mouths to feed and less money in their pockets. And never mind that when they arrived in their own home town, the town where Joseph grew up, none of their family offered them a mattress to sleep on, because Mary has disgraced the family name with her seeming promiscuity, getting pregnant before saying “I do.”

So Mary’s dress dragged in the dust, hanging from the back of the diminutive donkey, for an uncomfortable 5-day trip. All the while, her head filled with worries over rising taxes, judging family members, and the looming labor. I assume not one of Joseph’s sisters offered to do Mary’s laundry, none of his aunts loaned Mary a change of clothes, and yet my nativity Mary’s white is bleached alabaster and her smile is a scrubbed-clean peaceful.

If you’d like to simplify your Christmas decorations (and make them for free!) be sure to read this.

After the holidays are over, consider these 9 things to do on a long winter evening.

And if you’re looking for a nativity scene, I couldn’t find one with dirty cows (I tried), but I do love this simple, elegant nativity scene. Then there’s this one… nothing simple about it really, but I’m in love with the stable. (affiliate links) Check out the links below for others I adore.

A Humble, Dirty Story

What’s wrong with the nativity scene? Manger scenes are glorified pictures of what was, in reality, a humble, dirty, smelly story. Truly, nothing is more humbling than thoughts of an immense, inconceivable God, who knew no barriers of time or space, yet voluntarily contained Himself in a frail human body and left the perfectness of heaven to live in the smelliness of a sinful, fallen world, where He was greeted, at birth, by an adversary eager to devour Him. And he did it all so He could face a horrible death and take the punishment for our sins.

No it’s not a pretty story. It’s smelly and messy.

An Ugly Character From Revelation

So beside our pristinely clean nativity cow, we added a unique character. One that isn’t included in any nativity scene, but I personally think it should be. One that reminds us not of Luke, but of Revelation. (Revelation 12:3-4 to be exact.) We added an ugly dragon.

Our Nativities Need Some Ugliness

Yes, I think in every nativity scene, the cow should be muddy, Mary should be wearing a dirty dress and a worrisome look, baby Jesus’s manger should look more like an unclean food trough, and an ugly red dragon should be perched at the feet of the baby. Maybe those few realistic additions would remind us that it was an ugly, messy story–this story of our salvation from our sins.

Mind you, I’m just a newbie homesteader, and I’m no expert in animal husbandry, not alone red dragon proficiency. (I can tell you that the dragon represented Satan, who was desiring to devour Christ at his birth.) But I do know how this story will end. We actually have known that from the beginning. (Genesis 3:15)

Looking for a Red Dragon of your own?

If you’d like to add a reminder to your own nativity scene that the whole story–this story of God saving his people from their sins–is a dirty, difficult, humbling story, maybe you’d like to add a red dragon to your nativity scene.

I never could find one with 7 heads or 10 horns, like the dragon John described in Reveleation, but this red dragon right here is the one I purchased. It’s about 6″ from ugly pointed nose to vicious pointed tail tip. But I also found these other two on Amazon that are roughly the same size, if you’d like to go red dragon shopping. This red dragon and this one here would both be perfect additions to any creche in my humble opinion.

Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. Luke 2:11

Please follow along!

Please take a second to follow along here on SoulyRested to catch up on a few of my memorable mishaps, discover fascinating things about my centuries-old farmhouse, glean a little parenting/homeschooling insight from this momma who’s been failing at the effort for almost 2 decades, or enjoy the inside scoop on the secrets other legit homesteaders might not tell you.

I’d love to connect!

To find me in some other neck of the woods, just click any (or every!) icon below:

Pin this for later!

Just hover over this image for the Pinterest logo or click below.–>

Merry Christmas

I hope that you have time to slow down and savor the everyday joys this holiday season, I pray that you personally know the sovereign savior who voluntarily contained Himself in a frail human body that first Christmas morning because he loves you, and I sincerely wish you a truly blessed, very merry Christmas.

I hope you have true Christmas Riches this holiday season.

The post Nativity scenes need muddy cows and red dragons first appeared on Souly Rested.

Hold everything… if you’re more of a visual person, or just wanna see my sweet Bixby running in the snow and Selah mooing for her food… just click the image above or this link and hop over to my youtube video I just filmed, and you can watch this whole post in video form. (Bixby, by the way, is a rescued labradoodle. Selah is a Holstein/Hereford mix, six months old in this video. And they both have completely stolen my heart.)

Homesteading is like sitting down to an amazing Thanksgiving meal, hearing your student aced an important midterm, and being told you just inherited all of Great Aunt Flo’s retirement funds… but only if you personally plucked every feather of that turkey; stayed up countless, sleepless nights helping your student study; and worked twenty years in Aunt Flo’s place to earn that inheritance.

While the rewards of homesteading are huge in hindsight, on a minute-by-minute, living-in-it basis, it’s not so great. If you read about chicken care, dream about the land you want to buy, and have already named your family milk cow even though you still live in the city, well, this post is for you. Cause I know in the books and blogs you read it looks wonderful. I figured I should let you in on 3 secrets that will help you stay well-grounded with your dreams.

By all means, read till the very end and take a peak here at a 3-minute Snippets of Life on our homestead this week. (And while you’re there, take a second to subscribe to my youtube channel so you’ll get a monthly little snippet of life here on our New England homestead–the good the bad and the poopy.) While I wholeheartedly encourage you to make your dreams a reality, you should know a few things first…

#1. It’s hard.

We might not share this as often as we should. Not because we actually want to keep homesteader secrets. But because, as homesteaders, we have to stay focused on the positive. Truth is, we often have what I call a 4:8 Attitude–I explain here, on my very first blog post, many years ago, and I chat about it here, in this facebook live, if you want to peek in on the conversation. We are surrounded by our own feelings of inferiority (see #2) and so… much… mess! (See #3.) So we have to continually focus on the beautiful parts of homesteading today, or we might walk away from it all tomorrow.

Of course, I’m sure I am doing plenty of things wrong on my homesteading journey. But just like the Colossal Hoax of Parenting that I wrote about here, there’s a Colossal Hoax of Homesteading too… we don’t want everyone to know it, but all of us fail. Pretty often.

#2. None of us truly feel “legit.”

This is one fact we truly intend to keep a secret. It’s hard to be proud of failure. But most of the time, homesteaders feel like we could have done better. We mess up. Continually.

I’m pretty sure I’m worse than the average homesteader. I mean there have been the mistakes with my young hens, my incubated eggs, my pregnant heifer, and my cow with her calf, just to name a few. We didn’t even know our cow wasn’t pregnant until weeks before she should have given birth. Yep. Most of the time I feel like a fraud when I declare myself a “homesteader.”

#3. We stink.

This one, well, there’s no keeping it a secret if you meet us in person.

Yesirree Bob, I have shown up at the dentist office and the grocery store with animal poo on my boots. Not purposefully, of course. Sadly, it just seems to be a fact of farm life that poo lingers no matter how much I clean it off.

Living a sustainable life; living off the land; raising, growing, and milking our own sustenance–none of it’s easy. And it almost never smells anything like roses.

But this hard life–that’s filled with mistakes and messes–is a beautiful life. It’s beauty in one of its rawest forms. It’s worth all the effort, embarrassment, and stinkiness, because we get to be an intricate part of scenes like this. Every. Single. Day.

I took this picture this morning. We were down at the stables at 6:35 a.m., my teen daughters and I.

Early-morning transplanting in the garden was calling me. I often do gardening with bedhead, a sweatshirt (to fend off the New England morning chill), and dirty gardener’s knees. See those gardener’s knees, in all their loveliness, below.

My daughters had just finished milking Scout and took the jars of foaming white joy into our farmhouse. Now it was Selah’s turn to get her fill of her momma’s sweet cream, while Scout finished eating her morning hay. I had just finished picking some garden produce and gathering eggs when I let the chickens out to scratch around the barnyard. They ran down their coop ramp and straight for the fresh cow paddies. And that’s when I snapped the above picture. It’s a photo that shows how everyone was nourished here on our farm this morning. Nothing was wasted. Bellies were filled. Daily hope renewed. 

So, yeah, homesteading is hard, and most homesteaders feel inadequate for the task. (My friend, Janelle, was telling me this week how she feels the same way, homesteading in the Missouri Ozarks. So it’s not regional, that’s for sure.) But it is a BEAUTIFUL, hard, smelly ride that we’re glad we’re on. Most days.

But even if you’re not a wannabe homesteader, if you like playing the warm garden dirt, you’ll wanna snag a copy of my ebook, Beautiful Gardening. In fact, unlike most of the good things in life, this is one thing you don’t have to wait for… Just subscribe here and download it right away.

“We can be quietly about our business of living simply, in humble contemplation.

This is the way our Savior God wants us to live.”

I Timothy 2:1-3 [The Message]

Stop over to my farm for a minute!

Take a second to follow my channel while you’re there. (Honestly, it’s not easy making these videos but it’s so rewarding when you all tell me how much you enjoy them. If I know a few people like them, I’ll keep making and sharing them.)

I’d love to connect!

To find me in some other neck of the woods, just click any (or every!) icon below:

Pin this for later!

Just click this image to save this article–>

Many readers often ask what camera I use to take the images you find here on SoulyRested. I love my Nikon; you can read more about my camera and even purchase your own here.

DISCLOSURE: This post contains affiliate links.

Check out these homesteading-related products I love

For even more, hop over to my resource page, where you can get a glimpse of all the supplies I use and recommend for everything from gardening, to homeschooling, to nature journaling, to maple syrup making.

  | | | | | |

And please follow along!

Please take a second to follow along here on SoulyRested to catch up on a few of my memorable mishaps, discover fascinating things about my centuries-old farmhouse, glean a little parenting/homeschooling insight from this momma who’s been failing at the effort for almost 2 decades, or enjoy the inside scoop on the secrets other legit homesteaders might not tell you. I hope my focus always encourages you, because simple joys require hard work. Let’s face it, we all need all the encouragement we can get!

As soon as you subscribe, you’ll have immediate access to my subscriber library of resources, which I’m continually adding to. It includes lots of printables, including my popular e-book and lots of homesteading-related resources. You’ll have access to my directions for making lilac syrup and training your dog on your homestead, just to name a few. And, of course, you can snag my free eBooks too.

The post 3 Secrets Legit Homesteaders Might Not Tell You first appeared on Souly Rested.

DISCLOSURE: This post contains affiliate links. 

Don’t get me wrong, there were plenty of things that I DID learn. I know more about bovine anatomy and gestation cycle, and milking veins and vulvas, than I ever thought I would. I’m sure if you are dreaming of someday adding a cow to your homestead, you’ve done your share of reading about these topics as well. But there’s one thing I totally wasn’t prepared for and don’t remember reading anywhere.

Momma cows, at least good ones like our Scout, are extremely protective of their new little calf. Scout was totally fine with all of our family members approaching little Selah and petting her soft baby fur, so I didn’t think much about her being leery of any of the animals on our farm. I assumed if it was a familiar person or critter, Scout would not question their intentions with her little one.

I was wrong.

I should have seen the signs.

If you follow along on the SoulyRested facebook page, you’ve already read about my anguish and sadness. But basically Scout never had liked Teddy ever since the little barn cat, who was still in barn-cat training, entered our homestead. Teddy was feisty. Teddy had an in-your-face attitude. And Teddy loved to play. Scout didn’t appreciate the way Teddy pawed at Selah, trying to play with the newborn calf. Scout saw Teddy’s antics as invasive and told him so by mooing loudly when the kitty came around the stables. Scout even went as far as picking Teddy up with her nose and tossing the cat through the air with vigor when Teddy pawed at Selah, asking her to play.

Just as Teddy hadn’t yet learned all the details of the barn-cat job description (he still hadn’t figured out how to catch a mouse), he didn’t learn to read Scout’s intentions either.

One morning, when Selah was only three days old, Scout had had enough. With one swift kick of her hoof, our momma cow put an end to our little Teddy before he ever finished his barn-cat training. We found him in Scout’s field, squashed to death while still lying on his back in the “play-with-me” stance.

In retrospect, if I could do things differently, I would restrict Teddy from accessing Scout’s field for a few months, until Scout’s new-momma protective instincts calmed down a little. Now we will wait until a friend’s new litter of kitties is old enough for us to choose a new barn-cat-in-training. Hopefully he will be a little less in-your-face with Selah, a little more respectful of Scout, and a little better at figuring out how to catch a mouse or two.

Meanwhile, we are enjoying a very prosperous garden this year, and I’m baking something new every day, experimenting with exactly which recipes I will include in Sweet Maple, which will be in print soon!

But our barns and fields feel a little empty of character these days. We miss you, Teddy.

UPDATE: Soon after, we adopted not one but two new barn cats, and those cats had cats… oh my! Meet some of the 3-week old barn kitties in this fb live video–>

Have you followed along on SoulyRested’s YouTube channel yet? I’d be tickled pink and jumping-up-and-down-in-my-muck-boots excited if all my readers and followers (that’s YOU) take a second to subscribe to my channel.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Glance at my Resource Page if you’d like a glimpse of all the supplies I use and recommend for everything from owning a dairy cow, to gardening, to homeschooling, to nature journaling, to maple syrup making.

| | |  | |

| | |

I’d love to connect!

To find me in some other neck of the woods, just click any (or every!) icon below:

Pin this for later!

Just hover over an image for the Pinterest logo.–>

Find out why SoulyRested was considered to be one of the Top 20 Must-Read Homesteading Blogs of 2018 and then one of the Top Homesteading Blogs of 2019 as well.

Glance at my Resource Page if you’d like to get a glimpse of all the supplies I use and recommend for everything from gardening, to homeschooling, to chicken care, to nature journaling, to maple syrup making.

 

I’d love to connect!

To find me in some other neck of the woods, just click any (or every!) icon below:

The post Every cow person should know this. (I didn’t. And it cost me.) first appeared on Souly Rested.

DISCLOSURE: This post contains affiliate links. 

Honestly, I’m still embarrassed as I type this, but I’m gonna get over it and share what I learned this week about how to know the sex of a newborn calf. (No, this isn’t rocket science, and yes, I did learn about anatomy in middle school.). You see, my biggest mistake was the fact that for evidence of my calf’s manhood I was indeed looking at an umbilical cord…

Twenty months in the making

Granted, I should give myself a break; I was caught up in the moment of excitement that day. It was the day of the birth of the first ever calf born and bred on our homestead. Scout–a sweet purebred Holstein heifer–has been on our farm for almost 20 months. Kayla, my homesteader extraordinaire and 16-year old going on 30 for maturity and work ethic, saved money for years, working hard as an entrepreneur, to purchase Scout, her first winter’s hay, and all the supplies she needed to fence in a field for Scout around her stable. (She was even interviewed by CNNMoney for her entrepreneur efforts.)

Kayla immediately had Scout bred, as soon as she purchased her. At least we thought. Scout went on a 6-week “vacation” with “friends.” (Aka, we trailered her to a neighbor’s farm where they were keeping a bull to breed with their own cows for a few months.) We eagerly waited for the day when we’d have fresh milk on the farm. Maybe I should explain–because I’ll admit I didn’t understand how it all worked a few years ago–a young female cow doesn’t produce milk until she has given birth. Once she calves, she produces plenty of milk for her baby and for a whole family too. So for 20 months we have had a milk cow but no milk. (Notice me–the unexperienced homesteader–hanging her head in shame here.)

Sadly, the first attempt at breeding didn’t work. Thankfully, the second attempt, last fall, was the charm. So, you can imagine, after 20 months of very eager anticipation, we were over-the-top elated when the calf arrived last week.

A beautiful morning

My college daughter, the engineer student of this Language-Arts-kinda mom, was home for the weekend. She noticed Scout’s boisterous “moo”s very early in the morning. She went to investigate and then came into the house rousing us all from our slumber with elated screams, “Scout had her baby! The baby was born! We have a calf!”

We all ran to the field in our PJs and boxers to see the sweet black and white, big-eared adorableness already standing (albeit very unsteady) and cleaned. She spent her first day lounging in the shade–while being smothered by her momma’s pampering–meeting the other farm inhabitants who wandered her way, learning how to nurse, and, yes, incorrectly being called a “boy.”

Of course, because I’m a homestead blogger and I immediately share all big excitements on my facebook page, poor Selah was known as a boy her first full day by tens of thousands of people sharing the excitement and offering name suggestions (all male, of course).

You can see the calf’s umbilical cord in that last picture. Yes, that’s the evidence of my ineptitude. If I had just done a few other things before announcing to the social media world that I was inept, I could have saved face. But, alas, my readers already knew I don’t really know what I’m doing when it comes to this homesteading thing…

Four simple ways to know the sex of your calf

So here’s what I should have known about sexing a cow, because well, I do have a cow on my homestead…

Basically, if I had done any of these four simple things, I could have known that “he” was indeed a “she.” But the last one is my favorite because it doesn’t even require disturbing momma and baby, if you’re simply able to sit and observe them for a while.

  1. Look under the tail

It’s really as simple as it sounds. Lift the tail of the calf and look for the male anatomy. The testes or the vagina are located right in front of the anal opening. But don’t be surprised if it’s not extra easy to spot.

  2. Feel under the tail

Sometimes on young calves it’s not easy to see the male or female parts. So if you’re not sure by looking, you can feel under the tail. Again, you’re feeling right in front of the anal opening.

  3. Peer under the belly

I’ll be honest, I had no desire to invade the sweet moments of that morning by feeling all around for cow testes, so I simply looked under the little one’s belly. My fault was that I didn’t look back far enough. I noticed the remains of the umbilical cord and thought I had discovered the proof of manhood. But to properly ID a calf, one needs to look far back, between the back legs and the stomach. The stomach is where the umbilical cord will be visible.

  4. Watch the calf pee

In my opinion, the best way to sex a calf is to simply, patiently, wait to witness it relieving itself. Out the back? You have a heifer. From the belly? You have a bull calf.

So, after receiving hundreds of suggestions for a bull name, I was in the field and observed the “bull” peeing like a heifer. Then I had to eat humble pie and announce a plot twist to my facebook readers.

How we chose a name

Once I announced my error, sweet suggestions for girl names started flooding in. We narrowed it down to three options. We liked “Jem,” sticking with the To Kill A Mockingbird theme, since the Momma was named “Scout” after the feisty, innocent, lovable main character of the classic book. We also liked “Maple,” since we are a small maple syrup production farm, and my book Sweet Maple is in production, and the adorable heifer–with her white face and abundantly curious ears–sure is sweet. And then there was the name my engineer suggested a few weeks prior, when she learned that this Hebrew word could be a reminder to “chew on” God’s goodness she decided it was a perfect name for a calf: Selah.

In the end, we named our sweet new heifer the name that sums up our feelings and emotions the last 20 months while we were waiting for her. You see, in the almost 2 years we’ve longed for a calf and the fresh milk that goes with it, we’ve weathered many heartaches in our family.

From one daughter’s battle with chronic pain. . .

to her diagnosis with an incurable neurological syndrome.

From my mom’s cancer diagnosis to the loss of both my parents so suddenly. . .

We’ve been struggling to keep afloat, but always, continually, we were buoyed by the prayers of friends (and even strangers) and by the assurance of God’s presence and grace every step of every difficult day.

While “Selah” does mean “chew on” or think deeply, it is also a musical term that has many possible Hebrew meanings from its 74 occurrences in the Psalms and Habakkuk, but it could have represented a pause and a praise. Bible scholars disagree on its numerous nuances, so I won’t try to truly define it, but I will share what it means to us. It’s a meaning that seems so very appropriate referring to the difficulties our family has weathered recently.

To us, “Selah” is a reminder to think deeply on the heartache God has allowed in our life. Heartache, in God’s economy, is always for our good and His glory, even though it never seems that way in our economy, in the midst of the difficulties. So “Selah” is a reminder to us to “chew on” God’s goodness–not unlike a cow chews on her cud–and then, while we’re paused, offer praise. Because when you think deeply on God’s loving character, and when you take time to notice His gracious hand in even the most difficult, literally painful, nights, you can’t help but praise him.

I should be honest here. The praise never came instantly to me these last few months. I fumed with a stiff fist at God through many of the worst weeks of my life this spring, weeks I sat utterly helpless by my daughter who was writhing in scream-worthy agony. But He graciously never left her or me. When we sat crying in dark ICU rooms so far away from family and home and so deeply intimate with misery, He was there. I always felt His presence, and I couldn’t deny His obvious provision and direction to help my daughter in miraculous ways as the weeks unwound. The more His grace unfolded, the more my heart melted, recognizing His love.

So to our family, “Selah” means to pause, think on God’s goodness in every situation, and then give Him praise. Selah’s birth was the most beautiful, fluffy-soft reason for praise that we’ve had for a long season of difficult days.

In this video, Selah was just an hour or two old, still working on figuring out how to use her legs, and she still hadn’t attempted nursing. Scout was working hard to prompt her in that direction . . .

++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Join me for a few minutes on my farm and meet Selah. While you’re there, I’d love for you to follow my youtube channel.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Glance at my Resource Page if you’d like a glimpse of all the supplies I use and recommend for everything from owning a dairy cow, to gardening, to homeschooling, to nature journaling, to maple syrup making.

| | |  | |

| | |

Pin this for later!

Just hover over the image for the Pinterest logo.–>

I’d love to connect!

To find me in some other neck of the woods, just click any (or every!) icon below:

If you already ARE a subscriber, just hop over to the Resource Library here and enter your personal password. (If you don’t remember your password, no fear, we always include a personalized reminder in every Thursday email, “Hard Work, Simple Joys.”)

The post She finally arrived, and her name is music to my ears first appeared on Souly Rested.

Waiting. I’ve been drowning in “waiting” for a year’s worth of seasons.

What’s the one thing you must have if you want to succeed at homesteading?

Patience.

You need patience as a homesteader, because you’ll be doing lots of waiting.

Waiting for animals to be born. Waiting for crops to grow. Waiting for sap to drip and syrup to boil. There’s always a lot of waiting.

Thankfully, verses about waiting often renew my hope. (I share some below.)

Because in the dozen months since the New England leaves last looked this brilliant, I’ve spent too much time “waiting.” Today as I ambled toward my Luke 5:16 spot under leaf canopies of gold, crimson, and deep mango, where I treasure a few minutes by the river whenever I can carve them out of a morning, I realized how thankful I am that God provides such vibrant beauty, even while we wait for winter’s harshness.

Again and again, annually, while we wait for the pending barrenness of winter, we are blessed with kaleidoscopic grace of fall.

Even with the chromatic reminders of God’s mercy and the hope that occasionally fills me during seasons of waiting, this fall isn’t easy for me.

Waiting.

Seasons of waiting

Amidst all of the typical waiting of a farm, we homesteaders also have the waiting that life requires.

Spring brought news of my mom’s cancer and weeks of waiting for a diagnosis. Summer brought aches in corner’s of my heart that this momma hadn’t known to ever hurt before and months of waiting for calls from doctors’ offices about a daughter’s pain, letters from insurance departments, and appointments for diagnostic testing. Long, difficult days of… just… waiting. Late summer ushered my dad into his 80th year, while I quietly wait and watch my sweet parents age a little more every time I see them.

My recent homesteading failure

And then there was my recent homesteading failure that was the discouraging ending to 10 long months of waiting. Waiting for daily, fresh milk. Waiting to make fresh ice cream, and yogurt, and cool whip. We were all waiting on my daughter’s sweet holstein, whom she named Scout after the young heroine in To Kill A Mockingbird, to have her baby calf, so she would finally be providing our family with fresh milk every morning. Waiting 10 months to realize I still have so very much to learn about this whole homesteading thing and animal husbandry.

It took an experienced cattle farmer to point out to us that our holstein, who we thought came to us already pregnant, was not successfully bred last winter. We learned this just weeks before we expected a calf to arrive. So, all our waiting is now followed up with more waiting.

I have to wait another 10 months before we have fresh milk… Another 5 months before I can watch seeds sprout in our in-house greenhouse (aka any sunny window ledge the young gardener can confiscate)… Another 8 months to dig in the rich soil and plant promises of delicious food… All of these “waits” spilt through my thoughts last week as I tossed dying tomato plants, squash, and more from our garden’s rows. Scout was entertained, watching our every move.

My gardener and I, now that temps were below freezing at night, were clearing the patch of all but the pumpkins, beans, and broccoli, which still produce into the fall.

“Waiting” is like an heirloom seed

The gardener’s hair fell in wisps out of her long pony tail, over the navy Red Sox hoodie she had donned that morning, in honor of her team cinching the playoffs the night before. But she wasn’t thinking of Bett’s double or Papi stealing home as she knelt over the beautiful green leaves of a long row of carrots. She was thinking of last January. She was thinking of the hours spent pouring over seed choices, the pages devoted to journaling and garden sketches, and the joys resulting from her decision to grow all heirloom plants this year. She grew two different heirloom varieties of carrots; one being perfect for rocky New England soil, producing round balls of carrots that mature even when rocks try to impede their efforts.

“I’m so glad I planted these.” Her eyes crinkled with her smile as she held up a handful of little knobs of orange joy. “Mainly because not many people grow this kind of carrot anymore. It feels pretty satisfying to know that I grew something you can’t find easily. Anywhere.”

It dawns on me that waiting is like that. Waiting produces character traits and builds bonds that would be hard to find easily in any other way. Anywhere.

So maybe it’s not so bad that I have to wait another 8 months to dig in the rich New England soil that we call home. Another 8 months to enjoy the season I have recently decided is my favorite. Truth is, I haven’t always enjoyed much of a friendship with summer. The first 44 summers of my life I spent in the dry, humid mid-Atlantic states.

But ever since God called our family to set up a homestead in rural New England–on a farm poised at the edge of a lake and bordered by a slow-moving, lazy river–I struggle saying goodbye to summer.

New England’s summers are cool and breathtaking, not unlike her spring-fed lakes, always rewarding you if you just dive in. I learned 3 years ago, our first in New England, that I really do have to dive in quickly to the lakes (the sudden shock makes the swim exhilarating) and to the season (summer’s stay is too brief in our northern latitude). So as soon as the poplar tree blooms and the nuthatches and robins set up nests in our barn’s eaves, I’m in summer mode.

Even so, I was lamenting the hasty passing of summer’s soft, warm days and the short life of a New England tomato plant as I tore out brown, dying vegetable vines.

I was lamenting my goodbye to yet another summer.

Balms for my melancholy

But my daughter’s joy as she uncovered all her beautiful carrots (which are now tucked in a bucket, under a layer of dirt, in our root cellar) and her cow’s joy with the snacks we tossed her way (tomato vines and old bean pods) made me almost ready to embrace fall.

And there’s no denying that the vibrant foliage and cooking fires in the beehive oven are a beautiful balm to my end-of-summer melancholy.

But when I’m drowning in waiting for a year’s worth of seasons? These verses about waiting have helped me keep my head above water and my heart submerged in hope.

Verses about waiting that have encouraged me

The Lord longs to be gracious to you… Blessed are all who wait for Him! Isaiah 30:18

For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. 2 Corinthians 4:17

Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning. Psalm 30:5

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. Romans 8:28-29

Thinking of the way Atticus reminds Scout (our holstein’s namesake), in To Kill A Mockingbird, “Most people [are nice] when you finally see them,” I’m learning that most waiting is nice, when you finally see it for what it is: a time that God is busy molding you to be more like Christ.

So many times we just read the first verse in Romans 8:28-29. The one that assures us everything is gonna be alright. We stop there. But until we discover what “the good” is that God is working out, we tend to get frustrated while we wait.

But then we realize that “the good” is the fact that the time we’re waiting is truly productive.

We realize that “the good” is the fact that the time we’re waiting is conforming us to be like Christ.

Then we see waiting for what it is, and we see a reason to be thankful in the waiting.

.

Pin this for later!

Just hover over an image for the Pinterest logo.–>

Find out why SoulyRested was considered to be one of the Top 20 Must-Read Homesteading Blogs of 2018 and then one of the Top Homesteading Blogs of 2019 as well.

Glance at my Resource Page if you’d like to get a glimpse of other supplies I use for maple syrup making (as well as gardening, homeschooling, homesteading topics, nature journaling, and more).

Many readers often ask what camera I use to take the images you find here on SoulyRested. I love my Nikon; you can read more about my camera and even purchase your own here.

I’d love to connect!

To find me in some other neck of the woods, just click any (or every!) icon below:

And please follow along!

And have you tried my a-MAAHZ-ing Maple Sugar Cookie recipe that’s in my Resource Library? You won’t find this deliciousness anywhere else… until Sweet Maple is in print this fall.

The post When You Finally See “Waiting” for What it is first appeared on Souly Rested.

I’m learning to enjoy a lot of things these days that are… well… pretty unenjoyable.

Cow patties, for example.

They smell awful.

But the lady who produces them–Scout, our sweet dairy cow–also produces wonderful milk, which in turn helps me produce some amazing ice cream. So I’ve learned to enjoy cleaning out her stall. To be totally up front, though, Scout belongs to my 15-year-old farmer, Kayla, who saved up for Scout, and her hay, and her fencing, since she was 9. So I honestly don’t do the bulk of the cow-pattie removal. That of course also makes it more enjoyable for me. (If you’d like to meet Kayla and all of her farm animals, plus get a little insight into her entrepreneurial spirit that helps run our homestead, take a peek at Kayla’s endeavors here.)

So studying slimy amphibians is a walk in the park after doing the hard work around a farm. But this whole homesteading life is still new.

So it’s still an exhilarating sensation to me (aka a born-and-bred suburban girl) to slowly pull giant, two-story-tall doors across their squeaky track. It’s an amazing thing (at least to a mid-atlantic, grew-up-in-a-chain-linked-fenced-tiny-yarded-development kinda girl) to say “I… Own… A Barn.”

But last month, while closing those difficult doors, I had an extra treat. I was serenaded with a soothing song. The spring peepers were back in our neck of the woods, and in actuality of course the males weren’t singing to me, but to the females, doing their best to attract one with all their melodious charm.

So over the next few days we pulled out some books (see my list here for our favorite you-can-hold-it-in-your-hand, real book resources for nature study), pursued some websites, and added a new page to Our Backyard Book—a treasured homeschool heirloom that I’ve written about many times before.

If you have an aversion to “slimy things,” Mom, you really need to read my post that Tauna asked me to share on Proverbial Homemaker today. If you still believe that old wives tale about getting warts from frogs, trust me, you’re safe. If, on the other hand, you think kissing a toad will turn your husband into prince charming, well, I can’t help you with that one.

But I can help you with:

5 reasons you really should study amphibians, slimy or not…

3 simple steps to start your study today…

8 of my family’s favorite nature study books, and

my FREE, printable amphibian ID page that you can enjoy completing with a child who would like to learn about slimy amphibians… in fact, I bet you’ll wind up enjoying it too.

So take a second to peruse my amphibian-affiliated musings as a contributing writer over on Proverbial Homemaker today. I’m gonna go clean a cow’s stall now… and enjoy it.

Meanwhile, if you and a child or grandchild try out my FREE printable amphibian ID page please let me know some slimy facts you enjoy learning together!

The post How to Enjoy Learning About Slimy Amphibians first appeared on Souly Rested.