Pictures Peppered Throughout Previous Posts

Well, I have been having fun with the pictures from Erica's camera and being able to make them into a format that I could add to the blog. I have gone back and added pictures to several different posts if you would like to go back and see any of them. Some of you have already seen some of these, depending on when you read the particular entries. Since none of them had pictures at first, though, I decided it might be nice to link to the posts that now have pictures, just to make things easier.

There are pictures of our little pigs when we first got them as well as the post I put up earlier today. There are also now pictures of the pig lot we finished for them 11 days after they came to Pure Water Hollow.

There are also now some pictures of our chickens if you did not find them earlier. (I have taken more pictures of the coop, since some of you expressed interest in it before, but I haven't yet put them in a post.)

We don't have any goats yet, but I added a couple of pictures of the one that visited us to that post. We have thought about her several times since the owner came and got her. I hope she is being treated well.

I also put a couple of pictures of the snakes that we killed up at the clearing. (My wife does not think anybody would want to see those, but since this is a blog from a guy, I put them in anyway.)

Since I am listing all the pictures, I'll mention the Visit to Pure Water Hollow again that had pictures in it from the beginning. It was my first try at adding pictures and I like how it turned out.

I think that is all of the entries that now have pictures included in them. With every picture I am reminded how much God has blessed us. It truly amazes me!

I have some beautiful pictures of the fall colors of Pure Water Hollow that Erica took back in October that I want to share with you some time, and there are also those chicken coop pictures that I will put up. I have also taken several different views of our old barn where the pigs are living that are interesting, and might make for a nice post.

Here is a beautiful one of the fall colors just to whet your appetite:



Posting pictures does take some time, but it has been much fun, and I think it has made the Pure Water Hollow Homestead blog much nicer!


2 comments
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Out in the Garden on November 15, 2006 at 8:29 am
Way to go Eric! The pictures look great. I like your new avatar too. Your blog is really nice – good pictures and great writing! Keep up the good work!
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Purewater on November 15, 2006 at 8:58 am
This blog is looking nicer thanks in a large part to you, naturehouse! Thanks again for the computer and the help with photobucket! Also it was your great blog here at homesteadblogger last spring that helped me decide to do one myself. It has been fun.

Nice hearing from you, and God bless!

More Cute Pictures of Our Little Pigs

I showed some picturews of our piglets when we first bought Nellie and Sally last month, but I decided I had too many cute pictures not to share.

These were all taken that first week we had them when they were still about 7 weeks old. We can't believe how quick they are growing after just a month! I will try to get more pictures soon so you can see how much they have grown, too.

In the following pictures Erica was feeding Nellie, Matthew was getting to know Sally and then Erica picked up Sally:

Nellie has her eye on you!

                                                           


As you can tell, we have really enjoyed these little pigs. This has been our first experience with raising pigs and it has been fun so far!

I'll try to keep you updated on our pig adventures as we progress into unknown territory!



2 comments
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Henry on November 13, 2006 at 8:08 am
Eric, great pictures of the pigs. It brought back memories when I was a kid. My uncle Gene had a hog farm. He would give us a runt that we would bottle feed and keep them warm in the house until they were ready to live outside. They were pets to us boys until … well you know. I still remember one hog running through my mom's legs and taking her for a ride. Have fun with them!
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sheryl on November 13, 2006 at 3:57 pm
Little cuties! We hope our pig will have her piglets in Jan. We have never raised pigs before and we cant wait. What kind our they.? Our boar is yorkshire and the girl is hampshire.

A Sunday Morning Devotional from Psalm 95

I thought I would share a devotional about worship this morning. Actually it is from a sermon that I preached last night. We have church one Saturday night every month on the second weekend with the monthly church business meeting following after the worship service. It was a blessed service and the church came forward to meet God at the altar after the message. Since I am not going to go into great detail with the following post, I'll call it a devotional instead of a sermon. I pray you will be lifted up and encouraged reading it.

What is worship really all about? There are many possible answers to this question, but let's examine Psalm 95 verses 1-8 to answer the question. We will see that worship is:

I. Rejoicing in God's Salvation

II. Recognizing God's Sovereignty

III. Revering God's Supremacy

IV. Responding to God's Spirit

Here are the verses:

1. O come, let us sing unto the LORD: let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation.
2. Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving, and make a joyful noise unto him with psalms.
3. For the LORD is a great God, and a great King above all gods.
4. In his hand are the deep places of the earth: the strength of the hills is his also.
5. The sea is his, and he made it: and his hands formed the dry land.
6. O come, let us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the LORD our maker.
7. For he is our God: and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. To day if ye will hear his voice,
8 Harden not your heart, as in the provocation, and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness:

I. Worship is Rejoicing in God's Salvation. (Verses 1&2)
These first two verses remind us that worship includes singing, thanksgiving, and joy, but not just for the sake of having a good time. Verse one says that we are coming to “the rock of our salvation.” We rejoice with singing, thanksgiving, and joy because of the salvation that He has provided for us through His son Jesus Christ. If you do not have a personal salvation through His blood, then you can not truly worship the Lord, because worship is rejoicing in God's salvation!

II. Worship is Recognizing God's Sovereignty. (Verses 3-5)When we worship the Lord, we need to recognize that He is in control of everything. The Psalmist reminds us in verse 3 that “the LORD is a great God, and a great King above all gods.” Our God is greater than any king, president, or ruler of the most powerful empires that have ever existed! There is nothing that He cannot do, as verses 4 and 5 point out. We have the example of creation to examine and be amazed by. God created the seas and the lands and everything is in His control! The deep places of the earth are in His hands and the strength of the hills! In Jeremiah 32:17 we read, “Behold, thou hast made the heaven and the earth by thy great power and stretched out arm, and there is nothing too hard for thee.” God is great and powerful and in control of everything in the universe. But if you have not given Him control of your own life, then you cannot really worship Him. Worship is recognizing God's sovereignty.

III. Worship is Revering God's Supremacy (Verse 6)In verse 6 the Psalmist slows down some and brings us to a point of awe. We have rejoiced in the rock of our Salvation with thanksgiving and singing and joyful noise and we have felt the all consuming greatness of the creator of the universe as we recognized His sovereignty. And now we reflect on just what the previous 5 verses were about and all we can do is to fall on our faces before God in reverence and fear. We are so small and insignificant and we feel the sin and shame of our unworthy lives. We repent of our pride and hypocrisy and realize that our own righteousness is as filthy rags to Him. We are in the presence of the all-powerful creator of the universe who loved us so much that He sent His Son to die so we may be forgiven and saved from an eternal Hell! Wow! "Let us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the LORD our maker." Worship is revering God's supremacy.

IV. Worship is Responding to God's Spirit (Verses7&8)
Verse 7 starts out with a logical follow up to verse 6 by remembering that we are God's people; His sheep. The great and glorious God that we worship and bow down before has a job for us to do as His people. He wants to speak to us and He wants us to listen and obey. We worship Him and He speaks to us and we must respond. Worship is an active happening event in the life of the believer. Worship cannot be just a spectator sport. The end of verse 7 and the beginning of verse 8 is so important: “To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your heart” God's Spirit speaks to us as we worship, but too often we just tune Him out! Part of our worship should always include a desire to go the next step that God wants to lead us in, what ever that may be. What does God want you to do? Worship is responding to God's Spirit.

There are many other verses and angles that we can approach the topic of worship. These are just a few ideas. One thing is for sure: worship is a serious thing to God. Many people do not treat it as such and many more are not even saved. Jesus says in Matthew 15:8, quoting the prophet Esaias, “THIS PEOPLE DRAWETH NIGH UNTO ME WITH THEIR MOUTH, AND HONOURETH ME WITH THEIR LIPS; BUT THEIR HEART IS FAR FROM ME. BUT IN VAIN THEY DO WORSHIP ME,”Let us not be counted among those people! Let us worship Him in spirit and in truth. We should remember that worship is rejoicing in God's salvation, recognizing God's sovereignty, revering God's supremacy, and responding to God's Spirit!

Some Pork Barrel Spending

It has been two weeks and a day since last I recorded our expenses. I got paid again today and I was also paid two weeks ago. God has tremendously blessed us to be able to stay within our budget of only having $422 to spend for the past two weeks, even though we have been spending money regularly.

I’m not sure how much we were ahead when I got paid 2 weeks ago but we had a good cushion. We have bought our regular gas and groceries and also had the expense of starting up our pig operation. After everything we have bought these past two weeks, I still had $20 left and my wife has $15 left.

We spent $80 buying our first two piglets, $13.20 for their first 100 lb bag of chow, $10 for their first two bales of straw, and $20 for 50 feet of fence for the pig lot. The rest of the materials for the pig lot was home made and used with materials lying around. So we have less than $125 in our pigs so far.

There have not been any other expenses out of the ordinary. In one sense, though, we have gone over our budget because we have used our Wal-Mart gift card. When I last bought a pack of new tee shirts the receipt said we only have $34 left, which means we have spent $116 of it over the past three weeks. We are thankful for that, but if we had not had it, I think we would have still stayed within our cash we had and just not bought as much.

On today’s check there was a nice addition. I have been working extra hours on Mondays and Wednesdays and it showed up on this check as an additional $190. I could be upset that I only got $190 out of the additional $240 that was stated on the check, but I choose to be grateful for the $190. Uncle Sam got his share, but I am still $190 richer than I would have been without the extra assignment. So instead of $422, we have $612 cash we can spend for this two weeks. We will hopefully be able to put much of the extra into our Visa card bank account for Christmas buying. That is one reason I took the additional assignment.

I already spent $10 of it today to buy another cell phone card. We have to buy one every 60 days to keep the minutes alive. Since I don’t use it very much we have something like 150 minutes racked up.

The financial picture of Our Life is pretty solid right now. I’m looking forward to paying the credit cards again and seeing how much the debt has gone down. That won’t happen until after half way through the month. Also in the middle of the month we are planning to buy two more pigs, so we need to save back $80 for that.

We are thankful to our creator and Lord for providing for all our needs and even some of our wants as well. I will probably post again around Thanksgiving. Perhaps we will have one of our own wild turkeys for Thanksgiving dinner? That would be a nice way to save a little money!

Still Celebrating Daniel Boones Birthday

Last night we worked on the pig lot too late in the evening for Lisa to prepare the supper she planned. She wanted to have a supper that Great-Great-Great-Great Uncle Daniel Boone would appreciate, in honor of his birthday. Daniel Boone was known as a great hunter, a provider of food for many hungry people, and someone who could live off the land of Kentucky. His birthday was yesterday.

Our supper was excellent tonight and all the children helped prepare it! Daniel would have been proud. We had scrumptious squirrel and dumplings, delicious deer nuggets, marvelous mashed turnips, creamy corn, magnificent mixed greens, and heavenly homemade doughnuts for dessert. Most often we drink water with our meals so tonight's quince juice was a treat. (Can you think of an adjective better than "queenly" that begins with a "Q"? I couldn't and "queenly quince juice" just didn't work for me.) It tastes sort of like lemonade and is made from the quince fruit off of our own quince bushes. The squirrel was from our land in Pure Water Hollow, as well. The deer might have been a part time Pure Water Hollow deer also, but a neighbor killed it over the hill on another ridge and shared with us.

Speaking of deer, a recent local magazine article surprised me with this statement:

"Kentucky's deer herd numbers around 900,000 this year; far more than when Daniel Boone first entered the state more than 200 years ago."

My first thought was, "Wow! That is some statement to make! That can't be true!" After all, there were no white men in Kentucky except Boone and 5 other men. Many Indian tribes hunted in Kentucky, but they were few and far between compared to the land area. It seemed to me that the deer population would had to have been larger in a virgin Kentucky wilderness forest without roads and cities and man to contend with!

But then I thought some more and remembered that Daniel Boone saw and hunted much large game that are no longer in Kentucky in great numbers. He hunted elk, cougar, bobcat, panther, black bear, buffalo herds, and probably others that I am missing. With predators like bears and cougars to feed on white tail deer and with elk and bison competing with them for the food, I guess there may have been fewer deer in Kentucky 230 years ago! (How in the world could they know how many deer were around back then anyway?)

I am glad there are deer in Pure Water Hollow, except when they were in our garden last summer. They are a beautiful, graceful creature to watch, and also a good source of food! I hope I don't offend any hunters out there, but I just cannot see hunting and killing such a wonderful creature just to get a trophy. I do not agree with hunting as a sport if the purpose is not to feed hungry people! For some reason I cannot picture Daniel Boone hanging a deer head on his cabin wall and leaving the meat out there to rot. I wonder what Daniel would think about today's sport of hunting in Kentucky if he were still here?



I'm glad he isn't seeing it. Happy Birthday, Daniel!


3 comments
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sheryl on November 9, 2006 at 4:54 pm
Hi!

I am new on the blog and just found your page today. I live in Northeastern KY. I am also related to Daniel Boone. It is through the Webb Family. Sheryl
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lambechops on November 10, 2006 at 1:17 pm
Hi! I am new to this site and am finding my way round, reading blogs with similar family situations etc. We too have 4 children, 2 boys and 2 girls! We live in Northern Ireland, and are committed Christians. We belong to the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Ireland. I hope to read more of your blogs, and I have really enjoyed reading it so far.

Karen.
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Chris on November 12, 2006 at 1:35 pm
How about quintessential quince juice? Your feast sounds grand, but not the kind of fare I am used to here in New England. Are you really related to Daniel Boone? I'll have to read more of your blogs, maybe the story is buried there somewhere? Hope your Mac is treating you right this weekend. -Chris

Pig Lot Finished Today on Daniel Boone's Birthday

We celebrated Daniel Boone's birthday today by letting our pigs get out into the open and giving them some "elbow room" in their new pig lot. They were cooped up in a stall in the barn for the past 11 days, and they surely did enjoy the fresh dirt outside! I bet they felt better than even Daniel Boone did when he looked into the open spaces of Kentucky for the first time!

Today really was Daniel Boone's birthday! I don't understand why the mail ran and the banks were still open? Boone played a major role in the settling of Kentucky as well as opening up the entire west, and was one of America's first folk heroes. By the way, my wife's family has traced their ancestry back to Boone's sister, Elizabeth, so my children are likely one of the many, many branches of the Boone family tree!

Back to the pig lot:

We all put a lot of work into it and I'm not sure how many man-hours were clocked getting it done. Matthew and I did much of the work together but Matthew also put in several hours by himself while I was at work.

We dug the holes about two feet deep for the posts, cut the trees to the right sizes for the posts, and then Matthew set the posts by himself while I was at work. We cut trees to the right sizes for the top rails and then nailed them to the posts. We dug a two feet deep and two feet wide trench around the outside perimeter of about 40 feet in length. This took much time and effort, and Matthew again worked on this for several hours on his own, as well. We then nailed old roofing tin in the trench to the posts to act as a barrier in case the pigs root down too low, nailed on the wire fence to the posts, and cut and nailed more limbs for a bottom rail. We then filled in the trench with the displaced dirt that had by that time gotten packed back down some.

All of the children helped work in various ways. I found some pictures of our work one evening. By the date on the pictures you can tell how we spent the evening of October 31st. We were more productive and had more fun than many people on that evening. We have never participated in Halloween and we didn't celebrate Reformation Day this year, but we did enjoy working on the pig lot!














Here's Matthew and Simon filling in the trench:

And Christina smoothed things out for us:



The piglot crew paused for a picture. Erica was helping work, too, but she was the one taking the pictures:



We still needed a way to allow the pigs to access the lot so we had to reconfigure some of the existing boards of the barn's wall to change a large open window into a hog entrance at the bottom of the wall. Today, while I was at work, Lisa and the children engineered and built the hog lot door out of old recycled lumber, so now we can close the whole thing up.

Here is a picture of the heavy door they built:



And I thought I would show you a few pictures of the completed lot. It doesn't look like much, I know, but it was a big project for us, and it proved to us that we can do anything we put our mind and effort in. The pig lot is attatched to the side of our barn and the pigs sleep inside the barn:

We still need to put up more rails to make the lot sturdier in order to keep in hogs which will weigh 300 pounds and more in the months to come, but for now it should be plenty strong enough for our little pigs. We will also need to figure out a good way to keep fresh water for them and a good feed trough. Right now we are just using bowls; changing the water regularly and refilling the food bowls regularly. I say "we", but I should say "Matthew". He has taken it upon himself to drive up to the barn every morning to take care of the pigs.

The lot is finished just in time, too. We will have to go out of town Sunday and Monday for a funeral, and it would have been a shame if Nellie and Sally had to stay confined until next week! One of my former students from my school is going to come over to feed and water our cats, dog, chickens, and pigs, while we are gone, so the animals should be fine.

We gave Nellie and Sally extra straw for tonight, as it is supposed to be our first hard freeze; down to 22 degrees! They were enjoying the dirt so much, I hope that they come back in the barn and take advantage of it. I stayed up at the barn well after dark tonight to watch them and make sure they came back into their sleeping area. I lit a lantern in their stall so they would realize where their straw was. They finally came in, ate some of their hog chow, sniffed the straw, and let me pet them some. When I blew out the lantern in the barn, they went back out into their new lot and began rooting around again by moonlight! (The moon is almost completely full and very bright tonight. No clouds, so I bet it will be a cold one!)

Goodnight, Sally! Goodnight, Nellie! Happy Birthday, Daniel!


1 comment
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Renee on November 14, 2006 at 9:31 am
You all have been working hard! The pig lot looks great! I am sure your pigs will enjoy their new home dry inside and nice sunshine outside. You all should be proud of yourself…God has blessed you all with so very much.

Love to all of you,

Renee

A Goat Visits Pure Water Hollow: A Shadow of Things to Come?

Erica, Matthew, Christina, and I were working on the barn this afternoon when we heard the call to come back home. It was a beautiful, if cold, day and we were hoping to get much done at the barn in order to let Nellie and Sally have a nice lot to get out in. We were not really ready to go back to the house, but we decided we'd better go and see what was going on.

We returned to the house to find Lisa and Simon holding on to a brown and white nanny goat while it ate Chief's dog food! It was a very friendly goat but at first they said it seemed that she was going to fight Chief over the dog food. She was rather thin and had some scratches on her, and she looked like she had been on her own for a while.



We decided to tie her up and try to find the owners. I went up the road a few miles to a place where we had seen goats before. They were not home, so I left a note with my name and number. I then went to town to buy some horse chow for her. Actually I was going to buy goat chow, but the feed store lady said most people buy this horse chow for goats since it is less expensive and goats do very well with it. I paid her the $6.25 for a fifty-pound bag after I first made sure that it was ok for pigs to eat, too. (I also got a few more bales of straw while I was there so we would have them when needed.)

The goat really liked the horse chow and she ate right out of the children's hands! Her coat was soft and she enjoyed the attention and petting she got and we enjoyed spoiling her. We started envisioning keeping her and hoping that her owners would not come to get her!

The lady who had the herd of goats down the road did call. We still had hope, however, that we might be able to keep her. She told us that the goat was probably one of the three she sold last week to a guy down the road from us, and that apparently he did not keep the goats confined very well, since they all ran away. She made it sound like the guy did not really want to take care of the goats, so I started thinking that there might be a chance he would let us keep her, or at least let us buy her at a low price.

The lady came over and identified the goat as one that she had sold. The goat was named Fawn and was about 3 years old. She then told us a sad tale. She used to have 22 head of goats, but a pack of wild dogs had recently killed almost her entire herd. She had sold three of the survivors and still had three left. Some of Fawn's cuts were actually from when the dogs had gotten hold of her, but somehow she had managed to get away from them. The dogs did kill her kid, which looked just like her. (We had heard stories of wild dogs running around. It is scary thinking that her place is less than 3 miles from here across the mountains. Hopefully Chief will keep those wild dogs away from Pure Water Hollow! Great Pyrenees dogs are bred to be guard dogs and protectors of herds. They are supposed to keep predatory animals at bay.)

The lady contacted the new owner, and to our dismay, he came and picked up Fawn. I offered to buy her, but he did not want to sell. It may have been our imagination, but it seemed to us that Fawn did not want to go with this man. We sadly watched the guy drag her away from the straw lined doghouse she was staying in, and then finally had to pick her up because she was resisting so hard. Fawn wanted to stay with us and be a Pure Water Hollow goat! At least he did say that if he decides to sell her, he will check with us first.

We have been planning to get some goats, but I've been waiting until we get the pond fixed or at least some fence put up the mountain for a pasture. We have a giant patch of kudzu that continues to grow and will take over Pure Water Hollow in the near future if we don't do something about it. One of the goat's jobs will be to take care of the kudzu. Fawn would have been perfect for this because she was just a scrub goat. We think that we would also like to have some milk goats someday, after the future pasture gets cleaned up a bit.

We had to come to the conclusion that it is not God's timing for us to start a goat herd right now. We really do need to get a place fixed up for them to pasture before we get goats. I fixed up a barn stall for Fawn today just in case she was going to get to stay with us, but the fencing job still has me a bit intimidated. It will cost more money than we are willing to spend right now and I think it will be very difficult to run the fence down and up the ravine and up the mountainside and back down the mountainside and through all the brush and briers. It probably would not get done until spring even if we had Fawn in the barn waiting patiently for a pasture. I must be satisfied that God has not allowed Fawn to be a Pure Water Hollow goat right now, even though I would like to have given it a try! (By the way, if anyone has any fencing tips for goats, I would love to hear them. I'd rather not use electric unless it is absolutely necessary.)

It was nice having a goat around for a day. I believe it was a shadow of things to come in Pure Water Hollow!






2 comments

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Jessica on October 29, 2006 at 3:40 pm
Hello Uncle Eric! That is an exciting story! I hope you will get goats someday! I am sure that Fawn was really cute! Well, have a great Sunday!

Love,

Jessica
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Lynn on November 8, 2006 at 8:27 pm
Hello and thanks for visiting my blog today!

About goats and fencing, I have yet to see a fence keep a goat in. We tried electric several years ago and they crawled under the fence and we had it about 6 inches off the ground and 4 strands. My brother tried dog fence and wooden fence and neither kept his goats in, they would climb it. The best thing I have found to keep a goat in is to chain them up in a spot where you want them to clean at. I know that is alot of trouble, but it works for us. And they don't like to get to far away from home. Goats are very socialable and love people! I use dog collars and dog tie out chains and it seems to work except on a billy and they will usually stay wherever the females are.

Just my 2 cents worth!

Lynn in Eastern Kentucky

Big Family Blessings Bigger for Four Days

So do the words "big" and "bigger" here modify "family" or "blessings"? Actually, both.

We've been busy this week and I've not written much. For one reason, our family size had been temporarily increased from 4 children to 7 children! A good friend and neighbor of ours became very ill Tuesday afternoon, and had to go to the hospital via an ambulance. She was in such bad condition that they had to fly her out to a bigger hospital and she spent some time in ICU! We were in a position to be able to take care of her 3 youngest children while she was in the hospital: a 9-year-old boy, 7-year-old girl, and a 2-year-old girl.

Thankfully, their mom is much better now and was able to come home this afternoon, but from Tuesday afternoon until Friday afternoon, our family size was altered, and we got a peak at what our family would look like with 7 children: a 14 year old, 13 year old, 9 year old, 8 year old, 7 year old, 6 year old, and 2 year old! We were a sight entering the church house Wednesday night, where we were already the largest family before our additions!

At our house, our two boys share one bedroom and our two girls share another bedroom. Now there were 3 in the boy's room and 3 in the girl's room. They used the camping cot or made up beds on the floor and I think they took turns sleeping in different places. Our children enjoyed having company and I think everyone had as good of a time as possible! They played games with each other and read books to one another, and we tried to reassure the children that God had everything in control.

Lisa slept with the two-year old in the living room and let me have our bedroom to myself. She is an amazing woman and handled the situation marvelously! She felt the most stress and responsibility, of course, (I went to work each day) but she rose to the occasion.

During meals, we all squeezed around the table, and were able to function pretty much like normal. Last night we even had an incredible meal of steak, potatoes, green beans, corn, and breadsticks! If God allows us to have more children of our own someday, we will count it as a great blessing!

It has been a tiring week, but I am glad we were able to help out a friend in need. We are also very thankful that our prayers were answered and that she is OK now. Please pray for her and her family as she recuperates.

By the way, our pigs Nellie and Sally have done well during their first week with us and the children have been feeding them and making sure they have water. Matthew and I did get a little done on the barn and pig lot. We repaired some of the inner walls that were leaning and the door that leads to the steps to the loft. We also got the posts in the ground for the pig lot, attached a top rail to the posts, and got up most of the fence around the lot. I chose to use a cheaper fence of galvanized metal only 3 ft high for about $19 but we are also going to use wooden rails across it and bury some old roofing tin around the bottom. When I get my new computer on-line, I'll see if I can post some pictures of our progress.

It has been raining here for 24 hours and Pure Water Hollow is filled up with water right now! Hopefully, we will have some dry moments this weekend so I can finish the pig lot. I want Sally and Nellie to be able to go outside and get into the dirt and roots and things. They will not get to be free-range pigs, but at least they will have a good-sized lot!

Until next time,

Counting our blessings!

Eggs, Chestnuts, Pigs, Snowflakes

(Prepare for a Ramble)

Some firsts today at Pure Water Hollow: a pullet laid her first egg, our pigs ate out of the children's hands for the first time, and the first snowflakes of the year floated leisurely to the ground!

I had written about my concern when our chickens stopped laying eggs all of a sudden in September. In August, our 9 layers had given us 100 eggs, but then there were 21 consecutive days with no eggs in September! Finally, during the last week of September, one hen decided to lay an egg every other day into the first week of October. We got 7 eggs during the 12-day period and I was feeling like eggs were going to start coming around again. But then we had another 15 days in a row with no eggs again, until today.

We got an unusually small egg today, which means one of the pullets have started laying! In addition to our 9 mature layers we also have 11 pullets that were hatched March/April, which makes them 6 to 7 months old now. They have grown to be as big as the hens and it is exciting to think that they will all begin laying soon! I don't think they will start peak production until the days start to get longer again, in January. Every egg we get now is a blessing, especially after being with no eggs for so long! We've been thinking about getting some store bought eggs, but haven't caved in yet.

We also have 3 other pullets that hatched in July and are only 3 months old. I wouldn't expect them to start laying for quite some time still. So the 9 hens plus 14 pullets, plus Dommer makes 24 chickens in the main flock, which get closed up in the coop every night. I am still keeping 2 Dominique looking cockerels that are 6 or 7 months old because they are looking like such fine roosters. They are just about as big as Dommer now. We've read that if you have more than 15 hens you should keep more than one rooster with them, so we are waiting to see which one will work best with Dommer in the main flock. Maybe all three of them will get along together?

On the pig front, the children are continuing their goal to tame them and to help them feel comfortable with us. Sally ate some corn out of Matthew's hands this morning. When I brought the pig chow home after work today, they really went for it. Both Nellie and Sally ate out of Erica's and Christina's hands for about a half hour! Simon was climbing around the barn and Matthew was digging postholes with me for the coming pig lot we want to give them. On Mondays and Wednesdays I can't get home until 5:00, which is almost dark these days, so there is not much time to do anything out side. (It will really be bad next week when the clocks are moved back an hour. I won't have any daylight at all when I get home! On the good side, I will have some daylight to feed the chickens by before I leave for work.)

While I'm doing some updates let me tell about our disappointment with our chestnuts. We found some websites selling fresh chestnuts for $20-$25 per 5 pounds. I figure that we have about 5 pounds in each gallon size bag and we filled 11 bags full! That would be over 50 pounds, which means around $200 in chestnuts!!!! That cannot be right, can it? It doesn't really matter, though, because we still do not know the best way to use them, and no one is offering to buy them from us. We wanted to make chestnut flour but we read that they needed to be dried first. We have tried drying about 15 pounds worth by spreading them out flat on some old screens rigged in the rafters of our small metal out building. This is a warm area, and dry, so we thought that maybe they would be safe. We let them dry there for two weeks and checked on them this weekend. They seem to be ruined with those little white grub worm type things that we would run into other years, when we did not refrigerate them! So how in the world can we get them dried for flour making without the worms getting them? Does anyone know where these worms come from and how they can be prevented? We still have the equivalent of 7 bags in the refrigerator that I suppose are ok? (How can you really know for sure?) I guess if we can't figure out any thing else to do with them, perhaps the pigs would like $200 worth of chestnuts?

One final note: This is the earliest we have had snow flurries here, on October 23rd, since 1995. (There was some snow on October 21st that year. We remember because my brother-in-law, Gary, got married that day in WV.  It snowed there and we heard that it was the same here.) We have had mild, almost non-winters for so many years now that I wonder if folks will know what to do if we get hit with a bad one? We had some huge snowfalls in the mid 90s here, but the children were too young to enjoy them.

Erica was the only child we had when we saw 24 inches of snow dumped on us on March 13th, 1993. She was just one year and four months old! Matthew had also been born when we had the 15-inch snowstorm on January 17th, 1994, but he wasn't even walking yet. That January our water pipes were frozen for 3 weeks straight and the river nearly froze over when we saw our thermometer reading at 26 degrees below zero! It was our first winter in this old house here at Pure Water Hollow. The house had no heat because the fireplace was not safe and we had put in some very inadequate baseboard heaters that kept the house at around 50 degrees while costing hundreds of dollars in electricity! The windows were hand blown glass and let air in when the wind blew.  All this with a 4 month old baby boy and a 2-year-old little girl! They were too young to enjoy the 15 inches of snow but at least they survived!

Personally, I enjoy winter more than most people do, so I wouldn't mind having a bit more winter than we have had. On the other hand, I am not set up well enough yet to keep chickens and pigs alive for long, if we have many 26 below zero days!

I thought this was going to be a very brief, update of some things I hadn't written about lately, but as I look back at it, it has turned into another lengthy post! This one does not have much literary merit and reads more like a ramble, I am afraid. I suppose that's what a blog is for, sometimes.


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Renee on October 24, 2006 at 3:34 pm
Hello! I can't wait for the snow too! We got flurry's on Sunday. I found a web-site I thought you might like to look at they have chickens too. homesteadblogger.com/surplusfamily/ It looked like you all had a little incommon.

Blessings to all of you,

The Pigs of Pure Water Hollow

Winston Churchill is credited with saying,

"I like pigs.  Dogs look up to us.  Cats look down on us.  Pigs treat us as equals."

I'm not sure if he was trying to insult pigs or man with that remark, but it is something to think about. I'm also not sure what point I want to make here, except that I think it is an interesting quote and I tend to agree with him! We have a dog and we have many cats, and now we have two pigs as well!



We had all loaded into the van yesterday evening to check out the pigs that Jimmy Music was selling down the road. He is one of the many "neighbors" around here whom we have never met, although I have heard some stories about him.  I had planned on getting pigs from a fellow who had been selling them to the FFA at school but that deal fell through last month when the guy got out of the pig business. I had agreed to pay $40 a piece for those pigs, which I thought that was a fair price. I was afraid Mr. Music would want more than that, so we were just going to go over to meet him and ask about the pigs. He had some for sale that was ready to butcher but he also had two adorable little Hampshire gilts that were just 6½ weeks old. They looked perfect, and I was glad to hear that he was asking $40 a piece for them as well. We brought them home, much to the delight of the children, and put them in our most secure stall in the old barn.

Sally is mostly white with a black head and a white back with black spots. Nellie is black all over. They were born on September 5th and are now around 20 to 30 pounds, and are both cute little pigs.






If the Lord blesses and all goes according to our plans, they will grow quickly and become mama sows sometime next July. In order for them to become sows, though, we will need to buy a daddy pig! Our neighbor down the road, Mr. Music, has 19 more piglets, not related to Sally or Nellie, that are around 2 1/2 weeks old now (born October 5th). He has promised to sell us two of the males. We are going to raise one for breeding and one for butchering, and we should be able to have them sometime between November 15th and 20th.

So, we have now embarked on the beginning of a hog raising adventure in Pure Water Hollow! We have no experience doing this so we will be learning very much as we go along. If anyone would like to share any advice, it would be appreciated! Our first project is to construct a good, secure lot for them to grow up in. We are planning on building it on the side of our barn and let them have a stall in the barn for sleeping and warmth. (We have much to do on the barn before winter weather really grabs hold here!)

Tomorrow I will stop and get some more straw and some pig starter chow. Today they have only had cracked corn bought for the chickens to eat, which they seemed to like very much. (They ate like little pigs!)

So far, I must agree with Churchill. I like pigs!


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Jessica on October 23, 2006 at 3:01 pm
Hello Uncle Eric! I had a wonderful time at your house two weeks ago! I can't wait to see your pigs the next time we come over! I am sure they are so cute! It was nice talking to you, Bye!!!

~Jessica~