Desiring Authentic Relationship

There once was a man who found a pearl of great value.  The pearl was more amazing than anything that the man had seen in his lifetime.  That man sold everything he had in order to obtain that pearl.  And he will not now throw it in to the pig sty to be trampled and soiled.

As should be evident from the dearth of posts coming from this author, it is time for me to move on.  But for those who want to continue in or start some authentic relationship, feel free to drop a letter or stop by the house at 73077 613 Ave, Sterling, NE  68443.

Humbly,

Don U.

DEDICATION PRAYER FOR JOSHUA

My heart rejoices in Yahweh;  in Yahweh my strength is lifted high.

My mouth boasts over my enemies, for I delight in your deliverance.

 

There is no Holy One like Yahweh;  there is no one besides you;  there is no Rock like our God.

 

Yahweh is a God who knows, and by him deeds are weighed.

 

The bows of the warriors are broken, but those who stumbled are armed with strength.

 

Yahweh brings death and makes alive;  He brings down to the grave and raises up.

Yahweh sends poverty and wealth;  He humbles and He exalts.

 

He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap;

He seats them with princes and has them inherit a throne of honor.

 

For the foundations of the earth are Yahweh’s;  upon them He has set the world.

He will guard the feet of His saints, but the wicked will be silenced in darkness.

 

It is not by strength that one prevails;  those who oppose Yahweh will be shattered.

He will thunder against them from heaven;  Yahweh will judge the ends of the earth.

 

He will give strength to his king and exalt the horn of his anointed.

 

Psalm 127

 

Unless Yahweh builds the house, its builders labor in vain.

Unless Yahweh watches over the city, the watchmen stand guard in vain.

In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat –

For while they sleep He provides for those He loves.

 

Sons are a heritage from Yahweh, children a reward from him.

Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are sons born in one’s youth.

Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them.

They will not be put to shame when they contend with the enemy in the gate.

 

Psalm 128

 

Blessed are all who fear Yahweh, who walk in his ways.

Joshua, may you eat the fruit of your labor;  may blessings and prosperity be yours.

May your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house;

May your sons will be like olive shoots around your table.

Thus is the man blessed who fears Yahweh.

 

May Yahweh bless you from Zion all the days of your life;

May you see the prosperity of Jerusalem,

May you live to see your children’s children.

Peace be upon you and upon Israel.

Where Was I?

Construction has been progressing!

This is pretty close to what the house looks like this morning.  We should have some men come put on our new roof today!  Dad & I will then get after some of the siding and installing doors, windows, and a chimney so we can finish siding.

So why haven’t I posted in over a month?  I built a mudroom on the opposite side of the house and the mudroom enclosed the satellite dish that connects us to the internet.  So I called to have the dish moved, and the technicians were booked out for more than 3 weeks.

In other news, my babies continue to grow.  Abigail is quickly approaching her second birthday and pretty much refuses to talk because she can communicate by sign language.  Joshua is 3-½-months old and weighs 19 pounds!

We also had our first calf born on our farm:  a bull calf I’ve named Norman because he gave us quite a scare at first — we weren’t entirely sure he would make it through.

But the really exciting news is that I got a job!  Or rather, God has provided for his children.  I will detail this more in a future post and I will testify to the goodness and providence of Jesus!

Agricola

In May, my wife had her birthday (her 29th I think), and Caleb & I got her a new game, Agricola.  I, like Mark Twain, am often impressed by my parents.  Both of them recognized that Agricola is latin for farmer.  They both mispronounced it, but they still understood the word.

Agricola is, without a doubt, the best board game I have ever played.  In the game, each player has a small farm and 2 people who live on that farm, representing a young husband and wife.  Throughout the game, players attempt to gather resources, build fences, plow fields, grow grain or vegetables, etc., in an effort to establish a diversified farm by the end of round 14.  It is fun because no matter how poorly you are doing, there is always something on the farm you can be working on (just like in real life).  Also, around round 9 or 10, you begin to realize that there is absolutely no way you can get everything done in time (just like in real life), so you start to prioritize (just like in real life).

Gina, Caleb, Meagan, & I have had immense fun playing Agricola over the last 5 months.  We have shown the game to some friends and some are overwhelmed by it while others love it.  My Mom (Oma) just won her first game this past week.  My Dad (Opa), on the other hand, is not a big fan.  I have to work on him to make him a big fan.  I want to keep playing Agricola!

Hired a Professional

Oh wow!  I just keep getting farther and farther behind.  I started this post 3 weeks ago!  I was going to try to keep up with the addition work through posts on a regular basis, but that is just proving to be impossible.  In the interest of getting this post done and moving on to other posts about more interesting (?) things, suffice it to say that we hired an electrician to cure three problems for us:  run electricity underground to the barn (my black walnut tree knocked the overhead wire out during a storm), replace the pole service so that we would have a shut-off switch to be able to work on the electricity in the home or barn, and move the overhead wire approaching the house.

September 8

My Dad’s 60th birthday, but that isn’t what this post is about.  This post is about the abundance of productivity accomplished at my house on this Tuesday after a holiday!

The photos show Wentz Construction as they put the forms together for an Insulated Concrete Form (ICF) wall.  The ICF wall will be 2 inches of styrofoam on each side of an 8-inch-thick concrete wall.  These forms make pouring a basement wall incredibly fast, easy, cheap, and even better, because it is insulated.

Footings!

You only get one pre-pour picture today.  There is a limit to how many pictures of holes in the ground with rebar in them I can post.  I know, I know, what’s my excuse for all the other photos?  Bah.

The first concrete of our new addition.  Isn’t it special looking?

Here you have the crew working to pour the footings:  Kenny holding the chute, Kevin and the kid smoothing it out.  Oh, and Caleb supervising.

Okay, so it really isn’t that much different from the last one.  But at least it has people in it.  And now that I went to all the trouble of loading it, I’m not going to delete it.

Now these are some fascinating pictures, huh?

At least this one has a better shot of the greenhouse in the background.

And the tire treadmarks make it look like someone has already been using the garage.

And have I talked about this yet?  I’m not sure I have, so I will just leave the picture and no commentary.

Lagoons — They’re Full of … Dirty Water

In our case, gray water.  One of the wonderful things I bought when I moved to Nebraska was a dysfunctional wastewater plan.  The septic system carries the really bad water (“blackwater”) out through the septic tank, but there is no leach field.  The septic tank just has a straight pipe that runs out over the ground 200′ south of the house.

The graywater system for the house (graywater is all wastewater that isn’t blackwater) just ran out through a pipe to a ditch along the side of the road.  The ditch is fine for graywater, but that isn’t exactly legal.  I wasn’t too happy about the graywater system, and was happy that the two systems were handled separately — it gave me the option of recycling the graywater at some time in the future.

So we were digging out this addition to my house, and we knew we would hit the graywater line, because we knew it was down there.  We found it, but it smelled foul.

A house’s wastewater line is supposed to use gravity in order to move its contents from one place to another.  What we found here is evidence that gravity is not working for us.  Rather, we have at least a section of this pipe that isn’t falling.  The filth from the graywater is accumulating in this section of pipe and you can see how it is taking up at least 30% of the pipe’s size.  When it was still in the ground, it was closer to 50%.

So, I made the executive decision to put in a lagoon.  A lagoon is a legitimate way to handle wastewater in Nebraska and is relatively inexpensive (relative to a septic tank and leach field).  It is basically an open pond that wastewater drains into and nature does its job of decomposing the various nasties.

This is my new drain line as it exits the house.  The old drain pipe was too high to start, so Gary had this new pipe drop down several inches before it starts its run towards freedom, er, I mean, the lagoon.

The pipe is now running further away from the house.  Just for perspective, the 2×4 laying on the ground is a 12′ board, so the end of that board is where the wall for the addition will be.

You can see the lagoon now (this picture was taken from atop that mountain of dirt we created).

The goats are really enjoying lounging and watching the big machines.  I would have figured them to run and hide.

Here is Gary working (talking on the phone) while Randall digs.  Really though, what a great crew of guys those three were.

Same caption as last one, only different angle.

Digging It

Digging finally began!  Only 8 weeks behind (my) schedule, but it has finally begun!  On Thursday, August 27, a traxcavator and backhoe started tearing up my yard to the East and South of the house.  On Tuesday the backhoe was dropped off and on Wednesday, Gary Kuhl showed up to use a demolition saw to cut the concrete to the Southwest of the house.  So we knew it was coming.  But the fun really started on Thursday as Gary & Don started moving dirt.  What fun it was, too.

Above, you can see Don preparing to work with the traxcavator.

I guess a ‘before’ picture would be nice.  It won’t look like this ever again…

This is Gary removing the cement on the South side of the house.

And Don starting to dig out the new driveway.

At the end of day one, still some more digging to go.

But obviously they moved tons of dirt on that first day.  We are just so happy to finally have started.

Addition Work Begins With Demolition

So here is a post I started 7+ weeks ago.  For those who don’t know, my parents have been on the mission field in Ukraine for the past several years.  They sold their house in Delaware and have been planning on moving in with us here on the farm when they return from Ukraine.

It is now time for them to return.  My parents leave Ukraine on September 1 and should be to my house by October 1, so we had a plan to begin adding on to the house right after July 4 so that the addition would at least be dried-in by the time they get here.

Following are pictures from the beginning of the addition work.