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Hi Everyone,

                There is so much to do here on the farm, but it never fails that something always seems to get in the way to slow us down. This last week we have been on the home stretch for getting the last of the spring garden seeds in the ground. The week before we finally finished weeding and prepping one of the 16 ft. x 48 ft. garden beds; therefore on Monday I was able to plant field peas, okra, zucchini and butternut squash. While I planted, Mom and Steve began work on the pumpkin/squash bed. Last fall Mom and I had seen a video of a garden in France, and the squash garden was breath taking. It was made up of nine, 9 ft. square boxes that were about three feet high—and wattle fenced all around. I fell in love, and dreamed all winter of building these boxes in our squash bed. Surely we could get nine of them built in four months! I knew just where to find the bamboo that I wanted to wattle with, and I even found the owners phone number so that we could call and ask for permission to come and cut down their bamboo that is taking over one of their old houses and spreading out all over their property. Alas—some things are just dreams. We never could seem to find the time to go cut down bamboo, and I never could get the owner to answer the phone. A few months ago I counted how many pallet size cardboard boxes we had collected in the barn from all the chicken feed we had delivered—there were seven. I thought that we could use the boxes as a frame to fill up with dirt, and then we could wattle around it. Then April arrived, and the last week of planting arrived—and I gave up all hope of having my dream come to fruition. As we headed to the garden Monday morning I was completely prepared to weed a three foot circle, dump a few buckets of compost in it, and plant the squash and pumpkins in the circles. Mom and I discussed our thoughts back and forth, and Mom had the idea of weeding six, four foot wide strips across the bed and top dressing them with compost and planting in them. Sounded real good to me! So while I planted seeds, they weeded. We have had the whole bed covered in black plastic for a month, but it doesn’t kill nut grass. Thankfully though, all the other weeds were gone—but nut grass was pretty heavy. By the time I finished planting, they had finished weeding one strip. It was then time for lunch. After lunch Mom had a change of plans—she took out some of the cardboard boxes that are almost 4 foot square (the size of a pallet), and she and Steve set two up on the first weeded strip and filled them up with half wood chips and the other half compost. The first two boxes were ready for planting—and I quickly planted some Spaghetti squash seeds in them. I then headed over to pull up all the multiplier onions so that the bulbs can dry out for next fall’s planting—and so that I could weed their bed in order to plant basil there. After a while I went over to check on Mom and Steve and I found them digging a hole—and not a little hole either.

Using the broadfork we have unearthed quite a few rocks in the garden—two foot oblong shaped rocks. Thinking we had found another one—they began to dig. We tease Mom that when she doesn’t need any more rocks for the courtyard, then we will stop finding them in the garden. As they dug, they did dig up a two foot oblong rock, and a bunch of small rocks, but this one rock kept getting bigger, and bigger, and bigger! Hours later the hole was a good six feet long, three feet wide, and four feet deep.

Papa arrived with the tractor, and he hooked a chain around the rock in order to pull it out—but it didn’t budge. So he moved to a different position—and it didn’t budge, but it just about flipped the tractor. Papa had fun making the tractor come up off of two wheels—but Mom didn’t enjoy watching it.

It was after 6:00 when Papa quit on the rock and headed out to do his evening chores. Mom and I continued digging around the rock until sometime around 7:00. I was a little concerned that we might have to give up and bury the rock again. We called our neighbor to see if he could come over and help us with his backhoe, and he said that he could on Tuesday afternoon. I hated to have to go to bed with that rock still in the ground—for I wanted to be able to spend all day Tuesday working on getting the boxes ready for planting.

                Tuesday morning it was all that I could do to sit there and milk the cows. It takes about an hour and a half to milk—but I wanted to be in the garden so bad that I had a hard time sitting down milking. Then on top of that I had to bottle and make kombucha before I could go to the garden. I was chomping at the bit—but I persevered and a little after noon I was heading to the garden. I arrived just in time too. Since Papa had to take down some of the garden fence so that the backhoe could get into the garden bed, he could get his tractor up close to the rock. He drove up to the rock and I grabbed my camera and was ready to capture what happened next. He put the tractor bucket on the rock and pushed it—and it moved!!!!!

With the rock wiggled free, Papa wrapped a chain around it and hooked it to the tractor bucket. Then—little by little he picked that big rock up out of the ground. I shall now reclassify it from a rock to a boulder.

It was a good 5 feet long, 4 feet wide and about 2 feet thick. I think that we only managed to dig out half of it—the other half was still stuck in the clay. With the boulder removed from the ground, Papa then had to figure out how to get it out of the garden. When he put it in his tractor bucket, he couldn’t get the tractor to back up—it just spun tires and sunk in the sand. Papa then had to go and put the seed planter on the back of the tractor to give it more weight in the back so that when he picked up the 1 ton rock, he could manage to back up.

He then took it to a water hose and washed off as much clay as possible. I think that it needs a pressure washer to get off the rest of the clay—but it looks really good. Now we just have to figure out where in the yard we want to use it for a focal point.

                With the rock removed from the garden, we could then cover back in the hole, and work on wattling the two boxes. Mom had spent the morning cutting down chaste, apple, and mimosa branches, and Steve and I spent some time cutting sycamore and chestnut branches. We found out that we were highly allergic to the sycamore—we coughed, and sneezed, our throats itched. I guess the best time of the year to cut sycamore branches is in the winter—when there are no leaves or pollen. By the end of the day Mom had the two boxes wattled—and she was not sure how in the world we could manage to wattle eight more boxes. Yet, we couldn’t use the cardboard unless we had something to hold the boxes together once the rain started to cause the boxes to decompose.

                As Thursday arrived we came up with a way to rig our boxes. When we built our house twenty plus years ago, we had a lot of vinyl siding left over— one foot high, and five foot long. We use it to fix everything—holes in chicken houses, barricading turkeys out of the garden, etc. So, we decided to use them to frame in the boxes until we can wattle them. Our goal Thursday was to get seven more boxes laid out, filled up and planted. We had no time for weeding, and very little time for leveling. We had to empty the truck of one load of compost, so that Papa could go get us another load of compost. We had to do it quickly too—because we didn’t want to make two trips to town since the Post Office had called to tell us that the baby chicks had arrived. It was noon by the time Papa headed out, and we only had two boxes done. Papa had cut Mom a bunch of two foot posts to pound in the ground to hold the boxes in place and in shape. The rest of the day we measured out the rows, centered the boxes, staked them in place, filled them half way up with wood chips, and then the rest of the way with compost. It was 4:30—all eight boxes were set, they all had wood chips in them (and we had just enough), and we still had about six wheel barrow loads of compost to dump in them. Steve had to go home—his work day was over, so Papa took over hauling compost. How grateful I am that at 69 (Papa had a birthday on Friday), Papa can still do strong manual labor. Without his muscles, Mom and I would be in bad shape. Once the boxes were all full I wasted no time in planting them. I planted two more boxes with spaghetti squash seeds, the long middle box with Seminole pumpkin seeds, and the last four boxes with lemon squash. I was so excited! We still have to trim the vinyl to fit the boxes, but the boxes are made and planted.

                Friday was Papa’s birthday—but he had to work hard on his birthday, but thankfully we had help. We had 46 chickens to process—after Papa did all the morning chores and Mom and I milked the cows. It was 11:00 by the time we were ready to start setting up in the Poultry Kitchen. We started processing at noon. Around 1:00 a family of seven arrived to help us process and package the chickens. They made everything go so much faster. Two weeks ago we processed 30 birds, and it was 8:00 by the time we were finished with clean up. Last Friday all 46 chickens were processed by 1:30, and we were done with the packaging and clean up by 4:00. Many hands truly make light work.

                Saturday morning we milked the cows and then I packed the order and headed to the garden to harvest the vegetables for the Gainesville delivery while Mom packed the meats. We are very grateful to have Steve working full time for us (six days a week), for he helps us to get so much more done, and is a big help on delivery days. It looks like we shall be getting to keep him full time too! Once the orders were all packed and the receipts were all printed, I worked at the computer for about an hour getting some bookkeeping done. Mom headed to the garden to weed. My plans were to make Papa an Angel Food cake for his birthday. I had one problem though—I didn’t want to use the home made vanilla extract that I had made using wheat vodka. I couldn’t use regular vodka because it is made from corn, now Mom cannot have the wheat. I searched into brandy, but it comes from white grapes that Mom is allergic to. I kept searching, and it looks like we could use Pear Brandy—but I have never gotten around to getting some. With the price of the brandy, and the price of the vanilla beans, I think that a bottle of homemade vanilla extract could cost close to $100. Making it at home is supposed to be cheaper—unless you have allergies. Anyway, I had already asked Papa to buy me some vanilla beans at the store, so I decided to catch up on laundry while I waited for Papa to get home. I did go ahead and measure out all the ingredients so that I could be ready to go when he walked in the door. The cake turned out to be a success—and you can make your own if you stay tuned for my next recipe blog. Angel Food cake has been Papa’s favorite cake since he was a boy. He grew up on white flour and white sugar Angel food cake. Then we began to make it with whole wheat and Rapadura sugar. Then Mom had to go gluten free, and so I made it with buckwheat and millet flour. Then Mom became allergic to cane sugar and buckwheat—so this year I decided to give it a try with maple sugar and Cassava flour. It rose very nicely, and tasted delicious—especially since it was topped with homegrown strawberries.

Serving you with Gladness,

Tiare