Northern Farmer

This week winter returned to this area with just under a foot of sloppy new snow falling, and it sure isn’t in the mood to melt the way it looks to me. Well, in reality it is melting ever so slowly, not deep no more, but its just hanging around. The forecast isn’t looking all to bad with temps in the fifties later this next week. The big barn roof has a steel roof now, totally done and looking good! Just got done taking about a 30 mile drive west and was looking at the barn roofs over that way and there sure are allot of them steeled over. By that I mean they put the steel over the shingled roof that was there. That’s what we had done and it should outlast me. Been a busy week ever single night seemed like and I never get around to the computer too much. But that’s OK with me. Now I’m settling in after a good supper and can sit myself down and relax a bit.

Gonna do some work around the place this summer, building more corrals and gates. On the low pressure gates in the exposed areas of the farm yard I’ll make some wood gates out of oak. The one in my yard will be two ten footers in order to make me a twenty footer. That will probably have a bit of a western style to it and have to have some heavy duty railroad ties keeping those things from sagging under their own weight. I always had a thing about having a little “ranch” in the look of the place, (although in mud season its hard to imagine). Thus the oak gates. Anywhere there’ll be cattle pressure on gates they’ll be steel gates bought at the local co-op. Some heavy duty ones cause believe me, you ain’t saving any money buying light duty gates on a farm with cattle. They’ll bend em right up to a pretzel.

I sure do wish I could report some farm work getting done, but no such luck. I tell you, these are the hardest weeks of the whole durn year for me. Biting at the bit to get to spring work and a feller can’t hardly do anything! Just wait, and wait. Could be pretty easy to get all grumpy and owly, so I gotta watch myself close. Feed supplies are extremely tight and I’m hoping for this weather to break, quick! Gonna be right down to the wire with that! But the difference this past season was its our own feed, not purchased and that makes a huge difference on the family budget.

Don’t know what this spring and summer will bring on the ministry side of things. One never knows, its just like farming or ranching. Just gotta get out there and do it, do some planting and expect a harvest. Never know what weeds will sprout up and be a pain in the butt. Our own ministry is starting to take shape somewhat. Funny, you’d think a person would have everything figured out when they get started but that surely is not the case here. My own person call is for the folks that would hardly ever be caught dead in a church. There’s plenty of em too. Gets tough sometimes cause I have to agree with em about their distaste for church. I had that too years ago and not entirely unfounded. But a person gotta cut the tradition which is mostly only a few hundred years old anyhow and get back to the basics. The Gospel don’t drive all to many away, tradition, man made tradition does, so I figure the Book of Acts is a good manual to go by and hearts are much more receptive to basic truths and plus the beauty of the Gospels.

And seeing that a farm or ranch ministry such as ours has a total of absolute zero in contributions that does limit a person a bit in the normal way of thinking. But it doesn’t limit just talking to folks, or writing them a note every once in a while to let em know you care. Now, if I had me some contributions this could really take off. But I ain’t expecting any, first of all because I didn’t apply for any tax exempt stuff from the government and then it gets a little tricky doing something like that they tell me. But, (just imagining here), if I did get a sizable amount first thing I’d do is build a barn. Yes, a barn. A gospel barn! A place for those folks who have a distrust for traditional church to settle in and praise Jesus. And I have done a lot of research and this is a big plus out in the countryside.

Now it could be said that if they don’t want to come to a traditional man made church they just are going to stay lost, but I disagree with everything I got on that and will whip anyone in an argument on that one! Really, I read what folks, self righteous folks write on this very subject. Now the way I figure it many of these folks musta never read the Gospels. They set up barriers so anyone that is down and out has to jump through their hoops to become “just like them”. I wonder sometimes how many folks are going to stay lost “because” of church? The self righteous traditions of men that Jesus was so against, and still is I might add.

Maybe this is my downfall in front of the religious, I read and read the Bible daily and it becomes so apparent that so much of church stuff has absolutely nothing to do with God. I ponder this allot, wondering if it would be easier to conform. But I know deep down when it all comes down to me answering to God for my life I want it to be from the Word, the believing the Word, the walking it. Not following some man made “ism”. I pray that I never put burdens on folks, but instead be a light bringing them the Good News and letting the power of the Lord set them free! I pray that I can walk like Jesus walked and if it means to be hated by the religious, well, so was Jesus! This is one reason I do not consider myself a Christian Agrarian or any other label people make for themselves. Labels mean nothing to me, only following our Savior means anything for eternity. Thus the burden for the folks that so many traditional churches really don’t care about.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 4th, 2009 at 7:59 pm and is filed under Northern Farmer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.