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Hi Everyone,

                Yesterday our farm became a wedding venue, and most of last week was spent preparing for it. The original plan was to rent a big tent and host the wedding in our front yard, with the bride coming out the front door of the house. So Mom and Steve spent all day Monday cleaning the front porch walls and ceiling. The porch desperately needed to be painted (and to make matters worse—some of it is painted, and the rest is still plain wood), but there just was not enough time to paint the porch. While Mom and Steve scrubbed the walls, I scrubbed the cushions that were on the porch furniture. Wednesday rolled around and the groom gave us a call—the weather channel was predicting heavy thunderstorms the day of the wedding! That meant that a tent was out of the question—but where could we hold the wedding now? I knew just where—the Poultry Kitchen. One side is a big 16 ft. by 32 ft. open room. So instead of renting a tent, we rented 40 chairs. Thursday was spent mowing the lawn, and figuring out how to set up the building for the wedding. Friday afternoon we spent decorating the building. The garland that had graced our dining room all spring became the garland that made the arch way that they said their vows in front of. Saturday morning we woke up to rain, and the map said that it would only get worse as the day went by. While Mom fixed breakfast, I headed to the garden to gather flowers for the wedding. There were sunflowers, zinnias, crepe myrtle, hydrangea, roses, rudbeckia, gladiolas, snapdragons, agapanthus, blue sage, gaillardia, day lilies, baby’s breath, and Love-in-a-mist seed pods. After breakfast Mom became a “local” florist, and our kitchen floor became quite decorated with fallen flower petals as she arranged the flowers into about five floral arrangements to decorate the “wedding chapel”. The wedding began at 2:00, but the wedding party started arriving around 10:30. I forgot to say who got married—my youngest sister, Nichole!  There was a very interesting twist to this wedding. My siblings are adopted, and a few years ago they were able to find their birth parents. So, at the wedding yesterday Nichole had two sets of parents—her birth parents, and her adopted parents. The wedding went real well, and was just as we girls always said a wedding should be—simple.

                The rains this week have been a blessing. Last Friday we only got 6 gallons of milk. Then on Saturday we got 8 gallons. We usually milk early on Sundays—which causes us to get less milk, but we got 8 gallons again on Sunday. Come Monday we got 10 gallons—but we usually get more milk on a Monday since we milked early on Sunday. Then we got 10 gallons again on Tuesday and I knew that the milk was for sure coming up. We got over 11 gallons on Wednesday, 12 on Thursday, almost 14 on Friday, and then a whopper 16 gallons on Saturday. The Lord has truly been merciful! In the last 48 hours we have gotten 6 inches of rain—and when it rains real hard the cows stand under the shelter and do not eat. No food always equals less milk, so hopefully it doesn’t affect the amount too much.

                On Tuesday I worked on a new recipe for my recipe blog—Blueberry Pancakes/Waffles. I used Cassava flour, and they were totally scrumptious. I have enjoyed sharing recipes, garden ideas, and life on the farm through my journals. Last week I started taking a class on blogging and I am looking forward to what all I can learn.

                On Wednesday morning the phone rang bright and early—6:15. The Post Office was calling to let us know that our chickens had arrived and they were ready for pick up. We are finally getting them every week. We were supposed to start getting them every week about a month ago—but the computer messed up our ordering and the chicks never got shipped. So for the next month we should be getting 70 chicks every week. This will hopefully help meet the demand.

                Yes, this is a short journal—for it was a long exhausting week for me. This next week looks pretty interesting as the rains are supposed to continue—but there are potatoes to can. We also have to get the last two sweet potato beds prepared for the slips get mailed tomorrow, and will need to be planted on Thursday.

                I hope you are having a lovely summer.

Serving you with Gladness,

Tiare