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Hi Everyone,
I have a strong feeling that last week was probably one of the busiest weeks of the year. On our way home from church this afternoon we could honestly say—we survived! Now, if I don’t do anything productive tomorrow besides milking cows and taking care of tons of emails, I will not be surprised. We are truly exhausted. So grab a cup of coffee, or some strong tea and get ready for an adventure.
Monday morning while I was setting up to milk I saw these big things next door in the neighbor’s grain field. I thought at first that they might be coyotes, or people hunting birds. So I ran inside for the binoculars—and boy was I amazed. Every year when the whooping cranes fly south, I always wish that they would land here. To my delight I saw six Sandhill cranes walking around in the neighbor’s field. They are about 4 feet tall, and spent their morning walking all over the neighbor’s grain field.
Monday was a day that I had marked on the calendar as a good day to harvest the sweet potatoes. We had two long rows of red sweet potatoes and two longer rows of white sweet potatoes. Then we had a large bed of sweet potatoes that had come up from sweet potatoes that we didn’t manage to find in our treasure hunt for sweet potatoes last year. After lunch we headed to the garden—and we started with the white sweet potatoes, and we began to dig, and dig, and dig. Steve pulled all the vines away from the mounds so that we could dig—but we were not finding anything. Well, that isn’t exactly true—we found about 20 sweet potatoes max, and they were not big. Then we headed over to the red sweet potato rows—and there we dug up about 70 pounds of sweet potatoes. We also dug up two old rats nests. They were made of straw, they were under the ground, and they were situated right underneath a sweet potato plant—and all around the nest was half eaten sweet potatoes. We found a good handful of half eaten sweet potatoes—but mostly we found plants that had produced abundantly and the rats had eaten them all gone. When we dug up the plants that were loaded they had about 6 sweet potatoes hanging from the mother vine. All the other vines were totally empty, or had little pieces left of uneaten sweet potatoes. As the saying goes—“There is always next year,” and until then we will have to figure out how to prevent rats from eating all the sweet potatoes. When we finished our fruitless harvest in the white sweet potato bed, Steve and I moaned remembering all the work that we had put into preparing those rows to plant the sweet potato slips back in July. We had hours of labor that produced very little fruit. I figured that we have two ways to look at the situation:
1. Complain about the rats eating all of the sweet potatoes
2. Praise the Lord for the 80 pounds that we were able to harvest—that is 80 pounds worth of sweet potatoes that we do not have to buy.
Therefore, I am trying to be grateful for the harvest. It is easy to be thankful when we are given $1,000, but are we just as grateful when we are given $1?
Tuesday was full of little jobs all day long. After we milked the cows I worked on orders, and then I headed to the garden to harvest some herbs for my Garden Herb Mix. I thought that I harvested a lot of herbs, but in the end it only made 3 jars. I like to harvest in small batches—but not that small. Then I still had chickens in the Poultry kitchen freezers and we were going to need them to put ice in while we harvested the turkeys on Friday. So Steve and I transferred the chickens from those freezers to the walk in freezer. Then we went to the garden to finish harvesting the sweet potatoes in the large bed that grew from last year’s missed sweet potatoes. We spent a few hours digging—but only unearthed about twenty not so big sweet potatoes. Then it was time for me to teach piano lessons. After my lessons, I joined Steve and Mom in the milk house to help them package eggs. Later that night as we were fixing to climb into bed Papa stepped into the garage to check on something—and found a skunk eating the cat food. It was all white with black stripes. Have you ever tried to shoo a skunk away? They do not move very easily. They hide behind things—but since they are so slow, you can go up and move the object that they are hiding behind, as long as you keep an eye on their tail and when the tail goes up—you back up. Our cats were going up and sniffing it, and we finally gave up on the white one, and it was gone by morning. The next night there was a black one with white stripes—and Papa and I successfully got it out of the garage.
Most of my afternoon on Wednesday was spent getting all the paperwork ready for the turkey harvest on Friday. There were labels to print, emails to send, and papers to get ready for writing down the weights. Around 4:30, Mom and I headed outside to do the evening chores since Papa was in Jacksonville making deliveries. We got in sometime after 5:00 and then we watched a gardening video so that I could do a lot of ironing. We have been so busy of late that the pile was getting higher and higher. Papa got home around 7:30 and we had some Pinto bean soup that we made using the pinto beans that Mom had just canned. They were the easiest thing to can—put ½ cup of dried beans in a pint jar, fill with water, put on the lid and ring and process in a canner at 10 pounds of pressure for 75 minutes.
When Thursday arrived life began to get busy. We milked the cows and then while Papa and I bottled the milk, Mom began to look for a metal table for the poultry kitchen—one that had sinks in it and table space and sides so that the water doesn’t run off the edge and soak us. I had spent some time on Wednesday looking for a sink for the building. Both searches were useless. I do not know how people find them—but they do. Mom did head to town to buy a table that was big enough to set ten people—for we had a crowd coming to help us with the turkeys. I spent my afternoon in the kitchen. I had yogurt to make, and dried herbs to strip off of their stems so I could make my Garden Herb Mix. Then I had to prepare for the meal that we would feed all of our help. The menu consisted of Chuck roast, green beans, sweet potato and apples, salad, and oatmeal raisin cookies. The plan was to stop and eat lunch at 2:00—whether we were done with the turkeys or not. I would put the chuck roast in the oven in the morning, and the green beans were canned so all I would have to do is dump them in the crock-pot in the morning. I went ahead and made a large salad, and then I peeled the sweet potatoes and apples and cut them up and put them in a crock-pot with butter, cinnamon, maple syrup, and raisins. I put them in the fridge, and then come Friday morning all I had to do was put the dish into the heating part of the crock-pot and let it cook. My last preparation was to bake some Oatmeal raisin cookies—the recipe will arrive on the website the first week of December. While the cookies were baking, I was also busy cooking dinner. To my delight though, we did manage to get everything done in a reasonable time and get to bed before 10:00, which was a very good thing because. . . . .
. . . .Friday started at 5:00 in the morning. It was quite early and our brains were not yet awake—but we pressed on. Our first chore for the day was to get the cows milked, and Papa had his chores to do out in the pasture—move the chickens, cows, and sheep. Steve and Moises arrived about 7:00. Moises helped us finish milking the cows while Steve did his pasture chores—feed the bull (Flag), feed the heifers, and take care of the chickens, ducks and goose at the Poultry Barn. By 7:30 we were done with the milking, and I had Steve bring me the grass clippers so that I could cut down some of the turmeric and pine cone ginger that was blocking the sidewalk from the poultry kitchen to the milk house. Then while Steve and Moises bottled the milk and cleaned up the equipment, we fixed our breakfast and I got the roast in the oven. We had this very large chuck roast in the freezer that I was saving for a crowd, and since we had 8 people coming to help us with the turkeys—it was the perfect time to cook it. I always cook my roasts frozen, at 250F for 6 hours. When I unwrapped one layer of the roast, I saw that the wrapper said—brisket. I thought, “O no, I grabbed the wrong roast.” So I wrapped it back up, and there was a sticker that said “Chuck Roast”. Great! I had my big roast, but it was not a chuck, it was a brisket. I had never cooked a brisket this way, but this was going to be a trial run—and I had 10 people to feed it to. Once breakfast was over I did the dishes and finished getting the meal preparations—plates, glasses, napkins, silverware, salt and pepper, salad dressing, tablecloth, drinking water. To make the finishing touches I grabbed a pint jar, filled it with water, and filled it with red roses from the courtyard. Mom and Papa were getting the scalder ready, cleaning the floors, getting the tables set up, and all the tubs that we would need to soak the parts and the turkeys. At 10:00 our helpers started to arrive. By 10:30 we were in full harvest mode. We had help that drove over from Jacksonville—about two hours. Then we had some that traveled about 30 minutes, and some that traveled