Video Problem! (As usual...)

Hey folks, Blogger messed it up again, so while the bugs are being worked out you can view on YouTube my little slideshow of the kitchen being gutted. Here's the link:

Kitchen Makeover Phase 1

Harvest is Past...

Wow. It's hard to keep track of it all.

2 weeks of hot, long, sun-baked and work-filled days. I didn't even get a chance to take my good camera out and get pictures of the ripe wheat fields to couple with the verse about the fields being "white unto harvest"...but we've all seen that hundreds of times so what's the point.

The combining was done by another farmer, so I didn't take much part in that except pulling the 40- foot combine head to another field (as you can imagine it doesn't fit down the road on the front of the combine).

I mostly ran the baler over the rows of straw that the combine leaves behind it. I turned it into rows of 700-pound 3'x4' square bales, as pretty a picture as you could wish for

stubble

This indicates a broken string...

..so I re-thread that knotter, then crawl underneath and re-thread the needle

Finally it gets cool and a massive storm sweeps in off Lake Ontario, which is just beyond those trees.

This monitor tells how much moisture is in the straw or hay, and applies preservative if you are baling hay.

This monitor controls different functions of the baler, gives error alerts, and runs the lubrication systems.

loading the bales onto wagons to take back to the farm for stacking.

We finished up yesterday and covered the huge stack of 620 bales that didn't fit into any of our barns. there must have been over 1500 bales total.

The point I have drawn from the whirlwind tour of wheat harvest is that maybe we like to gaze across the wheat fields waving in the summer sun.

We like to take pictures and show other people the need of laborers. But when we turn around, we might stop short in astonishment, realizing the time was already past for gathering the crop into the LORD's barns.

What was my part in the harvest?

What was yours?

"A time to break down..."

West

North

South

East

A Study in the Old Flour City

Rochester NY.

Bustling, Busy, Prosperous.

But the other side of town...

Weekly shootings, stabbings, robberies.

Fear and Uncertainty.

Abject Poverty.

Crumbling, condemned ruins stand as massive testimonies to yesterdays hopes, dreams, plans. Offices, Factories, Warehouses, all failing the test of time.

I try to imagine people hurrying around, the noise of industry, the clack of typewriters, the clink of money... All that's left is a shell.

Just like many people. Folks who started high on the Broad Way, trusted in themselves, or trusted in others who failed them, or or just plain never had a chance. 

But although the world may slap a "condemned" sign on them...

...may think they have gone downhill too far...

...Christ can rescue anyone from the depths

All anyone has to do is open that long-shut door of their heart.

A bird cannot fall without its heavenly Father knowing and caring; of how much more value is a soul!

Aren't you glad He "reached way down" and made a way of escape for you?

Busy Spring, Busier Summer

I haven't posted much lately, but I don't feel too bad because everyone seems to be neglecting their blogs these days. I have a handful of pictures to prove I've been busy!

Quickie Project: When you need a heavy-duty 2 1/4" wrench...make one!

 Add the bead of weld for strength and you are ready to go tighten the disc!

Running the new Zone Builder over the first of more than 700 acres.

Turbo-till the weeds down. 

Another field done.

The last of the corn fields

The corn coming up in the first field. Taken the day I finished the last one.

Virginia Wedding Trip (No Captions)