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Hi Everyone,
Do you like to share? Children are taught to share—and for some it comes more naturally than others. The question though is—do you REALLY like to share? When it comes to my farm life—I really like to share. I share my life through my journals every Sunday night, but it is so much more fun to share my life face to face. I love to share the joys of farming—pulling a carrot out of the ground, picking a handful of flowers, serving a fresh from the garden meal, gathering eggs, seeing the cows come when called by name, and for some the chance to see if they can actually get milk out of the cow. (Hint: not everyone can get milk from a cow.) On Monday we got a chance to share our life with three college age people from Jacksonville. They dream of farming—but have a lot to learn. After reading everything on our website at www.shepherdshillfarmflorida.com and watching all the videos on our website, they emailed and asked if they could please come for a visit. They arrived at 9:30—in time to watch us milk the cows. When we were done, they came into the parlor and gave the cows some good old tender love and care. Then “Farmer Tom” aka Papa, took them for a tour around the farm on the Gravely. Yasha (the sheep guard dog)thoroughly enjoys visitors, and she smiles so big that peoples first reaction is that she is growling at them because she is showing all of her teeth—but she is just so excited, and her lips even quiver with excitement. One of the cutest things to see right now on the farm is the lambs. I think that a new one is added to the farm daily—and sometimes they multiply. There are two ways to learn how to farm—by reading and by doing. Reading leads to a “romantic” view point, and doing leads to reality. When our friend got her own milk cow, and had to milk it pregnant, on freezing cold mornings, and when she was sick with the flu—she was soon heard commenting that “this is not romantic.” Farming requires a passion—a calling if I may say so myself. There are two ways of learning farming by doing it—by yourself where you learn by trial and error; or alongside another farmer where you glean his wisdom, and learn from his mistakes. We have done both, and we are always eager and willing to pass on to others the things that we have learned along the way.
I fear that spring will be here before I know it—and I will not be prepared. There is so much to do in the garden—but we are making progress, just slowly. So many things need to be pruned, the elderberry has creeped into some garden beds again, the ginger and turmeric need harvested, one whole bed of ginger needs moved (it gets so tall that it blocks the sprinkler), and large beds need to be weeded—actually I do not want to weed them at all. I want either pigs or chickens to do the job for me, or some black plastic tarps. We have chickens, and we have tarps—but they take time to work, and time is ticking by fast. In the meantime I have been busy planting more lettuce in seed trays and transplanting some to the garden tunnels. We have also been preparing for spring flowers by transplanting stocks, statice, baby’s breath, California poppies, and snapdragons into the flower beds. Mom has been working to design the beds a little more cottage like instead of English like. In the past we have been prone to have monocultures—all gladiolas in one bed, all Dianthus in another bed, all lilies here, and all mums here. So as Mom set out the flowers that I had started in the greenhouse back in October, she also went around the garden gathering little flower baby’s from here and there. Rudbeckia and Love-in-a-mist grow wild in the garden, so Mom dug up a few of them to add to the baby’s breath, snapdragons, and poppies. She even grabbed a few daylilies and some herbs. You can find herbs scattered throughout the maze garden—though mostly in a monoculture setting. While lemon grass, ginger, turmeric, plantain, the mints (apple mint, peppermint, and chocolate mint), Mexican tarragon, chives, garlic chives, lemon balm, Echinacea, mullein, and oregano grow year round in the garden—I do have to grow parsley, sage, and thyme a new every year. The summer heat and humidity always seems to make them say “Good-bye”. That is when you bring in the basils though. Last week I was able to transplant the parsley, sage and thyme into their beds in the garden. This year we are not only putting down fresh compost in the beds, but we are mulching between the plants—and it looks so nice and neat and will hopefully keep the weeds at bay. The biggest trouble we are having right now in the garden is chickens. I have fixed the fence, clipped their wings, thrown them behind six foot tall fencing—and I still find chickens in the garden. UGH!
While we prefer to spend most of our days outside, there does come a time when I must lock myself in the kitchen and get some things done. Last Tuesday was one of those days. A few weeks ago I noticed that I was out of Soothing Salve, so I put some herbs in the oil and set them in the oven on low for a few days. Then I strained the herbs out and placed the oil in the fridge until I could get around to adding the beeswax and washing all the little jars. I had also dehydrated a bunch of lemon peels—but they needed to be turned into powder. I had a jar of orange peel powder—but it needed to be packaged. I am supposed to make yogurt on Mondays—but most of the time I procrastinate it to Tuesday because I would rather be in the garden all day. Since someone ordered a Soothing Salve, and I had placed the Orange and Lemon Peel on the Larder list (and got lots of orders for), and I had not made yogurt yet—I had a very, VERY busy Tuesday. As soon as I finished milking my ten cows (America, Sally, Rosepetal, Ellie Mae, Jenny, Decci, Sunshine, Amy, Abby—oops it is only nine because I just dried off Ana), I came inside and answered emails and put together orders for the Jacksonville delivery the next day, and then I headed to the kitchen. I added the beeswax to the herbal oil for the Soothing Salve, and then I ran all the lemon peel through the blender. Since I had to also grind up the cayenne peppers, I washed the blender. Once the blender was all washed I realized to my grand dismay that I had forgot one whole dehydrator of lemon peels—I had two full. I went ahead and did the cayenne pepper—and may I ask: if a mask cannot keep cayenne pepper out of my nose, how do they ever expect them to keep microscopic germs out? If you think black pepper is bad on the sneezer, then don’t get a whiff of cayenne pepper! I was only going to grind up half of the cayenne peppers, but since I found it challenging to keep it out of my nose—I ended up trashing the mask and getting a bandana which actually worked better, but not perfectly—I decided to go ahead and grind the entire batch of cayenne so that it was done. Once the blender was washed and dried again, I ground up the rest of the lemon peel. In between some of that I also made yogurt, ate lunch and bottled the Soothing Salve. At 2:00 I had to head next door to the milk house for the egg packaging party. My piano student arrived around 3:30, and then I worked at bottling the orange and lemon peels and the cayenne pepper. I do not believe that I finished before it was time to separate the calves for the night and harvest the vegetables from the garden for Wednesday’s delivery to Jacksonville. When I got back inside it was time to start dinner. After dinner I finished bottling the powders and then I sat on the sofa labeling all the jars, and folding clothes. Yes, it was a long day—but I enjoyed it all!
Friday was a cloudy, rainy, cool day and we hibernated inside. Papa worked on taxes, Mom canned some more beans, and I made a mess on the living room floor. Part of preparing for spring and summer is taking note of what garden seeds you need, and what you have—and don’t forget the looking through garden seed catalogues to see what new things you want to try. For years I have kept my seeds organized alphabetically in paper bags in an old filing cabinet—it worked, but I wanted something a little neater. I saw that other farmers were using plastic totes with little photo cases inside—so I ordered two sets. On Friday I emptied the filing cabinet to the living room floor, threw out old seeds—I had problem with some sprouting this year because of age. Not all the seeds fit in the plastic totes—the bulk packages and the large variety of sunflowers were put into an old, large metal popcorn container. Now I have to find a new place to store the seeds—because the totes do not fit into the filing cabinet. The least that I can say is that they are organized, cleaned out, and now all I have to do is plan when to plant them or start them in the greenhouse, and where to plant them in the garden. Oh yeah, I need to finish dreaming through the seed catalogues.
Saturday was another catch up day. Once the cows were milked and Papa was heading to Gainesville with the orders, Mom canned some more beans and I made some kombucha. When that was done I worked on my ironing while we watched a few things on YouTube—the best way to keep me at the ironing board. Then I practiced my piano. At 4:30 Papa had not returned home yet—because he had to take the van to a mechanic, so I headed out to lock up the ducks, separate the calves and close up the garden tunnels for the night. When I got back inside Papa was home and it was time to cook dinner.
Tomorrow we shall head back to the garden—which is my favorite place to be. Also starting tomorrow we begin a “rags to riches” story. Close to seven years ago we built a brand new milking parlor. It lasted about four years before it started to rot and fall apart—they don’t produce wood like they used to. Looking back we would have done better to have built on a concrete foundation instead of a wood foundation. The new one will have concrete floors and heavy duty metal pipe framing. I cannot wait to see the finished product—as long as the water drains out, and the cows cannot break down the walls when they kick I shall be happy.
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare