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Hi Everyone,
As my time to sit down at the computer and write my journal drew closer I realized that I didn’t have a picture for the journal—so I grabbed the camera and headed outside to see what I could capture. I stopped at the garden first and took a few pictures of the zinnias that are just starting to bloom. They are all shades of pink, purple, white, yellow and red and the plants this year are loaded with more flowers than I have ever seen on one plant before. Clayton asked if I had ever grown flowers in manured/composted soil before—and I had to admit that I hadn’t. I guess it makes a very BIG difference. I tried to take some pictures but my flower photos never turn out where others can enjoy the beauty also. When I was done admiring the flowers I headed down the lane past the turkeys and took a picture of them strolling through the pastures, relaxing and eating bugs. A little further down the lane I took a picture of the neighbor’s farm with the grain bins and the golden brown crop that got destroyed by last week’s freeze. I then headed down to the pond where I took pictures from this angle and that angle. There were wild grasses in bloom, cypress trees turning red and native grasses that had turned all golden. I saw a kingfisher land in one tree and a red cardinal land on a twig. I got a picture of the three geese and the lone duck hanging out in the knobby-knees of the cypress trees, and another of them heading into the pond. The frogs all managed to give a loud “chirp” right before they splashed into the water and disappeared out of sight—before I could ever get a glimpse of them. All across the pond little black turtle heads could be seen poking out of the water. I found two empty turtle shells (one a yellow-bellied slider turtle and the other a soft shell turtle). I found a trail coming out of the pond grasses and going across the lane and picking back up as it headed into the nearby field and up the fence line toward the big oak tree. Papa told me that the turtles use that trail every morning to go up and play around the big live oak tree—and he was very close to convincing me. Mom says that it is a fox trail. I saw dragonflies darting here, there, and everywhere—all different colors and sizes. Mom loves dragonflies and she had mentioned a few weeks ago that she hadn’t seen any purple ones this year. I saw one at the pond and I was hoping to be able to get a good picture of it—but it darted around so fast. I was patient—not my best virtue, but I stood and watched. I got my camera ready—and I just started snapping shots whenever I saw it. Then it happened—it landed on a twig and stayed there! I got a few shots at a distance before I was actually able to zoom in closer. I finally got my picture of a purple dragonfly. Praise the Lord! You can see the whole picture gallery on our Facebook page.
As I look back over last week it seems that we did a lot of juggling—there was a lot of inside work to do and a lot of outside work to do. Monday morning Clayton and I milked the cows while Mom and Papa hot-wired off another field of peas so that the beef cows and the milk cows would have fresh pasture to graze in. Thankfully we have pea fields left to graze because the grass has mostly turned brown and we do not have our winter’s supply of hay in our barn yet. Back in the summer when the hay farmer wanted to deliver the hay—our barn was a mess as Papa was working on our hay baler and had it torn apart in a bunch of pieces (which meant it couldn’t be moved out of the barn). When he got the hay baler fixed then he moved the cattle trailer into the barn because he had just finished painting it and the paint had to cure before it could get wet. While the paint cured Papa attached the trim work and last week the trailer was finally finished—on the outside for it still needs a wooden floor on the inside. Papa got the trailer moved out of the barn—but the trusses to the portable cow shelter are in the barn and they need to be put on the shade so that the barn can be cleaned up for hay. Tomorrow Papa hopes to start putting the roof on the portable cow shelter—which will not be too easy as we really do not have the right equipment for hoisting trusses in the air. I will also need to move the pumpkins from the barn to the storage room before the hay can arrive. So back to the peas! Walking through knee deep grass and thick plantings of peas is not that easy—Mom has had her fair share of falling down in the peas. It takes quite a while to string two strands of hot-wire length wise up the field and then two strands of hot-wire width wise across a field making six paddocks total with a eight foot gap between the beef cows and the milk cows—so the bulls cannot touch noses. We had to leave the farm at 11:00 in order to pick up our Azure order. Clayton and I were ready by 11:00, but Papa and Mom were still out in the fields. I rang the big bell—but they didn’t hear it. They were having troubles. The wires went up just fine. The beef cows moved just fine. The milk cows moved just fine—but the sheep escaped and they had to round them back up. It was close to 11:20 by the time we left. We thought we would be late—but we arrived on time—but the driver was an hour late, so we sat around and visited for an hour. When we got home we put away the groceries and then we ate lunch and Steve, Clayton and I headed to the garden. For the last few weeks Clayton, Steve and I have been working a little here and there at clearing the weeds away from the row of roses on the west side of the raised bed garden. It hadn’t been too bad so far—but those last two roses were a totally different story! There was a massive amount of goldenrod, cat’s claw vine, and wild grapevine roots. There was a huge grapevine growing near one of the roses that I had found last year but the weeds were too thick to get to the vine to remove it. This year we were able to clear out the weeds and get to the grapevine. Have you ever tried to dig up a grapevine? The roots go in every direction across the top of the ground in sizes from the thickness of a pencil to the thickness of a half inch rod. Those were pretty easy to pull up, but once we started to dig up the main root we ran into the impossible! I dug. Steve dug. I pulled. Steve pulled. Clayton pulled, and then we saw that the roots went and went and went—and were the size of my arm. There was no way to cut through the roots with a shovel, so Clayton and I went on a quest for the hatchet. We checked the barn, the tool shed, the garden shed, the garage—but found no hatchet. So I grabbed the ax and with a few strokes those roots were severed from the “trunk” and the grapevine was removed—for now as I heard that any part of a root left can grow another vine. UGH!!! After tackling the impossible and not really being able to conquer it and being attacked so badly by cat’s claw vine I have decided that I am going to figure out which parts of the garden I can truly keep up with—and the rest can just stay wild. I might need to move some precious flowers (roses and lilies) to tamer places.
Tuesday found Clayton, Steve and I back in the milk house washing all the milking equipment because Penny had to go and take care of her mother who had a stroke. I helped wash, and I bottled the kefir and then it was time for lunch. When lunch was over I was determined to help package eggs, for it had been quite a few weeks since I was able to help, but I had a lot of administration work to do. I decided to help with the eggs first, and then as soon as the egg buckets were empty I returned to the house to answer close to 50 emails. Orders are pouring in left and right lately and new customers are finding us every week. There are lots of people moving to Florida—looking for milk, eggs, and meat. There are farmers moving out of Florida leaving their customers searching for new farmers, and then there are other farmers whose cows are dried off until they calve. How I wish that we had an endless supply of milk—but alas our milk supply is up and down right now. It takes green grass to make lots of milk—and there isn’t very much of that around right now thanks to the drought and the freeze. The peas do help make milk—but every field has a different amount of green grass and peas so one day we may get 17 or 19 gallons of milk and then the next day it may be 12 to 14 gallons of milk. It is definitely not my favorite time of the milk year. Well, while I was answering emails Clayton came inside to see what needed to be done. I was anxious to get to the garden, but I knew that as soon as I finished answering emails I would then have to make the yogurt—unless Clayton finished the yogurt for me! That plan worked out great for by the time I finished the emails he was just about finished with the yogurt and then we were able to head to the garden to harvest a huge amount of greens (collards and bok choy) for the Jacksonville delivery.
I think that Wednesday’s order was one of the largest orders we have had since Covid hit in 2020. It took a lot of people and packing to get the order ready for delivery, and once Papa and Clayton were on their way to Jacksonville then I could sit down and teach my piano students and run the risk of being lullabied to sleep by their beautiful playing. Later that day I was delighted to get some much needed sewing done—I still have a lot more of much needed sewing to do.
Thursday Papa and Mom had to move the cows to a new pea field. The decision was made to move the Murray grey beef cows into the chestnut orchard—where they immediately began scavenging for chestnuts, and we would leave the peas for the milk cows (of which I was most delighted about). Clayton, Steve and I once again had to wash the milking equipment and then after lunch Steve and Clayton got to head to the garden while Mom and I worked in the kitchen making punch with the last of our Roselle calyxes. The last pot was on the stove and it was 3:40 and I had the worst case of “cabin fever.” The garden was calling me, and I just had to go—but as I was heading out the door I saw that the yogurt still had to be cultured and bottled. I will admit—I moaned! I quickly finished up the yogurt and then Mom came back inside from helping Papa at the barn and I was able to leave the timer with her and I headed to the garden. Steve and Clayton had practically finished pulling up all the spent tomato plants, frosted basil, and dead flowers from the summer garden. While they may have been ready to quit for the day, I just had to spend some time working in the garden. Steve worked for thirty more minutes, but he headed home at 4:30 for Penny was coming back from her Mom’s. Clayton and I worked until 5:00 tearing down the “deer and rabbit proofing” that we had rigged up back in September. The frost had pretty much finished the green beans that were in that bed (the ones under the garden tunnel are doing great), so it was time to clean up all the hardware cloth, fencing and stakes. I at least felt like I had accomplished something by the time I had to return to the house to cook dinner.
We are fast approaching the end of chicken processing season. We have four more batches to process between now and the middle of December. On Friday we processed a batch of 56 chickens—there was supposed to be 70, but I guess we lost quite a few beforehand. We had an extra helper this time. Wally needed Clayton to go with him to pick up some things in south Florida, so he decided to help us process the chickens so that Clayton would be available to help also. Since there wasn’t as many, we were getting close to done by 2:15 so we let them go ahead and pack up and head south. We were done with the chickens by 3:00 and then we crashed on the sofa for a few hours before we got up to cook dinner. While I cooked dinner Papa ran to get some alfalfa and hay for the cows, and then he had to go get gas for the vehicles. He arrived home just as I went outside to tell him dinner was done. He asked me if I had separated the calves—and I said “no.” Then he asked if I had locked up the turkeys—and I said “no.” He also asked if I had locked up the ducks and gathered the eggs—and I said “no.” Clayton was surely missed that night for that is what he does every night.
Since Clayton was on an adventure in south Florida, Mom had to help me milk the cows on Saturday. We were grateful Penny was back so she could take care of washing the equipment. Once the milking was done I headed to the garden to harvest some greens while Mom packed the meat part of the order. Milk was so low that I couldn’t pack that part of the order until the milk and the kefir was bottled. Once the order was packed and the receipts were printed I worked on posting some receipts from our farm customers and then I tackled some vacuuming in between helping Mom can the last batch of roselle tea for making jello with and we canned the large batch of punch. I managed to get the back of the house vacuumed, and then I needed to clean a few bathtubs. That didn’t go very smoothly for when I went to rinse the baking soda off the wall I splashed a quart container of water on the back wall but it shot right back at me soaking the front of me. Not willing to give up, I attempted to toss another container of water on the wall and was met with the same “shower” of water. I squealed and Mom came to see what I was up to—what I am usually up to when I clean bathrooms “Tiare’s Flood”. To make matters worse when I turned around to show Mom how wet I had become I knocked into the shower curtain rod and it came tumbling down landing in my puddle of water on the floor—for my dress had not caught all the water. One end of the shower rod broke and Papa had to fix it with gorilla glue. Before I could start the second bathtub, my friend Bethany called me. We haven’t had a chance to talk for quite a few weeks (and since she lives in Georgia, talking on the phone is the only way to keep up with each other). So I sat down on the living room floor—because I was too wet to sit on the furniture, and we had a lovely talk until we both had to go and work on our dinners. When dinner was done I had the joy of practicing my piano for close to an hour. Clayton got back home around 8:00 and for the next two hours we were either relaxing or getting ready for bed so that we would be ready to start a new week—and shortly a new month. So until November, I shall be . . .
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare