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Hi Everyone,
Do you dream BIG? I do, but sometimes the reality of bringing that dream or idea to fruition is harder than I imagined. Last spring I was determined to have a weed free garden—I was tired of aching hands and muscles, and hours wasted weeding! I was going to use my brain—and not my brawn when it came to weeds. I bought black plastic to cover the beds when we were not growing anything in them—but we never found the time to cut the plastic and put it over the beds. So . . . let’s not talk how parts of the garden look right now. There were some beds that I didn’t want to cover with plastic, but with iron clay peas. The peas would cover the dirt and prevent the weeds from growing, and they would fix nitrogen into the soil—which is one ingredient that winter greens need a lot of (nitrogen equals green leaves). We raise our winter greens (collards, kale, Swiss chard, lettuce, broccoli, cabbage, and bok choy) in two caterpillar tunnels—which gives us a total of sixteen, thirty inch wide and twenty-five foot long beds. While I failed at putting down the black plastic, I did manage to plant the iron clay peas in all but four of those sixteen beds. The peas grew thick and tall—and one row was so thick that it actually covered over one of the un-weeded and unplanted beds which helped to smother some of its weeds. When you get about a month away from planting the garden you are supposed to mow down the peas, till under the peas, bring the sheep in to eat the peas or just pull up and drop the peas so that they can decompose on the beds—but the plants were over two feet tall (so mowing was out of the question), you cannot get the tiller into the tunnels—plus it is broke (so tilling is out of the question), one of the tunnels has no fence around it, and the one that does has marigolds and strawberry plants in it (so the sheep are out of the question), and that leaves the option of pulling up the peas by hand and just mounding them on the rows to decompose. Shouldn’t be too hard—Right? Wrong! When I was done milking on Monday I did a little paperwork and then I headed to the garden around noon. First I had to pull up the Spanish needle weed that had managed to mix with the peas on two of the outside rows. Their branches are easy to pull—but the root system can sometimes require a shovel. By the time I had finished pulling the weeds—I was waning on energy. Thankfully the peas pull up real easy, but a large armful of pea plants can be quite cumbersome. I worked my way down the 50 feet (two beds worth), and slowly the row got shorter and shorter. When I finished there, then I headed to another row—but my energy was really gone by then and it was almost 2:00. I started doing more walking around and standing—than pulling up peas. Mom was in the kitchen fixing lunch and she could see me from the kitchen window, and she called me in. I made no argument; I just got up, got in the golf-cart and drove up to the house. I left all the tools thinking that I would return as soon as lunch was over, but once I reached the house and got washed up I decided that I was done in the garden and I went ahead and changed into clean dry clothes. Once lunch was over then I had to make some yogurt, and when that was done I headed upstairs to the sewing room to work on some new jumpers for Mom. I thought that I would do something cool and relaxing—but while the room was cool, I soon found that it was not relaxing. We are trying to make a new jumper pattern for Mom and it is not going easy. I spent two hours on the jumper and finally got it where she could try it on—and to my great dismay it was too tight. The last one was too big, the second one is to small, and hopefully the next one will be just right!
While I had spent my day in the garden and the sewing room, Mom spent her morning mowing the pastures behind the heifers and her afternoon fixing the birdhouse that the bull had flattened when he got out a few weeks ago. Papa spent his afternoon mowing—and by night we were all ready to sit down and relax a spell.
On Tuesday I headed back to the pea patch with what I thought was a better idea for pulling up the peas. On Monday I had crawled down the row pulling the peas toward me and pushing them away from me in order to pull up the roots—I thought that if I straddled the rows then I would just pick the plants straight up and pull up the roots and then lay them back down in a mound. Yes, it did work easier and quicker—but when you busted your knee in a horse accident when you were 15, your knee doesn’t exactly like the strain of straddling 30 inches for 75 feet! Steve was able to come out and help me some—he pulled up all the weeds out of the one bed that didn’t get weeded and planted with peas. We finished the one tunnel just in time to get up to the yard and help Mom with a little weed eating and mowing before it rained and it was time for lunch so that we could be on time for the egg party. Somehow I have got to figure out how to get the other tunnel done this week—five more rows of peas, and three of weeds. Then I will let the peas decompose for a few weeks before I top dress all the rows with chicken house compost.
Come Wednesday I took a nap! I don’t know why I was so tired—do you? Later that evening I had to go lock up the ducks before it rained. Our cat, Catalina, was sleeping in the front basket of the golf-cart when I climbed in—and she didn’t climb out, so I took her with me. After I got a bucket of duck feed she climbed out of the basket and set on the seat beside me. Catalina road with me all the way out to lock up the ducks and then I noticed that the water sprinkler was still on the Murray grey beef cows (our way to keep them cool when it is hot outside). Catalina road with me all the way out there too—even though she did get a little bug eyed at the big cows. She never bailed out though and road all the way back to the garage with me in the golf-cart—but I brought back two cats instead of one for Catapus joined us when we came back around the barn. She wanted to jump on when we headed out—but I knew from a past experience that the pasture riding is too scary for her.
When you want a good night’s sleep—you are supposed to count sheep and that is just what we did on Thursday. The sheep have been munching in the yard all week and they had eaten all that they were going to eat—but before we could move them to greener pastures we had to catch them up and separate them. We had someone that wanted 20 ewes (female sheep), and we have 20 rams going to the butcher in a month—so we had to separate them all from the flock. When Papa woke up Thursday morning he saw that the sheep were sleeping in the barn—so he quickly went down and closed the gate on them. Once we were done milking and doing the morning chores then we headed to the sheep barn. We grabbed some panels to make a pen in the barn so that we would have a place to put the rams once we caught them. We caught the first three, put them behind the bars and they ran right over to the hay rack and escaped back into the flock. We grabbed some more panels and blocked off the hay rack. The next 20 plus rams stayed where we put them—though at one point the ewes mobbed the panel gate and a few ended up pushing their way through to the ram side. Then we had to sort the ewes back out, and I stood guard so that they wouldn’t come to that corner again. Once the rams were all caught and wrestled into their area, and then Papa had to catch 20 ewes and mark them with a large wax crayon so that we knew which ones we were selling. Then Papa and Steve went out to set up the fields for the sheep and the rams to go to and Mom went inside to call the family that wanted the 20 ewes to tell them that we finally were able to get some sheep picked out for them. I stayed in the barn to make sure that the rams and the ewes didn’t mix again. That gave me some time to study the rams and pick out a few that we wanted to keep around to breed. When they got back Papa had to catch all the marked ewes and send them out the back gate where they would be in the yard until the family came to pick them up. Then we let all the ewes and the breeding rams out the front gate to go out to pasture. Papa backed the cattle trailer up to the barn and we loaded all the rams into it so that we could easily move them to a back pasture. At that time it was 3:00 and we headed in for lunch. After lunch Papa headed out to mow the front lawn, while Steve and Mom headed out to move the turkey pens from one end of the property to another. The hoop houses had reached the end of the field and there was no place left to go, so they loaded the turkeys in the cattle trailer and then pulled their houses to a new pasture. I headed to the greenhouse to pot up some seedlings. I have cabbage, broccoli, collards, bok choy, sage and kale to pot up—but I only managed to get the broccoli done. At 5:00 the man showed up to pick up the sheep and we all had to work as a team to get them to go back in the barn—there were no bottle babies in their midst to encourage them to follow the Master’s voice. May I say that we slept well that night!
Friday morning we hit the floor running! At 6:15 Papa and Mom headed out to pasture to gather the chickens for processing. I headed to the kitchen to make some elderberry syrup and some kombucha. While they cooked I emptied the dishwasher and got things ready to cook breakfast. Mom came back inside a little after 7:00 and she helped me finish up the kombucha and then while she fixed breakfast I headed over to the milk house to set up the milking equipment. Once the milking was done then it was time to process chickens. We finished there around 3:00 and Steve and Mom headed out to pasture to put up a new fence for the heifers. Papa had to clean up from the processing and then he had to go get some more alfalfa to feed the cows. I relaxed for a little bit and then I got some things ready for Mom and me to go to town. We had to go to the bank, but I wanted to take advantage of the trip and go to Hobby Lobby to get some more material—and Mom needed some yarn and of course we were suckered in to buying some more fall décor. Dinner that night was not hamburgers and white sweet potato fries as I had planned—but a quick heat up of roasted pumpkin and roast beef-n-gravy topped on some noodles.
Saturday the “To Do List” was very long and half of it was outside things and the other half was inside things. We wondered if we would get it all done—or what we would get accomplished. Then as soon as we finished packing up the order for Papa to deliver to Gainesville—it started to rain. So guess what we did—inside things. Our inside goal was to take down the summer décor to put up the fall décor. We started about 1:30 and finished around 9:00—with a break for dinner. What took so long was that we had to clean as we went. We tease that decorating with the seasons at least guarantees that parts of our house gets cleaned quarterly.
Well, it is after 9:00 now and this journal needs edited and sent so I must give my fingers a rest and hand this journal over to my editor—Mom.
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare