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Hi Everyone,
I hope that all you Fathers have had a wonderful Father’s Day! I will admit that Papa did not get out of doing his farm chores, but we did get to spend the morning at church and I did fix him a nice dinner. Before we left for church I got a lamb shoulder roast all set and ready for the oven. I like to cook my roasts frozen for 5 to 6 hours at 250 F. A shoulder roast is thinner though, and it is usually done in 4 hours. As I was sitting in church this morning though I got a little concerned. I had put the roast in the oven at 8:00—which meant that it would be ready by 12:00. We do not usually get home from church before 2:00 though, and today we really stood around talking and we didn’t leave church until 2:00. I wasn’t sure that we would even have a roast left when we got home—and I do not know how burnt a pan has to get before the oven catches on fire. We got home a little after 3:00, and I headed straight for the oven to rescue whatever was left of my lamb roast. Then I noticed it—my pot was still sitting on the counter. I had forgotten to put it in the oven, even though I did remember to turn on the oven. To my delight my roast was not burnt up, and since it was frozen when I set it on the counter, it was perfectly fine—just thawed and well-seasoned. To my dismay, we now didn’t have any idea what to eat for dinner. I remembered that thanks to a computer mess up I had harvested too much basil—so I thought that I could make some pesto, but I needed something to eat with that pesto. Thankfully chicken breasts thaw real fast in a sink of water—so I grabbed two of them. In the fridge we had some yellow squash from the garden, and we have a nice stash of Vidalia onions. I sliced them up and put them in a pot with some butter, salt, pepper and some of the fresh cinnamon basil. I opened up a few jars of home canned potatoes and heated them up. I also found a head of broccoli—the only part of the meal from the store. I boiled the broccoli for about 5 minutes then topped it with butter and a little bit of lemon juice. Once the chicken was thawed I cut it up in thick strips, salted and peppered it then cooked it in some hot olive oil for 3 minutes on each side. The meal was a yummy success—but since it was now 4:45 in the afternoon and we hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast at 8:00 that morning, I am sure that anything would have tasted good.
Really and truly we spent very little time in the garden this week. We got to weed some on Monday, and then on Thursday Steve mowed and Mom and I put a load of woodchips in some of the walkways that we had just got weeded.
Tuesday we picked up beef from the butcher, and in a week it was all sold. It is amazing how much farming has changed since Covid-19 arrived on the scene. It is next to impossible to keep meat stocked in the freezer—and that problem doesn’t just apply to us small farmers, it is the big farmers too. Thursday we picked up lamb from another butcher, and we shall see how long it lasts in the freezer. We had hoped to have lamb available for Easter, but thanks to Covid-19 the butchers were so busy that we couldn’t get them in until June 9th. Maybe people will like lamb for the 4th of July!
Tuesday afternoon we had an egg packaging party with the Durmaz family, and what a blessing they are. When a four to five hour job gets shrunk to an hour or two nobody can complain. On Thursday we spent the afternoon canning potatoes—that is, after we milked the cows, Mom mowed the front lawn, Steve mowed the garden, I made a bunch of yogurt, we all put the lamb meat in the freezer, and Mom and I spent an hour putting out mulch in the garden pathways. It was 3:45 when we started peeling potatoes, and we finished around 4:45. We had enough potatoes done to fill one canner with seven quart jars, and the other canner with 16 pint jars. At 5:00 I started dinner, but it was well after 7:00 by the time we got to eat. I heard the clock strike 8:00 as we were getting up from the table too tired to do another thing—so I will admit, all the dishes stayed right where they were until the next morning.
Wednesday was another crazy day as we hustled around getting everything done that needed to be done—and the list was long. I headed to the milk house at 7:00 so that I could set up the milking equipment, while Mom fixed breakfast. Then at 8:00 I headed to the garden to harvest the vegetables for the Jacksonville delivery, while Mom did the dishes and cleaned up the house. By 9:20 we were heading to the milking parlor to milk the cows. Then we had to pack the order, filter the milk, and finish up the receipts. At noon it was time to teach piano lessons—our first since Covid-19 shut down the world. While I taught piano lessons, Mom had to go to the Post Office to pick up another batch of chicks. We are trying our best to meet the demand, and thankfully it only takes eight weeks for a meat chicken to grow to maturity. Right now we are getting around 70 chicks every week, and by the end of July we shall be butchering every week instead of every other week. It was close to 1:30 by the time I finished with the piano lessons and I had just enough time to grab me something to eat before I had to tune in to my blog class that I am taking. It lasted 2 hours and then after some relaxing time Mom and I headed out to separate the calves from their mama’s. It wasn’t long after that when Papa called and said he was getting close to home and it was time to start dinner—waffles.
Friday was a very long adventurous day. We got the cows milked and then I was supposed to take my sister Samantha—who has been visiting us for the last week, over to visit with her brother and birth Mom. I got delayed by a customer—but really and truly I got myself delayed. I had to pick some collards for the customer and I just couldn’t resist taking the time to show her some of the summer beauty of the garden and she was extra delighted to go home with a fresh garden bouquet and some eggplant. It was noon by the time Samantha and I headed out, and I got home a little before 1:00. We were supposed to leave at 1:00 to deliver a heifer cow that we had sold. Miss Nettle is 2 years old now and just got bred. A family wanted a milk cow—and she was chosen. We call her Nettle because her mother birthed her in the nettle patch. Papa had been running his own errands, and Mom was needed next door at my sister Nichole’s place. Although Papa got home first, I had the van so he couldn’t hook up the trailer and load the heifer. Mom and I got home around the same time. We quickly fixed lunch, paid our workers for the week, and then it was time to load up Nettle. She is very sweet and calm so we didn’t bother taking her to the loading pen. We just backed the trailer up to the milking parlor area and let her in hoping she would just load without any problem. She walked up to the trailer, but wouldn’t climb in. She kept turning around trying to leave, and then she would come back and sniff out the trailer. We got a bucket of feed, but it wasn’t helping. Mama hooked a thick rope around her neck and Nettle immediately jumped into the trailer—but just her two front feet. I took the bucket to the front of the trailer to try to get her to come up closer, but I was rewarded by the sharp sting of a wasp. I yelped, and headed inside to treat it with lavender oil and my Soothing salve. The pain went away, and after a few hours you couldn’t even tell I had been stung. Papa and Mama finished loading Nettle and we grabbed our lunch, and I grabbed a ton of books to entertain me for the three hours that I expected to be in the van. We were heading to Monticello, Florida which is about 90 minutes away. An hour into the trip I heard a loud FLAP! FLAP! FLAP! My first fear was a flat tire. Papa quickly pulled over, and found out that the treads had fallen off the tire. The plan was to limp along on the side of the road until we reached the Rest Area. Then Papa would unhitch the trailer, Mom and I would stay behind, and Papa would go get a new tire. We got parked and Papa began to remove the tire while Mom and I headed to the restroom. We then asked one of the workers how far away a tire shop was. He said that it was 8 miles up the road. We shared that info with Papa, and we all agreed to continue limping down the road. We were only at the tire place for about 10 minutes and then we were on our way again. We had hoped to be at our friend’s house by 2:30, but it was 5:00 when we got there. It had been quite a few years since we had gotten the chance to visit—so after we dropped off Nettle we toured their farm and visited in their home. It was 8:15 when we left—and 10:00 when we got home. There was no dinner that night, and while I climbed out of the van and into my bed, Papa had to head out to the pasture to lock up all the birds and feed the dogs. The calves got to spend the night with their mama’s—for they do not move very well in the dark.
Saturday morning we milked the cows, packed the order, and harvested the veggies for the order. After Papa left I worked on putting the farm sale receipts into the computer—spreadsheet and QuickBooks. Then there was laundry to fold, emails to answer, kombucha to bottle, washed beds to make, and dinner to cook. I had hoped to get some ironing done, but the time never was found—until later that night. We had one goal for the evening—watch President Trump’s Tulsa, OK rally speech. We got dinner out of the way, quickly did the dishes, got our showers, and by 8:00 we were ready. Thanks to a two hour speech I got ALL of my ironing done, and all the laundry folded. I like it when I can be entertained while I iron.
I hope that you are enjoying your summer—for it is officially here. The longest day of the year was Saturday, and now the chickens will go to bed a little earlier every night. Papa never likes having to go out after 9:00 to lock up the chickens—but they will not go to bed before it gets dark.
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare