284
Hi Everyone,
In the Stars His Handy work I See
Have you ever been a star gazer? I have always enjoyed looking at the stars. When I was little, Papa bought me a telescope—too bad I do not still own it. For ten years (from 30 to 40) I got the chance to star gaze every night as I took my black lab, Genea, for a walk before we went to bed. Some nights she would run out and quickly do her business and be ready to go to bed. Other nights she had to chase make believe rabbits—at least I never saw them. While she ran around, I got to stand there in the quiet of the evening gazing at the stars. Crisp, clear nights showed off the stars the best. While I do not know all the constellations, I am very familiar with two of them—the Big Dipper and Orion, the Hunter. In the dead of winter when I would go outside at 9:00 at night to walk Genea, there would be Orion nice and big in the southern sky—usually straight over head. Lately though, we are heading outside at 5:30 in the morning, and to my dismay I am in a hurry to get the cows milked so I do not have as much time as I would like to star gaze. I have noticed one thing though—there in the southern sky, straight overhead is Orion. I guess he hunts by night in the winter, and early morning in the summer. The Big Dipper also moves around in the sky—and it points to the North Star which is always in the same place. I became fascinated with the North Star when I was a teenager reading books about Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad. While finding the Big Dipper has always been easy, I never could quite find the North Star—until we moved to this farm. So, if you have trouble finding the North Star, just come visit us in the dark, for it is very easy to spot here, and I do not even need the Big Dipper. You see, it sits on top of our electrical pole in our front yard. You just have to stand in just the right spot to see it. If you don’t believe me—come look for yourself.
A Normal Day? Maybe Not!
I have a pocket calendar that helps me keep track of what happens every day of the week so that I do not have to tax my brain so hard to remember. The squares are only an inch square, and I only write short words or letters to jog my memory. Last Monday the day was so full that I had to use Sunday’s square to help me remember everything. Our day started out pretty normal—Mom, Moises and I milked the cows, Papa moved the chickens and cows around in the fields, and Steve fed the dog and calf, and the broiler chickens, turkeys, and the compost chickens. After that was all done, Moises cleaned up the equipment, Steve bottled the milk, Mom jumped on the lawn mower, and I took care of some phone calls—because someone had once again stolen our credit card number. It seems that every time I order something from Amazon, someone steals our credit card number and spends thousands of dollars.
A BIG Mistake
Papa was busy cleaning out one of the chicken houses. In a few months, the new chickens will begin laying eggs, and they will move into one of the movable chicken houses. Usually we sell the oldest chickens and replace them with the new ones, but since we didn’t have as many chickens in both houses, we decided to combine the houses. Since Jill had retired and moved in with Sheba, Papa thought that it was a good time to go ahead and combine both houses. So, two weeks ago he drug one house over to the other house and let all the chickens out. Then he drove off with the empty house. All looked fine—until Mom and I counted the eggs last Sunday night. Three weeks ago when I counted the eggs, there were 74 eggs in one house, and 78 eggs in the other house. Last Sunday when we counted them (all the chickens combined into one house) there were only 68 eggs. OUCH!!!!! That meant that the chickens that lost their house had gone on strike and refused to pay rent—we found out that many were even refusing to sleep in the new house. Amazing—both houses look identical, but I guess they do not smell identical. Could it be that one house has a decorative wire heart on the front door and the other doesn’t and they tell their houses apart by the wire heart? Anyway, Papa’s chore Monday was to clean up the empty house, put fresh bedding in it, and take it back to the chickens.
The Price of an Oil Leak
While Papa was cleaning out the chicken house, Mom started mowing. The lawn has been in desperate need of being mowed, and where we can we have hired the sheep to mow for us. The back yard was in dire need of being mowed, along with a portion of the garden that has no fence to keep the sheep out. So, Mom mowed, and Steve raked—that is she mowed until the lawn mower started to click, click, click. It had run out of oil—and blew the engine. OUCH!!!!! The lawn mower was just in to be serviced a few weeks ago, and we have barely used it. Evidently it has an oil leak, and without warning it ran dry. So, now the lawn mower is added to the list of things that need repaired, but they cost lots of money to fix. I think that it goes on the bottom of the list—because it is practically the end of mowing season. While we do have a month more to mow, it will not be getting done. Now the question is—“How shall we get the garden and lawn in tip top shape for the Farm Tour next month?”
Grow where you are Planted
It was now lunch time, and after we ate we headed to the garden to weed. We had a 16ft by 20ft section to weed and get ready to plant with carrots and beets by tomorrow. The broadfork makes weeding a much lighter duty, and it is amazing how easy the nut grass comes up after you loosen the soil. I had one problem though—the section that we were to weed was home to about a dozen sunflowers and over a hundred zinnias. I have a major soft spot for flowers—especially those that come up on their own. Mom and I are always differing in opinions on whether or not a flower needs to be pulled up or left behind. When I win, the vegetables that are trying to grow nearby usually do not survive very well—except for the cucumbers which really enjoyed the shade that the sunflowers gave them last spring. So, I have decided to be a good girl, and find a different spot to let zinnias and sunflowers grow wild. First off—I had to transplant as many of the zinnias and sunflowers that I could save. I got up about twelve sunflowers and probably twenty zinnias. Then I transplanted them in an empty bed in the raised bed garden. I watered them real good, but it was a hot afternoon, and they looked real pathetic—practically flat on the ground. I told the Lord that I had done what I could, and asked Him if He would please let them survive. I was tickled pink the next day when I looked at them and they were all standing tall. I love flowers that you can easily transplant against all odds.
The Nose Knows Best
We worked in the garden until about 4:30, and we were hot and tired when we quit. I quickly came inside put dinner in the oven, and then I talked Mom into driving me 30 minutes away to a dairy farm to see about getting some free silage tarps. I am determined to make gardening easy and productive—and one of those ways is to keep the dirt covered with vegetables, cover crops, or silage tarps so that the weeds do not grow. I have found the new silage tarps to be pretty pricey, so I wanted to find a bargain. I called a few dairies, and only one answered and sure enough he said that they had a whole pile of used silage tarps that I could have. The drive out to the farm was very pretty, but since the truck has no A/C in it we could smell the dairy before we arrived. I could not get over the smell of the place, and the bugs that were swarming our faces were disgusting. I was so glad that our little farm dairy does not smell like this giant commercial dairy. I have no idea how people actually work at those places—I wouldn’t last one hour on the job, for my nose is very sensitive to stinky smells. Anyway, they did have a large pile of silage tarps—pieces of them that is. Only one looked like I wanted to touch it—and yes, we had brought our rubber gloves along with us. We unfolded the tarp, and while it was somewhat clean, it did have some stains on it, and Mom was afraid that they were chemical stains. Another farmer told us the other day that they spray round-up on the crops two days before they harvest them for silage—and we definitely didn’t want any of that in our organic garden. While the tarp was too small and had possible chemical contamination, there was one factor that screamed in my head the largest. If we brought that tarp home, I could not be too sure that the stench of the place wouldn’t come home with us. So, we climbed back in our truck, hoping that none of the bugs would come with us—and we headed home where true country air, is a breath of fresh air.
Pajama Time!
By the time we got home from the dairy, Mom said that all she wanted to do was get a shower and put on her pajamas—but the dishwasher needed to be emptied, dinner needed to be finished, the calf needed to be fed, and Yasha needed to be walked and fed. It was almost 7:00 by the time I was ready to serve up dinner. I went outside to call Papa in for dinner, and while we waited for him to come in from the pasture a big truck pulled up. To our dismay, it was the UPS freight truck delivering a ton of organic chicken feed. They dropped it off, and then we headed in to eat dinner before it got cold. While we ate dinner, Papa asked if Mom and I could please separate the calves and bring Penelope in to nurse her trio. Mom and I sat there in silence—ready to drop. Then Mom asked, “What are you going to do?” Papa reminded us that he had a ton of feed to put away. Poor guy, he had spent hours cleaning out the chicken house, spreading the compost out on the pastures, putting in fresh bedding—and suffering from a headache. So, after we ate, Mom and I gladly went out to bring in the calves and Penelope while Papa packed a ton of feed into the Feed room. Usually the calves come down the hill very calmly—but that night their mothers must have had chocolate milk in their udders. They skipped, and jumped, and ran lickity split up and down, side to side all over the pasture with Mom and I chasing after them. We both took off on foot, then I realized that we were leaving the Gravely behind, so I went back to get it. So Mom chased on foot, and I in the Gravely. We finally accomplished our goal—but we were really exhausted now. Then, since it was getting dark, we decided to go and put the chickens to bed. Papa had both houses back out in the field, and the chickens were going to bed in both of them. About 30 chickens were still outside and needed some help figuring out which bed to go to. The ones on the feeder roosts outside were easy to put to bed—but the ones under the houses were a different story. Let’s just say that when you crawl on the ground around and under a chicken coop you get pretty decorated and smelly. Chasing chickens in the dark is not easy either. There are holes to dodge, tall grass to glide through instead of being tripped up in, and dogs that are wondering what you are doing with their chickens. We did have a flashlight, but it can be pretty difficult to catch a chicken that runs right past you when you only have one hand. We managed to get them all tucked into bed for the night, and then we headed inside to do the dishes and get a shower and finally put on our pajamas and go to bed.
A Dream is a wish your heart makes—when you are wide awake!
For years I have dreamed of having someone help us in the garden—that knows what they are doing. Then I got a phone call Monday morning. The couple that came to tour the farm last Saturday wanted to come and prepare out garden tunnel so that we can plant the fall/winter vegetables. O what a blessing—someone who wanted to volunteer their precious time to come and play in our garden. When they lived down south they grew a garden the exact same way in which I am trying to learn how to grow a garden (mixing the Back to Eden method with the Market Gardening style of J.M. Fortier). So, Thursday morning they arrived around 10:00, got to meet the milk cows—for we were still milking, and then they headed to the garden. The chickens have been camping out in the garden for the last six weeks, and when they went in the weeds were one to two feet tall. When they left it was all dirt. Therefore, all we had to do was rake up some of the dried out weeds that were lying around, dig up some root clumps and start making our beds. There will be eight beds in the tunnel, and they were able to get two done, and they will be back tomorrow to work “play” some more. I was able to get another garden plot marked out to have five thirty inch rows where we will plant carrots and beets tomorrow. I also plan on planting some spinach and transplanting the bunching onions that are growing nicely in the greenhouse.
Preparation 101—Procrastination and Wi-Fi
For many months I have had an Herbal Remedies Workshop planned for September 21. When your life is so busy though, it is easy to wait until you absolutely have to do something. Come Tuesday I started preparing for the workshop. I was going to teach how to make 5 different herbal remedies that we go for when we get sick—or to help us keep from getting sick. In order to get all my ingredients gathered together, I grabbed five trays and put the ingredients to each recipe on a separate tray. On Wednesday I started to make recipe cards for each remedy. I had one done, and was working on another one when the Wi-Fi box made a loud pop. The battery had over heated and exploded—and we were now without internet. Computers are nice, but I hate the fact that we are so dependent on them. I couldn’t finish my recipe cards—because I was using an online sight to make them in. We couldn’t send our PayPal money to the bank—because we couldn’t even log onto PayPal. So, Thursday morning Papa headed to town after he did all his chores. He went to about four places before he finally ended up with a new Wi-Fi box. Everyone said that it would take until next Tuesday to get a new battery, but Papa told them that we run a business and couldn’t be without internet until next Tuesday—we wouldn’t even be able to check our emails to get our orders. Thankfully that was fixed, but since Thursday afternoon and evening was spent helping another farmer and eating dinner with them, I had to wait until Friday afternoon to finish the recipe cards.
Lots of Ladies equals lots of Laughter
I might not have had as many people attend the Herbal workshop as I had wished, but we had a lovely time with the ladies that came. They all enjoyed themselves greatly, and learned lots of new ideas. We made elderberry syrup, spicy lemonade, and some congestion tea. The recipe of the hour was Horehound Candy Cough Drops. It wasn’t very hard to make, but I poured it into too thick of a pan, and it just wouldn’t cool down so that we could start scoring it so that when it was cold we could break it into pieces. We stuck it in the fridge, then the freezer, and finally it was cool enough to work with. I managed to dump it out of the pan onto a cutting board, where I could score it easier—well, where it was supposed to be easier. Have you ever attended a taffy pull? This candy was perfectly gooey in its warm stage, and it just refused to be scored. So I would work real hard to get a long piece cut off the block, and one lady would roll it into a rope, and the other ladies would break off little pieces and roll them into candy drop balls. We had the most fun, and of course we ate some while we rolled up the little balls. We used maple syrup to make the Horehound cough drops, and when one of the ladies found out that we make Fudge with Maple syrup they said that we need to have a class on fudge making—maybe a healthy desert class. Sounds like a good class to have in December. Do you have any ideas on what types of workshops you would like to attend here at the farm? Send me some ideas!
I hope that you had a wonderful summer—for it is officially over according to the calendar. The mornings are cooling off, the sycamores are changing colors, and the sky is taking on a fall look. Before you know it, the birds will be flying south and we shall be harvesting sweet potatoes. The Phoebe birds arrive in October, and that is just a week away.
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare