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Hi Everyone,

                I was down at the barn tonight getting some photos of my disappearing pumpkins—stay tuned for the next garden blog—when I threw down a large object and saw Sunny Boy fly out of the seat of the tractor and come to a halt on the tire. When Sunny Boy arrived on the farm over a year ago, he would literally swim on top of the concrete if he saw a human being—because he was running so fast he couldn’t make traction. Over time he wouldn’t run away very far, and then he wouldn’t run away as fast. Now, if he knows that you will not try to touch him, he will not run away at all. He is so funny though for he wants to get attention so bad that he will meow and meow at you and he will even flop down on his side and start rolling on the ground—but as soon as you reach to pet him, he is gone. I guess you can say that he has a strange way of showing love.

                Thankfully the temperature dropped a little last week—or should I say we were grateful for every cloud cover and breeze that blew our way. We managed to work in the garden a lot, and we were able to get four beds weeded and layered with compost so that the beds are ready for us to plant carrots, beets, and onions tomorrow. I think that I may transplant the lettuce and baby bok choy too. Thursday I went to town to get the compost, and we spent Thursday afternoon and Friday morning getting the compost emptied from Papa’s truck and into the garden beds. We ran out of time before we could broadfork the beds in order to mix the compost in with the soil. So come Saturday I planned to broadfork. Do you ever have things that you want to do—but can’t, and see things that need to be done—but you don’t want to do them? Just as I was fixing to head to the garden Saturday afternoon, it began to rain. Of course I could think of a million things that needed to be done inside—but I wanted to be in the garden. I finally set down at my desk and did some garden planning. I am still trying to figure out just where to plant what. I think that I have everything figured out—but the Vidalia and yellow onions. When the rains quit—I headed for the garden. The first thing I did was to harvest some plantain leaves. Someone bought my last jar of Soothing Salve, and when I went to make some more I found out that I had used up most of the plantain leaves that I had harvested last spring. So I gathered a whole handful of leaves, and weeded the bed so that I could scatter more plantain seeds around for next year’s crop. The plantain that I am talking about is an herb—and in some places considered a weed. It is not the banana shaped fruit called a plantain. Once I was done with the plantain bed, I grabbed the broadfork and the garden rake and headed over to the long garden rows. I got three sixteen foot long rows broadforked, and had three feet left to do on the last row when Mom rang the bell for me to come in. I didn’t get to finish my last three feet, nor did I get to level out the dirt after I broadforked it—but I did manage to not get soaking wet since I obeyed my Mother and came when called. She was watching the sky get blacker and blacker from the kitchen window—I was watching it from the garden beds. With each step down and pull back of the broadfork, I saw the clouds get closer and closer. I was hoping to finish, and was wondering where to run for shelter when the storm hit. Mom answered all the questions for me—I got back to the house just in time to get into the milk house before the rains lets lose. I also arrived just in time to help a customer who had just arrived to pick up an order. Tomorrow is another day—and Lord willing I shall head back to the garden just as soon as I am done milking. Although, according to the weather forecast we may be dodging rain storms once again. Everyone I know is complaining about all the rain—but I look at it this way. October is always a dry month—it is also the best month of the year to get the best cutting of hay. If September is dry—then October will be too droughty, and if September is dry—the grass won’t grow lush enough to get a good hay cutting. On the reality side though—it is getting awfully muddy around the milking parlor and the duck house.

                Papa, Steve and Mom have spent a lot of time lately building a new portable chicken hoop house. When we increased the amount of chickens to accommodate the demand, we ended up with more chickens that we had pens for. We were lacking four pens, but I decided to cancel the batch of chickens that would make us need that many pens. Now we only need two more, giving us a total of 10 pens. The chickens take up eight of them and the Thanksgiving turkeys sleep in two of them. I say that the turkeys sleep in them—because they run free during the day time. They only go in the pens to eat, sleep and drink. The rest of the time they are roaming the pastures chasing down bugs. The trio got one pen finished on Friday and was able to take a batch of chickens out of the brooder house and move them out on the pasture. Now they have to get one more finished hopefully this week.

                We had another calf born this week—Miss Penny had a little bull calf. That means we have about 6 newly freshened cows. We should be swimming in milk—but alas it never fails that just as you add a new cow to the milk team, we have to dry off one or two because they will be calving in a few months. Every cow gets about a two month break from being milked. This allows them to build up good body fat, and to build up a nice supply of colostrum for their newborn calf. So while we added one new cow to the milk tank last week, we removed two. Penelope and Decci are due the end of October and the beginning of November so it was time for their “maternity” leave. There is one other problem in the world of milking—while calves grow best when they are allowed to nurse their mommies for six to nine months, they do get big enough to drink all of their mommies’ milk leaving none for us. When we are swimming in milk, we let the calves have all they want. When the daily milk total begins to drop, then we make the calves share. So tonight Papa and I headed down pasture to separate the calves for the night—there were six of them old enough to separate, we left Penny’s calf with her. Tomorrow we shall get to see just how big some of our new cows’ udders are. Their calves have been drinking them dry since the first week they were born—not to mention some of the older calves are snitching from the other mommies. When a calf is left on their mama, they drink all of the milk—they do not know how to share. When a calf is separated from the mama at night time, then the mama will only give us half of the milk and she will save the best of the milk for her calf—she knows how to share.

                I spent some time this week potting up some of my little vegetable seedlings. The kale, Swiss chard, and bok choy were very ready for extra root space. I still have the broccoli and some of the cabbage to pot up. It is amazing how fast the little plants grow when you give them more room for their roots. The new potting table is working out just perfectly.

                I hope that you have a great week. I must close for now so that I can go get my beauty sleep—or is it energy sleep?

Serving you with Gladness,

Tiare