Tag: Farming

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Liquid Gold

Psalm 19 NIV – Psalm 19:9-10

9 The fear of the Lord is pure,
    enduring forever.
The decrees of the Lord are firm,
    and all of them are righteous.

10 They are more precious than gold,
    than much pure gold;
they are sweeter than honey,
    than honey from the honeycomb.

Being a beekeeper is a very interesting hobby for me. I am still a novice so I learn new things everyday. It fascinates me how some many bees can work in harmony for a common goal. There is no fighting among the bees or undercutting coworkers to get ahead. The goal is simple: survival. Every bee knows its job and does it for the betterment of the hive —to make HONEY!!

Making honey seems simple enough, but is it really? In order to make one pound of honey, it takes about 768 bees to fly over 55,000 miles and visit over 2 million flowers. One bee will only produce 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey in its lifetime. That bee will visit 50 to 100 flowers in a single flight harvesting nectar for honey production. Seem simple now?

Honey is not only food for the bees, but it is also their medicine for diseases. It is 80% sugar and 20% water and is the only food that can completely sustain life. It does not spoil or ruin. It is so valuable that it has been used as currency and valued greater than gold.

Just this week, we harvested honey from one of the bee hives. While processing the honey, I started thinking about what all bees do to make this small amount of honey. It occurred to me that if our society could work together in harmony like the bees there would be nothing that we couldn’t do. But we are caught up in our own agendas and not the betterment of our society. We live in a “me” world, where everyone is focused on themselves. So we have people starving, homeless, and dying because of greed and corruption. God has shown us in the Bible and told us through his son that all we have to do is LOVE. Love is the greatest thing. It is part of every commandment and Jesus even said that Love was the greatest.

So why can’t we just love one another? It all goes back to a garden where sin was released on us.

Love is the honey for our lives. It is liquid gold, sweet sustaining food for life.

Starting today, let’s love one another and care for one another so that we can sustain life and happiness. For God gave us the way, all we have to do is following.

So from us to you, we extend love to you. Thank you for visiting and #welcome2serenity.

Check out our photo of the week that relates to this post.

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The first sign

“Then the Lord said, “If they do not believe you or pay attention to the first sign, they may believe the second.”
‭‭Exodus‬ ‭4:8‬ ‭NIV‬‬

As a beekeeper, I am asked all the time about getting stung or being afraid to get stung. I always repeat the statement that my instructor at my first beekeeping class said. “If you are afraid to get stung, then you don’t need to be a beekeeper.” Being stung is part of the hobby or the profession.

I can tell you that every time I have been stung was because I did something wrong. Just like with most animals, bees will give you a first warning or sign. I even have a warning sign for all visitors just outside my bee fields.

Bees change the sounds they emit as a warning to their mood or level of comfort. That’s why a beekeeper has to stay calm and collective. He or she has to control movements and slow down. If a hive gets irritated, then it’s time to give them space and time to calm down. A common myth is that smoke calms bees. Smoke actually causes the bees to focus on other issues. They believe the hive is on fire and start hive fire duties — protecting the queen, the food supply, and the young.

As with things in our lives, God gives us warning signs, but most of us ignore the first sign, the Holy Bible. He has warned us of all the dangers we will face and how to handle them, but we ignore them and get ourselves into so much trouble. We ask for signs but ignore them; we beg for signs and ignore them. Why? Because we are so focused on what we want or what we think things should be that we ignore the simple first sign. We ask God why even though we know the answer.

I don’t ask a bee why it stung me. I know why immediately. It is simple, I did something wrong. It’s the same with other animals on the farm, why did a hen peck my hand? Because I was to close to her eggs or chicks. Why did a cow get between me and the calf? Because she is protecting her calf. These are first signs and on a farm you learn to read those signs.

In this world, signs are everywhere. We choose to ignore them whether they are our first or second sign, but in the end we pay a price for our choice of choosing to ignore them. So from us here at Serenity Acres, let’s start paying attention to these signs and have better lives.

Thank you for visiting and #welcome2serenity.

Life Tip: When you are around bees, don’t wear perfume or cologne, don’t wear dark colors, and don’t swipe or fan a bee away from you just walk away as calmly as you can.

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The Dam

For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

Matthew 11:30

One thing about a farm, any size farm, is the To-Do List. It never gets shorter and always grows, even when other things on the farm will not. The list can, at times, get so overwhelming that it becomes a burden creating a mental and emotional dam. A dam that seems to hold back progress, success, and project completion. It keeps in the stress, fear of failure, and emotional depression.

For years, my family battled beaver dams that blocked creeks, streams, and drainage around crop land and cattle grazing land. The dams would cause flooding and destruction costing the family financial woes and physical maintenance woes. My family, over the years, used many different ways to clear the dams out and release the trapped water. One method was using a large grappling hook that my grandfather forged. We would place the hook, either via launching or climbing down, behind the dam and using a truck or tractor to pull the hook moving the materials holding the dam together. It was a constant battle for several years. Remove one dam and another one would get built, over and over pressure was released to be caught and built up again.

That’s the way it is on the farm. You remove one dam to have another build up or develop. In life, we have the same thing happen. We let our burdens build up creating a dam until we either breakup the dam or the dam floods our life with depression, dread, and fear. I still battle with this on the farm and in my own life. The great thing is God has already given us a way to deal with burdens, turn them all over to him. When you feel overwhelmed and your dam is flooding your life, turn it over to God.

There is no feeling like the feeling of release when all your burdens are gone. The farm reminds me of this over and over again. It’s not just my serenity but my church, where what I learn from the Bible is reinforced. Thanks for visiting and #welcome2serenity.

If you would like to see a photo of the grappling hook, then go to our photo of the week page. It is this week’s photo. https://welcome2serenity.com/photo-of-the-week/

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The protector

“The righteous who walks in his integrity— blessed are his children after him!”
‭‭Proverbs‬ ‭20:7‬ ‭ESV‬‬

Being a father of two daughters, I understand the duties and responsibilities of protecting and providing for my children. Your children become your world and your purpose for living. Their happiness becomes your happiness and their sadness becomes your sadness. Protection of our children becomes our top priority.

I have many stories from years on the farm, but one story reminds me of a protective father.

The story took place when I was 13 or 14 years old. My family raised cattle on the farm at this time and it was time to take weaned calves to the market to be sold. My dad, my granddad, and I started the day sorting the calves that we wanted to sell from the rest of the herd. As we worked on sorting the calves, the bull and father to the calves watched us intensely all morning. Once the sorting was completed and the calves to be sold were loaded onto the livestock trailer, we prepared to pull the trailer to my grandparents’ house before leaving for the livestock market. I drove the pickup pulling the trailer. As I pulled up to the main gate, the bull that had been watching us was blocking the gate. I honked the horn and yelled for him to move but he stayed put. I got out of the pickup and moved toward him to get him to move, he turned and looked at me but never moved. I walked back to the pickup to honk the horn again and move the pickup a little closer to him. While I was walking back to the pickup, the bull moved to the left side of the livestock trailer and with his body pushed on the trailer. He then went to the other side and did the same. As he was doing this, I ran to open the gate. By the time I got back to the pickup, he had returned to block the gate opening. He continued the back and forth blocking the gate and rocking the trailer for ten minutes until my dad came and helped me get him to move. For the next two days, the bull stayed by the main gate waiting, he was never the same after that.

That’s the way it is with dads, we want to protect our children from all of the suffering, the pain, and the disappointments of the world but we can’t. With each event in our children’s lives that cause pain, suffering, worry, stress, and disappointment, it changes us because it changes our children and we are never the same. Dads work hard to protect and to provide, knowing all along the impossibility to fully achieve. Yet, we do it anyway.

On this Father’s Day, tell your dad that you love him and thank him for all that he does for you, but mostly thank him for loving you more than he often loves himself because he blames himself for all of your shortcomings.

To all the dads out there, thank you for all you do and Happy Father’s Day from us here at #welcome2serenity. Thank you for visiting.

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Life’s repairs

“And to the masons and the stonecutters, as well as to buy timber and quarried stone for making repairs on the house of the Lord, and for any you outlay for the repairs of the house.”
‭‭2 Kings‬ ‭12:12‬ ‭ESV‬‬

There are always repairs to be done on the farm. Some are small and simple, such as replacing the tractor’s broken battery cable. Others, like clearing fallen trees and rebuilding fences after a major storm, are large and complex. Some require help, and others require none.

In life, we have to perform repairs. Whether it is repairing a broken friendship or a life affected by divorce or personal loss, we all face daily repairs. However, God assures us that we have his help and support through all of it — every break and every repair.

The keys to every successful repair are having the right tools, the right help, and the right knowledge. Some repairs require either starting over or replacing with a new item. Being human, it is often hard for us to give up what we have grown to trust and had in the past. To move forward, we have to start over because that is the only way to truly repair the break.

So keep working on those repairs, you never know what you will discover about yourself and how you will expand your knowledge for future breaks and repairs. Thank you for visiting and #welcome2serenity where we are all about repairing broken things.