Mother's Day Flood

This blog is about many common, everyday sort of things that go on around here, but every now and then something unusual might arise (like the river). When unique events occur, I usually feel like recording them as well.

Today was a slightly different sort of Mother’s Day, in that our church service was canceled. Why would a church dismiss on Mother’s Day, you might ask? There is little choice it seems, when the road coming from either direction leading to the church-house is under water! Our church is the River Baptist Church, so named because it is located adjacent to the river, but today the church building was actually surrounded by the river!

We had fun checking it out, and I took some pictures. Our church is just to the left behind the trees. You can see the maroon church sign if you look closely:





The church is just a mile from Pure Water Hollow, so I am speaking of the same river that runs in front of our house. Normally, we can’t see the actual water unless we walk out to the road. It has been strange today to look out from our living room and see the current of the river rushing by, because the water is so high.

Our rain gauge has collected 6 inches of rain during the past week, and since all the surrounding areas up the river had similar amounts of rain, it was just too much water for the old river banks to handle all at once.

This phenomenon is not especially rare, but it is uncommon enough to be notable. This has only happened perhaps 5 or 6 times since we have lived here since 1993. The last time we remember the river being over the roads was February of 2006. And also in February of 2003 there was a crest of 37.67 feet at our county seat, which was the 16th highest on the NOAA list of historical crests for our area. During those times, we have been completely cut off here at Pure Water Hollow, unless we wanted to cross over the mountains on foot, or risk the whirlpools of the river by boat.

Our Mother’s Day flood today was destined to crest out at only 31.2 feet this afternoon, so it wasn’t really any big deal in the grand scheme of things. The NOAA site lists 28 feet as "Action Stage", 35 feet as "Flood Stage", 38 feet as "Moderate Flood Stage", and 42 feet as "Major Flood Stage". They say that 35 feet is when the streets are flooding in our county seat and parts of the county are cut off, and then at 38 feet houses are getting flooded in our county seat, and at 42 feet the businesses are getting flooded. I’m sure the measurements are probably a bit different out here where we are, but I think it’s a pretty good comparison.

Saturday morning I decided it would be prudent to clean up our riverbank, just in case the river continued to rise. At 9:00am the water was still below our big flat area where we try to have a garden and some peach trees. We had down there some chairs, milk crates, and many hundred feet of chicken wire that I had used last year to deter the rabbits and turtles from the veggies. I didn’t want to loose all that fence material and I thought it would at least get mangled if left down there in flood waters. We worked on it all morning, and by that afternoon the water was beginning to creep up on the riverbank and surround the trunks of the peach trees.

Fortunately, we have been behind in getting our garden sites ready and planted, so there was no time-investment or seed-investment lost with this flood. Our four peach trees were loaded with small peaches, and unfortunately, they may suffer some damage.

These peach trees are kind of special in regards to Mother’s Day. The children each presented Mom with a peach tree for Mother’s Day back in 2002 (I think that is the correct year). We planted them on the riverbank and they found themselves under water the very next February! The first tree you come to is a Belle of Georgia semi-dwarf, the next is called Sugar Princess, and then Diamond Princess, and lastly a JB Hale semi-dwarf.

The Belle of Georgia seemed to have the greatest early yield of baby peaches this year, and being in front, it had to take the brunt of the current from the river. And being a semi-dwarf, it is not quite as tall as the Sugar Princess and Diamond Princess. This being said, the Belle of Georgia only had about 6 inches of one limb left protruding above the floodwaters as the river crested this afternoon for several hours and the current pushed the tree at an angle! Some of the limbs from the other trees were also submerged, but the top halves of the Princess trees were still visible above the water, and some of the JB Hale. Just last week I was saying that I should have pruned the middle of those Princess trees so they wouldn’t be so tall! Once again, being too busy may have actually proved beneficial! Perhaps we will still be able to harvest some peaches from the riverbank. We will have to wait and see what they look like after the floodwaters recede.

Here is a picture of a couple of the peach trees before the river had crested. It got much higher than this. What you can’t tell is how strong the current is going by the trees.:



Well, the river continued to rise all through Saturday, Saturday night, and Sunday morning. I took a strange pleasure in checking the river level regularly. When I went to check at 7 am this morning, the road to church was already underwater. We placed stakes in the riverbank to mark the progress of the encroaching water. I guess we had about 8 sticks in the ground starting yesterday, but the early ones became submerged quickly. We could still see the stakes from midnight, 7 am, 9 am, and 11 am. The water level held steady until about 3 PM, and then it began to gradually go down. The weather service on the computer said that the river crested at 31.2 feet at 11:00 am.

Historically, the biggest river flood here was on January 31, 1957. The NOAA site says that the crest for that one was 45.92 feet! I wonder if the water was actually in our house during that flood? In the book Swimming Upriver, an earlier flood is described when the floodwater got up to the top of the cellar, stopping just short of coming into the house. If that flood was February 3rd, 1950 the NOAA site lists that crest at 38.88 ft, which was the 13th highest crest on record! (There is an excerpt from the book on the website about that flood if you would like to read about it. It is pretty good.)

A flood on Mother’s Day is not the best present for an incredible mom like Lisa, especially since it preoccupied my time yesterday instead of working on remodeling the bathroom! We did not have church today, but Lisa still had a nice Mother’s Day. The children presented Lisa with homemade cards and Erica fixed a wonderful brunch of biscuits and gravy, sausage and scrambled eggs, juicy bacon, and fried apples. It was a meal consisting of food that was all home raised here at Pure Water Hollow except for the grain for the biscuits!

After our family Bible reading we drove up the road to look at the floodwaters and walked out on the suspension bridge spanning the river. We then took a nice walk through our hills identifying various plants and trees, which is one of Lisa’s favorite activities. We found a plant that Lisa had never positively identified before. She was happy to discover that it was what she thought it might be; purslane. It can be used in salads or boiled as a green and is supposed to be high in vitamin C, vitamin A, calcium, and phosphorus. I bet we will try it sometime soon!

After our walk we relaxed and had a nice dinner of pork loin roast. Lisa read to the children until bedtime while I finished typing this post.

All in all, I thought it was a nice Mother’s Day, even with a flood. Of course, Lisa deserves so much more than we can ever do. She is the most wonderful wife and mother I could ever dream of. The love I feel for her is impossible to put into adequate words!

If my love for Lisa were changed into drops of water, my heart would quickly overflow. It would run into the river, but the river never would crest. It would flood not only the riverbank, but also our house as well, and the surrounding land, the county seat, and the whole state of Kentucky! The flood would continue until the peaks of the majestic Rocky Mountains would become victim as the great nation of the United States and the whole continent of North America and, yes, even the entire world became submerged by the water from my love for Lisa! But since God promised he would never again flood the entire world I’m quite certain that He would never turn my love for Lisa into drops of water. Every one reading this should now breathe a deep sigh of relief!

It has gotten late. If the preceding love analogy seemed corny to you, just chalk it up to my being sleepy. But even when I am sleepy, I am thankful and grateful to the mother of my children, and I do love her that much! I am even more thankful and grateful to my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ for saving me, for giving me such a Godly wife and mother for my children, and for blessing my home and family here at Pure Water Hollow!

Good night everyone, and God bless.

When It Rains, It Pours

The saying, "When it rains, it pours" has a ring of truth to it when considering the current state of our homestead.

On the literal side, we got 3 1/2 inches of rain over the weekend, which caused flash flooding in our hollow. It made the rest of the dam break on through, so that it is now beyond repair with the tractor I have been hoping to get. I will not have a stocked fish pond this year, nor will I be able to use my ram pump with the supply lines from the pond.

The water again flooded our lower yard, part of the garden, and driveway, leaving debris all over the place once again.

Various places in our roads have been rutted out by the water, and we lost part of the road above the clearing that we had made last summer. I spent all morning yesterday digging trenches to divert the water, clearing out debris from the ditches on the roads, and opening up the culverts that had gotten stopped up.

Also our cellar is filled up with water almost to the top, completely submerging the kereosene heater I had stored down there. Another $100 loss?

Meanwhile, some critter got the goose eggs and ran Mother Goose off her nest, so no goslings this go around.

Also yesterday, we moved Nellie and Sally back to the barn again. Nellie is seemingly in heat and Rufus was not leaving her alone and we were afraid he was going to hurt her. This time Rufus, (the giant 900 plus pound boar) was not going to stand for it. He snapped the post (which was in concrete) that the gate was hung on, and proceeded to follow the sows to the barn. It was just a stick in the mud to him, it seems. It will take some work to repair it. We put the gate on the other lot and eventually moved Rufus and Nellie in there. We may need to sell Rufus sooner than expected. Sally is still in the barn. I don’t know if she is pregnant or not?

More rain is expected. The peach trees on the river bank are looking very good. I hope the water does not get over them as it is apt to do if the river floods out of it's banks.

But, when it rains, it pours.

Swimming Upriver by Judy Harwood

We here at Pure Water Hollow have been excited about a new book that had been in the works for some time.

It takes place at and around Pure Water Hollow before it was called "Pure Water Hollow"!

If you live in an old house, have you ever wondered what went on inside those walls in the far-off past? Our house was once part of a coal camp and then was sold at auction and moved across the river sometime during the 1930s. A new family bought it and lived here from 1943 until 1965 or 1966. It is interesting that the new family moved here in April of 1943 and my family moved here 50 years later in April of 1993.

One of the children who grew up in this house, on this land, during the 1940s and 50s wrote a book about her experiences here called Simming Upriver: Coming of Age in Appalachia. I enjoyed the book very much, especially the glimpses of life here 50 years ago. It is now available for purchase if anyone else might be interested. You can get it on Amazon.com or BarnesAndNobel.com.

God bless everyone.

Memories: 1823 – 1839

What was life like in these hills around our home about 180 years ago? I am always interested in learning about the old ways and times, and I love reading about life in the Kentucky hills of days gone by.

I came across an interesting memoir online from Zachariah VanHoose who wrote about the area he lived at as a boy. He is writing about the 1820s and 1830s. He lived from 1823 – 1887 but he left Kentucky and moved to Arkansas in 1839.

What is fascinating to me is that he wrote about an area near Pure Water Hollow and he had a good recollection of early life here. I copied the more interesting parts of it here on this blog, just for fun.

If you would like to read the whole thing, here is the link. http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~kyjohnso/ZVH.htm

When I skip over parts of the narrative, I used dots ….

"…I first see myself a little child, not more than 3 or 4 years old of age. Father, mother, sisters and brothers all at one large hewed log house, kitchen with great chimneys, fireplaces to them, bright crackling fires burning in those fireplaces. The house is on a public road and among the hills in far-off Kentucky. Our home with its surroundings was a world within itself. I knew nothing far beyond it. People came and went, stopped at our house, were entertained, talked, laughed, ate and drank, and went off again. I knew not whither.

I can remember that I had white or flaxen colored hair; wore little coats of linsey, colored blue, and made like those worn by small girls. Sometimes wore long shirts made of flax, coming down to my ankles, and no other clothing but this for summer weather! I can see my eldest sister Rachel as a girl of 11 or 12 years doing house work, spinning on a "big wheel" and mother spinning flax on a "little wheel". Rachel also looked after me a good deal, washed my dirty face and hands, and often took me off with Mary and brother Pete into the woods after berries, grapes, papaws, plums and red haws, walnuts, hickory nuts, hazel nuts and chestnuts. Often saw snakes, squirrels and many birds on those jaunts. I can remember a colored woman named "Junie" or "June" and a colored man named "Danl" or Daniel, who lived with us about that time and both of whom I greatly loved and who loved and cared for me a good deal. …

…At 10 1/2 or before 11 years old, I was put to plowing and did constant service in that way whenever plowing was done, and that was from March till August. It was an uphill business for me at first, but after a time I got along much better and was said to be a very good plow-boy. At any rate, I got lots of it to do and plenty of other work besides! …

…On one occasion, I remember we visited a turkey pen at the lower end of our "old field" on Jennie’s Creek, a mile from the house, and found a wild turkey caught in the pen! I was much excited over this and wanted to crawl into the turkey trap through the trench leading in, but Father would not let me, as he said the turkey would hurt me with its wings. So Father went in himself and broke its neck and we took it and went on our way, the turkey being added to Father’s burden.

A few years prior to this event, some wild bears invaded this same field and made havoc among the roasting ears growing therein. They would visit the field at night and kept hidden in daylight. Several attempts were made to start them with dogs, but it so happened that they did not come on those nights when the hunters were looking for them. They were cunning bears and not easily taken in.

After ceasing to search for them, Old Uncle Levi VanHoose was looking for squirrels one day not far from this same field and very unexpectedly came across old Madam Bruin and her dusky children, probably waiting for night to come so as to slip into the corn again. He fired on them with a squirrel shot and killed on the Mrs. B’s children, whereupon she emigrated and was never heard of in those parts afterwards. So we had good bear meat to eat, in compensation for the stolen roasting ears.

Raccoons, also, were accustomed to invade our cornfields and we generally caught and killed a lot of them to pay for it. We had good dogs and they often caught game of various kinds–treed foxes and wildcats, coons and possums. Some of these were shot and killed with a gun, and others caught by cutting down the trees and letting the dogs on them. …

…Jennie’s Creek ran through our farm and it was there I caught my first fish, and in its waters learned the art of swimming. Trapping for patridges and hunting rabbits was pleasant past-time in winter. Pheasants were very plentiful there and were excellent to eat. They resemble our prairie chickens of this country (Arkansas).

We had a good peach orchard and also a pretty good lot of apple trees, all of which bore fruit in great abundance about every 2d or 3d year. That was rather a poor wheat County; we raised but little of it and what we did raise had to be cut with the reap-hook or the old scythe-cradle. Then we had to tramp it out with horses or thresh it out with flails by hand power! We then took it (a bag full at a time) to the water mill or horse mill, had it ground. Then the women folks had to "sarch" each mess as ’twas used. Our "sarches" (as people called them) were made something like a sieve — only the hoop contained a bottom of muslin instead of wire or horse-hair.

I can remember when there were no bolting machines in all the region. One was finally put up in the "Big Paint" mill, 3 miles from us, and then Old Henry Dixon added one to his horse mill, 3 1/2 miles off. These were at first turned by hand, but after a little while were geared to the other mill works and run by the same power that turned the mill.

We used to wear a good deal of home-made cloth, "Kentucky jeans", linsy woolsey and flax and also cotton. Tow-cloth was also worn by a good many. We kept a flock of sheep and mother and the girls spun the wool and wove it into cloth for clothing and made many blankets and coverlets. They also made some sheets out of flax. Mother was a great flax spinner and made a large amount of that into cloth. I have worn flax shirts and pants of her make, when a little boy. People did not buy so many store goods in those days. Even our winter shoes were home tanned and home made. We had to make out with 1 pair a year — that is we boys. Sometimes the girls would be favored with a store pair for summer wear. …

…In those days we had great fun and good times making maple sugar and molasses. There was a large number of those trees on our place and we made shugar in the latter part of winter and early spring, almost every year. Those were times to be remembered, as we had a great deal of fun mixed with our labor and enjoyed the time hugely. We had a camp erected in the woods, a furnace built filled with kettles, large poplar trough dug out to hold water in, at camp — small trough to catch the water at each tree tapped and horses and barrels and halfsleds to haul in the shugar-water to camp. And then at night we stayed in camp, boiled down the water, told stories, listened to the hooting owls, dried off syrup in a skillet and ate hot shugar with paddles of clean wood, and drank spice-wood tea made with the shugar water, ate cold lunch &c &c. Happy were we then.

Our old home, of which I have already spoken was situated on the main road leading up the Sandy River country. It was 9 or 10 miles below Prestonsburg (the County seat) and was 3 or 3/12 miles above Paintsville, which was then in Floyd County but since then has been cut off by a new division of counties and belongs to Johnson County and is County seat of that new County.

Father bought and located on this old farm soon after he and mother married, which event happened in 1812 or 1813 (am not exactly certain which one of those dates). Nearly all of my brothers and sisters were born there, only two of them being born in the far West, as this country and Arkansas were then called. I was the first one born in the big new house situated on the road just mentioned a few lines back…..

…The house referred to was built of hewed poplar logs, was two stories high, had large brick chimney, a huge fireplace below and a smaller one upstairs. House cealed, had good pine floors and was furnished with several glass windows. The "upstairs" was the most pleasant part of the house. There was also a large kitchen built at the southwest corner of our dwellings and to it was built a large stone chimney and a fireplace adapted to cooking in those days. A large swinging iron crane was fixed in the jam of this fireplace, to hang pots and kettles on. Our house has a long porch on the front or east side and one also one the west, that extended up against the kitchen and made a very convenient passway into that department.

We had smoke house, stables and other outhouses, a good paled-in garden, in which we used to pick up scores of Indian arrow points made of very hard reddish-colored flint. The spot had once been an Indian Village, or at least a noted camping ground for them. This whole region was at one time their grand hunting ground and must have been a perfect Indian heaven! as it abounded in all kinds of game when new and its streams were full of fishes and the woods full of nuts, fruits, berries &c &c, all in lavish profusion. The climate was also mild and the whole face of the country was covered with heavy forests. The surface of the country was uneven, there being hills, ridges, hollows, valleys and many undulations and uneven places.

The hills, many of them, had pine trees on the tops, sometimes spruce and there were lots of cedar trees along the river bluffs. Beech and poplar grew in profusion and many large chestnut trees were found on the mountain sides and sometimes in the vales. Many other trees and shrubs grew there, that are not to be found in the western states, or at least west of the Mississippi River.

The whole country was full of fine timber, a great deal of which was cut and floated down the river to market. We also used to cut, saw and make thousands of barrel and hogshead staves and peel cords of tan bark, all of which we shipped in flat boarts built for the purpose, to Cincinnati and other markets. Some of my early lessons in sawing were taken, sawing logs for staves. That was hard work for a boy. We cut white oak trees that were 3 feet diameter and worked them into staves, one tree sometimes making over a 1,000 of them. This lumber business was carried on there to a very considerable extent at that time and still more afterward. The saw-log business became all the rage nearby in after years, tens of thousands being cut, hauled to the river, rafted or floated down to market at different points along the Ohio River.

About 1828 Grandfather Mankins, Uncle George Lewis, Uncle John Mankins and others of our relatives on the mother’s side and all of whom have a place in my early recollections, sold out their lands in Kentucky and emigrated to Illinois, going in old blue-colored wagons, drawn by fine horses. I can well remember the grief of friends, various scenes of the starting — Mother and Granmother and Mother’s younger sisters parting — they going to wilds of the Far West and we and others of the conexion remaining behind. It was almost like being parted by death itself, as we supposed the separation was probably to be one of forever as to the present life.

Several of us camped with them the first night, at a place called "The Dopp Hole" in Big Paint Creek, which was 3 1/2 miles below where we lived and was only 2 to 3 miles from where they all started, which was "Long Horn Bottom", 6 miles from where we lived. The starting road led up the stream called Big Paint and was west in direction. …

…In ’37 we deserted our old and long occupied home and moved to the River a mile or so away, so as to be handy to our hauling and boat building, for we had two big boats to build to carry off the lumber. This we proceeded to do. We cut our gunwale trees, poplars, one of which furnished us a pair of gunwales 84 feet in length, 7 inches thick, 2 feet 2 in at the bow-rake and about 20 in. at the stern-rake. Of these, with the other timbers necessary, with 2 in. plank for bottom and sides, we constructed the larger boat. We built the smaller one, in which we carried the tan-bark, 60 ft. long and 18 ft. wide and sided up 6 ft. high from the bottom of the boat inside. The larger one was sided up the same way. In this one, when ready, we placed 53,000 staves and heading; in the other about 30 cords of bark. It was very serious job to do all this work, as we had to haul the bark off of the mountain top, a mile or two away, and the staves from many a hollow and branch bottoms, 1 to 3 miles away from the River …."

I don’t have time to comment about the things Mr. VanHoose wrote right now, but maybe I will come back to this entry and write a more fitting conclusion in the future. Anyhow, I was amazed at this glimpse back into a bit of what life was like around here some 180 years ago!

Discouragements and Setbacks at Pure Water Hollow

We are abundantly blessed here at Pure Water Hollow, but from time to time we have more than our share of disappointments and discouragements. We are currently in the midst of such a time. I am going to unload several complaints with this post, so if you want to be encouraged, you may want to read something else. But maybe it will be encouraging for some of you to discover that "homesteading" is not always a rose garden, and even those of us who have been successfully striving for self-reliance hit some road blocks at times. In the real world, I’m sure we have all had projects that have gone awry.

I think spring time has the potential to be the most depressing time of the year. Christmas time also. These are the times when expectations are high and excitement is in the air, but when life does not live up to the glorious expectations, it is easy to fall into a “down in the dumps’ type of feeling.

First of all, the geese are getting to us. You saw them down in the play field in my previous post. Well, we do not like them down around the house because they are so noisy and they leave nasty messes all over the yard where the children like to play. They also get close to the road and we are afraid they may get hit sometime. They used to be easy to scare back up to the barn, but lately they have not run back up the hill away from the house when we go out and wave our arms at them. So, we spent some time putting up a fence in front of the pond to block them from coming down to the house. This worked for just a few days and then they figured out a way around the fence (and we are not yet ready to enclose the entire pond area). So now, we have to deal with their annoying behavior everyday. (Mother Goose is still on the nest, thankfully.)

Speaking of annoying, our dogs are driving us crazy also. For some reason they have gotten into the habit of attacking our garbage cans and spreading garbage all over the yard. The dirty diapers are the worse part. Also, Luna has been sucking eggs with a passion and leaving the shells all over our driveway. She can’t get our eggs from the coop, but we don’t like her getting into the wild chicken nests either. Mammoo continues to go crazy and chase cars, and she has now taught Luna and Champ to join in. Champ can be incredibly annoying by wanting us to play ball with him all the time and “nosing us” whenever we are outside. We are considering finding new homes for Mammoo, Champ, and Luna. Chief is the only one who is a “good” dog, (although I think he joins in with the garbage raids).

The yard is getting us down as well. The ice storm left a lot of trees lying around that we have not had the chance to get all cleaned up. Now weeds are starting to grow all around them. We couldn’t get our lawn mowers working early on. Now we have a new riding mower, but we still have to clean up the trees before we can do much mowing!

We are getting down also because the garden is way behind schedule. A tree from the ice storm fell across the fence encircling the garden and the fence was getting in poor repair elsewhere, so I decided we needed a new fence around the garden. At first our tiller was not working, so I didn’t get the garden ready. Now the tiller is working, but we are waiting on the fence. If we don’t have a fence, the chickens and geese will eat all of the seeds we try to plant. We put plenty of composted hog manure on the garden and tilled it in a bit, but I need to get it all tilled much deeper.

Speaking of hog manure, we had moved Sally and Nellie into the barn stalls so they could give birth safely to their piglets. Last time they were expecting, I moved them to the barn one day and they had piglets the next! This time, I had it down that Sally would give birth on April 21st and Nellie on April 25th. Neither one of them has yet had their piglets, and now I am wondering if they are pregnant at all! This is very, very disappointing, especially since I have about 13 of them sold already, as soon as we get the piglets weaned. There has been much interest from folks wanting to buy this group of piglets. We moved Sally and Nellie back to their outside lots because a barn stall is so small. If we have no piglets to sell, I won’t have the $600 plus dollars I was counting on. We will keep watching them, but we really don’t know what is going on.

Meanwhile, the pond behind the barn was looking very good. The ducks and geese were enjoying it and I liked seeing how full it was. In a matter of moments it all changed. It sprang a leak through the dam and washed out a cavern underneath the dam. We can still walk on the dam, but it will likely cave in anytime. It caused a flash flood down by the house as thousands of gallons of pond water came rushing down the hollow. It spooked the chickens and flooded our driveway, leaving all sorts of debris lying around the sides of the creek and in the driveway. I already knew that I needed to get some digging machines to raise the dam up a bit since it had settled so much and slipped some. Now I need to do some major excavation to try to get it right. I would like to have a tractor with a back hoe, but I’ve not found any in my price range yet.

There is still a little water in the pond, but we could now see the mud that was once under water. In the mud, we saw dozens of duck eggs! We had found a few duck eggs weeks ago, so we knew they were laying, but we did not know where. Now we know that those sorry ducks had been dropping their eggs right into the pond! That was a discouraging fact to discover, but what was just as bad was when we saw the ducks going around and eating all of the exposed eggs laying around in the mud! We gathered what we could to just keep them away from the eggs. How do you keep ducks from eating their own eggs? Between the ducks bad habit and Luna’s, I doubt we have much of a chance for ducklings. At least I had not stocked the pond with fish yet…

Over in the goat barn, we had a mudslide behind it which has been causing water to back up in the barn from the hill. We have been dealing with that for some time, digging ditches to divert water, but it is still a discouraging mess! I had hoped to have stalls and other things built in there by now, but we are still trying to get it dried up. They have also pushed their fence down in several places and are getting out now, almost at will. We have to repair several places in the fence. Other than that, they have not yet been as frustrating as the pigs, ducks, and dogs.

Inside the house, Lisa has been wanting to remodel the bathroom for some time. She started tearing out the old dry-wall a couple of weeks ago and we purchased materials. Time has been our enemy and we have not been able to get much done on fixing it back up. It is frustrating for her because she knows what to do and how to do it, but each day has found so many more activities to fill it up and the bathroom has not gotten done.

If it were just one or two discouraging events, it would be "par for the course". We could deal with a few adversities smiling. But it seems that we have gotten more than our share of setbacks during the past couple of weeks, and it is difficult to have a cheerful outlook!

We will persevere, of course. We will look for the lessons the Lord is trying to teach us. We will pick up the broken pieces and re-build and re-do. We will continue to thank God in the midst of our discouragements. We are not going to give up, or give in, and we will rely on God’s leadership and help. In a few more weeks, things will be looking up for us again, and if not, we still will try our best for His glory!

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5 comments
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S on April 27, 2009 at 12:13 pm
Sounds like you need help.

Can you hire / barter with someone?

If you had a couple extra sets of hands to get you caught up, I don't think life would be so overwhelming!!

Maybe even a weekend with friends and family helping???

Laura
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amanda on April 27, 2009 at 2:10 pm
You sound the way my hubby feels right now as well. He is about to "throw in the towel" as far as the garden goes. Too many "critters" have been feasting on all of our hard work.

Not enough money to "fix" the problem. He even came home last week and put himself on the roof acting as a "sniper." A rabbit sniper that is. Wouldn't you know it though, as soon as he went on the roof for a better shot, the bunnies suddenly dissappreared. :- (

Always learning and ever praying. I pray that the end of this day sees you and your family feeling better. it's all on THE LORD'S hands :- )

We are all in this together as brothers and sisters in Christ.

Amanda <><

Matthew 6:33
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homesteadingwife on April 27, 2009 at 5:53 pm
When we start feeling this kind of discouragement, I tell my husband we need to step back, take a deep breath and do one job at a time. I know you already know this, but sometimes a little humble reminder helps. We are also behind on our garden, due to the fence being down, due to the ice storm. We also had some rabbit copes damaged and my husband has tenditis in his right shoulder, and can barely use his arm. We are slowly getting things back together, it will take time, but with the our help and God's strength we will manage, even if my larger garden has to wait until next year. I still have another little garden site, that can be used this year. I know that God will bless us for just trying to do our best and he will bless you for trying as well.

Just take one step at a time. Take a moment and make a list (lists help me) of what is important and major and check off what gets done. One job at a time really does wonder's when you see it on paper.

Saying a prayer for you and your family.

Lynn
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LittleHouse on April 28, 2009 at 10:55 am
Eric,

We are here for you all!! Would you like us to come an help? We would Love to!!!!!!

Marc and I have so many things we would like to get done… our list seems to grow daily. We also know that everything we do is God's timing.

To me it sounds like you all need to take a deep breath and to re-group. I would suggest to write out a small to-do list and pray over that list…asking God to show you what needs to be done now and what can be put off until you have a little more time.

Don't ever forget how much we Love you….and we think your homestead is great….I wish everyone here at homesteadblogger could come see it!!!!!!!

I will be praying for you:)

Much Love to all,

Renee
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Schatzi on April 29, 2009 at 2:17 pm
Wow…now that is incredible. I have no idea where you find the time to tend to everything you have just mentioned…and I'm sure there are hundreds of things you haven't mentioned. It's great to see you with such a great attitude about it all.

I sure hope your week goes well…greetings to all your family…and look forward to hearing about your wife's bathroom being finished LOL.

Blessings,

Connie

A Virtual Tour of Pure Water Hollow Homestead

It is an honor being one of the “featured bloggers” on Homestead Blogger once again, and also a bit overwhelming. Part of me wonders why anyone would be interested in my little homestead here. But then I look around me and quickly realize that I have an absolutely wonderful life and I am getting to experience some awesome adventures that are made up of the types of things that homestead minded people dream about. My desire is always that our homestead will in some way point to our glorious Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Everything we have or do is ultimitely because of Him!

I’m really writing this blog for my immediate family, extended family, and for posterity as well. I must confess that I also have a selfish motive. In many ways I am recording this adventure just to aid my own memory. Sadly, I have had to realize that I do not have a very good long term memory at all, and 20 years from now I do not want to hear about all kinds of wonderful things we shared as a family and not have a memory of them for myself!

I was not intending to get so contemplative on this post.

What I am striving for with this entry, is to just give sort of a virtual tour of what types of things we have had going on lately at Pure Water Hollow Homestead. We had a few beautiful days Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, so I asked Christina, my 11 year old, to walk around and take pictures of our property and animals with her digital camera. She took some great pictures and I also borrowed her camera and took a few more.

The first animals you are likely to see are our dogs and cats. I don’t have any pictures of the cats right now, but here is our Pyr named Chief:



And this is Mammoo:



We also have Luna, a black mixed Pyr that didn’t make the cameras this time and a Lab named Champ that you will see in a minute.

Christina took several pictures I really liked from an angle that I have not seen much in picture form. I had the truck down in the play field to unload some hog manure over the garden spot. That is our Chocolate Lab named Champ with me(he is always with us even when we do not want him to be):



While we are down here I’ll show where we planted the new fruit trees and bushes this spring. You can see the milk crates behind me. This is where we planted 8 new blueberry bushes.



They are Blue Crop, Blue Ray, Earliblue, and Jersey from left to right and then the pattern is repeated in the next four. So far they are all living, but we never tested the soil there to see if it is a good place for blueberries. I hope they will grow and thrive there.

In front of the house I planted a new nectarine tree next to the peach trees:



We still haven’t gotten everything cleaned up from the ice storm, and these pictures do not show up very well. I’m putting them here mainly for us, but you can at least see the mess we have been facing. We went ahead and planted two plum trees and two new apple trees next to the old apple trees across the lane from the garden. Here are the new plum trees:



And here are the new apple trees:



Across from the apple trees is the garden spot and play field that you saw a minute ago. The geese had come down from the pond to visit. They are in the children’s playfield in the fore-ground. Those poles you see are a grape arbor and the cherry tree in bloom is to the right. You can see the outbuilding we call the tool shed, the side/back of our house, and our white van to the left. In the mid-ground is the children’s play-tree and swing-set:



Let me show you the grape arbor closer up. Once the leaves come out, this is a beautiful spot and we usually have plenty of grapes for jam. The Chery tree next to it always has an abundance of cherries:



This is a shot from further back. Here you can see the flower garden and you get the first glimpse of the creek that flows by the garden:



Come on back a little farther, up on the school house hill. From here you can see the chicken coop and lot, and in the distance the garden spot, the children’s play field, play-tree, the roof of our house and the tool shed:



Since we are here at the chicken coop, let me show you the other side of it. Those rectangles are the nest boxes for the hens. The nests are on the inside of the coop and we can gather the eggs from the outside:



And when Christina opened up the nests to check for eggs she found some hens in the process of depositing their rent money. Both of these are Buff Orpingtons, but they share the coop with Light Brahmas, Partridge Rocks, Black Giants, Australorps, and Dominiques. If you look close you can see the egg from the one on the right as she is getting up to leave:



We also have an area we call "the chicken duplex", because it is a two room compartment. Currently we have a game hen mama raising a brood of chicks in each section. Wingleg has 8 Buff Orpington chicks she hatched as well as 6 from TSC. On the other side is Onefeather who has 6 Black Giant mix chicks that she hatched as well as 6 Rhode Island Reds from TSC. The pictures didn’t come out the greatest through the fence, but you can get an idea.

This first one is of Onefeather and her brood. She is 5 years old and the only one left of our original group of hens and pullets from 2004. She has proven to be a good mama hen many times now:



In this picture you can see the duplex better on Wingleg’s side with Wingleg and her group. Wingleg is from the 2005 generation of pullets, so she is pretty old too. She may have been in one of Onefeather’s early groups of hatchlings.



Let’s go up that dirt road that swings around to the right in the above picture and then down to the left to the ravine lot:



Here is the ravine lot closer up. It is totally enclosed with wire to keep predators out. I originally designed it to keep our pet raccoons in, so we made it pretty tight. This is where we have been separating various hens and roosters in order to get specific eggs. The most recent group to have called it home was the Black Giants, which are the chickens you see in these pictures:



Now we will walk up the hillside via the steep dirt road to the barn areas. In the below picture the path to the ravine lot is in the middle on the left. It goes downward and this other road goes up to the pigs, goats and pond. Behind us is the chicken coop and lot:



Here we approach the old barn. Believe it or not, it is standing up much straighter now than it was a month ago. The pigs had played a number on it the past couple of years, eating out the main poles so that the barn had begun to lean quite a bit. We just had new posts put in and the walls pulled up straight as well as some new roofing where it was leaking very badly. I hired the work out, but I did get to help a few hours one day. The two guys were here a good part of 6 days working on it and only charged $600! I feel that it was well worth it because I think the barn will be able to stand for many more decades now. The alternative was tearing it down and building new. We still have work to do on it to make it a real nice barn, but it is very usable right now:



I like this view that Christina took from a distance. In so many of these pictures you can tell what a rugged terrain our homestead is located in:



Here is part of the new roof. We used remnant pieces of metal that was much cheaper to purchase. To get it cheap, we couldn’t choose the colors we would get. This picture won’t mean anything to you, but I like it, and now we can store things in a dry loft:



Inside the barn, we have moved our two sows. They should be giving birth to piglets very soon. We have now raised several litters of our own piglets born here. We sell most of them and keep some to raise to butchering size. This year we actually butchered and cut up our own pork right here on our property! We hope to keep a couple from these new litters and butcher them before Christmas this winter.

Here is a recent picture of Sally:



I will try to come back later to show you our other sow, Nellie and our boar Rufus. I can’t seem to find the pictures we took of them last weekend.

This past fall we had a new barn built for our goats on the other side of the ravine. It is a 40 x 12 foot building with a 3/4th loft. We still have work we want to do on it, but I am pleased with it overall:



Here is a nice picture of it from a distance, on the upper road to the clearing. You can see the pond in this shot also:



Here are some of the goats inside the new barn:



We have two does that are expecting next month. Here is the one we call Mama Belle. She sure looks pregnant doesn’t she? The smaller one is one of her previous kids, Tiny Tim:



Little Lulu is also expecting, but she doesn’t show as much. This will be her first time kidding. The little face bottom right is the buck we have on loan that provided these pregnancies:



And here are the other wethers, Little Joe and Big Jim:



Here comes the ducks walking by. They like to stay around the goat barn sometimes. We have decided that the dark ducks are Rouens and the whites are Pekins:



There they go off into the water. They spend most of their time in the pond:



The ducks share the pond with our geese. You already saw them visiting us down at the play field by the house, but here they are where they are supposed to be. The gray ones are Toulouse and the white ones ore Chinese. This white one I call Goosy Lucy and the gander I’m calling Sid:



Here is the other gander, Marty:



We have one of the Chinese setting on a nest of goose eggs, so maybe we will get to see some goslings swimming around next month. (I am looking forward to having goose meat for supper some day.) This picture does not show up very good, but that is the nest we made for her and she is spread out in there over 8 or 10 eggs. I’m naming her Mother Goose:



Let me end with some pretty pictures that Christina found as she walked around our homestead this weekend:







We still did not visit the clearing, the maple grove, or the ridge trails, but maybe some time in the future.

I hope you have enjoyed this virtual tour and I also hope you have seen the hand of God here. We feel His presence eveywhere we turn around. He has been so great to all of us!
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8 comments
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HSB Front Porch on April 20, 2009 at 11:04 am
I LOVE the virtual tour! What a great idea. You have an amazing place. Wonderful job you and your family have done…

Thank you so much for sharing with us.

Blessings,

Chasity L. Burrell

Senior Editor Homesteadblogger
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Sarah (Your Cousin) on April 20, 2009 at 5:43 pm
Hello! How are you? I have been doing great! I just wanted to tell Christina she did a wonderful job with the picture's! I Love your ducks! I hope we can come to your house and see them and all of you soon! We Love you all and Please know that we are thinking of you! I hope you have a blessed week! Talk to you really Soon!

~With Lots of Love,

~Sarah~

Ps. The Flower Picture's are really pretty!
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SimpleFolk on April 20, 2009 at 7:39 pm
I just stopped by to congratulate you on being featured, but thank you so much for the amazing tour! You have a beautiful place.

Amy
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Judy on April 22, 2009 at 7:05 pm
Hey KY neighbor, love the photos of everything. Your place is really coming along nicely. The tour was great, makes you feel like your really there. The animals all look happy to be there to. I enjoy your blogs keep up the good work…See ya'll soon. Judy

congrads on being this weeks blogger…!!!!!!!
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Sharon on April 22, 2009 at 10:36 pm
What great pic's! I enjoyed the "tour"!
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karen in MS on April 23, 2009 at 11:28 pm
You are very blessed to have such a wonderful homestead!!

Thanks so much for the pictures. I enjoyed them very much!
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Manna Milling Moms on April 24, 2009 at 6:26 pm
Congratulations on being the Featured Blogger!

You have a beautiful homestead. Blessings and Provisions from the Lord is our sustainability.

In Him, Jill (the big sister)
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Schatzi on April 26, 2009 at 3:13 pm
Congratulations on being featured…what a beautiful place you have. The virtual tour was great. You are truly blessed. Thank you for sharing it with us.

Blessings,

Connie

Our Buff Orpingtons

I haven’t written specifically about our chickens for a while now. We changed out the flock last summer with chicks from McMurray Hatchery. We bought Buff Orpingtons, Black Giants, Light Brahmas, and Partridge Rocks; all large, dual purpose, heavy breeds. Here they are in the box when we got them from the post office on June 24th:



The yellow ones are the Buff Orpingtons which is the breed I want to write about for this post.

Here is what McMurray has to say about them from their catalog:

One time years ago at our Hamilton County Fair the poultry judge was asked to describe the correct plumage color for this variety. Taking out his gold watch he said, "That’s the color for Buff Orpingtons." And pure gold they are, symbolic of great value and high quality. Introduced from England in the late 1800′s, they became one of the most popular farm fowls in this country. These are large, stately birds of quiet disposition. Easy to dress for the table they are white skinned, plump, and juicy, a beautiful eating bird. Their heavy, full plumage make them excellent winter layers, shelling out brown eggs right through cold weather. They also make excellent setters and mothers. These "Golden Beauties" have been one of our most popular varieties for years and years with their glistening plumage and pinkish white skin. Baby chicks are a soft light buff color. (http://www.mcmurrayhatchery.com/product/buff_orpingtons.html)


I think the Wikipedia article on them is pretty accurate. Here is part of it:

Appearance
Some characteristics of an Orpington are:

Heavy (7 to 10 pounds),
Soft, profuse feathering, which almost hides the legs of the bird,
Curvy shape with a short back and U-shaped underline,
A small head with a small comb.
Large and usually tame
Its fluffy feathers that makes it look distinctively large.

Personality
The Orpington chicken is thought of as a highly docile bird and is suitable for families with small children. They are very popular and their popularity is increasing. They also tend to be smarter than other breeds, some people tend to claim their Orpington has performed tricks and they usually come when their name is called.

Eggs
Orpingtons lay between 110 and 160 eggs a year. They do not stop laying in the winter. The eggs are a light brown to tinted white and range from small to large depending on the heredity of the breed. Hens tend to go broody more than other heavy egg breeds, which is to say occasionally.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orpington_(chicken))



Now for some pictures of what our grown Buff Orpingtons look like.

This is the alpha rooster of the flock, King Arthur. I thought King Arthur was an appropriate name for an English breed of chicken:



Isn’t he beautiful?

And here is one of the hens:



This is King Arthur with another of the hens:



I like this picture of Simon feeding them because you can get an idea of the size of King Arthur next to Simon:



In this one you can see our other Buff Orpington rooster back in the cage on the left. His name is Sir Lancelot. He is actually the rooster that we put with the hens in their secluded lot to get pure-bred eggs. That way it didn’t bother the rest of the flock to loose their dominant rooster, King Arthur:



I guess they have been one of our favorite breeds and they seem to be most in demand from folks wanting to purchase chickens from our farm. More than once someone has seen our Buffs and then asked if we have any for sale. Hopefully we will be able to raise some for a profit.

Only 4 of the 7 hens from McMurray survived. A couple died during the first couple months from unknown causes and one was killed during the winter when I failed to close up the coop for the night. We found the remains of the hen along with 2 Partridge Rock roosters. I'm not sure what exactly got them, but it served as a potent reminder that I must be diligent to close the coop every night possible!

I put the four remaining Buff hens and one Buff rooster (Sir Lancelot) in a secluded lot for about three weeks to make sure the eggs would be pure Buff Orpington. When we had a game hen go broody (the one we had named Wingleg) I collected the pure-bred eggs for four days and put them under the setting hen. During those 4 days they only laid 10 eggs, so that is the number that got set under the hen for incubation. 9 of them hatched on Sunday and the 10th hatched out on Monday! I was impressed that we had a 100% hatch rate, all adorable little yellow chicks! I will try to get a picture of them soon and put it in here later.

I had also picked up 6 Buff Orpington chicks from the new Tractor Supply Company store we have in town with the hopes of adding them to the mama hen. Here are the chicks from TSC:



Last night we successfully placed them under the mama hen! At first she was very upset and concerned that something was happening to her chicks and she tried to flog me in the dark. Soon all 6 new chicks were in the pile with the first 10 and Wingleg started cooing and purring to the disturbed chicks and settled down on top of all 16.

This morning I only counted 14 chicks, but I did not disturb them to count them thoroughly. Hopefully all 16 made it through the night.

So far our new chicken experiment is working out well and we are thankful to God for the lessons we are learning.


PS added later:
Those chicks from Tractor Supply turned out to be Red Stars instead of Buff Orpingtons, which are good chickens but won't breed true. Don't trust what they tell you about the breeds of chicken they are selling at TSC as they usually don't really know.
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1 comment
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Judy on April 16, 2009 at 8:47 am
You have beautiful chickens,,love your rooster he is sooo handsome. I am trying to put together a sturdy chicken coop so that the raccoons etc. cant get into it…I miss my chickens and those fresh eggs. I have ordered from McMurray's before, very happy with what they send..

Erica to Work at Summer Camp

Erica found out this weekend that she has been accepted to work at Camp Nathanael this summer!

This is something she has been praying about for some time and is very excited about the possibilities of serving God by ministering to the "Children of the Mountains" that come to camp. It is a Christian camp, but the bigger focus is as a mission to the lost in the area. They even have a program that children can earn a free week by completing Bible lessons and memorizing scriptures. It used to be the only way a child could attend camp, but the past few years the camp has opened it up for paid campers as well.

Erica has attended as a camper for many years and will be a camper again for one week during High School week, but the rest of the summer she will be working.

The problem is that we will have to get used to getting things done here around Pure Water Hollow without her for those summer weeks! She will be greatly missed, but I’m excited for her to have this opportunity. We will have to let our children go to make their own way in the world sooner or later, and this will be one of those steps in that direction. If our children are able to go out into the world as "arrows" for His Kingdom and are able to handle themselves maturely and in a Christ-like manner, then we have done the job that God wants us to do as parents! Of course even then our job will not be over, just different.

If anyone wants to check out the camp here is a link to Camp Nathanael’s website (http://www.campnathanael.org/home.php) and another one to Scripture Memory Mountain Mission (http://www.smmm.org/home.php) which oversees the camp.

On another note, the weather pros are predicting 1-3 inches of snow for us tonight! How about that? It was 80 degrees and sunny yesterday and now we have severe freeze warnings for the next two nights! Like they say, "If you don’t like the weather in Kentucky, stick around 'cause it will change."

God bless everyone.

Goose Eggs vs. Chicken Eggs

We have always appreciated meals consisting of eggs here at Pure Water Hollow. We had gotten used to our own fresh chicken eggs many years ago and can tell a difference in the taste between our chicken eggs and store bought chicken eggs. Recently we acquired some geese, and we have been collecting eggs from two of them, I think.

We have been a bit backwards about eating them and instead have just been keeping them in the fridge. I guess the novelty of having eggs so large kept us from wanting to destroy one.

However, a goose egg takes up a fair amount of room and will not fit into the egg carton!



After accumulating about 15 or so in the refrigerator, it was finally time to take action! Some folks had told us they would not eat a goose egg, but others said that they were good. We decided we needed to find out for ourselves, so last night we had eggs for supper.

(We also had some of our own home raised ham, so it was another great meal of food from our own homestead.) Lisa and Erica fixed scrambled eggs, fried eggs over easy, and an omolet, all with goose eggs!

I don’t do much cooking, so I can’t really comment much on the kitchen part of the meal but Lisa said the first thing they noticed was that the yolks were bigger in proportion to the whites compared to chicken eggs. Other than that, I think the preparation was pretty much the same.

The meal was a great success! There were compliments from all 7 of the customers (us). Everyone liked the eggs at least as well as chicken eggs if not better. It was hard for some to notice a difference and Matthew said he didn’t think he would know they were different if he hadn’t been told. Erica and Christina thought it was all very good.

My omolet (which took up the entire plate and consisted of just two eggs) was delicious, but I noticed it was much “fluffier” and thicker than normal. The taste was pretty much the same, but the texture was different. Everyone noticed the same thing concerning the scrambled eggs. They were fluffier and perhaps a bit richer than usual, but very, very good.

Those who ate the fried eggs noticed the biggest difference. The yellows were much thicker than fried chicken eggs, almost the consistency of honey, with perhaps a richer taste than usual eggs. I think Lisa and Simon liked them better than normal fried eggs, and Timothy was happy with it all!

We usually bring deviled eggs to our church dinners and we are having the next dinner on Easter. We are thinking we will still make a couple of plates from regular chicken eggs but then throw in a few deviled eggs from goose eggs just for fun! Wouldn’t that be a hoot! I bet it would be a great conversation starter around the meal tables!

It seems there is always something interesting going on around our homestead. Maybe we are just easily entertained, but we are still grateful to the Lord for our geese and the novel eggs that they are providing for us!


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4 comments
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~Patricia~ on April 4, 2009 at 7:08 am
I've obviously always known goose eggs would be larger than a chickens – but to see them side by side – WOW. I really like that even your kids are adventerous enough to give them a try. It really makes it more fun.

Thank you for the posting advice – it was really frustrating for a bit. I did upgrade the browser-to IE6, it's the newest this system can run, lol but I can post…for now, we'll see. I'll have to add pictures later as you said though. Or learn to write very descriptively again
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Kelly on April 4, 2009 at 7:37 am
We all loved the picture of the goose egg beside the chicken eggs. We were all saying, "WOW!" haha! Maybe because we are looking at our 4 geese and now waiting for our big eggs. And I'm looking forward to taking some goose deviled eggs to church myself. haha! Great idea!
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Sunflower on April 4, 2009 at 8:06 pm
I used to have a source for goose eggs -I am allergic to chicken eggs and even worse to duck eggs – but not goose eggs! They were a delicious way to have a tasty egg!!! Wish I could still get them!
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janaeel on May 24, 2009 at 10:09 pm
Ive had goose eggs as well and i enjoy them but I thought i would share that I once as a boy had a 21 egg omelet made from quail eggs from the quail we raised at the time. As for me an egg is an egg is an egg.

Janaeel