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Hi Everyone,
We started last week out with everyone having separate goals—and everyone needing help to accomplish their goals. The question was: “Could we get it all done?”
On Sunday morning I milked five cows, but on Monday morning I only milked four cows. It was time to dry Sally up for her “maternity” leave, because she is due to calve in late June. So until the next cow calves Mom will be milking four cows and I will be milking four cows. We have 23 cows and one bull that we bring into the milking parlor—so if we only have to milk 8 of them that means that while the others eat we can do little things here and there. Mom goes out with Steve to move the heifers to a new field, and they take the new puppy “Aliya” with them to get her used to the animals, give her exercise and let her learn about hotwire. Let’s just say that after one encounter with the hotwire she decided that it is safer to hang out in the Gravely than to run around in the pastures. I bring the first five cows in and while they eat I water the greenhouse or I pot up plants, or tidy up whatever messes need to be turned right side up. I also feed Aliya and clean out her pen and give her fresh water. Every few days I clean out the cows’ water tub and add a fresh cup of mineral salt and fill it up with water. When we first started giving the cow’s salt water to drink—only two drank it and it took days for them to drink all the water. Now at least half of them drink it and sometimes I have to fill it up twice in one day.
One of the goals that I had for the week was to transplant the Roselle’s to the garden—and I also hoped to get my trays of flowers (zinnias, celosia, and marigolds) transplanted to the garden. There was one problem—the rows were not weeded yet! So, Monday Steve and Mom spent the whole day in the garden with me weeding. We didn’t finish it, but we were close to done. Come Tuesday Mom and Steve had to start work on the boardwalk between the Feed Room and the Brooder House—it was rotten through in some places and since we had a seminar coming up we couldn’t take any chances of someone falling through. Therefore, they couldn’t help me in the garden. Papa was busy emptying the manure spreader, fixing the hay wagon, and cleaning out one of the chicken houses—and dumping it in my concrete compost bin so that I can fertilize the garden with it. So that left me all alone in the garden to tackle a big job. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time! That is exactly how you tackle an impossible task—one weed at a time. When I was done with milking I headed to the garden and finished weeding the last eight feet of a three foot wide bed—and it was 100% nasty nutgrass. By 1:00 I had eradicated all the weeds and had top dressed both 25 foot long rows with chicken compost—and I had just started broadforking it all in when Mom called me up to finish making the yogurt and to fix lunch. I wanted so bad to get the Roselles planted that day—but at 2:00 we had a family coming over to help us package the eggs, and at 3:30 I had to teach piano lessons and at 4:00 I needed to harvest the greens for the Jacksonville delivery. Mom and Steve were not having much success with the boardwalk either—it was more rotten than they had expected. The decision was made that after lunch I would go back to the garden, Steve would come and fill the wheelbarrow up with dirt for me, then he and Mom would continue to work on the boardwalk—and our faithful helpers would package the eggs by themselves. I finished broadforking the beds and then I spaced out the Roselles and added the compost/top soil mix thinly to the rows and thickly around each plant. By the time my piano student arrived I had the Roselles all planted and I had already filled the walkway with three wheelbarrows full of woodchips. When piano lessons were over I sat down at the computer to put all the orders together—Mom had never made me a new order spreadsheet so I hadn’t answered any of the emails and therefore couldn’t go harvest until I knew what people had ordered.
I finished that a little before 5:00 and was just fixing to head to the garden to harvest when Mom came in from the boardwalk—they had almost finished but were two boards short and still had all the screws to put in. Mom and Papa were supposed to go shopping in town at 2:00—but Mom kept working on the boardwalk. So at 5:00 Mom came in and asked if I would go to town also to help with the shopping. My sister needed some groceries—her husband had just lost his leg due to diabetes. We needed groceries too! So I shopped for us, and Mom shopped for my sister. It probably took my 30 minutes to get all of our groceries and then I went to find Mom—she was having trouble finding food. It really isn’t easy to buy food for someone when you do not know what they like and what they do not like—so it took us two hours! One thing that made it hard is that my sister is staying in a place where she has limited cooking and refrigeration possibilities. Poor Papa sat in the van the whole time we shopped—he said that he watched the whole parking lot exchange cars while we were inside. Once we had our groceries we took them over to my sisters and then we had to stop by the ice house to get 16 bags of ice for deliveries and chicken processing. It was 8:00 by the time we got home and thankfully I had a new idea for dinner—because what I had taken out wasn’t going to get cooked. When dinner had disappeared down our throats I headed to the computer to work on the orders and receipts for the Jacksonville delivery.
I very seldom write about Wednesday’s because they go like this: clean bathrooms, milk cows, pack orders, have company, teach piano lessons, and relax. Last Wednesday was different—if it were a dream it would have been classified as a nightmare. The morning started off picture perfect: I got up a little before 6:00 and got my shower and even had time to read my Bible. Then at 7:00 I headed outside to set up the milking equipment while Mom and Papa got breakfast on the table. At 8:00 I took care of the last minute orders, did the dishes and around 8:45 I headed outside to milk the cows. Once the first four cows were in their stalls eating I watered the plants in the greenhouse, and Mom headed out with Steve to move the heifers. She was delayed on her return because the chicken houses needed to be turned and Steve had to help Papa do that before they could move the heifers. Meanwhile, I had begun milking my first two cows: Honey and Sunshine. By the time Mom came back I was finishing up milking my last two cows: Emma and Mabel (they are sisters but you would never know it because: Emma is tall and Mabel is short, Emma has long teats and Mabel has short teats, and Emma doesn’t have as much milk as Mabel). It was not yet 10:00 and I was done milking—which meant that I could go to the garden and harvest the veggies that I didn’t get to harvest the night before, and this is when life got crazy! Before I made it to the house the phone rang—so I answered it in the milk house. The poor lady was calling to tell me that her mother was in the hospital and she wouldn’t be able to make it to the farm seminar like she had so hoped to. We had a nice chat and then I had to go because I had to go harvest—but a customer had arrived to buy some salve. It was 10:30 by the time I was done and then I still had to put in a few last minute orders and go to the garden to harvest and pack all the dairy products. Our friend Amelia and her son Samuel were over, so I snagged Samuel to go to the garden with me to help me package the harvest—it is so much easier to put lettuce and collards in a bag when someone else is holding the bag open for you. We had to harvest 4 bags of Swiss chard, 10 heads of lettuce, 7 bags of collards and get 3 Roselle plants in bags so they didn’t make the van (or the people’s cars) dirty. When we got back to the milk house I quickly packed the ice chests with the milk, kefir, and yogurts while Mom packed the meats. Then the telephone rang and a woman was in labor and wanted some advice from Mom. I took over sealing the veggie bags and then to my dismay one of the bags of Swiss chard was missing. By this time it was after 11:30 and Papa had to leave by 11:45 in order to be on time—but we were still packing with lots of interruptions. We searched high and low for the bag of Swiss chard but couldn’t find it—we must have lost it out in the garden or in the field on our wild drive back in the golf-cart. Mom headed back to the garden and I headed inside to finish the receipts. Then another order came in and I sent a message over to the milk house to pack another ½ gallon of milk. Mom couldn’t find the missing bag, so she picked another batch of Swiss chard. I finished up the receipts and it was 12:10 when Papa finally drove out of the driveway. I went back to the computer to finish emailing the receipts when an email came in from a customer who had already gotten her receipt and she told me that Papa was bringing her 5 yogurts instead of the 5 half gallons that she had ordered. I checked my order sheet and sure enough I had put the 5 in the yogurt column instead of the milk column. I ran outside to see if Papa had gotten out of the driveway yet—and he had, like three minutes earlier! I ran inside and called him and told him that he had to come back I had messed up an order. I ran into the milk house to grab 5 half gallons of milk—but there was only two left on the shelf and we had just finished packing that day’s milk in gallon jugs. So I grabbed a few half gallons from off the table and swapped the milk from the gallons to the halves—but I was lacking one half gallon. I told Steve to get me another half-gallon jug from the loft and that wasn’t too easy. The company had packed one of our half-gallon orders in a big box instead of a bag and when Steve opened the flaps the jugs started to want to fall out. He managed to get me my jug and hold the rest in the box until Penny got back and could help him get the box down. Then with all the half-gallons full we grabbed an ice chest and a few bags of ice and got it packed for Papa who was now waiting for us. He ended up getting out of here a half hour late, and so we had to rearrange the Macclenny drop for later that evening. With Papa gone I went back inside to finish emailing the receipts and then I had the joy of sitting down and relaxing while my piano students serenaded me with their music. The rest of the day was spent—relaxing!
Thursday was our last day to get things ready before our seminars began on Friday. At 6:00 in the morning the Post Office called to tell us that our chicks had arrived safe and sound—and they were ready for us to pick them up. As soon as breakfast was out of the way Mom headed to town. When I was in the milk house setting up I went into the cooler to put away the egg crates and I saw a package of Swiss chard sitting on the shelf. I had no idea where it had come from, but later Steve and Penny told me that when Penny was cleaning the floors on Wednesday she had moved the garbage can and there behind it between some buckets was the MISSING bag of Swiss chard—so we had Swiss chard for dinner that night. Once milking was done I spent hours at the computer working on my Power Point slide show for the seminar on Saturday. Papa was working on getting the file moved from our computer to my sister’s laptop computer so that we could use it to hook up to the projector (for it wasn’t safe to lug our big computer over to the Poultry kitchen for the seminar. Mom and Steve spent all day working on the boardwalk, and it wasn’t easy because one of the frame boards was warped and they had to do a lot of ratcheting to pull the board in so that when they screwed the boards into place they were straight. It took them until 5:00 that night to get all the boards laid and all 400+ screws installed. The new boardwalk looks very nice—and is very secure! After hours at the computer I just had to get outside for some fresh air so I headed out to the garden to plant four more roselle plants and to finish mulching the walkway. I did manage to pull a few weeds also. The rest of the day was spent getting dinner, printing out some info for the seminar and gathering some books for the “Sample” book table. I gathered some of our favorite farming books and grass-fed cooking books—and spent 30 minutes tearing through the house trying to find our “YOU CAN FARM” book by Joel Salatin. I finally had to admit defeat—but do you know how aggravating it is to look for something and you cannot find it. We must have loaned it to someone years ago and never got it back.
Friday was the big day—! We were holding a chicken processing class from noon until about 3:00 that afternoon. We had twelve adults signed up for the class—and around 20 children came with them. It was nice to see parents who wanted their children to see reality—and were not sheltering them from it. We only knew four people that had signed up for the class, so it was really nice to meet new people—especially when you found out that they lived just minutes away. One family though travelled four hours from St. Pete to attend the seminars. Everyone started at the killing station, and then they followed the chickens in groups as they went through the scalder, into the plucker and then to the eviscerating table. Then they were rinsed and sent to chill out in a barrel of ice water. Once all the birds were processed the packaging and cutting up began. In the end some were 100% sure that they could go home and do it themselves—and others were not too sure.
That night Mom and I headed over to our friend Emily’s to borrow some portable air conditioners to help keep the building cool. We had ordered an A/C unit for the building—and it had arrived Thursday morning, but the mechanic couldn’t put it in until next weekend. So we used one tiny window unit and two portable units and they worked good enough. Later that night we helped Mom put together her Power Point slide show—and it was after 10:00 when we finally crashed into bed.
Saturday was a BIGGER day than Friday! We were holding our first “You Can Farm in Florida! Seminar” that afternoon from 1:00 to 4:00—but we had to get all the morning chores done first and get the Gainesville order packed for Mr. Tavernari who was going to be delivering it for us. Thankfully everything did go very smoothly—except that the packing took a little longer (because I just had to gather two bouquets of flowers for the tables at the Seminar while I was in the garden harvesting the lettuce and Swiss chard for the orders). Needless to say, Mom and I only had time to drink a big glass of chocolate milk before it was time to start the seminar—Papa had his act together a little better and he actually had a sandwich and chips to go with his chocolate milk.
People started showing up at 12:30 and thankfully our dear friend Mrs. Sue had offered to come over and help in any way she could—and that just happened to be to check in everyone (she also helped me harvest the veggies and the flowers). We had around 40 people in attendance, and we began shortly after 1:00. Mom began by telling everyone “WHY” we became farmers, and why we farm the way we farm. I got to tell stories about the animals that we have raised and do raise and about the garden and chestnut trees—in other words I had the “WHAT” we farm. Then Papa told everyone “HOW” we farm—what fencing and infrastructures we use. Then at 4:00 as many as could fit loaded up on the hay wagon and the rest piled into the Gravely and the golf-cart—and we drove around the farm seeing the garden, the meat chickens, the laying hens, the guard dogs (Jill and Yasha), the heifers, the chestnuts and the milk cows (the beef cows said “hi” from a far distance because they were not in the chestnut field like we were expecting them to be. Then we all stood around and talked—with the last family leaving at 7:00 that night. We then did a little cleaning up and headed inside to fix dinner—it was close to 8:00. When dinner was done—we were done and ready for bed! It had been a lovely two days of sharing what we had learned over the years with others who were just starting out on this farming journey—or who were dreaming of it as they still lived in the city.
To my delight, as I have sat here typing this journal for the last few hours I have been able to watch it rain outside. We have not had much rain lately, and the grasses have not been growing very well and in some places things were starting to look a little scorched. I couldn’t help rejoicing and Praising the Lord for the rain—so much that I just had to go outside and film a little of it https://youtu.be/mPgTxeb_gXE. We got almost two and a quarter inches in about two and a half hours—I am sure that the squashes, pumpkins, cucumbers and melons will be most delighted.
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare