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Hi Everyone,
April showers bring May flowers—usually that is, but April seemed to be a dry month around here. Nevertheless, the garden is blooming abundantly with daylilies, roses, sunflowers, zinnias, dianthus, and a mixture of wildflowers. May is usually our dry month, but I am praying that since April was so dry, that May will be wet. So far, so good—and the grass is getting greener every day. With the evening temperatures being in the seventies the grasses will begin to grow by leaps and bounds. The front yard is speckled yellow with dandelions; their cheery little faces are such a delight to behold every morning.
Monday morning bright and early, Mom and Papa headed to Gainesville for a doctor’s appointment. I stayed home to hold down the fort—actually, to milk the cows. Steve did Papa’s chores, while Moises brought in the cows for me to milk them. The milking parlor is set up with two sides, which allow both Mom and I to milk two cows at a time. The idea was for me to milk all my cows on my side. Then I would swap to Mom’s side and milk her cows. Believe it or not, some cows are very picky and only like to be milked in one certain stall. Most of them are not picky, and will go into any open stall, but a few have their “special” stall and will not change to another. I had ten cows to milk, so technically I should have only had to load up the milking parlor five times. Wrong! It was like pulling teeth to get the cows to come in to be milked. They all said that their tummies were full of grass, and they were most satisfied and were not interested in being milked. We had to beg, barter, and plea with just about every cow—talk about a child acting up when the boss is gone. I could only get one milk cow in at a time—except for twice. One of those times I had to be quite talented, because when the second cow came in she went over to Mom’s side and squeezed under the rope that was blocking off that stall. There was already feed in the trough, so it would have been pretty hard to get her out. So, I got my cow hooked up to the milking machine, and then I headed over to Mom’s side to hook up the other cow. It was 11:00 when we accomplished our goal—milking the cows by myself. Once Steve and I got the milk filtered, we headed to the garden to weed. There were some hard packed walkways that were quite weedy, and I was not strong enough to run the hoe down them—so I had Steve weed them. He did a great job! Mom and Papa got home in time for lunch, and then we all headed back to weed in the garden.
On a sad note—Steve told me that when he let out the chickens and the turkeys that morning that my pet chicken Ariel (a green egg layer) was missing. Later when I asked Papa if he knew where she was, he said that she had died. Papa found her dead in the nesting box. Chickens live for about five to seven years—and she had done just that. I shall miss my Sunday night dinners with just Ariel’s green eggs.
Tuesday was a busy day—but then, are not all Tuesday’s busy. For some reason they always seem to be busier than most other days. That morning the cows were more cooperative, and Mom and I got the milking done in a timely manner. Then we bottled the milk and kefir and had lunch. After lunch we packaged eggs—into our hot off the press egg cartons. J That evening as I was working on the orders for the Jacksonville delivery I heard some giggling going on outside. My brother-in-law had brought the two children over for a visit. Makenna helped me bottle feed the two lambs.
Wednesday my Papa had a birthday—and he got to spend it serving all our dear customers in Jacksonville. The Crane’s arrived around 8:45 so that Samuel could use his drone to video the sheep moving from one field to another. It was supposed to be a video of the sheep leaving the sheep barn and heading out to pasture—but we forgot to bring the sheep in for the night. Once again the Crane boys were a lot of help. Two helped Steve do his chores, and take a batch of chickens out to pasture from the brooder house. One helped us do the milking. Then there was some kale to harvest, the ice chests to fill with ice and load into the van, and the eggs to gather for the day.
Thursday I had a goal to go to town and get a bunch of shopping done. My list of things that I needed was getting longer and longer, and I was ready to accomplish it. First though—there were cows to milk, and the milk needed to be bottled. I washed a load of laundry and hung it on the clothesline, and to my delight the Lord was merciful to let it be nice and sunny and breezy for the next hour and dried them up quickly—which was a good thing, for just minutes after I brought them inside the heaven’s opened up and it began to rain. As soon as lunch was done, Mom and I headed to town. One of our stops was Lowe’s Garden Center. We have a garden bed that we want to plant in all white flowers. I wanted to check the discount shelves to see if they had any white flowers. We found a whole bunch of flowers for $35. We shall plant them tomorrow, once we have Steve’s help to get compost dirt out of the chicken poultry yard. We thankfully got home at a decent time and were able to have dinner cooked before 7:00. Then Mom and I drove the van out to the garden to unload our stash so that it could get watered—buying plants on the discount shelves usually means that they are half dead, but a little water does revive them.
I had some more fun planned for Friday. About four years ago, my Mom and I went to Tennessee to visit her sisters and go to an estate sale. I had never been to one, and the one we went to just happened to be a really, really nice one. The people in charge said that the owner of the house had the biggest and best antique collection around. We spent hours there, and came home with a few treasures, but a lot of great memories. Here in Florida, most of the Estate sales are auctions—and I do not like auctions. Last Wednesday I saw an ad for an Estate sale at a really big house, and I wanted to go. Mom and I got the milking done, the kefir bottled, and lunch made and ate. Then we headed to the sale. Let me just say that if my first estate sale had been in this house, I would have never gone to another one. It did not take long to go through the house, and we were home in an hour. Once we were home we got some bills paid, folded the laundry, and relaxed some—it had been a busy week. Then we headed to the garden to harvest some kale, carrots and onions for dinner. After dinner I worked on the orders for the Gainesville delivery on Saturday.
Usually Saturdays are one of our more relaxing days, but this Saturday was an exception. We got our milking done, and while Mom and Papa bottled the milk, I packed the order. Then I finished up the receipts and made Papa and I a kefir drink with kefir, frozen bananas and blueberries, turmeric, black pepper, ginger, and cinnamon. Poor Papa came down sick, and I was giving him a good dose of beneficial herbs. As I drank my kefir shake I sat at the computer and put the farm sales into QuickBooks. Then I had to make sure that QuickBooks and our order spreadsheet agreed—of which they didn’t. Therefore I spent the next half hour or so trying to find the mistakes. When that was done Mom and I grabbed a baby bottle of milk to carry down pasture to encourage the newly weaned bottle lambs to move to the next field with the sheep. They haven’t learned yet how to move from field to field. We accomplished our goal, and came back inside to make kombucha. Mom bottled the kombucha while I made more. Then it was time to make dinner. After dinner there were dishes to do, orders to place, piano to practice and a few Christmas lima beans to plant. The first planting of beans had a whole section that rotted in the ground instead of sprouting. The garden is full of newly sprouted plants everywhere—in some places we have to figure out if the sprout is a weed or a flower.
It is now 9:30, and it is time for me to sign off and go to bed. I hope that you have a wonderful week—I know that we have plants to transplant, seeds to plant, eggs to package, and chickens to process on Friday.
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare