It’s been a busy week here on the homestead. In addition to keeping up on chores and projects, the girls started school this week. I think school starting was harder on me than it was on the girls. I miss them not being home every day. Wyatt has a couple weeks before he starts. He will start school after Labor Day, which gives us some quality mother/son time. He is very helpful with projects around the homestead.
One project on the homestead that is now complete was a family affair. It’s been a while since I reached out asking for aluminum cans for a project that I had on the homestead, and thankfully a few people answered my request. The chicken tractor, even though the chickens have been living in it for a while, now has the finishing touches completed. I love the finished product!!
Wyatt was a huge help in this next project. When we expanded the garden earlier this spring, we had planned for a gate at the other end of the garden, but never got to putting one in. Well, Wyatt and I got it done. This summer we were fortunate to have someone offer for us to salvage items from a house that was being prepared for demolition. One of the things we found was an old barn gate. The gate was too big for our project, and had some rotten areas, so we had to do some modifications, but I love how it turned out! I like giving new life to things that would otherwise be disposed of.
Reusing items and giving them a new life/purpose reminds me of the Bible verse from 2 Corinthians 5:17. “This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun.” The old in the scripture refers to our “old” nature – pride, love of sin, reliance on works/deeds, bad habits/passions. These old things have died, being nailed to the cross with our sin. But, the good news is, the new has come! The old, dead things are gone and have been filled with the life and glory of God. We find a new kind of love toward mankind, the sins we once enjoyed we now detest, our bad habits have been replaced with habits that brings joy to God, and we realize that there is no amount of money or time that we can give that will get us into Heaven…only a personal relationship with Christ himself. With the example of the gate, Wyatt and I took a gate that was rotting and falling apart. We removed the areas that were no good, and replaced them with new parts, giving it new life. So cool how references to the Bible are literally everywhere in our lives!!!
One final item I would like to give an update on…my pepper plants. Last week I posted how I learned a hard lesson, that grass clippings around the pepper plants was putting too much nitrogen in the soil, and while the plant was growing well, I was not getting any peppers. We have since removed the grass from the row of peppers, and this week it has been a joy watching all the flowers and baby peppers coming on the plants! I may get peppers this year after all!
I hope you all have a wonderful week. I’m sure ours will continue to be very busy. Between school, soccer, chores, noodles, bread, harvesting in the garden and canning season being upon us…I’m sure we are in for another crazy week. Take care, God Bless, and a reader question for this week…have you done a project where you have taken something old and given it new life? I wanna hear about it!