Ghost of Parenting Present

Last night we were visited by the Ghost of Parenting Present — a daughter with the stomach flu and gastric reverse action all night long at about twenty-minute intervals.  Things finally slowed down about 6:30am.  Today we feel like ghosts ourselves.  A life in synergy with the land means that nothing we were going to do today couldn't wait until tomorrow, but the rest of family life went on.

Yesterday I made pancake syrup.  It's so easy I can't believe that I bought the high fructose corn syrup stuff for so long.  Mix one cup water,  two cup sugar (we get organic fair trade sugar from Costco), and 1/2 teaspoon mapleine.  Bring to a full boil for 2-3 minutes.  Let cool for a bit and put in jars.  We found these old syrup jars in my in-laws stuff.

The girls discovered an injured chicken today.  It was on the ground not moving and the other chickens were pecking it.  Cannibalism is a problem with chickens.  The books say that they sense when one is injured or sick and a group can quickly kill a defenseless bird.  My husband rescued the hen and moved into a pen by itself.  He put food and water near it.  My daughter asked, "are we going to have to kill it?"  We'll give it several days and see if it heals.  If not, it will have to become a stew hen.  I hate butchering.

While outside, I noticed how much the fruit trees have grown.  We planted sixteen fruit trees in the chicken pen area last spring.  We have apples, pears, cherries, plums, peaches, nectarines, and apricots.  Chickens love nothing more than bugs.  I've read that if you have chickens around your fruit trees, they will eat all the worms before they crawl up into the fruit.  We have big plans for lots of worm-free fruit without any poison spraying.

Since my other children were feeling fine, I asked them to flatten the onions.  When onions get big, they need their tops bent over for the final maturing.  In a few weeks we'll pull them out of the garden and let them dry on the patio for their final preparation before long-term storage.  Even the two-year-old got involved.

When you are a person who wants to follow God, discerning God's direction can feel like such immediate work.  Sometimes I wonder if it's more like today's work.  God welcomes time of rest and times of work.  God's opportunities aren't one chance and then gone.  Instead, if today is good, God work things out.  Or if tomorrow is better, that's OK too.  This garden is more God's work than ours, so it seems that the patterns we find there must have some reflection of their Creator.