I Love Gardening and My Pets!

Ever wonder what makes a cow do what a cow does? She slowly moves along, munching on grass, seemingly without any particular goal in mind. Then suddenly she sees a juicy morsel on the other side of the fence. What does she do?

If the gate is open she walks on through and continues to eat! If it’s closed, she sticks her head through any opening possible and eats the grass on the other side. After all, the grass is always greener…and it just has to taste better!

This is a true story of the miracle of the wandering cows. It’s not documented by the Catholic Church, but it is definitely a tale of divine intervention.

I believe that God showers us with miracles every day, but unless they’re covered by the six o’clock news, we rarely hear about them. The following event is a no-brainer; this was definitely a miracle from God!

My friend Carol and her family built their home many years ago just outside our town. Due to progress spurred on by the space industry, our town has grown larger than any of our founding fathers could have imagined. Land that was in the country thirty years ago is now in the city.

Their house and their neighbor’s house and pasture is now surrounded by roads and highways. Their pastures are home to a few cattle, a couple of goats and a donkey which roam the field munching on grass. There is always the fear that someone will forget to shut the gate and the animals will wander onto the road and be struck by a car.

One rainy afternoon her neighbors were out of town and it was her duty to feed the animals. There were only a half dozen cows, but they still had to be herded to the barn and fed grain. Slipping and sliding through the mud, Carol wondered again why cows were so stupid that they wouldn’t get out of the rain and into a nice warm barn. Finally, they were fed and they began to drift back out into the pasture munching wet grass as they walked over the wet grass.

As Carol came to the pasture gate with the cows slowly following her, her cell phone rang. Her husband told her of an emergency involving another friend who had to be rushed to the hospital. She opened and shut the gate and ran to her house to change out of the muddy clothes. All this took only a few precious minutes and then they were hurrying to the local hospital some thirty minutes away.

For those who have been unfortunate enough to have visited any emergency room in this country, you know that it is a law that you have to spend at least two hours in the waiting room before you’re called into the actual emergency room. Then it’s another two hours before a real doctor sees you.

Thankfully the friend was treated and was able to go home after four hours. Carol decided to stop by the neighbor’s house to make sure everything was in order. As they drove into the driveway, she gasped as she saw the open gate to the pasture. In her hurry, she had forgotten to put the pin in the latch to keep the gate shut!

Every one of those cows was happily munching on the spring grass inside the fence! One, two, three four, five and six! They were all there! Not a one had ventured through the opening into the yard and ultimately onto the road just a few yards away!

Nothing is more tempting to a cow than a chance to wander through an open gate. Upon seeing such an opening, her mouth starts watering and visions of new tastier morsels of sweet young grass start dancing in her head. When six cows are wandering around the pasture, the odds are that one of them will be marching through that opening to the world outside the pasture!

This was a miracle paramount to the parting of the waters! For four hours God had prevented the cows from walking through the open gate! This is a miracle of epic proportions. Was God protecting the cows or my friend Carol from having to shoulder the blame for having left the gate open? I believe though, that it’s just an example of God’s love. There are miracles every day for all of us if we just look for them!

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 15th, 2012 at 4:50 pm and is filed under Uncategorized.

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If you are planning on raising chickens in the city, the first thing you have to know is, is it legal, probably not. It may not be illegal either, because some towns simply do not have such a law on the books. My town does.

Not everyone smiles at the sound of a rooster shouting at the world that he is awake and ready to take on all comers. As strange as it seems, not all adore the sound of a chicken announcing that she has just laid the perfect egg. Some people get highly motivated to complain when a rooster announces another dawn.

The city ordinance states that chickens have to be kept 150 feet from the nearest residence and can’t be noisy. Well, that leaves the rooster out of the hen house because he can’t keep silent in the early morning.

My town didn’t put a limit on the number of chickens one could raise. I guess they figured that no one could meet the one hundred and fifty foot requirement. They didn’t specify a number of hens one could have, but they were definite about no roosters.

Now that you have discovered the legality of raising backyard chickens, you will have to have a place to put them. Assuming that you are going to have two or three chickens to care for, here are some things you should know about raising them.

Lots of folks use an old building for the chickens’ living quarters that are already on their property. After building laying boxes or just laying hay or straw for the chickens for a nest, scatter some of the straw or wood shavings on the floor and then you will have a chicken house. For a roost and old wooden ladder or something similar should do the trick.

If you do not have an old building on your property, it’s easy to find plans to build one. There are hundreds of hen house ideas on the internet. If you don’t want to build, you can buy an already constructed “A” frame house or one that looks like a castle. Plenty of chicken coops designed to look like boxes are on the market. so picking out one just right for you shouldn’t be a problem.

Most areas of the country where you can legally raise chickens will have a feed and seed store. If they don’t have chicks for sale, they will order them for you. Bringing the newly hatched chicks’ home, you will have to have a cardboard box or something that can contain your flock for a few days.

Baby chicks need lots of fresh clean water. Keep their habitat clean and dry, that’s essential because they can get a myriad of diseases from damp litter. Keep them warm. A hundred watt light bulb should provide enough heat for the chicks. For the first several days, the newborn chicks have to be watched closely because they are very fragile.

Once you and the chicks survive that part of their lives, they next move into the chicken phase of their lives. By now they should require only the normal amount of attention; feed and give them plenty of fresh water. You don’t have to give the chickens a bath. They love to clean themselves by rolling around in the dirt. Locate the chicken coop someplace where they have plenty of dirt and grit.

If you’re going to really consider raising a couple of chickens, here are a few really important things to think about: Forget about the chicken if you’re looking for a nice pet to cuddle. They don’t like to cuddle and they are not easy to house train. Their poop is generally of the liquid variety and it is hard to clean up. The chicken really doesn’t care where she poops.
Make sure the enclosure around the coop doesn’t have holes big enough for the chickens to get out or the varmints to get inside. Dogs, big cats, raccoons, skunks and coyotes love a good chicken dinner. Protect your flock by taking care of the fence.

Bob Wilson is a son of the south. He has gained expert knowledge in affairs of the heart and enjoys fishing, eating barbeque and leisure living. Visit his site at www.redfishbob.com

I didn’t think I would need divine intervention to replace a bathroom sink faucet. Instructions found on the internet suggested that even someone with less than average intelligence could do the job in 30 minutes. With my plumbing expertise I did the job in five hours; with some help from God.

Reading the instructions and the first item on the list, I was advised to cut the water off at the shut-off valves under the sink. Tackling the cold water valve first, I tried as hard as I could to twist it with my hand. That didn’t work, so I used my channel lock pliers on the handle.

Squeezing the pliers hard, I put a lot of muscle into the twisting of the handle on the cold water valve and crushed it into a mangled mess that fell to the floor of the cabinet. Water spurted out of the stem, drenching me in a cold shower!

Dashing outside to the meter, I quickly shut off the water to the house. Back in the bathroom and the mangled shut-off valve, I tried the hot water and there were no leaks. I would only have to buy one and I could get the project underway again.

The super indoor lumber yard and hardware store was five miles away. After finding the items I needed I drove back home and replaced the shut-off valve. Now I could finally take off the old sink faucet and exchange it for the new one.

Taking the old faucet off the lavatory wasn’t really difficult and I had it off in 30 minutes. I also had skinned knuckles because the wrench I was using slipped off the brass fittings twice, causing me to accidentally rake my hands on the rough underside of the sink.

Now, only three hours after I began this task, it was time to replace the old bathroom sink faucet with the new one that was still in the plastic bag.

The next steps were easy. Tearing something apart is usually a lot easier than putting it back together again. This was the case with the new faucet. For some reason the ‘P’ Trap fell apart when I disconnected it from the drain pipe in the sink.

Try as I might, I couldn’t figure out what was wrong. Finally it made a lot more sense to run back to the hardware store again and buy a new ‘P’ Trap. When I got back home and installed the fixture, everything worked perfectly.

After installing the new faucet and connecting the water supply lines to the sink faucet, I removed the aerator as advised by the now water soaked set of instructions. Turning on the water from the road, I heard a hissing noise before I got to the bathroom.

This time I turned off the water at the sink.. Instead of a drip, there had been a flood coming from the faucet itself, a place where it was impossible to leak. Since it wasn’t dripping with the water off, I gave up and went to bed, soaked and tired from the day’s effort.

Being the praying man I am, before I went to sleep I asked God to fix the leaky faucet for me while I slept. If he didn’t want to do that, He could at least send me someone who was smarter than I to show me what to do.

The next morning when I turned the water on in the sink, water blasted from the top of the sink again. My wife heard the commotion and walked into the bathroom. After turning the water off, she held out her hand and showed me the aerator I had taking off the faucet saying, “I don’t know for sure, but this might help.”

Mumbling that no one told me to put the attachment back on, I crawled out from under the sink, screwed it onto the faucet. No leak!

God does have a sense of humor.

Bob Alexander is a son of the south. He has gained expert status in eating barbeque, telling fishing stories and leisure living.
Visit his site at: http://www.redfishbob.com