Santa vs. Jesus

Well, Christmas is over and I am happy about that. Overall it was pretty good. Here is a quick rundown of what we did. We hung out with friends on Friday night at John’s house in honor of the Tokar’s being in town. On Saturday, we picked up Annie and Walt at the airport and drove them down to Mena and stayed until Sunday. This was a lot of fun. We love hanging out with Walt and Annie and some of my favorite people to visit are her parents. You just feel good and when you are at their house and hanging out with them. It is like you don’t have a care in the world and you are just happy. I hope someday that people will feel like that when they come to our house. On Sunday night we went to Margo’s grandmother’s house and hung out with her family and then to her parent’s house to open presents. On Monday, all of my family came to our house and we cooked a big meal and opened presents. It was a very busy weekend and overall it went pretty good.
I do have some issues with Christmas. It is getting to be a little to much with the Santa Clause and all the presents. It seems like there is so much pressure on getting presents and getting the right one. And kids these days just want more and more and bigger and more expensive. I find it ridiculous that people go in debt over buying presents for their kids. I wish we would concentrate more on Jesus (of course) but also more on family. I like getting presents for people and receiving presents but there has got to be a better way. Maybe we should only be allowed to give each person one gift and that gift has to be something you make yourself. I told Margo the other day that we really need to come up with how we are going to treat Christmas once we have kids because I don’t want it to be like it is for a lot of families. One thing is for sure, my kids will not be taught that Santa Clause is real. I don’t want them to believe that if they are good all year than this jolly guy comes down in a sleigh with his flying reindeer and brings them presents. I would much rather teach them Jesus and make them excited about him.

Merry Christmas

For any of you who did not get a Christmas card from us, here is our picture that was on our Christmas card this year. I think it is our best one yet.




We tried to make it as much like the painting as possible, even the solemn looks.

Terrorists Attack the Farm!!!!!

Not really terrorists. But that is the thought that went through my head when I got home today. Let me start from the beginning. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. Maybe not that beginning, because that might take a while. So when we bought the farm, there was a "barn" on the property. Although, originally it was not a barn. As I mentioned in my post about the chicken coop, hippies used to own this property and what we call the barn was their house. It is really scary but I am sure it was glorious to the hippies in its hayday. I thought I could turn this structure into a barn for the animals but finally decided it was not possible and it must go. My neighbor Mark had mentioned he might like to tear it down so he could use the wood from it to build a structure of some sort on his property. As hard as it was to give up the idea of making a huge fire of it, I agreed that he could tear it down. This was a couple of days ago that I told him he could tear it down. Well, when I got home today, he and his buddy had almost completely dismantled the entire thing, there was only one wall still standing. This is the point that the thought went through my head..."it looks like terrorists flew planes into my barn". Let me just say right here that I am not trying to make light of 9/11 but I saw ground zero two months after 9/11 and that is what it kind of reminded me of (except smaller). Anyway, I am very happy that this eyesore on my property is almost gone. Seriously though, it does look like a tornado came through.

Before Terrorists (and winter)


After Terrorists (today)

The coop, the whole coop, and nothing but the coop

Long time, no post. It has been a really long time since I have posted anything. Lots of stuff has been going on, I just have been a slacker. Here is a quick rundown of some thing that have been going on. I started my new position at the VA. I now work in the urology clinic, which means I deal with a lot of penises and problems like erectile dysfunction, and prostates. But, overall this is a good thing because it is a lot less stressful and I get all weekends and holiday's off, so I will have Christmas off for the first time in like 4 years. Speaking of holidays, we went to my aunt's house in Mountain Home for Thanksgiving. It was fun to see family we had not seen in a while. But, the main thing I have been doing the past couple of weeks is working on building a new chicken coop. The old chicken coop is rotting and not in very good shape. It is so bad the chickens don't even like it, seriously they won't go in there. So, I decided to build a new one. I decided to build it where the old hippy bath house was(the building we called the fishing shack because it is next to the pond). Hippies used to own this property a long time ago and this building they used as a bath house and pumped in pond water to clean themselves. You gotta love hippies. Anyway, I burned down the fishing shack and rebuilt the new chicken coop in the same place. The best part of this whole project was burning the old fishing shack, it made a big fire and I almost caught the forest on fire (Smokey would not be happy). Overall it turned out pretty good, I still have a few things to do on it but overall it is complete. All I need now is more chickens.

Old chicken coop-


Old fishing shack (aka hippy bath house) -


Burning fishing shack (aka burning hippy bath house) notice the woods catching on fire in the left background-


New chicken coop in progress -


Finished chicken coop -

Deere, John Deere

I have a tractor. No, it is not mine, I am just baby-sitting it. It is actually Margo's parents'; it was originally Margo's mom's dad's (Margo's grandfather's). I don't remember what year it is, but it is somewhere in the 1946 or 1947 range I think. Margo's dad recently had a mennonite guy he knows fix it up so it looks nice and will run good. Anyway, Margo's dad lives in town and he decided to bring it out to my place where I might can use it a little on the farm. I am really excited to have it, not just because it is useful but because it is really fun to just drive around on. It is so old it has a crank start on it, the thing that you wind around in a circle on the front to get it started. I had never used one of those before, it was really fun. Even though new tractors are really nice and can do a lot, I like the old antique ones better I think, they are just a lot of fun to use.

Fall at the Farm

This past Saturday we had a get together at our house. It was kind of the first official "event" at our house. One thing Margo and I really want to do is have lots of opportunities for people to come out here and hang out and be on the farm and get a taste of the "simple life". So, we had a fall party out here. It was real basic, we just hung out, talked, fished in the pond, played some cornhole, and sat around the bonfire and cooked some hotdogs and smores. It was fun times. The most interesting thing about the event was that all my worlds kind of collided. We had our regular friends, our church friends, family, and even some neighbors showed up. It went pretty well, I hope everyone had a good time.

Smoking

I have decided to start smoking. I know this might be a shock to some of you. It is just something I have always wanted to try but just never have for one reason or the other. I figured since we have this new place and I am doing new things, that this is as good of time as any. I figure you only have one life so I might as well try it so I won't spend my whole life wondering what it is like to smoke. Margo is ok with it, the biggest problem she had with it is that the money spent could be used for better things or saved, but the cool wife she is, she said it was ok for me to try it out instead of living my life wondering what it would be like and never getting to try it. I started last week, and so far it has not been to bad, but it hasn't been anything spectacular either. I don't think I am addicted to it yet but with more time I might be. I am not sure how long this will last or when (if ever) I will quit, but I will try to keep all of you updated. It was hard to decide what brand to use so I finally decided on this one.

I'm like Jesus

Before Margo and I moved to the farm we sold our bedroom dressers and planned on buying some nicer ones. Well, since we have been here our dressers have been cardboard boxes, which I don't mind so much but Margo hates. We went shopping for dressers a couple times but did not find anything that would work. Our problem was I built our bed frame last year. It is made of wild cheery wood off of my dad's old farm and is styled after a bed in pottery barn that Margo likes. Here is a pic.



As you can imagine it is hard to find dressers to match it. I thought about building dressers but drawers are very hard to make. My brother offered me some dressers (dresser, chest of drawers, and bedside table) he had that he was going to get rid of. They were kind of ugly (no offense Zack and Joanna) but I thought I would see if I could redo them to make them work in our bedroom and match the bed. So. I went to my dad's to get some cherry wood that he still had from his old farm to make new tops and trim out of and I also decided to build a TV stand and another bedside table. I spent the better part of a day cutting and planing the wood at dad's house and have been working on building them this past week. So here are some before and after pics.

Here is the dresser ( I have not completed the mirror yet)


Here is the chest of drawers


Here is the matching bedside table, the other bedside table I made, and the TV stand



Well, there you go. I want to give a shout out to my dad for giving me the wood, letting me use his tools, and helping me plane the boards. Also a shout out to Zack and Joanna for the furniture and to John for helping me carry it upstairs. Anyway, Margo is happy now, which is the important thing. Speaking of that here is a song for all you married guys out there, click here, it starts playing automatically.

Fire

Another thing that we have at our new house that we are really happy about is we have a wood stove. This will be our primary source of heat. It is a nice stove and has glass on the front so you can see the fire burning. Just let me tell you that one of the best things in life is sitting in front of a warm fire and watching it. It could be the most relaxing thing in the world, besides tranquilizers.

Halloween

For this post, I will step away from my usual talking about the farm to talk on other issues. Halloween is fast approaching. I have always had issues with this holiday. No I am not the person that says it is the devil's holiday and denounce it. My issues are that so many "Christians" don't know what to do with this holiday. Some of our friends refuse to even acknowledge this day and won't even hand out candy to the little kids and then some of our friends go all out in celebrating it and decorate and take their kids trick or treating. Growing up I don't remember ever being allowed to go trick or treating but we always went to those church "Harvest Festivals". These days I do celebrate Halloween because I see it as just an American Holiday and I am not a fan of so called Harvest Festivals because I think they are just the churches excuse to celebrate Halloween while trying to look Holy. If my church ever celebrates with a Harvest Festival where you can come dressed as a Bible character, rest assured my kid will come dressed as Satan. Anyway, I know everyone will not agree with my ideas on Halloween: that we as Christians should not sit idly by but be a part of it and change what bad parts there are for the good. Anyway, my main point of writing this is that it seems like this holiday divides Christians more than any other. I stumbled across a blog entry by a pastor at Mars Hill Church in Seattle (which seems like a really awesome church) about his views on Halloween and this is the single best thing I have read to date about Halloween, its history, and how it pertains to us as Christians, so please take a few minutes to read it. click here for the blog entry

Pear and Fudge

No, this is not my new favorite flavor of ice cream. These are the names of two chickens. When my niece and nephew Patrick and Isabelle where here in August my parents bought them each a baby chick to have while they were staying with them. I think the reasoning behind this was to keep them busy and I think it worked pretty well, so any of you mom's and dad's out there that have little kids and get tired of entertaining them all the time buy them a baby chick. Well, when Patrick and Isabelle left, my parents gave the two baby chicks to us and we have been raising them. They have been in a cage on my front porch. I thought I would take some pictures and post them so Patrick and Isabelle could see how big they are getting. Don't forget to buy your kids baby chicks to entertain them and then give them to us.

A tale of two kitties

We lost one of our kitties a few weeks ago. We lost Fanta (the orange one), she just disappeared one day and we had no idea where she went. About a week or so after we lost her, one of Margo's friends (Melissa) got a new cat at her house. She showed Margo pictures and it looked a lot like our Fanta, but she had got this cat from a friend who found it close to Wedington Avenue in Fayetteville. Anyway, Margo went over to her house and was amazed at how much the two cats resembled one another, so she held the cat up to a picture of Fanta on our blog. Well, it was Fanta. The best we can guess, Fanta got up underneath my truck and rode to work with me and fell out from underneath when I stopped at a stoplight or something. Pretty Amazing!!!! I wanted to take Fanta back, but they had already become attached and would probably cry if I took it away which used to would not have bothered me but I have softened in my old age.
Anyway, it has just been Spot on the farm for the past few weeks until yesterday. We went and got another kitty from the same place we got Fanta and Spot. We like him so far, he is younger than Spot. Spot does not like him so far but Macy seems to like him. Anyway, I will post a picture and if anyone has a name suggestion feel free to comment.



On a side note, I need some help. This mostly involves the people who live around Fayetteville. I am making a duck house so I can get some ducks. I am going to make the duck house so that it floats in the middle of the pond. I am going to use 2 liter bottles to float it. So, any of you who have been wanting to help on the farm, this is your chance. Save your 2 liter bottles and give them to me.

Finally

IT IS FINISHED. You heard me right, I finished the fence. It seems like it took forever (it took 2 months). Overall, it turned out pretty good for my first time building a fence by myself. There are a few things that aren't perfect but nothing in this world is (except the sushi from Rice Village). I would just like to send a shout out to those who helped me with the fence..... this shout out goes to Gary, John, and my wife, and a big shout out to my dad who gave me a gate and some other stuff but even bigger taught me how to build fence. I am so happy to be finished so that I can now start working on other things. I will post a few of those "other things" in a couple days. Here are a couple pics of the fence, but to get the full effect you have to come see for yourself.

The other big news is that I have goats to put in my fancy new fence. My friend Trav gave them to me. He had them when he was here in Fayetteville but he recently moved to Ohio for work and he left them to me. They have been at my dad's since he moved but I brought them to my place the other day after I finished my fence. We are very excited and happy to have goats. I would like to take this opportunity to send a shout out to Trav for the goats. The goats have been eating brush and briars and all sorts of other things like crazy. I guess we officially have a farm now that we have livestock.

New Job

I got a new position at the VA. I probably won't start that position until around late October or November. The new position is in the urology clinic, which means I will have weekends and holidays off. I am so excited because I will have a more normal life again. I just thought I would share my big news with everyone. This whole new job thing got me to thinking about all the jobs I have had up to this point in my life. I don't know if anyone cares but I thought I would give a quick rundown of all the jobs I have had. I never did the normal working at Wal-Mart or waiting tables while I was in school. This is quite a random list.

1. Gathering eggs in a chicken house. I did this for one of our neighbors. This was before I could drive so I rode my bike there. This was my first real kind of job because it was regular and I got a check every week.
2. Working for a painter/carpenter. I worked for a guy from my church. He was ok to work for and I learned a lot about painting. I was probably 15-16 years old when I worked this job.
3. Working at Ouachita Rehab and Fitness. I helped people with their fitness programs and ran the fitness center at night and on the weekend. This was my all time favorite job, I loved it. If I could make a living and support a family doing that job I would still be doing it today.
4. One summer while working at the above job I also worked at Mena Steel Buildings. I did steel building construction all summer. I really liked this job even though it was really hard, and I loved working with construction workers. They were really funny and treated me really good.
5. Working at Transitions. I worked as a nursing assistant/mental health tech. This place treated geriatric patients who had psychiatric problems. This was a very interesting job and I have some funny stories from that job. I did this job while I was in college.
6. RN at Washington Regional Medical Center. I did this for 10 months after I graduated and I worked night shift. I hated night shift but I got some good experience.
7. My current job at the VA.

It makes me wonder what kind of jobs I will have in the future.

Neverending project and my first kill

Well, I thought I might catch everyone up on what's been going on the farm since I have not posted in a while. I AM STILL BUILDING FENCE. It is the never ending job. There is light at the end of the tunnel though. I have all four sides completed and I am working on the fence coming up the driveway and around the house. I am very thankful for the cooler weather. I think the high today was 66 which is awesome compared to the 105 it was a few weeks ago. I thought I would estimate (I haven't actually measured or counted) for you how much fence I am putting up. Approximately 3,400 feet of field fence and barbwire, driven in between 320-350 t-posts, dug 40-50 big wooden posts, and soon will hang 4 gates. I will take some pictures when I am finished and put them on the blog. It will probably be another week or two until I am finished, then I can start on other, more fun projects and I will be posting a lot more.

As I was writing the above, my dog started barking outside. If any of you know Macy, you know she is not the greatest watch dog, but I still go out and shine the light (it is 10pm right now) and see if there are any varmits out there. Well surprise, surprise there was a varmit out there, an Armadillo. CAUTION: If you are a PETA person you might want to stop reading here. Let first start by saying I love animals and don't kill animals unless I am going to eat them or they are a threat. I killed the armadillo. Armadillos dig up your land and garden, they also make big holes in the ground for their burrows which can cause a cow or any other animal including a person to break their leg. I have killed lots of armadillos during my life, one of the funnest memories I have from growing up on the farm (I don't have a whole lot of them because I did not like growing up on the farm, it is funny how things change) is going out to work early in the morning in my dad's old green farm truck and seeing an armadillo in the pasture and trying to chase it down in the truck and run over it. It was a lot of fun because we would be sliding all over the place because the grass would still be wet from the dew. I was going to post a picture of the dead armadillo but I decided that might be a little to much.

I'm a lumberjack and I'm okay

Actually my dad is the lumberjack and I'm am his sidekick, I think my sidekick name should be 'The chainsaw kid'. There were several large trees around our house that needed cutting, either they were dead, or were where the fence was going to go, or to close to the house, or close to power lines. Since it seems that I may not be the best tree cutter yet (see previous post of 'Death by Tree'), I decide to call my dad who has years of experience cutting down trees, and I have years of experience watching him cut down trees, which has made me come to the conclusion that I do not learn by watching someone else do something. Anyway, this past Saturday dad came over (6:30am) and we cut down all the trees that I needed help with. It was pretty interesting over all but went a lot faster than I thought it would. We had no deaths or trips to the hospital, no structural damage or loss of electricity, and only minor injuries, so I would say it was a pretty successful day. Margo took a couple of pics, and I thought they were very "epic" looking pictures. Like old pictures you see of your grandpa out working or standing by some amazing thing. So I made this one black and white to add to that affect. Also, here is a link to a great video and song about a lumberjack.

These are a few of my favorite things

I have been enjoying buying new stuff for the house. Some things I have been buying are not needed things but things I have wanted for a long time and have just never bought them. These things are simple things that just make life better and are the things I enjoy the most. I will profile three of those things in this post.

1. Porch swing. I did not buy this it was already with the house. It is so nice to be on the porch in the swing, just swinging my life away (not this type of swinging just to clarify). I do wish I could play the guitar (or guitfiddle) because that would be the ultimate - on the porchswing playing the guitar and singing with Aunt Bee and Opie by my side. (that show is my second all time favorite TV show, I wish my life was like the show)


2. Wind Chimes. I really like the sound of wind chimes, it reminds me of growing up and being in the country and simple times. Some are annoying but this one is really good. Lowes has all their summer things half price right now so we got it for half price. I wish I knew how to make a recording and put a link on here so you all could here it. But since I can't I will describe it.... Dong, Ding, Dong, DONG, dong, ding, ding.






3. Rain gauge. Another half price Lowes purchase. This just gets me one step closer to being a meteorologist. Seriously, I would like to be one of those weather watcher people that they talk to when they are doing the weather on the local news to find out what is going on around the area. If you can see in this picture, it has 1.5 inches of rain in it that we got yesterday. We have got 8 inches of rain the past couple of weeks. One day it rained 4.5 inches, that is a gulley washer!!!

Family get together and the new farm animal

I know it has been a while since I have posted but it has been pretty boring around here. All I have been doing is building fence. But, last night my (Josh) family came over. My sisters kids (Patrick-6, Isabelle-5) flew in the other day and are staying with my parents for a week. So, my parents and the two kids and my brother and his two kids (Lincoln and Keylor) came over. We had dinner and went fishing. It was a pretty good time. The kids had a good time fishing, they caught a bunch of bream. I think I need to have a new contest. The 'Catch a Catfish' contest. There are tons of catfish in the pond but we have yet to catch one, the bream get the bait to quick. We also got a few chickens the other day- 2 roosters, 3 hens, and 7 baby chicks. They are a lot of fun. They have already began laying eggs. The roosters has been crowing also which is a great sound, when you hear it you realize you really are on a farm. It does get a little annoying when it wakes you up at 6am.

Winners, inbred cats, and the newest farm animals

Well, we have decided on the winners for our cat naming contest. Although, in reality we may just end up calling them both the universal name of kitty. But we are going to try out the names we have picked and see how it goes. So, here we go- And the winners are.... Dylan and Molly for the name Fanta for the orange cat and Gary for the name Spot for the calico. Now the big job is deciding on a prize for the winners. Maybe we will send you a kitten from our first litter of kittens when we have some. There might be a problem with that though because we think Fanta is a male and Spot is a female and if this the case then they will most likely get it on kitty style and have kittens. The problem is they are brother and sister so they will be inbred kittens, I guess we have the makings of a true Arkansas farm with inbred animals. When we decide on a prize we will send it your way, so Molly and Dylan please e-mail us your address.

Here is a picture of what our inbred cats might look like.



We have new additions to the farm. GUINEAS!!!! We got them last weekend and I am very excited. I really like guineas and I like the sound they make when they get scared or excited, it makes me happy. They are really good animals to have around. They eat all kinds of bugs including ticks and the will kill small snakes and mice. They also make great watch dogs because they make a loud shrieking sound when a predator is around.

Hello Kitty

We got some new additions to the farm this weekend. I will only tell you about one of them and leave the others for another posting. How suspensful!!!! So, the ones I am going to tell you about are two kitties. They are not kittens and not adults, they are more like adolescents. Anyway, Margo is very excited and happy. They are cute. They are a little wild because they were just living in a barn of a lady I work with so we are trying to tame them a little so we can pet them. So, I will post some pictures of them and we will having a naming contest. This may not work if only like one person reads my blog (John). All you have to do is suggest names in the comment section and if your name is chosen, you will win a prize. There are two kittens, so you can suggest just for one or for both and disignate which kitty the name is for. One kitty is white with an orange head and an orange tail. The other is kind of a calico, it is mostly white with yellow and black/gray spots.

One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish

Today we decided to try out our pond. We were told by the previous owners that there were lots of fish in the pond. I used some hotdogs for bait trying to catch some catfish because we have seen some big catfish in there, but I did not catch any. What I did catch was a bunch of brim and a small bass. Every time I cast out into the pond, I got a bite within a minute. One time when I was reeling in, because something stole my bate, a bass bit on the hook, no bait, just the hook. It was amazing. Later on Margo's parents came out to celebrate her mom's birthday and her dad brought out his fishing pole and caught a good sized bass. Anyway, it was a lot of fun because the fish were biting so good. For any of you single girls out there that read my blog and have never seen such a manly and irresistable body as mine, I am married, sorry. I also put a pic of Margo and Jackson (Margo's nephew(Chris and Megan's kid)(how many paranthesis can you use in a sentence?)) and our dog Macy.

Building Fences with a Preacher

I have been putting in fence all this week and tonight we finished putting in the post for one side of the property. The next step is putting up the wire on Saturday. Anyway, tonight I had help in putting in posts from my pastor. This is a weird statement to me because we are helping start a new church and calling him my pastor still seems odd. Anyway, I had hoped that having someone assist me who is probably on better terms with God than I am might help protect me from falling trees. I also hoped that since faith the size of a mustard seed can move mountains, that he might have enough faith to move the post into the ground without any trouble. Unfortunately, that was not the case. The help was still greatly appreciated, although when you have a preacher around you can't really cuss at the posts for not going in straight which at times is hard to refrain from. So here are some alternate phrases for you in case you are ever in this situation.

Freaking Post
Son of a Jackel post
Dang this post.
Kiss my butt you darn post
Rott in hades you piece of crap post

Let me tell you, it feels a lot better to use the real words.
Anyway, if any of you want to help put up wire we will be starting about 8am on Saturday and you are all welcome to come and you can try out some of my new alternate cussing phrases.

Our house, is a very, very, very fine house.

Here are a couple of pics of our house and a pic of our pond which has crazy fish in it. The house is built out of cedar logs. We really like it. We hope all of you can come visit sometime.

Death by Tree

Well, we finally have decided to enter the blogging world. We thought we would start blogging since we have a farm now. By the way, in case you did not know, we have a farm now, I will try to post some pictures of it later. I thought it would be fun to make the blog mostly about making a farm and all the things that go into it, the good and the bad. Of course, we will share other things from our life other than just farm things. I hope this will be a blog that is interesting, entertaining and keeps you informed of what is going on in our lives.

Here is the first story I wanted to share from the farm. Our farm consist of a very nice log home, 10 wooded acres, some outbuildings, and lots of ticks and chiggers. My first job to make our new place into a farm is to put up fence so we can get some animals. So, yesterday I was putting up fence post and clearing out a fence line. I was cutting down trees that were in the fence line and I decided to cut this tree that was dead. I started cutting it and when I had almost cut through the bottom, I began to push it so it would fall in the direction I wanted it to. When I did this, the top part of the tree broke off and fell down onto my head. It stunned me for a little bit but it did not knock me out, Margo saw the whole thing. My head is very sore today and hurts badly if I yawn, laugh, or smile big. I have always wondered when something like this happens if your life really does flash before your eyes. Not for me it didn't, here is what went through my head in that split second when it hit me and I thought it might kill me: "I am fixing to die and from a tree falling on my head, this would be the most crappy way to die ever, DEATH BY TREE" How lousy of a death would that be. At least give me a car crash or a homicide, or even better having my entrails cut out by my enemy while yelling FREEDOM. I am just worried that I have inherited my brothers accident proneness. Anyway I thought it might make for a good first blog entry. Here is a picture of what hit me square on the head. The tree that is still standing but leaning is the tree I was cutting and the piece of tree on the ground is what landed on my head, it is about 11 feet long and about 6 inches in diameter.