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Hi Everyone,
Well the time changed today, and while you are technically supposed to get an extra hour of sleep—Mom and Papa didn’t. They woke up at 2:00 a.m. and looked at the clock and saw that their automatic clock had not changed yet. Papa was a little worried since we had to get up this morning at 5:00 in order to make it to church by 10:00. He wondered “will it change?” “What if it doesn’t and the alarm goes off at the wrong time?” So an hour was spent thinking about the time—and then at 3:00 the clock changed and they had the wonderful opportunity to repeat from 2:00 to 3:00 and that time round they slept. The nice thing was that this morning most of the chores were done by the light of day for the crack of dawn was at 6:00 instead of 7:00 like it has been for the last month. Yes, our nights will be longer, but when you are a farmer that is okay for after a long day of working you look forward to a little relaxing in the evening. I would much rather get up early in the morning (with the sun) and start my day, than go strong into the evening and go to bed late.
All summer Papa has been working to get the barn emptied out so that we could fill it up with hay for the winter—but first the hay baler’s parts were scattered around in the barn waiting for new parts to arrive so that Papa could fix it. Then the cattle trailer was in the barn drying from a paint job and getting trim put on. He finally was able to get the floor installed this week—it is almost ready for use again. The last project to accomplish was to put the trusses on the portable shade—and that is just what Papa, Steve and Clayton did on Monday. The other thing that had to be moved out of the barn was the stash of pumpkins that we had spread out on the drying racks in order for them to cure. So on Tuesday Clayton and I transferred them from the barn to the storage room. Then on Tuesday afternoon a dumpster was delivered and come Thursday the chore of “cleanup” began. It is funny how empty spaces can so quickly be filled up—for every winter the barn starts out full from side to side and front to back with hay. Then as the season goes by and the hay begins to disappear, the empty areas seem to always fill up with something else and sometimes that something else is an item that needs to be trashed. So on Thursday Steve, Clayton, Mom and I combed through the barn looking for trash—wood, metal, wire, boxes, bags, old rotten totes, string, stakes, etc. and pitched them into the dumpster. We then combed through the sheep barn and out in the pasture where an old shade had crumbled to the ground and we had a Clean-up Round-up and got things looking a lot tidier. Then on Saturday Papa was able to take the tractor and get the last of the big stuff out of the barn and now we are ready to get our winter supply of hay. Lord willing it shall start arriving tomorrow!
Out in the garden things are growing very nicely and too everyone’s delight the green bean plants are blooming. If all continues to grow well the third planting of green beans has been very charming instead of striking out on the third try. I headed out to the garden tonight to get a picture of those blooming green beans and got caught in a rain storm—so I decided to take a video of the garden tunnel. You can see the video here: Caught in the Rain! Off and on throughout the week Clayton and I worked at weeding in the West Tunnel (Mom did weed one row for us when she wasn’t weeding in her “Martha’s Vineyard). There were carrots to weed—they finally got big enough to pull up weeds without destroying the carrots, and then the flowers needed to be weeded so that I could transplant some broccoli in the empty spaces where no flowers bloomed. To my dismay all my seedlings in the greenhouse have been eaten by something—worms, rat, I don’t know—but something for sure. The lettuce sprouts one day, and then a few days later the leaves are all eaten. The snapdragons were all up and leafy green—and then they were just stems. The broccoli was three to four inches tall—and then they were not. I have looked for a culprit, but I can find none. So to my delight I had planted some broccoli seeds straight in the garden about a month ago—but I didn’t plant just one per hole, and that turned out to be a blessing. Some of the holes had four to six seeds dropped in them and they all sprouted—which gave me “transplants”. I wanted lots of broccoli this year, but between seeds not sprouting and something eating what did sprout I was getting pretty discouraged. In the end though, I think that I have managed to get over twenty plants. Thankfully nothing ate the celery that sprouted real well for me this year and I was able to transplant out close to twenty plants of them as well. Since starting seeds in the garden and transplanting the extra plants was working better than starting seeds in the greenhouse I decided to make some “seed beds” in the garden tunnels. I heavily sprinkled seeds in an area that was two to three feet long by thirty inches wide and I separated each section by a trench. I planted four types of lettuce, parsley, sage, thyme, catnip, and chamomile—now I just have to wait and see if they sprout and then I can transplant them around as they grow bigger. Clayton and I also planted two rows of spinach and around 40 elephant garlic bulbs. A friend gave me about eight cloves a few years ago, and every year I plant last year’s harvest in order to multiply my yield. Next year we should have enough to eat and replant!
Thursday was a long and dirty day. We worked in the barn until lunch and for a few hours after lunch—and then we went to the garden to plant the spinach and the garlic. The barn work was dusty as we dealt with rotten wood that when we broke it in half showered us with dirty saw dust. There was a six foot tall forest of weeds (dog fennel and Spanish needle) as we searched for old t-posts, lost plywood, missing feed troughs, and other farming paraphernalia. We felt just a little too dirty to be inside—but the day was so full that there just wasn’t any time to get a shower before it was time to fix dinner and do the evening chores—so a good brushing off just had to do. When dinner was done it was a little after 7:30 and on Thursday nights Mom talks to her sisters at 8:00 so we sent Mom for a quick shower and Clayton and I offered to do the dishes—of which there was a HUGE pile of them because no one had done lunch dishes, and I had made yogurt so there were those dishes to. Before we could start dishes I had to get the chicken carcass into a stock pot with all its carrots, celery, onion, salt, pepper and water and into the oven to cook all night—but before I got very far on that Clayton came in form throwing away some trash and said that there was an opossum in the garage. That opossum has been peeing in our garage for over a month and even tore into a brand new bag of cat food. I was determined to get rid of him, and Clayton and I spent the next thirty minutes chasing an opossum around the garage—it didn’t help that he was small enough to hide out under the pallet that had a ton of chicken feed on it. It was after 8:00 by the time we managed to win our opossum battle and return to the kitchen to finish putting the ingredients in the stock pot to make chicken broth, put away all the left-over food and start washing the dishes. All we really wanted was a shower and our beds. It took a long time of washing and rinsing before we began to see the light at the end of the tunnel of the stack of dishes, and it was after 9:00 before they were done and we could go get clean from our days excursions.
Rosy delivered a hefty bull calf a few weeks ago—but Rosy was not sharing her milk with us. She was holding her milk back when I milked her and that can lead to a mastitis problem—so I advertised her calf and Friday morning a family came to buy him. Papa has told me that he is done wrestling two and three week old calves—so Clayton got the job. Catching a rambunctious calf in the field can be a challenge, but Clayton stepped up to the plate and handled it well. As he walked up to the calf and Rosy the calf wasn’t too sure about the human and started to walk away. Clayton then acted like he wasn’t interested in the calf and walked the other way. He opened some wires into another field, and then he nonchalantly walked over near the bull calf. Quicker than you can blink Clayton had the calf and the gym work out began as he carried the calf a good 100 feet to the nearest hoop house where we could hold the calf until his new owners arrived—which happened to be as soon as we got back to the milking parlor. We went back to the hoop house and Clayton caught up the calf and loaded him into the back of the people’s car and they were so excited at how healthy and stocky he looked. They had purchased two calves from another farm—but they were never allowed to nurse on their mama’s and one of them died. Our calves are always allowed to nurse their mama’s—for six months if we keep them, or for a week or two if we sell them. It was then time to start milking the cows, but first Clayton needed a change of clothing for the calf had covered his pants with calf poo—a very, very, very stinky poo. When milking was done it was time to process chickens. The chickens have grown exceptionally well this year. For the last few years we have had to raise our fall chickens for nine weeks just to get a four pound chicken. The rest of the year the chickens are 4, 5, and 6 pounds at eight weeks of age. This year though we have actually had to process some of the chickens at seven weeks of age because when we wait until eight weeks they were weighing 6, 7, and 8 pounds. That is great for those who want BIG birds, but some people do prefer 4 and 5 pound chickens. Two Friday’s ago we processed eight week old chickens in order to get some big ones, and then last Friday we processed some seven week old chickens in order to get some “normal” sized chickens. We did 61 of them and we finished around 3:30. After a little bit of rest time Mom and I headed to the kitchen to spend the next two hours making chicken and refried bean enchiladas. It took us that long because we first had to make our tortillas from scratch (although I use a crepe recipe for cassava flour instead), and then we had to make our sauce from scratch. I will say that they were definitely worth all the effort. Saturday night Mom and I teamed up again to make another scrumptious dish from scratch—Pumpkin Pie. We were given what we think is a cushaw pumpkin. I roasted some of it with butter, maple syrup and cinnamon one night. Then I baked the rest of it and turned some into a pumpkin pie, and the rest will go into a soup and maybe some muffins. It is very tasty and I have to say the taste far excels other pumpkins.
I hope that you have a great week—and if you get up real early on Tuesday you just might get to see the lunar eclipse.
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare