The Past Month

It has been a long time since I posted and lots of things have been going on around the Donaldson homestead. I will try to give you a quick recap of the past month.

First of all, we said goodbye to a dear friend and brother, Jim Hartman.

Dane spent a wonderful two weeks with Jim in Pennsylvania before the Lord took him home and we are so thankful that they had that time together. The Lord's providence in the whole trip was amazingly clear - what a blessed gift.

During Dane's absence, the Lord was very gracious to the children and I. We had no major catastrophes and farm life went on. The few trials that we faced were great learning experiences for us all.

While Dane was in Pennsylvania, he got to experience the snow again. He took this picture of it for us. Here in the southern hemisphere it is the beginning of summer, and while he was gone we were having some of the hottest days we've had all year.

Dane was also so kind to take some pictures of the food that he ate while he was there. Our diet here, although very good, is much different than what it used to be. We do miss things like jalapenos, peanut butter, pepperoni, cheddar cheese, etc.

Mmmmmm.........Mexican food!

Mmmmm...... Pepperoni Pizza!

Dane brought us home a bag of corn chips (which exploded on the airplane from the pressure, but we ate them anyway :) ) , a jar of salsa, and some cheddar cheese. They were very happily enjoyed by us all.

And speaking of food - Since the Bible speaks of their cleanliness as a food source, the children and I experimented with eating grasshoppers while Dane was gone. The grasshoppers didn't taste bad, in fact Joseph loved them, but it is hard to get past the idea that you're eating a bug, so we haven't prepared any since. Maybe we will work up the nerve again soon - I'll let you know.

Since Dane's return flight stopped for a three hour layover in Houston, his mother Sue and stepfather, Leonard made the drive from Waco to spend a little time with him. Although short, it was a very nice visit for them all. Meme, as the children call their grandmother, sent us all some clothes, as did Jim's wife, Pamela. Thank you!

The Lord blessed us with another special treat as Dane's return flight conveniently coincided with the visit of our friends, Mr. and Mrs. New from Texas. They met up in Houston and got to travel together all the way to Misiones. We enjoyed a great time of fellowship while they were here and were blessed by their generosity and kindness. They brought Dane some parts that he had ordered for his hydroelectric turbine and some much desired reading material. They were so kind to help us out around the homestead and to lend us some helpful advise too.

Here is a picture of Mrs. New, or "Ni", as she let the children call her, reading to the children. They loved it!

And here, is Mr. New, or "Lolo" as the children affectionately think of him, taking a break from his marathon of helping Dane with some of his projects teaching Joseph to ride the calf.

After five days, we said goodbye to our friends. What fun it was to have them here, and we hope to welcome them back again soon.

All sorts of other exciting things have been going on since Dane returned home. Two of the children have had some pretty bad splinters. Joseph had one that was completely embedded in the fleshy part of his palm below his thumb. It took a local anesthetic and a razor blade at the local hospital to reveal a large orange tree spine in his little hand. And below is the huge splinter (or "kindling") that Dane pulled out of Elisabeth's wrist. Ouch!

One of our dogs was bit by a snake and she has been making a slow recovery. We have found two different kinds of venemous snakes right here at the house in the past week and a half.

One day, while we were working outside, Elisabeth discovered this snake right inside our back door. As she ran to get her father, the snake made its way behind the sink in the kitchen. Dane got it with the snake catcher that he made out of a piece of hose and a rope and on his next trip to town, he took it by the snake guy who identified it as a Yarara (pronounced Jadada), a highly venomous snake in these parts.

And remember this snake that Dane got back in July. It turns out that it is venemous too. We had been told this previously by one of our neighbors who saw the picture of Dane holding it then and then the snake man confirmed it. He found another one just like it - or maybe the same one - living in the big Ford truck under the carport. We don't know which one of the snakes bit the dog, but we are now convinced after what the dog has gone through (I will spare you the details) that dog's are quite resilient animals.

We still have so much to learn about farming here. Tending to the soil is an ongoing need as we are learning the hard way when it comes to many of our garden plants. The green beans did great, as did the lettuce and swiss chard but now seem to be suffering from some type of deficiency, so we are trying to rectify that problem. The tomato plants are growing in abundance, but have slow developing fruit, another sign of nutrient deficiency, so we are working to rectify that as well. I think that we are learning a lesson in the dangers of cross pollination when it comes to melons and squash, as those plants are thriving, but have little fruit. We have found that corn, onions, cucumbers, cabbage, black beans, parsley, and leeks do great here with little attention at all. Praise the Lord, we have more of these things than we know what to do with, a particular blessing since we have been eating a vegetarian diet since the proprane refrigerator stopped functioning properly. We have also been picking pears by five gallon buckets full off our neighbor's property for a couple of weeks now. Yum! We certainly have come a long way from last year's gardening venture and are thankful with what the Lord has seen fit to provide us and pray the lessons we are learning now will pay off in the year's to come.

Here is some of the corn that the children harvested yesterday and fruit from the Philodendron Selloum plants that grow right outside of our house.

As you can see, we sure are enjoying the corn.

Here are some pictures of other interesting things that we have found around the farm:

Abby found a twig outside that had what looked like a shell attached to it, so she put it in our pen cup. Well two days ago, we discovered what the shell like thing was - an egg sack for praying mantises. We had no idea they were so small when they first hatched. Interestingly, they let themselves down to the floor on strings of spiderlike silk.

Here is a pretty moth that Abby caught in the house the other day.

And one of the children found this interesting looking little bug on the firewood pile. It looks kind of like a bug version of the long horn cow.

And lastly, Dane was marking off where he wanted to make a new road on our property using Google earth and made a silly observation. He said, "I was looking at the river Bonito that runs next to our property and I thought hey, that kind of looks like the gulf. Anyways, it puts our house a little too close to Oklahoma but oh well. We would own everything from Wichita falls to Texarkana, and down to Houston and over past San Antonio."

Have a blessed day,

Jessica

Until We Meet Again Good Brother

Yesterday’s Sabbath was the beginning of our good brother Jim’s eternal rest with the Lord. Praise God and may he be glorified! Jim received comforting assurance from the Lord and enjoyed these days with his wife, family, and brethren and went home to the Lord in the evening. Thank you for your thoughts and prayers.

He ran his race, he kept the faith and endured unto the end proclaiming and not being offended of his lord Christ Jesus.

The Dane Donaldson Family

A Prayer Request

Dane left for Buenos Aires last night to complete Joseph's United States citizenship documentation and to complete some other paperwork for our land title here in Argentina. From Buenos Aires he will fly to Pennsylvania for two weeks to spend some time with our good brother, Jim.



It seems that Jim's cancer is continuing to spread. He now has tumors in his liver, his chest, and one pressing upon his brain. Jim is at peace with what the Lord has given him. You can read his latest post on his blog at the following address:http://jmhj.blogspot.com.



Please pray for Jim, his wife Pamela, his extended family and friends, and for Dane as he travels to and from the United States again.



Dane took our camera with him, but I will continue to keep you updated over the next couple of weeks.

Jessica

We had a great week and are enjoying some of our first fruits of spring. Everything seems to be growing well and we are trying to stay on top of the watering and weeding. We haven't had any rain in a couple of weeks, so we have had plenty of dry days for working outside.

Sarah completed her 5th grade curriculum on Tuesday. We are very proud of her, as she worked very hard to finish up all her subjects just a couple weeks past our original stop date that we extended due to our long winter break. Now she will get to take a break from her studies until we start our next school year in March. She has been such a help this week, making bread, tending the chickens, cutting vegetables for lunch, etc, etc. Her siblings still have several weeks until they complete their schoolwork, but there does appear to be an end in sight.

In the following video, you can see how laundry is hung when the correction (corrección) is moving through. It requires a lot of fancy footwork and can be quite amusing to watch though not experienced directly.

The corrección consists of a particular type of ant that travels in armies by the thousands in search for a new home. They cover the ground in an area so that it appears to be moving. The ants are quite determined and don't bother much during their move which typically lasts only about an hour or two, but if someone unknowingly disturbs them, the result is often painful as you can imagine.

Well that is about all that I have for now. Have a blessed Sabbath Day!

Jessica

More First Fruits

Dane had two and half of our bee supers processed yesterday at the honey coop in Obera and he walked away with about 12 gallons of honey which comes to about 110 pounds! INTA, the ag coop in town, was promoting their new honey extraction facility, so there was a television crew on scene filming the process. For being there and helping, Dane got all the honey processed for free!

We enjoyed some honey this morning on pancakes....Mmmmm, and after lunch we made butter and honey rolls.....Mmmmm, for our Sabbath morning breakfast.

Thanks be to the Lord for this wonderful provision and we look forward to eating, sharing, and maybe even selling some of the honey.

First Fruits

Our first fruits of the season. We are so very thankful to the Lord for His provisions!

New Washing Machine?

Having an engineer around can be quite an adventure. For example, yesterday, Dane did the laundry. In what, you might ask? ............

The Cement Mixer

The whole day's worth of laundry in one load, and it actually came out nice and clean!

:)

Farmer José invites you to check out some of the things that are growing around here.

Cucumber plants.... about 70

Watermelon plants.... about 32

Tomato plants... about 200

In this picture: carrots, green onions, swiss chard, green beans, and cabbage

This is one of our two corn fields. Dane spaced the corn out so that we could plant beans and squash between the plants. This past week after two full weeks of hoeing Dane, Elijah, David and the Lima boys, Ricardo, Lucas, and Matias finished hoeing it and the girls planted lima beans next to the corn stalks and about six different varieties of summer and winter squash between the corn plants.

We also have about eight canteloupe plants growing, about a dozen okra, and about twenty voluntary sweet pea plants.

Last week in the larger field that Dane had finished plowing, he, his helpers and the children planted potatoes, corn, and black beans. We still have more potatoes to plant and the areas that didn't get planted we will plant, Lord willing, the rest of the miscellaneous seeds that we have left.

Our bell pepper seeds never sprouted, so I replanted some last week - we will see what happens. We either planted too early (they like really warm soil) or they are not tolerant of the soil conditions in which we are trying to grow them. The egg plant seeds never sprouted either, but we likely won't replant those this year. Furthermore, some pest decided to eat up all of our lettuce seedlings, so we hope to replant them in the coming week.

On to other things.....

One of our chickens laid an egg prematurely last week - it didn't have a shell. But it was still just an egg on the inside. Our neighbor joked that it was fine to eat, but we'd never get a chick out of it.

The man who makes yokes in our area, Mr. Hector Dos Santos, made and delivered a yoke for our two young bulls that Dane hopes to make oxen. It is beautiful and Dane looks forward to having time to train them.

Dane also cut down two dead trees yesterday morning and made these stairs to get up into the second story more easily. He hopes to begin laying the floor for the second story this next week. Anyway, the stairs turned out really nice and eventually we will use them to get into the attic from the second story when Dane builds the staircase on the outside of the house.


The children really have enjoyed going up and down the stairs. We have had to keep a close eye on Farmer José who also likes to go up and down because at this point there is nothing to go up to - just rafters.

I forgot to mention in my last post that the new boxes that Dane gave our three bee hives were almost full of honey two weeks ago, so Dane prepared some supers and Elijah and Abigail painted them. He put them on the week before last and the bees are already working to fill their new additions. How exciting! Dane is making plans for a harvest soon.

Dane also prepared two nucleus boxes and put them out in the forest in the hopes of attracting two more hives. Honey is a high demand product in these parts and it is hard to come by. We haven't been able to find any in the store for about three months now. The local ag extension office has a coop that will extract local farmers' honey and bottle it and put the individual farmer's name on the label for a small fee. Until we aquire all the necessary equipment, it sounds like a great deal for getting our honey processed.

We are so very grateful to the Lord for all these blessings. We pray that we are good stewards with the things He has entrusted us with. Furthermore, we pray that the Lord sees fit to bless us with fruit enough for ourselves and for our neighbors.

Have a great week.

Jessica

A Time to Sow

The weather has been beautiful here and spring is in full swing. We continue to plant and prepare to plant in different places around the farm. Dane is nearing the completion of plowing the field that we planted corn in last year. The field was rough planted then (Dane just burned the vegetation and cleaned it up enough to put the corn seed in the ground) and it has never been plowed until now, so it has been a lot of work clearing rocks, roots, tree stumps, etc. It has been hard on the little crawler tractor too, with Dane breaking the suspension once, a plow blade another time, and bending another plow blade possibly beyond repair. Dane increased the field about three times the size that it was last year in order to plant potatoes, black beans, and corn. Last year we grew enough corn to feed our chickens for about six months, so we are excited about the possibility of growing more and being able to provide for all the animals for the year. Below is a picture of the part of the field that is ready for planting.

This is a picture of some potatoes that we are chitting in preparation of their planting next week.

We have also been cleaning up around the little corn plants in the other field in preparation to plant lima beans and squash. In fact, the girls started planting lima beans yesterday, until Dane who was clearing out some weeds with the tractor in some of the wider spots between the corn turned the tractor over on its side. Thankfully, no one was hurt, but the planting came to a halt as all the children watched with amazement as their father, who has got to be the strongest man in the world to them, winched the tractor right side up with chains, straps, and a strong old stump left in the ground up in the field.

We have also gotten three long rows of tomatoe plants planted in the garden and hope to get another one planted this week.

Here is a picture of some huge leeks that grow wild around here. We have many in our garden and I use them for cooking all the time, but all of them started from wild leeks that the children gathered from around the farm and transplanted into the garden.

We have been enjoying the first fruits of spring. The Brazilian Cherry trees on our property have yielded their fruit and we have enjoyed the picking and the eating. We also discovered another type of cherry tree in the pasture. The berries taste just like a bing cherry and have the same type of flesh and texture, but some have two or three smaller seeds instead of one. Anyway, we have enjoyed them alot too.

Dane and Erik Barney worked on the hydroelectric project this past week. Barney brought a turbine that was built at the university to be tested on Dane's setup, but it didn't make much power because this particular type of turbine is really not suited for the situation that we have on our creek. The professor was very impressed with the piping and dam and the force of the water coming through the pipe which is encouraging to Dane. With the right type of turbine, we could possibly have enough energy to power several houses. So, the project continues and Dane is still contemplating building his own turbine or purchasing a prefabbed turbine.

The cows and chickens are doing well. We are still getting around a gallon of milk a day from our cow, who appears to be holding back on us, but we are very pleased with a gallon. And, our egg production has increased to fifteen eggs on average per day.

Where do little boys who have just had bathes go? Straight to a muddy spot in the yard - that's where.

We went and played in the creek this morning and the children have just returned from there again this afternoon.

This is butterfly season around here and some of the butterflies are huge, so naturally some of the caterpillars are huge too.

This is a short video clip of all the butterflies around the house. They zoom around by the hundreds.

We hope all is well with you all. Take care and until next time.

Jessica

Rainy Days

We have enjoyed some rainy days this past week. It has slowed things down a bit around here, but we are so thankful to have the plentiful showers and a dry roof over our heads. Our garden plants are especially liking all the water.

We are getting just over a gallon of milk each day from the cow now (we milk once a day in the morning), and what a tremendous blessing it is to have the milk.

The first couple of weeks we weren't getting much milk and Dane could tell that the cow was really holding back. She looked and felt so full, but Dane could never get her to let down. Finally, one day he told the children to let the calf in near the cow while he milked. Well, that did the trick. She let down and that first day we had nearly two gallons of milk! We are so thankful for the fresh milk and look forward to making cheese and other dairy products again.

We have also been blessed with anywhere from nine to thirteen eggs each day! Yeah! Praise the Lord!

Dane has a plan going for the hydroelectric system. The dam and piping is completed and all that is lacking is the turbine, motor, and wiring. He plans, Lord willing, for the turbine to drive a three phase motor that will generate 380 volts to transmit the power some 250 meters to the house. Then at the house, he plans to use a power supply to convert 380 volt - 3 phase to 24 volt DC up to 40 amps. Then he will use a three-stage charge controller to charge a 12 volt battery bank and divert the excess power to heat water.

In the meantime, Dane and Professor Barney plan to install a turbine that was made at the engineering university in Obera for test purposes and if it has good results Dane may pattern his turbine based on the same design. Professor Barney would like to hold an onsite demonstration for his students if it all works out. The turbine is a banky style cross flow turbine with a simple design that is easy to build and has high efficiency.

We have seen some interesting things around the homestead this past week.

Below is a pretty moth that made its way into the house the other morning.


Our guymbae (?sp - I'm sure this spelling isn't anywhere close) plant is fruiting, which is very interesting. The fruit will open and close several times over the next couple of months and in the process will do some very strange looking things.

We have also enjoyed seeing several toucans on the property over the past couple of weeks. They are camera shy and I have failed to get an up close picture. There is one in the following picture in the top of the tree at the center of the picture. You might be able to make it out if you click on the picture to make it bigger.

We hope to get some more planting done this week. It is time to plant squash, beans, and more corn.

Well I better be off to get some house work done. Hope you all have had a great week too. Take care.

Jessica