Monday, October 20, 2008

I posted this picture the other day, about a rite of passage, but I would like to elaborate a bit more. Last March we lost our barn in a fire from a spark that floated over from our Sugar House. I felt a huge sense of loss because the big red barn is the sign and symbol of the American family farmer. Family farms are declining at an alarming rate. It has always been my contention that as the farm family goes, so goes the country. The agricultural community had a large part in the development of this country. Faith, hard work, and strong families are what made this country great. These days, few young men go into farming because it can no longer support a family.

Our son always planned to farm for a living when he grew up. He spent his childhood traipsing after his dad and his Uncle Howard. He spent his days talking with the farmers in the area. He was a farmer in a little boy's body. He could tell you the make and model number of every piece of farm equipment he saw. When Sam was in middle school, it was evident that he was going to need a plan B. One after another the farmers in our area - and their wives - sought employment off the farm in order to maintain an agricultural lifestyle.

In our area only 2 farmers remain who support themselves solely from farming. Sam now operates his own collision shop. He worked out for a while, but his ethics, formed in his youth, led him to open his own business. Those same ethics have made his business a success. Owning his own business now allows Sam to farm with Harold, Howard, and his cousin Cale.

When a farmer puts "and son" on his barn, it is an official announcement of a special bond formed between a farmer and his son. On Saturday, when Harold called me out to take a picture of the barn, Sam was seeing the "and Son" for the first time. In typical Sam fashion, he said nothing, but I know what he was thinking and what he was feeling. Mom stood there in tears as the dreams of father and son were spelled out in a sign on our new barn. No, it isn't the red wooden barn that held so many memories, but it is sign and symbol of a lifestyle that farm families everywhere struggle to maintain. Congratulations, Harold and Sam!
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Today is a baseline day. I thoroughly enjoyed my carb-up day yesterday.

Daily stats:
Type: Weights
Route: Living room watching Regis
Time: 20
Average heart rate: 114
Max heart rate: 134
Down 1.6 from last Monday (whoo hoo!)

Okay, so I head out for my walk with weights. It's sprinkling. Been sprinkling all morning. As soon as I hit the road it starts to rain. So I headed indoors. (No, I'm not a wimp - my walkman doesn't like water) I look ouside now that my workout is over - it's sprinkling again.

Our stockings are selling amazingly well. I'm surprised because of all the talk of a depressed economy. Our season usually starts around October 15, but this year it started mid-September. This week we are preparing for the craft show that I thought was last week. Last Monday I made a batch of the "Hunter's Green" soap. I can't wait for the guys to try it. We've gotten a few testimonials from some bow hunters and they said it works great. Tonight I want to make another batch of Harvest Home candles. I love the smell of those!


Word of the day:
Monday of the Twenty-ninth Week in Ordinary Time
Gospel
Lk 12:13-21
Someone in the crowd said to Jesus,
“Teacher, tell my brother to share the inheritance with me.”
He replied to him,
“Friend, who appointed me as your judge and arbitrator?”
Then he said to the crowd,
“Take care to guard against all greed,
for though one may be rich,
one’s life does not consist of possessions.”

Then he told them a parable.
“There was a rich man whose land produced a bountiful harvest.
He asked himself, ‘What shall I do,
for I do not have space to store my harvest?’
And he said, ‘This is what I shall do:
I shall tear down my barns and build larger ones.
There I shall store all my grain and other goods
and I shall say to myself, “Now as for you,
you have so many good things stored up for many years,
rest, eat, drink, be merry!”’
But God said to him,
‘You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you;
and the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?’
Thus will it be for the one who stores up treasure for himself
but is not rich in what matters to God.”

Thoughts from the cornfield:
It is so easy to look back in hindsight and snicker at some of the antics of the people around Jesus. The parable of the man who stored riches in his barn is a classic example of what our priorities need to be. The people of Jesus' time had ignorance as their excuse. What's ours?

God bless our troops!

Monday, July 14, 2008

On the lowcarb front:
My stats for today:
Type: walk/jog - more walk than jog today
Route: Deadend/loop/back
Time: 35 minutes
Average heart rate: 123
Maximum heart rate: 1146
Calories burned: 2276
I’m down 2 lbs. from last Monday
I got out on the road a little after nine this morning. It's a mild day and the workout was great. My knees are a little sore so I took it easier this morning. The hay bales are gone from my route. The corn is a green wall in which the deer are hiding. I can hear them in there - I really can.

On the home front/business:
We didn't find a canopy/tent yesterday in Mt. Pleasant so the search continues. I have several stockings to mail out today and 5 more to make. I have an order of tarts to fill also. And - since today is Monday, I will be making soap. I have a lot of packaging to do. Anna was gone for a week and just finished some labels that I needed. She and Kelli are testing some jar candles for me.

The guys have the poles up for our new building. I have mixed feelings about this. It's exciting to be building, but I miss the old barn. You can't see it in the picture, but back when Harold inherited the family farm, he had Anna make a sign with his name on it. (ooops, I just noticed that if you click on the picture, you can see Anna's sign.)It's a bit of a rite of passage for a farmer to put his name on his barn. The kids raised their fair pigs in that barn. Cousins told me they used play hide and seek in that barn. Back before we were married, the barn held dairy cows - then later, beef cattle. On windy days I remember listening to the big old barn door slap against building. I remember putting straw up in the mow on hot summer days.

The new building will go up, and the guys will have a place to keep their equipment, and probably a new "Harold Moeggenborg" sign will be put in place, but it won't be the same. Things never stay the same. It's the nature of life, I guess.




Old barn












new building





Word of the day:
Feast day Saint Camillus of Lellis

Matthew 10:34-11:1
Jesus said, 'Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one's foes will be members of one's own household.Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.
'Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet's reward; and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous; and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple-truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.'
Now when Jesus had finished instructing his twelve disciples, he went on from there to teach and proclaim his message in their cities.

Thoughts from the cornfield:
I was thinking about today's readings and wondering why Jesus would want to set family members against each other. My thinking is that in this passage, Jesus is giving us a bit of a slap upside the head. Of course warring families is not his desire. The point he is making is that seeking the kingdom should be our very first priority, because without that, everything else is meaningless. Sometimes our words of evangelization are going to cause disharmony - even in families. Denominations fight against demonination - each one thinking that its way is the only way. Here is my humble opinion, for what it's worth. There is only one path to God for Christians, and that is, of course, through Jesus Christ. But . . . there are many paths to Jesus.

One of the misconceptions about people in the Roman Catholic church is that we "pray to saints." Actually, this is not what is happening. We ask the saints to pray for us - as part of the communion of saints - the way we pray for each other. We look to the saints, not as examples of perfection, but as examples of how God works in our lives, imperfect though they are. The Catholic Church has a process called canonization in which she formally recognizes the spirtual conversions of pilgrims on the path. That would be our "disciples hall of fame" as it were. The misunderstanding of how we view saints comes through some overzealousness on the part of some believers in which they attribute intervention rather than petition to some in the communion of saints. Icons, pictures, statues - these are only reminders; not unlike family photographs that we put out in our homes. They should be just that, though, reminders. They are not vested with any special powers other than to help us to remember who we are. Through our baptism we are all called to holiness.

I did a search on St. Camillus of Lellis and found this online:

From SACRED HEART PARISH Waterlooville
"A SAINT for the WEEK
July 14th. St. Camillus of Lellis.
He was born in 1550 in the remote Abruzzi region, high in the central Italian Apennines. Strong, violent, and addicted to gambling, he served as a soldier in the army of Venice, until brought low by disease and by the loss of all his fortune at the gambling table. In 1575 he underwent a spiritual conversion; he wanted to join the Franciscans, but his health prevented it, and he was to become Bursar of the San Giacomo Hospital in Rome. Encouraged by St. Philip Neri, he was to be ordained, and in 1585 dedicated himself with a group of others to the service of the sick, of prisoners, and especially of plague victims. This nucleus of workers formed the basis of his Order of Ministers of the Sick. Some members of this Order went with the armies to Hungary and to Croatia as the first recorded field ambulance service; others founded hospitals, in Rome, Naples and elsewhere. Many died of the plague caught from those they tended. St. Camillus died in Genoa in 1614 and was canonised in 1746. "

Here is an example of one who saved his life by spending it. Love increases only when it is spent. That is the nature of love, is it not?



God bless the troops!

Thursday, May 29, 2008

On the home front:

The temps today are up a little from yesterday. The other night we had to put all of our plants in the garage because there were frost and freeze warnings out. Such is life in Michigan. Tonight, DH declares, we will plant our plants. It's probably a good time for me to take the Christmas garlands off of the front porch. (They have been home to a litter of baby kittens - honest) Also, the Christmas wreath should probably find its way to the burning barrel.

Speaking of burning, as some of you may know, our barn burned down on March 26th. I blogged about it in another blog and then switched hosts and lost the post.







The start











It gets scary here

















We are getting ready to re-build. We will be putting up a tool shed. It's sad that a century old piece of history had to burn. The red barn is the icon of the American farm and the farm family. These old barns and the farm family are quickly disappearing. It's sad to see. This country was built on the principles of hard work and strong families. Progress can sure be a two edged sword.




On the business front:
I am anxiously awaiting summer vacation so I can get my workroom/dungeon in some kind of order. We are going to be featuring the electric heart-shaped grubbies for the wedding season.












I love the electric grubbies. I am one of those people who has a habit of forgetting to blow out candles. It is something I am working on, this forgetting thing that seems to have crept up on me. I have a small blueberry grubby in the bedroom and a small cinnamon one in the living room. Mmmmmmm.












On the Flylady front:
I didn't get any zone work done last night, but I DID get a lot of junk cleaned out of the refrigerator. I hadn't intended to do that last night, but I needed room for some stuff I had prepared and nowhere to put it because precious room was being taken up by stuff that had outlived its right to be there. In typical fashion I thought I had to do the entire fridge if I was going to do any of it. It's that "all or nothing" thing that I am working to overcome. So instead of not cleaning any of the fridge, I now have a half-cleaned fridge. For me it's all about breaking things down into small chunks. I focus much better on small chunks than on the whole big picture. It's the same thing with decluttering the body - which leads me to my next section -

On the lowcarb front:
To continue the "small chunk" theory - I am focusing only on the next five pounds. I actually have yet to hit the first 5 pound segment. I'm trying to decide what my reward will be.