Baby Farm Animals ~ Bunnies!

Springtime on our farm means lot of new baby animals.  One of my favorites is the wee little bunnies that are born to our mama rabbits.  First, they are so tiny and don’t have their eyes or ears open yet.  At this point, they look like Mexican jumping beans if you wake them up from their naps.  They wiggle and bounce up and down while softly squeaking.  They think it’s Mama waking them up for a meal.  But, they grow oh, so fast and soon are hopping out of their soft nest.  Bunnies love to nibble at clover and of course, lettuce is also a big favorite of theirs.  Baby bunnies are especially soft, cute, and cuddly.  Here let me show you…

 

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Anthology of Embellished Memories Sketch #1 – The “Obsolete Line”

ClothesLine2

It was a warm July day and me & my best friend, Johnny Walker had been out playing baseball. Our appetites were beginning to interfere with our game so we decided to suspend the ninth inning just long enough to retrieve a fried bologna sandwich from our respective homes.

I was downstairs finishing up my lunch and studying over my baseball cards when suddenly my concentration was interrupted. “Daniel… Daniel…, are you still downstairs?” Startled by the distress in my mother’s voice, I dropped my baseball cards and ran to the bottom of the steps. “Yea, Mom, what’s wrong?” “Daniel, would you run quickly and bring in the clothes from the line? It is starting to rain! ”

I could already hear the pelting of the raindrops hitting the aluminum awning over the basement door. I didn’t bother retrieving my shirt or shoes since the clothes on the line were already being dusted by the summer shower. I hurried to the screen door dragging the laundry basket behind me. The sky was now black with leaking storm clouds.

I snatched the clothes pins from my dad’s overalls and quickly threw them into the wicker basket. A boom of thunder caught me like cannon fire and I dropped to my knees pressing my hands against my ears.

The rain was now flowing down like a river from heaven and my bare back was feeling the chill. I jumped up from my crouch frantically to continue gathering the remaining garments. There was no use. The clothes were wetter now than when Mom had hung them out. I pushed away my soaked hair from my eyes and gave in to defeat.

Mom stepped out onto the back stoop and from the protection of the awning hollered for me to come back in and leave the remaining items on the line. She was holding a beach towel in her arms and I was glad to oblige.

I ran for the back door and mom caught me and wrapped the towel around my drenched body. I looked up into her eyes as a smile emerged. “I guess the Lord likes to remind us that He is still the one in control,” she said as she snugged her arms around me.

By the time she loosened her embrace she was as wet as I was. We both enjoyed a laugh but the increasing deluge quickly turned our attention back to the crisis still hanging on the line. We both stood quietly for what must have been the better part of ten minutes watching God re-wash our clean clothes.

For the longest time, I saw little significance from this event in my life. But as I’ve grown older the lesson from that clothes line now shines bright. Today’s niceties afford us great leisure but seldom do we consider what we have given up in the exchange.

Our family has decided to take a few steps back, to embrace a more sustainable lifestyle, to lean more on God and less on man’s fragile pseudo security. In fact, we are going to sell our electric dryer and reinstall that old “obsolete line!”

So if you are ever out at the farm on a warm sunny day, and a shower approaches, if you don’t mind gathering in the clothes from the line, we’d sure appreciate it. I left the wicker basket by the door.

ClothesLine1

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Does Your City Have Country Roads

Does your city have country roads? That question is more than the title of our new blog; it’s also the hook to my Dad’s latest song. We make our living in the suburbs of Atlanta on the five-acre dairy farm many of you know as My Dad & Me Family Farm, but we also play a little music. My Dad’s been writing songs about farming and family for over twenty years, and it’s just simple living room music that’ll probably never make the Top 40. Music is more than just the latest hits though; our songs are part of who we are and they tell the story of our thoughts.

Somewhere along the way we’ve been sold a bill of goods, folks. As we race into the 21st Century, Technology has been heralded as the Savior of the Future, where we’ll save so much time with the latest and greatest gadgets we’ll have nothing but leisure to enjoy. Where’s the time we’ve saved?! Where is the life of relaxation?! America is overrun with cancer, heart disease, diabetes, gluten allergies and a host of other maladies from a food system more inspected, more industrialized and more removed from simple farming in our backyards than any other country in the world. In the midst of this space age life, Mom and Dad both work stressful jobs but it’s still barely enough to cover all the bills. Everybody’s a got a cell phone and shiny cars doing 90 miles an hour, but we still don’t have time to enjoy playing baseball in the backyard as a family. We’ve got more fast food in this country than ever before, but who has the time to sit down and enjoy a homegrown meal together? What happened?

I can’t answer those questions in a few paragraphs; the answer is what we’ll be trying to write about in this blog.

The song my Dad wrote is a probing one, begging you to question where the country has gone, in the midst of everyone being more and more dependent on a greed driven, private property rights consuming city. Our culture, our way of life in this 21st century, isn’t producing God-honoring, enjoyable, healthy lives. We ought to be striving for independence from an out-of-control government and more interdependence on old-time community based, agriculturally grounded living!

I grew up on a half-acre lot in Mableton, now I’m farming with my Dad on five acres full-time with a wife and two kids, all with dreams of moving to Alabama on 60-80 acres to further pursue our dreams. Does Your City Have Country Roads?

Comments are open below so please let us know what you think of the song and what it means to you!

 

We hope you enjoy the video and song! It was a lot of fun and work wrapped up together, and the song is now available for purchase on iTunes and Amazon for those of you who are interested.

Also, we have the song for sale in CD form through our online Store and on our back porch at the Farm.

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