John Gould Fletcher (1866-1950) was a poet and author. He is probably most well known for his contritbution to the pro-agrarian writing “I’ll Take My Stand”. I do not believe he was a Christian.

First, because I want to, in some way, commemorate the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the War for Southern Independence. Secondly, because I am sick and tired of all the other commemorative articles focusing on the liberation of the negro.

In accomplishing those objectives, it is not necessarily my intent to sway the reader from one side to the other, but to at least provide an accurate defense of my beloved Southland, from an unapologetically Calvinistic viewpoint.

The so-called Civil War was not sparked by a single issue. Sectional positions on slavery, states rights, and tariffs were merely the outward manifestation of underlying presuppositions that formed two distinct and diametrically opposed cultures. Although in a somewhat abated fashion, those opposing cultures still exist today.

Slavery. Several southern states list abolition of slavery as the reason for secession in their state ordinances. Although 75-80% of southerners did not own slaves, many hoped that they would one day acquire the means to do so.  It was the great American Dream. Is slavery wrong? Not Biblically.

What do you think? In case you don’t know, you are one. Oh, you may not be forced to “pick cotton”, but the federal government is as coercive and intrusive, if not more so,  as the stereotypical 1860′s slaveowner.

For the record, not only did yankees also own slaves, which were not freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, but the first state that attempted to abolish slavery was Virginia, in 1778.

States Rights. Contrary to popular teaching, the states entered the union as sovereign entities, not, as Abraham Lincoln represented it, as territories of a centralized government. Even Northern states had threatened secession in the past.

Tarrifs. Wealth redistribution 1860′s style. Northern industrial interests were attempting to make business cost prohibitive for the Agrarian class. Not unlike todays liberals, Yankees were intolerant of those who they could not control.

So…does this make the South the snow-white-good-guy? Far from it! Southern leaders often lamented the depraved state of their nation: from the institution of slavery to delivery of mail on Sunday. The South attempted to continue the American tradition in it’s Biblically based society, while the North changed the path of the entire nation with it’s departure down the path of humanism.

I am not bitter about the outcome of the war. My fathers and mothers did their duty and left the consequences to the Lord. At the same time, to those of you who call for forgetfullness of a war that occured 150 years ago, I say this: I will never forget that 350,000 of my people were killed and their homes destroyed for the sake of “national unity”.

Perhaps now you see why, in the dialect of the usually hospitible South, there exsists the phrase “Damyankee”.

The easiest way to say this is… ummmm… I’m back!

My summer up at Polyface was a wonderful learning time. I feel so blessed to have been given that experience.

I’ve kinda gotten back into a routine at home… (by the way, it’s awesome to be back home!)

I will try to post here from time to time, as time progresses, Lord willing, maybe get some pictures up. (when our camera charger arrives in the mail.)

Thank you for your prayers for me and my family during this summer.

The country song said it truly:

You find out who your friends are
Somebody’s gonna drop everything
Run out and crank up their car
Hit the gas, get there fast
Never stop to think ‘what’s in it for me?’ or ‘it’s way too far’
They just show on up with their big old heart
You find out who your friends are

A friend is much more than just a number next to your facebook profile.

A friend comes out to give you a hand two months after his wife passes away.

A friend drives from two states away to work and camp out at the home of someone they’ve never met.

Before this tornado, I could probably count my true friends on both hands. Now, I can’t count them on mine and my family’s hands put together. I’m terrible with names, but I’ll always remember the faces.

Faces that said “I’m sorry”, “let me help”, “cry on my shoulder”. Laughing, praying, singing, WORKING…

You will never be forgotten. Thank you so much.

A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.-  Proverbs 17:7
These are just a few pictures of just some folks that came to our place. This was repeated up and down the valley.

“I Love Me Some Rednecks”

“Most all of us around here have born the brunt of remarks from people outside Lawrence County about being rednecks. Well, I’m here to tell you right now that I love me some Lawrence County rednecks!

Rednecks have Polan (sic) chainsaws, bulldozers, four-wheelers and big ol’ trucks – and they know how to use ‘em. They aren’t afraid of getting dirty or of hard work.

As soon as the wind died down, they were the first ones out there, clearing the roads for emergency vehicles to get to where they needed to be. They were standing up to their knees in debris so that people could get out of their driveways. They were checking on neighbors who lived in the hardest hit areas where cars and normal vehicles didn’t stand a chance.

If you were the victim of the storm and found your driveway miraculously cleared, you can thank a redneck. If you have a brush pile a mile high and you didn’t do it yourself, you can thank a redneck. If someone brought you a shirt to put on your back that day, or hauled your furniture to a storage facility, you can probably thank a redneck.

Those good ol’ boys waded through water filled with gas and glass, nails and torn tin roofs and no telling what else to offer assistance to people stranded in the rubble of their homes. They worn camo jackets and John Deere caps, spit tobacco and more than likely did a little cussing, but they got the job done, and they are the ones who are still out there cutting up trees and burning brush long into the night, just as they have been ever since the storms hit.

They didn’t wait to be asked…they just ‘got ‘er done’ in the true sense of the phrase. They didn’t stand around jawing and waiting for someone else to take charge, they went to work doing what they do best – moving earth, pushing aside massive trees with root systems as big around as a VW, and tossing aside boards with splinters the size of kitchen knives.

And they did all this without any thought of their own comfort or safety. They put their scuffed cowboy boots and worn work boots on the ground and tread across roof beams and unsteady floors to make sure there was no one left inside the wreckage of everything from two –story brick houses to mobile home and barns. They already had a flashlight and a pocket knife with them.
They rounded up their neighbor’s cattle and horses and coaxed kittens out of trees where the wind had tossed them and they cried like babies when they found someone’s hunting dog broken and bleeding.

They waded into poultry houses and caught terrified chickens, and tossed mountains of dead ones onto piles to burn. They began to hang tarps and nail plywood over broken windows to save their cousins and other kin folk’s belongings. They didn’t stop for hours on end, hooking chains to cars, trees and any and everything that had landed helter-skelter as the tornados tore through.
Rednecks just show up when there is work to be done. They drive up and with a silent nod, they just pitch in, salvaging refrigerators and hooking up generators. They don’t care if they look cool and they don’t have to shave before they leave the house. They are tough as nails and love their mamas fiercely. They still say ‘Yes, ma’m’ and ‘No, sir,’ to anyone older than they are. They eat cornbread and pinto beans and drink tea so sweet a spoon will stand straight up in the glass. They sweat and swear and have grease under their nails sometimes. They can deliver a calf and half an hour later be sitting in church, scrubbed to a fare-the-well. And did they ever save the day when the thunder rolled and the lightning flashed and the wind knocked down the houses where they were born?

They don’t do it for the glory, and wouldn’t dream of taking a dime for it, and are sometimes even offended if someone asks how much they are owed ‘cause that’s what rednecks do – they drive loud trucks, bobcats and front-end loaders, they crank cantankerous chain saws and they know the feel of rope burns and blistered faces. They get those red necks from the sun beating down relentlessly as they labor in the dust and smoke from all the brush fires. They think sun-screen is for sissies and they don’t worry much about anti-bacterial soap or drink fruit- flavored water.

Give me a Lawrence County redneck any day when trouble comes – when fences get blown over and the lights go out, and there are trees and houses strewn like matchsticks as far as the eye can see, what in the world would we do without these rednecks?
Thanks to all of you dear rednecks, you deserve medals for what you have done in the past few weeks. And don’t think the world didn’t notice, they did. In fact, somebody is probably writing a country song about you as you read this.”

Loretta Gillespie writes for the Moulton Advertiser and the Cullman Times.

A special thank you to all those rednecks that came as reinforcements from all over the South, but especially Tennessee (now I know why it’s called the Volunteer State) and Georgia.

A huge thank you  to everyone for your prayers and assistance.

Here are a few links you may find interesting in learning more about the situation here:

-Baker’s Dozen

-Shoal Creek Valley Construction

-Shoal Creek Valley Relief

-Help the Lees

Of Mr. Lee, what more can be said?

He was a Lee, full of all the character and Godliness associated with that name. His legacy lives on in the lives of his wife and children every day. Words cannot express my awe at the work God has done through the Lee family.

To God be the glory.

I never would have imagined that I would be digging through the wreckage of their house with my neighbors, praying with every bone in my body that  everyone would be ok.

I never would have imagined that I would call 911 and plead for help I knew would not get there in time.

I never would have imagined I would drive over so many downed power lines.

Our hearts are broken.

Never in our family’s history have we experienced so much pain.

Never in our family’s history have we experienced so much grace and mercy and love from God’s people.

Our peaceful valley is basically destroyed. Once gorgeous mountains have been stripped to bareness. What were once quaint farms are now wreckage strewn landscapes.

The loss of life was tremendous. 38 people dead in a small 6 mile stretch of our community.

The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away: blessed be the name of the Lord.

In this crisis, our prayer is that our lives and the testimony of what happened in Shoal Creek Valley would be an everlasting monument to the grace and mercy of God.

It’s not about FEMA.

It’s not about the Red Cross, or the Salvation Army, or the SBC.

It’s about God… and the people of God coming together and wrapping their arms around us and crying with us and comforting us.

Thanks to you and your prayers, there still remain a remnant who have not” bowed the knee to Baal.”

On this day in 1862, French scientist Louis Pasteur, with Claude Bernard, completed the first test of a process that is known to us today as pasteurization, which is based on certain presuppositions regarding germs: Enter the Germ Theory.
You are walking down the street on a sunny day, when suddenly, out of the wild, blue yonder, you are attacked by deadly germs/bacteria! The only way for you to escape is to kill the bad guys!
Just one problem.
God created those so-called germs for a reason. They are micro-turkey vultures, going around cleaning up messes. The only reason you would be attacked by them is if they thought you were dead.

What you may not know is that Pasteur had a contemporary named Michael Beauchamp. Beauchamp acknowledged that the germs were out there, but articulated that the “bad guys” could only win if the protective defenses allowed them access to the victims. This is what’s known as the Terrain theory. Terrain encompasses many things: hygiene, stress, immune response, lifestyle, etc.
You are back walking down the street, and there are germs all around you. However, you are not afraid of them because you live a fairly regimented lifestyle: you exercise regularly, you get good sleep at night, you eat three meals a day, and you are on your way home to kiss your mom (or your wife/husband, if you’re married).

Now the above was probably a horrible attempt at analogy, but the point is, we have a responsibility to create an well defended terrain to keep the “bad guys” out.

Since the human nature is to choose the path of least resistance, and because we like to think of ourselves as victims, Pasteurs’ theory has been widely accepted and Beauchamps’…who has ever heard of him? The entire western world has bought into the Germ theory.
Ironically enough, on his deathbed, Pasteur rose on an elbow and gasped: “Beauchamp was right. It is all about the terrain”.
However, Beauchamp’s theory has fathered the wellness movement, which is essentially anything the western world calls old fashioned (homeopathy, etc.)

Germs or bacteria have no influence, whatsoever, on live cells. Germs or microbes flourish as scavengers at the site of disease. They are just living on the unprocessed metabolic waste and diseased, malnourished, nonresistant tissue in the first place. They are not the cause of the disease, any more than flies and maggots cause garbage. Flies, maggots, and rats do not cause garbage but rather feed on it. Mosquitoes do not cause a pond to become stagnant! You always see firemen at burning buildings, but that doesn’t mean they caused the fire… (source)

It really brings into question alot of modern day practices regarding our food. Take pasteurized milk. It was originally processed so that farmers could ship their milk into the large cities unspoiled (raw milk lasts about a week before becoming buttermilk).
Did God intend for milk to last longer than a week? I don’t think so.
There’s alot to be said for fresh food. Oh, I know it’s awfully inconvenient, but I cringe when I see our military eating those MREs. There ain’t a whole lot of nutritional value in those things.

Our supermarkets’ offerings aren’t much better. “Fat-free” is not necessarily a good thing. God made fat for a reason. That goes for all the other “insert word here- free” food.

It hits at the heart of what I think alot of more urban-type people are led to think about country life by us country folk.

Rabbit trail:
Urban vs. rural living really boils down to calling. People who live and work in the country are no more Godly than those God has called to live and work in the city. We love it, you may love it, but it’s life.
And sometimes life is just plain hard.

Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest. – Ecc. 9:10

And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men; – Col. 3:23

We’ve been very busy putting up our fence and our wonderful neighbors have been a big help to us. Several things I’ve learned about working with barbed wire:

-Gloves are a must. Unless you enjoy playing “hot potato”

-Barbed wire has a mind of it’s own.

- Shorts aren’t the best choice of clothing. 

Around the first of this month, 38 (our momma cow) gave birth to her third calf, a bull, whom we have still not officially named yet.

A few days later, we got a call from our next door neighbor, on the last day of deer season, who told us that a spike buck had gotten entangled in his fence and asked if we wanted it. Before we could actually kill the deer… he died of shock. Apparently, the “elusive American White-tail” is quite high strung and all those people standing around talking was too much for him to handle. Now, we are absolute failures at deer hunting and while several of us have been hunting several times unsuccessfully, none of us have ever field dressed a deer before. Add to that the fact that Michael and I had committed to go work for a neighbor that morning. So, armed with the knowledge from an over the phone neighbor and a youtube video, Dad, Allie, and Caleb tackled the job.

WARNING: potentially graphic content

Several days later, we got our third snow of the year.

Third snow.

In Alabama.

This year.

This guy came trotting up the edge of our field looking for a snack. What followed was the most embarrassing shooting done by any Southern marksman in our illustrious history, which I will not bore you with. Suffice it to say, I killed a coyote. It was a nice male, weighing about 34 pounds.

The hogs are very large. They now weigh about 150 each.

Theory: 6-strand barbed wire fence will contain hogs.

Fact: 6-strand barbed wire won’t hold water, therefore, it won’t hold hogs.

I learned this the hard way a couple of weeks ago. I walked out to feed them to discover that they were walking around in our side yard. I soon cornered them in a corner of our fence and our neighbors fence, confident that I would quickly get them back in their pen. But, the hogs had other plans and quickly scooted under the neighbors’ fence and escaped. An hour later, I finally got them back in, with the assistance of a couple of siblings.

Hog farming rocks!

The weather has been very nice the past several weeks and we can’t wait till planting time!