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Hi Everyone,
If I could sum last week up in one word it would be—RAIN!!! We dodged rain left and right. Thankfully we never had to do our morning chores in the rain, but the rest of the day was spent trying to get something done outside before it rained, or between rains. I will admit that there was some times where we just decided to work in the rain—like on Tuesday when Mom was trying her best to get the garden mowed and I wanted to get two roses planted on trellises in the garden and plant more peas. It wasn’t raining too hard. It wasn’t long after I got the roses planted before it did start to come down very hard. I was okay for a while because it was in the tunnels that I needed to plant more peas. Mom soon joined me. We got the peas planted and pulled a weed here and there, but our hearts were really not set on pulling weeds in the tunnel. Mom wanted to mow and I wanted to pull weeds around the sunflowers so I could plant more peas—or at least go weed around the roses. Needless to say—we were stuck. The rain came down in torrents, and the wind blew—but we were safe and dry. Well, we were not too dry we just weren’t getting any wetter. The yellow crookneck squash was really starting to look very poorly and I told Mom that if I looked at it too long I was going to pull it up and plant peas. She had hopes that if we sprayed them with whey and gave them some manure tea that they would perk back up. Two days later though I was wishing that I had pulled up those squash plants and planted peas—the plants had totally collapsed. I guess I shall go ahead and pull them up and plant peas at the first chance I get. We spent over an hour in the tunnels, and after the rain calmed down—but hadn’t stopped, we decided to go ahead and head home. We figured that we were already wet enough to need a change of clothing, so if we got wetter heading for the house it wouldn’t matter.
We also found different things to do—than play in the rain. On Monday we had beef to pick up from the butcher, and since it was raining and Mom and Steve couldn’t mow in the garden, then Papa and I headed out in the rain to pick up our beef. Once we had the beef back in the milk house—it was a dry job and the rest of the afternoon was spent organizing beef into the freezer and packaging pre-orders for the beef. Some things sold out real fast—because there really isn’t a lot of that cut on a cow. They only have one tongue, one heart, and one liver. There are not a lot of steaks, but there is a nice amount of ground beef.
On Thursday we did KP duty—peeled potatoes, cut them up into large chunks, packed them into canning jars and canned them. We got three canner loads accomplished—which was about half of our potato crop. When it comes to canning potatoes rainy days are very handy. When the sun is shining we would rather be outside working in the garden than inside in the house.
On Friday Mom spent the day in the kitchen washing up all the jars from the pickles and potatoes that we had canned. I was able to make easy to read recipe sheets for the salves that I make. The worst part about making my salves is the math—and sometimes I cannot remember what I did from one time to another. I had “simple” recipes for some, and “exact” recipes for others. Getting the oils made was usually not a problem—but when it came time to add the beeswax and the Vitamin E oil I would stand around with a calculator forever trying to figure out how much of each to add. My recipe said, “1 tablespoon Beeswax per 3 oz. of oil” and “¼ tsp. of Vitamin E oil per 1 oz. of oil”. It wasn’t easy trying to figure out how many ounces of oil I had, how much beeswax to add (and then flip the measurement from tablespoons to ounces so that I could weigh the beeswax instead of melt it and measure it), and then figure out how many ¼ teaspoons of Vitamin E oil were needed (and then convert it to whole teaspoons—which was quicker to measure than a bunch of ¼ teaspoons). So I sat down and put the recipes together with the math already done. I was really pleased when it was all done— for years my recipes have just been scribbled notes on paper. Then Mom and I spent the rest of the afternoon in the kitchen refilling our Spice mixes (homemade: taco seasoning, Italian Seasoning, Chili Powder, etc.). We also filled up the empty herb jars—mostly with herbs that we grew ourselves. Then to my utter delight I was able to organize the spice cupboard. Years ago I started that project—while I was able to move most of my spices and herbs out of little jars and put them in half pint jars and get them alphabetically organized in a drawer, the remaining little jars (mostly spices that I mostly used in shakers) we left in total disarray in the cupboard. For probably 20 years I have had my spice cupboard organized alphabetically—with a paper on the door, numbers on the bottles, it was easy as pie to find a spice (and put it back in the right place). Then all of a sudden I had a messy cupboard and I couldn’t find what I wanted without moving every jar around. Finally on Friday I had the time to fix that cupboard—and I am ecstatically pleased! Let’s not talk about the herb closet with its two large shelves full of bulk herbs that we have mostly harvested. The jars are so many different sizes that alphabetical organizing doesn’t quite work. Maybe one rainy day I will be able to tackle that closet.
On Thursday a family blessed us greatly, and what they did for us gave them a big blessing too! Our compost poultry barn was in need of being cleaned out—but we have not found the time to do it. One of our customers found out that we had a whole building of composted chicken manure and since they garden they wanted some. We told them they could have as much as they wanted and they could use our truck for transport—but they had to do the work. It took a few hours and a few truck loads, but the two young men emptied that building for us. We were very excited, and their Mom was more than ecstatic over her “black gold”.
This morning could be a chapter in a farm novel—but let’s see if I can condense it down into a paragraph. Our Sunday’s always start at 5:00 a.m.—and might I say that this morning was one of those mornings I really just wanted to sleep. We cannot get to church on time though if we sleep—so rise and shine we must! Things didn’t start out very smoothly as we had to do extra work to get the milking equipment set up. Then once we had the alfalfa in the troughs and were ready to bring in the cows to eat and be milked—our bull, Dijon, didn’t want to come in. Dijon, along with America, Jam, and Rosa are always the first four cows into the parlor every morning. The reason Dijon didn’t want to come in—was because he had a girlfriend. Emma was in heat, and Dijon was paying her special attention. We tried to call in some other cows—but Emma decided she was hungry and wanted a break from her very pushy boyfriend. Emma came in, with Dijon right on her tail—and he thankfully respects hotwire and I was able to close the wire gate right behind Emma keeping Dijon out. Needless to say—while he greatly respected the hotwire, he greatly contemplated going over the pipe wall that separated him from his girl, Emma. He grunted and moaned and tried to get his head over the wall. Mom kept telling him to cut it out—so thankfully he never tried to jump the wall. Once Emma was done eating we opened the wires and Dijon followed after her—he was love sick and had lost his appetite for food. Now we could continue our milking routine—it was on hold until we could send Dijon out, because we couldn’t open the wire to let in another cow. Things went okay for a while, except that when you wake a cow up early they are more likely to poop in the milking parlor. Then I realized that our almost 8 month old calf, Noel, was in heat also. In the past year I have made the mistake of letting the calves stay on their mama’s until they were 8 months old—but the results have been a few “teenage” pregnancies. I knew that today was the day that Noel must be weaned—but since her mama has mastitis, I couldn’t milk her, nor did I really want to dry her off. So Mom and I decided to separate Noel and her mama, Amy. Separating Amy was no problem—but I had to chase Noel all over the place. With all the rain there was a little bit of mud to dodge—but thanks to the recent new milking parlor overhaul the mud wasn’t very deep. Noel ducked under one wire and headed straight for the bull. Dijon headed for her at first, but his attention was soon diverted back to Emma. Thankfully I was able to chase Noel through another set of wires that Mom had opened—to let her in the field with her mama. We were then able to go back to milking. Then some of the cows started sticking their heads and legs through the hotwire metal fence—that wasn’t hot. I tried to get them to not eat the grass on the other side of the fence but they thought I was crazy. So I ran down field to hook up the wires that would make the fence hot—but in the end the wires were not properly connected and therefore the fence never got hot. Thankfully the cows moved away from the fence anyway. We finally got our milking all done and the cows headed down field--and Noel bolted through the wire and joined the cows (and bull). I had only one option—to lock her up in the barn. I headed to the barn to set it up for Noel. To my dismay the panels were not at the barn, but were further down the lane—so I had to drag them one at a time to the barn. Then I had to clean out the water and the feed trough—no one had used them for a while and the rain had made a mess of the old hay. Papa had been busy all morning moving the beef cows to a new field, the milk cows to a new field, the sheep to a new field, and four chicken hoop houses moved to fresh ground, and he still had the two egg layer mobiles to move. After he moved one, he was able to come to my rescue and help me clean up the feed trough and get Noel into the barn. Then while he finished his chores, I headed up to the hay barn and feed room to get some alfalfa and hay for Noel. When I got back to the barn I found Noel with her head out one of the holes that some calves chewed in the walls a few years ago. She was one determined calf! Once I got her food, I then brought the panels inside the barn to block off the holes. In the meantime Mom was cleaning out the milking parlor—concrete cleans up so nice, but you do have to pick up all the dirt and manure before you can hose it off. Then she had to take care of the chicks in the brooder house—all 200 of them. By the time we were all done we were all ready for a shower. We did not make it to Sunday school, but thankfully we did make it in time for the morning service since I am the piano player. Well—that is one long paragraph!
Next week shall be very interesting as we get the poultry kitchen cleaned up to start processing chickens on Friday—which means moving all the onions to a new location. Somehow we have to mow the garden and get the beds ready to plant sweet potatoes next Monday (July 5). I better go get some rest!
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare