Mission Opportunity At Home

Posted on October 15, 2012 by Jennifer

Learn to do good. Seek justice. Help the oppressed. Defend the cause of orphans. Fight for the rights of widows.   Isaiah 1:17

If you family is like ours, you have wanted to be able to go on a mission trip but funding has been somewhat of a hurdle.  New Horizons for Children is an international faith-based hosting program that brings orphans from Eastern Europe to stay with Christian American families.  This would be a wonderful way to introduce an orphan to the gospel while opening your home to them.

Currently our family is praying for God’s leading on hosting a child.  We have committed to praying for each of these children that a host family will be found for each of them!  Will you join me?

Following is the press release from the New Horizons website:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Contact: LeAnn Dakake

New Horizons For Children
678-574-4677 678-574-4757
ldakake@newhorizonsforchildren.org
www.newhorizonsforchildren.org

2,000 Orphaned Children Have Experienced Family Through New Horizons For Children

Acworth, GA, 9/12/2012 — As New Horizons For Children prepares for its 21st hosting session, they are celebrating not only their 10 year anniversary as an organization, but also this upcoming host period will mark their 2,000th hosted child. NHFC is an international faith-based hosting organization which brings over orphaned children from Eastern Europe to America twice a year for a 4-6 week period to share with them the love of God and the love of a family as well as teaching them life skills, valuable English language, and providing dental and eye care and a suitcase filled with clothes, shoes, and personal necessities.

The NHFC interview team travels to Eastern Europe twice a year to identify orphaned children who are resilient enough for the program and who could most benefit from the experience. Families nationwide host these children in their homes and give them a window into a loving, stable, Christian family in America. For some children, it is their first glimpse of what a healthy relationship can be. The program greatly increases their self esteem and leaves a lasting impact on their lives. Many children even find their forever families here in America either with their host family or through relatives or friends of the host family.

Without intervention, upon aging out of the orphanage system in Eastern Europe, 60% of the girls will end up in forced or voluntary prostitution. 70% of the boys will end up on the streets or in jail. 15% of the children will commit suicide within the first two years on their own. However, one person can revolutionize the life of an abandoned child and plant seeds of hope in them for a better future. Many previously hosted children have been given the tools needed to overcome these odds and create a more healthy future for themselves, simply because a family took them in for a month and poured into their lives. Stephanie Norman, who is the NHFC Western Regional Coordinator as well as Board Treasurer states, “My heart is for the older boys. The orphanage directors beg us to take the older boys to show them family. These boys will need to be fighters to succeed once they are out on their own, and we need to arm them with the proper tools to help them become men of character who can rise up out of their circumstances and stop the cycle of broken families.”

If you would like to know more about this program or how you can bring the mission field to your own living room, contact New Horizons for Children at 678-574-4677 or www.newhorizonsforchildren.org

Here is a video that shares more about New Horizons.

I pray that others will join us in praying for these children and even consider hosting one or more orphans and sharing the love of Christ with them.

Blessings!

Jennifer

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Chicken Brooder

Posted on October 8, 2012 by Jennifer

After a very busy spring and summer we are finally to a place where we have time to build the chicken brooder and get some chicks and ducklings.  I really don’t particularly like getting chicks when it is so cool outside but we really want to have laying hens and ducks ready to start laying next spring.  So… we have chicks and ducklings scheduled to arrive the week of October 15.
The basis for our brooder plans came from A Daring Adventure.  I did change a few minor things.  For example: the cutting layout of the 2″x4″ on page 2.  This is the layout I used.

Also our windows are smaller than theirs and we added a floor.

This project has definitely been a family project.  Everyone has helped somewhere along the way.  The three bigger kids have helped measure and mark where we needed to put boards.  All five of the kids have helped put screws in with the drill.  Scott has come to our rescue a few times when we weren’t quite sure how to do something or needed extra help.

The first two walls

Rebekah helping put screws in.

Eli putting in a screw in one of the short sides.

The four sides before we finished fastening them.

Brock putting the screws into the diagonal boards. Eli was in charge of handing him the screws.

I made a mistake on the diagonal boards (oops!)  I cut them to go to the top of the “rafter” boards.  We didn’t realize the mistake until much later so we had to do some modifications on how we put on the doors.  (like after the plywood was cut and attached to the whole brooder house except for the doors.)  Next time I will know to only have them 48″ not 49″. 🙂

Eli and Adisyn holding the plywood for one of the ends. (They are standing in the window hole.)

Almost finished!

Close up of chicken wire on window.

We are all looking forward to trying out the new brooder next week when the pullet chicks and ducklings arrive!

What projects have you been putting off?  Hopefully I’m not the only one who doesn’t get everything done when I really want to!

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Blessings!

Jennifer

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A Sick Calf

Posted on August 28, 2012 by Jennifer

As I mentioned in my last post, we recently had more cattle brought to us to take care of.  One of the calves in this herd became sick and needed to be treated.  Since we do not have a working facility anywhere close to where the herd is grazing, it was much better for the calf to rope and doctor him in the field.

