Spring is in the Air

The old peach tree on our property has beautiful blossoms on it.

The temperatures have continued to stay nice. This "winter" has been considerably mild compared to last year's. Most days are in the 70's and the nights fall to the 50's. We have also had little rain, aside from a nice sideways driving rain and hail storm that wetted us inside our still unfinished house and knocked out the power to our internet tower for nearly a week.

The flies and moths are beginning to make their appearances again - another sign that spring is approaching. We have been amazed at the hundreds of different moths and flies that are in this area. There were few days last spring that we did not see a new flying insect that we hadn't seen before. This is a picture of a beautiful moth that came into the house the other night. At the top of its wings it had a glittery silver band and the circles in its wings were transparent.

We are pleased to announce that we had our first visitors from the U.S. two weeks ago, Mr. Reed and Mr. New. These two Christian gentlemen were in Argentina on a business trip and graciously stopped by our neck of the woods to see this area and to visit. We had a wonderful and uplifting time of fellowship with them and hope that they will return for another visit sometime.

Projects, projects, projects....

Dane's list of projects is growing. He got one of the eight sections of the attic roof done and we are very pleased with the outcome. He hopes to get the others completed soon.

In the meantime, Mr. Barney, the engineering professor from the University in Obera who has 40 years of experience with microhydro came out here a couple of weeks ago and looked at the creek down from our house, and the river and said that he thought the creek has plenty enough flow to build a microhydro electricity system on it. He felt that putting one on the river would be too complicated and expensive. So, after some careful calculations done by Mr. Barney on his watch calculator and Dane on his cellphone calculator, they are thinking that the creek has enough energy to supply our home with 7 -30 kilowatt hours / day, depending on how much rain we have had. We are excited about this. Mr. Barney is now waiting for Dane to build a dam so that they can install a turbine. Dane worked on site for a couple of days and says he is ready to do the concrete work. Lord willing, our microhydro system will be up and running soon!

Mr. Barney and Dane also have an alcohol microdistillery unit in the works. They have started making plans to build one so that we can supply our own fuel needs here eventually. They have begun the search for parts and have been visiting with local fabricators. Lord willing, we should be able to supply all of our fuel needs with just a couple acres of sugarcane in the not so distant future.

The time to plant things like sugarcane, corn, and many of our garden vegetables is coming upon us, so Dane has purchased a couple more implements, a disc and a box blade, so that he can prepare the planting sites.

We have decided that we want to keep our chickens in chicken tractors. They have become a terrible nuisance and instead of interrupting their free ranging, Dane has started plans for the construction of at least two tractors that we can move them around in. The current chicken house will most likely become a tool shed in the future, and the chicken yard, an all purpose animal enclosure.

Needless to say, Dane has a lot to do, but this fact is a great blessing, and I pray that the Lord be magnified in all our family endeavors.

Here is a picture of all the children working to make sweet rolls one afternoon. Cooking is one job they all are usually more than happy to help with. They did an excellent job on them too!

Abby and Sarah also helped me butcher two roosters last week. Besides the killing, the girls completely cleaned one rooster and and removed all the meat from both after they were cooked. They were very excited about their contribution to the menu the next day. We enjoyed a nice pot of chicken and gravy over rice.

We also wanted to give a special thanks to Kris Ante over at http://www.anteagrarians.com/ for nominating our blog as a Brillant weblog in July. We really appreciate our friends in other places that have an interest in our family's adventures. Kris, her husband Logan, and their three sons are on their own agrarian adventure in Texas. Through their blog, we have enjoyed having the privilege of watching their Christian agrarian homestead take shape.

Well I just stepped outside for a minute and our goat and her two kids have apparently decided to let themselves out of the pasture. I snapped a picture of them by the tent. The kids are growing so fast.

Well it is time to get the next meal going.

Take care,

Jessica