an hour. We also had two that traveled all the way from Tampa. Some could help us until 2:00, some until 3:00, and others until 4:00. The two that came from Tampa helped us until the turkeys were all harvested—at 6:00. Then we served them dinner and by 7:00 they were on their way for their three hour trek south. Some helped Papa at the killing cones and in the scalder and plucker room. Then others helped at the eviscerating table. Some had the tedious job of cleaning the gizzards, and others were in charge of packaging the turkeys and getting them to the cooler. Only two of our helpers had ever processed turkeys—they helped us a few years back. The rest of them were newbies. It was really funny when they first arrived to watch them fly back a good six feet every time the water sprayer was turned on. I knew that they had become pros when one announced that she had just filled her boots with water. We were rinsing off the turkey, and the water was running off of the edge—and into her boots, because she was standing right close to the table. This is why we want a table with sides. We all had a wonderful time working together. Once everyone was gone, Mom and I had about 20 turkeys left to package, and then there was the entire cleanup. The cleanup process is the one negative side of having a poultry kitchen—there is so much more involved in cleanup. It was 10:00 when I got to come inside for a hot shower, and 10:20 by the time Mom and Papa came inside. We did learn though that 44 turkeys is really too many for us to do in one day. Since we have people that want the biggest turkey, and people that want the smallest turkey—we always do them all in one day. I think that next year we shall order half males and half females. Then we can butcher half of each on Friday, and the other half on Monday. The males get big, and the females are smaller—so we should be able to satisfy everyone.
Saturday we thankfully were able to sleep in—but once we got up, our feet hit the floor running. I had to put together all the Gainesville orders still—and make all the receipts. The kitchen needed to be cleaned up, breakfast fixed, and the cows milked. While we were milking, our cow Decci went into labor. We left her in the field and once we had everything done—we expected to check back with her, but there was kefir to bottle and orders to be packed. Papa had to get 7 pounds of chestnuts floated and packed. Plus I had to figure out who was getting what turkeys and get them packed for delivery. The Gainesville order took a long time to pack, and Papa was about 20 minutes late in leaving. We were exhausted—and we decided to rest for a little bit—but…. To our delight while Mom and I were fixing our lunch, I looked out the window and saw that Decci had finally given birth—to the most beautiful heifer calf. Little Merci is the sweetest little thing, and she cannot get any prettier. Then there were customers to tend to, turkeys to cut up and package, and more things to cleanup, plus dinner to cook. After dinner we had to make a pumpkin casserole, and clean up the crock-pots so that they would be ready to cook some more green beans and some turkey and gravy—for today we had a Thanksgiving dinner at church. Once again I was thankful that we were in bed before 10:00 at night—for our Sunday morning began at 5:00.
I hope that you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving. We haven’t exactly figured out what we are going to be doing. Half of me would like to invite everyone who has no family to spend Thanksgiving with—to come to the Farm and have a big Thanksgiving potluck dinner. The other half of me wants to have a relaxing day and find a quiet nook and curl up and read my four new gardening books that I got for my birthday. You see, not only is Thursday Thanksgiving Day; it is also my 44th birthday. I have to say that getting older has its advantages—you tell your parents what you want for your birthday and they tell you to go order it. There are also disadvantages to getting older—I think that my first pair of eye-glasses may be right around the corner. Fine print is one big blur to me, and last week it was all that I could do to read the spreadsheet to pack the orders for Jacksonville. My eyesight is not always blurry, and Papa said that if we bought some legal paper he could make the print a little bigger on the packing sheets—so I procrastinate. There is one thing that I do know—I want to cook a turkey for Thanksgiving, and not just so I can eat turkey, but so I can make a couple of gallons of turkey stock from the roasted bones. The broth makes excellent soups throughout the winter.
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare