Spotlight On Matthew

Today on this homestead blog, I am featuring my eldest son, Matthew.

I am proud of him, as I am all my children, but this post is going to focus just on him. He has just turned 14 years old last week, although most people who meet him think he is much older. This is partly because of the mature manner he handles himself, and partly because of his near 6-foot frame. He is a dependable, hard working, man of character and integrity, with a gentle spirit and a desire to serve God. He is a wonderful son and brother and touches everyone he is around in many ways.

I am very blessed to be his dad!

Matthew has been instrumental this past year in helping to transform the Pure Water Hollow Homestead from just a nice piece of land in the hills next to the river, into a bonafide working farm with fences, pigs, and goats surrounded by the beauty of God’s creation. He has done a lot of hard work this past year, let me tell you!

Since his birthday last year, we have added goats, pigs and honeybees to our homestead to go along with our chickens. He has learned much about construction by building and repairing goat shelters, pig lots, and pig stys. He has learned much about fencing as we struggled to unroll many feet of woven wire for the goat lots and pig lots and driving the T-posts into the ground.

This past year he has also learned how to use a chain saw to cut down trees for posts or to clear trees out of the way of trails. He was already proficient at chopping down trees with his axe and hatchet, but the chain saw really speeds things along! He has also become a master at using weed eaters and lawn mowers and has learned much about other gas-powered engines such as his four-wheeler and our golf cart.

It has been amazing to watch his physical strength and endurance increase throughout the past year as he continually rose to the occasion for so many more and difficult farm chores that needed to be done every day. For almost a year now he has been regularly carrying 5 gallon buckets of water and buckets of food every day, and bales of straw, bales of hay, truck loads of milk crates full of milk, and 100 pound bags of feed on a weekly basis, as well as moving heavy slabs of wood and other material any given day. He can now do many push-ups and pull-ups, which I don’t think he could do last year at this time, and his upper body strength has improved to where he can climb all the way up most any tree or pole now.

What follows is a collection of my favorite pictures taken over the past year of Matthew’s life, which give a glimpse of the types of things Matthew has been into lately.

Let’s start with a picture of his 13th birthday from last year. He fooled the rest of us by having his "birthday cake" made out of meatloaf and potatoes. Lisa had it decorated like a real cake!


When licking the candle, he had to act like it was icing even though it did not taste as good! It even suprised him, a bit!:


Now for some shots of Matthew at work:










And at play:








How about at rest, after working and playing so hard:




Some moments with the animals were captured on film:








And here are some nice looking general pictures of Matthew:








Here is a father son picture taken 11 months ago:


And here is a father son picture taken yesterday:


One of our heights seem to have changed a bit during the past 11 months!

I may come back to this post with a picture of Matthew’s cake for his 14th birthday. Around his birthday, I came down with a terrible stomach virus and passed it on to Simon and Christina and a bit to Lisa. We have had a rough couple of weeks. Matthew is such a nice son and brother that he did not want to celebrate with cake and ice cream until his family could enjoy it with him, so we have yet to sing "Happy Birthday" and have cake and ice cream! We are planning on doing it tonight, so…

Happy Birthday, Matthew!

We love you!!

What a wonderful past year the Lord has blessed you with and the upcoming year is sure to be full of many new adventures that we can look forward to and experience together!

The Children At The Overlook On A Nice Summer Day

The same day we took those pictures of the children holding the piglets we also went up to the East Ridge Overlook on our property. We needed a break from working on our new pig lots and it was a pretty day. The view of the countryside was fabulous but I enjoy the view of my children even more.

Here they are:




In this next one they were acting sort of goofy and I love the picture:




I’ll leave you with a shot of just the river valley below. I have posted many pictures from up here because it always takes my breath away:




1 comment
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2gramsroses on August 26, 2007 at 8:29 am
It would be very hard to get me off that Ridge, it so wonderful to see what great things the Lord has made !!!! The veiw is wonderful and so are your children. You have a great day.

Little Piglets Are Fun To Hold And Cuddle

The piglets have been fun for the children to take care of. Sometimes the little guys squirm and squeal when the children hold them, but sometimes it seems that the piglets enjoy the attention.

We took the pictures that follow when the piglets were 8 days old, when they were still living in that barn stall. They are still cute today even though they are much bigger now. This weekend they will be 6 weeks old!

I wanted to take a picture of each of the children holding one of the piglets and these are the ones I thought turned out good:









The piglets are great, but I especially thank the Lord for my wonderful children!

Building Our New Pig Sty

A big project last month for us at Pure Water Hollow Homestead was creating a new lot and housing for our mama pigs and their 15 piglets. I have wanted to move the pigs out of the barn for a while because they were being so rough on it and it seemed so small for them. After the piglets were born, we didn’t have much choice, as a barn stall was going to get little very quickly for a mama pig with 8 piglets!

For the entire week after they were born, July 16th-21st, we worked most days, off and on, fencing a new area for the pigs. We were going to give them a type of a small pasture on the hillside where I would like to one day grow corn.

Finally we were ready to construct the new pig stys the following week. We decided to use free slabs from a local saw mill so there was very little expense involved. Matthew and I went and loaded up the truck a couple of times and then on the 23rd we cut the slabs into the sizes we wanted. We were going to build approximately an 8ft. x 8ft. building about 5 feet tall.

Here is much of the wood for one building loaded in the truck ready to go up in the hollow the next day:




We worked at assembling the walls on the evening of the 24th. Matthew and Christina helped tremendously and Simon did his part toward the end. By the time Erica came up with the camera we were all pretty tired and a bit disappointed that we were not going to be able to complete the project before bed time. Here are some pictures of the action:




Simon likes to have his picture taken while he is working:







I was good at standing around supervising by this time in the evening:




But the next day came and God gave us a nice,sunny day to finish it.





Our building projects are usually a fun time of the family working together to accomplish a goal.






Matthew does not look like he was having fun bringing up some straw for the pigs bedding! I think he was trying to look serious for the camera.




Before long it was time to move the first family of pigs to their new home. Nellie and her piglets got to move out first because they were in such a dark stall in the barn. We had trouble getting a couple of the piglets to come out of the cage:





Nellie found the new sty to be very comfortable.




And her piglets were happy to nurse in the new building:




And they all seemed to enjoy exploring their new field.






Here is another corner shot of the completed pig sty. I like that it looks like a small rustic log cabin. It is very sturdy, that is for sure!




As soon as we finished Nellie’s lot and house we began working on another lot for Sally and her piglets. We made it adjoining to Nellie’s with a gate separating them. After we got the fence up we began the process all over of making another pig sty for that lot. Here we are working on that one:




The second building took almost as long to build as the first one, but this time we knew what we were doing better. We did move Sally and her piglets in over there and they seemed to like it very much also!

Making new pig lots and houses for them was a lot of work, but it was a rewarding experience also. I think it is a much better, and healthier situation for our pigs. If all works out the way I think it will, we will be growing corn in this field some day in the future, after the pigs get it all worked up for us!