'Tis the Season to Hunt All of God's Splendor

Hunting season has started out in Graham.  Unfortunately, my husband who would love to spend his time hunting is busy building our house.  My hunting seams to be of a more solid kind.  I was successful with rock hunting today, a whole truck bed full.  

We are into December now with an abundance of ladybugs - unsure where they're coming from, but they are all over.

On my rock hunt, I found this face looking at me, at least that is what I saw....it's fun to see something new each time you walk around the woods.

Most of the copper metal roofing is up, just the center ridge to be put up tomorrow.  Robert has sheathed the lower floor and has worked so hard while he works full time at his job in Fort Worth.

The most exciting news is the first piece of furniture has entered the house.  As we're living in a trailer, we are losing the battle to winter clothing and now that we have semi-dried in the lower half of the house, we've created a closet in the bathroom.  This will help me from losing my mind and I'm no longer living out of five laundry baskets.

We have a private lane to our front gate, it has pasture land on both sides, one side has some roping calves and two beautiful horses which we enjoy visiting with.

Our little Texas wild flower.......

WARNING.........for those that aren't fond of hunting, please stop here, there will be some photos of our newest hobby.





































Our goal is to become as self sufficient as we can.  We've raised a few goats and laying hens and have happily eaten them and hope to continue to hunt and raise our meat.  This continues to be such an amazing experience and we are so thankful for being able to live and realize more of our dream.

Robert and I went down to the back part of the woods last week to check his hog trap and BINGO!  It was exciting to have our first wild boar.  At first I wanted to photograph the moment, but then I sort of felt weird about it, as I'm new to the hunting/trapping experience, but believe in what we're choosing to do here on our land.  Robert weighed him in at 170 lbs.  The trap is on loan from one of his work colleagues, so we gave 1/2 of the meat to him and the other half is in our freezer.  We're looking forward to making a big pot of chili for Christmas.  We've always wanted to cook something over a campfire in a dutch oven.

As unsure as I felt about this wild creature, Audrey our 5 year old daughter watched almost the whole process of Robert gutting it, skinning it, I think she came inside during the head part, but found it fascinating, which I found fascinating.  She loves animals, but not without understanding of where our meat comes from and it's been interesting to raise the children with respect to how God provides.