Scott lost his hat almost immediately so he is without his cowboy hat in most of these pictures.

Cutter (the horse) was a little out of practice so it took him just a couple minutes to put Scott in the right place so that he could rope the calf.  Once Cutter got him to where he needed to be Scott quickly roped the calf.

Scott jumped off the Cutter and hurried to tie the calves legs

Scott jumped off of Cutter and hurried to tie the calf’s legs. As soon as the legs are tied, the rope can be taken off the calf’s neck.  The goal of all of this is to have as little stress on the animal as possible so that it can recover quickly; so we worked quietly but quickly.   The kids and I were on the John Deere Gator with the medicine so as soon as the calf was caught and secured we hurried to deliver the medicine.

Scott carefully administered the two medicines that were prescribed by our vet.  Then the calf’s legs were untied so that he could get up.

The calf got up and ran back to his mama and the rest of the herd.  After we had finished we walked/ drove through the entire herd to check them over closely.   They were not the least bit spooked by us having roped and treated the calf.

Since then the calf has made a full recovery and is doing great.  It is such a good feeling to be able to help the livestock when they are sick or hurt!

Blessings!

Jennifer

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MiG on CRP, Say What?

Posted on August 28, 2012 by Jennifer

With the drought that has engulfed much of the United States the amount of forage available for livestock has been significantly reduced.  In an effort to help offset the shortage many of the acres of ground enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) have been released for haying or grazing.

There are specific limitations on grazing CRP.  For instance, some limitations include leaving an average of 5″ of grass ungrazed and cattle can only graze until September 30.  (There are others also.)  Here on the ranch there are over 200 acres of CRP that have been released to graze, because of this we have been able to take in more custom cattle.  This has been such a blessing to us in the for of additional income, but we have also been able to bless to other cattleman.

I love how God’s timing works!  Our grazing consultant, Jim Gerrish, was here on August 11 and walked through many of the CRP acres with Scott and me.  He helped us determine that we could take in an additional 120 head of mature cattle.  Then on that following Monday we talked with the owner of the other cattle we are custom grazing and asked him if he would have more cattle to send us.

He said he did have cattle to send but not quite as many as we hoped for so he was going to talk to a friend and local cattleman to see if he could send some cattle as well.  This is where God’s timing gets really amazing, the other cattleman had actually gathered one herd and was going to round-up another herd in order to take them to the sale barn because he was out of grass and knew that he would not have enough feed to make it through the winter with them.  He was literally 2 hours away from selling these cattle when he got the call that we had grass available.

Both cattleman were able to bring the cattle up on that Friday.  They were so thankful to be able to bring their cattle to us.  We plan to keep these cattle until November because in addition to the CRP we have some non-CRP land that borders the CRP fields that we will graze on after the September 30 deadline.

With these additional cattle has come additional labor requirements.  None of the CRP is fenced so we are having to fence quickly.  Thankfully since the CRP land is bordered by the non-CRP when we are fencing the CRP we are also fencing much of the non-CRP land.  Also there is no water system of any kind of the CRP so we are having to haul all the water these cattle are drinking.  That is a LOT of water.  We invested in a new 1000 gallon water trailer that has helped however we still have to haul 2-3 loads of water per day depending on how hot it is.

We are rotating the herd through in a Management Intensive Grazing (MIG) system.  They are moved everyday or two days depending on how large the area is that they are grazing on.

You can see the difference between the paddock the cows came from and the paddock they went into.

The cows were happily grazing in their new paddock as we headed back to the house.

What a blessing the release of the CRP acreage has been for us and for other cattleman!

Blessings!

Jennifer

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A Milk Cow Named Daisy

Posted on August 14, 2012 by Jennifer

For several years I have been trying to talk my husband into a milk cow, well it finally happened!  Yesterday we picked up Daisy and her calf from the dairy we get milk from.  They were selling her because she was not giving as much milk as some of their other cows (at 40+ lbs she gives plenty for us).

About two weeks ago, we had gotten a call from another 4-H family wondering if we would be interested in twin bull calves.  Their mother wasn’t giving enough milk to support them, so the owner was selling the calves and taking the cow to the sale barn.  We jumped at the chance to get them and soon had two Angus bull calves tamed down and nursing from a bottle.

Our idea in getting Daisy was to try to get the calves to claim her and for her to claim the calves.  In addition to milking her for our own use. I was prepared to spend several hours making this all happen.

I had no idea the blessings God had in store for us!  When we unloaded Daisy into the pen with the bottle calves (Bumper and T-Bone) I was shocked at what took place!  Bumper and T-Bone started nursing right away!  Daisy wasn’t so sure this was a great plan so she kept pacing around the pen and occasionally kicking at them but they were persistant.

This is Daisy, Oreo and T-Bone. By the time, I remembered to take a picture Bumper had already gotten his belly full and was laying down.

We are keeping the calves separated from Daisy except to nurse morning and night as we don’t want them to scour with so much milk.

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