All We Need Is Love

the three little kittens

It was a normal day at school.  Brett got in trouble in class and Chloe had girl drama.  I imagine I will experience both of these things daily for the rest of their school careers, so I best be getting used to it.  Arriving from school we tended to the animals and visited with the babies.  Everyone is doing well except for Charles.  His eyes are very swollen and red.  I grabbed a bottle of saline solution and secured him to the fence.  I held his head and poured saline in his eyes to help flush anything that might be bothering him.  I removed a few specks of debris and placed a cool compress on his eye.  The compress made him relax and he slowly dropped his head and allowed the muscles in his neck to loosen from the tension he created with the halter.  Poor pony.  Tomorrow I will be calling the vet for a home visit.  I really need to attend vet school soon before I go broke.

The chicken with the droopy tail is still droopy.  I gave her a warm bath again and then placed her on a stack of paper towels on the kitchen floor to dry her off with the blow dryer.  She slowly made her way to my lap as you will see in the photographs.  She enjoyed her spa day, but she felt very hot and I'm not sure she will pull through.  All I can do is try.  

pony's swollen eye

After tending to the animals I washed up and made dinner.  I've tried to avoid watching any coverage on the Boston Marathon.  Sometimes I tell myself that if I don't watch the news, bad things don't happen.  The reality is, bad things do happen.  The news I produce out on the farm is bad enough for me to want to avoid all of the mainstream news outlets.  The dead rooster,  the chicken killed by a raccoon, the suspicious raccoon scat, the pony with swollen eyes, the upside down milked goat causing body aches to the farmer's wife.  The war on terror is not over.  I'm sure we will hear lots of reports about how we were warned about these terrorist attacks, but realistically terror is hate.  Hate exists every where.  Take a moment to remove the hate from your own life.  One by one, we can make a difference.  

1 Corinthians 13

New International Version (NIV)

13 If I speak in the tongues^[a] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. ² If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. ³ If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,^[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing.

⁴ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

⁸ Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. ⁹ For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰ but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. ¹¹ When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. ¹² For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

¹³ And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

I am thankful for the safety of the barbed wire that surrounds my house (Day 111).  Goodnight Friends.