Where The Green Grass Grows

I am blessed to have a morning commute of about 8 miles along a curvy country road into the town where I work the job that pays me money.  Sometimes I am frustrated by a car or truck pulling out right in front of me along the way, or often times one of them whizzing up from behind me and keeping close to my bumper, too much in a hurry.  Many times, however, I have driven the entire way without seeing another vehicle at all until I got to town.

Several mornings recently I've been awestruck by the mysterious beauty of low hanging bands of fog in the hills which hide the middle parts of the mountains.  These fog bands are seemingly held down by an invisible hand in order to allow the tops of the mountains to peak above the murky mists. 

Driving home I have been treated to the shows of the Dogwood and Redbud trees in bloom along with a variety of flowers of yellows and blues along the hills near the road.  I enjoy looking across the fields of the several hill farms I pass and seeing a man tending to his cows or horses, and I drive carefully by several homes where I have needed to brake in the past to allow for chickens crossing the road.

This morning it was not fog that had my attention, but the crystal clarity of the morning sun, shining on the mountains in the near distance.  It was unreal how it brought out such vivid shades of greens from the trees of the distant hills.  I thought to myself that the varied subtlety of the green colors seemed too perfect, like the artist had over exaggerated what the true colors of the trees were.  I realized that God was speaking to me, as He often does during my commutes.  He doesn't usually give me a specific message, He just taps me on the shoulder, reminds me that He is here and that He loves me.  I felt led to immediately thank Him this morning for the beauty of His creation and for blessing me with my wonderful family and home and providing for all our needs through the blessings of the employment God has allowed me to have.

My day at work today was unusually busy, but it was a good day.  As I got into my car to head back to the homestead, the radio started playing with the turning of the ignition key.  The last station that was playing this morning was the local country music station, becasue I was listening to the news at 8:00am.  I try hard not to make a habit of listening to the music on this station due to the offensive messages that so many of today's country songs offer.  However, there are still some songs that come out on the country music stations that are good!  I enjoyed the song that began playing this afternoon because it touched me so close to how I've been feeling lately.  Here's the chorus, which is pretty much the whole song.  You can sing along if you want...

I'm gonna live where the green grass grows

Watchin' my corn pop up in rows

Every night be tucked in close to you (Lisa)

Raise our kids where the good Lord's blessed

Point our rocking chairs towards the west

Plant our dreams where the peaceful river flows

Where the green grass grows

I am very thankful to live in this part of God's creation where there are grass and trees and hills and streams;  a place in the country where we can grow food, raise animals, and where our children can run and play and be loud if they want to.  I'm thankful that God has allowed us to plant our dreams where the peaceful river flows!  And where the green grass grows...

Here A Cow, There A Cow, Everywhere Cow, Cow (and a horse, of course)

We've been busy here at Pure Water Hollow with some brand new farm animal experiences, but I haven't yet recorded anything about it here on the blog.  On September 23rd we jumped head first into a grand bovine adventure! 

Lisa has always wanted a family milk cow, but we've never felt like we were ready.  I guess we still weren't ready in September, but the cows were, and the price was right!  We made the trek to near Mt. Sterling and brought home a 4 year old Jersey cow in milk with two bull calves and bred back to have another calf around June, as well as another 2 year old Jersey cow bred to calve in December!  We got them to Pure Water Hollow and introduced our horse Gracie to her 4 new room-mates.  We then hastily put up some new fence around our old barns and had to decide how to get a milking station ready.  Our "getting ready" process took several days.  The milk cows were patient and took to their new names as if they were born with them.  The 4 year old is named Violet and the the 2 year old is Dandelion.

We have been enjoying wonderful fresh milk and butter since October 1st!  None of us had ever milked a cow before, but we were quick learners!  We had a few rocky sessions at first, but soon things ironed out into a smooth routine and Violet seemed to forgive our inexperience.  We've been doing a system of once a day milking by keeping Violet up through the night, milking her in the morning, and then letting the calves have her milk throughout the day.  Most of the time Lisa and Christina have been the milk-maids, but Simon, Matthew and I have taken turns with the milking as well.  I mainly help on Saturdays and Sundays since I am home on those mornings.

Throughout October we worked on fencing in a good area of our pasture field down the road at our other property and also getting the barn in shape to house some animals.  There was much more work done there than I can do justice to with this writing, but suffice it to say, Pure Water Pastures has now been well christened!

We moved Gracie and Dandelion to the pasture some time ago, but kept Violet and the calves here, close to home, to keep the milking easier.  Today we decided to re-unite the entire gang and took Violet and the calves to the field.  Today I also finally took some pictures of the animals!  It was a cold, frosty, morning but things warmed up nicely with the sunny day.

Here is Violet with one of her calves in tow:

 The other calf is a twin, but a bit smaller:

Here's Gracie and Dandelion looking at the camera:

There they go!

Here is a closer picture of Violet.  She has a darker face than Dandelion and is a bigger cow:

All 5 animals in one picture:

I think Timothy is listening to Gracie's heartbeat:

Dandelion is wearing a red halter:

We also took a nice walk along the river below the pasture.  Here is a plant that we would like to identify:

A couple of good shots of Simon:

When we got finished with our little hike the sun was getting ready to set behind the mountains and we decided to put a bale of hay under our "in-progress" shelter.  Part of the field we fenced in is overgrown and this is where we are setting up the shelter.  So far, Matthew has been the carpenter on this project with Simon and Christina as helpers.

And now for the sunset.  Sunsets are a bit different here in eastern Kentucky compared to places where everything is flattened out too much.  I've seen some awesome sunsets on the Caribbean Sea, and hope to see some more, but I still like the way the sun sets here in the hills as well.  The sun goes down earlier here compared to at the ocean so these pictures were taken between 4:43pm and 4:46 pm in the afternoon!  Here is the sun saying farewell to us from behind the barn at Pure Water Pastures:

A different angle:

This one was taken from the house at 4:46 pm:

For some reason I hear a certain song in my head at the end of this post.  Maybe it's because of the horse and the sunset, but I'm hearing "Happy trails, to you, until we meet again...."

Pure Water Mountain

I have posted some pictures of our new property down the road that we are calling Pure Water Pastures, but I haven't recorded anything of the other side of the road. Back at the end of June we (me, Simon, Christina, and Matthew) climbed up the mountain that we now own behind the house. We did take the camera along, so I thought I should show some of the pictures.

I suppose that we shall call this part of our new property "Pure Water Mountain", and it is really a mountain! And it really does have pure water flowing from it in the form of a crystal clear mountain spring! Where our homestead is here, at Pure Water Hollow, we are surrounded by mountain sides that make up the hollow, but there is a road up the middle in between the mountain sides, which is very nice. There at the new property, it is just an overgrown mountain side! But there were some fantastic views from up there that rival the views from our Pure Water Hollow overlook up on our east ridge!

We began the trek down at the house at the foot of the mountain and climbed up the east side of the property to the right of the house.




Let's stop midway up and pose for a couple of pictures.




And here we found a needed resting place on the strenuous climb:




We're going up the rough side of the mountain!




Christina and Simon are up on top of that rock!





Some of our first views from way up there:





Behind Christina you can see the train coming around the bend passing that homestead on the other side of the river. We thought that was pretty cool! Here it is closer up:




If we turn just a bit to the right, we can get some of the neighbor's on our side of the river as well as where the train was. It's really too bad that I can't have a picture with the full 360 degrees of panarama we could see in person. I think Christina was pointing at Irene's house in this next picture:




Here is a close up of Irene's house. She considers Virgie her closest neighbor and is a bit upset that she is going to move away. Irene comes to church sometimes with Virgie.



Matthew really was up there, too, so here are a couple of shots of some scenery behind Matthew:




We were so high up that we felt like we were really a guest of the the hawks that kept soaring around overhead!



I think Christina took this artistic shot of the sun through the trees while we were up there:



Here is the only one I got with Bruce in it. He was our guide on this expedition and is Virgie's son. He has camped up here many times in the past as this was his stomping ground as a teenager. They moved to this homestead when he was around 16 or 17 so he had several years of exploration before he moved away.



We spent many relaxing and enjoyable moments up on top of the mountain looking around and taking it all in. At last it seemed to be about time to head back down.



We came down the mountain on the west side of the house, which Bruce was not as familiar with. Here Bruce and Matthew are looking over a cliff and deciding that we should not go that way!



But it wasn't too hard to eventually find our way into the side yard of the house on the opposite side from where we had started.



This was taken from up in the side yard where Matthew was in that last picture. You can see our neighbor's homestead across the road. The McCoys have a really nice place! Their property consists of 6 acres that were originally part of the farm we purchased. They bought their 6 acres from Virgie in 1997 for $16,000. You can also see a couple of the fruit trees in front of our house as well as the nose of our van down by the road. I think those are apple trees.



And this is another glimpse at our house from the road:



And there you have it. The first pictures taken by us on top of Pure Water Mountain, as well as some pictures of the house. I felt overwhelmed by God's blessings as I looked back at these pictures tonight! He has been so good to us!