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Hi Everyone,

                This life I live is full of wonder, excitement, and adventure. I promise you that there is never a dull moment and if we want to sit down and relax we have to turn a blind eye to everything that needs to be done. We are definitely farmers of all trades—but masters of none. We are constantly learning new skills and ways to improve the skills we already have. We never know what a day will behold, as our worker Steve says, “You never know what you will find yourself doing when you arrive to work each day.” We may spend one day canning potatoes—which means peeling a bunch by hand, and the next day may be spent weeding in the garden—or building concrete walls for a compost bin. We might have chicks arrive in the mail one day, then a few weeks later we have to take them out to pasture, and then in a few more weeks we process them. Everything has cycles and seasons—for today we may milk 18 cows, and in a month we may milk 8 cows. We calve all year round, so we are either drying a cow off in order to give her a break from milking before she calves or we are adding a freshened cow to the milking routine. Some times of the year we have more calves born than others, and that is exactly how this summer is going to go. We have about 12 cows due to calve June, July and August. Right now we are milking 15 cows, but starting this week we will have to start drying some off, and then in a few weeks we will only be milking 10 cows, but then the calves will start to come and we will be adding more cows to the milk tank almost weekly. Last Sunday morning as Mom and I were getting ready to start milking I noticed that the cow I always bring in first was not standing at the wire waiting like she always was. We looked around but could not see Jam in the crowd of cows. Then I saw the silhouette of a cow standing way off at the other end of the pasture. I knew that it just had to be Jam for she was a week past her due date—and sure enough a little while later Papa was shooing her up the pasture and a cute little calf was by her side. It was a little heifer—the first of the year. The last seven calves have all been bulls. We like to name our calves names that help us remember who their mama is, and since we all know that “Jam and Bread” goes together we decided to name her Melba—after Melba toast.

                Chickens are another thing that comes and goes on the farm. Last year we had a LOT of chickens coming and going—actually we ended up having a little too many coming. A farmer never wants to run out of products, but they do not always know how much the consumer will want. That makes life real tricky—for too much product can lead to waste and too little product can cause you to lose customers. Usually our meat chicken season starts in February and runs through November. Last year as Covid ran its course and meat supplies in the market were low; we bought extra chickens to make sure that our customers were stocked with chicken—especially during the months that we would not be processing chickens. In the end we had enough chickens to last a little longer than normal—so we raised no spring chicks this year. The time has come to begin raising chickens again, and as of this week we have already received three batches. Our goal is to process our first batch of the year right before the Fourth of July. While we have sold out of most of our cut up chickens, I am grateful that we have plenty of whole chickens still available to meet the needs of our customers.

                We are always doing something in the garden—weeding, planting, harvesting. Weeding is never 100% accomplished and it could honestly be a daily chore—but we do not make it to the garden daily. Planting and harvesting are seasonal, and one cannot happen without the other being done. Last week was Mom’s birthday and when Papa asked her what she wanted for her birthday she said: “I want you to help me 1. Put up a picket fence around our courtyard, and 2. Move the drive lane on the back of the property and put up new wiring making new paddocks and a place to run the chickens north and south in the summer.” So—last week Mom, Steve and Papa worked on hot wire fencing on the east side of our property. There are nine sections to do, and they were able to get six of them done—before they ran out of fencing supplies. While they fenced I harvested in the garden. Years ago we grew celery—but it was so infested with spiders that I made one of those comments that we hear from people when they realize where milk and eggs come from—“I’ll get mine at the grocery store!” We have always laughed when we hear that because milk at the grocery store still comes out of a cow’s udder, and an egg still comes out of the backend of a chicken. There was one thing that I knew for sure—there were no spiders in the grocery store celery. Then two years ago a friend was always talking about his celery that he was growing in his garden and how he would just snap off a stalk and eat it. I was intrigued and really wanted to give celery another try. So last fall when we were at the feed store and found a tray of six celery plants we bought them and planted them in the garden. They did really well—they survived all the 24 degree hard freezes, they produced abundantly, I never had to buy celery from the grocery store, and they were not consumed with spiders. Then the inevitable happened—it began to get hot and the celery started to bolt (send out flowers and go to seed). There were still a lot of good celery stalks on the plants though and I didn’t want to lose even one, but I didn’t know how to get them to last. Mom suggested that I dry all the leaves so that I could add them to our chicken stock when I make it. On Monday I harvested all the celery. The tops I put on the dehydrator and the stalks I cleaned up and put in a gallon glass jar full of water. I do not believe that we can consume that many celery stalks before they go bad, so I may freeze some. I have been tickled pink though with the harvest and consider the dried celery to be my most prized possession in the pantry. On Thursday I headed back to the garden to harvest some herbs. May is the best time to harvest them for it is dry. I harvested sage, oregano, parsley, and plantain (for the salves I make). I ran out of time before I got around to harvesting the comfrey and the dill and coriander seeds—but that is okay because the sage, oregano, parsley, and plantain overflowed all three of our dehydrators. I shall hope to harvest some comfrey this coming week. I love the fact that I can make my Soothing Salve from herbs right off our farm. The chickweed is harvested in February and then the plantain and comfrey are harvested mostly in May. On Saturday Mom and I spent time packing the dried herbs in jars. I think that the oregano must have taken us about an hour. I had picked a HUGE basket full, and we had to strip the leaves off of each stem. We ended up with a half-gallon of oregano in the end. We also made some herb posies to add to stews. We tied little bunches of sage, thyme, parsley and oregano together and then placed them on the dehydrator to dry.

                Tuesdays are our egg party day and last week the whole Tavernari family came to help. Usually one of the boys stays home to help their Dad work on different projects, but because their truck was having problems last week the Dad came too! The eggs were done in less than an hour, and then they were very willing to help us with another project—move all 150 chickens from the Compost yard/Poultry barn to the laying hen egg mobile. We finally were able to get the roof and walls fixed, and it was now time to move the chickens out to pasture. It was so much easier and faster with eleven people than it would have been with just three. We had all the chickens locked up into the barn and loaded into their new portable house in about 15 minutes. Since we were so close to the garden I offered to pick the four year old some flowers for him to take to his Grandma. You see, little Azariah is always looking for flowers to take home to his 90 plus year old Grandma that lives with him. He is most content to pick the weeds in the yard—dandelions and clover, but every once in a while I will offer him some “really nice” flowers. We headed to the garden and I grabbed some clippers and I began to clip some black-eye Susan’s—and then he pointed to some that were just his height that he wanted, so I picked some of “those” black-eyed Susan’s. Then there were some pick roses—just his height. A little further down were some daylilies, and while I was looking for some that were in bloom now and might have a second one that would bloom tomorrow, he had found two that he just had to have—that were at his eye level. Then we moved on to the sunflowers, and while I found a big one way up high, he had his heart set on the one that stared him in the face. I was learning to see flowers from a little boy’s point of view—he wanted those that were within his reach. I believe that we could learn a valuable lesson from him—for how often in life are we reaching for things that are bigger and better instead of being content with that which is right in front of our face, that which we can touch and enjoy. In the end Azariah had one big and beautiful bouquet of cottage garden flowers to take home to his Grandma—and I am sure that she enjoyed looking at them just as much as he enjoyed picking them out.

                Lately we have had a menagerie of wildlife here on the farm. I have already journaled about the skunks—but we do see them daily. We think that they moved from underneath the poultry barn to underneath the head gate in the panel pens by the sheep barn. I found them because of their smell—the funny part is that the calves always stop to smell the area when they pass by. I guess they are trying to figure out what “that smell is”. Up in the air we have hawks and kites flying around—kite as in a type of hawk. The whistling ducks are back and manage to hang out in the funniest places—one being on top of the fence gate posts. We have also seen a lone wild turkey hopping our fence and taking a dirt bath in our lane. Tonight Papa and I came across a water turtle in the back pasture. We gave it a lift back to the pond. Another wild animal that we have seen quite frequently was big and red! Steve and Papa saw it run across the pond field a couple of weeks ago and thought that it was a coyote. I saw it a few mornings run across the pond field as I was putting together the milking equipment. One morning I even jumped in the golf-cart and tore down the driveway hoping to see it cross the road—but I missed it. I questioned its identity though because it was red—coyotes are not red, but foxes are not big. Then last Wednesday right after breakfast Mom saw it run across the pond field. I grabbed the binoculars and it looked like a fox—a big one. Just as it ran through the fence a truck came down the road and slowed down to let the fox pass. We realized that it was our workers Steve and Moises and I couldn’t wait for them to come up the driveway for they had a close up view of the mystery “dog” like animal. They said that it was the BIGGEST fox that they had ever seen—and he is camping out in our neighbor’s woods. I do not know what all he is finding to eat, but I do know that he took off with the goose the cows killed, and he took off with one of our male ducks. He comes down from the chestnuts, so I know that he is terrorizing other farms too. Maybe it is a female and she has little ones to feed? If so I do not want her to train them to hunt on our farm—unless they want to eat rats!

                I hope that you have a wonderful Memorial Day—how grateful I am for the freedoms that we have. I just pray that God will grant us the ability to not lose them.

Serving you with Gladness,

Tiare

Whistling Ducks on our gate posts