Canceled

I have some very sad news. Margo and I have decided to cancel 4th on the Farm this year. This would have been our 3rd annual. Last year we had 60 people attend and we smoked a whole hog and had big fireworks, along with many other things. We decided to not have it this year because we are trying to save money for an adoption as I mentioned in a previous post, and putting 4th on the Farm on cost us a pretty big chunk of money. We tried to get some corporate sponsors but Wal-Mart, Tyson, and JB Hunt all turned us down. Sorry to all of you who might have been looking forward to it. We will try our best to bring it back next year wherever we are at that time.

FSBO

Margo and I decided to take our house off the market with a realtor for a little while. We are going back to trying to sell it by owner. This enables us to drop the price some. We now have it listed for $200,000 which we think is a really good deal for someone. We still have our website up advertising the house. The site is westforkfarm.blogspot.com. Be sure and tell all your friends, co-workers, etc. Feel free to put it on your facebooks, twitters, blogs, buzz, etc. Spread the word.

Flowers

Our flowers are looking pretty good right now so I thought I would post some pictures. These are in the bed out front. A lot of these I planted when I built that bed a few years ago. They are starting to fill that space better and look nice. There are a lot of daylillies, hostas, butterfly bushes, and many others. They really attract the butterflies. We have been enjoying them a lot.

Lum and Abner

Last weekend, Margo and I and a couple friends went to Mena for the weekend. We enjoy going to Mena to visit anytime but this particular weekend was the Lum and Abner Festival. If you don't know who Lum and Abner are click here. A brief description is they were a comedy radio team in the heyday of radio. Their show was the most popular radio show for several years. Anyway, these two guys were from Mena (and I just read that they both graduated from the UofA). The Lum and Abner festival is Mena's biggest festival during the year. It has been going on for a long time, as far back as I can remember. When I was a kid they had arts and crafts, fishing derby, and 3 on 3 basketball. I am sure they had more but that is what I remember. It has become a lot bigger deal now with lots more events. They had the above mentioned things along with quilt show, firemen challenge, live music, antique car show (they had 150 cars this year), pancake breakfast, bbq cookoff, and more. My two favorite things they have now is the baby crawling contest and the ice melting contest. The ice melting was they had 10 pound blocks of ice and the first one to melt their block using only body heat won. They had four heats and then a championship. Here is a video I took of it.

I just had to share the random awesomness with all of you.

We had lots of fun over the weekend with our friends who went with us and our friends we stayed with. We spent some time in the hot tub and a lot of time playing Beatles Rockband. It was a really good time. All of you who live in Arkansas should go check out Lum and Abner Festival sometime.

Going Personal

We don't share a lot of personal info on this blog. I don't really like to share personal info anytime except with people I am close to. I especially don't think the internet is a good place for all my personal stuff to be floating around, I think that could be dangerous. If we had kids and I was going to post about them, I would make my blog private, but that's just opinion. Ok, enough of that soap box and back to what this posting is really about.

Our immediate family and some of our close friends already know about this but I thought it was time to make it more public. Margo and I have some medical issues that make us not be able to conceive a child on our own. This is something we have been dealing with for a few years and no medical type treatment has been able to change it so far. There is still a very slight chance that we could get pregnant but it is a very small chance. So, we made the decision a couple months ago to officially pursue adoption. We are currently working on applications for adoption agencies.

The reason we decided to make this more public is because we would prefer to do an independent adoption (person to person) instead of going through an agency. Agency adoption costs average somewhere between $15,000-$25,000 and independent adoptions are usually 1/4 of that. But independent adoptions are hard to come by. You basically just have to be lucky and find out about someone who is wanting to give their baby for adoption but has not or does not want to use an agency. We feel like the more people we have out there who know we are wanting to adopt, the greater chance that someone might know of or hear about an independent adoption for us. Coming up with the money for an agency adoption will be a challenge. We can do it but it may take a little while and we are going to have to change our lifestyle a little. One thing we are trying to do to save more money towards adoption is selling our house. That way we can move somewhere that is cheaper even if that means not having a farm for a while. But an independent adoption would really be a lot better for us.

This whole process has been really difficult for us. There is a lot of things that we have been through so far but I will not share on here. It will all be worth it though if and when we are able to have a child (naturally or adopted). So, here is what you can do for us. If you hear about someone who is wanting to give their baby up for adoption, please let us know. We really would prefer to adopt a baby for our first adoption but we are open to considering anything situation at this point (especially if it is a large athletic black kid that is going to go pro in football).

We are not writing this to get sympathy from anyone, we just wanted people to know so they could help by letting us know if they hear about a possible adoption for us.

For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. 2 Corinthians 12:10

We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. 2 Corinthians 4:8-11

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Jeremiah 29:11

Finally an update

It seems that I am doing a poor job at blogging on a regular basis. We have been extremely busy the past few weeks. I thought I would give you a quick update on what's new on the farm.

Our kittens are growing like weeds. They have left the barn and are now residing under the shop. They are eating solid food and playing like crazy. And they are really friendly. If you want one, you better claim it soon before they are gone.

I bought some new sheep last week. We did not really need more sheep (since I had just bought two a few weeks ago) but it was such a good deal that I could not pass them up. I bought six total, 2 boys and 4 girls. They are all mostly katahdin except for one and I am not sure what it is. I will sell the boys pretty soon because I do not need them and they were not castrated so I can't keep them around and eat them. I am really enjoying having the sheep around though, especially since they are pretty friendly.

The garden is growing like crazy. The asparagus is done producing but we are getting tons of sugar snap peas. And we got our first zucchini and yellow squash today so that was pretty exciting. We should have green beans soon also. I still need to make a post soon about a new gardening method I am trying.

That is all of the update that I have for now. I have another post in mind that I will put up tomorrow so stay tuned.