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Hi Everyone,

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Yes, it is that time of the year when we celebrate the birth of our Saviour, Jesus Christ. With all the hustle and bustle of life it is very easy for people to forget—or in some cases not even know the real reason for Christmas. May we take time this year to reflect on the fact that: “For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord . . . and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins . . . For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;  . . . (And) the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

I hope that you have a wonderful Christmas, and that you have someone special to share it with. We are planning on going to some friends house for Christmas Day, but my sister and brother and their families are expected to come here for Christmas Eve—don’t know what we are going to eat yet, but I am sure that we shall come up with something better than hotdogs between now and then. The one thing that we are behind in is our seasonal décor. Usually we change the décor on the first day of the month when the seasons change—but as December 1st rolled around and winter began to set in, we have found ourselves very busy. Over the last two weeks Mom has managed to take down 75% of the fall décor and pile it in the laundry room. One day last week I spilt my water on the table—so off came the fall table linens and floral arrangement. When we went to put on the green winter tablecloth Mom couldn’t find it—and to my dismay it was still in my ironing pile from spring! OOPS! So we washed it, and dried it, and put it on the table right away—and I didn’t have to iron it after all. We have begun to hang our garland and lights, but they have been a challenge to our character as they refuse to go up easily this year. We hang them around the door jams in our dining room, and I have never had any trouble with them before. For some reason we have had a hard time finding the center, and getting the garlands to stay hooked to the thumbtacks. Little by little it will all come together, and we shall get to enjoy it until spring.

Last week was a mixture of everything. We spent all day Monday on our hands and knees pulling weeds. It wasn’t exactly the romantic side of farming—but it leads to it, for the truly romantic part of farming is when you walk through a weed free garden to harvest some vegetables for dinner, and gather a bouquet of flowers for the table or your bathroom. On Tuesday Mom and Steve returned to the garden but I found myself visiting with a customer for a few hours and teaching piano lessons. In case I be charged with playing all day long—I did milk the cows, help package eggs, harvest the greens for the Jacksonville delivery, cook dinner and make the receipts for the delivery.

Wednesday found us getting over 2.5 inches of rain which pushed our yearly rainfall over the 50 inch mark. It always amazes me to think that some people only get 12 inches of rain in a whole year.

When we finished milking the cows on Thursday we grabbed our winter coats and headed to the walk-in cooler and freezer—we had some eggs and chickens to organize. After lunch we grabbed our two little juicing machines, three five gallon buckets full of oranges, and some squat jugs and headed to the poultry kitchen. We spent a little over two hours juicing the oranges and found out that you can get a little over seven quarts of juice out of a five gallon bucket of oranges. We found juicing to be quite tiring—and we were ready to fall asleep by the time we were done. Steve and I headed down field to separate the calves for the night, and we yawned the whole way. We were so thankful that the Lord had mercy on us and the calves just walked out of the field and up the lane like little pros. When we were done outside I headed for the kitchen to make a broccoli soufflé. The broccoli is coming in fresh in the garden, and a soufflé is one of our favorite ways to enjoy it.

We are almost finished processing chickens for the year. We processed our second to last batch on Friday—69 chickens to be exact. We will process the last batch of the year on the Monday after Christmas. We have truly been blessed this year with help on processing day. Usually we are done with processing, packaging and clean up within four hours. It took us a little longer on Friday and it was 5:00 and Papa and Mom were still scrubbing the floor. I headed down field by myself to separate the calves praying that God would once again have mercy on me, for it is not easy to do alone. Thankfully four of the calves started walking towards the opening. Little Autumn decided to give me the run around—run here, run there, around the hay rack, past the bull, to that end of the field and back. Then Rosa took off running with Autumn which gave Autumn just the little boost she needed to go join the other calves. Then they all headed up to the cattle pens. As we were heading up the lane I saw that Papa had come down to help. Since the calves were already on their march up the lane, Papa stepped aside into one of the fields. It was funny to watch the reaction of the calves as they spotted him. They acted like scaredy cats, and if it wasn’t for the hotwire on either side of the lane they would have run far away. Papa and I had a good laugh at them. When we got back inside I fixed a big pot of chili and headed for a nice hot shower—Friday was our first cold day to process chickens.

We had a baby shower to attend Saturday afternoon, and our morning was spent milking the cows and packing the Gainesville orders. When we got home from the shower I took care of all the laundry that was desperately waiting to be folded and put away—then it was time for dinner. Thankfully it was a quick and easy meal: oven broiled sirloin steak, cooked broccoli, and butternut squash mash.

Tonight Mom and I have had plenty of laughter and aggravations. Before I started my journal I talked Mom into spending an hour on the dining room décor—set the table, take down the fall leaves garland and put up the winter pine branches garland. Thanks to garland that refused to hang easily, that hour turned into two hours before Mom was rescued by a phone call. When the phone call was over Mom headed back to the garland for it wasn’t safe to walk through the walkways since the strings of wooden cranberries were hanging down in big loops. While I was sitting here typing I heard a hundred wooden cranberries going dancing all over the floor—down the hallway, into the living room, and even to the other end of the kitchen. Having white carpet at that moment would have been very helpful to find all the red wooden beads—but then again since the pine needles are shedding off the garland by the cup full, I guess it is good that we have wood floors. It seems that we have just managed to make a bigger mess instead of beauty to behold. I guess that is what happens when your décor is over 30 years old. Will we ever get order back into our dining room? Maybe we should have just skipped the garland this year and just cut down some mistletoe and hung it instead—for there is plenty of it to be had in the chestnut orchard and in the birch trees at the pond. Then again it is the lights that we love to look at during the long winter nights—and if Mom and I could we would eat by candlelight every night. So, I am glad that we persevered and hung that garland with its sparkly lights, and I guess we shall have a stringing party soon so that the cranberries can add their beauty too.

I must wrap this up and head to bed, for there is much to do tomorrow. I hope that you have a very Merry Christmas.

Serving you with Gladness,

Tiare