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Hi Everyone,
If you want to know how hot it is outside you do not need to go look at the thermometer—just look out the window and see if the cows are grazing or standing under the sprinkler. Papa was having trouble with the beef cows. He would find the cow’s water trough dumped over and find them lying in the cool water that was running out on the ground—or he would find the trough full of mud because someone had been standing in it. So, he came up with a solution—turn on a sprinkler so that the cows can get under the water and cool off, and then they would use their water trough to quench their thirst instead of to cool off, thereby ruining their water supply.
This week I think that we have truly worn many different hats:
Milk Maids
While every day is different, we do start every day with milking the cows. We are milking about 12 cows right now, and while we have two that will need to be dried off soon, we have a good six to eight that will be calving over the next few months. It seems that we have at least one cow due every two weeks from now until October or November. We have had three cows freshen in just the last month. With plenty of green grass, and many freshened cows, we have lots of milk. It never fails that when we get lots of milk—we end up with more milk than we can sell, and we have to cream it. We postponed it as long as possible by leaving all the calves on their mama’s at night time. This helped until the three cows that just calved all had bulls—that were sold, and two of the heifer calves turned eight months old which required them to be weaned. Cream is one of the items that customers beg for—but an item that we as farmers dread to make. It takes us an hour and a half to milk the cows, and about 20 to 30 minutes to bottle the milk. On the days that we cream, we do not bottle the milk—it goes straight from the cow to the creamer. The creaming process takes about two hours to set up, cream the milk, and then to clean up all the equipment. Then we have a new problem—lots of skim milk. We turn as much skim milk into curds and whey—you know the stuff Little Miss Muffet ate while sitting on her tuffet. The rest of the skim milk Papa spreads out on the pastures as fertilizer. Therefore, our thirty minute bottling job is replaced with about four hours’ worth of work.
Managers of our Home
While much of our life is spent serving others—milking 12 to 20 cows instead of one, collecting eggs from 300 chickens instead of 20, planting rows of garden greens instead of a few plants, daily rotating herds of cows and sheep to new pasture instead of just a few animals, raising and processing hundreds of chickens every year instead of 60. Yes, we love what we do, and we gladly do it for those who cannot do it for themselves. Yet, while most of our days are spent serving others there are those chores that every keeper of the home must do. Of course there is the daily preparing of nutritious meals, cleaning the house and doing the laundry—but there is also the making sure that your pantry shelves are full so that you can fix those nutritious meals, wash your dishes, and your laundry. Proverbs 31:14 says, “She is like the merchants' ships; she bringeth her food from afar.” While most of our food that we eat is produced right here on the farm, there are those things that we have to bring from a far. July is the month that cherries are in season, so we ordered some from Oregon and they came in on Monday. We spent Tuesday in the kitchen pitting cherries. We have found that the best way to preserve some foods is to dehydrate them. So about two-thirds of the cherries were pitted, cut in half and put on the dehydrator. The other third we pitted, covered them with maple syrup, and froze them in pint size containers so that we can make cherry cobblers. I made a cherry cobbler tonight with the left over fresh cherries—and boy was it scrumptiously delicious.
Movie Stars
Many years ago our farm was the stage for a documentary on how to raise chickens. This was done by the University of Florida’s IFAS team https://virtualfieldday.ifas.ufl.edu/pastured-poultry.shtml. We learned all about the behind the scenes of movie making—from “Don’t move that, it wasn’t like that in the last filming,” “Don’t put your hair up, for it was down in the last filming,” to “Move the script up so that their eyes do not look like they are reading it.” After hours of filming certain sections over and over we understood why actors get paid so much. Over the last few months another documentary is being filmed—this time by an entrepreneur film maker. Samuel is doing a documentary on our farm and how we raise meat chickens—from the Post Office to the Table. Last Thursday was the day for the interviews. I have no problem telling people why we do what we do and how we do it as I take them on a tour of the farm—but there is something different about being sat on a chair in front of a camera. I learned one thing about myself—I may not be camera shy, but I am camera happy. What I mean by that is that I got a good case of the giggles, and started laughing so hard I had to run inside to regain my composure. I did manage to get rid of my giggles and be able to participate in the interview—and yes there were quite a few “Do that over” or “Say that a different way.”
Gardeners
With shopping, rain, picking up meat from the butcher, pitting cherries, packaging eggs, and creaming we have not gotten to spend as much time in the garden as we need to or want to. I did manage to harvest vegetables two days last week, but should have harvested two more days also. The okra needs harvested every other day, and the yard long beans every three days or so. The butternut squash is ripening and the last of the acorn squash has finally been harvested. I have the squashes curing on the back porch railing—but have to remember to bring them in when the afternoon rain showers arrive. We have also gotten some tiny tomatoes, cayenne peppers and figs. The peppers, figs and some of the okra have been preserved on the dehydrator. We have also frozen some of the okra. Thursday afternoon we got to spend a little over an hour in the garden. While Mom weeded in one of the sweet potato beds I weeded in the caterpillar tunnel (big greenhouse like structure). It was time to pull up all the collards, kale, Swiss chard and the tomatoes. The heat had finished off the greens, and the worms were eating more tomatoes than we were and only three plants out of twelve were even producing tomatoes. So—they had to go. I still have to finish taking down the tomatoes and then I need to weed the bed—which thankfully it isn’t too bad with weeds. Then I need to weed the okra—for some plants I cannot see because of the tall weeds. On Monday when Mom and I headed to Gainesville to pick up our cherries and other “foods from afar”, I grabbed my garden calendar and all my bags of garden seeds. I used that time to take inventory of our seeds so that I knew what I had and what I needed. Then on Saturday I spent about an hour searching the Garden websites looking for the seeds that I needed. My favorite sites for seeds are Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds www.rareseeds.com and Southern Exposure Seed Exchange https://www.southernexposure.com/ To my grand dismay though my favorite red carrot seeds were sold out—one of the negatives of the whole world deciding to grow gardens. Last year I grew three different types of carrots: Kyoto red, Amarillo yellow, and an orange carrot called Imperator. The red carrots were the absolute best—and I wanted to grow a whole lot more, but they are out of stock. The Imperator’s were my least favorite—but then I didn’t plant them right and they grew too small. The ones that got big did taste good. Since I have tons of those seeds left—I will have to plant them properly. I keep teasing my Mom that I am going to grow a rainbow of carrots: red, black, yellow, purple, and orange. She says that she doesn’t want to eat a black carrot—for carrots are supposed to be orange!
Wood Workers
A few weeks ago a tree came crashing down on our fence. That had to be cleaned up before we could put the cows back in the field. Therefore, on Monday while Mom and I were busy shopping, Steve and Papa cut up the fallen tree, and fixed the fence. Now we have to send the branches through our new wood chipper. Then come Friday Papa was working with a different type of wood—pressure treated 2 by 4’s. With all the chickens that we are bringing in, we need two more chicken pens. So Papa started building the frames on Friday—but didn’t get very far before the rains started to roll in and it was time to pick up some alfalfa from the feed store and do the evening chores.
Yes, we have been very busy this week—and we are not on top of everything yet. Some people believe that you have to do everything perfectly or you need to cut things out—well, that is not how we roll around here. There is so much in life to enjoy, that if we only focused on doing what we could accomplish perfectly then there is so much in life that we would miss out on. Somehow though, we have got to figure out how to mow the lawn—and rake it up since the grass is a foot tall; build new partitions in the brooder house for we have lots of chickens, turkeys and ducks coming; get the garden weeded—at least the parts that are producing; package all the eggs, and . . . . Go to bed so that I have enough energy to start a new week. I hope that you have a good week too!
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare