The Past Month's Adventures

A lot of time has passed since my last post, so this post may be long. I have lots of pictures and exciting things to share.

First of all, Elisabeth, John, and I did make it to Buenos Aires to apply for John's passports last month. It was a fast trip, but very fruitful. We left on a bus on a Sunday evening, arrived in BA the next morning, applied for both a U.S. passport and an Argentine passport, and then returned on a bus that night to arrive back in Misiones on Tuesday morning. Whew!!!! We were tired, but were blessed with John's Argentina passport two and half weeks after we applied for it! Dane just returned this past week from completing the application process for John's U.S. passport, and Lord willing, that should arrive within two weeks. Our littlest guy is almost ready to travel!

We discovered on this trip to Buenos Aires a most amazing thing in this country that I hadn't realized before because I rarely get out. We have known for a long time that the culture here is family oriented and children are looked upon with fondness by most, but I did not know that there was a rule - "Mujeres con bebes tienen prioridad", or in English "Women with babies have priority." Can you imagine what this means? It happened first in McDonald's. Elisabeth and the baby and I were standing in line to use the women's restroom when a McDonald's employee came and got me and informed me of the rule, "Mujeres con bebes tienen prioridad," she said. Imagine my surprise when she ushered me into the bathroom in front of all the other waiting women to use the restroom first! Once in the restroom, there was another line of other waiting women with children, but when they saw me they ushered me in front of them seeing that my baby was the youngest! Ha! What kind of place is this, I thought. It happened again at the Argentina Federal Police where we went to apply for John's passport. We got in line behind about 50 people only to be quickly ushered into the building to a special line for women with babies. What a wonderful concept. I imagine something like this would be so quickly abused somewhere else, but here, I suppose it is a respected cultural thing. Looking back to my trip to Buenos Aires with Abby and Joseph when we applied for his U.S. passport, I now understand why they let us ride the subway for free - they wouldn't allow me to buy a ticket and quickly ushered me through the handicapped entrance to the train because I was toting a baby.

A few days after we returned from Buenos Aires, we had some visitors from Paraguay. Our visitors were strangers to us, but had learned of us through a friend in Texas. They quickly became friends too, and we were so blessed by their visit. They graciously brought their own blankets, delicious homegrown and made foods for all eighteen of us, and their Bibles and hymnals in order to worship and study the Word of God together. They were very forgiving and didn't seem a bit uncomfortable in our modest accomodations. We had two wonderful days of fellowship, food, Bible study, singing, and stories with our guests before they returned to their homes in Paraguay. We basked in the glow of their visit for days after they left. It was such a blessed time for us. They have invited us to come and visit them and we plan to do so in October.

From the top left to right is: Jonathan and Adrianna, Daniel, Matthew, and Irene.
Lower left to right is: Rebecca and Ethel, Esther, and Carol (from Plainview, Texas).

Our neighbors, Horacio and Lucy, over at the Chacra Mariposa, made us a CD of pictures that they had taken when we were there visiting one day and gave it to us as a gift recently. Here are a few pictures from that day. This was just a couple weeks before John was born.

I mentioned in my last post that Dane had finished the floor in the second story. He also got some walls up there too, so that when our guests came we had divided bedroom areas. I still haven't gotten any good pictures of the upstairs yet, but below is one in our new bedroom just after he had finished the floor. We had a bee box wall and curtains for a few nights before Dane was able to begin the real walls.

Here is a picture of Joseph helping me to scramble some eggs. You can see all the additional space that we now have downstairs behind him since we moved the children's beds upstairs. The tape on Joseph's nose was to keep him from picking a scab that was there.

Dane has been working on the outside of the house too. He continues to get it closed in more all the time. He really got motivated to get it closed in quickly recently when vampire bats started attacking our cows at night. Thankfully, that activity has seemed to subside.

Dane has been doing a lot of work on the roads into our farm. Trying to improve the old one and make a new one. The work has been hard and it has been really hard on his tract vehicle and implements. He has had to weld the implement arms and several of the implements. The roads are slowly getting better and better.

Dane has also been working with the bees a lot and has brought home another colony recently. That brings the total to fourteen working colonies. He had a problem with one a little over a week ago and it may have to be exterminated. The colony has grown huge, it is one of the first three that he bought, and it is very aggressive. All the bees here are Africanized and can be very dangerous if a colony becomes overly aggressive. While changing the boxes on this colony the bees began to sting him through his protective gear. Dane set down the box pieces and his smoker and ran down the road to escape them, but they persued. Elisabeth, David, and Joseph were back at the top of the hill in a little shack, not too far from the hives, and Dane began to worry about the bees finding them as the sky was becoming black with angry bees. He went to the window and asked the children if they had been stung and at that moment a bee stung Joseph. The children had to make a run for the truck which by this time was crawling with bees too. Each of them were stung between fifteen to twenty times. Once they were far enough away from the scene, Dane was able to pull over and get the bees that were in the truck out. And since he was about 40 minutes from town, he then drove to the hospital in Obera as a precaution in case one of the children had an adverse reaction. Joseph and David were administered shots to counteract the stings even though they were only showing signs of minor swelling. Elisabeth wasn't swelling at that time, so she was sent here home with Benedryl. We continued to remove stingers from her head that night. The stings never slowed down Dane and the boys, but Elisabeth woke up very swollen and sore the next day and acted quite miserable. By the next day though, she was back to herself. Dane hoped that the temperatures would drop enough so that the bee colony would die due to exposure that night, but they didn't. He returned the next morning and reset their box and he is now thinking of an extermination plan.

Well enough about bees. Here are some pictures of some other interesting insects that we have found around the farm recently.

This one is a newly hatched or emerged (what is the word I'm looking for?) moth. Its wings were still curled and it could not fly.

This is a huge wolf spider that has made its home in our kitchen.

This is a little armored beetle that is marked similarly to a ladybug.

Here is a pretty moth that Abby found on the chicken tractor.

This is a newly hatched walking stick. It was really tiny and hard to get a good picture of.

We just recently had five new chicks hatch too. The children love to watch the chicks run around with their mother.

Here is Elijah testing out Sarah's bicycle with a "spare". An old wheel from a baby stroller. It didn't work well, but it sure was funny to watch him try and ride over the bumps.

Homeschooling is wonderful. These pictures show that even the baby gets involved in school time.

Lastly, we bought our plane tickets and after a trip to visit our new friends in Paraguay in late October, we will be flying to Miami. It will be a sad day when we leave here, but we look forward to our next step in the journey the the Lord is leading us on.

Well, I hope I haven't left too much out about our past month. We hope that all is well with you and yours.

Have a blessed evening,

Jessica

Argentina Homestead Update

There is lots going on on the Donaldson Family Homestead these days.


I forgot to mention a couple of posts ago that Dane sold all of our honey harvest on a trip to town one day. Everyone he mentioned that he had honey to, asked him to sell them as much as he could. So the honey went, and people are still asking for more. That was a while ago, and we just got a text message the other day, asking if we had any honey for sale from a business in town.


After Dane's successful sale, he set about buying several more colonies. We now have 13 thriving colonies, which, Lord willing, would be a start to producing a nice middle class income here.


Dane and Elijah have spent considerable time caring for and feeding the new bees. Needless to say, the bees have been busy, and despite the winter temperatures, Dane is expecting to start harvesting honey in September.


Here is a picture of several new bee boxes that Dane has painted for the new colonies.





Here is Elijah with a bee smoker as he and Dane were on their way from one group of hives to another.

After Dane's tractor accident, he had some repairs to make on it. Within a couple of days of getting the tractor going again, it blew a head gasket, so he had to take it apart and replace it. He also had the head machined and a valve job done on it.

Dane finished the second story floor this past week and moved the children's beds upstairs. We now have a lot more room upstairs and down. 880 square feet has never felt so roomy! I would have added pictures of the upstairs, but our computer is acting up and we can't download right now - hopefully we can include some next time.

Dane has also been cleaning up the farm and getting it ready to sell. We believe that we have a buyer, a good friend and brother, so we couldn't be more thankful.

The children and I have taken some time off from our schoolwork in order to get ready for our upcoming move. When we get a few more things packed up, we will hit the books again for a few more weeks and then take a break again in October, when we plan to fly back to the U.S.

To continue, the Lord has blessed us with a regular supply of rain these days, and we have had cooler temperatures too.

Diapers drying over the stove

Little John enjoying the buntings and blankets that Meme made

Elijah had five stitches put into his lip at the hospital in town after his sister accidently catapulted a log into his face. In addition to the lip injury, he had several cuts in his mouth, bruised gums, a scraped cheek, and a black eye. As is his nature though, he was more concerned about his sister feeling badly than he was about his injuries. Praise the Lord, he is healing nicely.

Elisabeth, John, and I are traveling to Buenos Aires tomorrow evening, Lord willing, in order to apply for John's United States and Argentina passports on Monday. Dane will have to go soon after in order to finish the process, but hopefully we will have John's passports in the near future. Like Joseph's, we made his passport photos here at the house. He did very well as I took about 50 some pictures of him. We did get several that would make fine passport photos. The following photo won't work because of the wrinkles in the background, but it was a good picture of our newest little guy, so I thought I would share it. Who do you think he looks like? Maybe it's the hair, but I think he looks a little like his grandfather :).

The children never cease to find interesting things around the farm.

In this picture, Abby caught a bird that had gotten trapped in our shade cloth covered garden.

Abby found this strange flower growing on a vine, and Elijah climbed a tree to pick it for her.

And Elisabeth found this butterfly. It looks very much like a monarch. I guess that would be a question for our neighbors over at the Chacra Mariposa (Butterfly Farm).

Jessica

4,800 miles as the crow flies

Our current project is trying to figure out how the get from here to there:

Here is a picture of where the farm is in Kentucky. (you should be able to click on these pictures to see them bigger)

Here is a picture of the local towns around the farm.

Here is the outline of the farm. It is mostly forested.

Kentucky scenes

Well, we are moving ahead trying to prepare for the big move.
We have some more pictures from the homestead in Kentucky and we thought we would share them:

Here is the entrance to the farm looking from the county road.

From the front 'yard' looking at the pond. The pond is 15 feet deep.

This is the Allen family cemetary near the entrance to the farm. The farm is on Allen road.

One of the chicken coops. The chicken house is pretty fancy!

Here is the garden, MMMM veggies.

This is the inside of the phone booth. There is no phone inside the house.

Berries ready for auction. We are so excited about the berry farming!

Here is the entrance to the farm looking from the 2nd story deck of the house.


On the left is the chrysanthymums plot, then the grapes (table and wine grapes), then berries (blackberries and raspberries). The strawberries have been planted in another location this year, they rotate the strawberries.


More Berries!


More Grapes! They are 3 years old this year so there should start to be some fruit soon.


Inside the barn.

From the deck, the furnace house and pasture.

Here is the living area as seen from the kitchen.

A view of the upstairs. We don't really have a good idea about how things are laid out but with all the room, we hope that we can be very hospitable.

Donaldsons In Kentucky!

Well, we have some big news! The Donaldsons in Argentina are soon to be, Lord willing, the Donaldsons in Kentucky!

The Lord has opened the door for us to move and take over an Amish farm in Kentucky, and we couldn't be more excited and humbled to have this opportunity. We are making preparations and hope to be in the U.S. by the end of October.

Here are a few pictures of the farm.

The Barn

The Gardens

House Front (taken from barn)

Right now I don't know what else to say, as we are just in awe at the way the Lord has worked this whole thing out.

We will keep you posted along the way as we make our transition.

Have a blessed evening,

Jessica