Fall 09

White turkeys are the ones generally sold commercially. I meant to take a picture of both the bronze and whites before, but I just have a white before and a bronze after.

And After II (yes, we cook our turkey's upside down, it's part of a very elaborate turkey roasting ritual my husband carries out):

Our white hens that we got last year still lay wonderfully--one big fat white egg a day usually. But, I'm down to 6 now. I had them loose for much of the summer and I guess I lost two to predators.

Cute lucy on the tree ladder.

Lucy and Noah in the back yard.

Mother hen (used to be the rooster I called "sissy chicken") and her 12 chicks out learning how to forage. She is pretty fierce if you get too close, as you can kind of see in this picture. She's a great mother, and she does gather them under her wings, just like the scriptures say God will do for us.
I need to take more pictures of the trees here--it is so gorgeous. Yesterday we got the sod cutter rented again and took out more grass for next year's garden. It seems counterintuitive to follow up my miserable neglected failure of this year with expanded ambitions for next year, but we feel we should try again. The first year was very fulfilling, and we did get some good out of this year's but I was learning how to juggle the work/family/health/garden issues.

Talk about fall, we picked tons of apples yesterday from the neglected tree way back on the property (you have to commando crawl under a fence to get over there, then pass the buckets back over when done). Some of them were so perfect and huge. If we found a wormy one, we threw it to our neighbor's (very grateful) sheep. I have applesauce canning on the agenda this week.

Yesterday I also inventoried my food storage, and I'm not so bad as I thought. We are fervently working on that now. I'll go on record that I think the constant media talk of signs of recovery is just that--talk--and I personally think we haven't yet seen the worst of it. I realize only 20% of economists agree with me on that, though.

I heard a comment in general conference that perfectly summed up what I've been feeling as I've been reading about both the economy and studying the scriptures much more than I have before (funny how well they go together!)

It was D. Todd Christofferson who said, "We cannot presume that the future will resemble the past—that things and patterns we have relied upon economically, politically, socially will remain as they have been."

I think there is a lot of false security thrown about in the name of what has always happened, but real security is in obedience to and trust in God and trying to live by the Spirit.

Am I prepared?

I love crazy talk. I love picking through crazy talk and finding the little gems of truth, or of more crazy. It's because my dad was a crazy genius conspiracy theorist--and I mean CRAZY. While still a little kid, I was raised on debates around the four horsemen of Revelations and the identity of the Beast--like it was mother's milk. My dad was always swinging between religious zealot and self-proclaimed apostate prophet. Ah, childhood.

So can I tell you I am all about orthodoxy? It's my form of rebellion.

So, when my sweet friend tells me about a crazy alarmist prophecy email she got, I was all, "send it over, I love that stuff!" By which I mean, good for laughs, nice to see what the crazies are up to.

This one was some quotes in the family journals of a dream a mid-century LDS prophet had, which was alarming but not alarmist, but it was spread heavily with the interpretations and bold tweakings of his grandson, and then added to heavily by the emailer himself. End result? Don't you know, there'll be an inevitable, major war on American soil between the election and inauguration. Didn't see that coming.

First of all, who cares? If you follow the counsel of the prophets to be prepared temporally and spiritually, who cares what happens when? If you read the scriptures at all you know the latter days aren't a picnic, so boo hoo and get your food storage and have Family Home Evening.

Second of all, now we are for sure safe because I put it on my blog, which everyone knows jinxes it, so--no war.

But, the crazy talk did remind me I have an empty water barrel outside that needs filling, and I did forget to do my semi-annual food storage inventory at conference time (because my house was full of Pasadena scouts). So, I guess I'll get on that before the election. Gotta love the crazies.

In closing, something we should be paying attention to, probably more than the crazies:

Gordon B. Hinckley, 2002:

Occasions of this kind pull us up sharply to a realization that life is fragile, peace is fragile, civilization itself is fragile. The economy is particularly vulnerable. We have been counseled again and again concerning self-reliance, concerning debt, concerning thrift. So many of our people are heavily in debt for things that are not entirely necessary. When I was a young man, my father counseled me to build a modest home, sufficient for the needs of my family, and make it beautiful and attractive and pleasant and secure. He counseled me to pay off the mortgage as quickly as I could so that, come what may, there would be a roof over the heads of my wife and children. I was reared on that kind of doctrine. I urge you as members of this Church to get free of debt where possible and to have a little laid aside against a rainy day.

We cannot provide against every contingency. But we can provide against many contingencies. Let the present situation remind us that this we should do.
…

I do not know what the future holds. I do not wish to sound negative, but I wish to remind you of the warnings of scripture and the teachings of the prophets which we have had constantly before us.

I cannot forget the great lesson of Pharaoh's dream of the fat and lean kine and of the full and withered stalks of corn.

I cannot dismiss from my mind the grim warnings of the Lord as set forth in the 24th chapter of Matthew.

I am familiar, as are you, with the declarations of modern revelation that the time will come when the earth will be cleansed and there will be indescribable distress, with weeping and mourning and lamentation (see D&C 112:24).

Now, I do not wish to be an alarmist. I do not wish to be a prophet of doom. I am optimistic. I do not believe the time is here when an all-consuming calamity will overtake us. I earnestly pray that it may not. There is so much of the Lord's work yet to be done. We, and our children after us, must do it.

Let's get to work!

Incapacitating Freedom

So, my computer died, or at least it seems so, and it died in the process of me doing a belated back up. So, since I've lost all my emails, my addresses, my documents, my calendar, my bills and financial records, my web favorites, my pictures, and basically I have nothing to do, which is to say, don't know what I am supposed to be doing, so it's about the same thing.

So, please send me your email address if you happen to check this blog, along with any interesting files or websites I may have ever sent you. :)

The family is fine, just more of the same, Ben's not loving school, but does love scouts, Sophie is pretty easy going and enjoying her own musical extravaganzas in the bathtub and bedroom venues, and Noah is joyfully destroying everything in his path. Lucy has begun to take an interest in Noah's exploits and as his apprentice in destruction is beginning to show some promise. Still no more steps, though she can stand and squat and stand again hands-free.

Finally got my emergency kits into relative order, just a few small pieces missing (like the kid's food for those 72 hours), but closer than ever, and none too soon, since we have been reminded to do this for our entire lifetimes. May we never need to use them.

Love to all.