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Hi Everyone,
There is a sign that hangs up in our garden shed that reads, “Never enough thyme.” How true it is when it comes to accomplishing everything that needs to be done—especially if you add trials to our everyday life.
When Life Gives You Lemons
Our two lemon tress really blessed us this year with lemons. It was the first year that our Ponderosa lemon produced for us. The tree has a reputation for not knowing when “enough is enough.” When it produces—it produces. Our Meyers lemon tree in our courtyard produces abundantly also. Last year we got over 12 five gallon buckets of lemons off of the Meyer’s lemon tree. We juice the lemons and freeze them for lemon drinks and lemon deserts throughout the year. This year we decided to share our lemon juice and we spent all day Monday juicing lemons. We packaged the juice in pint containers and added it to our “Larder List”—a list that tells our customers what we have for sale. We were very grateful for our new $20 electric juicer, and we hope to buy a second one. Mom thought that she had fixed our hand press juicer, but alas after a few presses it was falling apart again. So, while one person used the electric juicer, the other one used the old-fashioned glass citrus juicer where you twist the lemon by hand to get the juice out. Steve’s job was to wash all the lemons for us, and then Mom and I juiced them. We finished juicing the lemons around 3:40, and then we cleaned up the lemon mess, and Steve started washing a bucket of oranges that we had. I peeled the oranges to make orange zest—the nice part about juicing home grown oranges (they have no chemical or wax on the rinds). Then Mom and I took turns juicing them on the electric juicer. Once the oranges were all washed, then Steve left and Mom and I finished up. It was around 5:00 when all was juiced, and the mess was cleaned up. The orange juice tasted great for breakfast the next day, and now I need to make a lemon pie at the request of Papa. I look forward to sharing that on my next recipe Blog.
How to do it all?
It never fails that Tuesday’s can be the busiest day of the week. I never understand why it all seems to fall on that one day, but it does. Then to add to all the “To Do’s” for the day, when Mom headed out to feed the bottle lambs, she found one not feeling good. Along with everything else we had to do that day, pampering a sick lamb became top priority. The lamb was cuddled and fed, watched, and listened to as it moaned. Our hearts ached not knowing what was wrong with our little lamb, or how we could help it. Mom tried everything that she knew of to try, but by evening, our attempts had failed and the little lamb passed away. That left us with one bottle lamb, of which Moises took home to his brother-in-law Wednesday afternoon. For over 20 years we have always taken care of bottle lambs, but this year we have decided that it is someone else’s turn, and this man absolutely loves his little babies. He works at a horse farm, and he loads all five lambs into his truck every morning and takes them to work with him so that he can bottle feed them throughout the day.
Milking the cows right now seems to be taking us a good two hours, so we do not finish before 11:00 in the morning. I start setting up around 8:00, and then it is usually 9:00 before we can actually start milking. Once the milking was done, then I headed inside to answer emails—but I didn’t get very far before a customer arrived. They were friends of the people who poured the concrete in our garden, and he was told to go and see the leaf pattern that was imprinted in the concrete. So after he got his order, we made a trip to show him the garden and the concrete. When the people were laying the concrete, Mom pulled a bunch of turmeric leaves and they pressed them into the concrete. The next day when we pulled up the leaves, we had big leaf prints in the concrete. By the time they left, Steve was done bottling the milk. Mom, Steve and I then grabbed all the flowers that we had growing in the green house and we headed to the garden to transplant them. There were snapdragons, Mexican Poppies, California poppies, baby’s breath, cornflower, larkspur, and Shasta daisies. While we planted, Steve mowed the weeds down around the garden. We filled four beds with flowers and started pruning on the rose bushes before it was time for lunch. When we came inside for lunch, I had to finish making the yogurt. After lunch we all headed to the milk house to have our weekly egg packing party. Now that the chickens are happily laying eggs, the party lasts a lot longer. I only got to help for 30 minutes before I had to come inside and teach piano lessons. When the lessons were over I quickly answered all the emails and put the Jacksonville order together. I really needed to know what vegetables I needed to harvest for Wednesday’s delivery. Once the orders were done, I headed back to the milk house to help package eggs. At 4:30 we quit—for Steve could work on them more Wednesday morning while we milked. Steve then went home, Mom went inside to do the dishes—with a sick lamb, none had been done all day. I headed to the garden to harvest collards, kale, broccoli, spinach, cabbage, carrots and some green onions. When I came inside I set up the island in the kitchen for a photo-shoot for an upcoming blog on butter. Then I had to put away all the vegetables, and start cooking dinner. When dinner was over, there were dishes to do, a sick lamb to take care of, and receipts to make for the Jacksonville delivery.
