6/08/10 - 3rd Day - Late Afternoon. Greetings y'all. Busy and hard day here on the ranch on this beautiful June day. We woke up with a plan because we had a pretty busy day ahead. Jennifer and I began harvesting the collard green seeds from our prize collard that made it all the way through the hot summer last year, then made it all the way through the winter, and was still producing this spring. We let it go to seed so we could harvest its awesome seed for the future...
As we were processing the seed, Jennifer and I talked about how most preachers, when they read the parables in the scriptures about the "seed", sowing seed, etc., they don't really even know what all went into that whole process. They don't know how much work the sower put into choosing the seed, saving the seed, protecting the seed, and such - all before he EVER went out to sow it. Here is the product of this one beautiful collard plant:
Meanwhile, Robert and Sarah were harvesting Agarito berries, Tracy was getting the burlap bags ready for our wheat crop, and Danielle was arranging to have our generator and water pump taken into the shop. Somewhere around 10 a.m. we all loaded up and headed into Brownwood with the generator and pump. We dropped them off at the shop, then we headed to Home Depot for Wheat harvesting supplies (mainly some buckets, metal twist ties for the burlap bags, etc.). After lunch we made it over to our friend Richard's farm to begin harvesting wheat. Richard has an old 1950's or 1960's harvester/thresher so he harvested and threshed the wheat, then we would bag it all up and load it into my pickup. After about a ton, Robert and I drove the truck to our ranch to unload, while the girls all continued to bag and bucket up the crop. Robert and I unloaded, picked up our 16 ft. trailer, then headed back to the scene of the crop. When we go there, the ladies (and Richard) were all done, and were ready to load up the trailer and truck. We ended up getting almost 4000 lbs. of wheat (2 tons). We then hauled it all back here to the ranch and unloaded it all by hand... here is the pickup and trailer backed up to the office, where we are currently storing the wheat:
Personally I am very tired, slightly injured, and... well... very tired. Richard says he will have oats ready to harvest in about a week or so, so I am intending to get a bunch of that too. All of this will go as animal feed, possible seed for the future, and for our own bread as well. Word on the grapevine is that Mr. Woods is picking up Pizza for tonight, which will help heal my wounds. We are all feeling very satisfied after a great day's work... but there is even more to do tomorrow.
Praise God for His increase, and there is rain in the forecast possibly for tonight and tomorrow. We need it.
Your servant in Christ Jesus, learning about God's Agrarianism and what He has to say to us through His glorious parables.
Michael Bunker
4 comments:
That made me SO happy to read :) Whenever I start flagging, having doubts, hard times, mental trips, etc I check out what you have going on and it gets me energized and going again. A few questions: how much wheat does your family go through in a year? And what kind of wheat is it? Does Richard have any plans to use horses etc to harvest the wheat down the road?
Michelle, Glad my post made you happy!
I have no idea how much wheat we go through a year. No guess, but I would say it is a lot. But even using a lot, wouldn't add up to more than a couple of hundred pounds a year, I would guess, which would only be a few bushels.
Richard is a friend and has been very helpful, but he is not "one of us". He farms mostly organically, lives off-grid, etc. but he really doesn't see most things the way we do. He does many of the same things, but for different reasons. He is currently trying to sell his ~60 acre farm near here, if you are interested. He has an off-grid small cabin that is solar, with a catchwater tank already attached. He is just a tad south and west of Bangs, so he is about 15 minutes from here on the back roads. If anyone is interested in his farm, let me know.
Michael
Thanks for the post. How is the garlic coming? Very nice to have a friend like Richard. I have more to say but i am late late late.
Peace. Todd
Sorry you guys had to endure pizza without us, though we wanted to be there for the wheat harvest.
We're still praying for that rain to hit home!
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