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Hi Everyone,
Our week started off with a party—although there was no cake and ice cream. We have known the Crane family since before they were married. It has been a privilege to watch their three boys grow into young men—and the oldest of them turned 21 last Monday. When Timothy was asked what he wanted to do for his birthday he replied, “Spend the day working on the Street’s farm!” We were tickled pink with the idea and our minds began to run—“With the strength of three young men what could we get accomplished in a day?” Papa decided that he would like one of them to help him make the rest of the rafters for the portable cow shade that he has been working on for the past I don’t know how many years—time seems to be limited or missing in action around here. Mom is in the beginning stages of redesigning a portion of the garden and liked the idea of having help to put the four 6 x 6 posts in the ground for the rose arbor entrance. I on the other hand was looking forward to getting to spend time visiting with Amelia (my dear friend, and their Mom). They arrived around 10:00 in the morning and we were almost finished milking the cows—matter of fact just as soon as they arrived at the milking parlor Peter (the middle son) looked the situation over and quickly opened the gate, grabbed the manure bucket and went right to work saving us all from being splattered by a cow going to the bathroom. Evidently they arrived during the “bathroom break” because the cows kept them hoping on their toes as about three cows decided to let us have it. Shortly after they arrived the sky grew black and it began to rain—not good timing when you plan on working outside all day. They did manage to fix an electrical box to our tool shed before the heavy rain arrived—and then they had to take cover for a while. Amelia and I were enjoying a nice chat in the living room—after we had fun admiring the floral arrangements that Amelia had brought over for us to enjoy. We had made 14 of them for Samuel’s (their youngest son) graduation the day before and so they brought half over for us to enjoy for the week and they kept half for them to enjoy. Back in January our infrared sauna stopped heating. The parts were bought to fix it, but an electrician was needed to understand how to do it—and that is where Travis (the Dad) came in. Travis spent his morning fixing our sauna—and to our delight it heats up again. Once the heavy rain ceased Mom, Samuel, and Timothy headed to the garden to begin figuring out what to do and getting everything marked. Around 12:30 Amelia and I headed to the kitchen to make grilled cheese sandwiches for everyone to go along with the chocolate milk that was already on the menu for lunch. After lunch I headed to the garden because Travis and Amelia had headed out to run a few errands. I pulled up the bolted lettuce, the spent flowers, weeds and after seeing that the collards were melting in the heat I decided to pull them up too. To my delight Peter had just finished helping Papa with the rafters and he offered to help me in the garden tunnel—pulling up the collards. I enjoy gardening, but there are some things about gardening that really do need a man’s strength. To pull up the collards I needed to use the garden fork to loosen the plant in order to pull it up. After I loosened a few for Peter, he told me that he didn’t need the fork he preferred to just twist the stem and pull the plant up that way. I couldn’t have done it that way if I had tried—so I left the brawns to pull up the rest of the collards and I went to pull up the rest of the little weeds out of the old forget-me-not flower rows so that they could be broadforked and planted with cover crops. To my dismay I found myself covered with forget-me-not seeds that had fallen off of the plants while I pulled them up. Some of the seeds had actually sprouted into solid masses of little green plants. Are forget-me-nots considered wild flowers—flowers that go to seed and wildly take over your garden? The Cranes left around 4:30 as they were heading out to eat for the birthday boys dinner. By the time they left two posts were perfectly set in the ground and two more holes were dug. Mom, Steve and Papa continued to work on the arbor and by 6:00 that night the other two posts were in the ground and framed in so that they would stay still-because the dirt was not filled back in around them. Mom and I are pretty sure that no one that helped put that arbor in the ground will want to help with either of the other two that need to be built. The posts are 6 x 6 posts that stick out of the ground 8 ft.—it is a massive arbor, but it will look really nice when covered by roses.
Tuesday was a full moon—and I have heard that it is the best day of the month for harvesting herbs. To me the best part of planting by the moon is having a date to plant or harvest—this helps me to plan and actually get things accomplished. If I say, “I need to harvest herbs this month”—I never seem to find the time, but if I know that Full Moons are good herb harvest days—then I can have a set day to harvest. May is honestly the best month to harvest herbs, but I was not up to it last month. So as soon as I was done milking Tuesday morning I grabbed a bunch of baskets and my clippers and headed to the garden. I harvested parsley, peppermint, oregano, sage, plantain, and comfrey. I got back in the house at 1:50—just in time to grab a quick lunch and head to the milk house for the egg packaging party. Mom and Steve were still in the garden working on setting the last two arbor posts, and Papa had attempted to mow the lawn but the lawn mower broke and after putting in three fuses that all blew he had to take it in to the mechanic. When the egg party was over I had to make yogurt, and then I had to get the herbs onto the dehydrators. The plantain and comfrey filled up all three of the dehydrators that we own. I did manage to crowd two trays together so that I could have a tray for the sage. The parsley we just had to wash, spin dry and lay out on tea towels until the next day and I could get more room in the dehydrator. In the middle of dealing with the herbs I had to cook dinner, and then after we ate I went back to the herbs. It was after 8:30 when I finally finished—and I needed to work on the orders for the next day’s delivery. I had been so busy Monday and Tuesday that I never had the chance to answer any emails and put in any orders—so I had a lot to do before I could even make the receipts. By 9:15 I had answered all the emails but I was so very tired that I could not keep my eyes open any longer so I signed off and headed to bed and Mom made the receipts. Now I will ask—“Why did the full moon have to fall on a Tuesday, the busiest day of the week?” I am glad that it was done, because some of the herbs would not be good for harvesting if I had waited too much longer.
HEAT WAVE!!!!!!!!!!!!! We usually only get about two good days a week to work in the garden—and the only thing that keeps us out is a very hard rain. Yes, we will work in light showers in the summer—hey; we would be soaked with sweat anyway! Thursday we found ourselves working in extreme heat—like it was 98 degrees F, with a heat index of 116 degrees F. We have a garden seminar this coming Saturday—you can get your tickets here: https://youcangardeninnorthFL.rsvpify.com. Anyway—we have a garden to get ready. Come June the rains make the weeds grow by leaps and bounds, and the Spanish needle is definitely already in seed and I am determined to have it all eradicated from the garden so that when we walk around the garden everyone will still like us—no one likes to be covered with unwanted seeds. I think that I can say that half the garden walkways are cleared. We have one week left to work—but did I say that the potatoes need to be harvested this week?
Friday we decided to process a batch of chickens a week early—they are weighing from 6 to 8 pounds when we let them go to eight weeks. So we decided that in order to have 4 to 6 pound chickens we had best process them at seven weeks. This is a nice blessing with the price of feed going up, up, up. Back in December we were paying $31 for 50 pounds of starter feed, and now we are paying $50 for 50 pounds—and that price doesn’t include the shipping price. We got the chickens done by 3:00 and then we came inside and finished loading the dishwasher and went to turn it on—but nothing happened. Papa checked the breaker box—but still nothing happened. We pushed the ON button over and over—but still nothing happened. Then reality set in and we realized that our dishwasher was dead—and full of dirty dishes. Ugh! We decided to take a little time to relax before we tackled the dishes and dinner. While Mom washed the dishes, I cooked dinner. I was almost done when the stove caught fire and sent smoke and soot everywhere. Ugh! The burner totally burnt the wires in half. Thankfully we had a second stove for canning in the pantry so I moved our dinner to that stove. Did I mention that our refrigerator freezer is having a hard time getting below 20—which means the fruit will not freeze? No more frozen bananas for kefir smoothies! The ice maker doesn’t work on it either—but thankfully we have some of those old-fashioned ice cube trays that you fill up with water and wait for them to freeze—and thankfully water freezes at 32. Have you ever had all your appliances in your kitchen break at the same time?
If you are wondering if we ever took time to rest—well yes, we rested Wednesday afternoon and while Mom piddled in the tool shed Saturday afternoon I stayed inside and took care of computer business and made a few phone calls. Now I must head to bed so that I will be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for this next week.
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare