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Hi Everyone,
Here I sit at the computer and out the window I can see fields green with winter grasses, and a yard full of flowers---you know the kind that children love to pick and bring to you to put in a vase in the kitchen window. While there are some dandelions, there is also wild mustard, old field toad flax, hen-bit, evening primrose, clover, and blue flax. There is even a cornflower plant that hasn’t started flowering yet. Our front yard is flower free, but our side and back yard are pretty full of flowers for my niece Makenna to pick and for the bottle lambs to eat. So just how did we acquire such a weedy yard? We ran hoop houses full of chickens and ducks back and forth in our yard---the seeds are in the feed. While it does look a little unkempt, they did come in handy on Wednesday when I needed some fresh flowers for my bathroom counter---and I had no time to run to the garden. I slipped out the front door, and ran over to the side yard where I grabbed a few mustard flowers and some blue flax flowers. On the way back to the steps I spotted some old-field toad flax growing at the edge of the porch. Purple, yellow and blue flowers thrown into a crystal vase and I was in style---for a country girl! My niece Makenna is in love with flowers---I think that she needs a giant flower garden. She is constantly picking handfuls of flowers. Last week when she was helping me plant lettuce seeds, she noticed that one of the garden beds was taken over with hen-bit (a small purple flower). She gladly announced that the bed was her very own flower garden and that I was not to walk on the flowers.
If flowers are not enough to say that spring is here---then let’s talk about the birds and the bees. The clover is covered with honeybees and the garden tunnel is a buzz with mason bees and more honeybees. The broccoli is flowering, and all the pollinators are doing their job buzzing from flower to flower. This morning while we were filtering the milk in the milk house (with the door open), I heard the sweet little call of the red-winged black bird. I had just read that the red-winged black bird was one of the first signs of spring in Vermont. I guess it is here too. Then as Mom and I were heading to feed the lambs their bottles, there was a slender black bird on top of the electrical pole chattering away and slapping its wings against its sides. I had never seen a bird behave like this, and found it quite interesting. As we fed the lambs, we watched as one, two, three….fifteen other black birds arrived to sit on the wires or just fly around. When we headed inside to get ready for church, five and twenty blackbirds were all searching for food in our front yard. The blackbirds are called grackles. It has been many years since we have seen them in our yard—and it is nice to have them return.
Then to my utter delight, the three figs that I got for my birthday from a friend have decided to start leafing out. They are still in pots in our garage so that we can protect them from the cold. Once all chance of frost has passed we shall figure out just where to plant them. By next year they should be quite sturdy.
Monday morning my dear friend Lydia arrived to finish the last minute painting on the Little People Barn---she had to add grass under the pigs feet. That only took her about an hour, and then Mom and she worked on painting the weather vane that I had cut out of metal. Actually, they painted it after they welded it altogether. I was camping out in the milk house with Steve and Moises while we creamed the milk for the first time this season. When I sent out the email that we had cream, I sold it all two or three times---thankfully we also creamed on Thursday, but we still didn’t have enough cream to fill all the orders. After the milk was creamed, I got to head to the garage to join in on the “barn” fun. Since the front of the barn has a picture of a hay loft, and the post hanging out the front has a pulley, I went to the hay barn and gathered up some loose hay. Mom tied some pipe cleaners around it to make a bale of hay. Then we tied a rope around it and through the pulley to make it look like we were loading hay into the loft. Since all the painting was now done, we needed to know how to seal the wood so that the weather didn’t have a negative effect on the paint job---especially since we had made the mistake of painting the whole barn ladybug red, from the left over paint we used to paint our laundry room (indoor not outdoor paint). Then while some of the craft paint was outdoor paint, not all of it was. Since we knew that some sealers could turn the paint job white once the rain hit it, we wanted a professionals opinion of how to make our little people barn last. So I called Sherwin Williams Paint Company in town. They called their hot line and called me back. They said that they didn’t have anything that would do what we wanted, and that they would advise just painting the whole barn over. Now if you have seen pictures of the barn and if you only knew that Lydia probably spent ninety hours painting on that barn---you would know that that advice was the wrong advice. So I called a local artist who does wall murals for business’ in town. She was very kind and helpful. She suggested using a clear outdoor deck sealer---much more encouraging advice!
