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Hi Everyone,
Before my Papa was a full time farmer, he was a geologist at a phosphate mine. During rainy season there were times that he would come home and tell us stories of losing his boots in the pits, slipping and sliding in the mud with the company’s trucks, or of those who needed the tractors to come in and pull their truck out of the mud. We used to tease that Papa got paid to go mud bogging. Well, lately it seems that mud bogging is part of the job. Last Sunday Papa and I headed out to do the evening chores of feeding the ducks and separating the calves for the night. I do not change from my Sunday church clothes to go out and do those chores—because typically it is not a dirty job. The drive lanes have become pretty muddy in some places, and usually we try to drive around them when possible—but that night Papa was “feeling his oats”. We drove right down the middle of the drive lane, and right through every mud puddle. AS we drove down the lane to the low area of the property, Papa began to pick up speed as if to drive through the deepest mud puddle and send the mud flying everywhere. I had on a white and peach jumper-with a white turtleneck shirt and I began to question my sanity for not changing my clothes. I was totally prepared to no longer have a clean peach and white outfit ever again—for mud stains. We got closer and closer to the mud and water hole, and I inched toward the middle of the Gravely pacifying myself that the Gravely usually throws the mud away from its sides, whereas the golf-cart throws it up on you. Then about ten feet away from the puddle Papa slowed down and we crept through the big mud puddle. Papa laughed and asked if I thought we would actually drive through the puddle fast, and I told him that I was bracing myself to do it. My dress was saved, and we continued on our merry way. We did dodge all the mud on our way back to the house—I guess he had gotten his “mud bogging” out of his system for the night.
Last week we dodged more than mud puddles—we dodged rain and cold weather. We did get to work in the garden until 3:45 on Monday, but then a tornado warning popped up and we sent Steve home and we retired to the house. Since the building crew was working on the milking parlor, we were all pleased that the rain skirted around us. A farmer north of us got 3 inches of rain plus quarter size hail. The next day as I was talking to another farmer who told me that she was glad she lived in Florida, because although she was exhausted from an adrenaline rush from the day before when her family did have to take shelter due to the tornado that was just a mile from her house—she was glad that they didn’t live in Texas or any of the other places that have suffered greatly from the snow and terrible cold. I could totally agree. I would have to say that my worst nightmare would be being stuck on an interstate in snow for 14 hours. Anyway, we gladly took advantage of every sunny and warm hour we had last week. I have begun planting seeds in the greenhouse for the spring and summer garden. The lettuce and Roselle are already up, but I am still waiting for the cayenne and paprika to sprout. I was supposed to plant more seeds on Saturday, but we had company instead. So tomorrow I plan on starting a bunch of flowers and vegetables. Last Monday I transplanted about 50 lettuce plants to the garden tunnel. I am trying to plant lettuce every three weeks—but it sure does take forever for it to mature.
On Tuesday the weather was picture perfect—warm and sunny, but I had a list of things that I needed to do inside. I was quite envious when Mom and Steve headed to the garden. I almost went with them, but I refrained and made the yogurt, bottled the kombucha, updated a birthday list, and got the house vacuumed. I am supposed to be vacuuming every morning between 8:00 and 8:30—but somehow that half hour has been disappearing and I have to head out to milk before I can even plug in the vacuum cleaner. I was glad to get almost the whole house done and not have to worry about it. After lunch we packaged eggs, and then I taught piano lessons. I did make it out to the garden after piano lessons—because I had to harvest the greens for the Jacksonville delivery the next day.
Wednesday found us freezing once again, but I did find the cure for being cold—working. It never fails most times that you are coldest when sitting down doing nothing (like sitting here typing this journal), but when you get up and do something you build up heat. Milking is a sit down job, and when it is cold—we freeze. When I finished milking on Wednesday it was then time to pack the orders—which meant going into the walk-in cooler. When the ice chests were all packed then I had to head to the garden to harvest some greens for some last minute orders. Once I got into the back pasture I saw that the calves needed to be returned to their mammas and the cows needed to go back to their hay field. It would be another hour before Steve could do it, and I was sure that the cows would just love to spend some time in the green winter grass field. Papa had not moved the hotwire to a new section of the field, so before I could let the cows in, I had to move the wire. Green grass is full of nutrients, and it makes lots of milk—but too much of a good thing can have serious consequences. If cows eat too much spring green grass they can bloat and die. If they eat too much fresh green grass and not enough hay—they get soupy manure and we will regret it the next day when we are milking. It is very hard to dodge flying soup. Therefore, we only give the cows a percentage of a field every day—and only for an hour. So I moved the wires—but since I do not usually do it, I did it the hard way. I unhooked the handle on one side of the field, then walked to the other side of the field and unhooked it there, and then I walked back across and picked up the three stakes that hold the wire off of the ground and moved it to the next post. Then I walked back across the field and hooked the wire up, and back across the field and put the stakes in and hooked up the other end of the wire. Then I walked back to the beginning of the field and let the cows in, and then I walked down the lane and let the claves out, and then walked back to the other side and hooked back up all the fence wires. I had worked up a sweat by then, and by the time I finished harvesting I was carrying my coat. I asked Papa later how he did it, and he said that he unhooked one handle, walked across the field picking up the stakes, grabbed the spool of wire, walked to the next post, walked back across the field putting the stakes in as he went and then hooked up the wire on the other end. Ugh! I guess if you do it 50 million times you do know how to do it the easy way.
Fifty years old—that is how old our worker Moises turned last Thursday. It was a beautiful warm sunny day, and I was not envious of Steve and Mom when they headed to the garden after milking. I had things to do inside—like bake a birthday cake. A month ago while Moises was dreaming of his birthday out loud, he said that he wanted a pineapple upside down cake. I knew that since he was having a party with his family and a store bought cake was on the menu—he wouldn’t be getting a pineapple upside down cake. Therefore, I decided to secretly make him one myself. I haven’t made very many of them in my life time, and the last one I made was very thin—too thin! The Crane crew had never had pineapple upside down cake, so I was safe there; but Steve said that it was his favorite cake, so the pressure was on there. Could I find a recipe that tasted good—with healthy ingredients? I searched high and low for a recipe that used cassava flour—but I didn’t like the ingredients in none of them. I decided to use a regular recipe and make my own alterations—if I could find a recipe. Some of the recipes I had found online mentioned the fact that pineapple upside down cakes used to be the go to for open fire cooking in cast iron. So I grabbed my Lodge cast iron cookbook and found two recipes. I used a mixture of both of them. The first recipe is what I went by for it called for crushed pineapple, but I also used the second one because it only called for one cup of sugar instead of two—and I used maple sugar instead. I also added some of the fresh cherries that we had frozen with maple syrup last summer, along with some roasted walnuts. I then let the topping boil and thicken while I made the batter. Duck eggs make a cake nice and fluffy—so of course I used them. Lately I have been using them for our pancakes, and O what a difference! The recipe called for 1 ¾ cups of flour, but I used 1 ¼ cups of cassava flour instead. Really and truly, you do not need special cookbooks to cook healthy food—you just need to know how to substitute your flours and sweeteners. Once the cake was cooling, I ran out to the garden to harvest a handful of broccoli in order to make a chicken and broccoli frittata for lunch. With the frittata in the oven, and Mom and Steve back up from the garden, we gathered up the cake and headed to the milk house along with the 3 Crane men (our milking parlor builders), and we sang “Happy Birthday” to Moises and we all had cake and milk—well some had kombucha instead of milk. In the end they all really enjoyed it—May I say that the cake turned out to be a success?
When the little party was over, we ate lunch and then we headed to the garden. The agenda for the day was to weed one of the caterpillar tunnels. It was a little after 3:00 when we finished—and we were all ready for a change of scenery and position. We put away all the garden tools and grabbed all the pruners. Our destination was the back yard where we have two crab apple trees—that are majorly over grown. We spent the next hour pruning “ONE” of them. American garden books say that you should prune a fruit tree so that you can throw a cat through it, but the British say “so a bird can fly through.” In the end I think that there were more tree branches on the ground than connected to the trunk of the tree. It was time to quit for the day, so we loaded up the branches in the Gravely and through them in our compost heap. That night as I lay in bed reading Tasha Tudor’s garden book I read about how she uses wattle fences to keep her chickens out of her flower beds. I have tried everything to keep the ducks out of the yard—but to no avail. I decided that the best thing to do is to fence off the flower beds—and to my dismay we just threw away a whole load of whips that would be perfect for wattling. I guess Steve and I shall have to retrieve them, plus there is one more crab apple tree to prune.
Friday was another cold rainy day. When milking was done Mom and I headed out to our courtyard and side porch to start a little spring décor. Our scarecrow had been decked out for fall with one of Dad’s flannel shirts, and the porch had been decked out with bundles of dried out cornstalks. We figured that it was time to freshen up the potted plants, take down the cornstalks and dress the scarecrow for spring. I had ordered a Styrofoam ball to give our scarecrow a head—because the straw poke bonnet refused to stay upright on a t-post. We covered the ball with a piece of white material, and then we attached it to the t-post, and tied the hat on with a pretty pink floral scarf. We swapped out the flannel shirt for one of Mom’s long sleeve fancy colored white blouses, and we topped the bluejeaned jumper with a pink striped apron. The broomcorn hands were replaced with garden gloves and our scarecrow got a name—Miss Jane Crow! She is quite the garden lady, and adds such cheer to the courtyard. When our fun was over I hibernated at my garden desk planning what to plant when, and Mom and Papa tackled some of the mess in the garage. When our water pipes busted last year the closet under the stairs had to be cleaned out—which meant toys and paint cans were all over the garage. It is easy to make a mess when necessity calls for it—but it is hard to find the time to clean it up. That time finally came on a rainy afternoon with nothing else to do. Once I had my planting scheduled I headed to the piano. A few weeks ago I got my piano fixed and I have found myself spending much more time at it. I have missed my piano practice time, and I am determined to spend as much time as possible allowing my fingers to dance on the piano keys.
I am looking forward to this week, for after tomorrow there is no rain—just lots of warm sunny weather. Now I must go do the evening chores—for Papa is gone for the night, and the eggs must be collected, the calves separated, the dogs fed, the ducks fed (usually we have to lock them up too, but we leave them in their hoop house on Sunday’s), and the chickens locked up—of which I had better figure out what field they are in before it gets dark.
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare