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Hi Everyone,
I once had a friend tell me that we always had so much to do that we lived in the “tired” mode. I can totally understand her for when you are not used to going all the time it is quite exhausting—it can be exhausting even when you are used to going all the time, but after recovering from Covid—getting out of the “tired” mode isn’t very easy. Last Sunday was the first time that I had left the house since January 9, and it was nice to be back at church. Sunday’s are always long days and I am prone to sleep on the way to church and on the way home from church—hey, we get up at 5:00 and have to go out to milk the cows first thing, but I was extra tired last Sunday—and wanted to sleep the rest of the day, and the next. Yet, Mom had other plans . . .
Monday dawned a grey and dreary day. Only 30 % chance of rain was forecast, but it misted all day long here on the farm. As soon as we were done milking, Mom and I came inside and decided to clean out and rearrange a few more kitchen cupboards. It never fails that in order to clean up something you must make a mess—and a MESS we made! Every counter in our kitchen was loaded with dishes and supplements. We would empty cupboards and load the dishwasher until it was full and we would run it, then empty the dishwasher refill it and run it again, and again and again. Steve usually works all day on Mondays, but with it being soggy outside we all decided to call it a day and let him go home early—no one wanted to work outside in the rain and Mom and I had a mess in the kitchen to clean up. Around 3:30 Mom decided that she wanted to go to Hobby Lobby to see if she couldn’t find a few more spring decorations to fill in a few empty spots in the dining room. I on the other hand would have gladly laid down and taken a nap—but I couldn’t let Mom go to Hobby Lobby alone! It was after 5:00 by the time we got home with our special finds and we were greeted with a dishwasher that was ready to be emptied, and counters that were still full and needing to be put away or ran through the dishwasher. It was 7:00 that night by the time we had the kitchen put back together, and my dinner plans were ruined. We do not like to eat too late, and any normal meal would take an hour or more to cook. We didn’t know what to cook for dinner, and while Mom and Papa were in the living room trying to figure it out, I decided to grab some fast food! I had a thawed 8-pack of chicken in the fridge so I grabbed one of the chicken breasts and sliced it and tossed it in salt, pepper, lemon peel and garlic powder. Then I got a skillet and added some olive oil and pan fried them for three minutes on each side. In another pot I dumped a bag of mixed vegetables and in another pot a jar of canned potatoes and heated them up. Dinner was done in 20 minutes. The funny part was that Mom and Papa had decided that we would all have banana splits for dinner—and Papa could have a chicken sandwich to go with it. Then when they came into the kitchen to fix “their idea of dinner” they found me in the process of cooking a “real” meal. Papa wanted to know if he could still have a banana split—and we said “yes”, but in the end the ice cream was next-door and he didn’t want to go back outside for the night.
A good night’s sleep was not enough to rejuvenate my tired self, but there was nothing I could do to stop the clock long enough for me to catch up my energy. Thankfully milking really is a relaxing job and it is very peaceful. Yet, last week we had some problems in the milking parlor. It seems that the supply chain got a little broken and our local feed mill was not able to get the brand of alfalfa pellets that they always carry. Have I ever told you that cows do not like change? Well, they do not. They don’t like the color of a bucket to change, the entrance and exit to change, the walls to change (as in curtains hung up to block the cold wind and rain, and then pulled back to let in the cool spring breezes)—and they do not like it when you change the brand of food. Some of them can be really picky eaters too! They remind me of people: I don’t like cook carrots, only raw. I don’t like canned peas, only frozen. Please don’t overcook my broccoli. Then there is the case of: I don’t like Smucker’s Strawberry Jam, I only like St. Dalfour’s Strawberry Jam. Well that is exactly what some of the cows said when they came into be milked. They can even smell the difference! Some come in and just as soon as they get their head into the stall they turn around and leave. We have played Ring around the Roses quite a few times with some of the cows last week. My cow Abby was the worst—for she said, “If you don’t give me the brand of food I like, then I will not let down my milk for you!” She would come in and turn circles and circles before we could get her into her stall far enough to tie her in. Then she would stick her head over the pipe and just sit there—refusing to eat, or even smell the food. We rejoiced when Papa came home Friday and said that the feed store had the old food back in stock—and the cows rejoiced on Saturday. Everyone came in with no problems and Abby let down her milk.
As Tuesday afternoon came to a close Mom and I were heading out to the garden to harvest collards for Wednesday’s delivery. I told her that I was so tired that I could hardly go any more. It had been a long day, and the afternoon had been busy with packaging eggs and teaching piano lessons. Mom said that when we got back inside I could sit down and rest for a little while before it was time to cook dinner. I rejoiced—and looked forward to that time. It didn’t take long to harvest nine bunches of collards and we were soon on our way back to the house—but when we came out of the garden Mom saw a huge flock of chickens coming towards us and she asked, “Where did these chickens come from?” Just a little ways off from the garden the chicken tractor was parked with hot wire netting around it so that the new laying chickens could get used to their new house and learn to go to bed in the house and not under it. They decided that they had eaten all the green grass in their area and so they crowded against the hotwire netting—that was not hot, and pushed it over and about half of them escaped (like 75 of them). We picked up the stakes and tried to shoo the chickens back in—but the ones on the inside just wanted to come out instead. They finally got crowded enough that they went back in the way they came out—pushing their way over the fence. Then I hooked up the hotwire netting to the “HOT” wire and made the netting hot. It didn’t take the chickens long to learn to stay away from the fence. Once that was done there was still one rooster that was out. Mom and I chased it around for a while—but it always dodged us by running under the chicken tractor. We finally gave up—and when Papa went to lock up the chickens for the night, the rooster had already jumped the fence and gone to bed on his own. By the time Mom and I made it back inside the house—rest time was over and it was time to cook dinner. When dinner was done I could finally sit down—but it was at the computer putting together all the orders and making the receipts for the Jacksonville delivery the next day.
Last Sunday when we went out to milk, Penelope was not standing at the wire waiting to come in—she is usually one of the first four cows into the milking parlor every morning. It was dark outside—but from what we could see, Penelope was not in the crowd. I knew that she was due to calve on March 1st, so I assumed that she had given birth a few days early. Mom headed inside for a little bit and while she was gone Penelope showed up ready to eat so I let her in. When Mom came back I told her that Penelope had showed up, and her response was, “O no!” I couldn’t understand why that was a problem until she told me that she had just sent Papa out in the dark to drive through the field to look for her. I laughed, but Mom felt bad, and since it was dark and Papa was in the noisy Gravely, there was no way for us to tell him that Penelope was already found. When he did come back up, he said he didn’t spend too much time looking and just figured that she was up at the parlor. Wednesday morning as I was fixing to let in the first four cows—once again Penelope was missing. This time it was daylight and I walked through the whole herd and looked every cow in the face—and none of them was Penelope. I figured that this time she must have had her calf, and sure enough when I looked down field there was Penelope standing in the field with a calf at her feet. So we had one more cow to milk Thursday morning because Penelope had given birth to a little heifer calf Wednesday morning. This evening Ana gave birth to a little bull calf—spring calving has started.
Spring brings more than calves—it brings lots of work to be done in the garden. Thursday from 11:00 to 1:00 Steve and I worked in the garden. I have close to 200 snapdragons that need to be planted in the cut flower garden—but the area needed to be weeded first. The weeds were big, but sparse. Thankfully the pathways are still thick with woodchip mulch and the rows are covered with black plastic—making for few weeds. That area was in the sun—but the weeds were light. After lunch Mom, Steve and I headed back to the garden and we decided to work in the shade—but the weeds were heavy duty. The elderberry was starting to take over the ginger and cucumber bed so we had to dig deep to get it out of the bed and then we had to pull up the 20 foot long rubber conveyor belt that covers the walkway so that we could dig up all the elderberry roots that were creeping under the walkway. We dug and dug and dug, and can only hope that we got every piece. There are still more roots to dig up before they reach other beds—but that’s another day.
Come Friday we had three young men that wanted to help us in the garden—and what a blessing they were. We ordered in 7 yards of woodchip mulch and two of them helped Mom fill the walkways in the garden tunnels with the mulch. The other boy helped me put chicken compost around the roses and on the ginger and turmeric beds and he also cut down the wilted (dead) stalks of one of our gingers. I worked on weeding the rose beds so that Mom and her two boys could cover the beds with mulch. Two years ago we mulched the rose beds—and we had no weeds and beautiful roses. Last year we didn’t mulch the roses—and we had tons of weeds and I couldn’t find the roses. We worked in the garden for two hours, and then Mom took the boys home and Steve and I worked a little longer and finished weeding the roses and putting out chicken compost and a mushroom compost/top soil mix. Then it was 2:00 and time for Steve to go home for the day.
When Mom got home we ate lunch and then Mom and I worked on cleaning the laundry room and pantry while Papa ran errands. The negative of being sick for so long is that the vacuum cleaner doesn’t run enough and when you get non-perishable items they don’t get put away—just stacked on the floor. So with a little extra energy, and a little extra time we pulled out the vacuum cleaner and made all the piles of dirt and fluffy dust bunnies disappear. We also carried all the winter décor boxes upstairs and then we had to organize the sewing room—because for the last few months all we could manage to do was to ask Papa to take things upstairs and just drop them off on the floor or the table. We put all the canning jars away in their boxes and neatly stacked the seasonal décor storage boxes and headed back to the pantry where we finally got all the groceries put away and the floor emptied and vacuumed. It is so nice to have order back—and it sure doesn’t take much to lose it.
January 8 we had a little black ewe lamb born—and no mama claimed her. Therefore we had an orphan lamb that we were going to have to bottle feed. The next day was Sunday and we took her to church with us so that we could feed her during the day. One of the ladies there fell in love with her and offered to take her home and bottle feed her for us for two months. We agreed! We told her that there was a possibility that the lamb would die—for not all bottle lambs live, but she said that she would call the lamb “Faith,” and she would have faith that God would allow her to grow strong and live. Little did we know that that very week we would come down with Covid—but God knew we would, and He knew that we would not be able to take care of a bottle lamb while we were sick. We were sick for about six weeks, and today was exactly eight weeks after we had dropped her off. Emily had thoroughly enjoyed taking care of little Faith—who isn’t so little anymore. The lamb slept with the chickens at night—until she stressed them out so much that they quit laying eggs. Oops! During the day Emily spent a lot of time outside with Faith—everywhere that Emily went her lamb was sure to follow. Faith roamed the yard staying close to Emily all the while munching on all the weeds and flowers and fresh green growth she could find. Faith was the highlight of Emily’s house and all the grandchildren and children enjoyed getting to bottle feed little Faith. Emily loves animals and has raised horses, goats, dogs, cows, and chickens—but nothing has been as sweet as the relationship with the little lamb. We brought the lamb home today. We put a diaper on her and put her in a box. She would baa unless I was touching her, and then she felt secure. She only laid down once when a violin was playing a song on the radio—but as soon as the song was over she jumped back up and continued turning circles in the box. You can tell she misses her “mama,” but it shouldn’t be long before she bonds with us since we will be the ones feeding her now. So far ducks are a little scary and the cat is too, and after she gets used to us and we can take her out to pasture I wonder what she will think of all the other lambs and sheep.
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare