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Hi Everyone,
One word can sum up our life very well, and that one word can sum up our week too.
B—Broken items
U—Udderly full (lots of milk from the cows)
S—Sizzling HOT
Y—Yucky brown stuff (cow poop)
Every day is full of adventure and every day has had its trials, but Monday morning was . . . well interesting to say the least. Papa had a broken tractor arm—and the travelling welder came by at 8:00 in the morning to weld the broken parts together. At 8:30 I headed out to start milking the cows—Mom was on the phone with a friend whose son was in the hospital. I got all the feed mixed up (alfalfa, fermented molasses, apple cider vinegar, and minerals for good milking udders), then I let in my first two cows—America and Jenny. America’s calf was injured, so she stays in the “Nursery Field” as much as possible, and Jenny’s calf has “failure to thrive” so she stays in the nursery too. We bring the mama cows up to the nursery every night and they happily feed their calves, but come morning they feed their calves and then they are ready to be milked and join the herd again for the day. America is prone to bust through the wire to get into the parlor if she is not first, and Jenny is prone to walk through the hotwires and leave if I wait too long to milk her—so, on Monday morning I decided to bring both of them in together (I can milk two cows at a time). Once I got the cows into their stalls I realized that I had made a mistake. America’s calf, Liberty, drinks all the milk in the two front quarters of America’s udder; and Jenny has only two udders that work—therefore each cow needs undivided attention to milk them in order to keep the milk claws from falling off. I got the cows tied in, and cleaned up—but I needed to check Jenny for mastitis. I was having a hard time reading the test, so I tested her the second time, and the third time, and the fourth, come the fifth time I took the test into Mom—who was on the phone still. I waited just a little bit, and then I interrupted because I knew that my cow’s “time limit” was almost up. Mom declared the milk to be clean and I quickly headed back to the cows. I got the claws hooked up to both cows and then I jumped up to let two cows (Dijon the bull, and Ana a cow whose calf drinks her dry) in on Mom’s side to eat. As soon as I sat back down Jenny’s tail lifted up—and I jumped up, grabbed the orange 5 gallon bucket that we call the “Poop Bucket” and proudly caught the poop (keeping myself clean). I sat back down, and Jenny decided to go again—so I jumped back up and caught it. I sat back down and America’s tail lifted up—so I jumped up and caught hers too. Then the bull needed to be let out, and Emma (whose calf also drinks her dry) let in. Then the claws started to slip off of America, so I dove for them and grabbed them in one hand and grabbed Jenny’s claws with the other as they too started to slip off—and just at that moment Jenny’s tail went up again. I was helpless! I placed both sets of claws in one hand and reached for the bucket with the other—but the hoses were not long enough and I pulled one of the tanks off the step and pulled the air hose off of it. I only managed to grab the bucket and throw it behind Jenny while the poop was splattering everywhere. I was finally able to get the claws hung up, the milk tank stood up and the air hose reattached. Then I had to clean up the poop, hose off the mat and finish milking America and Jenny. I got America done, and then I could focus on Jenny whose patience had long gone and she was ready to leave. She danced back and forth and I tried to calm her down by calmly petting her and singing to her. I sang to her until I saw two legs on the other side of the gate—Penny, our new worker had arrived to get the directions to the place where our Azure order was to be picked up at. Our Azure order was due to arrive at 10:00—right in the middle of milking, so we were sending Penny to pick it up. Then Jenny pooped again and this time she covered me REAL good. I was already covered from the last time! I got Jenny done and then Ana decided to go too—which sent Penny on the run. All the cows were now out of the milking parlor (except Emma), so I hosed off my dress and headed inside to get the directions for Penny. Mom was off the phone by now and while I changed my clothes she headed out to milk. By the time I got back out to the milking parlor—Mom hadn’t even begun milking, but was still hosing off the concrete. She had already shoveled up Jenny’s mess, and Ana’s mess, and yes, Emma’s mess too! Once the parlor was all clean again, we proceeded with our milking—and it was after 10:00, and I had begun around 8:45, and I had only accomplished milking 2 cows. Penny arrived on time, but was soon informed that the truck was going to be 90 minutes late. At least we only live 20 minutes from the pick-up site. Penny came back, and then when Mom had finished milking her cows she headed back over to get our order. I still had three cows to milk, but thankfully Steve was done with his chores and he could manage the poop bucket for me. It was after noon by the time I finished milking—and then because we had an abundance of milk, we had to cream all the milk. It takes 30 minutes to bottle the milk, but about two hours to set up to cream, cream the milk, and then wash all 50 something pieces to the cream machines. It was 3:00 before everyone was done in the milk house that day.
In the meantime, Papa was having his own adventure. The lawn mower belt broke on Friday and Papa had to go buy a new belt and put it on the lawn mower so that Mom could mow the fields behind the heifers. Does anyone know how to get lawn mower grease out of clothes? Poor Papa was a total grease monkey by the time he was done—he was covered in grease and hydraulic oil.
Once I was done in the milk house, we had lunch and then I headed to finish washing up all the seed trays so that I could plant some fall crops. It was a long day!
Milking went so much better on Tuesday—no one pooped on us! Yeah! We did have to cream again, but we were done a lot earlier than the day before. As soon as we finished creaming I ran for the garden—I had one goal, and that was to plant some more sunflower seeds and some Sugar Baby watermelon seeds. I grabbed a bucket and started to pull up the few weeds that were in the walkways and were peeking up through the holes in the weed cloth. Then the sky turned black and the rain came down. Since the tarps are off the garden tunnels I decided to take shelter in the duck’s hoop house which wasn’t too far from the garden. It poured down rain, but I managed to stay pretty dry in the duck house. It seemed like forever before it quit and I was able to go back to weeding—but Mom had already sent Papa in the truck to rescue me. Though it was no longer raining—it was lunch time. After lunch I had yogurt to make, and then there was an egg party to attend, and then I had to teach piano lessons—and at 4:00 I was honestly ready to curl up in my bed and take a nap, but I pushed myself and headed back to the garden. Once the area was weeded, I then began the long crawl down the 60 feet of wood chips in order to loosen up the dirt in 57 holes. Yes, it would have been easier to just take off the weed cloth, prepare the soil and put the weed cloth back down—but the woodchips in the walkway were on top of the weed cloth, so it really isn’t easy to take it off and put it back on. Once I had accomplished 10 holes I was ready to quit. I looked down the long row, and sighed, but continued on. Every four feet I promise that I took a longing look toward the end, and wanted so bad to quit—but the end did slowly get closer and closer. It was 6:00 by the time I finished weeding, prepping the dirt and planting the seeds—and I still had to go fix dinner. My arms hurt, and I was tired—I just wanted to relax! Then the thought came to my mind—“What have I just done! I went through all that just to plant sunflowers and watermelon!!!!” Let’s just say that the watermelon better sprout and taste good, and I hope to sell a lot of sunflowers.
It was so HOT last week that we spent most of our time in wet clothes—and it wasn’t from the water hose. We got soaked with sweat just sitting in the milking parlor milking cows—those who worked in the fields were wetter. We saw temps up to 109, with pretty high heat indexes. Mom said that it was so hot that she just wanted to do what we had to do outside, and then go inside. The problem with that was that we had a lot to do outside! On Thursday I found a huge shade cloth for the greenhouse, and with Steve’s help I got it put over the greenhouse. Then I spent the whole afternoon in the greenhouse planting seeds for the fall garden: cabbage, kale, broccoli, collards, bok choy, Swiss chard, lettuce, and herbs (chamomile, winter savory, horehound, sage, parsley, and thyme). When I was done with that I headed to the garden to rescue the paprika plants that were not producing very well because they were being taken over by weeds and flowers. I dug them all up and planted them in big 3 gallons pots and brought them up to the side of the milk house. Papa isn’t sure that I rescued the paprika—for it is not thriving very well. If they die—I guess I lost nothing, because I wasn’t getting anything from them in the garden.
Thursday morning when we woke up—the computer screen didn’t work. In the milk house one of the sinks had sprung a massive leak, and therefore Thursday was another repair day. Papa went to town to buy a new computer screen and a new drain for the sink. It was amazing to see how big a hole had been created in the metal drain. Then he and Mom spent hours fixing the drain—first it wasn’t as easy to get the old one off as it should have been because someone had glued the main pipes together and there was no way to unscrew the pipes. In the end though, our sink no longer leaks. For months it has had a slow drip and we kept a tray under it. Then on Wednesday the hole got so big that it started shooting out across the room—we could not procrastinate any longer.
Friday morning Mom and Papa headed outside at 6:30 to collect all 48 chickens that were ready to be processed that day—or so we thought! Shortly after they were done Mom and I were talking about their size and we began to question our dates. Eight weeks ago a batch of chicks arrived dead, and they replaced them the next week. We forgot all about it, but once we checked the paperwork then we realized that the chickens were only seven weeks old—so Papa and Steve had to put the chickens back out to pasture. Talk about a bunch of pardoned chickens! Since we would not be processing chickens that afternoon, I decided to spend my afternoon sewing. I had 3 aprons that I am supposed to have sewed by September. I did manage to get one all the way done by Saturday night, and the other two just need to be hemmed. I think that I shall accomplish my goal—even if I did set that goal back in May.
Later that day my friend Lydia and her parents stopped by for a visit—and it was fun to catch up with each other. They left around 6:00, and while I should have started cooking dinner, Mom asked me to go help Papa bring in the cows (Jenny and America). One day Liberty managed to go out to pasture with America, but Jenny’s was locked up. Mom and I thought that we would just get Jenny’s calf and drive her down pasture in the golf-cart to Jenny—but when we got to the hoop houses we found Liberty in one of them sleeping. The door was not locked—but evidently Liberty got hot and decided to come back to her little hoop house and chill out for the day. We have laughed and laughed at how the calves will actually go to bed “on their own”. Anyway, Friday night only Jenny’s calf was locked up in her house so Papa and I went to get her mama and America and Liberty (because Jenny will not stay in the “nursery field” without America. On the way down there we found Liberty camping out in the weeds by the sheep barn. We tried to get around her so that she didn’t run down the lane, but she was too fast for me. When we got to the cow field, Jenny and America gladly came out to go feed their claves—but Sundae and Abby were screaming for their calves too. I walked all through the two acres of knee high grass—but found no calves. We let the cows out and they ran up the lane and Abby found her calf in the same place that Liberty had been hiding out—but Sundae’s calf was nowhere to be found. On our way back to put up Abby and Sundae we noticed a brown blob was standing against the fence in the chicken field—two whole fields away from where she belonged. Counting calves is next to impossible. In the last few months we have had a total of around 20 calves born to our Jersey herd. Every week another one or two calves has been added to the "numbers" that we must count when we bring the cows in to be milked, and when we take the cows back out to pasture to graze for the rest of the day. Counting them is far from easy as they mix up, run around, and hide in the tall grasses and weeds. I took a video of trying to count them, and you can see what I mean https://youtu.be/cP0p4B3A6k8.
Saturday was spent milking the cows, getting the orders packed for the Gainesville delivery, making kombucha, ironing, sewing, mowing, putting away my first batch of dried cayenne peppers, harvesting some seeds from the garden, and fixing dinner.
Yes, everyday has been full to the brim and over flowing some too! Who knows what this week shall behold . . . but I promise to tell you all about it next week.
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare