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Hi Everyone,
Have you ever made plans to do something in a certain amount of time, and think that you have plenty of time to accomplish your goal—and then the deadline almost arrives and you haven’t done what you set out to do? Well, in the first month of Clayton working here on the farm we mentioned cooking a chicken on a string over the open fire in the garden. We had plenty of time to do it—but first it was too hot, then we forgot, then we got busy and then our time is almost up before Clayton heads on to another farm. So we made plans to cook a chicken over the fire on my birthday when Lydia was here—but Papa ended up sick and Clayton ended up visiting a farm in Pennsylvania. So I put it off. Last Monday Lydia was back with us, Clayton was here again and it was a garden day so I decided that we were going to cook that chicken—it was now or never! I had never cooked a chicken on a string over a fire before, but I had seen it done by my brother-in-law a few times and our family had done it once or twice ourselves. Mom was feeling pretty poorly and really couldn’t help except to give me a few pointers. So Clayton, Lydia and I headed to the garden around 11:30 to clean out the fire pit of all the weeds and to get the fire started so that we could roast hot dogs for lunch and have hot coals by 2:00 in order to have enough time to cook the chicken by dinner time at 6:00. May I say that the easiest part was clearing the weeds out of the fire pit? Clayton gathered the wood that he had split and began to build the fire—and then we learned that he had never built a fire before—and neither had I! Thankfully Lydia had and she came to the rescue, and it was a good thing because it sure is hard for the blind to lead the blind. Once the wood was stacked tepee style, then the twigs and lighter wood underneath was set on fire. I worked on pulling weeds out of the daffodil bed while Lydia and Clayton gathered sticks, twigs and dead weeds to feed the fire. Soon we had a nice roaring fire. Lydia and I headed to the house to get the hotdogs and the chicken—along with the salt and pepper, roasting sticks, an old enamel tea pot, spoons, mugs, honey and some string. When we got back I picked some peppermint, dug up a ginger root, and picked a fresh lemon off of the Ponderosa lemon tree in the garden. I then cut the lemon in half and added it to the water in the tea pot and I added the peppermint leaves and I cut up the ginger and added it too and then set the tea pot on the fire grill near the fire. Then it was close to 2:00 so I prepared the chicken—well, I attempted to prepare the chicken. I tied the legs together and cut the string long and then I lost my mind and hung the chicken on the metal bar that went across the top of the fire ring. The fire was on one side of the fire pit, and on the other side I had a piece of metal to help reflect the heat. (No the picture for this blog is not our chicken and fire—I forgot to take a picture.) Next to the metal I hung the chicken. Then Clayton informed me that I forgot to salt and pepper the chicken. UGH! The fire was real hot and the skin was already seared and hot—but I grabbed the chicken back up and we salt and peppered it. I also grabbed some handfuls of garlic chives, oregano and the peel from the half a lemon I squeezed into the tea pot and stuffed it in the chicken. We then put our chicken back into the fire pit. It was now time to cook our lunch—roast our hot dogs. Lydia and Clayton were already roasting their hotdogs while I was still trying to get mine on the stick. Then they let out a holler—the chicken had fallen into the dirt beside the fire! The fire was so hot that it had burned the string off the chicken. We had to use some long metal hooks to retrieve our chicken and I took it over to the water spigot to wash off the dirt. We then re-hung our chicken and a little while later Mom arrived. She took one look at the fire and said that it was too hot! So we took the chicken back off and let the fires die down some. Mom insisted that we had to cook the chicken by hot coals—I wanted to believe that we needed a fire. Mom assured us that as hot as we had the fire the coals would still be hot come morning. I am sure that when my brother-in-law reads this journal he will be laughing his head off at us—and shaking his head that we messed it all up royally. Anyway, patience is not my best virtue, and I was told that the chicken would take four hours to cook—so having to take it off of the fire at 2:30 was terrible to me. How would the chicken be cooked by 6:00 if we didn’t have it cooking by 2:00? I waited as long as I could—which was probably just 30 minutes and then I couldn’t stand it anymore and I re-hung the chicken. Lydia and I then went up to the house to put some potatoes in a Dutch oven and took it back to the garden and placed it in the coals to cook. Mom and I then picked the green beans, and Clayton watched the fire. At 4:30 the chicken was cooking nicely and we were done picking beans and it was time to do the evening chores. Papa had arrived home from jury duty around 3:00 and had been planting more winter grass seed, and by 5:00 he was done and headed to the garden to check on our progress. I went up to the house to get a big skillet to cook a fresh cabbage in and when I returned Papa had been working on the fire. It turns out that Mom was wrong and those hot coals were not going to be hot until morning. Papa saved the day and added more logs to the coals and got our fire blazing again. I got the cabbage cut up and added it to the skillet and started cooking it. When the cabbage was done—the potatoes were too, and to my delight the chicken was too. Dinner was done by 6:00—and it all tasted very good! We never used the stove or oven to cook any part of dinner, for we cooked it all over the open fire in the garden.
With all the chickens processed and tucked in the freezer, Steve’s morning chores have been shortened drastically, but on Monday he had plenty to keep him busy. Papa was summoned for jury duty Monday morning, so Steve had to feed and let out the egg layer chickens. Then he brought the last two or three hoop houses out of the pastures and tucked them behind the hay barn for winter storage. Once the hoop houses were secure then he had to wash all the feeders and waterers. Everything is now clean and tidy and ready for next year’s chickens. The rest of the week Steve came out to the milking parlor when he was done with his morning chores of turning on and off the garden water; feeding and letting out the new egg layers at the Poultry barn; giving hay and alfalfa to the bulls and heifers; and letting out the ducks, gathering their eggs and giving them fresh water. Sometimes Steve is able to lend a helping hand by catching the pee and poo in a bucket to keep it off of the milk claws and we milkers, and sometimes Clayton has milked all his cows and Steve is able to take those two milk tanks into the milking parlor to filter and bottle the milk. Once the milk is bottled then Steve helps with the washing of some of the equipment and then he heads to the garden to help Mom get the weeds out of her new garden bed “Martha’s Vineyard.” He calls weeding job security!
Tuesday morning when we finished milking the cows, Clayton started cleaning up the manure on the concrete around the milking parlor and I got the idea for some good old fashioned farmer baseball. It has been a long time since I have played baseball farmer style, but I couldn’t resist showing Lydia and Clayton how it was done. I found some older piles of cow manure that had dried out pretty good, and Clayton used the shovel for a bat. My aim isn’t always the best—but I never did hit Clayton with any of the “manure balls”. I did manage to get some close enough for him to actually hit with the shovel. Some were hard enough to fly, and others were crumbly enough to explode. We had a lot of fun! When we headed inside we all gathered around the island in the kitchen for KP duty. Mom had bought two bushels of white potatoes a month ago and it was time to can them. We were able to get two batches peeled, cut, in jars and in the canners before lunch. Then after lunch we had an egg party.
When it was arranged for Lydia to come up for 10 days I planned that we should play the violin and piano together every night for about 30 minutes—but come Wednesday we hadn’t played one piece together. So as soon as Papa and Clayton were on their way to Jacksonville for deliveries I sat down at the piano and Lydia grabbed her violin and we played to our hearts content. She brought some piano/violin duet books for us to play out of. She had a bit of an advantage over me—she had played some of them before. I had to sight read every piece and boy was I glad that I could, but I will admit that some were just too hard for me to play, but we had a lot of fun with the ones I could play.
Thursday was a rainy day and we spent our day in the kitchen canning four batches of potatoes. With only three of us in the family, we usually can everything in pint jars, but I have grown partial to having interns around and I told Mom that I wanted to can some in quarts in hopes that we will get more interns next year.
Friday seemed to be errand day for Mom and Lydia ran errands all morning while Clayton and I milked the cows, then after lunch Mom, Lydia and I ran errands all afternoon. One of those errands was to a pecan farm where we bought some cracked pecans, and now we have something to keep our hands busy when we sit down—although I will admit Mom shells most of them. That night while the chicken pot pie cooked in the oven Lydia and I sat down at the pianos and played Christmas hymns—the advantage of having two pianos in the living room.
Saturday was Lydia’s last day with us. She helped Clayton and I milk the cows by filling the feed buckets full of alfalfa pellets, and she helped me tie in the cows and let them out. When we were done milking we had kefir to bottle and orders to pack. While I finished up the receipts, Lydia spent time packing up her belongings. Once Papa left for the Gainesville delivery I once again sat down at the piano and she grabbed her violin. We played through her violin/piano books again. Then we headed to the kitchen to make a big batch of lip balm. I was sold out and she wanted to take some home for gifts. While we waited for the beeswax and cocoa butter to melt into the olive oil we helped Mom shell pecans. Once everything was melted I poured the liquid into the lip balm tubes and then we waited for them to harden. When they were solid we labeled the tubes and then it was time to say “Good-bye”. Once Lydia left I asked Clayton to head to the garden with me because it was time to harvest the last picking of green beans. We were blessed with eight pickings of green beans that gave us over 100 pints of canned green beans. It seemed to take a little longer to pick the last batch because we pulled up the plants as we went. It took us three plantings of the green beans due to the deer and the rabbits—but thanks to the deer and the rabbits the third planting ended up being in the tunnel which protected the beans from the freeze that we had in October. We planted the third planting on October 1st, and harvested the first picking on November 28th. We were able to pick the beans for three whole weeks! We are so thankful for the bountiful harvest that the Lord blessed us with.
Now we must finish the potatoes, can some pumpkins, juice the lemons, and . . . get ready for the winter that arrives this week.
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare