Welcome to Home Shalom!

Welcome to Home Shalom and Shalom Farm. We pray your visit here be blessed. We are learning to walk in the Ways (Torah) of our Father YHWH and follow Y'shua, His Messiah until He returns to "set things straight". We call it a "Messi-Life". Our walk is neither tidy nor perfect, but it is filled with passion, devotion and desire to serve our King. We are learning to be humble servants, and to be good stewards of the things that He has entrusted to us: His Word, our marriage, our children, our family, our community, our health, and our farm. Hitch your horse and stay a while--our door is always open!

Saturday, March 26, 2011

Preparedness Challenge #2 - Planting an orchard

This week for the Preparedness Challenge we planted an orchard!

10 apple trees, 4 peach and 4 cherry and a whole lot of love and prayer! I know it can be a real challenge to grow organic fruit, but with lots of prayer and lots of reading and research, we hope that this becomes a large source of food for us and maybe even others! Oh...they don't look like much now...just 18 scrawny little trees that are about 5-6 feet at their tips....but they are the most beautiful little twigs I ever did see! In three years time if YHVH blesses our efforts, we should see some fruit for our labors! We have planted them in front of the house, across the street. This will provide us easy access the trees for maintenance and monitoring. Our well is also just across the street in our front yard. I am looking forward to sitting in my rocker on the front porch and watching my trees blossom into gorgeous bouquets of flowers. I am also looking forward to setting up benches and mowing the orchard. I can see it as a wonderful place of meditation and reflections. I can see bee boxes in the back ground....a swing, maybe a picnic table or a cot for precious Sabbath naps. Oh....how my romantic imagination runs.....

In this planting process...We also discovered that we will need to take down about 30 (count them, I said 30!) Cedar trees on the property for the sake of our lovely orchard, because of the dreaded Apple Rust Fungus that comes when apple trees and Cedar trees are in proximity of one another!! We hate to do it...but food trumps wood! It isn't too terribly hard of a choice, because while these trees do provide aesthetics we appreciate, the do not provide other imperative functions right where they are. So we gotta do what we gotta do!!! (I think I'll go back to that "happy place" of sweet fruit, birds, blossoms, bees and shaded Shabbat naps in the summer for just a little longer!)


2 comments:

Enid said...

Living amoung trees is amazing!! I missed that. Desert is hard and dry...
I can't wait into you get those trees going!
Enid

Andi said...

May I put in my request for a rocker, because SOME DAY I know we will be on a porch together...I KNOW IT! :)