Pictures From Our Visit With the News

The News were so kind as to send us some pictures that they had taken during their visit here. We thought that you might enjoy them. The dates printed on the pictures are not correct. The pictures were actually taken in early December.

Mr. New, Elijah, Joseph, and Dane

David testing some overripe cucumbers to see if they are bitter while Abby and Elisabeth look on.

Sarah, Elijah, Abby, and Joseph :) singing hymns.

Dane and I enjoying some ice cream in Obera.

Our family at the bus station in Obera.

Snake and Other Happenings

This morning I came down the stairs to find a snake in the kitchen! It was another Jarara, a venomous snake. Praise the Lord we slept in for a while until it was light outside so that the house was lit enough to see it! Anyways, Dane quickly came down and removed its head with a machete. After breakfast he skinned it in order to tan the skin.

Now on to other things that have been going on around the farm.......

The children began milking the cow by themselves several weeks ago. It is so funny to watch them because they all milk her together at the same time - each of them milking out a teet. They have been doing a great job at it too.

Dane has been fencing in our new pasture. Last week he got all three of the hot wires strung and our front gate to the property built and installed. Today, he began stringing the other three ground wires.

The fencing has been hard work - especially for the littlest of our carpenters.

After a hard mornings work, Joseph fell asleep in the grass under a tree.

Our tomatoes are starting to ripen. Here are the tomatoes that Abby and Sarah picked for our lunch today.

We enjoyed some nice rainy days. And the girls and I got some sewing done. In the picture below, Abby, Elisabeth, and Sarah are making some hand towels out of some toweling material that Mrs. New bought for them while she was here on her visit.

Last week, most of us were afflicted with a stomach ailment, but thankfully it passed quickly.

Yesterday, Dane made some bamboo fishing poles for the children and we went down to the river to fish and swim for a while. I didn't get a picture of the poles or the fishing, but I will try to include one the next time we head back down there. The children didn't catch anything, but had a lot of bites and lost all there bait to the hungry fish (grasshoppers, worms, and bad cheese that they rounded up from around the house). Dane decided that they probably need smaller hooks next time they fish.

Creeping things......

This is a picture of a wolf spider, the most common house spiders that we have around here, that Abby caught in our kitchen sink one morning.

And what is this? Abby found this strange looking insect last night.

Well, I will leave you with these before and after pictures of the entrance to our property.

The first picture was taken two years ago and the second was taken today. In the second picture, you can see our new front gate. What a difference in scenery, ehh?

Next to our new gate, Dane hung a sign that says "Donaldson Family" that our friend and escribana, Natalia, made for us.

Fence Posts and Other Things

The week before last, Dane got all the logs drug up here from the forest, and since he has been cutting fence posts and putting them along the new fence line.



He has learned to make pretty straight cuts with the chainsaw.



After cutting three or four logs, he had most of the posts he needed, so we have a lot more wood left for other things. You can see some of the cut posts along the chicken yard fence line.


Here is a picture of the posts that he has put in for the front gate.


We enjoyed a walk to the neighbor's property to pick pears this past Sabbath morning.




On the way there, we saw this bamboo shoot (Elijah is standing in front of it) that was tiny two weeks ago, but as you can see the bamboo grows very quickly around here.


After we picked pears, we went to check the banana plants to see if the bananas were ripe yet, but they are still too small.



This pretty plant was growing near the bananas.



And this is the view from the banana plants. You can see our house off in the distance.



And on our way back to the house, we found a wild squash vine and picked two nice sized squash and have enjoyed eating them the past couple of days. We love finding wild things to eat around here. We are so thankful that even when some of our crops are struggling, the Lord has blessed us with other fruit of the land.

Yesterday afternoon, we went down to the river to swim and our neighbor, Javier was there fishing. After swimming for a while, he, Dane, and David decided to climb the cliff that separates that particular part of the river from the rest of our property, and they made a very interesting discovery. They found one of our missing goats, or at least her skull. The one that escaped fifteen minutes after Dane got her home from the man he had bought her from. She had made herself at home in a cleft of the cliff and apparently the strap that Dane had wrapped around her horns had gotten stuck on a spine and she had gotten tangled up around some other trees. It appears that she lived there comfortably for a while before becoming tangled. Though we are sad that we lost her, we are glad to know what became of her. Maybe someday we will discover what happened to the mother and her baby that escaped a few weeks later.

Lastly, here is a picture of a strange little bug that Dane found the other day. It was very brightly colored, orange and blue, and ran around with its tail curled up in the air in a defensive mode like a scorpion.

Logging

The past few weeks Dane has been logging in the jungle close to the river. He found several dead trees there that he is harvesting to make fence posts. The work has been a bit treacherous since the trees overlooked an approximate eight foot drop off onto a twenty foot ledge that overlooked another sixty foot drop off (does that make sense?).

First he macheted a path through the jungle so that he could get the track vehicle down there to haul up the trees. This path clearing took nearly a full two weeks.

Thank the Lord Dane had his trusty crew, Elijah and David, along to help with the task.

After much work, the track vehicle made its way down the new path.












One of the trees was a bit tricky to cut down. Dane had a plan to cut it so that it wouldn't fall down the cliff; however, when the tree started to shift as he was cutting, the chainsaw got stuck. He was able to get the chainsaw out minus the chain. Afterward, he put a used chain on the chainsaw and finally got the tree cut down (and no, it didn't slide down the cliff), but the one mishap ended up taking an entire day.



A couple of the trees that Dane was harvesting were on the ledge, eight feet below the tractor, and the one tree above it that had been troublesome to cut down was huge, so hauling the trees up and around the path Dane had cleared took a lot of trial and error too. Unfortunately, the pictures do not give a clear picture of the terrain - the drop off and angles cannot be made out.











Dane used the track vehicle, chains, a hoist, and a rachet and straps to get the trees up onto the path.

















Since then, Dane has been hauling the trees up log by log and dusty log rider (child) by dusty log rider (child).






This is a picture of about half of the logs that he has gotten up to the house so far.







Hauling up the logs will take at least another day or two, and then Dane hopes to start cutting fence posts for a new five acre pasture for the cows. The plan is that our new fence line will also enclose the area around the house and allow us to put a gate in at the property's entrance.


On another note, I forgot to mention in my last post that Dane had completed half of the second story floor in the house, so now he and I have a sort of loft bedroom. In the picture, you can see the beginnings of a wall that he put up that will separate this part of the second story into two rooms.






For now, the children are still sleeping downstairs because it is too dangerous for them upstairs until more walls are built. However, the absence of our bed downstairs gives us all a lot more room.

Other things that are going on around the farm......

The corn in the field close to the house is past the edible stage now, so the rest will be allowed to dry for the animals. But the corn field down the way, is flowering, so we hope to be eating corn again soon. The black beans are growing well and right now look and taste like green beans (which explains why our neighbors, that had never eaten green beans, want to peel the green beans that we give them in order to eat the seeds). The watermelons, cantaloupe, and tomatoes are ripening and thankfully we got to enjoy our firstfruits of those this past week.

We have also had what looks like an end to the drought! It has rained nearly every day for the past week. Praise the Lord! The springs are replenishing, which means now we don't have to pump as much water up from the lower spring to the cows.

Well that's all that I have for this post.

Have a blessed Sabbath day,

Jessica

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