With the little barn all painted, Lydia was free to just hang out with me. So, Tuesday morning she got to help milk. Then we bottled the kefir, made yogurt, fed the lambs, and packaged eggs all day with Steve. Around 1:30 Mom and Dad headed to St. Augustine to a new doctor to see if Mom can get some help with her Hoshimoto’s---an autoimmune disease that attacks the thyroid. You can eat the right foods, and live the right lifestyle, but if you get stressed in any way your body is going to suffer. How to get rid of stress is the all-time question---for you can never get sick (for that is stressful to the body), and you can never love (for when you love, you open your heart up to be hurt or burdened because you care), and you can never be exposed to toxic chemicals (anybody found that perfectly pristine place to live). Hopefully this new doctor can be a lot of help, for Mom’s numbers are climbing too high. So with Mom and Dad gone---Lydia and I were home alone (kind of). Steve was with us doing eggs until 3:45, at which time he headed to gather the eggs for us, and Lydia and I headed to town to run a few errands. By the time we finished the important errands it was 5:15. We had wanted to go to Hobby Lobby, but we had chores to do. We got home and grabbed our jackets (but forgot the flashlights), and headed out to separate the calves for the night, bring the sheep in, feed Sheba and Jill, pick some green onions for dinner (we were going to have soup), and finally lock up the chickens and the turkeys in the Poultry barn. When we were bringing down the sheep we noticed that there were two ewes’ that did not bring their lambs down from the hill. The lambs were freshly born, and travelling was not good for them. So we walked up the hill. One decided to run on with her lamb, but the other lamb was fresher. They took off running at first, but the little lamb couldn’t keep up, so I caught it and handed it to Lydia to carry. The ewe would run ahead then run back and do circles around Lydia. We made it all the way to the sheep barn, and when Lydia put the lamb down she noticed that the pocket of her (my) jacket was covered in newborn baby tar poo. Not only was it on the coat, it also was on her hand. We had lots of laughs, and headed to the water spigot to clean her hand off. She cleaned up the coat once we got back to the house. After the sheep were successfully locked up, we fed Sheba and then we headed to the garden for some green onions. I put the onions in the Gravely and then we headed to lock up the turkeys and the chickens. Locking them up was the easy part, but you must always make sure that you do not lock a rat up in the chicken house. So I used the little LED night light that we keep in the chicken house (for when we forget our flashlight). I checked behind the chicken nesting box (where once we found Pepe le Pew the skunk). The top board was empty, but the bottom board was occupied---and it was our job to make Templeton the rat to vacate the premises. There was one problem though---we couldn’t see very well. So I ran to the garden and confiscated three of Mom’s solar pathway lights that go around the fire pit in the middle of the garden. They were well lit since it was dark, and as I came running across the orchard yard all the heifer calves saw was three lights floating through the air coming toward them---and they scrammed in many directions (but not before they did some dinner damage). Once I was back in the poultry barn, Lydia and I spaced our lights out so that we could see. We disturbed Templeton once, and he came down and ran around---but the lighting still was not bright enough for all we could see was a moving shadow. So, while brave Lydia stood guard, I ran up to the house to get mine and Papa’s extremely bright flashlights. They are so bright that you can read by them and not hurt your eyes. When I got back, we positioned the flashlights so that the whole room was lit up, and then we poked at Templeton and was able to accomplish our goal and escort him out of the chicken house. Then we took the solar light back to the garden, and headed up to the house. It was now 7:30 and we were starving for some soup---but I couldn’t find my onions that I had picked. Mom and I found them the next night---about five feet from where the Gravely was parked and partly chewed up. So, since we had no onions, and it was so late we opted for eggs and toast. We crumbled some left over bacon in the skillet, and just before I was ready to dump in the eggs---Mom and Dad got home. So we added more eggs to the bowl, and put more toast in the toaster and we all had a nice hot meal together as we told our stories of the day.
Wednesday morning Lydia helped feed the lambs and clean the bathrooms before she headed off to some fun at her sister Emily’s for the rest of the week. We got the milking done, the milk bottled, the orders packed and the garden harvested all with the help of our dear friends the Cranes. By noon I was all done and ready for my piano students. After my lessons were over I visited some with my brother who had stopped by, then I worked on laundry and ironing. I also took time to do a little sewing project. Two years ago I bought material to make a new curtain for my bathroom window---my old one was rotting. I never got around to it---but when we had the new metal roof put on, I hung the material up over the window and held it up with thumb tacks. The other day I noticed that the material was getting dusty---but I couldn’t wash it for it would fray the edges. So I did the next best thing—I took it down, shook it out, and went upstairs to the sewing room and made me a curtain. I looked in the closet for curtain rods and found a two inch flat, fat one. It looked small enough, so I made the curtain to fit it---Mom was using my old curtain rod in her bathroom. Once the curtain was all made, and strung onto the curtain rod, I headed to my bathroom to hang it up. To my dismay, the rod was too wide for my window, and it couldn’t be shrunk anymore. I had learned how to use the tinsnips to cut out the weather vane, so I headed to the garage to use those tinsnips. I shrunk the metal curtain rod to fit the window---although the edges were a little sharp and it took a lot of work to get it to go back together. In the end, the curtain looks really nice.
Thursday was spring cleaning day—at least for some of the house. We were having company on Friday and I was ready to take down all the winter decorations in the dining room and replace them with spring décor. I usually wait until March 1st, but with all this spring weather we have been having, I was biting at the bit to change the table setting to something more light and springy. So, off came the hunter green tablecloth with pine tree napkin holders, and on went the pink tablecloth with black rabbit napkin holders. The lighted garland was taken down from the doorways and the windows were scrubbed clean. Now the room is bright and airy---in need of some spring garland and lights. The floors were vacuumed and mopped and the sofas were vacuumed too. I got all the furniture dusted, and then I headed to the garden to harvest some carrots and lettuce for Friday’s lunch and some collards for our dinner. I topped the basket off with some fresh parsley and a handful of little yellow daffodils. When I got back inside I made a meatloaf for dinner, heated up some left over broccoli soufflé, and cooked the collards. While everything cooked I started making some banana pudding. The dinner was done before the pudding was---but since it was beginning to thicken I had to persevere until it was done. After dinner we got the dishes done and crashed for the night.
Friday dawned early---while we got most of the things done on Thursday to prepare for our guests, there was still some things to finish up. I like to cook my roasts frozen at 250 for 6 hours---so, if we wanted to eat lunch at 1:30, I needed the lamb neck roasts in the oven by 7:15. So, at 6:45 I headed to the kitchen to put the lamb in the pot and to make the mustard sauce to go on top. Then I peeled the carrots and sliced them up into the pot with butter and salt to sit until I was ready to cook them. Then we fixed breakfast and milked the cows. Our Pastor’s favorite desert is banana pudding---I made the pudding Thursday night, but then I found out that we had no bananas. So as soon as the milk was bottled, Mom headed to town to buy some bananas. I bottled the kefir and headed inside to set the table and make the salad. At 12:50 I started cooking the carrots---like Thomas Jefferson I agree that the best way to cook most vegetables is sautéed in butter and salt. The potatoes were the easiest part, for all the labor was done months ago when we canned them. All that I had to do was to dump the jars in the pot and heat them up. Around 1:15 Papa headed out to bring in the cows, and then we bottle fed the lambs. Our company arrived around 1:45 and left around 4:30. Our Pastor and his wife, and Pastor Handyside and his wife who are visiting from Scotland were our lovely guest. The fun part of the meal was that all of it was grown here on the farm (except the celery and the radishes that were in the salad). Mrs. Handyside gave me a sewing thimble that she brought all the way from Scotland. Later when we were talking about growing lettuce, I remembered that Thomas Jefferson said that every two weeks you should plant a thimble full of lettuce seed----and with a little thimble in my pocket I could visualize it real well. We had a wonderful time fellowshipping and getting to know each other better. After they left we had a customer arrive and then Papa went to do the chores and Mom and I decided to have banana pudding for dinner. J I then did all the orders and receipts for the Gainesville delivery on Saturday.
Saturday morning came too early---even though I slept in until 7:00. It had been a long week, and a very full last few days. Mom and I got the milking done and then Mom headed to the garden to harvest a few veggies for the delivery. When Mom got back she and Papa bottled the milk while I packed the Gainesville orders. Then once Papa was on his way I got my ironing done---finally, for the first time this year I am all caught up with my ironing. Around 2:30 a family that is interested in sheep came by to pick our brains. We had a lovely time sharing about sheep with them, and even getting the chance to take a tour through the garden. When we got back inside I practiced my piano and figured out which hymn I was to play for the offertory today at church. Usually I figure it out early in the week, but I had been a little too busy to sit down and think about it. Then it was dinner time, and once we fed the lambs their evening bottle we could retire and relax ourselves.
I hope you have a good week. We were supposed to plant potatoes on Saturday, but time ran out. So I shall throw out planting by the moon this time, and do my best to get them in the ground tomorrow. For those of you who did not enjoy last week’s weather in the high 80’s, I think that this week’s weather will be more to your delight (40’s, 50’s, 60’s and 70’s).
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare