The Circle of Life

The circle of life is complete at the Smith homestead. Yesterday Winnie the Wyandotte died. I first noticed Winnie was sick yesterday morning. I did my morning head count, and she was lying on the floor of the coop beneath the perch where the whole gang sleeps every night. I thought she had died on the perch and fallen to the floor. I went to pick her up, and she moved, but I could tell she was sick. So I put her in a warm box with some oat grass from the garden and went inside to do a little research about caring for sick chickens. What I read informed me that it would be a good idea to look after her nutrition and hydration, so I made up a concoction of Gatorade, water, boiled eggs, egg shells, oat grass, bread scraps, and dirt and blended it all up in the blender. Then I took a syringe and started injecting it into her mouth a little at a time. She was swallowing, so I took courage and started to give her a little more at a time. I put three squirts of the stuff into her mouth and waited for her to swallow in between each one. Even though I didn't see her swallow, I somehow didn't connect the fact that the stuff was still somewhere in her head or neck, so I just kept squirting it in. She started turning her head upside down and flapping her wings lightly like she had been doing earlier in the day as I was caring for her, so I didn't think anything of it at that time, but I think that was the first sign she was choking. After the third squirt, I got the idea I should slow down, but it was already too late. As I watched for her to swallow, I began to smell a bowel movement. I thought it was the poop that was caked in her feathers from lying under the perch, but I looked down to see a fresh BM running down the side of my legs as well as Winnie's legs stretched out backward as far as they could go--signs she was struggling to breathe. Her head and neck were relaxed in my left hand, and I knew she was dead. I had killed her.

My first moment of true sadness as a homesteader had come. It was not from the monetary loss of livestock--she cost $8 a couple months ago. It was not from the mere loss of life that I felt the sadness. It was from the knowledge that I had caused a poor animal to struggle, suffer, and die.

Since I work overnight, I went to sleep in the afternoon. When I woke up later in the evening, I went out to check on all the animals again, and what I heard lifted my spirits. First there was the BAAHHH! mmBAAH! of the yearlings. Then the mmaaaaaah! of the 2-month-old billies, and then the mmmaaaaaaaaah! of the new baby goats! Hilda had given birth to two boys and a girl, and they were so teeny and cute! They sounded like Chipmunk goats! There wasn't much to the birth from our perspective. I just went out there and there they were. We cleaned the umbilical cords and gave some extra feed to Hilda, and then I laid a pallet inside the goat house and covered it with carpet so they would have somewhere respectable to live in case it started raining. Hilda wasn't happy when I moved the babies from the middle of the forest into the house. She's a pushover, though. When we get near the babies, she approaches with one single step and looks very concerned, but if the babies are already near her, she will run away. I'm trying to make friends with her so she won't worry about us trying to hurt her babies--and because I want her milk in several weeks! But food is proving not to be the best way to this goat's heart. I just hope we can find out what is soon. I think rope works, but I don't want to have to go that route.

So the circle of life is complete here at the Smith homestead. We had a good time today installing a brand new tire swing with parts harvested from our forest!

Firewood

A couple days ago, I got a return call from a guy who had posted an ad on Craigslist for some free firewood. He is in the tree cutting business and wanted to find someone to take the wood away after he finishes a job. So I was the lucky candidate, and all I had to do was drop everything, hook up my trailer, drive 35 miles, help load up a little less than a cord of firewood, completely demolish my trailer's footjack on the way out of the driveway, and store the wood up in my shed for use next year. Now all we need is a wood-burning stove. Soon.

The pictures in this post are of Em and me enjoying the first eggs from our chickens, the first load of firewood I ever got, the chicken coop I built (er...am still in the process of building), our attempt at making boston creme donuts at home, the doghouse I am DEFINITELY still in the process of building, a load of free pallets I scored from the local Ace Hardware, a video of my daughter helping move firewood, a picture of the goathouse I built, and a picture of my son being the cutest thing on the planet.

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like a Homestead

My homesteading efforts may not be paying off very big yet, but it is paying off. And, from the looks of things, you'd think I've been doing this for years! I unloaded a bunch of firewood yesterday and stacked it up in my shed. I have eggs from my chickens, and my pregnant goat has huge udders. So my wife and I wrote a song. Well...we wrote one verse of a song.

It's beginning to look a lot like a homestead
Everywhere you go.
There's some firewood in the shed.
There are chickens laying eggs
In our own back yard!

Now I just need to come up with the rest of it--and 9 or 10 more songs--and I'll have a whole album!

Pictures

I haven't put up any pictures of all the exciting things I've been talking about, so here they are all in one big batch. Enjoy

First Eggs!

This morning I posted about the first eggs I harvested from my free range chicken operation in a post that was about ten miles long, so I thought I'd give this event some more attention in a dedicated post.

Last night I went outside around two in the morning to work on the chicken coop. As I was setting up my work area, I happened to shine my headlight on a spot of ground inside the goat house and saw an egg lying there in the forest groundcover. At first, I felt like I was back at Doug's house (the man who sold us the chickens). He had over 100 chickens and lots of eggs lying around his yard. There was even a hatched chick lying dead right next to its shell on top of one of his cages. So when I saw this egg lying in the dirt inside the goat house, my first reaction was to think nothing of it since that was the first environment in which I ever saw home-raised eggs laid. Then, a split second later, I thought, "Wait a minute! That's an EGG! From MY CHICKEN!" I hurried over and picked up the egg excitedly, let out a great big YAAAHOOOO! and began inspecting it. It was what you'd probably call a small egg by grocery store standards. It was tan in color, and its shape was a lot more like that of a fig than a typical supermarket egg. I was about to turn back to the house to go wake up Emily to show her the eggs. I was so excited I didn't care if I had to wake up my pregnant breastfeeding sleep deprived wife to show her the evidence of our newest achievement in life. That thought quickly gave way to the thought that it would be much more pleasant in the long term to wait until she wakes up in the morning to show her the egg. As I started back to the house to store the egg inside, I stumbled upon another egg lying under the eave of the goat house and gave another forest-echoing holler for joy. I started back to the house with both my little eggs in tow. Emily was awake with the baby when I got inside, so I showed her the eggs briefly by holding them up in the light of my headlight. I just stood there, not saying a word, awaiting her response, which came quite as quite an anti-climax to me. She simply gave a thumbs up and said, "cool." To her credit, she did just wake up in the middle of the night to feed a crying baby. But we both enjoyed eating the eggs together in the morning! We got pictures!

This morning I went outside again to clear out the lean-to to make room for the load of free firewood we picked up today. I began removing items one by one from the shed when I saw my small dog, Mori, standing outside looking up at me with a look of shame holding an egg in his mouth! As soon as we made eye contact, he started running away, but I said, "MORI...DROP IT!" He stopped, gently placed the egg on the ground, and ran away, probably to hide his wounded little self-esteem somewhere. My poor Mori is would be a manic depressive if he were a human. Anyway, I stopped to wonder where the heck he picked that egg up since he was outside of the fenced area where all the other animals were. I continued with my work and went back into the shed to find the fourth egg of my little adventure today lying on the ground in the corner. I conjectured that Mori had probably picked up his egg from this same spot as it had been a well secluded, private corner hidden by a shelving unit before I moved it out of the shed. So...that was about 9 hours ago. I'd be willing to bet there are some more eggs waiting out there for me to go out and harvest them.

Another Nature Rant

We think we are so advanced with our technology. We think nature is "primitive" and that people who live close to nature are somehow backward, but I for one think that nature utilizes the most advanced technologies.

Here's a thought. We think it is impossible to achieve a 100% efficiency rate in any kind of energy transfer whether chemical, thermal, mechanical, or a combination of these. It is impossible, we think, to put any amount of input into an equation and receive an identical amount of output. If you're driving a car, you have less than 100% mechanical efficiency because some of the energy from the fuel you burn is absorbed by the engine as heat, not converted directly into mechanical energy. Some of the motion created by the engine is not converted into forward motion because as the mechanical energy is transferred from the pistons to the crankshaft to the transmission to the drive shaft to the wheels to the road, that energy becomes less powerful. It's like a row of balls running into each other. If you line up ten balls in a row so that they will collide in succession, the last ball in the row will not move as fast as the ball that struck the first one because each time that collision takes place along the line, it loses some force. Some of the motion that does make it to the road is lost with the flexion and reflexion of the tires as well as wind resistance. We humans think we must always receive LESS than what we put in.

Compare that to the technology nature uses. A tree grows from one seed and produces many other seeds. The leaves of the tree fall to the ground along with the seed, providing its own source of nutrition for the tree itself and the next generation tree, or the seed. So, so far, this single seed has taken nutrients from the soil and created enough matter to grow itself, feed itself with its own waste products, and establish a descendant which will do the same things. The seed sprouts up and continues the cycle. Now, assuming the soil had to be amended to grow the tree in the first place--which would only be the case for the very first tree ever created-- and taking the existence of soil for granted--after you get the first tree going, you have a seemingly never-ending cycle of tree multiplication. Think about it. That means that if you take one single seed and allow it to propagate and reproduce, that single seed can be the source of millions of trees later. What this means is that nature has achieved chemical and mechanical efficiency rates of over 100%! Indeed, if you consider that trees and all other vegetation can and do reproduce spontaneously in the right conditions, that means nature's mechanical efficiency rate is INFINITY!

We think we know that matter can neither be created nor lost, and perhaps we're right. If we're not right, I think that would explain how nature is able to perform so impressively. If we are right, here are two possible explanations:

The earth is like a battery. Everything needed for an entire human race to survive for a several or so millenia (since I'm not sparing anyone my religious views, I think the earth is really only 7000 or so years old and that it won't be around in its current form for much longer) was packed into the earth when it was created. That means that somewhere deep in the layers of the earth, beneath all that seemingly useless uncultivated dirt (which may not seem to be so useless if we were a little more advanced in our powers of observation--Darwin and the earthworm, anybody?) all the material to create all those trees is just slowly being pumped to the surface of the earth by some unknown geological force, which means that one day the earth will run out of new materials to add to the cycle and no more new trees can be created without an equal amount of old ones dying first. Hey, it's been working that way for decades with our consumption of oil. Why can't dirt be the same way?

If the battery theory is correct, it would offer another explanation for the phenomenon known as desertification. All the fertile vegetation is leaving one part of the earth to fertilize another place on the earth. This movement could be governed by some sort of geological "survival of the fittest" criterion.

The second possible explanation is that we are not as smart as we think we are and that matter really can be created. Either explanation, whether true or not, provides an opportunity for us humans to slow down and think about our place in this world and in the universe and consider that perhaps there is a "next big thing" out there for us if we were open to the opportunity. I think those who are looking beyond the mark by placing faith and trust in their own creations end up ironically focusing through their distorted lenses on what is pitifully short of the mark--themselves.

Nature provides us with everything we need. Yes, modern technology has advanced our ability to utilize what is available to us, but we will never be able to manufacture oxygen. We will never be able to provide food for ourselves without nature. Unfortunately, because of our technological state, most people I've ever met don't understand the importance of nature and the importance of our being attuned to its harmony and knowledgeable about its processes.

A person who chooses to associate himself with and benefit from that entity which possesses the most advanced wisdom and technology doesn't seem to ME to be very backwards. It is said that when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. I hope one day we can all find ourselves ready to receive the teacher. When we do, we will find that she has been right there under our noses all along.

Chicken Story

So here's what happened with the chickens.

We went to see this guy named Doug who lived on two acres with about 150 chickens, three goats, two cows, two dogs, a wife, and two grown children. He was a really nice fella. He walked around his property with us for about two hours showing us his operation and answering our questions about raising chickens. During our visit, my friend Jesse called me, and Doug even took the time to talk to Jesse on the phone and answer some questions for him. I'm really glad Emily went with me because she came away from the whole experience with the realization that it doesn't take a whole bunch of time and money to raise chickens. She also really surprised me by helping me load the chickens into the car. We didn't bring a camera with us, but I still have a perfect picture in my head of the way she looked holding a chicken upside down by its legs in either hand and the look on her face. It was Emily, through and through. She was like a child who really wanted to go play in the mud but didn't want to get wet and dirty, finally succumbing to the peer pressure and the look of having a really good time. She was a bit standoffish toward toting the chickens around on her first trip from the coop to the car, but by the second trip she was an old pro, proving me (and probably herself) wrong that she would never make a good farmer's wife.

We left that day with 13 chickens in tow and no idea how we were going to keep them. (Are you starting to see a pattern here? Yeah, we're learning.) We thought the feed store was closed already for the night, and we knew we didn't have an adequate long-term shelter for them. I only realized the feeding would be a problem after we had parted company with Doug, so I called him back for advice, and he said they should be alright until the morning since he had just fed them. Still, I wasn't content to know that I didn't have a plan in place to feed my new avaian constituents. Luckily, Tractor Supply Co was still open, so we stopped there and bought some layer feed. Much to our surprise, however, being the green city folk we were at the time, when we let the chickens into our dirt-floor shed and started clearing out the clutter lying on the ground, the chickens went absolutely nutty cleaning the bugs out of the place! There had been some old bags of concrete, plywood, and other things sitting in the shed for a long time, so the insect populations thriving in these little hidden crevices. The funniest part was when I removed a piece of plywood that was leaning up against the wall and walked away. Seconds later I began to hear, "knock...knock...knock knock knock...knock knock...knock." I went back to look, and our rooster was massacring a community of crickets that had made their home on the wall behind this plywood.

About ten days after we brought the chickens home, we had to leave town for a few days. We asked around at church for someone to watch our animals for us and found a lady who thought it would be a good idea to have her kids help out. We had them over to see the animals before we left and show them where everything was, and we left some written instructions for them in case they had forgotten anything. Two days into our trip, we got a call from the lady saying one of the chickens had died. It was just dead on the ground in the shed. No marks, no body parts, just a dead chicken. I thought it was a normal part of raising animals of any kind to have at least some kind of mortality rate, so I didn't think much of it at the time, especially since there was nothing I could do about it anyway.

As a little side story, the lady called and told my wife the chicken had died, who then told me, who then asked my wife, "What did they do with the chicken?" My wife said the lady didn't know what to do so she had left the chicken in the shed, to which I replied, "Did it not occur to you that it is not good for chickens to live around animal carcasses so you should ask her to remove the chicken from the shed?" to which my wife replied, "No, it didn't occur to me." My sweet wife--she's a baby tank and a hard worker and an excellent lover and very intelligent and thoughtful and kind and and and--but she's not a scientific thinker at all. She said, "Do you want me to call and ask her to go back to the house and get rid of the chicken?" to which I replied, "Uh, YES!" She called back a few minutes later to ask the lady to remove the carcass, but she told us that she had spoken to her husband on the phone who also said it wasn't a good idea to leave the chicken in the shed, so she was already on her way back to the house.

See?! We men are good for something!

We arrived home two days after the chicken died. The first thing I did was to check on the chickens. When I walked in, I was a bit angry about what I saw, I'll have to admit. It was night time and the lamp had been left on, so my first thought was, "Oh, they left the light on all the time, so the chickens never slept." Then I noticed the water pot had chicken crap and flies in it, so then I thought, "...and they never changed the water." The next thing I noticed was that the feeder was no longer hanging from the ceiling but was instead sitting on the ground, AND the stack was completely filled, so it was going bad collecting dirt and feathers. I cleaned and fixed things up and thought about the whole thing. First of all, I didn't leave specific instructions about how much food to give the chickens, so they just filled it to the top. Makes sense, right? That's my fault. Second, the water pot was almost always knocked over when I went to check on the chickens the first few days, so the fact that there was water in the pot at all was evidence that they had paid attention to the water pot. The fact that it was--a pot--and the fact that I hadn't made better arrangements for a clean, secure water source for my chickens was, again, my fault. Third, the light was left on, but they said they turned it off every night, so I was willing to let that go since it's really not that big a deal. And, last and most, I went out to check on the chickens again two hours after I got home, and another chicken had planted face into the ground dead.

I got the big idea that perhaps placing 13 chickens in a shed with no sunlight or ventilation for two weeks was a bad idea--which was MY bad idea, and not the fault of the sweet people who agreed to come to my house to care for my animals twice a day for four days. I immediately moved all the chickens out to the goat pen where they began the next day eagerly scratching and hunting for food. I have lost two more chickens since the move, but none for improper accommodations. One was killed by an unknown canine assailant after she left the safety of the pen, and another disappeared the day after we moved the chickens into the pen. I think she either ran away to live with the neighbor chickens or got eaten by a dog. It's weird, though. I never found a carcass, but there were Barred Rock feathers spread around the yard--and not very many of them--not enough to make it look like there had been a struggle or any *YUK YUK* FOWL play!

I have since learned that ventilation is very important. Duh. What land-lubbing vertebrate can survive without fresh air? See...these are the important things mankind has forgotten in our "advanced" state. We think we are so advanced with our technology. We think nature is "primitive" and that people who live close to nature are somehow backward, but I for one think that...oh, I'll save it for the next blog post. So the chickens are definitely very well ventilated. In their pen they foraged for food for a couple weeks in addition to feeding off the layer and finisher feed I combined in their feeder. Then I had a talk with my best friend in the whole world Jesse, who has two chickens. He told me about how he kept his chickens in their little pen for months until one day he decided to let them out in the forest in his yard to free range and eat a natural diet of bugs and vegetation. The results, he reported, were healthier chickens as evidenced by their deep red-colored, enlarged wattles and the fact that they didn't begin laying until he let them free range. And the icing on the cake from a poultrykeeper's perspective is that they snuggle up together on the rail of his front porch at night. Even though he lives a stone's throw away from the downtown area of an established suburban city on an acre of land with no fence on a two-lane road, his chickens go to the forest to eat and then go to the porch to sleep. They don't run away, and the predators in the neighborhood are so domesticated they wouldn't know what to do with a chicken if they found one--much like the predators in my neighborhood, I've found. Of course he still has his pen for what it's worth, but it's not like his chickens wouldn't survive without it.

The next night, I was out bottle feeding the baby goats before going to work, and I was worrying about what I was going to do to feed and house all these animals when I said, "Ya know, all kinds of birds and four-legged animals survive in the forests all over the world without any human intervention of any kind. With the human interventions of food and shelter, they become loyal to a place and that becomes their home. So...number one, this 20' pen is a pathetic excuse for faith in nature. And number two, this 20' pen is going to cost me a whole lot more money and time than free range goats and chickens would."

So, I ripped off my shirt, beat my chest, screamed into the darkened forest thick, stood there for a minute thinking, "Man, that was overboard," then then stooped down to lift up the bottom of the chain link fence to let all the animals out into the forest.

It has been, gosh, at least two weeks. That was before Thanksgiving. I have fed my adult goats and all the chickens nothing except a daily refreshing of the waterer and a couple small scoops of cracked corn and sweet feed in the last week or so once a day in the morning when we go out to feed the baby goats.

My results?

My goats and chickens are all still alive. It's near freezing here at night, and my goats don't use the shelter I built for them--even when it's raining. My chickens stay inside the fence most of the time, but even when they don't, they stay in the general area. And, the best part is that my chickens have begun laying, too! Last night I picked up the first two eggs from my free range chicken operation and gave a great big ol' "YAHOOOO!" for each one even though it was two in the morning.

This is healing.

Goat Story (continued from last post)

So there I was, standing naked in the terminal with just a light bulb in one hand and a piece of chicken wire in the other...

Oh, wrong story.

We got the pen established well enough to keep all the goats inside it, but it was not a good long term solution. The fence was 4' high and the pen was probably 20' across--not a good permanent living arrangement for four goats and 10 chickens. (Yes, I said 10 even though we started with 13. More on that later.) The first couple days, the adult goats demolished the brush inside the pen, and I began to get worried about how I was going to feed these guys. The first solution was to feed them bagged feed from the store. I built a little trough for them and filled it with feed, but all the goats kept standing in it, tramping dirt and leaves in it and dropping their little black bean surprises in it. The chickens pecked at the goat feed a little bit, but mostly every time I went out there, there was no change in the amount of feed in the trough. It had just gotten dirtier.

The second solution was to let them out of the pen manually for a little time each day. I say let them out of the pen "manually" because the pen was a single piece of chain-link fence wrapped end-to-end; there was no gate! I entered the pen by placing my step-ladder over the fence and climbing in. Then I had to chase the goats around the pen for a few minutes, throw them over my shoulder, and drop them on the other side of the fence. This was a comical scene even for me for a couple times. Then I began to see that I was preventing the goats from coming to think of me as their protector when I was always terrorizing them in addition to the fact that this ritual took too much time out of my day--sometimes at really BAD times, too, like when I had to get to work soon.

The third and final solution was to build a fence around the back half of the property and let the goats free range. This solution took effect immediately after I erected the front leg of the 4-sided fence, but the fence itself took several weeks to get completed. The front leg of the fence kept them in their place well enough since our neighbors to the left had a fence already installed, our neighbors to the right had an open barbed wire fence that mostly kept the goats in our yard, and our neighbors to the rear had a fenced pen for their animals that served along with a heavily brushed area in the back right corner to serve as the rear physical border of the property. The major problems with this setup were the barbed wire fence on the right, the long open corner in the back left, and the fact that the front leg of the fence didn't join either of the neighbors' fences since my 100' roll of RedBrand fencing wasn't long enough to make it to the side borders of the property. Over the course of the next several weeks, I made several trips to Home Depot, Lowes, and Ace Hardware to buy posts, fencing, stakes, zipties, threaded rod, metal-cutting skilsaw blades, and who knows what else. The end result is that my fence will surely keep my goats in, but keeping the neighborhood dogs out will be a constant battle. Luckily none of the dogs around here has shown a desire to eat my goats yet.

Dreams Come True

So much has changed since I last wrote. I left California on September 12 and took a 10-day journey across the country which included visits with family in Utah and Ohio as well as a bit of adventure as we stopped to replace blown out trailer tires, ran out of gas, took our dog to the veterinarian, and spent a TON of money on gas, (8 MPG with a Suburban and a 4540-lb trailer traversing the Rocky Mountains) lodging, and food. We settled down in Winder, GA, where I found a 1.44 acre piece of land with lots of trees and a 14x70 mobile home. After a long delay in starting the job I thought I had lined up, I decided to take a part-time position with the company until a better position came available and I could get promoted.

We wasted no time in establishing our homestead. With no job and not much money, I took to the land with a flat shovel and leveled out a spot of ground behind our house for our garden measuring approximately 40' x 15'. After reading in Mother Earth News about how oats are such a great cover crop, I ventured to my local feed and supply store for a bag of oats to sow in my garden for the fall/winter. While I was there, I looked at the community board and saw an ad for chickens for sale. I called up a man named Doug, visited his house, and came home with 13 chickens! During our visit, I told Doug I was a budding homesteader and wanted to get either some goats or a cow. The next day he called me back to tell me one of his friends had some baby boy goats only two days old whose mother had died, that he was unable to care for them and wanted to find a new home for them. We visited again with Doug and his friend and brought home the cutest little animals ever created: two teeny little white Boer/Nubian goats with brown spots on their heads and necks, huge floppy ears, and the most heart-breaking little cry--mmMMAAAAA!

We immediately began feeding the little billies with baby bottles we had left over from the days when Maddy was on the bottle, and Emily got to work researching raising goats on the internet. Em found a lot of wisdom stating that baby goats need to be socialized with other goats so that they will grow up knowing they are goats and not people or chickens or whoever they socialize with. So we began to feel the need to get some more goats to be surrogate parents to our babies. We looked on Craigslist and found some goats for sale and ended up with two more female Nubian yearlings.

We got lost on the way to Matt's house (the guy who sold us the nannies), so the trip took us an hour longer than we expected. This was very bad for us, since I was planning on erecting a makeshift pen for them in between arriving back at home and having to leave for work. That day I was in training for my job, and I had already been late to work once because of a car accident in the rain, so if I were to have been late again, I would have lost the job. We were considering letting the goats stay in the back of the Suburban while I was at work, but quickly ruled against it for the sake of the goat's safety and comfort as well as the sanitation of our family vehicle. (The carpet in the cargo area in the back of the Suburban was bad enough just from the trip home.)

Immediately upon arrival back home, Em and I got started trying to throw up this 50' length of chain link fence we bought from Doug the chicken man. That entailed unrolling the fence--which was frequently catching on itself--pounding stakes in the ground, and wrapping this length of fence around the stakes and two small trees in our yard. The wrapping was the most difficult part since the part of the yard we were establishing the pen was in the wooded area, and there is a lot of underbrush that was catching the fence. To make matters worse, after we got the pen 70% I went to put the goats in the pen so I could get them out of the car and head to work while Emily reinforced and finalized the accommodations. After I put one goat in the pen, I went back to the car to get the other one and came back to the pen to find the first one escaped and running around the yard! OH NO! I was sure I was going to be late and lose my job. So I put the second goat back and started chasing the first one around the yard. Prior to all this, I put my dogs in the shed so they wouldn't terrorize my goats, but I decided to see what my black dog could do with her Border Collie pedigree. I let both dogs out and they immediately followed my example by chasing the goat around the yard. I had to maneuver so that I was closing in on her on the opposite side from the dogs. It worked out beautifully, and I was able to snag her, put her back in the car, reinforce the pen enough to prevent the goats from getting out, transfer the goats, duck in a phone booth and don my QuikTrip uniform without showering or brushing my hair, and dash off to work in time to clock in before 3:00 pm.

If you could see a picture of my life now and a picture of my life on July 23, you would see prophecy fulfilled. You would see the seeds of happiness and bitterness sown now flourishing. I am grateful for my life, and I am grateful for God's promise that everything will be alright if I stay faithful to him. Now...if I can just master that "staying faithful" part...

More on the story of the burgeoning homestead to follow soon. I must get to my job now--preferably on time.

Don't Ya Like Jammin' With Me?

I have made jam! I got 21 half-pints of strawberry, blueberry, and raspberry jam out of my labors today. Tomorrow when everything is cooled off, congealed and (hopefully) fully sealed, we shall see whether I did my jamming correctly today.

Some of my veggies have taken a turn for the worse! I don't know what might have happened, but all of a sudden my beans and peas just dried right up on me, and my cucumbers have begun producing bitter fruit with a sticky juice that coats the inside of the mouth like sap...ECGH! I haven't watered them any less than when I was bringing them up. The only thing I can think of is that the hotter weather mixed with larger plants means that the water I was giving them wasn't enough. Any ideas? At least my tomatoes are still producing nicely. Everything else in my garden is either a has-been or a never-will-be (muskmelons and strawberries).

Emily and I have put a contract on a piece of property in Winder, GA. It is on 1.44 acres in unincorporated Winder. There is a singlewide mobile home in near perfect shape on the property, and it has a well and an outbuilding with electricity. We hope to close on it during the first half of August. That is where we will be living when we move in September!

On Saturday July 18, we went to a Pioneer Day Celebration at church. It is a yearly commemoration of July 24, the day the Mormon Pioneers arrived in the Salt Lake Valley after leaving their homes in the east and midwest. The Pioneer Day Celebration was really cool. I participated in a log cutting contest, made butter, made ice cream, ate grilled corn, made rope, made a candle, drank home made root beer, and saw a lot of antique machinery people used such as a hand-cranked washing machine and a scythe. With my penchant for homesteading these days, this thing was right up my alley!

We are going to court on August 10 for child stuff. Pray for us!

Roller Coaster

Life has been a very wild roller coaster ride lately. There have been such ups and downs, highs and lows. We are going back to court regarding child custody. Emily has been hired for her first job as a graphic designer. We are getting out of the Marine Corps and going after a new life and new challenges, but we are going to be taking a 70% pay cut and moving across the country. We are looking for a house to buy. I am 90% certain I have a job when we get to Georgia. Our babies are growing and they're very cute! I was talking with my dad on the phone telling him about some of the challenges we're facing right now, and he told me about a survey he read about in which older married couples were asked what the best time in their life was, and they reported that it was when they were young and struggling. I'm sure it's true. Struggling together for a common goal brings joy. Emily and I will always be struggling together for some goal, so we will have to think really hard about what answer to give when we are asked that question as an older couple. I'm grateful to be on God's path for my life. I know that no matter what is happening in my life, it is always really good to be alive.

Life Isn't ALL Bad!

Man, life is too good to be complaining all the time!

My cucumbers have started coming in! Emily and I have eaten one or two a day for the past four or five days. We also started eating the Dragontongue and Garden Variety beans, and, of course, our tomatoes have been beating down the door of the kitchen. Maddy LOVES our tomatoes, but they give her such horrible diaper rash. I feel bad for her, because I want to share them with her. I really think it's cute that a little one-year-old is so fond of tomatoes. She eats them like an apple, just like we do. I also feel bad for Em and myself, because we can't eat them around her unless we want her to get a rash. She will pitch a FIT if she doesn't get her tomatoes!

McCoy the Dog also likes our tomatoes. I found her chewing on one last night. I guess I can't trust her to stay out of the garden, so I'll have to start closing the gate more religiously.

This morning, my breakfast consisted of fresh beans, a cucumber, and a tomato--all hand picked from the garden. There is a confidence and reward that come with growing one's own food supply that can not be gained any other way.

You might be saying, "Why are you just now picking veggies out of your garden in July in California?" The answer is that as a first-time gardener, I have really had no idea what I was doing. I was shocked that seeds would sprout up and grow in my garden at all, let alone produce an abundant harvest! So...I delayed a little. I didn't even start until March, which is behind the power curve for Southern California. But my garden has been fruitful nonetheless.

We have a term for our tomatoes: "home made tomatoes." I was talking to Em on the phone about a tomato I was eating, and I called it a "home made" tomato rather than a "home grown" tomato. She thought I was cute, so that's what we call them now.

Benjamin cracked his first smiles this week! Emily has pictures on her phone. They will follow shortly.

Emily officially exited the Marine Corps on Wednesday. She is officially a stay-at-home mom, and I am officially more than 50% poorer than I was last month!

I have a job interview for a position as an assistant manager with QuikTrip on July 21st at 9:00 am. I feel I have a very good chance at getting this job. However, I will be prepared to take other interviews if necessary. I need to finish my CDL training by getting my class B and HazMat endorsements before I leave California.

Madeline French kissed me today! I was lying on the floor when I asked her for a kiss, and she bent over with her mouth wide open, stuck her tongue out and licked my lips, then bit me softly with her teeth as she pulled away--all in one motion as though she knew exactly what she was doing. I'm going to have to have a talk with her.

Corey is with his father and step-mother in Louisiana this week. He lost a tooth while he was there, but his sister spilled some soda on the table and washed it away--I guess onto the ground outdoors somewhere. So he lost his tooth in the most direct sense of the word as well. I miss him.

God lives. We are progressing along the correct path. We have each other and a knowledge of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Life is good.

The Dance

Did you ever hear that song, “The Dance” by Garth Brooks? It goes like this:

“Our lives are better left to chance.
I could have missed the pain,
But I’d have had to miss
The Dance.”

That’s how I feel right now. I’ve been really worrying and struggling mentally with all the change before me. It’s not that I fear the change. I fear the transition. I welcome the change of venue closer to my family, the change of career, and the less expensive cost of living. But I have been driving my life so confidently in one direction, and now I have to turn it 90 degrees to the right because the reality is coming -- the eggs I counted didn’t hatch!

The worrisome thing is that we don’t have a permanent address in Atlanta. We have found a couple really nice properties, but believe it or not, they have been scooped up by other buyers. So I’m pulling my hair out wondering where I’m going to light. There are too many variables. Where will I end up working? How much money can we get a hold of? How much work will the house we buy end up needing before we can move in? I really just want to buy something to give myself some mental stability -- something to focus on and move towards. But Emily is kindly and lovingly (!!??) reminding me that moving too quickly has gotten us into a lot of jams before. ;)

I find myself saying a lot, “But that’s not what I want,” as well as thinking, “I want this or that right now!” I know God is letting me suffer the consequences of my choices to let me learn from them. I’m also getting one heck of a spiritual workout; you should see my lats! The things I want for my life and my family are wonderful, but I am not going to be able to get them immediately. I have to deal with some of the problems I’ve created before I can go get what I truly want. I guess I’m just glad I do have a sense of purpose now. Some people never get it.

We decided to scrap the plans to buy the 8-acre property in Lincolnton. That would have created a huge strain on us by forcing us to live with my mother for a very long time before our house was built or moving out into our own house AND saving to build a house at the same time. We felt that that plan was not in keeping with the goal of becoming more self-sufficient. In addition, even if I were to have built a house magically within a couple months, moving to the property would have required me to commute 2.5 hours to Atlanta or 1 hour to Augusta to find work. I could possibly have found work in Washington, 20 minutes away, but that prospect is too distant, and I know too little about Washington, GA to feel comfortable banking on it. So we cancelled the offer on Saggus Road, and now we are looking for other properties in the Atlanta area. We figured that buying our own home near Atlanta would give us good mid-term security and affordability and would cost just as much as renting from my mom and paying our mortgage on Saggus would cost.

The goal is financial freedom—having passive income from investments that is higher than our living expenses. Our plan is to pay off whatever house we buy within three to five years, save up some money, continue to buy and hold real estate, get really rich, and give most of it away. Moving to the country, as I wrote before, will be more like moving to the outskirts of town physically. Mentally, we have already moved there. Of course, we still have some habits to change, but that will all come with time and practice.

Growing Pains

I am realizing it is going to take me possibly a number of years to move to the country. It’s not simply a move in location. It’s a move in mindset. It’s a move in lifestyle. It involves the clearing of the financial arteries, which have been collecting the cholesterol of debt, and the healing of the cancers of paycheck-to-paycheck living and the rapid acquisition of liabilities. How often I have lamented in this time of uncertainty, “If only I did not have a house payment!” The more I have pondered the move before us, I realize that the geography really has little to do with living my life according to my values. To tell the absolute truth, I would rather live in a densely populated area because I am a supremely social creature. The location in a rural area has more to do with the affordability of land than it does a desire to “get away from it all.” The real move is made in the mind. It is a move away from pride into humility. It is a move away from selfishness toward consciousness of and concern over the effects of my actions. It is a move away from the isolationism resultant from the race to acquire goods and prestige into an awareness that our families, our communities, and our fellow man are the true riches in life. As I have been drawn to embrace this mental shift, I have come to realize that I can not focus on what I believe to be the true riches in life because I have obligated myself to go to work to repay debts. I have knavishly clamored to be brought down in chains in exchange for possession of an item that caused my intemperate heart to race with delight. Now, in the depths of humility, I realize what I should have been doing with my time, my money, my education, and my body for the last 15 years. If I am to escape from debt and live a self-sufficient lifestyle, I must reject the systems of thought and action that have been presented to me by the world I grew up in. I must now work for only those possessions that truly make a difference in my life and my children’s lives: a home, a car, an education of knowledge, service, work, art, self-reliance, temperance, patience, nature, family, God, and an understanding of the behavior of humankind. What else in life is needed to bring happiness? And which of these of a necessity requires merciless debt if one is educated and willing to work from an early age?

I am angry. I was not educated properly in my youth. As a young child, I witnessed the world embrace the credit card, the 3% down payment on a house, the 0% down payment, the exponential growth in distribution of reading material, movies, music, and television shows unfit for consumption by the human mind. Now as a father and husband, I have to figure out how to undo the damage of years of wanting the wrong things and get my life on track I can begin to enjoy the true riches that Heavenly Father sent me here to enjoy and to help others enjoy.

I am angry at the world’s ways. But I am thankful that God has a way and that it is never too late to begin keeping that way.

Saggus Road--Our New Home!

One small signature for Em and me...one giant leap for the Smith Family Homestead. We signed an acceptance on a counteroffer on 8 acres of land in Lincolnton, GA today! We are to purchase this land with a well, septic (which we won't use) and electricity in place for $30,000. There is no house on it, so we are going to save up for a couple years and build a small house that is expandable in future years. We are going to be living with my mother for a little while before we move out to the property or to our own house somewhere near her house while we are saving up some more money. However it works out, we are very excited about the prospect of owning our homestead property already!

I applied for a job with the QuikTrip Corporation online, and within an hour I had a call back from the hiring manager. It seems my previous experience with the company and possibly my military experience are in demand. This will be our main income until we become financially free and can move out to the property. The best part is that with a $30,000 property and saving to build a debt-free home, financial freedom looks much more like a quick walk to the end of the street than it did a cross-country trip just a few days ago! Also, if we get really serious and work really hard, we could buy a house for all cash in Georgia to live in between my mom's house and our final move to the homestead. 1500 square foot houses only 30 minutes north of the city of Atlanta are going for $50,000 now! That's not our main goal, but it is a pretty important sub-goal, I think, to be able to have our own place while we're working and saving toward our final move. So we'll see what happens.

We are planning to move by August 1 so we can rent out this house. That means we have to sell the entire inside of our house, touch up paint and carpet spots, get the sprinklers fixed and make the grass turn green again all in the next 18 days. We are going to be very busy. It is not going to turn out perfectly, but our end goal will be well worth the sacrifices.

One question remains: What will happen with Corey?

Father's Day

My father's day was wonderful! I spent the afternoon after church eating lunch with my family then taking a nap, then playing with the kids and reading my favorite magazine, Mother Earth News, and eating dinner. Then I did some shopping online for ice cream makers. Anyone have any advice on ice cream makers?

I had a great business idea pop into my head today: a homesteading store that sells items for people to use on homesteads or for emergency preparedness.

Trials, Tribulations, and Trailers

A couple weeks ago, I promised Emily I would not eat out again until we become financially free (that is, our passive income from investments is greater than our living expenses). She was not hounding me about eating out at all. I made this promise to myself as much as to her because I truly believe that our money can be better spent. We work for probably a full three months out of the year just to pay for the interest on a loan attached to the house we live in. Take away Emily’s income as we are about to, and I work for six months out of the year—for debt. So instead of directing my money toward reducing my debt and increasing my peace of mind, I’ve been making semi-weekly trips to Taco Bell, In n’ Out, Eriberto’s, and Chik-fil-A for a satisfaction that departs in less time than it took to obtain it.

Anyway, tonight, as I was out driving around at 10:30, it really hit me what I did: I promised my wife I would not eat out again—for a VERY LONG TIME. I was at the gas station getting gas, and I had to go inside to get a receipt. I walked around the store looking for something yummy. I saw Suzi-Qs, Doritos, Naked juice, sandwiches, Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, and lots of other good stuff. But there was a little white angel on my right shoulder telling me that if I bought anything to eat in this gas station I would be worse than unsatisfied. I would be guilty. I walked out of the store not really wanting to. I still felt as though I were pulling myself away from what I wanted—where I wanted to be. But I had made a determination that I was not going to life in this manner. I was not going to live on expensive, sugar-filled, synthetic foods when my gut told me to. And even though my gut and my tongue were telling me to give in, my mind, my spirit, and my wallet were all crying for relief from the excesses of the past.

Back out on the road, I headed toward my destination when I realized I was driving past the street on which I would turn if I wanted to get some Taco Bell. This time, I really thought. Those two crunchy tostada shells filled with soft cheese, beans, and tomatoes all covered in sauce were calling my name. I thought how I had really made an error in promising to myself and my wife such an unrealistic change of behavior over such a long term in my life, and if I were to simply go to Taco Bell and pick up six dollars’ worth of food, I wouldn’t be so great a sinner. I mean really...I might not be financially free for another three, five, ten years? Am I REALLY not going to eat at Taco Bell for ten years? Then I thought how everything I had just thought was nothing but justification fed to me by the little brown and grey angel of death on my left shoulder. (I wouldn’t tarnish the reputation of black by describing evil with it because black is the color of the life-giving soil) My money, my health, my freedom, my prosperity, my peace are all tied to the decisions I make on a daily basis. The decision to eat food not produced by me or bought from the grocery store is a decision that leads to other expenditures and perpetuates the cycle of vanity and incontinence in my life.

I am going to keep this promise.

I brought home my truck today. I just need a hitch on my car, and I’m going to get that within a couple weeks. U-haul has to order the hitch that fits on my car, and it should take 7-10 business days to come in. Once that comes in and I get the hitch and wiring installed, I’ll be in business! Anyone need to move?

Update

Cameron says...

I haven’t written for a while because I’ve had to pull my head out of the sand (or—perhaps more fittingly—the garden soil) and work on some tasks related to my real estate investing business. It is a far less pleasurable family business than my gardening has been these last few months, but I believe the results will be well worth my time some years or months down the road. I am working at becoming self-sufficient in two ways: by raising our income, and by lowering our income needs. So far, both have been slow processes, but I am in the beginning stages of both and I feel that as soon as either project reaches a moment of critical mass, they will both explode with success so much that I’ll have to share to prevent all the goodness from going to waste.

I bought half of a truck today! It is the bed of a 1970s model Chevrolet pickup truck mounted onto a flatbed trailer with leaf-spring suspension. I am going to install a hitch onto my car so I can still have my 4-door family car and have a “truck” along with it. I’m really excited, because I’ve been to Lowe’s many many times this year and wished I had a truck. In fact, one time I had to rent their truck for $20 plus gas and a bunch of other fees so I could tote home all the lumber and soil I used to build my raised garden beds. With the equipment purchase and installation ($189 plus wire hookups and a ball hitch...we’re looking at less than $250 here) and the trailer purchase, I should be able to be ready to haul for less than $500! That’s way better than selling my car and buying a pickup truck with no back seat!

The garden is going well. I potted three banana plants and transplanted an eggplant and a banana pepper plant on Saturday, then dunged everything up nicely. My compost heap is shrinking, just like Joe Jenkins said it would, which means that I probably will be able to add to it for a full year without it overflowing. That’s good news. I don’t have much room in my back yard for endless compost bins.

Pictures to follow.

Paganini

Anyone ever listen to Nicolo Paganini's violin caprices? That man was an animal!

Final Answer

I have constructed my Final Answer to the composting question. The latest and greatest in compost bins has arrived in my back yard in the form of three used wood pallets ziptied together and lined with landscaping felt, then fitted with two 2x4s that form a groove in which to slide 2x12 boards that form a front wall for the bin.

The total cost for this project was $34--$11 for a bag of 100 zipties (already onhand), $15 for a roll of landscaping felt, and $8 for a mattock I bought at the Oceanside Swap Meet that morning (used for digging a relief in the ground into which to set the pallets more or less level). I got the pallets for free from a lady who has a farm/ranch nearby. After digging a "foundation" for the pallets, laying them in place and securing them together with the zipties, I dug out the rest of the ground inside of the bin to form level-ish surface that was flush with the bottom of the pallets. Then I dumped in the vegetable-only compost I had been keeping to attract worms (This pile was seated directly on the ground to allow worms to travel up into the material.) into the bin and followed that with enough grass clippings to form an 18-inch layer of vegetable material to act as a sponge/barrier to prevent liquid from leaching into the ground from my humanure compost pile. Then I dumped out the plastic bins in which I had been keeping my compost up until that point into the new bin and covered those with grass clippings. Along the way I had to use some of my "variable bulkhead technology" inserts a.k.a. my 2x12 boards. I'd have to say that this is the most attractive and easiest to use composting solution I have used yet. I might get a couple vining plants and plant them in the ground on the side of the bin to spruce it up a wee bit.

I must give credit where credit is due, and that's not to me. Many web pages contain instructions for building compost bins out of pallets. I just did the work.

Last night I went down the street and knocked on the door of the neighbors who have a huge front yard with waist-high grass. I asked the man who answered the door if he would mind if I cut his grass to use it as mulch in my garden. (I thought saying "compost" instead of mulch--especially "humanure compost"--would have made an already strange man on his doorstep seem even stranger, and while I'm really not worried about what people think about me, I am worried about not getting what I want, and I wanted his grass!) He said the lot in front of his house was actually owned by someone else, and he has been trying to contact the owner to ask him to cut the grass without success. After asking him whether he thought the owner would wand me to cut the grass , he said he didn't know. I thought...hey, what the heck. It's a fire hazard and this guy standing here in front of me doesn't like it. And it doesn't look like a wheat crop. So...it's better to ask forgiveness than permission, right?

The grass was so tall and thick I had to go over it once with the front of the lawn mower deck raised up in the air then again with all four wheels on the ground to cut it down a little lower. I had to empty the bag after every row. I cut for an hour and finished an area probably 50 feet by 50 feet. I filled up four bedsheets and one 35-gallon trash can. With all those grass clippings, I was able to lay a 16-inch layer in the bottom of my compost bin, then dump the two full 55-gallon bins in the new bin I built and cover those with grass clippings, then have a little pile left over.

So I have a good source of compost cover material for a while down the street from my house until there's no more grass or the owner finds out and asks me to stop (if he does) or I stop composting. There's also a big field next to an apartment complex close to my house that has very tall grass. So I'm set with compost cover material for a long time, I think.

I think it's interesting to note the lengths to which I am going to engage in homesteading activities. I would laugh at me if I weren't me.

Maddy and I decided to try on some new hats today. What do you think?

Fear and Loathing In San Diego

Cameron says...

I am fighting the urge to reenlist in the Marine Corps. Fighting. With swords. The enemy has brought the fight to me, so to speak. Where I once thought I owned the ground of surety in our decision to exit military service, I find myself fearing financial disaster. I find myself weighing whether the reality of the situation I fear would be worse than the disappointment of committing to the military for another four years.

It would be just that--a disappointment. I have looked forward to October 7, 2009 for a long time because the military is not what I want to do with my life, and to throw away the chance to pursue something fulfilling just for a little money would be a travesty. The prospect fills my mind with darkness. Yet at times, I feel my mind knotting with fear and longing for an anchor, though it would be a shallow water indeed where I would find my moorings as Sgt Smith until 2013 or beyond.

In these moments of temptation, when I cradle my 8-day-old son in my arms knowing he trusts me implicitly with his life, as do my other two children and my good wife, I feel a sheepishness for having dreams in the first place. Even though the living I could make in the military would be cut in half with Emily not working anymore, reenlisting is the surest way to have any income after October of this year and probably the only way to be able to continue paying rent or a mortgage in San Diego County--my indefinite sentencing ground. I feel as though my dreams are a hindrance to the security of my children. I feel as though the pursuit of a challenging long-term goal and a sense of fulfillment in my daily life is an irresponsible departure from the call to fill the needs of the here and now for four other human lives.

I try to realize that I can't see past October 7, 2009. God can see it, though, and He can see that although the interim may be messy, the rewards beyond that time for employing my gifts and ambitions in a righteous cause are manifold. He can see that many husbands and fathers have stood on this threshold before I have and settled for the sure thing rather than exacting a higher price for their labors in life. He can see that a door has been and always will be open to two roads in life—a tame one and a wild one. The tame road encounters little risk, requires little faith, and offers little reward. The majority of men opt to step through this door—sometimes out of fear, sometimes out of lack of ambition, and sometimes out of temporary necessity. There is no shame in walking this path. The man who reaches for security in order to labor diligently and with integrity all his life for the betterment of others is worthy of a crown of honor. But Cameron Smith is a pot of boiling acid with too much ambition and too much creativity to live a subdued life. In my mind, the sure thing in life is God. The sure thing is the oft-repeated promise, “Seek, and ye shall find.”

“Ask, and it shall be given.”

“Knock and it shall be opened unto you.”

If I fear, it is because I lack faith. What would financial disaster bring? Hunger? Homelessness? Family separation? Death? Do I believe that there is a reward for faithfully enduring all of these things? If God should see fit to try me to these extents, I should suffer the trials cheerfully. Though I do not presume to know God’s plan in my life, I believe that if I am on his side, He is on my side. I believe that if I am doing my best to improve my lot in life, he will guide and prod my life into success, and as His definition of success for me unfolds, if I accept it, I will be happier than I could have ever been without His help.

First Harvest

Cameron says...

Yesterday I harvested three square feet of kale, spinach, and mixed salad greens, and today I harvested more lettuce and six radishes! I'm a real farmer boy now! I cooked the kale by sawtaying (YOU spell sautee in the present imperfect tense--it's a FRENCH word. You can't put ING on it without RUINING it!) some garlic and onions with some chicken bouillon (also a French word--pronounced bwee-YAWN) and parsley, basil, and salt. Then I wilted the kale in the butter and its own water, and it was very very nice! My dogs liked it, and so did my kids! I made salad out of the greens from yesterday, and the greens and radishes from today are sitting in my fridge waiting for tomorrow.



















This was her second bite. The look on her face says, "Daddy, daddy, I WANT IT!"





































Mahonrimoriancumur the dog likes the kale dish...



















...and so does McCoy the dog.



















Benjamin didn't eat any kale. Well, his mom did, so technically he did too.

My XBox is Natural After All!

Sometimes in my search to live simply and naturally, I find myself becoming slightly radical in my thoughts--and you know if I think it's a radical thought, it must really be a radical thought. I have to admit that some of my desires and goals are motivated simply by the fact that before the industrial age, there was a way to provide for all of our needs using completely natural means. Take refrigeration for instance. Immediately before the electric refrigerator was invented, people stored milk and eggs in the ice box—a box that held a big block of ice cut from a frozen river and sealed the air in so that the ice and the inside of the box would stay cold for a very long time. Before that, people stored meats by curing them; vegetables by drying them, burying them underground, preserving, or storing them in cellars; and dairy products were simply consumed fresh or fermented to give them a somewhat longer shelf life. I have always had a big ideological problem with refrigerators because there are so many ways to do the same thing a refrigerator does without polluting the environment or becoming dependent upon man-made technologies. It seems like a big waste.

Refrigerators are not the only things. Electric and gas oven ranges are pretty silly in my opinion too. The automobile is a good invention. It does something that no other natural means of transportation can do—it travels faster, longer, more comfortably, and with more cargo space on less fuel than any horse or mule ever could. Back to the original point...

A lot of times we tree-hugging types tend to lump in all modern technologies as evil (or its 21st century politically correct equivalent) because they are unnatural—they weren’t around in Biblical times. They weren’t around in medieval times. They weren’t around for Alexander or Genghis or Xerxes, and now all of a sudden we have cars and electricity and dishwashers and pollution and global warming (which is a MYTH—don’t get me started on that one) and gee, wasn’t life better before Ben flew a kite?

My answer is, “No.”

Human existence on this planet is much like the life cycle of the individual human. As human consciousness, intellect, knowledge, skill, problem-solving, and industry has evolved, so have the methods, tools, paradigms, principles, and capabilities—just as a human progresses from infancy through toddlerhood, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, parenthood, and old age. There was a time when all fires on the face of the earth ignited by natural means—dry vegetation in hot climates; lightning strikes, and so on. There was a time when all tools were accoutrements to either a human or animal body, i.e. teeth, fingernails, fists, tusks, tails, etc. There was a time when all electricity was working in the atmosphere, only occasionally visiting the surface of the earth during storms.

Human curiosity has observed these phenomena over the millennia and harnessed them, manipulated them, and focused them into efforts that have advanced the human race. The most natural of all these forces is the human need to progress. So it is only natural that in this late age in history mankind has learned as much as we have. It is only natural that we are using tools, fire, and electricity to make our lives better. The biggest challenge now, I think, is learning to use all these things in a way that works with the earth rather than creating more work for it and ourselves.

Of course, lest we think we’re masters of any universe, we must remember that even with the “advanced” technologies we have, we still have not even scratched the surface. Think about the technologies God uses. He has a huge ball of burning gas invisibly, intangibly tethering at least nine other heavenly bodies to itself. This ball transmits energy over an invisible, intangible medium through 93 million miles of empty space, where it meets with our atmosphere and is distributed all over the surface of the earth in the form of light and warmth. This energy powers every single living thing on the planet either directly or indirectly by first finding storage in the cells of plants and then making its way through the food chain.

None of this knowledge about the natural world is news to anyone, of course. Nevertheless, there is a difference between comprehending it and understanding it or being able to use it. We may be able to say we have come a long way, but until we know how to create a battery as big and powerful as the sun or generate gravity or write computer programs that can feel and reason and observe dynamic scenarios and make appropriate judgments, we don’t know squat. After all, we still don’t even know how to cure a cold.

An Attitude of Gratitude

Cameron says...

Today we went to church, and all the ladies flipped over the new baby. They were also amazed that Emily would even come to church four days after having a baby, let alone stay for three hours. It’s days like today that remind me how much I have and remind me to be grateful for the richness in which I live. I take for granted that I can walk out of my front door every Sunday morning in a suit and not worry about getting killed because I profess to believe in Jesus Christ. I take for granted that I can always turn the key in my car and not worry about whether I am going to make it to church because of engine failure or lack of funds to buy fuel. I take for granted that I can drive on well-paved streets that are orderly and safe because of a well-trained, effective police force that silently, patiently watches over my town 24 hours a day. I take for granted that I can walk into a large, beautiful building built upon attractive, well-manicured grounds and participate in worship services freely and openly. I take for granted that I live in a time and place in which sanitation, hygiene, and health services are well-established and effective so that my children can grow up without sickness approaching death one or more times in their childhood. I take for granted that I have three large grocery stores and probably at least ten other stores that sell food, medicine, fuel, and supplies within a five-minute drive from my home. I take for granted that I can get on the internet and have the answer to any question I can possibly think of and many that I never would have thought of in just a few keystrokes—that I can communicate with my family 2500 miles away instantly and study about things that interest me. I take for granted hundreds of other blessings that I can’t even begin to count or understand every minute of every day.

If this sounds over the top to you, it is because you have chosen to remain isolated from the realities of life in the world outside your own town. People are outraged in America that they are possibly on the verge of becoming major stakeholders in a formerly privately owned corporation. How would we feel if our houses of worship were all state sponsored? How would we feel if our communications infrastructure were state-sponsored and censured? How would we feel if—God forbid—our 298 channels were taken away and all day every day our TV showed pictures of an insane dictator running around in a military uniform he didn’t earn? How would we feel if we grew up in a place where we felt we were unworthy to ask for a greater ration of water after having a baby? How do we look at far Eastern countries who have been so crippled by the artificial constructs of a socialist economy that they are now unable grasp the concept of freedom from government ownership? How would we feel if we didn’t have a public school system to complain about—one that produces high school graduates at dozens of times the rate achieved in third world countries? This is the reality of much of the world’s population. This is the mire in which our brothers and sisters live daily while we squander water, electricity, food, clothing, building materials, fuel, medicine, etc. at a rate that would boggle the minds of people who have never even seen more water than they could carry in a bucket.

I am grateful for all the little things in my life, because they are not little. The very poorest Americans are rich by world standards. I am grateful to live in America. I feel it my duty and my destiny to make America a better place—and make America make the world a better place—by not taking more than I need and passing on that which comes into my control to others who could benefit not by a hand out but by a hand up.