Yes, apparently June 15th is Pumpkin Planting Day – but not for us. Keep reading.
Last week, we were back in Alabama, taking care of estate items, and other business. It was a busy week and we still haven’t had an estate sale. We are making progress but sometimes it seems very slow. Monday, we spent on laundry and packing, etc., and yesterday morning pointed Fred north fruitlessly looking for some cooler temperatures. (Actually we headed north for our annual Constructors for Christ project.) We stopped at Christian Way Farm and Mini Golf for the night – a Harvest Hosts site. This was a wonderful choice! We met two of the nicest people, Janie and Milt who own this beautiful farm. Their largest event each year is the Pumpkin Patch. They raise over 10,000 pumpkins each year and have many more visitors than that. This is in a small rural area of KY. They also have precious goats, cows and other farm animals. They do school tours, educating the kids on where their food comes from etc. What makes this place so very special though is that they share the gospel with all their visitors in such a special way, with a pumpkin seed. We suspect that for some it may be only time they hear about the love of Jesus. Special, special place. If you are ever in the area of Hopkinsville, KY, it’s well worth the drive off your route for a visit.
“Sowing Seeds for Tomorrow’s Harvest” is the true mission of the farm. They incorporate sharing the gospel in everything they do at the farm.
The mini-golf course was all farm-themed and looks like a lot of fun, but it was just too hot yesterday.
It was also too hot to try out the tricycle race course.
The farm has the largest Scrabble board we have ever seen. Might be a good place for a tournament.
Maybe we should all learn to play kind.
These Fruitful Plates were some of our favorite items in the farm’s store. We particularly like the one in the lower left for self-control.
Janie cooked us some great bacon cheeseburgers in the Christian Way Cafe. We really enjoyed hearing her share the history and mission of the farm.
We enjoyed watching these baby goats out our front window this morning. They are small enough to climb through the fence, but stay close enough that if they feel threatened they can quickly climb back through to safety. In fact, we watched them climb through then go around to where the feed troughs were up against the fence, stick their heads back through and eat. That was easier than trying to work their way to the trough through the bigger goats on the inside.
Milt and Janie always plant tens of thousands of pumpkin seed on June 15th so they will be ready just in time for their fall pumpkin patch. It is their busiest time of the year. Milt has modified an old tobacco planter for the task. They started at 6am to avoid the heat, but it still took 6 hours to plant the 44 rows.
We will begin working in Bremen, KY this beginning this weekend. We will be building a church with Constructors for Christ and are really looking forward to seeing people we haven’t seen since last year. As with NOMADS, we have made some special friends in Constructors. We were hoping for cooler temperatures but the forecast looks only hotter, 95-100 degrees every day. Please remember our Constructor friends in your prayers, that we all work smart and stay hydrated, while serving the people of Bethlehem Baptist Church.
Hope everyone is enjoying these first days of summer. It’s gotten pretty hot here in the south. After our last post when we were back in Alabama, we talked with our friends in Laurel, MS and decided to return to Laurel on Memorial Day. We spent last week working to remodel the area above the Bread of Life Food Pantry. A new missionary family that has been ministering in Nepal and recently returned to the states will be joining Hope and Grant in ministry at the Glory House Global Outreach Center. The Glory House simply brings the goodness of God to those in its reach with things like ESL classes, community meals, community service projects, classes for better living, and blessing others. They work with children, youth, and adults, poor, and elderly. It was great to get to work with Robbie again as we trimmed out all the windows and installed doors and ripped and installed 1×2’s at the top of the walls. It was also great to spend time with Hope and Grant again. We are touched by their ministry in Laurel. They just love on everyone they meet and share the love of Jesus. Thursday evening the new missionaries prepared an Indian meal, similar to what they would have eaten in Nepal and shared it with Grant, Hope and us. It was so very good! We ended up with the six of us visiting and getting to know each other until about 11:00pm – way past our bedtime – but so much fun. Friday night we had dinner with Grant and Hope and Robbie and his wife (it was great to meet her), sharing another wonderful meal and then saying our goodbyes – for a while. We do hope to return to Laurel. There is much work to be done there.
This is how the apartment looked back in April when we first saw it. A lot of local volunteer hours have been put in since then.
The bathroom really looked bad
To go with the vintage look of the apartment we used 1x6s to trim around the doors and windows.
We had to rip much of the 1x2s and window trim for a custom fit.
After enduring the heat all day Tuesday, the first thing we did on Wednesday was build this stand for an old window air conditioner to help us through the rest of the week.
It takes a lot of time and patience to install salvaged doors in non-standard openings.
Most of the rooms now have the 1x2s around the top of the walls.
We had a whole week without a tornado warning, but did have an interesting sky one evening.
Saturday morning we headed back to Alabama. We wanted to be back in time to be at our church Sunday morning. There is still estate work, accounting, NOMADS work and doctor’s appointments to keep us busy. The estate sale has been postponed a week by the people preparing everything because there is just “so much stuff”. We are not surprised. We tried to warn them that there were a lot of very full closets and cabinets in Aunt Helen’s house. We plan to stay here for about another week and then hopefully will be making our way to our next adventure. Until next time…be sure to keep on serving others. Try to make at least one person’s day a little better each day.
Hi Ho Schultzy, Away! Most of you know about Gumby but you may not know about his companion, Shultzy. When Anne left home for college oh so many years ago she had a dachshund named Schultzy that could not go with her. Her mother bought her this Shultzy to take with her. When we were cleaning out her mother’s house a few years ago we found him in a box of keepsakes her mother had saved. He has traveled with us ever since. Like us, they are always happy to be on the road again.
Hope you have been doing well since we last posted. We arrived back in Alabama May 5th and as planned in our last post have been busy taking care of doctor visits, trying to get caught up on business items, NOMADS work and working at Aunt Helen’s house. It’s been a busy time but nothing interesting enough to report. We now have all our and other family members “stuff” out of Helen’s house with the exception of items we will need until the estate sale is complete and the house is sold. A really big accomplishment for us. We have also reconnected with friends and family who live in our community, and worshiped at our home church – always a joy. Last Friday we went a couple hours northwest of our home base and spent the weekend at Joe Wheeler State Park. The campground was demolished in December 2019 by a tornado. The campground has just reopened and is so very nice. The sites are very smooth and level. Newly paved roads and bath houses with individual showers are also nice. The sites with water views and access are fantastic. Our site just barely had a water view but we certainly enjoyed our time there. Our friends Dave and Carol from Texas were on the way to some other friends’ home but stayed the weekend at the park in the lodge. We did some hiking and visiting and eating. If you are ever in Rogersville, AL (don’t know why you would be but….) you should eat at Fat Cat’s Seafood Restaurant. Super good fried catfish. Back to the mountain on Monday and this will be another week of estate work, etc. We are planning some other trips but…a lot depends on the estate sale and house sale. We’ll keep you posted and until then – keep on serving others.
Campsite C-3 at Joe Wheeler State Park
We had a great time hiking the Yellow Trail with Dave and Carol
View of the lake from the Yellow Trail
Our audience for part of our hike
Great catfish and from the number of pickup trucks in the parking lot on Saturday morning they must serve a good breakfast, too.
As we ended the last blog post we had arrived in New Braunfels, TX for the Switch It Up Huddle. For you non-RVers, Switch It Up is a YouTube channel created by two of our friends from Kansas, Todd and Shelia. They have been RVing for a little over a year and chronicle their travels, ups and downs, etc. A huddle is a gathering for people who watch the channel. It’s a time to relax, have good food, give back to the community and meet new friends. Max and I have also been able to share the NOMADS story with some of the new people we met. This most recent huddle was held at a new, not quite complete, campground, Camp Fimfo (Fun Is More Fun Outdoors). Camp Fimfo is a large facility with many amenities including cabins for those who do not own an RV. It’s definitely glamping instead of camping and when everything is complete will be a great vacation site for families. Kids will love the pools, water park, play grounds, bounce pad, lazy river, miniature golf, zip line and many other amenities. We had about 180 people from all over the country and Canada at the Huddle. After our meet and greet Thursday evening, we were up early Friday to participate in our community give back, at the New Braunfels Food Bank. We almost overwhelmed the Food Bank because almost everyone participated. In our 3 ½ hours at the food bank we packed 864 boxes of dry goods (we worked on this), 540 fresh produce boxes, worked in the garden mulching and weeding, gave out food to over 110 families, worked in the kitchen (they prepare meals for seniors and use this service to teach culinary arts skills), swept floors, cleaned windows and donated over a $1,800 in spontaneous donations that were given by our group. It was a great morning and great way to begin our time together.
Bag packing crew
This is where we worked packing boxes.
The garden crew
Drive through food distribution
The wall inside the food bank
Friday afternoon we took a relaxing float down the Comal River. The river was pretty full when most of our group made that trip but it seemed everyone had a great time.
Our first man-made rapid on the river was called the Tube Chute
Some of us went down it backwards.
There were also two other lesser tube chutes.
Saturday morning, we visited the Natural Bridge Caverns close to San Antonio. While not the largest cavern we have visited, it’s one of the most pristine we have seen. It’s been well protected. Beautiful. There was also a motor bike ride, a jeep tour, and shopping at the outlets for those wanting more to do. Every evening we had a great dinner together and then had entertainment, games, time to just visit and get to know each other. Sunday we had a wonderful church service with music provided by some of our group and the message by Shelia. Awesome! All too quickly Monday morning arrived and with hugs and tears, we all had to say safe travels until we meet again.
Natural Bridge Caverns
Emerald Lake
Sunday morning worship.
Leaving our friends is always hard. We drove to a Corps of Engineers park, Magnolia Ridge, in east Texas, almost to LA for two nights. It was a small 41 site campground – camping, not glamping – on the shore of Steinhagen Lake. Great park! There were very few campers in the park on Monday and Tuesday so it was so quite and peaceful. You could hear the birds singing and we saw an eagle shortly after we arrived. Wednesday we were back on the road and made a quick overnight stop in Laurel, MS, and the arrived back in AL Thursday afternoon.
Shortly after we arrived at Magnolia Ridge we were greeted by a bald eagle flying over. We didn’t have our camera out yet. We kept it with us the rest of the time but never saw the eagle again. So here are alternate pictures:
The view out our back door
One of several large magnolia blossoms at Magnolia Ridge
This tortoise was not interested in us.
Some times we saw as many as 5 squirrels together.
This gray tree frog’s camouflage would probably be more effective on a tree.
And this little gator swam right up to the bank at our campsite.
A green lynx spider made itself at home on our picnic table.
We will now be back at work on our aunts’ estates, cutting grass at Helen’s, etc. We do plan a few quick trips this month but since we aren’t sure what we are doing, you will just have to wait and see what we can get into. Stay safe, healthy, and use your talents to serve others.
RVing With a Purpose 