Wisdom at your fingertips

Ephesians 5:15-16 tells us to "Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise, but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil."

This scripture speaks sweetly to me as to how I should be living out my days. I know the Lord has called me to serve my family daily. Serve can mean so many things and be so many different hats to wear.

But, when the Word says to 'make the best use of the time' it doesn't mean to just let your days happen and try and deal with the result. We shouldn't be in a reactive state all day long. I'm learning this more and more the bigger our family gets and the older our children get. I still have so far to go.

If you are like me, you are always looking for ways to improve your 'serve' in your home. You are always looking for ways to make your life a little less chaotic and a lot more organized so that you can spend time on what really matters.

My favorite sister-in-law, Heather Hendrick, is doing a series on her blog that will address anything and everything on the nuts and bolts of running a house effectively. Many women from our church are offering wisdom and insight to various issues such as laundry, organizing, toy control, time management, and the list goes on.

I feel it is worthy to address and so that is the reason for this post. I've already gained wonderful insight into the area of laundry. I love the body of Christ and gaining wisdom from women who have been there, done that, and bought a t-shirt.

Go read and comment. Click HERE to view the Hendrick blog.

Grow some hair on that chest

See this cute little guy?

We are one less.

You see, today was a sad day on the farm.

Last night the girls and I were doing our chores outside with the animals and I noticed that one of our four newly acquired cute little piglets was out of the pigpen. As I walked closer and closer to it, I realized that something wasn't right. It was shoving its face in the dirt and scooting around like a wheelbarrow.

I was mystified about what exactly happened and why he was acting so weird. With three years under my belt as a vet tech, I thought I was going to do something about this and go CSI on the pig.

As I went to pick up this little guy, I heard something come from him that I didn't even know existed in the world. There is great truth to the saying 'Squeal like a pig'. It should be 'Squeal like a pig, then pee your pants'. The shriek was deafening and I knew instantly that he was in pain.

I discovered that both of his front two legs were broken. Somehow he broke them during his escape from the pen. My heart hurt for him because I knew what was in store for him.

I wanted to be like Fern to the rescue in Charlotte’s Web and take 'Wilbur' in as my very own and push him around in a stroller and feed him his supper in a bottle and dress him up in bonnets. And then reality set in. I do that with my own human piglet. That is what the mama/girl in me wanted to do. However, I knew if I were going to make it as a farmer's wife I had to toughen up.

I consulted with farmer Jason about this last night over the phone because he was at the fire station. Although there wasn’t much said about this piglet’s fate, we both knew what had to be done.

How could he live like this? He was in too much pain. It would have been different if it was just one leg, but both of them.

Jason got home this morning gave me the ‘I am man’ look and headed straight out to the barn, gun in tote with his pants tucked into his boots. I wanted no part of the details. I just wanted to remain in my state of toughness because it had taken me sooo long to get there.

I know that you must be thinking ‘They were going to kill it anyways and make Christmas ham out of him’. Although that may be true, he didn’t get to live out his life’s purpose.

I have had to come to grips with that very fact. All animals here have a purpose. We grow and raise some animals solely to eat them. That’s it. How sad is that? Our goal is to let them live a life free of stress and grow up to be big healthy animals so we can eat good healthy meat and know exactly where it came from and exactly what we are consuming. Our pigs eat grass and for scraps they get our fruit and veggie clippings. Not buckets of slop with a bunch of miscellaneous in it.

Jason is amazing to me. He was somber and yet strong at the same time. He has a good balance. I know that must be so difficult to do something like that and remain sane. But then again, I forget what his other job is too. He truly has the mind of superman to be able to do the things he does. And he most definitely has what it takes to be a farmer. I need to take a course is Farmer’s Wife 101 or something. Do they offer that in the Ag Dept at A&M?

We could see the vultures from our back porch. And occasionally I would catch the two of us gazing off into the pasture in that direction with blank stares on our faces. Then we would look back at each other, sigh, and go about our day.

Chicks, Improvements, & Goats

To all of you faithful readers who entered a name in the 'Name that chick' contest, thanks! I appreciate all 6 of you.

BTW, Yonder Way comments are dwindling before our very eyes. What's up wit dat yo?

I would like to inform you that ALL 6 of you have won and we are using your names to name the 13 of the chicks that hatched. We were hopeful that just one would hatch, but 13! Are we farmers or what???

Here are the names that we have selected to be the first 13 baby chicks.

Aristotle- really who came first here?
Plutarch
Humpty Dumpty
Leggo
Waffle
Yolko Ono- for our more eclectic readers
Stan- when we determine which one is a rooster, this rocks as a roosters name 'Stan the Man'
Indeed (Because even though Brandon didn't post a name, he still posted a comment.)
NaShell- how funny is this?
Skillet
Ducky
Clucky
Princess (this ones KK's)

I'm sorry. There are no portraits to follow of the individual chicks with their cute little names below. So, this will have to do.

The chicks

Out with the old, and in with the new!

Jason also made improvements to the previous beach house chicken coop and re-invented the chicken coop as we at Yonder Way know it. Its pure genius if you ask me and much more farm-esque complete with tin siding and wheels. We have 60 chickens here on the farm. The new ones needed somewhere to go.

This coop is much easier for Jason to transport around the farm and also much easier for us to get the eggs due to the lower and light weight door on the back. Aunt Debbie and I appreciate this feature very much.

We've also learned that chickens don't really need the cute little metal chicken coop boxes to lay eggs in. Sad, I know.

So Jason built little wooden squares and put hay in them for them to lay in. And they work like a champ. We had some lay in them yesterday.

We also have 4 cute little goats running around the chicken pen. Jason adopted the natural way of mowing by putting the goats in the pen to eat down the grass. Brilliant. Less mowing, less gas being used, fun little goats for our children to play with.

Billy, Nanny, Lucy, & Ethel

Our goats are full grown Pygmy (pronounced pig-me) goats. They are adorable and have such cute personalities. I think that more people should have these as their pets. It might not be so great on the landscaping, but you get cute little goats to adore!

I think that is all of the news for now.

5 amazing months!

Laney Rae is 5 months old!

I really can't believe in just 5 short months she has went from a sleepy newborn to a giggly baby. She is all smiles.

Her personality is already starting to show and silly faces are starting to appear.

So are two tiny teeth on the bottom of her mouth. I have thought that she might be teething but it is always anyones guess until you actually see something. Yesterday morning, there was a something. Two of them to be exact.

Laney Rae is your typical bouncing baby with enough sweet faces to go around.

Our two girls bring us so much delight and joy.

Photography BLOG

I started a photography blog to post some of my work on.

I realized that their needed to be a separation of farm & photography so there you have it.

Although, you will still see pictures of the farm and our family here. There is just no getting around that!

GO DOWN TO THE NEXT POST TO SEE PICTURES OF MY BEAUTIFUL NIECE! I didn't want you to miss them.

You can see the photography blog HERE and it will also be linked over to the side.

My Niece Is Here!!!

Ava Joy Aldape was born Monday, August 20, at 9:01 am.

She was 7 lbs 12 oz and 20 3/4 inches long.

Ava (don't you love this name??) is absolutely beautiful and precious in every single way. She has the blackest hair and the most beautiful eyes.

I'm so proud of my sister. She allowed me to be a part of such a special day in their lives and I was blessed. Kayla was so amazing in the delivery room and has been an incredible mother to Ava.

David, Kayla, & Ava are doing wonderful. We are glad that Ava is finally here!

When Kaylyn saw Ava for the first time she said the funniest thing. She was looking at her with her face all scrunched up and said,"Mommy, her belly button looks like a piece of bacon!"

Name that egg

I realize that I probably should receive a big fat 'F' in blogging. I have been the worlds worst at updating this thing.

My computer crashed last week and I think I've just been plain ole' scared of my computer ever since.

So, for those of you who actually still visit this pathetic excuse for a blog, I promise that I will get over my fear of my computer eventually. We have lots going on out here on the farm and my husband is too OCD to have our blog stuck on July 30. We love those Mosiers, but it is time to move on.

Which brings me to this.

This is our very first egg, among a few others, that we are hatching. If you look closely, you can see this little chicks wing. This technique is called 'candeling'. We use this to see if the eggs that are sitting in the incubator are fertile since not all eggs are fertile. BTW....I did not know this prior to becoming a farm girl. All eggs have yolks, but not all eggs that are layed were fertilized by a rooster. Some are and some aren't. But, the ones that are fertilized are actually better for you to eat (still in yolk form of course!!!).

We could actually see the chick moving around inside the egg. It was super cool!


It has been sitting in an incubator on the kitchen countertop. We keep the temperature at 101.5 degrees F. The eggs stay in the incubator for roughly 21 days and day 21 is in a few days.

So, we need you to come up with a name for our very first Yonder Way chick. The winner will receive free e-mail updates of the status and wherabouts of their namesake. I promise to make them interesting and fun. It might even be a rooster! How cool would that be? Sorry, 'Mac Daddy' is already taken.

I know that we have some pretty creative people that read this blog.....hopefully, they still do! So, I'm trusting you to NAME THIS EGG!