Six Arrows Farm Update

The first snow has come and gone...the transient herald of nearing abundance!  Wood splitting, trimming iris, bringing in potted plants, storing away the last of produce fill the fleeting time.  Charlie and Sam moved the hens up the hill and into the big bright hoop house.   All summer this place has been a desolate storage space; too hot to stay in and dreary with the dust of last winter.  Now, permeated with the spicy fragrance of a new deep cedar bedding and filled with subdued clucking, it takes on the cheery aspect of the sunshiny winter hen-house.  

Five of the hens were still in denial...evading grasping hands to wander aimlessly across the empty pasture and deposit eggs in forlorn tufts of dying grass.  Mama caught them and the boys locked them in with their more resigned companions that night.  Whether they became sensible and heeded the call of food and shelter remains to be seen.

Inexorably the splitter lays open the pale splintered hearts of cured logs and we heap them up, raw and lifeless.  Yet these dead shards of life yield to us warmth and cheer in the sultry breath of fire.  Again the Creator at once reminds us of ever present mortality and the promise of redemption.  Everything is redeemed on the land.  What falls asleep will awaken.  That which dies gives birth to abundance.  The privilege of the husbandman is to reach with reverent mortal fingers into this heart of creation and feel it beating with a vitality from the divine hand that we are powerless to recreate.  It it is granted us to nourish, prune and care for it and in turn receive from it divine gifts of life and nourishment.

Here comes a time to heap up in your heart the abundance of these blessings, along with the severe mercies.  Blessings...what a great many there are and how gracious is our Father.   And yes...the severe mercies...these wounds from the knife of sorrow.  These too are a gift, because when they make our well run dry, pain cuts deep and strikes into the true life flow of the heart...the love of God.  So He makes pain a servant that masters us to drive us back to the greatest gift...His redemption and the springing of joy from ashes.  Thanksgiving does not deny pain.  It is the antidote to it.  So when you are counting up the mercies of God, mark together the blessed and severe, the joy and sorrow.  They both mark the road to eternity, and both glorify Him through us...joy when we praise Him and sorrow even more when we praise Him.

Last night Daddy observed that these last days of fading warmth are another gift to add to the account.  The time is ripe and short...every hour, every minute, becomes a period of grace for the last work of the season to be completed.  Times like these remind us of the days when we first essayed to name our farm enterprise.  Among the titles eventually abandoned was the epithet "NeveRDone Farm".  This is life...the pleasure of living for man is found in his work...that which is incomplete until his appointed time.

"There is nothing better for a man, than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labor. This also I saw, that it was from the hand of God."

~Ecclesiastes 2:24~

These are just a few of the things on my Thanksgiving list this year.

What are some things one yours and would you care to share them?

A blessed and merry Thanksgiving to everyone!

Six Arrows Farm Update

The subdued hills and woods and fields are waiting with bated breath to be washed and clothed in snow-light like a bride.  When the last saturated splash of living color fades, I long for that flood of dazzling frosty flashing white.  There was a hint of it this morning before the sun kissed the grass...every blade and twig was encrusted with a thousand diamonds.  The annual foraging for a harvest of venison begins tomorrow.  At least three Lenz men will rise in the wee hours and seek out their quarry from the plentiful summer-fattened herd.

I stoked the fire before tumbling into bed last night.  A blessed old habit born again after months of cold hearth and empty wood box.  Broad smooth tiles before the sooty black stove that cooled my dusty summer feet glowed in the dim light and dancing heat...a silent invitation to bask.  Stepping into the house to be greeted by these permeating mingled scents of life and ashes is a continual joy now.  Back it comes to paint its familiar ever-changing scenery on the family room wall, throwing fantastical shadows and lights over familiar framed faces and new colors on beloved old bindings marching rank and file along the shelves.  Even as the death of the outer world sweeps away every vestige of color and life, firelight inside echoes autumn's song and carries a flashing refrain into the depths of sleeping winter.  

Here in our home a new kind of summer grows strong, careless alike of numbing cold and rushing blast.  This refuge where God grants to us quiet and rest is of all places in the world most sacred and cherished.  Anyone who knows us will believe me when I say that this quiet and rest in our house has almost nothing to do with dullness or inactivity.  A subversive kind of energy radiates from the house in every kind of enterprise...and by mid-afternoon, begins to culminate in the kitchen.  If your day of work leaves you exhausted,  all you have 

to do is follow your nose.  Imagine pumpkin and squash baking slowly until the juices caramelize on the pan, followed by pumpkin seeds roasted crackling and snapping until they blush golden.  Potatoes and onions and venison all simmering in a pot all day until the meat lends its full flavor to the potatoes and soaks in the savory zest of the onions casts up the most delicious and tantalizing aroma.  

Then around the dinner table, a reviving aroma of another kind rises, regardless of seasonal swelter or chill.  Here the throne of family holds sway and teaches us time and again through sundry simplicity and familiarity how trivial the many aggrandized issues of men really are.  
So says the Maker of hearth and home:

"Thus says the Lord

'Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, let not the mighty man glory n his might, nor let the rich man glory in his riches;  But let him who glories glory in this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the Lord, exercising lovingkindness, judgment and righteousness in the earth.  For in these I delight,'

says the Lord."
Jeremiah 9:23-24

Here is a greatness in the beaming glow emanating from every face that puts the pomp and swagger of potentates to shame...a sovereignty of a different kind than that granted rulers and powers of the earth.  Here we learn that in all things, the small as well as the mighty, God will have dominion over men and in this we take comfort, since no device of men can bring of such servitude and mutual dependence more joy and contentment, nor lift the sons and daughters of mankind to more pure and lasting freedom.

“Let all the earth fear the Lord; let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him.  For He spoke, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast.  The Lord brings the counsel of the nations to nothing; He makes the plans of the peoples of no effect.  The counsel of the Lord stands forever, the plans of His heart to all generations.

Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people He has chosen as His own inheritance.  The Lord looks from heaven; He sees all the sons of men.  From the place of His dwelling He looks on all the inhabitants of the earth; He fashions their hearts individually; He considers all their works.  No kin is saved by the multitude of an army; a mighty man is not delivered by great strength.  A horse is a vain hope for safety; neither shall it deliver any by its strength.

Behold they eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him, on those who hope in His mercy, to deliver their soul from death, and to keep them alive in famine.  Our soul waits for the Lord; He is our help and our shield.  For our heart shall rejoice in Him, because we have trusted in His holy name.  Let Your mercy, O Lord, be upon us, just as we hope in You.
Psalm 33:8-22

The affairs of the world are in turmoil and set before us a constant battle to be fought. The imaginations of men grow dark, but around the family table, before the family hearth, we are reminded of this:

All the ends of the world shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall worship before You.  For the kingdom is the Lord's, and He rules over the nations."
Psalm 22:27-28