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Hi Everyone,
If this week could be summed up by a few Scripture verses, they would be, “To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;” Ecclesiastes 3:1-2.
Monday and Tuesday we spent the majority of our time pulling up weeds and old plants in order to make the garden ready to plant new seeds on Tuesday. I wanted to plant butternut, acorn, spaghetti, yellow and zucchini squashes, along with cantaloupe, cucumbers and more noodle beans. Before we could plant though—all the trellises and a few of the garden beds needed to have all the weeds and old plants removed. The neighbor girl, Leslie, who had been helping us some this summer, wanted to head to the garden early—while it was not so hot. So, while Carry helped Mom and me with the milking, Leslie headed to the garden. Once we were done milking and had the milk bottled, we all headed to the garden for a few hours. Rain showers brought our gardening to a stop—but it was time for lunch anyway. After lunch Mom and I headed back to the garden, while Steve, Carry, and Leslie packaged eggs. We had told Steve to come and join us in the garden at 3:45, and the girls would clean up the kitchen before they headed home—but, it began to rain around 3:30 and we came in. They were done with the eggs, and we went ahead and called it a day. A little later the mail lady arrived—with a flat tire. We tried to fill it up for her, but alas it was cracked and her husband had to come and take off the tire and go get a new one.
I had one goal for Tuesday, but a long list of things that needed to be done. I was very grateful for all the hands that we had helping—for delegation is the key to getting things done quickly. While Mom and I milked the cows, Leslie bottled the kefir, and Carry got the yogurt containers ready to fill with yogurt. Then she fed the baby turkeys their daily ration of kefir. It is amazing how birds with beaks can clean a tray of kefir spic and span. They have to lick it with their tongues—but it shows just how much they love kefir. Every morning they come and stand at the door waiting for their kefir. Then once we put it down, they mob it. Once we were done milking, Carry, Leslie and I headed to the garden to finish weeding and taking old vine plants off the trellises. Mom, Steve and Papa worked on the lawn mower which kept blowing a fuse. Mom has been too busy the last few weeks to mow—and now when she wanted to, the lawn mower is broke. We girls were probably in the garden close to an hour when I noticed the sky was getting blacker by the minute. We all wanted to finish our work, but it was beginning to look very doubtful. Then I felt a drop—and I knew that we had better run for it. Poor Leslie only had four feet of sweet potato vines left to trim back and she didn’t want to stop for nothing. I understood her fully, but I knew it would not be good to stay any longer. By the time we reached the Gravely, it was raining. Carry was on the other side of the garden pulling red noodle vines off of a trellis. We stopped to pick her up, and it was raining so hard I could hardly open my eyes—the Gravely has no windshield. By the time we made it up to the house Carry and I were soaked. Leslie was sitting in the back seat and so was shielded by Carry from the rain. I took Carry home for a fresh change of clothes, and then found me some dry clothes to. It was noon so we decided to break for lunch. After lunch I quickly made the yogurt and then we all headed back to the garden. We had to finish cleaning up the trellises and weeding a few more beds before I could have Steve bring me some composted dirt out of the poultry yard so that I could mix it with the garden dirt and plant the seeds. Before Steve could get around to getting me some dirt though—we had to put the new shade cloth over the caterpillar tunnel so that we could move the compost chickens into the tunnel so that they could do the weeding for us. The fall/winter garden will be ready to be planted the beginning of September, and I do not want to be the one who weeds the tunnel. So I hired about 22 busy birds to do it for me. We all agreed that putting up the shade cloth is much easier than covering the tunnel with the plastic. Once the shade cloth was in place, then one end was covered with a tarp to give the chickens shelter at night and during the rain. Steve was now able to get me dirt, and I was ready to plant seeds. I was half way done when my piano student arrived—I am sure that not many piano teachers are covered in dirt when their students arrive. I quickly cleaned up and had a lovely half hour of teaching my new student Sarah. The rains returned by the time that my lesson was over, and I was glad to have dodged it. It was time for Leslie, Carry and Steve to head home. Once the rain stopped, Mom and I headed back to the garden. Mom had to finish attaching the shade cloth to the tunnel, and I finished mixing the compost that Steve had gathered for me and getting the seeds planted in the ground.
Wednesday was the BIG day, and we were grateful to have both neighbor girls and the three Crane boys here to help. It was Carry and Leslie’s last day to help us on the farm—for they had to help decorate for a wedding on Thursday and Friday, and they start back to school on Monday. We have really enjoyed having the girls help with different things this summer. Their laughter and chatter made many of the chores so much more enjoyable. Processing chickens was not their favorite thing, but O how their presence helped pass the time with lots of laughter. They loved packaging eggs, and that was actually the last chore that they did for us on Wednesday. They helped us milk the cows—which is Carry’s all-time favorite job on the farm, and then they worked at packing the Jacksonville order while I finished making receipts for the last minute customers. The Crane boys were having adventures themselves. First off there was the heifers to feed, and the chickens to take care of (feed, water, and drag their pen to fresh grass). Secondly they had to move all 23 chickens from the Poultry barn to the caterpillar tunnel. Then it was time to filter the milk and pack the ice chests into the van for the delivery. Timothy and Mom cleaned out the poultry barn and put new bedding down. Then Steve, the Crane boys and Mom gathered all 100 of the new laying hens (and a few roosters), and took them to the poultry barn and compost yard to “grow up”. They will live there until they start laying eggs, and then we will move them to one of the mobile chicken tractors out in the pastures. I think that collecting the chickens became a race to see who could collect the most chickens at one time. I will say that Mom won—because dresses hold a lot more chickens than one can gather in their arms. Mom would grab the bottom of her dress, shoo a bunch of chickens into a corner and then scoop them up with her dress—about 15 of them at one time.
On Wednesday morning when Papa headed out to the pasture to bring in the cows for milking, one of the cows would not come in. Papa walked out to check on Bella to see what was up—and little did he know what he was about to discover. Before he got to Bella, he came across a dead sheep—that was half eaten and tore up. Coyotes had struck, but Papa thought that the sheep might just have died. When he got to Bella, the news was better—she had delivered a cute little heifer calf. We are calling her Bonita, and she has A2 genes. A little while later when Papa headed back out to the sheep field, he found another sheep torn up and eaten. It was then that he realized that a pack of coyotes had attacked our sheep in the night. Poor Bella—I wonder what it was like for her having just had a baby, and a pack of coyotes are attacking and killing two sheep in the same field with her. We knew it was coyotes, because dogs kill just for the fun of it, and they do not eat what they kill, and they would not have stopped at two. One year we lost 19 rams in one night to a pack of wild dogs—they chased the sheep, then they get a taste of blood, and kept at it until we arrived on the scene. It was one of the worst things that we have ever experienced on the farm. Since we lost two sheep, we also knew that it was a pack of coyotes. The last we heard a pack of 5 was noticed in the woods behind the neighbor’s house a few years ago. Later that morning, Papa moved the sheep and cows to a new pasture, and we haven’t had any more problems since. Later that evening, Mom and I were out doing the evening chores. We notice that little Bonita was trying to nurse on Bella’s neck and bottom—but not the udder. She would walk round and round trying to nurse every place up high. We went out to try to help her find the teats, but Bella would not stand still for us, but was determined to get her calf far away from us. We were helpless. As we walked through the pasture though, we noticed another little calf. June had given birth to a little heifer also—and she had a big white patch on her forehead. We are calling June’s calf—Summer! In twenty-four hours two sheep had died, and two calves were born.
Thursday morning while I was milking Bella, Mom brought Bonita up to the parlor to see if we couldn’t help her get on a teat. Bonita was on the weak side—because she had not figured out how to nurse yet. I unhooked the milk claws, and held the calf while Mom directed the head. As the saying goes—“You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink.” Mom got the teat in the calf’s mouth, but she would not suckle. We spent a good 15 minutes working with her—and all we got was covered in manure from Bella who was ready to be let out of the milking parlor. Mom gave up, and gave Bonita a bottle—who suckled it like a pro. Stubborn calf! I finished milking Bella—who continued to cover me in manure. I needed some clean clothes when I was done.
With the first half of the week being spent going full speed at manual labor, it was a no brainer to spend the next three days at a more relaxed speed. Therefore, Thursday afternoon I set up my ironing board and to my delight I got all my ironing done—the first time since sometime last winter. I know because some of Papa’s long sleeve shirts were in the ironing. While I ironed, we watched a few farming YouTube videos. Once my ironing was all done, we headed to town to run some errands. On our way home the Lord was so merciful. The car in front of us pulled over to the right into a turning lane, and then a car not seeing us pulled out in front of us. Praise the Lord that there was no one coming at us in the lane beside us so that Mom could swerve over into that lane. It definitely jostled us around a little, and sent our groceries all over the van—but we missed the vehicle. All we could do was praise the Lord for His goodness and mercy. When we got home and opened the back door to the van, we were a little fearful—we had four glass jars of grape juice standing up in a shallow box, and they were now flat and under the box. We were afraid to look, for fear that they were broken—but we reckoned that if God could spare us from getting hit, He could spare the glass jars from being broken—and He did! We were so blessed, and glad to be safely home, with grape juice to drink!
When I went to hang my clothes out on the clothesline Friday morning, I had to turn back around and bring them back inside. The grass seed heads were so tall that they would have ruined all our clothes—with a broken lawn mower, the lawn desperately needed to be mowed. I determined that after milking I would push mow under the clothesline. I got it half way mowed, when Mom came out to finish it for me—it was heavy work. The heat index was well over 100, and I found myself done in for the day. I spent the afternoon cleaning out closets, while Mom sanded down an old rocking chair so that she can repaint it, and Papa built some roosts for the chickens in the caterpillar tunnel. Not only did we find it HOT, but the beef cows were finding it HOT as well. The heat index was reaching 120. We kept losing water pressure in the house, ad when Papa went out to do the chores he kept finding the cows water trough dumped over. It seems that they were dumping the trough and making a “pool” to cool off in, for he would find them lying down in the water. Papa came to the rescue by hooking up a sprinkler for the cows to stand under—and boy do they like it!
Bonita was still being a dumb calf as of Friday, so Mom gave her another bottle and this time she put her in the pen with Yasha—our new puppy. Friday night Bonita refused to take a bottle, but come Saturday morning Mom didn’t even offer her a bottle. Instead, she took her back to Bella in hopes that she would finally find a teat. Just before I was ready to milk Bella, Moises looked out and found Bonita nursing away. We were so happy. We let her nurse until she was done—and she had completely emptied one whole teat, and was working on another one. This morning when Bella came in to be milked, she was almost dry—the little piggy is making up for lost time. We are so glad to not have to bottle feed her.
When we were done milking Saturday morning, I headed to the garden to harvest some okra, and the Florida Seminole pumpkins. The Cinderella pumpkins that I harvested last week didn’t even last a week—they rotted real quickly. I am sure that the chickens didn’t mind though. The jack-o-lantern pumpkin is doing okay, but I have noticed a few spots on it. So I need to do something with it real quick. The Seminole pumpkins are made for Florida’s hot humid weather, and they should store real well. I harvested 17 of them Saturday, and have them in a little wagon so that they can cure in the sun for the next two weeks.
Once again the weather was just too HOT to be outside, so I hibernated inside practicing my piano and making kombucha. I also helped Mom repaint a metal sign that used to be in the garden, but is being recycled to be our Brooder house sign.
Thankfully the rains return this week, and the temps are not supposed to be so hot. I am not sure how we shall spend the first half of the week, but we shall be processing chickens on Thursday and Friday. I hope you have a wonderful week.
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare