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Hi Everyone,
When we first moved to the country a little over 30 years ago, the neighbor boy did not hesitate to tell me that I was no farm girl. He declared me a typical “city girl”. I was determined to prove him wrong—and I am pretty sure that I jumped the fence more than once to push his wheel barrow around while he picked up all the cow manure in certain parts of his pasture. My mindset was—“If he can do it, I can do it.” I will admit though—I didn’t always embrace the reality of being a farm girl. The first time we processed chickens I took pictures, and then headed back inside—I didn’t touch a thing. There were times when I missed out on visiting with my Grandma when she wanted to sit on the front porch and swing while shelling peas—because it was so hot outside and I didn’t like to sweat. I will even admit that there were times that we headed to the garden to weed and I stood around staring until I could work up the nerve to get my hands dirty.
I can honestly say that over the years I have become that “farm girl” that I told the neighbor boy I was. You know you have become a farm girl when sweat is something you embrace instead of run from and when you are the first to get your hands—and clothes dirty pulling weeds in the garden. You know you are a farm girl when you have no problem playing Frisbee with a flattened dried out cow patty. You know that you are a farm girl when you have to be careful when you drink from your water bottle because it could be covered with added “flavors”, and your pink dress is polka dotted brown (yes I buy pretty material to make pretty dresses—just so I can be feminine while milking cows and pulling weeds). You know that you are a farm girl when you prefer cows over diamonds, and milking over the movies. You know you are a farm girl when you have withdrawals from cows when you go on a vacation. You know you are a farm girl when a man wants to get to know you better and you invite him to spend an afternoon pulling weeds with you in the garden—hey, it weeds out the bad ones real quick! Lately—we know that we are farm girls when the eau de parfum that we wear ends in le pew! A week ago we lost our worker Moises—after eight years of faithful service it was time for him to move on. Thankfully two weeks before his last day we started training Steve’s wife Penny to wash all the milking equipment, but we do not have anyone to help us in the milking parlor while we milk. A third person makes bringing in the cows, letting out the cows and catching the manure and urine a little bit easier. Today was the first day in a week that we didn’t get pooped on—but that doesn’t mean that we caught all the poop, it just means that we managed to get out of the line of fire fast enough (but then we had to shovel it up and wash the floor down before we could bring in the next cow). Sometimes we can grab the bucket fast enough to catch the poop, but sometimes we are in the middle of milking a cow—or two, and we cannot get up to grab the bucket, or we didn’t even see the cow lift its tail and the next thing we know we are hearing “splat, splat, splat” and we had best not look in the direction of the noise or we just might end up with chocolate drops on our faces—needless to say our dresses can get pretty covered. The best part of it all though—is that when it happens we can laugh and continue on. Sometimes though there is nothing we can do but take a hose to our clothes and go change. If we could only pay attention to the cows warning signs—a little antsy, nudging you with their nose, looking at you, and lifting their tails—then we would be ready to catch it every time, but it is so easy to get absorbed in milking and not pay attention to the warning signs. It doesn’t help either when more than one cow decides to go at the same time.
To say that we are busy around here is an understatement—we could easily keep ten more people, and two more tractors busy non stop around here. We are milking 15 cows right now and they are producing more milk than we can possibly sell, therefore we are spending 2 to 3 days a week creaming, and then Papa has to spend a whole day fertilizing the pastures with the skim milk.
On Tuesday the hay farmer called us and said that they were ready to start delivering our hay—but our hay barn was full of all the wood and supplies from tearing down our old milking parlor, and a bunch of other “junk”. Have you ever noticed how fast an empty space can fill up with things that do not belong there? Come Thursday and Friday Papa, Steve and Mom worked at cleaning out the barn and organizing the wood piles. It was a very hot (the temp was in the 100’s and the heat index was over 120) and heavy job moving a couple hundred pieces of wood from one area of the barn to another area of the barn or to a shed, having to decide what to keep and what to trash, and figuring out just where to put everything. Yes if we would have a place for everything and everything in its place it would not take us so long to clean the barn out to fill it up with hay—but most of the things in the barn had no “place” because last winter they formed a falling down milking parlor.
While Mom and the men folk worked in the barn, I headed to the garden. The row of cayenne peppers desperately needed to be weeded, and the peppers desperately needed to be harvested. The cayenne peppers are growing in one of five 16 foot long rows in a 20 foot wide bed. I purposed to keep them weed free and green and growing all year—but alas June and July hit and the weeds took over. Last week I reclaimed one of the rows so that I could plant some green multiplier onions. That was the first time that I noticed that the weeds had taken over my garden beds. The last time I saw that particular row it was covered in cantaloupe vines—so I really thought that it would be very easy to prepare it for onions. Alas, the cantaloupe had been replaced with crab grass, which also took over the other four rows. When I weeded the cayenne peppers I also weeded the row beside them—accomplishing two rows at the same time. Once I finished weeding, then I harvested and got about a gallon of peppers, and then I headed over to one of the garden tunnels (of which the roof has been removed for the summer) and checked on the okra. I planted a 50 foot long row of okra a few months ago and the plants are finally getting tall and looking very lush and healthy. The okra is starting to bloom and I actually was able to harvest the first ten okra pods. Getting to the okra plants was a chore though—the rows on either side of the okra are planted in iron clay peas for a cover crop. It is really time to chop and drop them in order to get ready for the fall planting, but they were growing under, around and through the okra making it impossible to walk down the pathway. I used a fence stake to push the pea plants out of the way, and to whack them down a little. Now the okra can breathe and I bet the bees and the bugs can find the flowers better in order to pollinate them.
Taking orders from our customers returned to the all-time simple way this week—as we closed our online store after only having it open for two weeks. Having our customers email us their orders and we placing the orders on a spreadsheet and making receipts in QuickBooks is honestly the easiest method for us—and we can have a more personal relationship with our customers. We did make one change though, and that is that we updated our QuickBooks. At first we thought we wanted to use QuickBooks online, but since our QB account was the desktop version from 2016, we had to upgrade to the QB Desktop version 2021. Once all our files were moved to the new version, then we could move them to the online version. After all that was done we realized that we did not like the online version—it was difficult to sign on to, and if our internet was down then we couldn’t make receipts, and if our internet was running slow then we would lose our minds. Some of the features that we were used to using in Desktop were not available online—so in the end we decided to not use the online and stick with the new desktop version. The main reason that we wanted to upgrade was so that we could email our customers their receipts, and so that they could pay using a credit card or ACH (bank to bank). It wasn’t long before we realized that we could not afford to accept credit card or ACH payments. One would cost us close to 4% of our sales and the other would cost us $3 per transaction—if someone bought an item that cost $6 we would only get $3. Therefore we decided to stick with the simple payments and the simple ordering—and just add the feature of emailed receipts. It works great for us!
I had three goals last week: weed the cayenne peppers, finish a dress, and wash all the seed trays so that I can start planting seeds this week for the fall garden. On Thursday I weeded the cayenne, and then come Friday I found myself waiting around for a phone call and so I took the time to finish my dress—I only started it last November when my friend Lydia spent time with me around my birthday, and then she worked on it some a month ago when she came to spend a week with me. All I had to do was hem the sleeves—but I haven’t been able to find any time to sew. Last week one of the widow ladies at church and I were talking about how I used to quilt and I told her that I can barely find time to sew clothes and I told her about my unfinished dress. She challenged me to have it done by the next Sunday, which really was helpful because it helped me to “look for opportunities” to sew. I was glad to finally finish the dress.
On Saturday I was able to work on my last goal—washing the seed trays. That was a bigger job than I had anticipated. I sat up a wash station on the concrete in our new milking parlor and I stood there for hours scrubbing—10 flat trays and 10 cell trays. Each cell tray had 34 cells, which meant that I cleaned 340 cells! I also cleaned about twenty 2 by four inch pots, and a few big black rubber tubs to use as water trays for the grapefruit trees. It was 4:20 when I looked at the clock and realized that it was time to clean up and cook dinner. I was half glad and half sad. I was so exhausted, but I was only half way done—I still have 10 flat trays and 10 cell trays left to do. The cell trays I have left to wash have 72 cells in them—that makes 720 cells that need to be washed. UGH! I shall continue tomorrow so that I can start planting seeds.
When I came inside to cook dinner I had brownies on my mind. We had picked up our ice cream the day before and I thought that some good fudgy chocolate brownies would taste so good topped with ice cream. I searched the internet high and low for a cassava flour recipe—and I found one! If you like fudgy brownies that are quick and simple to make I suggest you try out this recipe: https://www.recipestonourish.com/fudgy-grain-free-brownies/ . I have to say that they were the BEST!
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare