Pullet Eggs

Everything I've read (by people who are supposed to know via experience) said that if hens turn five months old after the longest day of the year, they won't lay eggs until the following spring. Well, guess what? Today is September 28, three months after the longest day – and, this morning, when I went out to feed the chickens there was a pullet egg. I guess it pays to have hens who can't read.

The hens are just five months old now.

I wonder, though. It seems as if the people who write about such things usually live in places like Vermont. I live in southern Arizona. I'm sure it's a lot colder in Vermont right now, than here. We still hit 90*F, sometimes higher, sometimes lower. Perhaps it has more to do with temperature than with length of days.

I'm not complaining, I promise.

This morning, I also saw a coyote. Yellow hair, long tail. It looked just like the one I saw at Clay's house in Cane Beds. At the time, he was living on Liberty Lane, away from any other house. It was the first time I'd seen a coyote that was yellow. Today was the second. Don't think bright yellow, like a daffodil or dandelion. Think muted yellow, like a dog.

Technically, I live out of town. Really, I live in a neighborhood, house after house all the way into the town limits. Okay, there is a cotton field just north of us, then houses, the high school, like that – but if you drive, it looks like town. The lots are way too small for country lots.


The coyote was walking down the street that goes past our backyard. It's actually a driveway that starts at our northeast corner, and goes from the front of our house to the houses behind us. It walked down the drive, then cut off into one of the yards.

Often, as I type or read in my room, I can see the parade of animals in the evening. A rabbit or two. Several quail. They just walk down the road, like a family on an evening stroll – or run. The youngsters run. Lizards. Pigeons. Other birds. (I saw a robin in my front yard a few days ago.)

Apparently we have septic tanks out here, but we buy water from the town on the east (it calls itself a city; actually, I think our town also calls itself a city – no one wants to be just a town anymore). We buy natural gas and electricity from the town after the town on the west.

If I had my druthers, I'd live on at least five acres (twenty or fifty would be better), off the grid. My electricity would come from sun and wind, and maybe something else (don't know what that would be, though – definitely not a generator; I like quiet). I would probably use propane for heating water, and for cooking until I got used to using a sun oven, eating mostly raw, using a wood stove in winter. I would use wood for heat most of the time. If I lived in Cane Beds, I would have propane to keep the house at least 60*F. If I lived here, I'd just have a well-insulated house with windows on the south, and no trees at all on the south. That, and a wood stove, would work fine.

People around here usually avoid putting windows on the south, and they load the south with trees. To keep the heat out. If they paid attention to the sun and the shade, they'd see that all they need is a three foot overhang shading their windows. At least, I think that's what Mom and I measured. It has been a long time.

You don't want the sun in (unless it's unseasonably cold) from about April until September or October. In Cane Beds, I'd say from June first until the first of September.

But, even around here, you want the sun to shine in your south windows in the winter. It cuts down on the heating bill. It gets to about 27*F for the lows in winter. Heat is needed at night, and on cloudy days. If the house is built right, it won't need much heat besides that.

The trees need to be on the east, west, and north. Deciduous trees are best. Around here, some lose their leaves by December, and some keep dead leaves on the tree until new growth pushes them off in February or March.

Gardening

I doubt it's cold enough around here to grow cherries. I want to grow cherries. And apples. Granny smith apples make the best fresh juice.

I could fill a whole page or three with a list of the food and herbs I'd like to grow. Okay, maybe not a blog page. They're pretty long.

I can't find my list, so let's see if I can remember some of the plants I would like to have.

Elberta peaches  

green cherries

dark red cherries

yellow cherries with a blush (all of these are sweet cherries)

red apples

yellow apples (yellow delicious)

green apples (granny smith)

green plums

dark red/purple plums

plums

pears

mulberry

pawpaw

raisin tree

banana

apricot

pecan (round paper shell)

almonds

hickory

chestnut

hazelnut

(a couple of kinds of nut trees I can't remember, that aren't your average run-of-the-mill nut in the west)

black currants

red currants

gooseberry

red raspberry

black raspberry

yellow raspberry

blueberry

blackberry

loganberry

strawberry

I'm sure I have forgotten several berries, as well as several fruit trees

a night-blooming garden
a water garden (only water plants)

a flower garden made completely of edible flowers

herbs such as comfrey
mint (peppermint, spearmint, catmint, pineapple mint, etc.)
yarrow
feverfew
thymeherbs
rosemary
sage
St. John's wort (it's beautiful – I had some before, never used them but loved to look at them)
catnip
echinacea
wormwood
garlic
chives, soapwort, etc.

assorted greens to eat (chard, arugula, etc.)

melons (large variety)

corn

green beans

tomatoes (large variety)

potatoes (large variety)

squash (including pumpkins)

beets

Jerusalem artichokes

artichokes

carrots

peas (edible pods)

legumes

wheat

oats

rye

and so forth.

Denver Snuffer - A Comment I Would Make if I Could

Restored post, with comments included

Monday, September 26, 2011

No one can comment on Denver Snuffer's blog now (it got pretty crazy, so I can't blame him), but I wanted to say my piece.

Recently, there was a post by DS that said his wife surfs the net on occasion to see what people are saying about him. I got three hits that were search engine results with his name in them, so I thought I'd comment, since one of them most likely was his wife

.

I agree 100% with DS that he is unimportant except as the messenger. The thing that is important is the message. But his name is connected to the message just as much as any other messenger from God (for example, Jeremiah).

Here is my reason for writing about him: It is my experience that there are many people who consider him to be apostate because he does not preach that the current leader of the church is infallible. My own experience with his books that I've read (as well as many things on his blog), is that many of those words are the words of God. I know this, because God (via the Spirit) has told me so, strongly.

There are two levels of speaking to my spirit that I have experienced. One is the kind most people talk about: Is it of God? Is it of me? Difficult to know for sure. The other kind is where there is no doubt. I can't explain it. You have to experience it to understand it. The second form of revelation is what I experienced with these books.

I perceive that the message is vital, but if people trash the messenger (or refuse to hear out of blindness, deafness, fear, "I've got enough", etc.), they won't hear the message. And I was told that the message is vital for us to hear, that otherwise good people will suffer greatly if they continue to refuse to hear the message because they don't approve of the messenger. Thus, when I speak of DS, I am trying to help remove the barriers in people's minds so that they will listen to the message. There are a lot of people I love and care about who say, in essence, "We have enough. If God wants to tell us more he will tell us through the president of the Church. God cannot and will not speak to an ordinary person, if He intends to warn us about anything." Yet, the message is not really "more" because everything in the message is in the scriptures. By the way, I thought the same way, until God told me differently.

I do talk to people about what I've learned, using my own words. Perhaps, I will one day be given all the words to say without referring people to the books DS has written, but I've not had the experience of viewing Gethsemane, et al. Reading what DS has written about it, not only brought me to my knees, it opened up my willingness to accept the Atonement to the point that I received a major spiritual healing of the most horrible thing that had happened to me when I was a child. More recently, I received a more complete healing of that experience. Be assured, the glory for this goes to God.

So, for better or worse, I expect DS will continue to be on the web. People will continue to wonder what this strange thing in the land is, "for a wild man is come among us." 

Edit: There was a comment with a link. I want to make it a clickable link, so I am putting it here. Lecture mentioned in link below It goes directly to the recording. 

New edit:

This link was on Brother Snuffer's blog. It is from the same meeting that was so kindly shared in comment #1. It goes to a webpage with a link to the talk on it.

Elijah talk

[Note from the restoration of this post: I did not keep the link when I deleted the post, but here is a link to Denver's link of it.]

Anonymous said... I know exactly where his dear wife has been reading it is the LDS Freedom Forum. There are a few people there who judge him extremely harshly and then there people there who are very appreciative of the things Denver Snuffer writes. I hope Brother Snuffer does not let a few contentious people influence him on which insights he is willing to share.

On a more uplifting note here is an mp3 file of a lecture Brother Snuffer did last night.

http://www.latterdayconservative.com/audio/Denver_Snuffer-Elijah-10-14-2011.mp3

Keep in mind the first 10 minutes of the lecture is missing on this recording. If I find a better mp3 recording I will let you know and post it. October 15, 2011 8:27 AM 

L'Jn said... Thank you for the link.

Unfortunately, I don't know how to make links come alive in the comments section - so to anyone interested in following it, copy the link above, paste it into a new tab or window, and push enter.

October 16, 2011 5:59 PM 

L'Jn said... Anonymous, I've edited my original post to add a clickable link to the lecture.

I can't join LDSFF because they don't accept my personal email account (they don't accept yahoo, hotmail, etc. because of spam issues), but I have read through their posts many times. I have seen what you refer to. And I see the same dichotomy in other places. For example, ldsglo.com.

October 17, 2011 11:46 AM 

L'Jn said... The link with the first ten minutes missing has the clearer sound. I'd recommend listening to the first ten minutes of the one that has it all, then listening to the other one for the rest of the fireside.

Also, I went over to LDS FF to see what they were saying. The opening comment is right on. I have not seen such vigorous debate, though I have seen such close-mindedness among those who refuse to read the Book of Mormon yet claim to know everything about it.

The answer is simple, and was pointed out on FF again and again: Read it, then judge. Read it, ask God. Read it before you say all of these bad things about it. Don't read pieces of it, read the whole thing. October 23, 2011 11:46 PM

Dreams, Miracles, and Choices

Restored post

Monday, September 26, 2011

Life can be really rough sometimes. I was lying here, thinking of my problems, wondering why God doesn't at least talk to me. (It isn't as if He never talks to me. If that were the case, I wouldn't be feeling deserted and abandoned.) Then I remembered the dream I had a few years ago. I said, “But I don't remember enough of what happened.” Then I began thinking about it.

I want to write the experience here. This is a copy of what I wrote about it on Tuesday, January 6, 2009, after I realized the dream was connected with an experience I'd had the day after Christmas, 2008. I wrote it as an email, which I shared with a few people. Any comments I have to make now will be in brackets [ ] . (It's a "copy and paste job" from the email "sent" folder, otherwise.)

Begin email -

I had a couple of interesting experiences. I didn't connect the two together until a few days after the second experience. I thought about sharing them with you but kept procrastinating. The thought kept persisting, so here it is. I'm sure some who receive this email will think I'm just weird. That's okay.

Several months ago, I woke up absolutely convinced that I had been to the afterlife/spirit world. I couldn't remember anything visually, but I was convinced that I had spoken with someone (women [women relatives/ancestors]) and they had told me I had the choice to stay there or come back to mortality. Then they showed me what would happen to my three children if I came back [stayed in mortality, instead of dying]. There was such a huge difference for good, that I decided I would come back. There was such a huge difference for good that I decided I would come back. As I lay on my bed thinking about this, I wasn't sure whether or not to believe how I was feeling and I mused, "I didn't even know I was in danger of dying." After all, I felt just fine.

The day after Christmas [the Christmas that had just passed, i.e. December 26, 2008], my ex-husband called (via Rachel - she relayed the message) from southern Arizona. He was there with the two younger children. He was expecting a package to be delivered to his door here in Cane Beds and didn't want it to freeze (it was bitterly cold here), so he asked if I would go to his house and put it inside. I didn't really want to but I thought I would "be nice" and do it.

Sometimes the UPS driver doesn't get to this area until after 5 p.m. so I waited until 10-15 minutes before 6 to leave. I told my husband (probably more than once) where I was going. (He forgot, though, which is very common for him). I thought about putting on boots but figured I'd only be going from car to house and back. I was wearing a summer cap-sleeve shirt, light weight pants, and sandals. I did put on a coat that has a hood.

As I got close to the driveway, I didn't want to get stuck (it is sand and clay) so decided to take the north driveway and park on the carpet. Well, the snow covered the area pretty well and I couldn't tell which dirt was safe. I got stuck before I could reach the carpet. The next door neighbors were not home.

It was so cold that I didn't want to walk up to the door to look for a shovel. I got out (with my coat on) and tried to kick the snow away (it was a few inches deep). That didn't work so I started digging the snow away from the wheels with my hands. Then I got back in the car and tried to move. By doing this a few times, I was able to move almost out of the bad area.

I was frustrated and angry. I cried and cursed (and God heard me anyway - weird). I thought about who to go to. The next people down didn't "feel" right but the ones [farther down] - B' - did. [This was maybe a quarter of a mile walk, not really very far. The area is in the country. Some of the houses are relatively close and many are not.] I figured Tom B would know how to get the car unstuck. But before I did that, I decided to try one more time. It was nearly completely dark and I wanted to see if the package was there before it got too dark to see it. I also wanted to check for a shovel.

It didn't feel as cold, so I walked up to the porch, the package was not there but shovel was. I brought the shovel back and tried digging out but still no luck. By then, it felt very nice out - like a summer day (for those of you who know what this means, yes, this should have warned me of danger but my mind was a bit altered as well). I put the shovel in the back seat of the car because I didn't want to carry it all the way back to the porch. I figured I could put it back when I came back with Tom to get the car out.

As I began walking in the snow, with my open coat, I thought, "It is so nice out here that I could just walk home." I wanted to take my coat of[f] and put it over my arm. I was not cold and I was not hot. I was comfortable. I lived close to a mile away. Tom lived about 1/4 or less of a mile away.

For some reason that I don't know (it's just what you do when the weather looks cold?), I tried to zip up my coat. The zipper is a bit stubborn anyway and it was even more stubborn this time. I finally gave up. But the coat had snaps so I snapped it up, put on the hood, snapped the bottom around my neck, put my hands into fists and drew them up into the sleeves of the coat. All of this seemed totally unnecessary to me yet I did it. I was still tempted to just walk home.

When Tom opened the door, I began to cry as I explained my predicament. I thought and felt like a total fool for crying over something as simple as getting stuck in the snow. After Tom opened the door, his wife (E) came to the door. She looked down at my feet and immediately became alarmed. She seemed to think I was in serious trouble. I couldn't understand why and I took off my sandals and took the snow out of them. My feet were fine. They didn't hurt. In fact they were as comfortable as the rest of my body.

She asked Tom to put a chair in front of the fire (they have a wood stove). There wasn't much space between the stove and the back of the couch but there was room for a chair with about two feet or so from me to the stove. I sat down. I couldn't feel the heat from the stove but didn't think about that. They told me to take off my coat. I wondered why. After all, the temperature inside of the house was the same as outside - comfortable.

E brought over a pan of water. It was probably, in reality, cool water. As she put it down in front of me she said, "Let me know if this is too warm." As I put my feet into it, they felt like I had put them into a fire. Immediately I pulled them out and put my hand in the water to make sure she hadn't given me boiling water. It felt a bit warmer than lukewarm but was nothing I shouldn't be able to handle. I tried again. Again, I couldn't do it. I ended up warming my feet with my hands until I could put them into the water.

Tom put another log on the fire after I had been there a several minutes. When he opened the door to the wood box, the heat made me move back (so that was a good sign that I was thawing out).

After a while, I told her I was ready for warmer water (she had told me to let her know when I was). Even later still, I took my feet out of the water and she had socks and slippers for me.

Tom said he'd see about getting the car out the next day when it was light enough to see what they (he and M [the spouse I had at that time] ) were doing. After I'd been there about 45 minutes or an hour I'd guess [emphasis on guess], I asked to call M. The phone didn't reach where I was so Tom called him. M had no idea where I had gone (like I said, this is normal for him so it didn't hurt my feelings).

After a while, they took me in the car after Tom had heated the car for quite a while. The car felt slightly warm to me and I commented on it being warmer than outside.

During the time I had been at the B' we had visited quite a bit and E had stressed the danger I'd been in and that if I had tried to walk home I would have been in the hospital having my feet cut off.

After my brain functioned better, I began to realize that had I not been protected by something or Someone, I would have taken off my coat and started to walk home - casually - enjoying the beautiful stars (it was a clear night). I would have never made it home at all. I would have gotten tired and sat down. [I would have sat down to look at the stars. Since I wasn't cold, there would have been no need to hurry. Then, I would have gotten sleepy, lay down, and slept.]

It took a couple of days to connect this experience with the intense feeling I'd had several months ago when I woke up knowing I had been invited to go to the spirit world/afterlife.

So, take it however you see it. I know what I believe and I have shared it because the feeling to share it would not go away.

Love to all,

Toni B

End of email.

The interesting thing is, my kids' dad died very suddenly and unexpectedly on October 14, 2009, a little over a year after I had the dream. (I had the dream a good three to six months before the experience that verified it the day after Christmas.) If I had died, then Clay had, I wonder what would have happened to my kids? Obviously, I was shown in the dream, but I still don't remember what I saw.

Perhaps, today, God is trying to tell me that He really is watching over me – and my children; that my feeling of being deserted is an illusion.