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Hi Everyone,
Last week we lived on both ends of the spectrum: hot and cold, wet and dry, health and sickness, life and death, harvesting and planting, working and resting. It was a full week, and if you keep reading I will tell you all about it. Spoiler alert—you might need some tissues.
The beginning of January I had planned on planting sugar snap pea seeds, Sweet pea flower seeds, and transplanting the flowers to the courtyard—but God had other plans. Proverbs 16:9 says, “A man's heart deviseth his way: but the LORD directeth his steps.” I had made my plans, but God knew what was best. Many things got in my way to prevent me from carrying out my plans. First—there were weeds, and not just a few, but a whole bunch. We got one of the areas weeded around the middle of January, but it took another week before we could get the trellises built—and then we caught Covid. While we were down with Covid, a severe cold snap arrived bringing 20 degree temperatures for a good twelve hours. Had the peas been planted at the beginning of January they would have sprouted—and then froze to death. Praise the Lord for the obstacles in our path that prevented us from accomplishing our goals. This week February arrived and life was a different story with all the freezing temps behind us. On Monday Mom was able to head to town in the morning and get us a truck load of compost. At 1:00 the Elder family arrived to help in the garden. I loaded the back end of the Gravely with trays and trays of flowers and onion starts—I had BIG dreams. Two hours later a lot had been accomplished, but there was still a lot to do. A few weeks back Steve had covered the beds with chicken compost, but it hadn’t been mixed in yet. So the first thing we had to do was to broadfork the compost into the soil. Once that was done then Mom leveled off the dirt and I ran the gridder down the rows to make a “grid” in the dirt so that we would know where to plant the plants. We then placed the pots in the right places and Brenna and Abrielle planted the flowers in the ground. The first flower that they planted was close to 100 forget-me-nots—this is the first year I have ever gotten the seeds to even sprout so I hope they continue to thrive. Then they planted pink California poppies, a few snapdragons, some strawflowers and catnip. While the girls were planting, their Mom and brother were weeding the cabbage and collards on the other side of the tunnel. When their time was up I was just beginning to plant around 30 statice plants and Mom was working on the onion bed. Steve and I then covered the flower beds with compost—something that I should have done before we planted the flowers, but I didn’t think about it—which was good because the girls wouldn’t have had time to plant the flowers if I had thought about it. I put pots over the little flower leaves and then Steve dumped shovels of compost all around them. I had about 16 pots to work with and I just kept moving them down the rows after he covered an area with compost. I was getting weaker by the minute, and so was Mom. By the time we finished with the compost, Mom had finished transplanting the rudbeckia plants—and we were done for the day. It was only 3:40, but we couldn’t go no more.
Tuesday was a new day, but we really didn’t have much renewed energy. After dealing with Covid for three weeks I was now dealing with asthma and spend most of my days coughing. Mom is still dealing with inflammation in the lungs and heart. We have to milk our cows every morning—but after that what we do depends on what has to be done or what we have strength to do. When the milking was done on Tuesday we headed for the garden to transplant the onions. They were supposed to have been transplanted out a few weeks ago—but alas we were sick, the bed wasn’t prepared, but that is okay because they too would have frozen to death last weekend. I had started the onions from seed around Thanksgiving and they were now ready to be growing in the garden. We ran the four row gridder down the bed and then Mom took one side and I took the other side and we transplanted about 250 onion plants. We were done by lunch—and all I could think about was taking a nap. First I had to make yogurt and Mom fixed lunch. After lunch I grabbed the cushions off the front porch and headed out to the front yard to take a nap. The wind was on my back and the sun was on my arms and face—and I fell fast asleep. When I came in from my nap later I found Mom working in the kitchen. She had been cleaning a counter a day for the last few days and Tuesday’s counter was the long one. It looked overwhelming to me, but I did manage to find some things to put away that were 100% my clutter. I had bowls of seeds: Tithonia (Mexican Sunflowers), Okra, Watermelon, and pods of brown cotton that needed to have their seeds removed. Once I got the seeds all put away I helped clean up a few more things and then the counter was clean—and empty!
Papa spent Tuesday afternoon fixing fences until about 4:00 when my sister called and said that her husband was ready for Papa to bring the manure spreader over so that Gary could help Papa fix it. Gary was a traveling blacksmith when my sister met him, and he has worked with metal his whole life—you name it, he could do it (from furniture to cookware). Gary was able to help Papa get the manure spreader taken apart, the new part put on and everything put back together—except for a few nuts and bolts that Papa had to go to town to buy the next day. Wednesday Papa bought the missing pieces and a little later when Mom and I looked out the window Papa was driving around the fields spreading out the manure—the machine works! YEAH!!
Wednesday morning was not the most romantic of farm days—it was a major dose of reality. When they headed down to bring in the cows to be milked they found a dead cow—one of the Jersey milk cows. Mom was doing the breakfast dishes and I was cleaning a bathroom when Papa came in to tell us. I wanted to go see who the cow was—but I knew that I physically couldn’t go rushing down there to see. I begged Mom to go—but she still had two bathrooms to clean, the dishes to finish, a bed to make and we both needed to pack the Jacksonville order and I needed to harvest greens from the garden—before we could milk the cows. Mom finally agreed to go look, and from what she could see the cow had laid down and must have rolled over on her back and got stuck, and after much thrashing she died. When I finished in the house I headed outside to the milk house to pack the order. I found Mom at the milking parlor walking around the cows—she was trying to figure out which one had died (she couldn’t tell by looking at her). I decided to get our “roll call” sheet and start marking off all the cows I saw. I was almost done with the “roll call” when I noticed that the cow that is always standing at the wire waiting to come in first—was not there. I groaned for I knew that it was my precious Jam that had died. Jam is the sister to my favorite cow, America. Jam is also the last calf that my last favorite cow, Jamima, raised before she died. Jam was due to give birth to her second calf in April. Jam had a beautiful udder with nice long teats, and she gave lots of milk. She never kicked, never had mastitis, raised a beautiful calf—and now she was gone. Having figured out who the “missing” cow was Mom and I then went back to our work. I packed up the order and then I headed to the garden to harvest cabbage and collards. When I was ready to let the first four cows into the milking parlor I wondered who would take Jam’s place—Sally said that she would. She used to be first with America until Jam came along, so now she is first again. When I finished milking Sally, America, Rosepetal, and Rosa I then brought in Ellie Mae and Jenny to eat (we let their calves nurse 100% on them). When the two cows were done eating I then resumed milking with Sunshine, Abby and Ella. I had a new cow to add to my milking routine that day—Mabel. Tuesday afternoon when Papa took the milk cows back he found that Mabel had given birth to the most adorable little bull—he has a perfect heart on his head with white markings on his sides and tail. I lost one cow, and gained another—but it was far from an equal exchange. Jam was always first, Mabel is happy to be last. Jam had long teats—Mabel’s teats are little buttons (which is why no one wanted to buy her). Jam had a calm personality when it came to being milked; Mabel doesn’t like to be touched. I will say that Mabel’s udder is twice as big as Jam’s was. When it was time to milk Mabel for the first time she thankfully came in willingly (thanks to Papa and Mom working real hard over the last month to train her to come in). When I went to tie her leg back though, I found out that she was a kicker. Steve had to stand on the other side of her and gently push on her to off balance her so she couldn’t kick me—so she kicked at him. We had to tie back both legs. Then when I went to hook up the milking claws she danced all over the place. Mom had to dodge kicking legs to help me hook the milk claws up to her tiny teats—and once they were hooked, Mable stood perfectly still. I was really struggling with my thoughts—why did Jam have to die?????? Why not Ellie Mae who was very old and not doing the greatest? Why not—Mabel!? Yes, I wasn’t too excited about exchanging my beloved Jam for Mabel. The second day Mabel at least still came in to be milked—we didn’t scare her off. She only needed one leg tied, and she let down more milk. The third day she came in again, ate her food better, and didn’t kick too much. Each day gets a little better—but still DO NOT TOUCH her teats or udder. Once she is hooked up though she stands perfectly still. Just maybe she will turn out to be a precious cow too.
The other day we were sitting at the table eating when I noticed a crow was chasing the ducks. He chased them one way, and then he chased them all the way around their hoop house. It was funny to see him hopping around on the ground after the ducks. We wished that we could have caught it on camera—but our memory will have to do.
I am sure that you have heard the song “Feed the Birds” from the original Mary Poppins movie. Part of it goes like this, “Feed the birds, tuppence a bag, Tuppence, tuppence, tuppence a bag.” Well, lately the sheep have been grazing in the yard, but they have practically eaten everything green in sight—which wasn’t very much to begin with. We are definitely in the “brown of winter”. Mom has been throwing scoops of alfalfa pellets over the fence to them, and they come running to get their mouths full before some other sheep gets it all. The leader of the pack is an old bottle lamb named Smokey. She loves to be petted, and is always eager to come up to you. Lately since Mom has been throwing feed over the fence she stands at the fence baaing when you walk by, or if she sees you in a window she will stand and stare in it baaing at you. I told my parents the other day that we need to sing “Feed the sheep, two bucks a cup, two bucks, two bucks, two bucks a cup.” It would be like going to the zoo where you pay to feed the birds and the giraffes.
Thursday found us back in the garden to finish up the last of the delays. Sugar snap peas are supposed to be planted January first—but that didn’t happen this year. The trellises were ready for the Sweet pea seeds, so we planted them first. We had to weed the trellis for the sugar snap peas—and it was full of nutgrass, blackberry, and cat claw vines. We got it all weeded before lunch, but after lunch we had to go back out to plant the seeds. When we were done I came inside and sat on the sofa looking through seed catalogs dreaming of what to plant this spring and summer.
Friday we realized that we were getting more milk that we could sell, and since Mom and I are still not up to par—we chose to let the calves drink all the milk, instead of creaming. That meant that I only had three cows to milk: Sunshine, Abby and Mabel. That also meant that while all my other cows ate their alfalfa pellets I had time to work in the greenhouse. I was finally able to get all the snapdragons potted up to bigger pots. When we were done milking I came inside to make kombucha and Mom headed to the garden. Papa emptied all the chicken compost out of the big chicken tractor and refilled my concrete compost bin. Now we just had to fix a few broken things on the tractor and then we can transfer the new laying hens out to pasture. After lunch I have to admit that Mom and I were exhausted—it had been a long week so we spent the rest of the day relaxing.
Saturday we let the calves drink that milk again (which only means that I have very few cows to milk, but Mom still has most of hers). When the milking was done we packed the orders, harvested collards for the order, made the receipts and Papa was finally well enough to go back to deliveries. We had to hire someone to make the deliveries for us the last two weeks since we were all sick. Once Papa left, Mom curled up in her rocker and I curled up on the sofa in the living room to read. I finally got a few new books (one being my coveted Polyface Micro—Joel Salatin’s newest book on farming). I read for about an hour and then I could hold my eyes open no longer and I cozied down into the sofa and fell fast asleep. We will be so glad when our energy returns, but when it is cold and rainy outside it doesn’t matter if I am sick or healthy the best thing to do is to curl up and read a good book and take a nap.
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare