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Hi Everyone,
They say that many hands make light work—but here on the farm many hands helped us accomplish a VERY BIG job. Every Monday the Elder family comes over to help us milk the cows, pull weeds, clean up—whatever is in need of doing that day. Every Tuesday the Tavernari family comes over to help us package eggs, and they also came over every other Friday to help us process chickens from June to November. Last Monday we had both families here on the farm to help us tackle a weed disaster in the garden. When you have thirteen people (26 hands) working together in the garden a lot can be accomplished—especially if three of them are teenage boys and one is a grown man. While goldenrod looks awfully pretty when in full bloom in the fall, and people actually buy goldenrod seeds to purposefully plant in their garden—when it gets carried away it becomes a nuisance and I heard at least one person talk with disgust in her voice as she pulled up more and more of the dead stalks and saw all the new “babies” already coming up for next year’s fanfare. What is above the ground is only a fraction of what the root system looks like underground—but we are not focusing on that right now. A few weeks ago Steve was able to clear the big weeds out of the herb garden beds, so on Monday I took the crew of girls to the herb corner and we cleared all the little weeds out of the eight 4 ft. by 4 ft. raised beds. Once the beds were nothing but dirt I pulled out the trays of herbs that had been growing in the greenhouse and with the help of two ten year olds, a seven year old, and a five year old we planted all the herbs—catnip, horehound, thyme, celery, sage, bee balm, and chamomile. The ten and seven year olds needed no help planting—I just set the plants where I wanted them and they buried them. The five year old helped me—he dug the holes and then I put the plant in the hole and I helped him cover it in with dirt. Mom was working with the men on the other side of the garden and I was very impressed when I walked over and found the boxwood bed weed free, the stepping stones swept clean, little green sprigs of lilies peaking up through the dirt, and the boxwoods trimmed to make a perfect hedge. We only spend two hours in the garden—but a lot gets accomplished, and by that time everyone is exhausted.
We were not given much time to recover from that exhaustion though—for the Tavernari’s wanted to save on gas (very wise idea), so they decided to stay the afternoon and package the eggs on Monday instead of coming back on Tuesday. The Elder’s wanted some chestnut leaves to make leaf mold—and I wanted some too. So after a very quick lunch, Steve, all four Elder’s and I jumped in the truck—well the children climbed into the trailer that the truck was towing and we headed up to the chestnut field. First we raked a bunch of leaves into long rows, and then the son mowed over them with the push mower. Once again we raked up the leaves—now mulched, and stuffed them into four large garbage bags. We would fill the bag to the max, then we would sit on it to smash it down, or the ten year old would belly flop on it. Once all the bags were full, we grabbed out the tarp and raked leaves onto the tarp and then dumped the tarp into the trailer. When the trailer was full, we left the tarp laid out over the leaves and climbed on top and rolled around to smash the leaves down—so we could pile more on top. Once we had the trailer as full as we could possibly get it the two girls climbed on the tarp and had a nice soft ride back to the garden. It was 3:30 by now and everyone was tired. I was willing to let them go home—but the Mom suggested that they help us unload the trailer into my concrete compost bin. A few months back when we were preparing the caterpillar tunnels for the fall vegetable crops we had to pull up all the iron clay pea vines that I had planted to smother weeds and add nitrogen to the soil—those vines were thrown into the compost bin and they filled the 8 ft. wide x 8 ft. wide x 4 ft. tall compost bin to the top. As the months passed by they began to decompose and I was able to climb on them and smash them down. Then while we were raking up the leaves, I asked Papa to please empty the manure spreader (which was overflowing with manure that we collect from the milking parlor everyday) on top of the pea vines to help them decompose faster and to give my leaves a “soil” base instead of a concrete base—and to help them decompose too. To empty the manure spreader was supposed to be very easy, but Papa made one fatal mistake—he backed up the spreader a little too close to the pea vines and when he turned it on so that the machine could throw the manure into the compost bin it grabbed the pea vines and they wrapped all up in the machine and broke it. Therefore, Papa had to shovel all the manure out by hand—and when I heard that story later I made sure that I cooked him a real good dinner. With the manure on top of the pea vines we were now ready to unload the leaves from the trailer and into the compost bin. They transferred the leaves and I smashed them down with a rake, watered them down and climbed on top to smash them some more. The area in the compost bin was smaller than the area of the trailer—but we did manage to cram every last leaf into the compost bin and then pull the tarp down over them to hold them in place. It was then 4:30 and we were all done in and ready to be done with all physical labor for the day.
I had worked so hard on Monday that to be honest—I was done for the rest of the week, and not only was my body exhausted but my voice was too. I had talked and laughed so much on Monday that I had nearly lost my voice—or should I say that I sounded very hoarse. The rest of the week was spent weeding a little here and there, selling a milk cow to a family who needed one, selling some of our old chickens, and working in the greenhouse—I have a lot of flowers and herbs that need to be potted up and planted out. Mom spent a lot of time making wreaths and swags out of cut cedar and juniper. One evening we headed up to our pine trees to see if we could find any pinecones to decorate an old wooden bucket on the front porch. We found just enough, and a pile of pine straw too.
Thursday afternoon I spent in the greenhouse while Steve weeded in the garden and Mom and Papa spent hours collecting chickens for a man who wanted 25 of them. The trouble was that the 65 chickens were running lose in the field and catching a lose chicken is like collecting water spilt on a basketball court. Every once in a while they could trick one or two into going into the house—but it took them over two hours to collect 26 chickens. I had my dinner all planned out. At 2:00 I had put a whole chicken in the oven at 250F to bake for four hours, and then I planned to be inside by 4:45 so that I could make a Butternut squash bake with some left over butternut squash from Monday. My plan was to get the squash bake in the oven and then run to the garden to get some collard greens for dinner—but the weather threw a kink in my plans (or at least tried to). When I came inside to cook I noticed a BIG black cloud to the south of us, and I knew that it was going to storm soon. I hoped to get the squash bake in the oven before the rain arrived. Papa needed to separate the calves and I was hoping he could get it done before it rained—BUT the rain arrived before either was accomplished. I was still assembling the squash bake when the rain arrived, but Papa had made it to the cow field when the rain let lose. He managed to hide out under the portable cow barn (a roofed structure so that the cows can have shade in summer and get out of the rain). I had looked at the weather radar and I thought that it was a little storm and wouldn’t last very long—it was just a skinny band, but it wasn’t moving fast and it was loaded with water. By the time I had the squash bake in the oven the rain wasn’t coming down very hard—but it was still raining pretty good. I wanted collards really bad, so I grabbed my raincoat and headed for the garden. If my raincoat had gone to my ankles I would have stayed dry—but it didn’t and the bottom half of my dress was pretty wet when I got back inside. I asked Mom to wash and cut up the collards and I headed for a quick shower. When I got out of the shower I cooked the collards and finished up dinner. Papa came in very wet—and he had not been able to collect the eggs, lock up the birds, or feed the dogs. Thankfully he was able to separate the calves, even though he had to do it in the rain. By the time dinner was done the rain had stopped and Papa was able to go back out and finish his chores.
Saturday Mom and I planned to spend our afternoon putting up our winter décor—we only had three days left before we would be officially late getting it up. I like to say that the first day of winter is December 1st, even though it is technically December 21st. While we missed the first, we were hoping to not miss the 21st. BUT—Papa was finally able to call the lumberjack and tell him that we were finally ready to have our firewood delivered (after taking a month to build a lean to on our old shed and a firewood crib), and the wood was scheduled to be delivered Saturday afternoon. Mom had to take the Gainesville delivery so that Papa could help stack the firewood. I decided that even without Mom’s help, I was going to decorate. So as soon as Mom disappeared out the driveway I talked Papa into helping me carry the fall décor boxes upstairs and bring down the winter décor. I then spent the afternoon hanging greenery, putting up snowmen, and decorating a basket of pinecones, and a few more things. When Mom got home I was in the middle of vacuuming up the greenery mess. She took over the vacuuming so that I could cook dinner—and it was very nice to plug in the lights that are wrapped in the greenery that drapes around our dining room doors. Now that our winter décor is up, and our firewood is stacked in its crib I guess we are ready for winter—but does it have to get cold enough to actually have to use the firewood?
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare