What in the world is a "Frolic"?

 Photo from AmishAmerica.com

I was talking with a couple of my brothers in Christ recently, when the subject turned (OK, I turned it :-) to the building plans for our home in the woods, beginning in the Spring/Summer/Fall of this year.  I told them that it became clear to me LONG ago that there was no way I could accomplish this endeavor with my pea-sized knowledge of construction (or lack thereof).  I then asked them, if I put a date on the calendar (say, over the course of some upcoming three-day weekend), would they come out and help us "raise the roof" and eat a bunch of food?  One of them, who's had extensive interaction with the Amish in both Montana and Maine, said, "Absolutely!  The Amish call it a 'frolic' or a 'work-bee' ".  They were both quite enthusiastic about the possibility of helping building our home, which came as no surprise to me, given the reality of the love and Spirit of Christ operating in their families' lives.  (Not to mention that they both have some serious labor forces in their families!  :-)

Then I got to thinking.

God has blessed me with such dear family-in-Christ in other locales as well, several hours' drive away, but reachable nonetheless.  I suspect there may be many who would like to visit Montana in the Summer (a gorgeous time to visit here; isn't it always?), and perhaps swing a hammer or heft a saw in productive fellowship on the outskirts of beautiful Whitefish, Montana.

So, here it is:

If you're interested in being a part of our family's biggest project to date, a labor of love that will represent the culmination of a lifetime of prayers and dreams, please consider joining our "Frolic" this Summer.  If you are seriously considering making the trip to join the effort and fellowship, please leave a comment on this post, or send me an email, letting me know when you might be available.  If you are unable to attend, please pray for the Lord's protection, provision and wisdom as we build.  This will undoubtedly be a very long project, overall, but we would be honored to enjoy your company for even a small part of it.

Thanks for reading, and I look forward to hearing from you soon!

Moving Forward!

(Our Future Driveway.)

Good day, dear friends and family!  Many apologies for the lapse in time since my last post.  So much has been happening, that I have been admittedly intimidated by how much writing I've needed to do, just to bring you up to speed with what's new with our dreams and goals.  Let me start with a little background...

Since my dear bride and I were married, we have dreamed of having a home in an area full of what we like to call "Wide Open Spaces".  However, in the many years that we lived in Southern California (for a multitude of reasons that could be summed up, in hindsight, as Providence), that dream was never realized.
Then we moved to NW Montana.  And we started to get our bearings.  I found work (I now have employment in Kalispell and Martin City), and our family found encouraging relationships with genuine Christ-followers here, people of all different kinds, with wonderful histories.  During that time, my parents and my Uncle Dave had followed suit in relocating to the Flathead Valley.  After he had purchased 10+ acres of "raw land" just west of Whitefish, Uncle Dave invited us to consider purchasing a portion of his land (given some pretty amazing & unbeatable terms), and to build our future home there, adjacent to the one he was planning to build.  After seeing this beautifully-wooded place and dreaming a lot, we agreed to "partner" with Uncle Dave, who was repeatedly proving to be an instrument of God's grace and provision.

Now, he was waiting for his home in Oregon to sell, before he could "pave the way" in developing that land for use in construction (bringing in an electric line, digging a well, septic, etc) and beginning to build his "mountain house".  So, we waited too.  For over a year.
Then, suddenly, Uncle's house went into escrow!  So, for the last couple of weeks, my Bride and I have been putting our heads together -- and praying a LOT -- over plans to build our home in the woods.  We have staked out the dimensions of what will become our South-facing house...

 

(This is pretty much the exact spot where our home will be built.)

...and have found an amazing local draftsman/engineer/designer who is consulting with us over the continual floor plan revisions and "tweaking" necessary before we build.  He never complains about our barrage of questions and changes; and, he never charges us a penny.  "Who is this guy?", you ask.  Well, we like to call him:
"Uncle Dave".  That's right.

(Uncle Dave, on the left, with us -- visiting an Off-grid friend in Eureka last year.)

And now -- drum roll, please --  Uncle Dave's escrow on his former Oregon home closes tomorrow!  Praise God from Whom all blessings flow!  We are planning to celebrate his "ground-breaking" this Saturday morning.  Of course, our home will probably not begin construction until next Spring, but lots of our prep-work (Septic system, electrical decisions, excavation, etc) will be going on this Summer and into Autumn.

Please continue to pray for us.  Here's what we need prayer for:

• God's divine protection, provision and direction.  (John 15:1-17; Philippians 4:4-13; Proverbs 3:5-6; Psalm 37:4)
• Friends to help us with the labor, when construction begins
• Cooperation from Ric's employers as we work out a harmony of schedules that will accommodate our home-building
• That we will keep Christ at the center of all we do.  (Psalm 24)

Keep this blog bookmarked in your browser, so we can keep you up-to-date on our progress.  May the Lord bless your efforts to serve Him.

--Ric

 

(Clockwise from Left: Chloe, Jenna, Ric, Emily, Caleb, Cassandra and Sophia)

Venison Report

WARNING:

If you are a member of PETA, I apologize in advance for offending your sensitivities.

Now that that's out of the way...

This morning the three wanna-be deer slayers (My two oldest children and I) went over to our friends' house, who had graciously offered us one of their deer, a buck with a mere 4" of antler on his cranium.  When we arrived, the animal had already been expertly eviscerated, decapitated and elevated by his hind legs:

Now let me just brag right now on a couple of young gentlemen, whom our family is proud to know.  Matthew, I believe, is about 13.  He's the lad responsible for our family's recent motherlode of meat.  He dropped that buck in his tracks with a shotgun slug, right out in his own backyard.  Handy.

Then there's his older brother Daniel, who seems to live-and-breathe hunting-and-skinning.  At 14 years old, the way that guy wielded a skinning knife and a sawz-all was downright impressive:

With the skills these guys have, it would have been easy for them to make sport of our inexperience.  But the best thing about Matthew and Daniel is that they have been diverted, by loving and wise Christian parents, from the trap of cruel and thoughtless peer pressure so pervasive in public education.  These guys have been taught to show love and respect at all times, and they wear such qualities like badges of honor.  They were glad to be able to help us out, without needing so much as a word of oversight from their father (who was occupied nearby).

Hats off to young people like this everywhere (including my beloved children), who will undoubtedly bring hope, healing and provision into this broken world, in Christ's Name.

Frenetic Blogging Fricassee

 

Here's a new recipe: I like to call it...

"Frenetic Blogging Fricassee"

• 1 lb. of scattered thoughts
• 3 hours of uninterrupted sleep (maximum)
• 1 Allergy Pill
• 102 Pictures of my current Dream
• 2,376 Projects that need starting... or finishing
• 1 anticipation of pizza and ice cream on Fathers' Day

Mix well and sit in bed with a computer in your lap.  Serve promptly.

Anyway, I'd love to be coherent and concise, but I can't, so I hope I don't scare anyone off.  Here goes...

——————

We have been spending lots of weekends working hard (probably harder than some of our kids would like) to gather all three acres'-worth of "firewood" that's been laying all around the property.  One of our favorite meals in the Airstream that has become our "base camp" is Macaroni and Cheese and Wienies (or "MacWienies", as I've heard it referred to).

 Since a picture is worth a thousand words, here are a few...

At the entrance

Showing off their walking sticks

Studying the local flora

We love Montana in the Spring!

Hoping to build a "starter garden" just to the right (South) of the shed, using its roof to catch rainwater for irrigation.

(Unfortunately, my dear Bride was behind the camera for these shots.  Oh well.)

————

Looking forward to doing some boating this weekend, with Grandpa and Grandma, maybe out to Whitefish Lake.

I miss the presence of some dear family and friends back in SoCal.  I so wish they could be here, to see all of this breathtaking beauty.

Both my PC's battery and my body's "battery" are running low.  Please leave a comment if you're so inclined.  Looking forward to hearing from you!

--Ric

Dandy Lions

This week, I've been assigned the monumentally important, earth-shaking task of... cleaning up around the shop.  You know — spray weeds, demolish old fences, etc.  Now I must confess that my thinking is being radically altered in the way of re-purposing old materials: I'm attempting to always think outside the box ("O-T-B") when it comes to "de-comissioned resources", so to speak.  But make no mistake: I'm not a disciple of the Anthropogenic Climate Change movement (AKA "Global Warming").  Too many slippery slopes into pantheism and too much bad science, yessir.  However, I do try to practice what Yahweh commands humankind to do in Genesis 1:28 — "...replenish the earth, and subdue it..." (KJV).  Perhaps "replenishing the earth" implies that in order to continue to enjoy the earth's natural resources (water, wood, plant life, minerals, etc.), we ought to squeeze every bit of good that we can out of whatever it is we're working with, and not be quick to discard things, as is the custom of our wildly-consumerist culture here.  Anyway, back to our story.

I was getting ready to spray the unwelcome "weeds", when I realized that the plants in question were mostly dandelions.  Now even a cursory search for the health benefits of dandelions will reveal that they are far more useful than they are given credit for.  And these particular dandelions had the healthiest, most perfect leaves I have ever seen on such a plant.  I mean, they grew en masse back in North San Diego, but they always seemed a little dingy and dirty — not something you'd want to throw on a salad.  But these... well, they were Montana dandelions.  'Nuff said.

Before spraying the doomed shrubbery, I clipped the leaves and soaked them in some hand soap for a while.  After I tackled that pesky fence for a while (recovering about half of those 2x4's and 2x6's for building a square foot garden, later), I came back and rubbed, rinsed and dried the dandelion leaves.  Man, are they pretty!  Check these out:

The Dear Wife and the kiddos will be joining me for lunch today, and I plan to impress them with my scavenging/gardening/re-purposing "skillz".  Now, what will YOU do today, to think "O-T-B" and re-purpose something?  "Leave" (pun intended) a comment, if you will.

Have a blessed day, friends.

Update:  I just ate a couple of the leaves, and they are a little on the bitter side, at first, but the after-taste mellows quickly, leaving the satisfaction of knowing how happy my liver will be to receive them.  ;-)

A Happy Accident

In my last post (which, admittedly, might have been a bit confusing), I forgot to go into detail about a single event which really made the whole evening as memorable as it was.

Sunday afternoon, "The Puff" (our nearly-6-year-old girl) was successfully wrestling with the bike she inherited from her 10-year-old sister ("Munchkin").  The "Man-Cub" (13-year-old son) was using a jump-rope to hitch a ride ─ on his inline skates ─ from Munchkin on her bike (which she inherited from her 15-year-old sister, SweetPea).  I think the Dear Bride was pulling out some dead flowers from the planter in front of our porch, and little Miss Cougar Bait (our 2½-year-old) was napping.  It was a GLORIOUS Montana Spring day, and it was shaping up to be a nearly perfect evening, as well.  So, determining that we should stay up late and enjoy it (the sun sets around 9:15pm, presently), I started packing the car for a little outdoor cook-out on our future homestead land (more on that, later).

Knowing that we should cook up the 4 trout the kids caught the day before, I grabbed our cast-iron griddle


and our propane camp stove


and our "fire bucket" (a 5-gal bucket & lid from Home Depot, stocked with everything I need to get a fire going; doubles as a seat).  We arrived at "The Refuge" ─ our working title for the homestead ─ at about 6pm, meeting my parents and my Uncle there.  My Uncle Dave was towing his restored Airstream trailer (a beauty!), which he was going to set up on the property.  We all made it safely up the driveway (which was rocky but dry, with a 9% incline), and by the time we had parked and leveled the trailer, we were all getting hungry.  So I broke out the camp stove, found my bottle of propane...

...and realized we had left the propane pipe (the part that connects the fuel to the stove) back at the house.

RATS!

After my Dear Bride and I blinked at each other in disbelief for a few minutes, I had an epiphany:

The early homesteaders didn't use propane!!

I rifled through my fire bucket and found some old dryer lint (makes a suitable fire starter), a lighter and my folding "pack grill".

(Yes, I know the early homesteaders didn't have these things, either; but hey, "baby steps".)

The kids helped me round up some rocks for a makeshift fire ring and voilá: Instant Primitive Grill:

The trout turned out GREAT, thanks to my pioneer woman (who later grilled up some potates in bacon grease).

Special thanks to my Uncle, who brought his formidable trout-filleting skills to bear on the feast.  (We had also brought along some hot dogs, in case the fish idea bombed.)  Everyone had plenty to eat, and Miss Cougar Bait kept clamoring for "more fishy".  :-)

After we topped everything off with some homemade Choco-chip cookies (thanks, SweetPea and Munchkin), I found myself thanking the Lord for the happy accident of not being able to use propane.  The outdoor fire pit was much more authentic.  We didn't get home until after 10pm that night... and little Miss Cougar Bait talked excitedly and incessantly, the whole way home.

Something tells me we'll be getting to bed much later during the warmer months, when the sun lingers outside until well after 10pm.  The seasonal life is the life for me.

Ric, the Tanner??

Yes, being the aspiring Mountan Man, I've been reading the definitive primer on the subject of tanning hides:



After deciding that I should, in fact, attempt to become adept at this primitive (but complex!) skill, I decided to post an ad on Craigslist, to see if anyone had any "hides" laying around in their freezer, just itching to be tanned.  Well, as it turned out, someone did!  Here's what I got back:

"Hi...  I shot a nice black bear last fall, the hide [and skull attached, I've been told] is in my freezer.  Was not quality to make a rug out of as she sat on tree limbs to eat apples and rubbed off alot of butt hair. I was shocked at the prices to get hides tanned. I don't want it to go to waste, so if you are interested in working out some sort of deal. If it turned out nice I could pay you for your time and get it back or if not we can say we tried to save it.  [He leaves his name and phone number here.]  Get ahold of me and see what we can do..."

So, I'll be picking it up on Saturday (of course I'm bringing the kids), and we'll see what becomes of it.  I'd like to look back on this day and be able to say it was the beginning of my long experience in the tanning trade.

Recent happenings

~ You've heard of "High School Musical"?  Well, in Montana, the equivalent is the "High School Rodeo".  We attended one last Saturday at the Majestic Valley Arena in Kalispell... Anything that can hold our whole family's attention for about 3 whole hours is a thing of beauty.

~ Not 25 yards from our house this afternoon, the Mrs. and I saw a very large bald eagle swoop around and perch on a high branch, scanning the area for food, I'm sure.

~ The Boy has been thoroughly enjoying his Jr compound bow.  We need to buy little William Tell some more arrows!  Also, his older sister hit just outside the bullseye at 25 yards.  Nice job, Sweet Pea!

~ the outdoor temp hit 52F today... Is Spring finally here?

~ Went walking around my uncle's new property, about 20 minutes away, in the woods... And spied a black bear track in the snow!  Pretty cool.

~ Last week, us four oldest Calvi's graduated from Hunter Education class, and look forward to becoming hunters in this amazing place.

I hope your recent days have been as enjoyable as ours... God bless your efforts to serve Him.