Emmanuel Farm Blog

After working daily on it for more than a week, Jonathan finally finished the shower and it passed all tests this morning! So we got to take a wonderfully hot shower without having to go out in the cold. It sort of defeated the purpose of a hot shower to get all toasty warm and then have to go back out in the cold to drive home! It is indeed a blessing to have a hot shower whenever we want. Once again I have realized the little blessings that I have taken for granted

We have enjoyed several weeks of mild temperatures. In fact it has felt like spring was on the way. But so we wouldn’t be fooled, Old Man Winter has returned with a vengeance, bringing strong winds than we have seen and more below 0 temps. So we are back to cutting down trees and hauling more wood so we have enough to burn around the clock.

We are happy to have hot water which really helps, and Jonathan has been spending a lot of time trying to get a shower installed for us. Of course like every project he keeps running into obstacles but he is getting closer to completion.

The pressure tank in the well sprung a leak last night! It took us two hours to get home from church because of the freezing rain. So we arrived home late and noticed the light on the well house was on indicating water was running. Jonathan investigated and found water in the well house! UGH! So we all brushed our teeth and used the toilets one last time so we could turn the water off for the night.

The well guy came today and said the tank was so old it needed to be replaced. So $400 later, we have a new and improved tank. Not really how we were wanting to spend the money we were saving to live on, but the water pressure is better. Another lesson in trusting God to provide ALL of our needs.

I have accomplished a couple of new things in the kitchen recently that I have been wanting to do for years but have never made the time for it. We found a local source for whole corn so I soaked it in lime water, like the Mexicans have always done, dried it in my new house warming gift, a dehydrator, and ground it up to make fresh yellow corn tortillas for cheese quesadillas. They were not quite the quality of the skilled Honduran women but they were delicious!

Since winter hay, Cream has been producing more milk, much to our delight. So, not only have we been sharing some, we have also had enough to experiment with cheese making. I have made a basic cheese that does not use rennet several times, but I have never made a good hard cheese, until now! We are letting it age so we haven’t tried it yet, but it appears everything turned out. We are very excited about it! We hope to make a cheese that is good enough to sell.

Speaking of selling, right now we are working on baked goods to sell for Valentines Day. Some of the items I have baked many times, but others are new that I am experimenting with to make a good salable item. It has been fun to plan and work on it together. We even found the pans we needed on clearance! So the last several days I have been baking and decorating samples so we can take pictures of them for our website and ad.

It has been in the 20’s and 30’s the last couple of weeks and it feels like fall, except for all the snow on the ground. Some days we have been hot, having to strip our long johns off and replace them with t-shirts! Its amazing how God designed our bodies to adapt so quickly. The awesome part is that it is still sooo beautiful with snow on the ground and beautiful frosty mornings. With the warmer air we have had fog and frost that freezes on the trees and makes for a picture perfect morning. We stand at the window in awe of the beauty of God’s creation and the beautiful land he provided us. Check out the photo library for pictures.

Because it has been warmer, we took a walk to the back corner of our property that we have been to busy to explore. We walked through the woods, down the frozen creek, across the snow covered swamp, through waist high cat tails and up a hill through two feet of snow to find the corner marker and were surprised at how far back our property goes. It was a good reminder of the blessing that God has given us in this land. There is plenty of room for a couple more houses if anyone wants to come live in community. We were even dreaming about building a winter cabin in the back woods of our property over looking a cross-country ski area and ice skating for a winter retreat. It is fun to dream but for the moment, we need to focus on making some money off our farm.