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Hi Everyone,

                How much can be crammed into one week depends on how many hands are available to help, and how you manage your time. While winter is a time for some to sit back and relax—not the case on a farm, spring is literally the time when flowers begin to spring forth from the ground, new life begins to spring forth from the animals, and we begin to spring from one chore to the next. The “To Do Lists” around here are a mile long, and trying to prioritize each day and each task can be a chore in and of itself.

Every Second Counts

                I had goals for Monday, Papa had goals for Monday, and Mom had goals for Monday—therefore, we did lots of running for the goals by ourselves, and working together when more hands were needed. Mom wanted to finish putting rock around the lemon tree in the courtyard, so that she could finish fertilizing it and putting wood chips under it. So while we milked, I asked Steve to head down to the live oak tree by the pond and see if he could find any rock. His mission was very successful, and after we finished milking Mom headed to the courtyard to finish landscaping around the lemon tree. I was determined to hire the whole flock of sheep to eat all the weeds in the garden—but first I needed to fence off the parts of the garden that I didn’t want them to eat. I enlisted Steve to be my right hand man and we headed to the garden. First we had to find all the 16 foot long hog panels so that we could fence off the raised bed section of the garden. Then we gathered some rolls of plastic fencing to wrap around the long garden bed where the onions are growing, and around the caterpillar tunnel where all the winter greens are growing. Those garden beds are fenced around with hog panels, but as I learned last year—the sheep can put their heads through the holes and eat what is on the other side. I had planted brown and green cotton around the edges of the pumpkin patch garden bed. The cotton was just starting to reach maturity when we brought the sheep into the garden to eat down the weeds since the lawn mower was broken. To my dismay, those sheep stuck their heads through the fence and ate my cotton down to the ground. I didn’t want the same results for our yellow and Vidalia onions, or our collards, Swiss chard, lettuce and kale. So we wrapped the hog panels with a plastic fence. We got the garden all sheep proof, and then it was time for lunch. While we had been working in the garden, Papa was busy getting two hoop houses pulled out to the pasture so that we could move the first batch of chicks out of the brooder house and out on some green grass. When lunch was over, we all pitched in to collect all 40 plus chicks and move them to their new home. Then we headed up to the chestnut field to herd the flock of sheep to the garden. We had no problem getting them out of the chestnuts—for they had gobbled up all the grass and weeds in that field. They ran down the lane, across a field, and up the center lane with great eagerness to find new chomping grounds. They were doing so well—and then just before they reached the field that opens to the garden, they ran through fences and scattered into other fields. That meant that we had to get a little extra exercise as we ran around trying to shoo over 100 sheep out of two fields and into the garden. It took us 30 minutes from start to finish, and I was excited because we were done by 3:30—that meant we had one hour to work in the garden before Steve had to go home. Papa dropped the trailer load of compost off at the garden and the first thing we did was to get the bed ready where I had just harvested the cabbage. I had bok choy ready to be transplanted, and I needed the bed prepared so that the little plants would have the nourishment that they needed to grow. First we removed the few weeds that had sprouted and then we dumped a load of compost on top. Once it was spread out we took the broadfork down the bed to make the soil loose, and then Mom leveled it all out and I began to plant the bok choy. Steve and Mom headed back to the raised bed side of the garden to put compost around the roses.

A Heavenly Ordained Dinner

                For three nights I had planned to have broccoli soufflé and roasted pumpkin for dinner, but something always came up and I didn’t have time to cook them. Monday night was “the” night, and I was going to have broccoli soufflé and roasted pumpkin no matter what. It was 5:00 by the time I entered the kitchen, and I will admit that I was a little overwhelmed with my menu plans. I was also having Lemon Barbecued Chicken Quarters, and while the cooking part was simple, I did have to make up the lemon barbecue sauce. I knew that to assemble a soufflé takes about 25 minutes—then it had to bake for 45 minutes; to peel and cut up a pumpkin takes about 25 minutes—then it had to roast for 45 minutes; to get the chicken ready for the oven takes about 5 minutes—and then it cooks for 45 minutes, during which time it would take about 10 minutes to make the lemon sauce. My dilemma was to know what to fix first—so that everything was done at the same time. The first thing I did was turn one oven on to 400 F to cook the pumpkin, and the other oven on broil to cook the chicken. Then I noticed that the broccoli had to cook at 375 F, and I was out of ovens. So, I scratched off the soufflé and decided that we would have plain broccoli with butter roasted pine nuts. I then headed to the pantry to get the last pumpkin and turn it into some delicious roasted pumpkin coated with cinnamon, butter, and maple syrup. To my dismay, when I picked up the pumpkin my fingers almost went through it—it was rotten. O well, I decided that it would be a great time to use a jar of canned pumpkin. I would put some butter and maple syrup in my pan and let it boil for a few minutes, and then I would add my jar of canned pumpkin and let it cook for a few minutes. So far dinner was getting easier and easier. Broccoli was now only going to take 10 minutes from start to finish and the pumpkin would only take 10 minutes also. Now I could focus my attention on the chicken and the lemon barbecue sauce. To make matters even better, I had time to help Mom wash the dishes, and since we didn’t make a soufflé we had very little dirty dishes.

3 Little Helpers

                Tuesday morning found us back at the garden once we were done with the milking. We had a few more roses to put compost around, and we wanted to weed the asparagus and cover the beds with compost. We accomplished our goals by lunch time, and then it was time to have an egg party—and that is just what three little girls thought it was. My niece Makenna (who turned 7 on Thursday) came over with two of her friends and they helped us package eggs. They were a lot of help, and they really did have a lot of fun washing and drying the dirty eggs. Clean eggs are wiped off with a dry rag, and the dirty eggs are washed in plain warm water. It was 5:00 when we took the girls home, and when we got home it was time to cook dinner and put together the orders for the Jacksonville delivery on Wednesday.

UGH! And Ugh!

                It is always nice to get a little visit in with my friend Amelia. When they arrived her young men were eager to find Mr. Steve and help him with the chores on the farm. Mom and I were eager to show Amelia the progress in the courtyard, the new spring décor in the dining room, and then I just couldn’t pass up showing her the disaster in my bathroom from two broken water pipes. When the leaks were found two weeks ago, all the hot water to those lines was turned off, but to our horror when we walked into the bathroom to show Amelia the mess—we found a mess! The hot water pipe that was broken underground was still leaking out into my bathroom. The water to the whole house was turned off—and I began to have visions of life without running water in the house. Living without hot water in the laundry room, kitchen, and one bathroom has not been too bad since the other two bathrooms still had hot water. I was not sure how to function though with no running water at all. Thankfully when Papa came up from doing his chores he was able to fix the problem so that we could turn the water back on. While the hot water heater was turned off—it still had water in it, and it was filling up the pipes and leaking out in my bathroom. Therefore, Papa hooked a water hose up to the water heater and keeps it drained so that there is no water in the hot water lines. Since our house is 22 years old and because two of the copper water pipes are broken we have to re-plumb the whole house. This will require a lot of “tearing into walls”. Mom was teasing the other day saying that she always wanted to remodel an old house—she just never thought it would be her house that she got to remodel.

                Leaky water pipes were not the only Ugh! for the day. Papa found the sheep in the garden bed where the onions, beets, potatoes, carrots and spinach are growing. Thankfully they had just gotten in—I forgot to make sure one of the gates was latched tightly shut. They tried to eat the beet tops—but the whole beet came out of the ground and they dropped it. They trampled through some of the onions—but only uprooted two or three. Thursday when I went out to check on it, I harvested a handful of strawberries to bring up to share with everyone. Then I saw the beets and onions strewed all over and I picked them up. I had one arm full of beets and onions, and the other hand full of very red, juicy ripe strawberries—and I had no way to open the gates to get back home. Therefore, I did the most logical thing—I ate all the strawberries.

Rain, rain, come today!

                Rain was in the forecast for Thursday and I had a list of things that I wanted to get done before it rained. Since we didn’t separate the calves from their mama’s on Wednesday night, I only had two cows to milk—for the calves drank my other four dry. Therefore, while those dry mama cows ate their breakfast, I weeded the lily bed that my Grandpa helped me create. In that bed someone spit a grape seed a few years ago, and it sprouted and has grown into a nice size grapevine—in the wrong place. We tried to pull it up last year, but Steve said it would break his back, so we left it. The vine is majorly in the way, so it had to go. I knew that we could hook a chain around it and attach it to the tractor bucket and pull it out that way—but I also knew that it would pull up a lot of lilies. Since rain was in the forecast, I decided that it was a good day to pull it up, that way the lilies could get watered real well after we replanted them. At first I was going to throw the vine away, but I really wanted to save it somehow. I had another goal in the garden—plant zinnia seeds and sunflower seeds. The zinnia bed was already weeded and ready to go, but I needed to weed the sunflower bed—it hadn’t been weeded for years, and years, and years. It took me a few hours, but I got it done. That bed bordered one of our trellises into the garden, and I thought that it would be the perfect place to transplant the grape vine to. I got it tucked into its new bed, now we just have to wait and see if it comes out of dormancy or if it dies. To my delight when all was said and done—we got almost half an inch of rain!

A Blessed Interruption

                I had so much to do on Friday, that I had no idea how to do it all. The easiest part of planning any day is to know that milking is the first thing we do—every day of the year. Then we have to prioritize what comes next, of which some days is real easy. On Friday’s what come next is bottling the milk and the kefir. Then I have a little bit of time to do something else before I have to finish making the yogurt. Last Friday I spent that little bit of time making my bed that I had washed, talking with a friend, and setting up to make kombucha. After lunch I made the kombucha, and then I needed to finish my recipe blog on Oven-Fried Drumsticks. When that was done I began to look for some shirts on-line. I have jumpers that I cannot wear, because I have no shirts for them. In the middle of my search, Mom came and asked if I would go to town with her to look for some rock for the courtyard. Years ago she got a 55 gallon drum full of pebble size river rock from her brother in Missouri. We put it in our courtyard to help the water flow—but we need more. Southern river rock is brown or white, but northern river rock has blues, grays, and pinks. We really couldn’t find something that we really want, and since we do not have a milker, I do not see us going to Missouri anytime soon—I wonder if my Uncle is coming to Florida for vacation anytime soon. When we were done at the rock place, we walked through an antique store for a few minutes, and then we headed to Walmart to get some potting soil and check out their shirts. To my delight I was able to find shirts in the very colors I was looking for—and for only $5 apiece. No shirt that I could find on the internet was under $25. I was glad to have been interrupted from my on-line shopping spree.

Preparing for the Future

                Our future dinners that is! Saturday we got the cows milked and then I packed the Gainesville order and headed to the garden to harvest some kale, broccoli, Swiss chard and strawberries. After lunch I sat down with my basket of seeds and went through them figuring out what could be direct sown and what needed to be started in seed trays. When that was all decided I headed outside to the green house and planted more lettuce, some Roselle hibiscus, cotton (I will grow it this year where the sheep cannot east it), cinnamon basil, lettuce leaf basil, and a variety of flowers. Then I headed to the garden to transplant the lettuce that I planted in the seed trays about five weeks ago. It isn’t growing very well, and I decided that maybe it doesn’t like greenhouse life, so I took it to the garden. Hopefully it will be inspired by the other big plants to grow big too.

                This next week looks just as full, and the weather looks very delightful—so get outside and enjoy some sunshine and get some dirt under your nails.

Serving you with Gladness,

Tiare