286
Hi Everyone,
Everyone needs a purpose in life—and that includes animals. Our new puppy Yasha may only be five and a half months old, but she is showing signs of needing to be busy. Her energy level is in high gear, and a leisure walk on a leash does not use it up. I am thinking about turning her lose in the pasture where our retired bull Flag roams, and where the Thanksgiving Turkeys are roaming. Wednesday we moved the turkeys out of the front yard and into the front pasture so that they can roam free by day. We couldn’t turn them loose in the yard, or they would have been roaming on our front porch—and where birds roam, they leave behind their calling cards. Now that the turkeys are roaming free, every night they have to be locked back up in their hoop houses so that the night predators do not have them for dinner. Papa and I have been doing this, and I have been taking Yasha with us. Yasha has been used to taking care of the turkeys in the evening as I would go out and give them fresh water and gather their kefir/egg trays. Tonight I wanted to see how Yasha would do with the turkeys if I was not holding her leash. For the most part, she ignored the turkeys—for turkey poo is so much more enjoyable than live turkeys! I must say that dogs have very interesting appetites. Maybe we shall see how she does with the turkeys during the day.
Patience my dear, Patience!
My personality is to do everything fast—and if doing it right gets in my way of doing it fast, well………………………… To my dismay, gardening is not going very smoothly this year. While the spring garden did produce an abundance of green beans—three days after they were all canned we found out that Mom was allergic to them. The butternut and acorn squash gave us a few meals, but the Lima beans get moldy or buggy, the okra didn’t give us enough to preserve for fall and winter meals, and the watermelon tasted nasty. We did get about 20 pumpkins, and last night we peeled one and cut it up, smothered it with butter, maple syrup, salt and cinnamon and then baked it at 400 for 50 minutes. Yum! Yum! Have you ever wondered how people survived when all they had to eat was what grew in their own garden—and their garden flopped? I am thankful that we can buy vegetables at the grocery store—but the variety is so limited and nothing tastes as good as fresh from your own garden. So I have been very antsy to get the fall garden in the ground and growing—but alas, our year of troubles is not over yet. Two weeks ago one of the new beds was ready for planting and we transplanted the Swiss chard to its new home. By the end of the week we had a terrible problem—the whole garden bed was covered with a solid carpet of sprouted chicken feed. That would be fine if all I wanted to do was feed chickens—but I am hungry for kale, collards, Swiss chard, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, and bok choy. I didn’t exactly know how to deal with the weedy sprouts—especially since Mom had taken the stirrup hoe to them and they grew right back. At the breakfast table I was trying to convince Mom to let me use the blow torch to burn all the weedy sprouts—but that was a lost cause. So, come Monday morning our new garden friends showed up to work in the garden getting more beds prepared so that I could transplant the kale, collards, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, and bok choy into the garden. We were still milking when Leo and Sue arrived, so they headed out to the garden without us. Ten minutes later Sue was back with some dreadful news. They saw the garden as hopeless, and suggested that we dig back up all the Swiss chard that we had planted and plant them in pots. Then all the transplants that were ready to be transplanted to the garden—well, we should transplant them into bigger pots. It got better though—they had two silage tarps that they no longer needed, and with a little bit of bartering, we could call them ours. I was delighted, since my other attempt to get some free ones was a lost cause. While we finished milking, Leo hoed down all the weedy sprouts, and Sue washed up all the little pots that she could fine. Then while I bottled the milk, Mom headed to the garden to help Sue. We had one problem about transplanting all the plants to pots—we didn’t have any potting soil. Sue had a soil recipe from J.M. Fortier www.themarketgardener.com , and to our delight we actually had all the materials that we needed to make a whole wheel barrow full of potting soil. Once the mix was made, Sue filled the pots with it, and Mom and I transplanted the Swiss chard to it. Then we spread the silage tarps over the whole tunnel garden area. It was then time for lunch and time for Leo and Sue to go home. After lunch Steve weeded in the raised bed garden—we had a row of roses, but thanks to the Spanish needle we could no longer see the roses. Mom and I moved into our green house and set up shop. We used every pot that we could fine, and to our delight, Sue came back later with tons more pots. We had close to 350 plants to transplant into bigger pots. We spent all afternoon, and early evening transplanting. Then we filled up some more 72 cell trays and planted parsley, sage, winter savory, thyme, and horehound. I am hoping to grow my herb plants from seeds this year—so I do not have to travel an hour away to buy organic herbs. I also hope to grow enough herbs to bring my Garden Herb Mix back to the Larder list. Now we spend our days checking on the little baby plants, watering them, watching them grow—and some of them die, and saving them from pests. One day I went out and found two of the Swiss chard leaves were quite black. I brought them inside to Papa’s hand lens that he used to find phosphate in a dirt sample. To my dismay I saw an army of microscopic green worms. We doused them with soapy water—but they squirmed on. So we powdered them with diatomaceous earth, and they ceased living. The damage was already done though, for with the two true leaves of the Swiss chard munched away by an army of hungry baby worms—the little plant died. As I was writing these last few sentences, Mom came in and said that the plants in the green house had worms on them. I went out to investigate—the plants are not even as big as a quarter yet, and some of them have little pin holes in them. The leaves that have pin holes also have little bitty worms on them. I mean little—like take an ink pen and draw an eighth of an inch line and that is how big the little green worms are. I came inside and looked them up—they are Diamondback Moths (well, moths in the baby stage). The more they eat the bigger they grow. HELP!!!! We are being invaded by green aliens! Looking on the positive side of life—if these plants were growing out in the garden we would never know that we had a bug problem until it was too late. Thankfully the greenhouse is right outside our garage, and it is nothing to go out with a flashlight and smash worms—but there has got to be a better method, for I do not plan on growing them in the greenhouse any longer than three weeks.
