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2-16-25

My Beloved Mother

I thought you might like to see my progress on the barn,  or the side which the wind tore off.  All the water from my yard goes past that east end,  and it doesn't take much to turn it into a mud hole.  There was about a foot of bedding straw close to the barn, and underneath  the ground is still frozen and slippery, and moving machinery over it is almost impossible.  So I removed the straw and am now waiting for the ground to dry before I put tin on the roof.  Like I said, I hope to get that  all closed in before the Spring rains, which turn the whole corral into a foot of mud. I'll be able to put in enough hay in the feeders to last two weeks if need be.  Otherwise,  on rainy days, I do little more all day than trying to find a way to feed them outside.  As you can see, the inside of the lean-to is a long feeder--on both sides of the barn--and once enclosed, I'll have enough space for the entire flock.  But I'll post pictures every day, so you can see my progress, and pray for me.  Had real high wind and a little snow the last few days.  But now it looks like I'll have good weather to get this done.  I have enough straw to keep them snug and dry inside.  Nothing like a fresh-strawed barn to make the lambs run and leap for joy.  My noble ram Shiloh likes to sit in the choicest seat in the barn, in the midst of the flock enjoying his cud, and they use him to play king of the mountain.  He's a good natured sort and suffers their manners until they try to balance on his head.  Those little hoofs are sharp as needles, and after awhile he'll shake his head vigorously to get them to stop, and when they don't, he'll jump up and deal blows.  Because my rams got out, about 30 ewes lambed early in the cold.  I have to pump water since my Pehelter is below ground, which means frozen buckets of water every day when it's cold.  I have huge tanks above ground with floats when the weather is warm, so that saves a lot of time.  

Linda sent a picture of Jason and the little girl.  Jason looks so strong, and he's so cute.  

When a man and his family from Colorado stopped in a while back to buy a piece of equipment, I filled a bottle with milk and gave it to the little girls to feed Benji, a very lively bottle lamb.  "He's the milk monster," I told them, "so be careful."  In his haste to get his bottle, he  almost knocked them over, and they jumped on a trailer and scolded him for being so unlamb like.  I had another bottle lamb that looked like a toy, and wouldn't move a muscle when you picked him up.  I ran and got him for them to cuddle.  This now, they cooed, was the real deal.  They handed him off to each other saying what a sweet little lamb be was.  But after a couple of minutes, they said, "Where's the milk monster?"  So I handed them the bottle, and it was as before.  Again, they took refuge on the trailer. 

One year, the last lamb of the season was a strong and healthy single that would wander off constantly, and George Dave and I would have to go look for it.  One day, I came into the Shofhitten and there was Dave with a huge tub of soapy water scrubbing it.  He had found it up to its neck in the pig pens.  In the fall, when we put the sheep on the stubble, after school I would take Velvet and go check the Flat to find any strays.  I was crossing the dam by the Leveled alfalfa, and was getting ready to give Velvet the free rein home, when something made me turn and look back.  Turning I looked right into  the eyes of a yearling stuck in the mud by the overflow at the bottom of the bank.  She watched me pass, and I don't remember that she made a sound, but she could have.   The coyotes would have got her by morning.  I pulled her out, let Velvet run home, and then spent a couple hours pushing her home.  Which reminds me.  You remember the city boy who mistook big jackrabbits for lambs?  I was invited to an Amish after church dinner near Waco, Texas one Sunday, when I went through my usual routine of singing for my supper.  I was well along in regaling the room with sheep stories, when a little girl cried out excitedly, "I like the one about the rabbits best."  Erk! I had so far said nothing about no rabbits, so what rabbits?  The audience let out a deep groan and rolled their eyes.  Too late, it was like hearing the little boy yell out, "The king has no clothes on."  Well, so that was why the response to my punch lines was somewhat "polite", to say the least.  Like Moses said, "Surely this thing is known." "Someone's been plowing with my heifers," I said.  Because I usually saved that one for last, and had not yet told it on that day.  But she could probably tell it better than me by now.  I had been in that area at another family (who were at the dinner table that day also) some weeks before, and the little girl (who heard the story from them)  didn't know that you can't tell the same story twice--not for your supper, that is--without getting into longwinded histories and twice told tales.  But she couldn't wait for me to get to the little lambs and the big jackrabbits, because that was her favorite.  My, but that's a charming one.  But you improvise on the spot, and in the end you get another good story out of the deal, enough for another fine supper.  He laughs best who learns to laugh at himself.  Speaking of suppers:  I unloaded in downtown New York City in the old garment district (now gone) one cold December day, and my next pickup was 150 miles above Ottawa in Quebec.  It was already 5 o'clock when I got unloaded and as I had eaten nothing all day, I walked around trying to find something to eat, because I would be driving all night.  It was all fancy restaurants, and the cheapest item on the menu when I entered one was lobster for $25--without vegetables or soda.  Just plain lobster.  It was too early for the upper swells, so I was in the upper crust all by myself with all the uniformed waiters watching.  And me in cowboy boots and leather jacket.  Well, I was too much pride to just walk out, so I cut my losses and ordered just the lobster, no veggies, no roll, no soda.  You should have seen the look on the waiter's face when he brought it too me.  He must have thought I was from Mars.  I even left a tip.  Then I drove all night up to Montreal, then west to Ottawa, and up a snaky paved-over rabbit trail--they paved around boulders and trees--deep into French Canada.  How do I know it was December?  Because, I had a Christmas card ready to mail to you, Mom, and finally found an English speaking woman to mail it  for me from that French town.  I don't think you ever got it, so she probable just pocketed the money I gave her and threw the card away.  

"Esau cometh to meet thee, and 400 men with him" (Gen. 32:6)

Is that good, or bad news?  We are not told.  But since Moses wrote it, people who have read it reacted like Jacob:  he panicked.  No one thinks this was a welcoming committee, and Jacob drew the worst (likely right) conclusion:  Esau was coming to destroy him.  Likely the messengers told him that Esau's face was black as thunder, and he had threatened to kill him twenty years earlier, just as Cain killed Abel, and Joseph's brothers planned to kill him.  He sent presents to change the look on Esau's "face" (Gen. 32:20).  His mind  was in such a state of terror that neither his family nor servants were able to help him.  The closest he had come to this state of mind was 20 years ago when he left home for the first time in 77 years and God  entertained him all night with a ladder full of angels.  It was so real that he concluded that he had stumbled into "the house of God," and where he slept was "the gate of heaven" (Gen. 28).  Whatever fears he may have had of what lay before disappeared, because now "he was afraid" because he found himself in the "house of God" and "knew it not."  Elsewhere, God is called "the Fear of Isaac" (Gen. 31).  This is the kind of fear spoken of here.  It is the godly fear that believers have:  "Surely the fear of God is not in this place," Abraham said of the Philistines (Gen 20).  

After wrestling all night with God, he finds  himself saying "I saw God face to face, and my life is preserved."  In other words, had he known it was God, he would have acted differently, just as when he found himself sleeping in "the House of God" which he named Bethel (which means House of God).  Now, does anyone think that Bethel is anymore the "gate of Heaven" than any other place on earth?  Or did  Jacob think he could shamble along carelessly once he left "the house of God"?  "The House of God" is wherever God is,"his grandfather would have told him, and  God is wherever faith is, even when there are no angels going up and down ladders."  He would have to walk by faith the next 20 troubled years in Syria when Laban "deceived" him over and over.  God did not appear  every time he got into trouble.  But "the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous."  That is, God walks side by side with the believer, on that same way, "the path of righteousness."  "We walk by faith, not by sight," Paul says.  That is, faith turns every place into Bethel (House of God).  And sometimes, God draws near in disguise.  In this case, Jacob probably thought he was dealing with a thief and robber.  Ordinary people do not prowl around at night looking to test their wrestling moves.  What was Jacob to think?  People usually think the worst when attacked like this:  a murderer!  But Jacob was in his element now.  Here he was Weltmeister.  And before he knew it, it was morning.  His iron grip did not fail him.  This was an iron man.  A man of troubles all his life.  But he never complained.  

"I saw God and lived to talk about it,"  Jacob marvels.  So where was God when He was not wrestling with Jacob?  In other words, he caught God by surprise and caught a glimpse of His face before  He could vanish.  He thought he was beset by a maniac most of the night, and as soon as God vanished, he was left to wonder what that was all about.  And he doesn't even mention that God turned him into a cripple.  For his descendants, that became Jacob's chief mark of distinction, proof that he had been touched by God.  And God did not smite him because of disobedience when he said "I will not" when God wanted to end the contest, because that only made Jacob tighten his iron grip, which he had honed already in the womb, and would not even relax while he was being born.  So even while God was in Jacob's iron grip, He still had the power to maim, and kill, because afterward Jacob marveled that he was still alive.  His family probably found him distracted by all this, and Esau had become a very small problem.  You've heard the story about the woman who asked the preacher, "Should I bother God with my small problems?"  To which he replied, "None of your problems are big with God."  That is, it's as hard for God to create the little worm that killed Jonah's huge weed, as it is for God to create a great whale to swallow Jonah.  For most of the night, Jacob thought he was dealing with either a maniac or petty thief, and did what it took to rid himself of the pest.  He may even had said, "Now stay down, you pest." And all this in the presence of God.  When he awoke in Bethel, he was worried that he had carelessly stumbled into the House of God.  Imagine what his thoughts were now, because God could have seen Himself roughly used, to say the least.  But God was flattered by his effort, and blessed him for it.  That must have been mindboggling as he limped toward Esau.  Because,  the limp was proof that he had not been shadowboxing all night.  He probably still had twigs in his hair when he met his worried family in the morning.  "I wrestled with God all night," he would have told them.  

"You what...and He smote you hip and thigh...you're lucky to be alive!!!"  they would have shreiked.  

"That's what I said, when I let Him go, because He couldn't shake my iron grip." 

"Who couldn't shake whose iron grip?"  They must have thought he had taken leave of his senses.  But there he was, a cripple, talking like a vigorous  giant, ready for the day.  They probably heard him say all day, "I saw God's face, and lived to talk about it."  

Or they might have wondered if this was not a haphazard case of mistaken identity:  God coming down under cover of the night to "strive with man" (Gen. 6), and Jacob just happened to be in the wrong spot at the wrong time, and God ambushed him.  Because, He seems not to know who He was striving with:  "what is your name."  And He even plays the vagabond to the end, because he doesn't want to be unmasked so He could be identified.  That would have been a reasonable conclusion, because God doesn't say, "I can't let you see me and let you live."  Jacob knew Abraham for 15 years and the latter might have said something about God's appearance when He came to dinner with two angels.  Would the faces have matched?  The same clothing?  The same tone of voice?  The same height?  God, we are led to believe, "was in the still small voice" which spoke to Elijah, and the Ten Commandments forbid speculation about God's appearance.  But here God plays the part until the end--and then vanishes.  This is one of the strangest chapters in the Bible, and an utter contradiction from one end to the other.  But believers have always understood it perfectly.  So, unbelievers might say: 1) God doesn't know everything, 2) He is weaker than some men, 3) He rewards disobedience, 4) He prays to a man, 5) He is trying to hide from man, 6) He ceases to be a Spirit while touched by a human because He has to be "let go" before He can vanish, etc., etc.

Did  Jacob walk away boasting that he had pinned God to the ground, and forced Him to bless him because he was stronger than God?  Because God Himself says that Jacob "prevailed" over God.  This is the only place where it is said that God made supplication to man  to get something from man.  Because God said, "let Me go," and Jacob disobeyed, and God was forced to reward disobedience by pronouncing a blessing upon Jacob.  Or Jacob might have boasted of having discovered a great secret:  God was afraid of daylight, but could not disappear as long as he was in the grips of mortal man.  "Let me  go, for the day breaketh,"  He pleads.  That is he could not allow Himself to be seen by man.  But Jacob claims to have gotten a good look--and lived to talk about it.  And because God was weaker than Jacob, God had to resort to supernatural power to maim Jacob--which only made him tighten his grip.  So God was left to plead.  And instead of strengthening Jacob for the crisis before him, God not only kept him up all night, but made a cripple out of him, a disfiguration which his descendants made sacred.  And all that, when he was supposed to deal with the crisis that drove him into a state of panic.  

So what was the all night wrestling all about?  God needed to keep Jacob's mind from overheating so he engaged him in his element:  wrestling.  For Jacob was a wrestler from the womb.  When  the "sun came up" Jacob had but one thought, as at Bethel,  in the words of David, "What is man that thou art mindful of him?"  In other words, if you had just seen God, you would not be afraid of anything, and would  probably see Esau as a minor problem.  And sure enough there was Esau, whose "face looked like the face of God" (33:10).  Facelift.  God  had been busy elsewhere during the night of wrestling.   Before, he had warned Laban that he was already walking on eggshells.  He had crossed all the red lines long ago, and whether he "speaks good or bad to Jacob" may not make much of a difference.  In chapter 20 God tells Abimelech in the middle of the night, "Behold, thou art but a dead man."  Jacob renamed the river Penuel (face of God) and "crossed the face of God  halting on his thigh."  In Luke 18:5 the widow wears out the unjust judge by refusing to take no for an answer.  This is how Christians have interpreted Jacob's wrestling.  It is as if God is saying to Jacob, "Your business is with the Shepherd,  I'll do the wolf-watching around here."  Because we hear no more of Esau's 400 men.  Apparently, God had also been busy all night elsewhere.  This is how your children and grandchildren pray for you my beloved mother.  

I always pick up when you call, or call right back.  I leave my phone in the house during the day, because I can't work with it on me and I've broken too many.  The telemarketers call me constantly from all over, and many times from Montana.  I answer only the ones that I think are real, because if you answer they sell that information to the others, and the calls get worse.  But I believe I have all your numbers listed, so I don't see how I could have missed your call, unless the towers weren't working.  

It's 10:26 and time for bed.  Hope to get a good days work on the barn tomorrow.  

Love you Mom

3-7-25 (1:21 PM)

Beloved Mother

Had hard cold wind for days on end, and had to make sure lambs were in the warmest part of the barn and dry to keep them from getting pneumonia.  I have enough room for most, but some still have to be outside, so I keep checking them during the night in case any lamb outside.  Now its nice and warm again, and I'm working on getting the tin on the east lean-to before the Spring rains, when the corral turns into a foot of mud.  During that time, I hope to keep  everything indoors and feed them inside.

Hope you enjoy the pictures of Linda helping me pull out the tractor. The mud is like glue so we didn't even budge it, and I had to lift it out.  These sloughs are everywhere around here and few there be that have not every year told their wives, "This is the last time.  I've learned my lesson."  Because once you get stuck--well then you have a situation.   And as any Sloughmaster will  tell you, there are sloughs within sloughs. and not in the low areas where you would expect them, but higher up where the water seeps in.  When I mow in dry years with my andarble, I will mow my merry way when all of a sudden the ground becomes like a waterbed and the turf in front of the tractor becomes a rolling wave.  You're OK as long as you keep moving, so at that point you give it more gas and hope you're in a low enough gear not to stall.  Because once you stop, as soon as you try moving again the tires break through and the water gushes up like a burst balloon.  If you take a steel post and puncture it, water spouts out.  Like I said, walking on it is like walking on a waterbed.  In the early years, I would try to bale with my heavy baler, and you can about imagine how that went.  Down it went, and the pickup would take in mud with the hay, break a few things and plug.  I would remove the part, walk home and weld it, and walk back, sometimes half a dozen times a day.  I enjoyed it, because I was determined to tame the slough.  Now, I put my Sloughslayers in just as it starts growing, and  they'll go in up to their bellies in water to munch on the  tender cattail shoots (if you keep them short, they can't grow bulbs and they go away).  I give them a little extra corn to give them energy.  This way the cattails can't take over, and all the smaller startups get to start, because once the cattails grow a foot tall they kill everything else.   And for a  sheep, any shoot is a delicacy.  And even in the driest years, the slough is always green.  A neighbor told me that every year after the haying was done, his father would eye the slough once again,  thinking that by perfecting his technique year by year he could get the upper hand.  After all, it's free hay, and while not the best, still in hard winters, not to be sneezed at.  An idle boast.  Only sheep can tame a slough, and thrive in it.  One year, he told me, they got the neighbor who had a stronger tractor to bale it.  As you can imagine, all sloughs are surrounded by higher ground, where the ground is dry and from where you make your assault.  As the neighbor sat there on his tractor in high roar (remember Keelbow's loud tractor that we would listen to on quiet days when he would try to make it up the hill plowing?  A one cylinder Cockshutt, we would scoff, bang bang, bang), he said, his dad walked up to the anxious neighbor and clapping his hand on his shoulder, leaned in and shouted above the roar of the engine,  "WHATEVER YOU DO, DON'T STOP."  Listening to the son tell it was like hearing it firsthand, in all its dreadfulness.  "Whatever you do," I can still hear him shout, "don't stop."  That's how I got stuck.  My bailer got heavy and began sinking, and because I was in the worst part of the slough (the slough within the slough), things went from bad to worse.  Linda  and I huffed and puffed with three motors roaring  and we didn't budge it an inch.   I pulled the baler away with long cables, and from then on--no more. You can imagine my thoughts as I watch my sloughslayers deal heavy blows.  I wade in and watch the muttonous lamb devour the most toxic weeds (delicacies) while getting fatter and fatter.   "Now grow," I crow, "and grow and grow and grow."  You would not believe what sprouts from the mud when the sun can get through.  Seeds from the beginning of time.  And all the gladsome lambs getting fatter and fatter.  

Two young married men from a colony in Minnesota stopped by to buy a new Grundfos circulating pump.  Many years ago when they were small boys I visited their Gibbs Colony in Sough Dakota and was hardly welcome.  Hutterites are becoming major manufactures in this area--"a lot of knowledge there"-- a professional welder from Britton (isn't that where Dad took the geese to?) told me last week.  I never let anyone out the gate here without trying to share the Gospel, and in this case, I got a quick response,  Well. I said, how is that you being Gibbs, are not afraid to talk about the Bible?  Because, they said, you can't just say "I'm in the Gmah, you have to born again."   And the old colony where I visited, I asked?  Their uncle, who was Hausholter, is now also born again, they said.  (Came in to charge my drill battery, so off  to work)  Love you Mom.

2-27-25

Beloved Mother

When it rained so hard one summer, I got stuck in the slough trying to go from my east three acres of alfalfa to the three acres on the other side of the slough.  You can see Linda in the white telehandler.  I even further back on drier ground with long cables on the second John Deere.  I would get the stuck tractor spinning, run back to the other other tractor, and Linda would gun the big tele, but we couldn't move it.  The mud is like glue.  When Linda left, I was able to get the tele up to the tractor, and lifted it out one wheel at a time, putting blocks under the wheels as I went.  You wouldn't believe how often I got stuck down there.  

This area is full of sloughs, and while slough hay doesn't have much feed value, still its free--or so everyone tells themselves.  Sooner or later,  the cost of repairs is enough for people to stay out.  In rainy years, I would mow it with my little Japanese tractor pulling an old fashioned cycle 

2-25-25 (6:33) PM

My Beloved Mother

A little muddy out there, so didn't get much done.  My sheep still go out every morning, a half mile east  and then a quarter mile south to a 40 acre corn field where they've been gleaning all winter.  It's owned by the Kleinjans, and joins the field next to me, where there is little corn on the ground.  I noticed they combined it (the 40 acres) almost two weeks later than the rest, but have yet to talk to Kleinjan to know why the ground is covered with corn.  But because there's so much corn on the ground, I have had to feed little hay.  They go down by themselves and back.  The fences are long gone.  Their mothers would have been at the other end of the county within hours.   

I don't remember much about the sheep at Glacier, except the camp which we used to plunder for sugar.  .Sheepman Jake was a kind soul, and as children we probably sensed that he was looked down upon, so we played tricks on him.  Once he came into kindergarten, and as we were napping, he pointed out the culprits:  "he's guilty, he's guilty, he's guilty etc., --they're all in one sack."  But he could rhyme endlessly, making it up as he went.  He must have been an intelligent man.  

We spent more time at the pig barn  because the cousins were there.  I dreaded walking through the farrowing barn, because the sows would stick their heads over and go "woof" and I was careful not to jump too far to the other side where another was waiting.  But at least they were not in cages like now.  

And now a dozen eggs cost more than a frying chicken.  If these diseases keep hitting the corporate farms, more people will likely start keeping hens  and fatten a hog.  Most of the town lawns are the size of small farms in China--imagine all the food that could be raised.  

When Americans visited Germany in the eighteen hundreds, they were aghast to see manure piles right next to the house.  They kept their livestock in the basement.  Extra heat.  "Flies," Americans sniffed.  

I still remember the row of small cages by our house at Glacier.  They were probably for geese.  Then at some point they were removed.  And the wooden sidewalks which the women scrubbed.  I imagine people were afraid that concrete would be too dangerous when icy.  And every year, the hardwood floors had to be varnished and then polished.  You were glad, Mom, when they covered them with linoleum.  I removed three layers of it here to get to the wood floors (the wive was a Prairieleut Kleinsasser).  I was at an Amish family in Pennsylvania whose house had linoleum floors.  "He promised me a wood floor soon," the wife said.  Sunday's, when trucking, I would walk for miles in the country side and enjoyed many a visit.  One Sunday, while talking with a group of Amishmen, one of them volunteered that during the morning sermon, a huge bumble bee came in through the open window.  Everyone pretended not to notice the flight of the bumble bee.  Soon the bee landed right on someone's forehead. and everyone kept trying to look straight ahead and trying not to think about the bee boring into the poor man's head.   Then the bee took flight again, and everyone dreaded his next move.  Finally, one of the men told me later, the bee went down under and crawled up the leg  of the man next to him, when suddenly he made a quick move with only his hand to crush the pest.  The rest of the church wondered what happened to the bee.  But the man who told me clearly relished telling the story.  It got a lot of laughs--especially the part with the bee on the man's forehead, and he pretending that it wasn't, while everyone wondered for how long.  Because the people would talk if he took a swipe at it in the middle of the sermon.  

When I went to school in Dallas, I would go eastward to Sulphur Springs where the Dutch hired  the Amish to run their dairy herds.  I had a telephone number from someone in the Budget, and was told that the Sunday meeting would be at such and such a place.  When I arrived, instead of thirty horse and buggies (like in Aylmer, Canada) there was but one horse, and what looked like an abandoned house.  Not a sound came from the building.  The only door I could see was missing the steps, and I remember being at a loss at what to do.  What if it's a house, and  I just barged in.  But who ever knocked on a church door? Still not a sound from within.  So reaching up, I turned the knob, and when I swung the door open "every eye was on him."  The threshold was waist high and and there must have been two hundred eys boring down at me.  They had been waiting for me, hearing me approach.  The situation was highly critical.  So reaching up I took hold of the doorframe and heaved myself into the building.  Not a sound from any of them.  I was like the bumblebee--things like that aren't supposed to happen, so they don't.  Now, all the Amish hats were stacked on a bench by the door, where the preacher was to speak, which means that there was also a huge glass of water next to the hats.  When I closed the door, I knocked the glass of water over. and it went flying down the middle with me in pursuit desperately trying to get control of the situation, , the men on one side the woman on the other.  No one as much as batted an eye.  I  finally ran down the glass,  but when I returned it to where it was before, I noticed that the glass  had emptied on the hats, and the crown on the one on top was full of water.  What am I supposed to do now, I remember thinking, shake the hat?  I put the glass  down, walked down the aisle and  found an empty seat way in the back.  By the time I sat down, I was already thinking, no would will believe this.  Looking across the room, I saw some of the young girls in stiches.  I told the story to Elmer Stolzfus later in Pennsylvania, and said, "You know if this had happened to me as a Hutterite, I would  never show my face in public again."  "If that happened to me as an Amishman," he replied grimly, "I would never show my face in public again,"  

When I was in Philadelphia i would always go out there on the weekend.  I related another story of stopping to chat with an Amishman selling baked goods at the exit next to Poole's terminal in western Pennsylvania.  This man had been raised quite "liberal" (rubber on their tire rims), but married into a group which didn't allow buggy windows.  "Why not?"  I asked.  "It doesn't hurt to get wet," he said.  "I once met a man who build a house without a roof," I said.  "When I asked him why, he said, it doesn't hurt to get wet."  At which point the Amishman grabbed his knees and rolling  back in his chair, laughed and laughed.  I thought he got it, and was laughing as if to say, "Ok, I get the point."  "He didn't get it," Stoltsfus said.  "What do you mean," I said.  "He didn't make the connection between the windowless buggy and the roofless house," he said.  "Had he done so, he would not have laughed at something that is so personal to him."  

One day in the same area, I took the company car and went touring.  I came upon an auction that must have had a thousand Amish onsite--everyone smoking brown cigarettes (whites were too worldly), from the smallest to the oldest.  On the platform, the Amish auctioneer was puffing on a huge cigar.  "Would you like to meet the Bishop," one asked blowing smoke in my face.  Anything, I thought, to get away from these human furnaces.  When I turned, there he was, puffing on a huge pipe.  

Did you ever notice, my dear Mother, that when Jacob was the first time away from home, that God entertained him all night with a ladder full of angels.  When he awoke he said "this is the house of God." Bethel means house of God.  In other words, he had been a guest of God.  God did not want him tossing and turning all night in despair.  Then when he heard that Esau was marching toward him with 400 men, he was terrified.  To keep his mind from overheating, God met him in his element (Jacob was a wrestler from the womb) to distract him away from his fear.  In the morning he said, "I saw  God."  When he meets  Esau, he says, "your face is like the face of God."  Now obviously, the 400 men meant that Esau was furious.    Shepherds do not allow their  sheep to be frightened.  But obviously something happened to Esau overnight.   Before, God told Laban, "Good or bad, it  doesn't matter, because you crossed all the red lines long ago.  Keep that in mind when you talk with Jacob?"  Jacob had a hard life.  "Few and evil have been the days of my life," he tells Pharaoh.  But without such hardship there would have been no Bethel (house of God) nor Penuel (face of God).  "The shadow of death"  is the place of hardship, and Jacob was in it most of his life--with God.   

2-25-25 (11:06)

My Beloved Mother

I'm praying that God will give you a full recovery.  Talked to nephew Phil last evening  and said I would type something for Linda to print.  Weather is very mild now, after weeks of bitter cold and wind during which, because my ram lambs got out, I had early lambs.  Had to bring them into the house to warm them up, and then two ewes rejected one each.  These black headed ones are very suspicious, and even if I bring both lambs in, they'll find some excuse to reject one.  

I still need to put tin on the roof of the lean-to on the east side of the barn which that wind tore off.  I hope to  get it done before the Spring rains and just keep everything inside instead of outside in the mud.  If I let them out, they bring all that wet and mud in.  Have been getting up every 3  hours to check, so I just sleep on the floor next the stove.  I have a small mattress I could use, but I like to sleep on the floor because it's like a chiropractor.  The first three days everything aches, and you don't sleep as well, but even those rough three days you end up better rested.  After that, I sleep like a log.  The reasons doctors recommend a hard mattress is that mattresses conform to the body's deformities.  A good way to prove this is to touch your toes after three days, and find that you can touch your toes without your back hurting.  Against a hard surface the muscles have no choice but to relax, and tightened muscles are what throws the skeleton out of order.  This year, I'll fix all the male lambs.  They grow much faster unfixed, but they bring 10 cents a pound less on market day, and they are the worst rascals--all day playing king of the mountain, shoving and slamming each other around.  When I go in the corral they all run up to jostle with me.  One of them puts his head behind my knee and gentle pushes as long as I'm in the corral.  If I stand still for too long, they all begin chewing on my clothes, buttons, and shoelaces.  They're always waiting for me to make a mistake and leave the gate open, at which they all run out.  At feeding time, I never go in the corral without Bander to keep them away from me.  He bristles next to me and as long as he keeps eye contact they stay away.  But then one will make a dash for the bucket, and then the all hem me in so that I can't move.  At which point I have no choice but to  call in the Hair Force.  He doesn't have a light touch, and he'll throw a few to the ground to make a path.  He has no fear, and he will meet a hard charging 400 pound ram and throw him.  The black headed ones chased him around when he was a puppy, and he would crawl under a trailer with just his nose sticking and howl while they tried to get at him--sometimes for hours.  He was best friends with Mt. Moriah my great ram, and would hide under him and pester Shiloh my black headed one,  because Shiloh would not think of attacking Moriah.  Moriah would sometimes stay out and graze after the ewes came home, and I would sent Bander to bring him in.  He would run off lickety-split but as soon as he saw that it was Moriah, he would turn and look back at me as if to say, "there's nothing here."  Because he would not think of barking at his good friend.  

Did you ever notice that the lamb in Psalm 23 begins by talking "about" the shepherd--"He does this, and that."  But then the lamb senses danger, and talks "to" the Shepherd--now he uses the language of prayer: "Thou, Thy."  I have a three week fat and bouncy little bottle lamb that sometimes follows me out to the stubble for a mile and a half--she and Bander.  I never have to worry where she's at even in the dark because she's constantly brushing against my knee, even when we run, without causing me to stumble.   As soon as its dark the coyotes make a fearful racket from every corner, but she' doesn't care.  And the "shadows" he soon learns are real, because he see "enemies" all around.  And just at that point he sees the Shepherd spread the tablecloth and prepare a feast, as if to say "God is always at home."  One day when Linda was here, I was mowing the east slough, when stepping off my little tractor, I saw a small bite-sized piece of wool at my feet.  Picking it up, I could see fresh little  veins.  I walked home to show  Linda, and when we checked the corral, we saw one limping, and sure enough, it was missing that patch.  Three days later,  they got out and ran down to the same slough, and when I saw the gate open, I quickly ran after them.  When I came over the hill I saw a sight that made my hair stand on end.  There was  a big coyote in the midst of the flock, while they were grazing peacefully all around him.  It wasn't the coyote that scared me, but their utter lack of fear at being right next to the beast.  I had set a trap a few days before, so I knew he could do them no harm.  This is the secret of sheep, they have no fear. 

Wherever, you see a sheep, as any shepherd will tell you, look closely and you will see a shepherd not far off, because without shepherds, in one month there would not be ten sheep left on the face of the earth.  But today, there are more sheep than ever before, and the wolves are under government protection.