Welcome to Harvest Home Farm

Posted Aug 17, 2009 by Herbie — Comments (1) — Filed under: Camp, Personal

On August 16th, we pulled up onto Mike and Becky Poulos’s driveway also known as Harvest Home Farm.  Our “home” for the next six weeks as we are starting out our sabbatical leave from Camp Forest Springs.  Already we are learning the every day chores of Harvest Home Farm and the flexibility of what comes and goes throughout the day. 

Here is a link to www.harvesthomefarm.org.  Take a look around and see where the Lord is leading this ministry.

Well I (Michael) had the opportunity today to work with Mike and two other volunteers today.  Mike has a automatic water trough that his cows and sheep share between pens.  The other volunteers, Russel and his grandson James, installed a more economical water trough that is based on a geothermal concept.  Roughly there is an insulated pipe surrounded by dirt on the out side and a large gap of air surrounding the actual water line. We busted up the concrete under the old trough and dug down 4 feet, placed the insulated pipe around the water main, back filled and concreted today.  They say that this trough will not freeze up in the winter as easy due to the heat the earth.  Other farmers in places like ND and even Canada have used these and have claimed the total electric bill (a small censor that kicks in if needed to heat the water) is about $4 dollars a year.  So we are eager to place the new trough in on Wednesday after the concrete has hardened…  While our backs were turned some of the cows thought it would be fun to place nose and hoof prints in the fresh concrete.  We didn’t take it as being too fun

A six week change

Posted Aug 04, 2009 by Herbie — Comments (0) — Filed under: Camp, Personal, Cross-ing's

Do you have email?  How about a cell phone?  Have you ever said, “I’m blogging this!”? How about using an iPod? Do you drive by GPS? How about Facebook, Twitter’ing?  Do you have a SPAM problem?  Virus ever brought you to tears? Yep, I’ve been there too (minus the cell phone, but Lisa has one ).  I tell you the need to be in communication just seems to overwhelm me.  And the list just keeps growing every day.  I’ve counted now 10 different e-mail accounts that I manage, not to mention all of the camp staffs’ e-mail accounts to maintain.  Isn’t that crazy!?!?  You may have noticed though Lisa and I haven’t “blogged” anything for quite some time.  I confess my reasons - I’ve been enjoying getting to know Lisa and learning how to communicate with her… especially this first year of marriage.  I guess this is a strange way to introduce to you something that Lisa and I are about to be a part of …  A Sabbatical!

Through the wisdom of camp - every seven years missionary staff qualify for a sabbatical. A sabbatical is intended for the combined purposes of personal growth, camp growth, and rest and rejuvenation through learning experiences such as continuing education, travel to other camps, research, or other planned activities that address these purposes.

Lisa and I will be heading over to another camp recently establish here in Wisconsin called Harvest Home Farm.  The camp is run by former missionary staff of Camp Forest Springs the Poulos’.  We are excited for the opportunity to work in a farm setting and all the activities that go with it; quite a change for me with my computer fingers and no calluses to working with animals, baling hay, butchering chickens, and wranglers breakfasts.
Some of you may be asking “a sabbatical? ... but you’re so young!”  Exactly!  We are taking the opportunity of a sabbatical when we ARE young.  Lord willing, we hope to have a family and have lots of “little Herbie’s” running around some day but in the mean time an experience like this as newlyweds seems to be where the Lord is allowing us to be a part of.  This sabbatical allows Lisa and me to rejuvenate and personally for me to take a technological pause, gather my bearings again as to how technology can be best used at CFS.  We appreciate your prayers as we venture to help out Mike and Becky Poulos for six weeks at Harvest Home Farm starting August 16th, 2009.

www.harvesthomefarm.org

First attempt!

Posted Jan 29, 2009 by Herbie — Comments (3) — Filed under: Camp, Personal

This is my first attempt on learning to blog without my computer engineering husband.  He has trained me a couple of days ago on how to blog.  So here I am and because I am now home more often, I am looking forward to be a little more informative on our life, both home and in the ministry. 
Not much happening since Michael performed at a local church last week.  Right now, Michael has been busy teaching snowboarding throughout the week on top of his Computer System Manager job.  He does sleep well at night after a full day of physical and mental activities.  We do have a local church that is bringing close to 300 high school kids along with 20 some adults for this coming weekend.  This is a new group for Camp Forest Springs and we are looking forward to serving them.  Hopefully the next time I blog, I’ll have some pictures to show.  That would be my next session in training - learning to post pictures on a blog.  Wish me luck:)