266
Hi Everyone,
If ever there was a week where we could see the Lord’s hand in everything—this was the week.
In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, He also created a garden and put Adam and Eve there to tend to it. We found out this week that God is still in the business of planting gardens—and He even weeds them too. Truly “the heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows His handiwork.” (Psalms 19:1) Monday we were working in the garden weeding away. We had one last bed to conquer of its weeds—especially before it is time to plant the sweet potatoes in July. Not only had nut grass taken over, but so had thorny pigweed and cosmos. The cosmos isn’t exactly a weed—but most of the bed was covered in it since I grew the cosmos there last year. If you want a free flower garden—let your flowers go to seed. We have a nice crop of sunflowers, zinnias and cosmos this year—that we didn’t plant. J Last year we grew the everglades tomato, and the mockingbirds spread the seed everywhere. One of those places was in the caterpillar tunnel before we covered it for the winter. Therefore, all winter long a tomato plant was growing in the tunnel being protected from the freezing weather outside. Around February I do believe that we got to eat our first little tomato. It is producing nicely, but we are planning on raising some chickens in the tunnel during the summer—and they will eat my tomato plant gone, gone. I wanted to start some new plants so that they would be producing by the time the other one is devoured by the chickens. Planting new seeds, or finding some “weedling tomatoes” was on my agenda for last week. As Steve and I were pulling up cosmos, pigweed, and crabgrass out of the garden bed, Steve unearthed about five little Everglades tomato plants. Not only did God already have some tomatoes growing for me, they were also growing in the perfect place where all we had to do was put up a trellis so that they could grow up it. Right down the middle of the bed, we have a pathway with arched trellis’s going over it. The little tomato plants were in the perfect place to put a trellis that would be in a straight row with all the other trellis’s. We only had to transplant one plant, for two were already in the perfect location—and don’t tell anyone, but two plants had to be deemed “weeds” for they were truly in the way. Not only had God dotted our garden with pretty flowers, and placed some tomato plants in the perfect place—He also weeded a large portion of our garden. For years (nine or so), our garden has been taken over by Florida Betony. It is so invasive, and to make matters so terrible—you can spend hours weeding it, to only have it come right back if you leave even a piece of root. We have sifted dirt, emptied whole beds of all their dirt, given up, and continued to weed—all to no avail. We have four asparagus beds, but only two have been usable for quite a few years because of the betony. Monday afternoon all that changed. As we were walking through the garden we realized that the two beds of asparagus were full of the tall green, feathery asparagus plants. As we looked closer, we noticed that you could almost see the ground—and that there was no betony in the beds. As we looked through the rest of the garden there was not one piece of betony to be found in any of the raised beds. We were so excited, and thanked the Lord for His mercy. We still have a few patches in our market gardens, but they hopefully will be easier to control.
While we spent our morning in the garden, we spent our afternoon doing eggs. Steve left at 5:00, and Mom and I headed back to the garden to harvest the first crop of green beans. Then we came inside and cooked dinner—and of course fresh green beans were on the menu.
In Genesis 1:3 we read, “And God said, Let there be . . .” (and it came to pass). For years I have dreamed of having a Garden Tour or an Herb Walk—of doing workshops in the garden. Last year I wrote the email to have an Herb Walk last May, but the Garden was under so much construction that everyone would have been tripping over string. So we decided to not have an Herb Walk. By this spring the strings were gone, and the concrete around the fire pit was poured, and I was biting at the bit to have a Garden Tour/Herb Walk. I hadn’t voiced my opinion yet, but back in March when we were setting up the website with our dear friend Alison, she had made an event page with fake (but ideal) events to give us an idea of what the page would look like. Since we were going to be going live with the website, we needed to put in real events—the first being the Sheep Seminar in April. One of her “fake” events was a Garden Tour—and I voiced my opinion that I really wanted to do it, and that May was the perfect month to tour the garden. All the flowers and the herbs are at their peak in May. In about two minutes we bounced the idea off of Mom, and she gave the okay, and I was one happy camper. I rewrote my Garden Tour Flyer (for when our computer crashed last fall, I lost my first draft.) Alison posted it on the website, and I sent out emails to everyone on my email list. The emails began to come in, and the story was the same over and over –“It sounds like such a great idea, I would love to come, but . . .” Then I got one email that said—“I will be there, and will mail you a check.” I was hopeful that more people would be able to come, but as the time grew closer, I still only had one person who could attend, and many that wished they could. If anyone knows the secret of how to plan an event when the rest of the world is doing nothing—kindly let me know please. J I decided that I didn’t want to have a tour with just one person, so I cancelled the event. I asked Alison to remove it from the website, but I did not send out an email telling anyone that I was cancelling. Then last Monday (five days before the event), I got an email from someone asking if I had received her check for the tour—she and her friend were planning on coming. I wrote her and told her that I had cancelled the event. Then I had another idea—what if others were planning on coming, and hadn’t told me yet? So I sent out another email asking if anyone was interested. Once again I received lots of emails from people that were interested—but couldn’t come. I did receive a few though from people that was planning on coming. So I had Alison put it back up on the website, and I contacted those whom I had cancelled on, and told them that the event was for sure going to happen. So, I had a dream—but I didn’t believe that it would come true. God knew my heart, and he brought the dream to pass. Now all we had to do was prepare! How much could we get accomplished in three days?
