Happy Valentine’s Day! “A loving heart is the truest wisdom.” This Charles Dickens quote has been one of my favorites lately. Love and wisdom, two big goals. According to the Bible, God is Love and also the fear (respect and reverence) of God is the beginning of wisdom. Need wisdom? Love. Love God, acknowledge God, Spend time with Him. After I’ve done that, I feel better equipped to love others. There’s a great little app called, “Glorify” that makes it easy to listen to some wisdom and a meditative thought each morning. I found it in the App Store, try it, you might find it helps you to be more loving AND wise.
We have a special little “Gal”entine this year and she is so easy to love!You knew we were going talk about this sweetie before we got on to less important news.
We got to spend some more time with our little grand daughter and her parents at the beginning of this month. We even got snowed in with them for an extra day.
Leila is 1 month old now. We can’t wait till our next visit and we are grateful for regular pictures from her mom and dad. It’s so much fun to see her grow!
Back in North Carolina, we moved Old Glory to her new home in a storage space 3 miles from the Ballard Homestead. For now we decided it was best to keep her in storage.
Mark received a trail cam for Christmas. He finally got it set up back by our creek. We’ve been able to see lots of activity -Deer, Possum, Raccoons, skunk and a coyote like to visit our yard.
Hunter Camera 
Hunter Camera 
Hunter Camera 
Hunter Camera
Garden planning has begun. We have had a few random sunny, warm days to begin yard and garden work.
In anticipation of a very productive garden, we purchased a used pressure canner on Facebook Marketplace. The Ballard Homestead holds a lot of potential and we are looking forward to learning a lot this spring and summer.
The John Deere has new tires and brakes and has already been very useful.
Some new furniture and decor has been added. The guest room is complete.
The new basement window has now been installed.
We were happy to visit some baby goats at the nearby Amillia Acres Farm. Hopefully we will be able to help bottle feed these babies when they begin weaning.
We are finding a lot to LOVE about this season of life. Spring is coming and there will be more new adventures on the Ballard Homestead! Thanks for following along!
