#farmhouse – Page 2

We’re coming into a new year…2021

Just a check in…How’s everyone feeling? Are you ready for a fresh start? A new year filled with a new hope and new beginnings? I know I am…

Although, looking back on 2020, I see some good things that have come out of it. I have had more time to spend with my family and tackle some new projects. I have enjoyed slower mornings and days. It was a much needed break, but I am ready for something new and fresh. I haven’t figured out quite what that is, but I want it 🙂

I saw a post today about setting goals and getting perspective for the new year. I have never been one to set goals. I am not really sure why except for I guess I don’t really know how and when you’re not really sure what you’re shooting for, it’s hard to really figure that out and then you think to yourself..what actually is the goal. It’s a vicious cycle in your head 🙂

Is there a good podcast for that or youtube video? If you have some insight of how to do that and how to figure out what your goal is, please let me know 😉

I pray for 2021, that this year would be filled with a joy and peace that is unexplainable. Where we would be firm in our faith and stand unshaken by the weightiness of the world. Let our eyes and hearts stay focused and when it gets rocky or uncertain, let us stay focused on the thing that will keep us upright..Jesus

Be safe friends and keep our eyes up…xox

Matthew 11:28 (NLT)- Then Jesus said “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest”

A little update on Winston & Nelson…

These two goofballs have been keeping us entertained all summer! We have sure enjoyed spending time with them. Although we did have some different expectations. We expected them to be our friends..well they are our friends..sort of … but only when we have treats for them, it’s really annoying. We have seen all of these other goats in videos following their humans around and climbing on them but that’s not the case here. If anyone has some ideas of how we accomplish this please let me know 😉

Winston loves bananas which is so funny! You can take one to him and he will gobble it up, peel and all and Nelson wants nothing to do with them! They have also begun fainting (they are fainting goats it’s normal) and it’s actually pretty funny and sad all at the same time. Poor guys but it does give us a good laugh. You should look up videos on fainting goats it will keep you entertained for a while.

They are just so dang cute! We are wanting to get a bottle fed one in the spring maybe… I’ve heard that’s the key to making them your friends. Enjoy the small simple pleasures life brings you these days! Have a blessed week friends.. xox

A little regrouping..

Sometimes in the midst of chaos and a pandemic, you just need to get away for a little bit to regroup.

During this time away I’ve been thinking about several things. I’ve been thinking about some different things like who am I and what do I love to do. Although I haven’t discovered the answers to those questions, I am definitely taking some time to reflect and figure it out.

Although I don’t agree with all of these lockdowns and mandates, I do believe that God is in control and will always be in control, I just need to continually remind myself so I don’t loose my mind.

What are some things your working on right now to help you during this time?

Conya’s Potato Soup

Recipe:

In a large pot melt your butter then add the onions and garlic and saute them together until soft. You will only use this one pot for everything so make sure it’s big enough

1/2 cup butter
1 large onion chopped
4 green onions chopped
1 clove garlic chopped

Saute the above ingredients together

add to the pot

6 cups water
6 chicken bouillon cubes

and bring to a boil

add to the pot

6-7 rustic potatoes chopped up

Boil until soft like you would for mashed potatoes. Use an immersion blender of you have one or you can use a regular blender if not. I prefer the immersion blender as it is easier and less mess. Blend everything together until smooth. Add milk or cream until desired consistency is reached-roughly 1 cups but I just wing it to be honest. Serve with lemon pepper and cheddar cheese. Today I added bacon bits and sour cream also and it was amazing!

It’s been awhile…

Well it’s been awhile since I last posted. I’m not sure why other than I feel like a funk has been on me and honestly didn’t feel like I had much to offer anyone. Not that I am feeling particularly any different right now I feel like I need to do something because doing nothing is worse.

As I sit here today my state is literally burning up! We have hazardous smoke levels at our house and can’t really see 2 feet in front of your face. Ok maybe its a little farther than that but you get the idea. The smoke is really really bad here! I am so sorry for all of the people who have lost their homes or their lives. I’m sorry for their families and all the sadness they feel and for the half million displaced people in Oregon my heart is just heavy. I keep thinking about all of the fire fighters on the front lines and I can’t even imagine how they are feeling and I instantly get worried for them and a little anxious. I grew up in a fire fighter family and my oldest son is a professional fire fighter and my 2nd son is just starting his college career to become one also. So these times are really dear and near to my heart. I am fiercely protective over first responders and I believe in them and all they stand for and I always will. There has been a lot of negative media against them and honestly it makes my blood boil. Sure there are a few bad ones but people are sinful and so you will always get a few bad ones (no matter what profession). It’s called sin and free will but then grace enters….grace is extended to all of us even the bad ones. God will continue to purse even the bad ones as he doesn’t want not even one to perish. I am very justice driven so this is a hard one sometimes. Most times I find myself think man he’s a really bad guy and deserves eternal damnation but then grace enters… Sometimes thats a hard pill to swallow isn’t it?

This has been a really hard season for just about everyone I know. I can’ think of one person that doesn’t feel either sad, scared, angry, hopeless etc… this is where I have been landing myself and not really sure of what the future will look like or feel like. I am grieving what we once had and that honestly won’t go back to that way because well it can’t. It can’t because I believe the Lord is calling his people to rise up. He’s calling us to a different place and I believe he is preparing us for battle. Which is honestly exciting and scary because of the unknown but I have read the end of the book and God wins!

I feel like this may just be a bunch of rambling but this is what’s been on my heart lately. It’s time to rise up and step into what God is calling each of us too and watch what happens. What a time to be alive!!

Keep your head up soldiers together we can do anything…

So Much Farm Drama..

So we live on a small farm..we have chickens, ducks, a donkey, dogs, barn cats and we are getting 2 goats in 5 days~ fainting goats to be exact! There is always so much animal drama here! I kid you not, it almost has become so comical that I can’t not tell you about it. Last Friday, one of our chickens we named pigee because well she looks like a pigeon got attacked by our male duck. This duck has been after her for a while but she usually manages to escape him. We last Friday that was not the case, she just wasn’t fast enough. My daughter and nephew went out to the chicken coop to fill up their waters and feed them and that’s when they found our favorite little chicken mangled. Her poor little face and head were very messed up. I won’t go into details because I can’t even handle it. We immediately grabbed her and brought her in the house.. I know gross.. but farm life is well.. another thing hahaha…

We got all the different stuff out to begin to try to clean her up and hopefully save her life! I was trying to clean her off and I don’t handle gross things or blood at all. I was trying my best to be strong and I had to take the chicken outside to get myself some fresh air and sit down. My daughter looks at me and said “maybe I need to take over you are very very pale” which is usually the case in these situations. So thankfully she took over. We got her as cleaned up as best we could, got a small portable dog kennel and waited for my husband to get home which is usually what I do when things are gross.. 🙂

We have been very faithful for the last week of keeping her very clean and putting a couple different medicines on her and giving her water with probiotics in it and keeping her little kennel very clean. We weren’t sure if her eyes were going to survive the attack. I will let you imagine what her face looked like using that information. We were cleaning her yesterday afternoon and my daughter said “mom I just don’t think she has an eye in there”. I said “I believe she does and it’s just swollen”. I have been praying over this chicken since Friday. I tend to pray and believe for God to heal my animals and honestly God must really love me a lot because they usually survive. I have countless stories of our animals that should be dead but God heals them! That’s a whole different blog. Anyways back to her eye.. We got her all cleaned up and put her back in her little crate and that was that. We went to dinner last night and came home and got ready to take care of the chicken and we pulled her out and bam there was her eye! All the swelling went down which is crazy because it was huge and I kid you not all the swelling was gone and her eye was there! Both of her eyes are still there! She is healing so great and I honestly can’t believe it. I believe in the power of prayer..I know it’s a chicken but I believe God loves us enough that he cares about what we care about, to come down and heal even our little chicken.

I would love to post a picture to show you what we were up against but that would probably be a very horrible idea..you’re welcome 🙂 For now just know little pigee is doing great and I can’t wait to watch her run around again..don’t worry she won’t be with that duck anymore. I’m considering making her her very own chicken house and getting another little bantum chicken just like her to be her friend.

The moral of this story is nothing is too big or little for God. What things have you prayed for that are so random that it had to be God? I would love to hear them!

Life Changes…

Jeremiah 29:11-14a (NLT) “For I know the plans I have for you” says the Lord. They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. In those days when you pray, I will listen. If you look for me wholeheartedly, you will find me. I will be found by you” says the Lord

I am on a new path and a path of where I have no idea where its headed. I have offically retired from the bakery. A bakery that I have worked at tirelessly and have found some purpose in my life. I have had a lot of joy there and have found some amazing lifelong friendships with people who God has placed in my life that have become like family to me. I feel very blessed to have them in my life and its time for me to discover what God is calling me to now, which has yet to be discovered. Truth be told~ I feel a little lost right now. I am not sure of who I am but I am confident that God will let me know.

I find myself soaking in lots of different church services online. I am intrigued and expectant. I am in search of what God is up to and I want to be apart of that! My heart has always been ministry and the one thing I want people to know until the day I breath my last is that God sees you, he knows you and your heart and most of all he is for you! The things that we go through in life are meant to propel us closer to God not further away. Because we are human we have free choice and unfortunately we live in a fallen world and people are bad.

Jeremiah 17:9-10 (NLT) “The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperatley wicked. Who really knows how bad it is? But I, the Lord, search all hearts and examine secret motives. I give all people their due rewards, according to what their actions deserve.”

You see God doesn’t create those bad things, he just helps us get through them and helps to use those moments in our life for something good. Sometimes and most often, it takes a hot minute to see how and where God is going to use them so be patient and keep pursing Jesus.

More than anything right now I want to be used by God. I want to live a life thats full of purpose and where people come to know the love of Jesus. Where they find Jesus for themselves. Where they aren’t relying on their parents or friends relationship with the Lord but where they have their own deep encounter with the living God.

If you want to have your socks blown off listen to the song called “The Blessing” by elevation worship. It is a game changer!

I pray this week you and I both have an encounter with the Lord where we each know without a shadow of a doubt deep down inside our very soul that he is for us! I can’t wait how about you????

Be blessed friend xoxox

Getting Weary….

Who else is getting weary? I am definitely ready to get everything opened up to the “new normal”. Maybe because I am a 6 on the enneagram and well we don’t like the unknowns. We like to know what’s coming and how we are going to respond to it. We don’t like the unknowns. I want to get things moving because I want to get things settled inside of my own-self.

I am ready to go to all of my favorite stores like TJ Max, Ulta and Home Goods… Who’s with me??? We have still been working countless hours at the bakery on a very limited staff and we are getting weary. We laugh a lot because we don’t understand the quarantine life. We don’t understand what or how it feels to stay home every day all day..sometimes we joke about how it sounds dreamy but then we realize we actually love to work and then start laughing.

Last weekend I did some work in my garden and cleaned out the beds. I raked them and rearranged some stuff in the yard and that was awesome! It felt great to be outside in the sunshine doing what I love. I love plants and flowers and I could buy millions of them. I did plant some roses in my garden beds this year. I want to have a little rose garden and with deers that love to eat them, I decided I need to plant them in my fenced in garden that my husband built me a couple years ago.

How are you doing? How and what are you doing that makes your soul sing? Are you painting something? Are you planting a garden? What helps you?

Hang in their friends I’m hoping this is getting near to the “new normal”… xoxox

My New Friends…

So I wanted to share with you what happened today while I was at Costco during this crazy virus time which leads to its own experience all together. If you haven’t attempted Costco lately maybe you should give it a go just to feel the experience of it all haha…

So the morning started off fine. I decided that at 8:10 am I was going to first head to Safeway to see if they have any toilet paper. We have some rolls left but I have looked for the last couple days and have found nothing so I started to kinda think about it a little bit more like maybe I need to be a little more proactive about this particular situation. So after not finding anything at Safeway I headed to Costco to get in line. It was 8:30 now and the line was already starting around the side of the building and the doors open at 9:30. People kept pouring in and getting into line and now it was wrapped behind Costco. I thought wow if someone is really desperate for something there is no chance they will ever get it way back there. I started chatting with the couple in front of me and I was telling them that I have been looking for toilet paper for the last several days and how my son told me last night that he and his brother go through about a roll a day! I was like well you boys are going to need to dial that down and I probably need to figure out what everyone is eating around here hahaha…Anyways we had a good laugh and kept chatting. Well the doors opened and the line started to move and we were told that the toilet paper was right by the door so I was already starting off a little rough because there were a lot of people still in front of me. We got to the front of the line and they handed us the sanitized cart and we went in. I saw the staff handing out the toilet paper and I got in line behind my new friends leaving a little room so I didn’t hit them. Well a gal on my left literally cut in between us and got the very LAST package!Like right in front of my face!! I was like what just happened. I looked at the guy and said “oh wow did you just see that”. He said “yes I am very sorry.” I said “its ok I will just keep looking”. Mind you we have some rolls at home but after my sons story I got a little concerned I’m not gonna lie. Anyways I proceeded to keep walking and my new friends pulled to the side and put their toilet paper in my cart! I said “oh gosh you don’t have to do that!” I was literally chocking back the tears. Not because I just got toilet paper I honestly was ok but because there are still the most kind people out there. I have been thinking about them all day today and I have been praying over them asking for the Lords blessing in their lives. Again not because they gave me toilet paper, it’s because they put someone else’s need above their own.

So as I finish my story about today I just pray that when I see someone in need I pray my first reaction is to give them what they need if I have it and put myself second. We are in a time right now where everyone is out for themselves and the “me first” attitude and I don’t want to be like that. They may never know how much they actually touched my heart today but I pray that I see them again maybe even at Costco 😉

Just go out and be the blessing 😉

PEACE

As I was reading this morning in a devotional that I have been doing this really stood out to me today. The simple word “peace”. As I have thought about this today I was thinking about everything that is going on all around us and the very thing we are all lacking is peace. There is literally no peace anywhere to be found right now if you look at anything on tv or read anything online. This is what my devotional said today about it-

Peace (Order)-God is not the author of confusion and disorder, yet he is active in the midst of confusion to bring about HIS eventual fully controlled order. (This is from the Trustworthy devotional by Lysa Terkeurst on You Version bible app.)

You see all of this craziness and confusion and chaos is not caused by the one who holds our future but he can bring a calmness and give us peace in the midst of it. The enemy is defiantly working overtime right now to cause a lot of worry and fear. God never said following him was going to allow us to be free from all of these things but he did promise to be with us during it.

Here are some verses to ponder:

Philippians 4:6-7- Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be known to God. (7) and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

John 16:33- “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart I have overcome the world”

John 14:27- “Peace I leave you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid”

God is the author of peace. I know for myself personally I struggle with fear and trust which doesn’t bring much peace at times. I don’t want to live that way so I have a choice to make. Either I choose trust and trust that the Lord is in control or I give the enemy a foothold in my life. Is it easy? Absolutely not but it is my choice and mine alone. Every day I have to wake up and choose peace. Everyday I have to get up and choose to believe and trust the God is who he says he is and keep moving forward in him. Am I anywhere near perfect at this nope I’m not and I fail at it everyday but I keep getting up and choosing Jesus.

What area’s do you struggle with and in what ways can you choose peace in your circumstances? We are all on the crazy journey together we call life so let’s help lift each other up and help each other keep moving forward and keep building each other up. If we are to be Jesus to people then let’s start by changing the culture around us and lets spread peace but what the world needs is peace but only the life giving peace of the one who created it Jesus…

Blessings