You can hear it as soon as
you walk in the barn – a low rumble coming from somewhere amidst the
hay and buckets.  If you wait a few seconds the source of the
rumble, a small orange tom-kitten named Ozzie, will come out to greet
you.  Most kittens purr when you pet them, pick them up or cuddle
them.  Ozzie purrs almost all the time, whether anyone is there or
not, whether someone is petting him or not.  He just purrs because
he’s happy with life. 

It makes me smile to hear him purring.  I care about my animals
and it makes me happy when they are happy.  His purring tells me
that he thinks he’s got a pretty great life here in our barn, as part
of our “family”. 

God must feel that way about us.  The book of Hebrews draws to a close with these words:  “Through Him, then, let us continually
offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, the fruit of lips that give
thanks to His name.”  Continually offering up a sacrifice of
praise to God is, in effect, sort of like purring – letting God know
I’m happy with the life He’s chosen for me, the redemption He’s given
me.   Recognizing Him as the source of my contentment, the
wellspring of my unquenchable joy, no matter what my circumstances.

I think God smiles when He hears Ozzie purring.  “All His creatures praise Him…”

It amazes me that you can dig
a hole, stick some sticks in the ground, water, mulch and fertilize and
in a year or so God gives you this:

Blackberries!

And peaches – the very first peach we’ve ever grown.  It was DELICIOUS! 

The same thing is true of seeds.  A little bitty packet of seeds
in the ground and a few weeks later, I’m harvesting buckets of green
beans and baskets of squash.  I just think it’s amazing… 
Good work, God!  What a great idea!

The kittens have been
showered with love for two days from some 4 year old fans.  It
amazes me how they can get schlepped all over like they don’t have a
bone in their bodies!

Of course they were tuckered out afterwards:

New to the farm since last weekend are three ducklings:

There is absolutely nothing cuter than a baby duck.

I have never seen so many
fireflies in my life!  Driving home across country roads tonight
it was an amazing spectacle – acres and acres of fields with millions
of fireflies doing their slow, blinking dance as far as you could see
-  little lights rising slowly in the still air.  I’ve seen
fields of fireflies before but nothing on this magnitude; the sheer
numbers were staggering.  A once-in-a-lifetime
experience.   It stirred my wonder.

Several times a day I find
myself stopping in the barn just to watch the kittens.  Even a few
minutes spent with them is guaranteed to relax me and make me laugh -
cheap therapy!  They scamper all over the barn and my biggest
worry is that they don’t watch out for Ivy’s hooves.  One misstep
and she’d make a kitty-pancake out of them.

Basking in the morning sun

Ozzie in mid-air

Tippy stalking the chicks

Prairie sunset

For the past 10 weeks (and 2
to go) I have been part of a group of women studying different aspects
of the character of God.  It has been so refreshing to soak in
Scripture in which God tells us about Himself and describes Himself to
us. 

One of the traits we were studying this week was God as My
Satisfier.  There are some amazing verses in the Psalms about how
God “satisfies the desire of every living thing”, “satisfies your years with good things”,  “satisfies
the thirsty soul”.  I was doing some background study on these
verses and ran across some thoughts that were eye-opening.  Here’s
one little nugget:  In Psalm 103:5 where it says He satisfies your
years “with good things” it could also read “He satisfies your years
‘so that it gets its cheeks full’!”  Being a visual person, the
mental picture this brings me is worth more than a thousand
words.  God longs to fill my cheeks!

In another place (Psalm 36:8) it says “They drink their fill of the
abundance of Your house and you give them to drink of the river of Your
delights.”  Keil & Delitzsch expand on this to say the river
of delights is “the abundant, pleasant and powerful gifts and goods and
recreations with which God entertains those who are His”.  I have
to think about that some more – being entertained by the abundant, pleasant and powerful recreations of God…!!!

Here’s wishing you chubby cheeks…

I can’t believe it. 
Just last night I wrote about no one but me ever being stung by one of
my bees.  Today, someone was! 

Our neighbor girl (7th grader) comes over most nice days to see the
animals, play with the kittens, brush the horse and occasionally ride
her.  She just likes to hang around, helping me with stuff in the
barn.  Today she brought her friend Andrea with her.  And
Andrea got stung by one of the bees!

I must have really made them mad yesterday because several bees have
been in “attack mode” as Pete and I are working out in the
pasture.  I hope they calm down soon.  I don’t want to have
to institute drastic measures.  But it’s very hot and that makes
them ornery. 

I gave Andrea some honey to take home as an apology from the hive.  Animals are SO unpredictable!

I was working outside today
and noticed that some of my bees were acting a little funny. 
Funny as in, “We are getting ready to swarm”-type behavior.  Not
wanting to lose half the population of my strongest hive, I decided to
do something about it.  I split the hive.  That means I went
into the brood part of the hive and removed several frames with honey
and with bees and eggs and brood and put them in a new hive box. 
Hopefully they will raise themselves a queen (I saw a queen cell
already made) and establish themselves as a productive colony. 

I split that same hive last week for the same reason.  Unusual
that I had to do it twice.  Last week I got in the hive and out
without a single sting.  Today I think I got stung about 5
times.  I wear my bee suit and it does slow them down but they can
get that little stinger in anyway.  I notice it at the time but
when you’re splitting a hive there’s no time to stop and worry about
it.  Just get the job done and the hives closed up.

The stings hurt a little but I am always amazed at how afraid people
are of bees.  When someone hears that I have beehives the VERY
FIRST QUESTION they always ask is, “Do you get stung much???”  My
standard answer is this:  No, not really,  And in the 11
years I’ve had bees, not one person besides myself has ever been stung
by one of my bees.  None of my family or their friends or visitors
to the farm.  So the bees really don’t go around trying to sting
people.  After all, they die after they sting so it’s not such a
good deal for them.

To put it in perspective, I like to think of it this way.  I used
to raise strawberries.  But weeding a strawberry bed is an
endless, backbreaking job.  Picking strawberries gives you an
incredible backache, too.  So I quit raising strawberries because
I found it too painful.  At the moment, I have some blackberry
bushes.  I love those huge, plump berries warmed by the sun. 
But those bushes have the nastiest thorns known to man.  I can NOT
pick those berries without ripping my skin or coming away without welts
of blood.  Compared to raising strawberries or picking
blackberries, keeping bees involves less pain! 

And in light of the gallons of beautiful, nutritious and delicious
honey my bees give me, why, it’s worth a few stings.  If you stop
and think about it, many things we do in life involve risks of pain,
even things people do for fun (paintballing for instance!).  I
just choose to risk it with thousands of little insects.  Really,
really cool little insects.

The big event of the day
today was the arrival of 5 kittens.  Neighbors down the road had
14 kittens (from 3 mamas) so we chose the 4 we wanted today. 
Number 5 is going to someone else’s home.  They are in a cushie
pen out in the barn right now, getting used to their new environment
and being kept safe while all the other barn inhabitants get used to
them!  Toby, our 125 lb. male Great Pyrenees, was fascinated by
the bundles of fluff.  Rosie, our cratchety old barn cat, was
distinctly less than pleased by their arrival. 

“Did someone say ‘dog’…?”

Kitty on far right:  Isabella (Becca’s kitten), Bella for short
Black kitty:  moving on to new home – remains nameless for that reason
Black and white kitty:  Tippy
Gray striped kitty:  no name yet (open to suggestions)
Orange kitty:  Ozzie, in memory of our last orange cat.