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Hi Everyone,
For the last few days I have had that feeling that summer is coming. I can just sense it—I even pulled out one of my summer cookbooks. Then tonight we came inside at 6:30 from doing the evening chores and the temperature outside was 100—with a heat index of 109. It is an hour later, and the temperature is dropping rapidly—for it is already 85 degrees. Yes, summer is a coming in.
In the garden we have one last big planting for this season—the sweet potatoes. I had the chickens weeding the bed for us a couple of months ago—but because we didn’t throw the food on the ground, they didn’t do a very good job scratching up the weeds. So now we must get down on our hands and knees and weed, weed, weed. I will say that some parts are not real bad thanks to the chickens, but other parts are very loaded with the dreadful Florida betony and nutgrass. I am thankful for the broadfork which really loosens the soil and makes weeding a lot easier. There is just one problem—we do not get to weed enough because the rest of our life must continue on.
Every day of the week rain or shine, heat or cold, we start our day off milking the cows. Our precious Jersey cows are so sweet, and it is amazing how each one knows its name—and sometimes I think that they know each other’s name. For instance, we might be calling Gail to come in to be milked, but Ana is standing at the gate wanting to come in. Knowing that we do not want her, she goes over to Gail and gives her a good shove with her head as if to say, “You just think that they are calling you, but I am next whether you like it or not.” Needless to say, bullying doesn’t get them anywhere. If it is not their turn, they have to wait like it or not. Sunshine on the other hand will come up to the wire wanting to come in real bad—but she is my third cow that I milk, not my first. She still comes up hoping that she can sneak in, and sometimes she does, but we have to shoo her back out. When she doesn’t get her way, she goes all the way back in the corner of the field and stands there—pouting I am sure. As soon as she hears her name, she will come running back up excited that it is finally her turn. Ellie Mae runs so fast to come in when you call her name that we make sure we never say her name unless we really need her— otherwise, she just might run through the hot wire gate. A few weeks ago Honey had a little heifer calf, and we named her Blossom. I do believe that Blossom is our new bull, Dijon’s first calf. Analee and Emma are due any day now. Emma is a first time heifer. Thankfully she is used to coming into the milking parlor, being tied in, and being petted all over. So the biggest part of the battle has been won—now we just have to see how she does being milked. We have quite a few new heifers added to the milking herd this year—and they are all beautiful. We sold one (Daisy) a couple weeks ago to a family that is ready for their first milk cow, and last Tuesday we sold another heifer (Nettle) to another family ready for their first milk cow. The interesting thing about both families is that they both learned about us from interning on another local farm. You may wonder how in the world Nettle got her name— well, her beloved Mother, Penny, decided to give birth to her in the middle of a large fireweed-nettle patch. The family that is buying Nettle actually was a very big help to us here on our farm some thirteen years ago. Since Dana had learned how to milk while interning at the other farm, her Mom, a friend of theirs, and a young man that was interning on our farm all stayed on the farm for a week so that we could go on vacation. It has been at least 5 years since we last saw Dana, so it was really nice when she and her Mom came out to the farm on Tuesday to look at Nettle—they were amazed at how much had changed on the farm in the last thirteen years. One of the biggest changes was that what used to be the feed room had since been turned into our Milk house where we bottle milk; wash up the equipment, and package eggs.
While Tuesday afternoon was spent selling a cow, Monday morning was spent selling a ram. An elderly man was looking for a sheep to butcher—and with the butchers so full right now, if you don’t butcher it yourself, you have to wait months to have the butcher do it for you. After we caught him up a ram we decided that it was time to separate out the rams that we are planning to take to the butcher on June 9. We scheduled for fifteen to go to the butcher, but when we got them all separated out, we found out that we only have nine. We never know how many we have, until the day we separate them. I was surprised that with over 100 sheep, we only had nine lamb rams from last year. Well, we did sell some already, so I guess there was more. Separating nine rams from a flock of over 100 sheep was not the easiest task, but thankfully it was not as hard as it could have been. We had all the sheep in the sheep barn—but there was one problem; the calves have taken up eating the barn at night, so there are huge holes in the walls, of which the sheep can jump out. With some panels, we blocked as many holes as we could, and then with some more panels we sectioned off a part of the barn near the back gate. We would then run about 10 sheep into the panel section, and Papa would catch the rams and send them back out the opening that Steve was guarding, and then Mom would open the gate and let all the ewes and little lambs out of the barn. I stood on the outside of the panels helping to eye the rams. A few times I found myself in the wrong place as the sheep would get too antsy and decide to jump over the panels to get back with the rest of the flock. If they had cleared the panels it wouldn’t have been so bad—but they usually took the panels with them knocking them over on me. After about an hour we finally had just the rams left in the barn. We then got the cattle trailer and loaded them up so that we could take them to a field that was lush with grass. The rest of the flock was then taken back down pasture and up the hill to the chestnut orchard.
May is usually our dry month, so it is nothing new that we haven’t had rain lately—but no rain means that the grass doesn’t grow as fast as it should. With the grass on the short side, the cows have not been producing as much milk as they were in April when the rains were producing lush, green grass. Green grass is what makes milk. A few weeks ago we were getting 14 to 17 gallons of milk a day. Last week we got 11 to 13 gallons of milk a day. For the most part we were still able to fill all of our orders—but a few had to be cut short. Wednesday after we milked the cows, Steve was bottling the milk and I told him that we needed 16 gallons of milk to fill the order. Steve told me that it was impossible—for we had only gotten 13 gallons the day before. I told him that he needed more faith than that. I hate marking gallons off of people’s orders, so I was delighted to hear that we had gotten all the milk needed to fill the order. Praise the Lord!
Last fall I started a recipe blog, and I have had fun sharing recipes that we consider “comfort food”. While I try to get one recipe out on the first Wednesday of every month, things do not always go as planned. Last Wednesday I was finally able to work on the blog for May: “A Birthday Cake for my Papa—Angel Food Cake.” Angel food cake has been Papa’s favorite cake since he was a little boy. AS we have learned to eat healthy, the type of four and sugar that we use has changed over the years. This year with Mom’s allergy to grain and cane sugar I attempted to make a grain-free cake—and it was a success. I used cassava flour and maple sugar.
Back in February we planted a row of Irish Potatoes. The weather was perfect this year as there were no frosts after the little plants emerged from under the dirt. They just got to grow and grow and grow this year. Since we covered them with about six inches of dirt after we planted them, we did not hill them up as they grew this year. We planted 25 pounds of potatoes. Last Thursday was the day to harvest them. That is one nice thing about May being a dry month—the onions and potatoes are ready to be harvested, and they will keep better if the weather is dry and not wet. Mom and I spent most of Thursday digging up the potatoes. Once we had them all dug up, we then brought them up to the house to dry out in the sun. Then we packed them in baskets and took them upstairs to the sewing room where I can keep the air conditioner colder until we can process them. To my delight we harvested 60 pounds of potatoes—they should give us many pints of canned potatoes. Canned potatoes make cooking potatoes so easy—just open the jar and heat up to make mashed potatoes, open the jar and rinse them off and throw them in a skillet of hot butter and make fried potatoes, open the jar and rinse them off and make potato salad. Yum! Yum!
Have you ever realized that maybe you have too many irons in the fire? Life lately has truly been extra busy with gardening and processing chickens every other week. Then there is the house work, cooking the meals, putting together orders, harvesting and preserving, making yogurt and kefir—and making kombucha. I have made kombucha for the last 13 years. Dana (whom I mentioned earlier) and her Mom are the ones that introduced us to kombucha. Most of the time we have made kombucha just for ourselves, but then more and more people wanted it. At one point we were making so much that it became a four hour job if done by one person, a two hour job if done by two people. In the past few months I began to feel that it was time to stop making kombucha for sale. Last Thursday after we harvested all the potatoes, we had two flats of strawberries to get to the freezer, kombucha to make, dinner to cook, and laundry to get done. You guessed it—I had too many irons in the fire, and I decided that it was time to do something that I had been contemplating for the last few months. I decided to stop making kombucha for sale—it only takes 30 minutes to make enough for my family, and I can find time for that much easier than I can find a two hour block of time. So, I have bottled up the last kombucha for sale—and when it is gone, it is gone.
Friday was another chicken processing day. The Durmaz family came over around noon to help us process the 47 chickens. To our delight our processing table showed up on Thursday. Mom had prayed that it would arrive in time for us to use it—because they originally told us that it wouldn’t even be shipped until the 15th. What a delight to get a call on the 13th telling us that they would deliver it on the 14th. The table is eight feet long and has 3 inch high sides all the way around it. Now all we need is two more sinks. We could use a higher table for packaging, but for now what we have will do. In the last two weeks we also got another table for the packaging side, and for Papa’s birthday we ordered him the Featherman killing cones and stand. Being able to do 8 birds at a time made the process go so much faster. We were done with 47 birds in one hour. It then took us close to 3 hours to package the whole birds, and cut up 16 birds and package all the parts. It was shortly after 4:00 p.m. when we were all done. We then came inside and ate dinner together. They cooked the kale casserole and the sweet potatoes, and we cooked the beef brisket and banana pudding. When dinner was done we gathered in the living room to have a movie night. They had never seen the movie “The Biggest Little Farm”, and we had just recently bought it. So they brought their big screen, but there was a little bit of difficulty getting it all hooked up. While they worked on the “technical problems”, Papa loaded two tons of chicken feed into the feed room. Well, actually he only unloaded a ton—the other ton was sent to the barn until Monday. Since it was getting late, two of the daughters and I headed out to pasture to separate the calves for the night—with milk being low, I dared not separate them. I was thankful that we did, because it was 9:00 by the time we finished the movie and 10:00 by the time they left. It was a long—but enjoyable day.
Saturday was another long day—but boy were we tired. We got the milking done and then Mom worked on packaging the meat part of the Gainesville order, while I packed the milk part and headed to the garden to harvest the collards and kale. When I got back I helped Mom finish packing the meat, and then I finished the receipts. After lunch we did a little house work, and then we had some customers. Once they left we headed to the garden to harvest the last of the carrots. They were not the best crop—because I planted them too close, never thinned them, and then left them in the ground about two months too long. We have carrots though—and now we just need to sort out those that are good for storage, and those that need to be canned for soup. When we got back inside we still needed to get the dishes done and cook dinner. After dinner we had to vacuum seal the strawberries that Mom had frozen whole, and we had to package in pint containers the strawberries that she had sliced up and poured maple syrup over. We had been blessed with two flats of strawberries on Thursday from two different families. We were very grateful, and look forward to buying us some more tomorrow. The local produce store is having a sale on organic strawberries—one flat (8 quarts) for $11, or 2 flats for $20. Sound like a deal to me!
I hope you have a great week. We still have weeds to pull, and some sweet potatoes to get in the ground.
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare