Northern Farmer

Its been so busy around here I’m having a hard time finding time to write anything nowadays! But such is life in summer on the farm. Busy cultivating corn today and its a little behind but looking pretty good although we’re getting short on moister again. So what else is new? I’d probably feel guilty if we ever have a summer again with ample moister, wouldn’t know how to act. Now if I could develop a OP corn that didn’t need rain in July and a strain of tasty grass for the cows that would do the same I’d be set good! But such is not the case so we’ll just see how this all develops as time goes on. The time spent today cultivating was a full eight hours and that’s not counting anything else done around the place like chores and getting fences put back up that the calves ran through. But it was a good time cultivating and I figure there’s one more full day of that and then I can go to the low meadows and start cutting wild meadow hay which is as high as my head when I’m sitting on the high tractor seat. So that’s telling me there’s allot of hay down there, about three days of solid cutting and I’d better make sure the old sickle on the haybine is good and sharp and the rock guards ain’t wore to much. Cause some of that lowland wiregrass is like cutting steel wire and everything had better be working perfect in order to even attempt to cut it. I always wondered about that wire grass, the cattle absolutely hate the stuff when its growing and they’re out there grazing. But put it in a bale and come winter the just love the stuff. Another mystery of life on the farm but I ain’t gonna lose no sleep over it trying to figure it out. There’s never a shortage of other stuff to worry about so why dwell on that!
Besides all the work that’s been going constant this is the season out in the countryside for small town festivals and different church events too. This weekend on Friday and Saturday evening we drove thirty miles away to the west and there was an old fashioned tent meeting taking place and that was pretty durn good to say the least. Saturday evening was cloudy and very, very windy and the chairs were blown over as the folks were standing up singing and during the preaching it looked like the tent was going to be blown to OZ and it looked like it should be stopped right there and then. BUt the people just yelled “preach it” and away it went and I might never forget that night as long as I live. Bragging rights you know. We didn’t quit and I think everyone was happy we didn’t either. I might have to write about that sometime. Your’s truly even got the privilege of of closing the service when it was all said and done with a closing prayer. It might be a classic prayer too! Thanking the lord for keeping them tent pegs solid in the ground because I think my faith was wavering when the wind gusts were hitting over fifty miles per hour. But I figure the oldtimers endured allot more when they went to brush arbor meetings, tent meetings and them huge camp meetings of yesteryear. They’d even bring along their milk cow for the week or two that the meetings were held and all those folks would put there milk cows together in a community pasture and keep right on going with the old camp meeting. They sure were a different lot of folks compared to nowadays. I think some of the weakest folks then were stronger than the strongest folks now when it comes to toughing it out just to praise and worship the Lord like they did year after year back then.
We think we’re so good and following the Lord so nice and everything, but it ain’t nothing compared to back then. I even am at my limit driving a car thirty miles to the meeting. Those folks years ago came from much farther than that, most of them walking, pulling a cart, leading a milk cow. Having their one set of good cloths safely packed away for the meetings. Many walking barefoot so their one pair of shoes would be clean and unscuffed for the meeting. And nowadays we figure we’re so high and mighty. We figure that we really have it together. We figure we’re so different from the world cause we can some food, raise a few critters, farm a little or homestead some. Some of us write on the computer telling some of what we do and believe. But no matter what, we don’t have what they had back then and it bothers me when I even think about what a genuine wimp I am compared to the faith those folks had back then. Bothers me allot. Now we’re all too busy, but in reality, no we ain’t. We just don’t want to live free and for the Lord like the folks did back then. Mention something about visiting and most folks have to check their calender, years ago they probably didn’t even have one!
I was just thinking. I hadn’t planned on writing about this, never do plan on what to write, but as far as myself goes, I have a long, long ways to go to have the peace and freedom those folks did. Sure a person can act like they’re living simple, but no we ain’t. We’re all sucked into this society hook, line and sinker. I think its just as important to throw away the calendar of our schedules as it is to raise a garden or raise some critters. I for one am getting sick and tired of having to have an appointment just to visit someone. What good does it do to act like a person is getting a simpler life, to write about it and all that stuff, but still live the modern life to the hilt as the testimony of our schedules shows? What good is any church stuff, what good is any faith matters if a person is a total slave to the schedules that we follow religiously?
Oh boy, now I’m getting growly! AT MYSELF! I can say, that we don’t have what they had! And no matter what we say we ain’t even close and it makes me sick! I always said that I wished I was born a hundred and fifty years ago, but that doesn’t count for much because I’m not back in that time and there ain’t all that much I can do about going back to that time! So I ask myself, what do I do to take care of this problem? To be truthful, its totally between the ears, no where else. It ain’t in how a person dresses, it ain’t in how they quote the Bible or church doctrine because all that means squat if what’s between the ears is totally in tune with society’s schedule and we race around totally in the world. Hmm, interesting. Maybe I should post this post private so only I can read it but then I would have to comment to myself and that ain’t normal no matter what kind of society one is in.
I’m gonna have to look at that more closely, deprogramming one’s self from the modern hustle and bustle. Even as simple as we supposedly live in comparison to so many there’s still that burden of the modern society dictating way to much in our lives. I’d like that freedom in Christ like they had a hundred and fifty years ago and earlier. Now religion is hand in hand with the modern breakneck and family destroying society, trying to “teach” us how to cope, how to make it OK in this mad pagan society. Well I don’t want to impress anyone in this mad society, I could care less, so why am I doing it?
I guess what I’m really trying to say, and it ain’t coming out to well, is that for all the things we supposedly do to live simple, to get away from society nowadays, we’re still deeply programed to march in step with it. And when a person starts chewing through that rope that binds us, that’s when the hope starts to appear. I heard at the tent meeting the other night during the powerful preaching, that what can society do to you if they hate you for following Jesus? Mock you, beat you up, imprison you. Well, so what, there’s rewards for that promised in the Bible. If they kill you there’s huge rewards instantly on the other side. But talking right from the Bible doesn’t sit well with a luke warm Christian population that is “programmed” not to make waves. That is programmed to be like society and to be indistinguishable from everyone else around them. This is the problem, do we deny Christ just to fit in to mainstream society. Folks, this ain’t some lunatic preaching, this is preaching right from the old fashioned tent meeting this weekend! This ain’t from some Christian Agrarian thingy, this is old school preaching that is almost extinct today. But let me say, it was being preached out in an open field in Central Minnesota this past week. People don’t hear the truth very much any more in mainstream churches and the like.

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