Good Morning!

Just a few quick thoughts before I start my Saturday chores:

Remember a few days ago when I mentioned checking into a raw milk source for butter and yogurt making and hubby pleasing? Well, the source said yes so I had a moment of great excitement. Then suddenly, I heard knocking on the inside of my skull and a little voice said, "Uhh, excuse me, Einstein, but isn't your son immunesuppressed, making him vulnerable to any stray little bacteria or virus that the rest of the family's strong immune systems might otherwise scoff at?" So, I figured I better check into whether Tan can have unpasteurized anything (including the goat's milk). Our online kidney guru pulled up a report stating that unpasteurized or raw is on that advisory council's no-no list, and my initial Google search pulled up the same. I'm going to check with Tanner's kidney doctor, who I trust implicitly, and will consider hers the final word. While it would be lovely to bring fresh milk into our home, I'm certainly not willing to take an unnecessary risk with Tan. If we have to wait until he's off the immune-suppressing meds, really, that's no big deal. We'll wait. I'll let you know what we learn.

Gertie let me scratch her behind the horns yesterday. It was fabulous. Then she stomped on my foot. One step forward....

Mike has pink eye. I've been grateful the past few mornings to be able to pop open my baby blues without degooping first. Fingers crossed these clear-eyed mornings will continue.

Adam's missionary application is sitting in front of Church leaders who are deciding where in the world he'll go. Will we be buying pea coats for England or short-sleeved white shirts for Central America? Or a banjo for him to do some front-porch pickin' in Kentucky? We'll know soon!

My friend Debbie said we can go scoop poop from their horse barn. Yee haw!

One of the pigs bit me yesterday. That was a first in two years of having pigs. I was dumping a can of kitchen scraps into their pen and one of the big fellas was ever so excited so he tried to take the can from me and chomped down on my thumb and hand. It was a blunt-edged chomp and broke the skin from the tugging motion, not from any razor-sharp teeth. But the throbbing, fevered, bleeding thumb didn't bug me nearly as much as the gobs of slimy goo he left all over my hand. Let's just say he was primed to properly masticate whatever food entered his strong jaws. Before you think I made some comment like, "Yeah, you'll get yours, buddy!" just know that I didn't. While I'm grateful for the food these pigs are going to be providing us soon, I'm not lighthearted about killing them. I thought being a farm girl now I'd take the butchering in stride, and to a degree I do in terms of not brooding over it, but mostly I just feel grateful for these animals' lives, not entitled to them.

Looking forward to seeing what the heck this "super moon" will look like tonight. It's been really bright around the farm the last few nights, and last night's moon was freaky, because it had a wide red ring around it. Creepy! But really, really cool. Wish the kids had been here to see it. They were in the Valley with family, where you don't see the stars, you see the soft glow of street lamps.

My kiddos are coming home today from their cousins' and my mother-in-law will be bringing them here, so soon our home will be filled again with some of my favorite people in the whole wide world. Guess that means I better go take a shower and get on my chores.

Love from the farm,
Teri