Tuesday morning we milked the cows, and then as soon as Steve and I had the milk bottled, then he and Mom headed to the garden to begin mowing, finish weeding, and do some tilling. I bottled the kefir, and then I joined them. We got the bed that we had been working in all weeded, the trellis put up for the tomatoes, and the crabgrass mowed down—now Steve could till up the bed. I marked where he was supposed to till, we pulled all the hoses out of the way, and he tilled. Mom called us in for lunch, and I was letting Steve finish the row. Then it happened—the tiller quit working! A hose was buried under the ground where we didn’t realize, and it wrapped itself around the axel near the blades like a boa constrictor. Steve moaned, and when I looked—all I could do was laugh. We headed in for lunch, and after we ate, Papa was able to unwind the hose. To our delight it still worked just fine—no leaks. We worked in the garden until 5:00, and then it was bedtime—we wished! It was actually time to cook dinner, do the dishes, and make all the receipts for the Jacksonville orders.
Wednesday morning was cool and refreshing. The Cranes came over and the boys were a big help. Peter had the great joy of spending his 17th birthday working on the farm—although I am not too sure that they consider it work. They helped Steve move the chicken pens around, take a batch of chickens from the brooder house to the hoop house in the pasture. Then Samuel helped us milk, while Peter and Timothy helped Steve package eggs. After the milking they put the cows away, cleaned up the milking parlor, bottled the milk, and helped pack the Jacksonville order into the van. I put all the milk products and meat into the ice chests, and then they carry the heavy loads to the van and ice them down. The last item to be packed is all the eggs—of which they always have to ask me how many to pack, for I always forget to tell them. Once the order is all packed, Timothy volunteered to continue to help Steve package eggs, while Samuel and Peter went to gather the eggs for the day. I spent my afternoon preparing for the Herb Walk—reading books, writing notes, and making lists.
Thursday morning Mom and I milked the cows and headed to the garden to get as much of the garden beds weeded and the walkways cleaned up. A few beds that I had planted with flower seeds had sprouted—weeds. So we weeded them. One bed I couldn’t see that any flowers had sprouted and I took the triangle hoe to it. Then I headed to another bed and I made one push with the hoe and saw a little flower plant—actually I ran over three of them. I put aside the hoe, and began to weed by hand. To my delight, quite a few flowers had sprouted. To my dismay the flowers had also sprouted in the other bed, but the weeds were too thick to see and I had hoed them under. Next time I plan on starting flowers in trays, and then transplanting them when they get bigger. At 2:00 Papa called us in—for it was past time to fix lunch. Then I headed to town around 3:30. I needed groceries, and I wanted to check the Discount racks at Lowe’s to see if they had any creeping flowers to fill in the spaces that my flower seeds failed at. I accomplished my mission, and made it home around 6:30. I immediately started dinner—though my body was ready for bed. Food revived me, and after dinner Mom and I headed to the garden to harvest green beans. It was 8:00, and the sun was setting fast. We got about five rows harvested before we could no longer see the beans in the midst of all the leaves. The moon was pretty bright, so we grabbed the plants that I had just bought and quickly plopped them into their new home in the rich soil of the garden beds. It was going on 9:00 when we finished, and we relaxed on the benches around the fire pit in the middle of the garden. We came back inside at 9:30, and did the dishes and went to bed.
While most of the week was spent working hard, Friday made up for it. I was supposed to make kombucha and yogurt, but as Proverbs 16:9 says, “A man's heart deviseth his way: but the LORD directeth his steps.” I forgot to make yogurt, and we never had any time to make kombucha, because—we had to harvest the rest of the green beans. We got about a five gallon bucket full, and they needed to be snapped and canned right away. So, after lunch Mom and I pulled the sofa up to the computer, grabbed out big tubs of green beans, a bag for the ends, and we watched garden videos all afternoon while we snapped beans. It was about 5:00 when we finished snapping, and then we had to wash them, pack them into jars, and can them. While the beans were being canned in the pressure cooker, I cooked dinner. We ended up with 38 pints of green beans—and they are ready to be picked again tomorrow. After dinner I had receipts to make for the Gainesville order, and I had the brochures and goodie bag labels to make for the Garden Tour/Herb Walk.
Saturday dawned bright and early for Mom who was in the garden around 6:00 to watch the sunrise—well, not exactly. She wanted to get a little bit more of the garden weeded before the garden tour began at 1:00. I slept in! I arrived in the kitchen shortly after 7:00 and cooked breakfast. Then there were garden maps to label, brochures to fold, goodie bags to put the stickers on, cows to milk, orders to pack, tea glasses to wash and dry, a pitcher to wash, supplies to gather, the Gazebo to set up with a table and chairs, and a flower bouquet to make for the table. We were swallowing our lunch when the first guest arrived. We ended up with a total of seven guests, and one of them (Diane Royal) was one of our very first customers. The Cranes were our first customers—we drove to Jacksonville every week to deliver them two gallons of milk. Then Diane Royal, one of the Weston A. Price chapter leaders in Jacksonville, was our very second customer. For months we drove to Jacksonville for just these two families. By word of mouth, and by a booth at a Sally Fallon seminar in Gainesville, we have been growing ever since. Diane has seen a lot of changes on the farm, and one we were talking about yesterday as she was touring through the Poultry Kitchen. When she first started buying chickens from us, you had to come to the farm to pick up your chickens the day we processed them, and you had to bring your own bags—2 gallon Ziploc bags that is. Since our chickens weighed between 5 and 6 pounds each, they would only fit into a 2 gallon bag. Some people would show up with one gallon bags, and we would have to help them out—for the bird was not about to fit. We also used to process on the concrete outside of our garage, and we would do all the sales and packaging in our garage. When a doctor in Clearwater ordered chickens—that we had to deliver to him, Papa said that it was time that we had nice bags and labels for our chickens. Then when we got a walk in cooler and freezer, people no longer had to come to the farm to pick up fresh birds—although we are not opposed to that at all. Before, we only offered chickens in the spring and the fall, and now we offer them year round. My how times have changed—for the better!
The Garden Tour was a nice success. Everyone enjoyed themselves, and while the sun was shining brightly, and the temp was around 95, we did get a few clouds and some nice breeze. They got to taste the Everglade tomatoes, see the caterpillar tunnel without its coat on, and behold the majestic sunflowers in their glory. There were giant onions, lush green beans, pretty zinnias, cantaloupe flowers, and squash and bean plants climbing up the trellises. In the raised beds there was a whole bed of white flowers, daylilies of all colors, wildflowers, roses, dianthus, and snapdragons to delight the eyes. To tempt the taste buds and the nose, there were all the herbs: peppermint, spearmint, Mexican tarragon, oregano, cinnamon basil, thyme, sage, cutting celery, sweet fennel, and chives to name a few. As we strolled through the garden I showed them how I harvest, dehydrate, and make herbal oils with the herbs. We ended the tour relaxing in the gazebo while we made a cold batch of apple mint tea.
When the tour was over, I came inside and practiced my piano and bottled the kombucha. I did not have the energy or time to make a new batch—but tomorrow is another day. There was still dinner to cook and dishes to do, and then we called it a day (or was it a week), and we retired for the night to rest our weary bodies. It was a good week though. Tomorrow we start a new work week—and working we shall be doing.
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare