Order in Each Season

I've been doing this homesteading long enough to know, I'll never quit learning.  Life is fluid and I like that.  This year upon hearing to "prepare practically" I began selling off some of the "pet livestock" and got serious about a production herd.  I figured the best number for efficient keeping as well as milk requirements and really headed toward that goal.  I still am, but my practicality has amazed me . . .

I was still waxing a bit sentimental over Stella, so as I wrote about the two Togg crosses that came home with Eloise in April, I had high hopes.  Well, one of the Togg crosses and I got pretty close before she kidded . . . As it turns out, she wasn't such a great mother, so that turned into extra milking and bottle feeding.  Let me tell you.  When the babies are in the same pen as mama, but they come running to the human with a bottle in hand, that isn't practical . . . so

I came to the place of choosing obedience.  Not that it took any great coaxing or conviction.  I knew in the time of bottle feeding to not let the babies starve, I would be selling them at first opportunity.  With school out and the County Fairs gearing up, bottle babies and bucket calves are a great way for country kids to enjoy the summer.  It's a great lesson in responsibility as well, so I knew the babies at the sale would be wanted, and a bad mama was on her own.

The day following the auction, it occurred to me, the varying responsibilities of homesteading, and if I'd chosen to keep those bottle babies, I'd have been in disobedience, quite far from practical.  They'd have needed to be bottle fed until the end of August.  This will work perfectly for summer vacation for elementary school students, but not for a farm woman picking and canning and preparing for Shemitah.  I hadn't fully realized that usually the kids are all sold or weaned by the time the blackberries are ready for picking, but that is how it works.  It seems the zucchini and cucumbers come on about the time the early greens begin to go to seed.  The blackberries and corn are in full production between the green beans and the tomatoes.

In preparing practically, according to the Instructions given me, I have to operate in the order Adonai provides increase and abundance.  I'm only milking once a day now, and the calves are on pasture with only a night bottle.  In looking at the cauliflower and peppers coming on, not to mention the tomato plants are loaded, it would be absolutely ridiculous to knowingly give up the blessing of obedience for impracticality. I obviously knew the difference between growing season and winter, but now I've been shown some of the detailed order in each season.