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Hi Everyone,
We started the week in 2021, and we finished the week in 2022. It is hard to believe that we have wrapped up another year and are marching quickly into a new year. As the year came to a close we decided to embark on a new adventure. I am not too sure how it will all work out, but we aim to give it our best shot. Somehow we hope to share bits and pieces of farm life with you via YouTube. We have a lot to learn, but we at least managed to post our first “Farm Life” video Thursday morning.
Monday started out like every day on the farm should start—a nice hot breakfast of oatmeal and eggs before we head outside to milk the cows and tend to the chickens, sheep and beef cows. When 11:00 in the morning rolls around that is when each day takes on a different rhythm. We might go to the garden, work in the house, head to town, build something, and take care of customers or whatever comes up that day. Last Monday we headed to the garden. The dumpster was still here so Steve and Mom worked hard to clean up every walkway in the “Cottage Garden” raised beds section. I grabbed the camera and tripod and headed for the carrot bed. While it only took me 4 minutes to harvest the carrots, I spent the rest of the day preparing them for storage—and some of that time was spent setting up the camera and pushing the “video” button.
While Monday was spent pulling up carrots from the ground—Tuesday was spent burying daffodil bulbs in the ground. I love my life so much that I always want to share bits and pieces of it with others. There are many ways to share our life with others: farm tours, journals, pictures, video, but one of my favorites is to share of the bounty of the garden—for there is nothing better than farm fresh vegetables. Yet, the garden is more than just vegetables and herbs—there are flowers too. I love to grow flowers, and for as long as I can remember we have planted flowers in our vegetable gardens to add beauty and color to the green landscape of green beans, collards, kale, broccoli, lettuce, etc. Last year we expanded our flower gardens so that we could share flower bouquets with people who don’t have access to fresh flowers. Last Tuesday we added another flower to share with people—475 daffodil bulbs. When the grey of winter begins to get old there is nothing better to add an ounce of sunshine to your table than a cheery bouquet of yellow and white daffodils. We worked a few hours after milking in the garden to prepare the bed for the daffodil bulbs and we had just started to plant them when it was time to stop for lunch—and to make yogurt and attend an egg packing party. When the party was over we headed back to the garden to finish planting. The space we had prepared ended up being too small and we were only able to plant 375 of the bulbs. It was going on 5:00 and we had no time to prepare another bed—but I was able to return Thursday afternoon and prepare that bed and get the other 100 bulbs planted. The best part is that now we will have even more “sunshine” spots in the garden since there are now two beds planted with daffodils instead of one.
Wednesday we milked the cows, packed the Jacksonville order and then Mom and I got to sit on the front porch and have a lovely visit with one of our dearest friends. It was really nice to just sit down and relax and spend some sweet time together. Later that afternoon Mom and I worked together on editing the carrot videos that I had taken on Monday. Thankfully Mom found a video editing program on our computer that Papa said he had down loaded a few years back—but no one had ever used it, and I didn’t even know it was there. To my great delight it turned out to be very easy to use and easy to figure out to use it. We had lots of laughs—as Mom was great at “photo bombing” my videos while I was filming. Somethings were easy to trim, but for the first go around I had no idea how to take something out of the middle of a video. It wasn’t until we were all done and had the video put together and were showing the finished product to Papa that I finally figured out how to edit a scene out of the middle—O well, at least I learned! We found out that it takes hours to upload a video and when at 9:00 at night it said that it would be done in 3 hours we decided to go to bed while it finished and we would post it in the morning. I climbed out of bed at 5:45 and met Mom at the computer where we finished up the YouTube post and posted it to Facebook where I learned another trick. I needed a picture for the Facebook post but I didn’t take any of the carrots. We knew that people “crop” pictures out of videos—but I had no earthly idea how to do that. Mom and I looked at the buttons on a video editor and Mom spotted just the right buttons to get the job done—and that is a big accomplishment because Mom is pretty much computer illiterate. You can see the video for yourself on our YouTube channel Shepherd’s Hill Farm under “Harvesting the Carrots”.
A week ago we were not able to separate the calves at night because it was too cold and rainy and we had no shelter for the calves in the area that we separated them to. I woke up Thursday morning at 5:00 with a vision of how to fix that problem. We have an area of our property that has a nice size barn on it—but the calves ate holes in the walls a few years back and the fence around the barn was taken down when our septic tank drain field was fixed. So not only could we not keep animals in the barn, we couldn’t keep them out of the yard if they got out of the barn. Near the barn we have four pens built out of cattle panels. One of those pens is where we usually lock up the calves at night. The panels are moveable and with another cold snap and rain in the forecast I thought that it was the perfect time to play musical cattle panels. I shared my idea with Mom and she was in favor, and she shared it with Papa and the plans were made. The plywood on the barn walls would be taken off, turned upside down and reattached so that the holes are on the top and not the bottom. Then all the cattle panel pens would be dismantled and we would make one small pen, and then one large pen that went from the small pen to either side of the barn. This would allow the calves to have space on the outside of the barn and go into the barn to eat and to get out of any nasty weather. So as soon as the milking and the morning chores were done we headed to the barn. The whole day was spent tearing down and building back. Once the walls and the fencing were all fixed then they started on the inside of the barn. The barn was originally built for the sheep to have a place to go in the winter—but after the calves ate holes in the walls we couldn’t hold the sheep in there anymore. Mom decided to split the barn in two with a big hay rack area going down the middle of the barn—one side having small slates for sheep heads and the other side having big slates for calf heads. By Friday night the hay rack was finished for the calves, but we have to do some fencing before we can get the sheep into the other side.
While they all worked on the barn area on Thursday afternoon I spent time taking a young lady on a farm tour. She is one of our new customers and was more than ecstatic to get to see the farm. When I finished with the tour I headed to the garden to finish planting the remaining 100 daffodil bulbs.
Procrastination is a terrible thing, and sometimes it doesn’t matter but sometimes it costs us dearly. When we make deliveries the orders are put into QuickBooks and receipts are printed out for the delivery, but when people come to the farm to buy products we use a paper receipt book and then we add it to QuickBooks later. Well, sometimes later comes a whole lot later, and the pile of receipts may consist of weeks’ worth of orders. Friday was the last day of the year—and I needed to have all the receipts posted. So before I headed out to the garden to play I sat down at the computer to post receipts. Mom and Papa were working in the barn, and I had quite a few customers to take care of (which gave me more receipts to post), plus some laundry and dishes. Once I had all the receipts posted, then I had to make sure that QuickBooks and our order spreadsheet (where we post all the orders so that we have a packing list) agreed with each other—and to my dismay they didn’t. I finished at the computer at 5:00 and while I should have started dinner I was climbing the walls and just had to get outside and work in the garden a little. I worked on getting the sides of the caterpillar tunnels tied up so that they would let the hot air escape and the cool breezes in. We have two tunnels and I managed to get one side of one done before Mom wanted to show me the barn. Before I left the garden I stopped to pick three camellia flowers so that I could float them in one of our crystal dishes. After the tour of the barn was over Mom and I had to take care of a lamb whose mama was destined to abandon her. The ewe had given birth to two lambs: a big ram lamb that looks like a skunk, and a little white ewe lamb. We locked them all up together in a hoop house so that the mama couldn’t get away from the little white ewe lamb. As soon as they were in the hoop house the little lamb took right to nursing. I wish that I could say that they lived happily ever after—but the little ewe lamb only survived a few more days. Out in the field there are around ten or more lambs hopping and skipping and jumping all over the field.
Saturday began a New Year and the “To Do List” was forever long with things we needed to do. As soon as the milking was done I packed the order for the Gainesville delivery while Papa and Mom headed to the heifer barn to seal the concrete that was poured a few months ago. Tomorrow we should be able to use the barn again—it holds hay for the heifers and gives them a place to get out of the rain. They got done in time for Papa to get ready to make the delivery. After he left I headed to the garden to finish tying up the plastic sides of the tunnels. When I opened the door to the East tunnel I found a burrow under the marigold plant—and I was not happy. I am assuming it was a rat hole for I found the red potatoes were being eaten. I had not planned on harvesting potatoes—we had strawberries to put up, but once the rats find the potatoes you lose more and more every day that goes by. I headed up to the house to recruit Mom to come help me and we managed to harvest two five gallon buckets of really nice size potatoes. Back in September I had found a small box of potatoes left over from the spring harvest that we had never gotten around to canning. Those potatoes had long white stalks growing out of them and I decided to take my chances and plant them in the garden tunnel so that they would be protected from frosts. They grew really well and the yield was very nice—I guess I will not have to plant any spring potatoes this year. Once the potatoes were all harvested then it was time to cook dinner—and bake an apple pie. We had made the crust on Christmas Day—it was a double crust recipe and the other half was used for Chicken Pot-pie. I had promised our worker some apple pie, and I had to get it made even though Mom and I both were very exhausted. When dinner was done there were dishes to do and beds to make—for we had washed them. Then I got some ironing done and we called it a day. The strawberries never got touched—but there is tomorrow.
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare