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Hi Everyone,
I do not know that I have ever enjoyed fall as much as I have this year. It has always been one of my favorite times of the year, but this year just seems different. I am enjoying watching as the sycamores begin to change their leaves from green to golden and brown. I am sure that in the next few weeks the maples and the cherries shall join in on the colorful parade. The elephant grass in the back yard is about fourteen feet tall, and the bottom third is starting to turn brown, and the top third is shooting out seed heads. Before long the songbirds will be hiding out in the grass and feasting on the seeds. The other morning the sky was all red with the sunrise, and it made the perfect backdrop to the elephant grass. The browner the grass turns the more it sings as the wind blows through it—which is the closest that I get to hearing the wind blow through the sea oats at the beach.
How Important is Papa?—Very!
Monday morning Steve had to do Papa’s chores as Papa went off to encourage another farmer. I think that the cows knew that Papa was away, and they didn’t feel like being on their best behavior. First off the heifers had escaped their field—so he had to put them back away. Then one of the wires was not closed, and once some of the cows were done in the milking parlor, they left and headed into the field where Steve was feeding up the last batch of broiler chickens—so he had to shoo the bull and one of the cows out of that field. Then once all the cows were milked, Steve bottled the milk and I worked on answering emails and putting together the orders. When I headed back outside I realized that no one had remembered to put the calves back with their mommies and the cows hadn’t even been put back—they were just scattered through the fields and in the lane. So, Steve and I headed out to put everyone in their rightful places. First off though, we stopped in the heifer field to pick up Jamima. She is my all-time favorite cow, but due to a nasty batch of mastitis, I had to retire her from the milk herd a few years ago. Every year our goal has been to sell her, but she always seems to come up pregnant. The last two calves that Jamima has thrown have been absolutely beautiful A2/A2 heifers. One is named America (so when she comes in to be milked I can say, “Good Morning America”), and the other is named Jam. Maybe when she grows up and has a calf we can name it “Bread”—well maybe not. Since we do not milk Jamima we let her raise her calf for about eight months and then we dry her up so that she can “fatten” back up to have the next calf. I am not 100% sure if she is pregnant this time, but if she is, she should calve in February. Anyway, Jam is eight months old now, so it was time to wean her and dry up Jamima. Thankfully we could lead (sometimes drag) her by her collar, and it really wasn’t that hard to put her in with the milk herd so that she could dry up, and be fed extra so that she could fatten up also. Once we had Jamima in with the herd, then we let the calves out to join their mommies. To our dismay, one of the cows had bumped the fence gate to the sheep barn where Penelope feeds her three calves. Penelope had rejoined the herd, one calf had stayed in the barn, but two had ran through the hot wire and broke a post, strung out the wire, and were gallivanting down the lane to the pond. It didn’t take too long to get everyone where they belonged—but we did have to come back to the house to get a new step stake to hold the wire up. Then we headed up to the two year old heifer pen to get Sally—which is short for Salamander. Her mother’s name was Pollywog, and her Grandma’s name was Pollyanna. When Pollyanna gave birth to a little heifer, Papa came in and said that Pollyanna had given birth to a pollywog—and the name stuck. So of course when Pollywog has a little heifer, it is only proper to name it Salamander—right? Well, we call her Sally, and she is the most gorgeous heifer I have ever seen. Her eyes are well highlighted with mascara and eye liner—or at least that is what they look like. She is almost three years old, and it was time for her to move into the big cows herd so that she could hang out with the bull—Dijon. She is very sweet and gentle, and all we had to do was walk behind her to get her to move from one field, down the lane, and into the other field with the milk cows and the bull. That all took us about an hour—and then Papa was home.
Missing in Action
Tuesday morning Mom and I got the milking all done by 9:00, and then we headed off to be of encouragement to another farmer. While we were gone, Steve bottled the milk, got the yogurt containers ready, bottled the kefir and weeded in the garden. He said that my chores were easier than Papa’s. When we got home, we ate lunch, I made yogurt, and then we worked on the eggs—for it was raining outside. While I taught piano lessons, Steve and Mom worked in the green house transplanting plants from seed trays to small pots. At 4:00 Papa was heading to town to get some ice, and I caught a ride with him to get some much needed groceries. When we got home it was time to cook dinner. Before we sat down to eat, Papa was reading an email, but I didn’t have time to finish reading it. After dinner I wanted to finish reading the email—but it was gone. A few customer emails came in, and before I could open them—they disappeared before my eyes. Then more emails came in, and again they disappeared before our eyes. I called my cousin that works on computers and told him the situation. He told me to call Yahoo! They told me that our computer was hacked, and that someone in Ohio was also using my email address, and was working to gather all of our “Identity” by the use of a Trojan in our computer. We realized that they had originally hacked our Amazon account—which is why every time I ordered from Amazon, someone started using our credit card to buy expensive stuff. We have had to get four new credit cards since November. Yahoo then connected us with a computer company that works to fix such problems and make the computer secure again. It was 10:30 at night by the time I got off the phone with the computer people—and I hadn’t even begun to make the receipts for the Jacksonville orders. The worse part was that I had no idea how many orders had been “deleted”, and I had no hope of getting back the lost emails. Since it was late, and we were very tired, we did the most logical thing—we went to bed. To our delight when we woke up the next morning, all our missing emails were back. We stayed off line and I was able to answer all the emails and put in all the orders on the order sheet. As soon as I signed on line to send the emails—they all disappeared again. I was thankful that the computer company that we were working with had told me that before they charged our credit card, they would be calling me back to make sure that everything was working right—and they did. It took another hour of work, and required them to remove Outlook Express and reload it before our emails quit disappearing. It took until Sunday morning before all our disappearing emails came back into our In Box.
The Perfect Day
It is a perfect day when you get to do everything that you want to do. Mom and I got the milking done and the milk filtered by about 10:30. Then we headed to the garden to help our friend Leo. He was preparing some new beds. (Sue was out of state visiting family.) We weeded, while he made the beds. It was 1:00 when we all quit. Then we ate lunch and set up to process chickens—the last batch for the year. For over ten years we have raised chickens in the spring and in the fall. This year we decided to raise chickens from February to October. Every two weeks a new batch of 50 chicks would arrive in the mail, and then when the first batch was eight weeks old we began processing chickens every other week. We did thirteen batches total. I had scheduled to do 15, but we got cold feet a few times and cancelled two shipments of chicks. It is hard to plan how many chickens you will sell in a year. I based my math on how many chickens we sold last October to January, but when the sales drop in the summer because everyone goes on vacation, it is easy to panic and think that you have too many. We have really enjoyed using our new building for processing the chickens. We still need a lot of equipment—tables and sinks, but they will come in time.
Creepy Crawlies
Friday morning Mom and I milked the cows and then we packaged the chickens. We were done by lunch time and then I made yogurt. After lunch we headed to the garden to plant 50 strawberry plants, and the remaining few plants of broccoli and collards that were still in the green house. When we got done we walked through the garden harvesting zinnia’s and Roselle calyxes. I also harvested a pocket full of dried Lima bean pods. It was 5:00 when we finished, and we needed to get to the bank before they closed. I grabbed a little jar, and decided to shell the beans while we drove to town. We were not even off of our dirt road when a spider came crawling out of the pods and up my dress. With much determination, and a little panic, I smashed the spider and went on shelling beans. We were half way to town when another spider began its quick accent up my dress. This time I had the same amount of determination—but a lot more panic and some added squeals. Poor Mom was trying to be a safe driver—and I wasn’t helping. Once I had finished off that spider I tucked my apron back under the seat-belt, and pulled it nice and tight. I usually like my seat-belts loose—but this time I couldn’t seem to get it tight enough. When we got home I quickly dumped my pocket on the tailgate of the Gravely and Mom and I finished shelling the beans—and we saw no more spiders.
How Many Did you Say?
A month ago we visited the local farm center to buy some yellow onion bulbs. When the man asked me how many pounds I wanted, I told him I wasn’t sure—for I wanted 300 bulbs. He had to pick his jaw up from off of the floor. I was serious—I love to grow onions, and I want a year’s supply. Mom helped decide that we needed 3 pounds—at least it was a start. Saturday was the last day of the month to plant root crops, and the bed was finally ready. So after lunch Mom and I headed to the garden to plant the onions. We had to finish spreading out the chicken compost, and then we took the broadfork to it in order to mix it all in. After that Mom ran the gridder down the bed to make three rows that were 10 inches apart, with a cross row every ten inches. On the middle row we planted four onions at every point and three onions at every point on the two outer rows. That totaled 10 onions per every row. There are 30 rows—which meant we planted 310 yellow onion bulbs. We only had half a pound of onions left over, and they were the small ones. As soon as we finished—it began to rain! What a blessing!
We had a really nice week, and who knows what next week shall behold. Now that we are not processing chickens every other week—we have more time to work in the garden. I am also hoping to get some sewing done. Mom and I desperately need a winter wardrobe.
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare