Poor Farmers Market

06/15/2026

ADOPTED. 😀 This sweet pup is back up for adoption again. (His last owner wasn't ready for a pup.) He is a 3 month old German Shepherd/Labrador mix. If you are interested in adopting him please call the shelter at 276-694-6259 or come by for a visit.

06/15/2026

06/15/2026

She said she didn’t like that look in my eye when I was eyeing the ducks this morning. She’s afraid my ancient wolf genes will come out. They have before. I can’t help it if I have a wolf in me. I was born like that. She said collies are supposed to protect the farm not eat your chickens. But I’m no ordinary collie and humans eat chicken. Think about that. I hate dogfood.

06/14/2026

This dog is wondering around Meadows of Dan. He has a collar and a flea collar so he or she belongs to someone. Not safe here. Come get your dog.

06/14/2026

Scenes from a Day in the Life

A group of young Amish girls wearing identical clothes and head coverings walking toward our stage each carrying an ice cream cone, dresses blowing in the breeze.

Walking in on an employee fussing at a customer. “ You customers are getting on my nerves today!” As the local customer walks out he calls back to the store clerk, “Love you”. “Love you too”. The employee tells the customer. A true Andy Griffith moment.

A note from a neighbor who adopted a stray dog I helped home. The same stray dogs the police called me about for trying to find them a home. I am not supposed to find them a home. I’m supposed to take them to the pound, in case someone claims them. (I know an abandoned dog when I see one around here). Here is part of the note from my neighbor about that stray dog. “ His leg has healed, and he has gained weight. His coat is shiny, and he is the most loving dog I have ever seen. He has become "my" dog and I didn't even know how much I need him.”

Walking up on the porch at Poor Farmers Market to a group of content bikers sharing stories about the road.

Talking to Terry, our assistant store manager, about how hard it all is. “All we can do is get up everyday and do the best we can and don’t worry about it”. I tell Terry.

Back at the farm my farm hand shows me his sun tan. He wears a bandana around his head all the time. The top half of his forehead is white as snow. The rest of his face is as brown as Walnut. The contrast is sharp,

At the end of the day I fall in behind an Amish buggy heading home.

06/13/2026

Tony and Blue at Sunset

06/11/2026

The summertime heat really bothers me and Tony. We don’t even feel like eating sometimes. We have plenty shade and water but she’s not getting us an air conditioner. She said she has never had an air conditioner in her life. Dogs lived thousands of years without air conditioners. We will just have to tough it out. The cold doesn’t bother us, no matter how cold it gets, but the heat makes us miserable.

A bear came through here the other night. We all went bonkers even the horses. That’s the most exciting thing that has happened in my life for a long time.

06/11/2026

Thursday Morning

Monday night when I went upstairs to go to bed I looked down toward my pond after I turned off the light. I saw a deep blue beam of light, or something, moving across the pond just above the water. It was shocking. I will never know what that was. I don’t think I imagined it. It wasn’t in my peripheral vision. I saw it clearly but only for a few seconds, maybe 30 seconds. I can’t even hypothesize what that was and neither can anyone else.

In our Tuesday Meeting we have some highly educated people. I asked some of them what could that possibly have been. No one has a clue but we all agree there are things in this world we don’t understand.

Speaking of the Tuesday Meeting, my neighbor Ralph lead the meeting this week. His topic was things the Bible talked about thousands of years before they were discovered by science. It was fascinating.

In our Tuesday Meeting there are believers and non believers, democrats and republicans, Jews and every flavor of Christian. We use to also have Muslims and Mormons but not lately.

One of our Tuesday members is a Jew with a PhD from M I T. He will soon publish a book about what he thinks are the discrepancies in the Bible that were instigated by the Roman Empire when Constantine converted Rome to Christianity in the 4th century. He will lead the meeting next month on this topic.

Of course I believe that the Bible has been preserved by God. I don’t worry about discrepancies in the dots and tittles. I just try to see what it is saying to me at the given moment, The Living Word.

I told the Tuesday Meeting what the Bible means to me. It is the story of man’s relationship with God beginning with man’s creation on earth, in Genesis ,and ending with where we are headed, in Revelation. We are headed to Transformation.

In between Genesis and Revelation is the story of man, lost in the wilderness ,circling the Holy Mountain , while it was there in plain sight all along , but our sin and our unbelief causes us not to see it. God placed Cherubim east of the Garden of Eden to ban our reentry, in our fallen state. If we were all in heaven ,the way we are now , it wouldn’t be heaven.

I told how the person and teaching of Jesus Christ was radical at the time. We don’t realize how radical Jesus was to the Jews when he appeared because we have been steeped in Christianity for 2,000 years. Jesus taught us to love and forgive and to look at each other through the eyes of Jesus and to have faith that this world is not all there is to it. Sounds simple, but it is humanly impossible. With God all things are possible.

I attended a Bible college for six years and waded and wandered through all those Old Testament stories. The more you know ,the more you know , you don’t know. The more you know, the more you feel like getting down on your knees and saying, Lord have mercy on me, a sinner.

I will leave you with this Bible verse that I mentioned to the Tuesday Meeting. When you try to study the Old Testament it is hard, if not impossible, not to get bogged down in laws and rituals and bloodlines and wars. But among all the muck of that story of mankind on earth there are clear lessons to show us that something more is going on here, something above our human heads.

Consider this verse by the prophet Zechariah written some 500 years before Jesus was pierced.

Zechariah 12:10

“And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication. They will look on me, whom they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only son…”