Down She Comes
With the garden tunnel bed covered with silage tarps, it was of utmost importance to get them as hot as possible—we want those unwanted plants to die for good. Therefore, Tuesday afternoon we took the tarp and shade cloth off of the tunnel—they had given shelter and shade to the chickens that had weeded the garden for us, and which caused our new “weed” problem. Before we could remove the shade cloth though we had to milk the cows, feed the chickens, move the animals, bottle the milk and kefir, make yogurt, move the chickens from one freezer to another, and pick up beef from the butcher and get it organized in the freezer. While Mom and Pa cut all the ties that attached the shade cloth to the tunnel, Steve added some compost to the mullein bed so that I could sprinkle seeds all over it—at least I hope that there were seeds still in the mullein stalks. Once the shade cloth was down and folded up, the mullein bed seeded, and the chicken roost folded up, we headed for the milk house to package eggs. At 3:30 I had to teach piano lessons, and then I helped finish up the eggs. Then around 4:30 we headed to town to buy some much needed groceries.
A Picture says a Thousand Words
Wednesday was the Crane’s day to come to the farm. They love it here, and I think that they would be content to spend all their days here. If we were hiring, I think that they would be applying. While they come to work on the farm—they consider it a vacation, and to miss a trip to the farm—is most terrible. Each has their special jobs that they enjoy the most here, but they are willing to do about anything. Sometimes we get to ask them to do things that allow them to use the skills that they are learning—like photography. Samuel has been learning quite a bit about photography lately, and I have been giving him quite a bit of practice. Lately I have wanted to get a good picture of the October daisies that are in full bloom in the garden, and I wanted some good wildlife photos of the whistling ducks on the pond. Seven years ago when Tropical Storm Debbie unloaded 24 inches of rain in a twelve hour time-span, we ended up with a lake at the south end of our property instead of a pond. All kinds of large birds came to visit, but two birds that we had never seen before took up residence on the pond. They made the neatest sound, and they roosted in the trees—but they were ducks. That was seven years ago and now there is a flock of about 30 of them. They live in the area—and mate, and have babies. It is always neat to hear them fly over, and especially fascinating to visit the pond and see them swimming around, bathing, or eating out of the feeding trough. I think that they enjoy the peace and quiet that the pond offers them—and they don’t even fly away when we come to visit.
Preparing For a Farm Day
Thursday we had the sheer joy of weeding in the garden all day. It is October and it is time to get the wildflower seeds and spring flower seeds sown into the garden. These beds needed to be weeded first—and nasty nut grass had taken over some of them. I have a few wildflower seed mixes to plant, but then there are California orange poppies, Mexican yellow poppies, Blue forget-me-nots, baby’s breath, larkspur, bachelor buttons, and blue cornflower. Some will be direct seeded into the garden beds, and some will be started in seed flats. Another thing that is encouraging us to get rid of as many weeds as possible—is that in two weeks we are having a Farm Day here. The idea is for people to come and see where their food comes from. To have a chance to meet and greet the cows that give them milk, yogurt and kefir and the chickens that lay eggs for them. They can also see how the meat chickens and the Thanksgiving turkeys are raised. Then there are the gardens to stroll through—where some things are growing now, and many things will hopefully be growing by mid-November.
No Help!
Saturday morning we got a phone call at 7:30 in the morning. It was Moises, and I thought that he was calling to get a ride to work—but I was wrong. Moises had twisted his foot very badly at his house Friday afternoon and he was in so much pain that he couldn’t stand on it. Now Moises has worked for us for almost seven years, and I do not believe that he could fill up one hand with how many days he has missed. He is the most faithful worker a person could have. Once he couldn’t find a ride, so he decided to ride his bike to work. It took him two hours to get here—but he got here. Moises sets up the milking parlor for milking, brings in the cows, catches the poo when the cows have to go while we are milking them, carries all the heavy tanks of milk for us, and then washes up all the equipment—a very valuable helper! With a swollen foot though, he wasn’t sure how many days he would miss from work. Saturday we got done with everything by 1:00—but we had our challenges. I am prone to screw down all the nuts and bolts pretty tight, but I cannot unscrew them. Thankfully Papa did manage—but he had to use a wrench. The hoses grip onto the claws so tight that they are next to impossible to pull off. Papa had to do it for us. Then I forgot to put the little yellow stoppers on the openings of the air hoses on the milk claws—and filled the air hoses with water—oops! This morning we had to wash up all the equipment before we could leave for church. Papa was still cleaning up the milking parlor and putting back the cows so Mom and I had to break down the equipment to be washed. Thankfully Mom didn’t tighten the nuts as tight as I did, but those hoses where still pretty stubborn. Mom and I had to do tug-of-war with one set today. By this afternoon I have found a few muscles that I do not usually use. My arm muscle below my shoulder feels like someone punched it. Moises must have some pretty strong muscles—for he does this stuff seven days a week. We got a phone call tonight—it was Moises. You cannot tie that boy down. He says that he is coming to work tomorrow—and his foot is in a medical boot! We shall see how this works—I wouldn’t want to stand on my foot all day if I had sprained it. We were not expecting Moises to be back for at least a week, maybe two or three—but as I said, you cannot keep him down.
I hope that you have a good week. I am still listening for the first call of the Phoebe bird—it is October!
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare