Attitude

Farmers Rock

Liz James · April 6, 2020 ·

Happy Sunday friends! Did you eat today? 🍞🍎🌽🍗🍖🍏Yeah me too.
No matter the situation, God makes sure that we have all we need. It may not have been what you’re used to (ie: a post church dinner at some restaurant on plates you don’t have to wash for some of you), or your meal could have been exactly what it always is ….. a beautiful spread of home cooking, just with fewer friends and family around the table.
Regardless….. it’s food. And it was brought to you by God thru the caretakers we call our farmers👩‍🌾👨‍🌾. If you haven’t thought of farmers as essential workers, please consider adding them to your prayers. They work incredibly hard and long hours and usually get little to no recognition.
Young Living values quality farms too. If you’d like to know more about YL farming practices, please visit http://seedtoseal.com/en .

But these guys…. give a farmer a hug… especially the ones who do what they do with joy in their heart and a smile on their face! (You’re gonna enjoy this video… these guys love what they do!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYZPcUNyUaQ&feature=youtu.be
hugs and love~ liz

#farmerlove
#farmersrock
#ThanksYL
#gottasmile

Farmer Rock Anthem: Featuring How Farms Work, Farm Babe, MN Millennial Farmer, Welker Farms, Big Tractor Power, Farmhand Mike, OneLonleyFarmer, Cody the Cow …

Victory Gardens

Liz James · March 20, 2020 ·

Springtime is one of my most very favorite times of the year, for many reasons…. Not the least of which is the anticipation of getting my fingers deep into the earth in preparation for seed planting time.

Spring this year has been somewhat challenging. Lots of distractions, an incredibly wet February and March, and a spirit of unrest that seems to have enveloped our world.

And yet….

The leaves and flowers continue to unfurl from the safety of their buds as if to tell us that life will go on, despite the circumstances at hand.

It makes me want to talk to the old timers…. The ones who were around as kiddos and young adults during WWII. What did it feel like, to have such a great unknown? To know that a loved one could be taken from them because they said yes to following God and their country? With only snail mail letters to communicate in the interim?

I hope a bearer or two of these memories will comment because I have a strong love of history and would love to hear the stories of resilience on the home front……the peace they perhaps held that surpassed all understanding even when the world seemed anything but calm.

Perhaps this was another reason the people at home returned to gardening in 1942-43? Canned food and buying from grocery stores instead of self sufficiency was a relatively new concept to the world back then.
It had only been about 25 years since the first grocery store (A Piggly Wiggly if you remember those!) opened and self serve grocery shopping had quickly taken over supplying the USA with food.

25 years. One generation. Many had already lost sight of where nourishing food must come from.

1942….. Not 2020.

And then World War II happened…. and it didn’t last days….it lasted years. 😥

Ask one of the old timers about those times. Invariably, one of their strongest memories will be the rationing of foodstuffs. Food was in short supply for a variety of reasons:

🍅The processed and canned foods they had become accustomed to buying at Piggly Wiggly suddenly were reserved for shipping overseas to the soldiers who were fighting and to our Allies who were bearing the brunt of the war devastation.

🍅Transportation of fresh foods was limited because of gasoline and tire rationing (priorities were placed on getting those to soldiers and to the war effort)

🍅Many farmers in the USA were off fighting instead of growing food.

🍅Imported food, especially the likes of coffee and sugar, were limited in supply.

Rationing books were issued. (I have one that belonged to my grandmother.) Stamps inside the books were for certain food categories, and if you had already used your stamp for that product for the month, you were not eligible to buy it until the following month rolled around. It prevented hoarding and encouraged creative menu planning. ( Hmmm …. Seems like we could use that principle these days for basic things like toilet paper!)

Suddenly, the skill of gardening became an asset again…. Not reserved for someone living on a farm. By 1920 tho, more Americans lived in cities than in rural areas for the first time in America’s history so this had to have been hard.

Real hard.😔

This situation was something they felt unprepared for, they had no land to make gardens. For others, it felt like they were being called home….. back to their roots…. and it was those whom the former leaned into and learned from….. And a beautiful thing began to sprout around the United States…..

Victory Gardens.

They began to sprout up across America and eventually across the world:

👩‍🌾People plowed up their beautiful front yards and lawns and began growing fruits and veggies.

👩‍🌾They pulled up their rose bushes and flowers and replaced them with edible foodstuffs.

👩‍🌾Pots and containers were used to grow gardens on back porches, patios, and stairways.

👩‍🌾Even public land was put to use….. San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park had one of the best public gardens in the country!

Neighbors helping neighbors. 👫

Sharing knowledge.

Sharing bounty.

Relying on God to supply no more or less than they needed.

Back to their roots.

The food, of course, was important, but so was the community idea of doing something for the common good, and the daily grounding… the resetting of emotions and release of nervous energy expelled just by getting dirt under their fingernails. In times like those, I am sure that gardening felt heavenly!

Anyone can do this…. Gardening.

All you need is Sunlight. Seeds. A container or two, or 12 (or a plot of land of any size). ….. And a desire to be part of the solution.

A time to heal.

A time to return to our roots.

If this post is calling to you, there are TONS of seed packets for sale at the feed stores. There are also half grown “teenager” plants if waiting is too much to bear.

Never gardened? Don’t let that stop you. You never know, you might pick up a new hobby you love while in this time of national time out.

The best growth comes during times of adversity…. Knowing that, our Great Nation should be due for a bountiful harvest. The Bible says it. This I know.

Garden on friends!

xoxo ~liz

#GodblesstheUSAandtheworld
#wecandothis
#strongerthanyouthinkyouare
#learnsomethingnew
#embraceyourdowntime
#youwillbeproudofyourfood
#springtime2020
#healthyfoodismedicine

#1 Corona Virus 101

Liz James · March 11, 2020 ·

Post #1 / Corona Virus 101…. General housekeeping
(Please see the previous post for intro information)

😷 Let’s get some info out here on the table… like it or not, everyone is a “prepper” to one degree or another. Unless, of course, you fly by the seat of your pants in every aspect of life.
❓Do you make sure you have gas in your car before going on a trip…… ✅
❓Do you keep food in your home for your next meal……✅
❓Have you run out recently and bought 3x’s as much toilet paper as you normally buy?
……..any of these things would mean that you, somewhere in your brain, have a bit of preparedness built into your psyche.
#wealldo

👉Here’s the thing tho…. people, for whatever reason, think about gas, food, and toilet paper before their own health. And yet… if you don’t have your health…. AND you don’t have the things needed to remain healthy handy…… does anything else really matter? 🤔

👉Secondly…. Emotions….. If you run around thinking you’re going to catch something, your body is already accepting the advice that it’s going to…. and your immune system starts dropping (I know…. Crazy but true)….. Yet hundreds (if not thousands!) of studies show that believing something will happen (good or bad) definitely affects the outcome, even with your health…. This information is designed to put you in the right place emotionally. Pull on your oxygen mask and help yourself so you can help others! #thinkpositively

The emotion “fear” is addressed over 500 times in the Bible. We are told not to have a spirit of fear or timidity but of love and strength. If you are a believer, as I am…. I take our responsibility to “fear not” very seriously. #ifGodiswithuswhocanbeagainstus

👉When preparing what you need for your health, this is NOT the time to cut corners. (that would be like handing out flimsy paper plates from the Dollar store when you’re about to ask that plate to hold Thanksgiving🍗 dinner fixin’s…. Inadequate preparation could backfire on you if you are asking an inadequate product to do something it was never designed to do…. make sure what you are buying will work well under pressure. #KEYPOINT

👉 You’ll hear me refer to essential oils…. I only use Young Living…. precisely for the 🍗 dinner reason above. 👆 You’ll hear me mention some supplements. Unless otherwise stated… only YL. There are a few places where YL doesn’t yet stand in the gap, and so I’ve researched and come up with some brands that I trust and use. Never pick/use a synthetically sourced supplement…. It’s a flimsy paper plate.

👉 And finally, knowledge itself really doesn’t matter IF IT’S NOT APPLIED…… so USE the knowledge you glean from this.

Now….. let’s move on to some facts.

xoxo~ liz

#knowbetterdobetter
#aintskeeeredandyoushouldntbeeither
#ThanksYL

Growing with Elsa

Liz James · October 8, 2018 ·

Elsa at 10 months. She is starting to get her mama’s darker face.

Welcome! You’ve found my first official blog post on the updated website! This has been a work in progress for the past several months, and…. not being exactly technically savvy (give me science or farming any other day!), I’ve had to call in some excellent tech help to assist in the upgrade. You can finally find ALL you need right here in one place!

The move to the new website put blogging on a little hiatus until we could get everything matched up properly. I think you’ll find this venue MUCH easier to navigate. Growing means learning, expanding, and exploring new options, right?

Speaking of growing…. She’s now 10 months old, and it’s well past time for an Elsa update! Sweet girl shows up on Facebook with some regularity, but I need to update here…. this is kind of her ‘baby book’ after all. For all my love of animals, I never thought I’d love a cow as much as I love this heifer. I guess that’s what might happen when one lives in your bathtub for a few weeks, and syringe feeding around the clock takes control of your life! The cards were certainly stacked against her. Birth during 20 degree weather (which cost her parts of both ears), failure to thrive (because she couldn’t suck properly), trips to the vet (because we didn’t know any better.. couldn’t see the internal cleft palate… and subsequently also missed by the vet)…. it did not look good for Elsa. If you scroll back thru my early 2018 posts, you’ll find her history scattered throughout.

Nonetheless, she prevailed.

Her story hasn’t been without a little work and some modifications in her/our life. Elsa is a permanent mascot on our farm. She is a greeter, social maven, photo bomber, and so much more. As she’s grown, we’ve adapted and risen to the challenge.

Her cleft palate is not easily repairable. According to a couple of vets I’ve consulted at Texas A&M Veterinary College, the surgery would not be easy on her. Cow mouths do not open very wide, and any repair of this nature would only be manageable by entering thru the side of her face…effectively eliminating the possibility of surgery unless absolutely necessary.

Elsa eats well (albeit messily!), and does not seem to be hindered much by her birth defect. Fairly early on, we discovered that she is also moderately tongue tied, and is only able to stick her tongue out of the right side of her mouth. This really doesn’t seem to affect her much, so I’m torn between getting it fixed surgically (rather, putting her thru that surgery), and just letting her carry on as she has been. She doesn’t know any differently, and so it seems more like the surgery would be for us moreso than for her.

Cleft palates in calves are not as rare as you’d think. Unfortunately, most calves are birthed fairly unattended, and if they go without nursing for long, they die. As in the case of Elsa, if the cleft palate is undetectable externally, the rancher usually assumes the calf simply died of natural causes. Cleft palate in calves is not a genetic anomaly…it’s caused by eating the wrong plant during the first trimester of pregnancy (a similar thing can happen in people if certain medications or products are consumed during the first trimester too). In Honey’s case (Elsa’s mama)….. she apparently got ahold of a select few plants in the lupine family….. the most common culprit for bovine cleft palates. Honestly, we’re blessed. Her deformity could have been much much worse, and her personality more than makes up for the bit of added work that is required for her health and safety.

Milestones
Just like all babies, Elsa has had her milestones.

She survived the first month! It took a team of dedicated friends and ‘nannies’, as well as Charlie and I to get her thru the first month.
Around the six weeks mark, she finally figured out how to eat properly from one teat…. the left front. Each teat is different on a cow, and Elsa had to figure out how. We never gave up, and every day, I would encourage her to try. After the mastered one teat, she gradually learned how to nurse (in her own way) on 2 other teats. Because of the angle and size (And probably because of her limited use of her tongue on the left side of her mouth) she never mastered the 4th teat on the back left quarter. As she grew, her nursing got pretty rough on Honey. She used her teeth more than most calves, and consequently, was really tearing her mama up. We made the difficult decision to wean her at 4 1/2 months (early!) because the damage she was doing prevented us from milking Honey too.
Eating creep feed and grass is not a problem for Elsa. Occasionally, she will have grass coming out her nose and she will stamp her feet and blow until it comes out. For awhile, we had to wet her creep feed so that it wouldn’t end up in her nose. She has outgrown that need now, and eats food just like the big girls!
Cud chewing…. all cows regurgitate their food and then thoughtfully re-chew it for better digest-ability. Elsa does this too, but the liquified food comes out her nose if her head is in a downward position. It doesn’t seem to bother her overly much, but it can get messy. Because of this, she gets a spongebath about once a week.
Schooling. She is going to make an amazing hand milked dairy cow. She is calm, cool, and collected, AND she’s about as social as you could possibly imagine. Because the facial deformities are not genetic, we are not worried that the cleft palate will carry forward to her offspring.

Lessons from raising a Cleft Palate Calf

Life is what you make of it.
When you are able, make the most of running, bucking, and living like there’s no tomorrow…. but above all else, never ever give up!
Resiliency is a good thing. Bounce forward not backwards!
Vitamin D is a necessary part of healing. Lay in the sunshine even when you think you don’t have time to.
Be friends with those who are different from you. (Elsa doesn’t know a stranger… 2 or 4 legged!)
Work with what you’ve got! Not everyone is born with the same tools.
Family doesn’t always mean blood relatives.
Being ‘schooled’ is not a bad thing. We all need to be haltered and given parameters on occasion.
Patience is still a virtue.
Love IS worth it.

Stay tuned…. Elsa will always be making an appearance here. She’s one of us….. part of the ‘farmily’.

Thanks for visiting and celebrating our imperfectly perfect life on the farm.

Hugs and Love – Liz

3 days old, and struggling for her life. We didn’t yet realize that she had an internal cleft palate.

Cutest calf ever! Two weeks old, and finally figuring out how to live!

Celebrating Elsa’s one month birthday with her Auntie (and my dear friend). Can you say spoiled calf! She’s turned into a photo ham!

Photo bombing and selfies are one of Elsa’s favorite hobbies!

Giving slobbery kisses is another favorite of Elsa’s!

9 months. Sept 2018. School’s in session, and basic training begins!

Feed room takeover. Elsa is one of the dogs (as far as she and the dogs are concerned!)….waiting for dinner. 9 months.

With Her Weight In Gold

Liz James · May 30, 2018 ·

Well. This morning started off with a bang. Literally. I was not sure whether to name this post “Family First”, “Farm Life Reality Part II” or the above title.

About 6:30am I heard a very specific series of barks. For those of you who are well tuned in to your dog(s), you know exactly what each bark means. Our dogs have some very specific ones:

Herding yip-barks
Hot air balloon notifications (we appear to be on the regular flight path of a few )
Sirens (the dogs will start yip-howling before we can even hear the sirens on the highway a few miles away)
Skunk/Possum barks. These are more excitable bark patterns, but not a “Danger Will Robinson” kind of bark.
Happy barks.
Warning barks (stranger danger!)
And then there was the one this morning….. ‘the enemy is here‘ bark.

As soon as I heard it, I flew out of the house wondering which enemy it was. When I rounded the corner on the back side of the property I knew we had a situation that wasn’t going to end well. Lily, our livestock guard dog, had backed a coyote into a corner (between fences), and no way was she going to stand down. Lily is an Akbash, a dog very similar to a Great Pyrenees, but in my mind, a far superior LGD for many reasons (another post for another day). These dogs are not fighters, although pressed to do so, they will defend themselves and will kill if necessary. No, their instinctive drive is to protect their family at all costs using intimidation first, and force as a backup if necessary.

We do not kill predators for the sport of it, but if we have one threatening our farm family, we will not hesitate. It is a rare day that we pull out a gun and use it for this purpose, but this morning, it was necessary. We have shot sick skunks and poisonous snakes. Coyotes, although they live all around us, generally stay off our property thanks to the dogs. This one had gotten brave, and that’s not good. A brave coyote will find a food source and then our farm becomes Luby’s cafeteria for she and her friends. This means that our chickens, our cats and kittens, and even our calves and smaller dogs become potential meals…… not to mention vet bills that start rolling in as our LGD’s have to sometimes engage the enemy in battle.

Today did not end well for this coyote, and it was stressful for Lily too. She would not back down even tho she is terrified of guns. She held the coyote at bay, and Charlie shot it. Lily scrambled back to the porch, shaking…… not because of the coyote, but because of the gunshot.

Lily prefers to spend her time outdoors guarding her farm-ily……unless there is thunder, fireworks, or gunfire in our area. Any of those, and she’s at the door begging to be let in (which we do). This said, I was concerned about her response to gunfire literally that close to her.

Young Living has an oil that is well used and loved by those who know it: Stress Away. I would venture to say that several million bottles of this relaxing blend have been used and relied upon over the years. It is one of my favorite oils, and for a very good reason too…. it is my ‘go to’ in times of stress. Consequently, I keep a bottle in my purse, and one in my lab coat at work, as well as one on my desk at home. It is literally like letting out a gentle sigh of relief simply by applying it to the neck and wrists.

Now, this morning, while the situation was an elevated one, it was not as stressful for me as say….. driving in Dallas traffic during rush hour…… or working in an intensely busy pharmacy with not enough help (Frankly, that’s waaay more stressful than the previous scenario!). Poor Lily, however, WAS stressed… not from the coyote, but from the gunfire.

So, after all was said and done, I slathered our hard working girl up with Stress Away and gave her some extra special loving for the good job she had done. Young Living oils are amazing for many reasons, not the least of which is that they work just as well (if not even better) on animals as they do on humans. I believe this is because animals have no preconceived notions about what therapeutic oils can and cannot do. They either work, or they don’t for our four legged friends…. but in my experience, they nearly always do.

I am happy to report, that after about 30 minutes, Lily had a very spoiled breakfast (with treats), AND she had no interest in coming inside to recover from the gunfire. In fact, she spent the rest of the morning laying in the midst of the chickens, guarding her peeps. I’d say both she and Stress Away did their jobs well this morning!

Hugs and love from the farm y’all…. Life goes on. ~ liz