Rush to the finish line
Wednesday mornings are packed from 6:00 to 1:00. We wake up at 6:00 and spend the next hour getting dressed and reading our Bibles. At 7:00 we head to the kitchen to fix breakfast, empty the dishwasher, start the laundry, eat and see if there are any last minute orders—of which that day there was a lot. Last minute milk and eggs are easy to add to the order, but last minute vegetables make for a juggling act. I hate saying “no” if I can do what is asked, but it isn’t always possible. At 8:00 I head outside to set up for milking, Papa heads out to do his chores, and Mom gets the dishes done and cleans some bathrooms. As soon as I had the equipment all put together, I made a quick dash for the garden to harvest some more greens to fill the orders. I am grateful for the abundance of the garden, and the ability to share it with others. This is truly one of the best year’s production wise and harvesting wise. The poor kale keeps giving and giving, but it just cannot keep up with the demands. There are about 36 more plants growing up to help supply the demand. I am taking notes for next year; so that I can plant enough from the get go. I heard that you could plant a whole greenhouse full of kale—and sell all of it. I only have one bed, with a second quickly growing up to join it. With the veggies harvested, I then head back and drop them off in the cooler and Mom and I head out to milk the cows. Two hours later the milk was ready to be bottled and turned into kefir, the veggies needed to be bagged, and the order needed to be packed. All that was done by 11:30 and I headed for the computer to finish up the receipts—add in the meat weights. By 12:00 Papa is on his way and I can sit down at the piano and teach my two piano students. Around 1:00 I am done with everything that needs to be done and I can now sit back and relax for the rest of the day—well that is until 5:30 when we need to head out and do the evening chores. That night it was drizzly, and the Gravely had wet seats. We thought that we would take the truck, but it had a flat tire. So—we decided to walk. All we planned on doing was feeding the dogs and taking the sheep out of the green field. When we got closer to the field, we saw our old bull, Flag coming to meet us, and we realized that we forgot to bring his food with us. The sheep didn’t look like they wanted to leave the field, so we moved Flag to a new field and then we decided to go ahead and separate the calves. When Papa got home from deliveries, he took food to Flag and to the calves that we had locked up in the barn.
Always unprepared!
Thursday found Mom and me in the garden for an hour or so pruning roses. We have almost 30 roses in the garden, and forgive me if I say I need more. After the hard freeze the week before, the roses were finally ready for a pruning—but not as ready as they should be, for some were still blooming. I was able to bring in large clusters of roses for the vase. I didn’t go to the garden to prune roses though—I only went to see what Mom was looking at. She was eyeballing the grapevines with the idea of making a grapevine wreath to go above her bed. I decided to grab the moment and started pruning the roses. I need to invest in some elbow length, leather rose gloves. I tried to remember to keep my long sleeves pulled down—but my arms will tell you that I didn’t do a good job at that. I have a short pair of leather gloves—but they were at the house, and as I said, I wasn’t planning on pruning roses. We didn’t get to finish the roses on Thursday because a new customer showed up and spent the afternoon with us. We were very grateful though when Steve showed up unexpectedly to work on Friday—while we finished pruning, he gathered up all the branches and stacked them around the fire pit so that we can burn them the first nice day we get. Once the roses were all pruned then we began weeding them so that we can feed and mulch them.
A Tale of Two Cows
Last week we noticed that our cow Jamima was having a hard time getting around. She was pregnant, and was due February 11—but we think that the calf was sitting on a nerve in her hip. The vet suggested that we put her in a small area, so that she didn’t have too far to walk. By Wednesday she couldn’t get up anymore. We treated her just like any pregnant woman who is bed ridden—we fed her breakfast, lunch and dinner in bed. Thursday morning when I looked out the window I was horrified to find Jamima flat on her side, her belly all bloated up, and stuck in a shallow trench. I knew that Jamima could die any moment, but I didn’t want her to die because she had rolled over into a hole. I ran out in a panic, with Mom and Papa following me a little more level headed. I was glad to find her still alive, and we were able to get her sitting up so that she could start belching all the air out of her belly. The vet had told us that when she cannot get up anymore, that is when he would induce her. So, Thursday night we called the vet, and he came out Friday morning. Since she is an old, weak cow, he said that we would have to be available to help when Jamima went into labor, and that the drugs could take 36 to 48 hours to take effect. Thirty-six hours was like Saturday night, and 48 hours was when we should be in church on Sunday—not to mention all the hours in between that would be dark. I contemplated checking out if the tent still worked—for how else were we to know if she went into labor in the middle of the night. We didn’t have to worry about that though—for about two hours later while we were in the middle of milking, Jamima went into labor. There was a problem though—the head was coming out before the feet. Mom worked with the calf, and was able to get it delivered. I knew that this would be Jamima’s last calf, and I knew just what I wanted that calf to look like. To my surprise, the calf came out looking just as I wanted—brown with white squiggly markings on its side, a white leg and tail, and a white mark on its forehead. There was one problem—it was dead! The only comfort was that it was a bull calf—I had wanted a heifer. I can keep a heifer for many years, and make it a grand pet, but bulls get sold. I am thankful for the last two heifers that we got from Jamima—America and Jam. America is due to have her first calf the end of August. Once the calf was born, we really didn’t know how Jamima would do. All farmers know the saying, “A down cow, is a dead cow,” and Jamima had been down for three days. Would she ever regain enough strength to stand up again? Saturday morning as Mom was doing the dishes, she looked out the window and watched as Jamima stood up and walk off a little ways to go potty. We were so happy! She still spends most of her days lying down, but she does get up to go potty, go looking for food, and to get a drink of water. I know that her days are numbered—she is old and weak, but last week was not her last on the farm.
Jamima was not the only cow that gave birth Friday morning. Our oldest cow, Amy—who is in perfect health, was due January 1st. She procrastinated, and while I thought it would be cute if she delivered February 1st, she decided to bring forth her big heifer calf on the last day of January instead of the first day of January. We had two cows due in January—Amy (1st) and Gracy (15th), and two cows due in February—Jamima (11th) and Lucy (13th). Instead, all of them delivered in January, in a two week period—three early, and one late. Two calves were born dead, and two alive. Lucy delivered her calf one week before Amy delivered hers. Lucy’s was born dead, but she looked for it all week. When Amy showed up with a calf Friday morning Lucy thought—my long lost calf! Lucy immediately started licking the little calf and pushing it back to nurse on her. Amy would come up, and lick the calf, and push it to nurse on her. Both cows moo for the calf, both cows clean her up and both cows nurse her. Lucy only has about a half-gallon of milk, but Amy has about three gallons. I guess that Lucy will give the calf an appetizer, and Amy will give it the meal. Now all it needs is a name.
Finally!
There were a lot of things that made it to the “To Do List” last week that never got done, but when Saturday afternoon rolled around, I was very determined to get one thing accomplished—plant some seeds in the seed starting trays. So, once the milking was done, the milk bottled, the Gainesville order packed, the veggies harvested for the delivery, and lunch in our stomachs—we headed to the greenhouse to plant three types of lettuce, Bok choy, broccoli, cauliflower, cayenne peppers, paprika peppers, and green bell peppers. We finished just a little before 4:00, and just in time to take care of one of our favorite travelling customers.
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare