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Hi Everyone,
I had a blast last week—and I should have because my dear friend Lydia spent the whole week with me. I was hoping to be able to go spend two days at her house this July—but when you milk cows you cannot go on vacation whenever you feel like it. Usually I milk 10 to 12 cows every day, but for the last two months I have been slowly drying off my cows so that they could have a break before they calved again. I was thinking that when I got down to only three cows to milk—then I could get my Mom or a friend to come and milk for me. I figured that the only days that I could go off were Thursday and Friday—and it had to be a Friday that we were not processing chickens. Needless to say the window of opportunity was too small and I missed it. One Thursday morning I was milking the cows and realized that I only had three cows to milk—and we hadn’t started processing chickens yet. If I was going to go to Lydia’s—it had to be that day! Alas though, last minute plans are not that easy, and a few days later the calves started being born. So, Lydia and I talked and we decided that since a lot of young people go off to camp in the summer, we would have our own camp—“Friend Camp” right here on the farm. We had a long list of things that we had to do, and of things that we wanted to do. Of course normal farm life must continue, and thankfully Lydia loves helping on the farm—but we made sure that we used our “free” time very wisely.
Monday morning dawned bright and sunny after weeks of rain—and with the bright and sunny came heat index’s over 100 degrees. Lydia arrived during the middle of milking, and she happily took over being the cows “chef”. She mixed up the alfalfa for each cow adding apple cider vinegar and fermented molasses to every “cow’s meal”, and extra vitamins and minerals to those who had just freshened. When the milking was done we headed inside to answer order emails and print labels. We were supposed to process chickens the Friday before—but the Tropical Storm caused us to have to postpone until Monday. We were all set up to begin by noon. The Tavernari family showed up to help us and thankfully everything went real smoothly. We have only processed two batches of chickens so far this year—and they have been huge! Usually our chickens are 5 to 6 pounds, but so far the chickens this year are running from 6 to 8 pounds. If the chickens we process this week are just as big, we might have to start processing them at 7 weeks instead of 8 weeks.
Once we were finished with the chickens we had to catch up one of our steers and take it to the butcher. Lydia and I stayed inside and worked on dinner, while Steve, Papa, and Mom headed out to round up the steer. They did have to do a little extra directing of the steer to get him to go where they wanted him to go—but I do not think that they had to do any chasing. We have had some that jumped fences and circled all over the place. Once the steer was in the panel pens they came up to get the trailer—but it had a flat tire. The clock was ticking fast, and we had to have the steer at the butcher by 5:00 and I found Papa patching the tire shortly after 4:30. I made a quick call to the butcher to let them know that we would be late, and the rest of the event went smoothly.
Tuesday I had hope to head to the garden to transplant some lettuce and some flowers—but shortly after milking was done Papa came up and asked Mom to come with him to investigate a weed that was in the field where the cows were heading. She came back with a green plant that was full of thorns and had little white and purple flowers. We got out the Florida Weed book and began flipping through the pages and found it towards the back of the book—horsenettle! To our dismay, not only is it poisonous, it is also very hard to eradicate because it grows by rhizomes—roots that spread easily underground and only a piece is needed to reproduce. The weed had probably taken over about 20 square feet in the middle of the pasture. Papa, Mom, Lydia and I grabbed our gloves, some shovels and pitch forks and loaded up on the golf-cart to do our best to pull up all the horsenettle. That probably took an hour. Lydia and I decided to work as a team—for I do not do very well going up and down (as in step on the shovel, loosen the dirt, get down and carefully pull up the horsenettle, stand back up and step on the shovel, loosen the dirt, get back down and pull up the horsenettle). Lydia worked the pitch fork and I crawled around on the ground pulling up the plant. When we got back to the house it was time to fix lunch. After lunch the egg party began, but since Papa was busy mowing grass Lydia and I took our worker Moises home. When we got home the egg party was over, but another was fixing to begin. The new egg layer chicks were ready to be moved out of the brooder house and into the Poultry compost barn, plus a batch of broiler (meat) chickens were ready to head out to pasture. With five children and three adults it didn’t take very long to catch all 200 chickens. We finished out the day with my sister Samantha coming over for dinner.
Wednesday morning Lydia and I decided to do our devotions together on the back porch—Mom and Papa were on the front porch. We were not there very long before we heard a crash and a string of transformers blowing. I knew for sure that we didn’t have any electricity left, but the generator never clicked on. I was a little concerned so I got up and checked—and we did have electricity, but I was sure we didn’t have any running water—because it is on a separate power pole. We finished our devotions and then headed inside where I found out we did have water, and I was very confused because I knew that we had just heard transformers blow. Mom said that they had heard a tree crash at the neighbors. When we came back inside and Mom went to start breakfast she found out that we didn’t have water—I guess it took a little bit to empty the lines. Thankfully we have a reverse osmosis tank under the sink so we were not waterless completely. Lydia and I headed over to the milk house to set up the milking equipment while Mom worked on breakfast, and Papa took our portable generator down to the well so that we could have running water. While we were setting up the equipment the electricity went off too—but thankfully the generator clicked on. It was hours later before the electrical company had all the transformers replaced or fixed. We got the milking done thanks to all the generators—but before we could begin milking we had one more problem to fix. We were still cleaning in the house when Steve came in and told us that one of the heifers had jumped the fence and was in the neighbor’s peanut field. Yikes! I went out with Steve to see what we could do—but animals have a unique quality when it comes to jumping fences—they only know how to jump over to escape, they never can jump back over to where they belong. We put alfalfa pellets in the troughs hoping that it would encourage the heifer to return to our side of the fence—but she just stood on the other side mooing at us. I came back up and called the neighbor farmer to ask how in the world to get our cow back on our side of the fence—when there is no gate. He suggested disconnecting the barbed wire and the field fence from the wooden posts and lifting it up so that the heifer could go under it. Mom went and got Papa, and they fixed the fence so that the heifer could step over the fence. It sounds easy—but it wasn’t and it took a good thirty to forty minutes to accomplish it. In the meantime, Lydia and I finished up inside and began milking. When the milking was done it was time to pack for the Jacksonville delivery.
Later that afternoon Lydia and I worked on making one of her vest patterns fit me. Hours later the conclusion was finally made that while the vest looked good on her—it didn’t look good on me. We were a little heartsick because of all the lost sewing time. Mom needs new clothes, but we needed to make a pattern for her. We could have had that done—had we not been piddling with the vest pattern. We made up for lost time on Thursday as we spent our whole afternoon sewing. Lydia worked on trying to get a dress finished that I had started when she was here for my birthday back in November (no I haven’t had one chance to sew since then). I worked on making the new jumper pattern for Mom.
Friday morning dawned a little sad as we realized that our time together was coming to an end, and there was still so much that we wanted to do. Lydia was scheduled to leave around 4:30 that afternoon but I still wanted her to help me transplant the lettuce and flowers to the garden and we needed to make music together. Lydia plays the violin and I play the piano and every time we get together we want to make sure that we take time to play music together. While we were eating breakfast the phone rang and it was Lydia’s mother calling to let her know that their plans had changed and Lydia could stay an extra day if she wanted to. YIPPEE!!!! While we were milking we were told that there was a new calf in the Jersey field—but the mama was not there (she had come in with the herd). We figured out that Sundae had given birth—and Lydia was so excited because she was hoping to see a new calf while she was here. We had two cows due (Penny and America), but neither of them had their calf while Lydia was here, so I was happy that Sundae did (and we didn’t know when she was due). Penny did have her calf this morning—and it was a little girl, and she needs a name! As soon as we were done milking on Friday Lydia and I grabbed our cameras and headed out to find the new calf. We found her—and she is a cutie. She is all brown with a white tail and two little white swirls on her side. We always like to name our calves’ names that match their mama’s name—and it isn’t always easy. We knew that with a cow named Sundae, we wanted a name that went with that. We looked at lists: caramel, praline, candy, vanilla, sprinkles, etc. Nothing was sounding great, and everyone had a reason why “such and such” name wouldn’t work. We thought that we would stick with Caramel—but really and truly it wasn’t our favorite. Then this morning I came up with Sugar—and I guess when Sugar has a calf we can name her Spice.
After Lydia and I finished playing with little Sugar, we came back up and creamed the milk—we have abundance of milk, our customers are on vacation, and we still have 8 or 9 cows left to calve. Looks like creaming might become regular, and we will be making lots of whey, and Papa will have to spend more time on the tractor spreading skim milk to fertilize the fields.
When lunch was done Lydia and I headed to the garden to plant the lettuce and flowers. We got the flowers all planted and were just starting on the lettuce when Mom yelled out that it was 4:00. At 4:30 we had an appointment with Barn2Door (a company that will help us create an online shop for our customers to have an easier way to place their orders). Therefore, Lydia and I went into full speed ahead gear and pulled up the few weeds in the ginger bed between the cucumber trellises where we planned to plant the lettuce (a shady spot for the summer). Once the weeds were removed we planted the lettuce in the ground just as fast as we had pulled the weeds up. We arrived back at the house with just a few minutes to spare—just long enough to wash up, grab some cold apple juice and get the computer ready for our meeting. When that was over we sewed a little and then after dinner we finally took some time to play music together. We played classical pieces and hymns and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.
Saturday was truly our last day together and we enjoyed every minute of it. Once the milking was done we had to make lip balm, and then it was time to pack for the Gainesville delivery. Someone had ordered sunflowers so we had the privilege to go to the garden and pick flowers. Once that was all done we took a break to drink a kefir shake and to watch some of our farm short films. Then we headed upstairs to the sewing room and spent our last few hours working on the dress and Mom’s jumper pattern—I actually got far enough to get a jumper cut out. A little before 5:00 Lydia packed up and since Mom was way out pasture mowing we took the golf-cart out so that Lydia could say “Good-bye.” We went through the front field because all the cows were in the back field and we would have had to open three sets of wires and a gate. To our horror the front field had a nasty drop off from the field to the lane (thanks to all the rains). Then driving up the lane was treacherous in and of itself. We had to dodge miniature ravines and hope we wouldn’t tip over since the lane was no longer level. By the time we got past the section of lane that was washed out, we saw that Mom was done mowing and was coming up. I decided to follow her back to the house—because I knew she wouldn’t drive through any scary places. We got almost up to the house when Mom turned to go through the milking parlor area—sure the lawn mower would fit between the two parlors but I wasn’t about to chance it with the golf-cart. We ended up having to go through two sets of hot wire and two gates—but it wasn’t treacherous just inconvenient. After Lydia left Mom decided to be a little daring and see if the golf-cart could fit through the milking parlor area. The answer was that it could, but just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. She had to go VERY, VERY slow and there wasn’t an inch available to make any mistakes.
I hope that you have had a wonderful week too—and if you get a chance, take some time to spend with a friend. Be sure to laugh a lot and make lasting memories.
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare