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Hi Everyone,
April is here! The dominant color of April is green, and the dominant sound is rain. I am anxious to get all the garden seeds in the ground so that they can benefit from all the rain. The other night we got a down pour after being dry the whole month of March. I recently read that March is usually wet and cold, or hot and dry. I guess this was the year for hot and dry. The weather has definitely gotten cooler once April arrived, and the rains returned. I was cooking dinner when the big rain storm arrived, and it was all I could do to refrain myself from running outside to play in it. I am positive that I could have been caught “singing in the rain”.
Now that April has arrived we are truly racing against the calendar to get the garden planted. According to my moon calendar, the whole garden should be planted by tomorrow night. There are squashes, pumpkins, beans, okra, cucumbers, and flowers of course to be planted. Last Monday I was able to get some okra planted, and some tomatoes transplanted. We have spent many a day trying to get the garden beds all weeded, the rows marked out and loaded with compost. It seems that we are fighting the inevitable nut grass. I wish it would just disappear into thin air. Mom says that the more you pull up the less there is, but it takes forever to weed it, and I would rather be planting. By Tuesday night we had all the fencing and arbors in place and we could really focus on weeding. Thursday we were supposed to process chickens, but we forgot to remove the feed from the chickens the night before. It is pretty messy to process a chicken whose crop and intestines are full. There were no complaints about the forgetfulness though, because that meant we could spend the whole day in the garden. We also ordered eight yards of wood chips to be delivered. The delivery fee is $55, and we have been trying to not have to pay it. Papa has faithfully been going and getting us two yards at a time, but when the “Stay-at-Home” orders came down on Wednesday for all of Florida, we were not sure if mulch and compost would be considered an essential business so we went ahead and ordered a load to be delivered. When the load arrived, the owner told me that he planned on staying open because gardening was essential in these times, and he had the ingredients to make vegetables grow well. On Saturday a family came over and helped us weed in the garden—now we have two beds ready to mark the rows, top with compost, and line the walkways with compost. Three of us worked in one bed weeding and broadforking. I am glad that we have compost, for that bed needs a lot. I hope that we can get more if we do run out.
Last month was spent getting the floor of the Poultry Kitchen sealed so that the grease doesn’t ruin the floor. The people also sealed the seams on the walls, and around the floor where the walls and the floor meet. On Tuesday Papa was able to go in and wash all the walls and the floors down, so that it would be clean for processing. On Wednesday the Cranes were here, and we were able to get the equipment put back into the Poultry Kitchen. We still do not have the tables and sinks that we need—but there is light at the end of the tunnel. Last week Mom found a sink, and as of today we have finally found a table. Tomorrow we hope to get them ordered. Then we still need two little sinks and a smaller table. For now we always have to borrow the table from the milk house. Friday’s processing went really well—to start with. Steve is now working six days a week; therefore, he could help us with the processing. Papa worked the “chickens one bad day” station, and Steve worked the scalder and plucker. Then Mom and I made them look like a chicken ready to roast in the oven. That process only took us two hours. During those two hours we received a short visit from my brother’s girlfriend. She had gone to visit her parents in a little town south of here called Bell—and there she was able to find toilet paper! She was so kind to bring us some, for ours was beginning to get low. My brother and she had spent all day Thursday going from store to store in Lake City looking for groceries. Each store had a little bit more of what they wanted, but not one store had toilet paper. Papa made a run to Publix first thing Thursday morning, and he was able to come home with butter, celery, cleaning supplies, and bananas—but no toilet paper. So it was such a blessing for Claudette to bring us some toilet paper. After lunch I put together all the orders for the chickens and then around 3:00 Mom and I headed back to the Poultry Kitchen to package the chicken. Some we packaged whole, and some we cut up. Usually we sell only a few chickens from each processing time, and then we can store the rest in the freezer for later sales. Well, this time we had more orders than we had chickens. I actually had to ration chickens! I called the egg hatchery, and ordered more chickens. Right now we get 50 chicks every two weeks, since we cannot process more than 40 to 50 chickens in a day, we decided to order 50 every week. Next week’s chicks were sold out, so starting April 28 we will be getting chicks every week. It is nice that we already have chickens on the ground, so that we can restock the freezer every two weeks—but it will not be until July before we actually have a surplus.
Life is so full right now with gardening, processing chickens, milking the cows, feeding the animals—and now that the grass is growing the chickens and the cows are moved to new pastures daily. The sheep are still on hotwire strike and running where ever they please, whenever they please. It is a good thing that most of our life is spent outside, for right now the inside of our house is being—demolished, rebuilt, torn out, put in. A few months ago two copper pipes broke in my bathroom, causing us to have to re-pipe the whole house. We have hired the Crane Crew to do it for us, and they are doing a great job. I am one though that likes to have everything in order, and every week I lose a little bit more order. When the pipes first broke, I had to move out of my bathroom. Everything in my bathroom closet had to be emptied out and put on one of the twin beds in one of our unused rooms. Thankfully I could use the hall bathroom. Then Friday I had to move out of my bedroom. One of my bedroom walls is on the backside of the hall bathroom. The only way to re-pipe the sink, toilet, and shower is to cut holes in my bedroom wall. I wanted to just remove the bottom half of the wall and replace it with wood and a chair railing. Then Mom said that since the house is so old, we would not be able to match the stain to the rest of the wood in my room. So I decided to just patch the holes—but Mom said that since our walls have an orange peel texture, you would see the seams from the patch work. So, we decided to take all the sheetrock off of the wall and after the plumbing is fixed then we will put shiplap on the wall. So, Friday morning I emptied everything off of my bedroom walls, took everything that I could out of my room, and covered the rest of my furniture with sheets. My room reminds me of stories I have read where they had rooms that were not used and all the furniture was covered in sheets to keep the dust off. Thankfully there was another bedroom that I could move into. In the end it will all look spic and span, clean and orderly, fresh and new.
Yesterday I looked out the window and saw an extra cow in with our old bull, Flag, and his guard dog Yasha. Yasha has guarded Flag most of her life, and she didn’t know what to think of another cow with her “bull”. Later we found out that Papa had found one of the two year old steers nursing on a mother cow. So he separated him out, and put him in with Flag. Every time the steer came near Flag, Yasha would run up to make sure her Flag was okay. She has seemed to accept the steer today.
I hope you have had an enjoyable week, and that you are getting to spend quality time with your family. I have to admit, I never liked going to town anyway, so I do not miss going shopping for groceries. Life here on the farm is the same—busy as usual!
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare