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Hi Everyone,
They say that if you find an occupation in a field that you really love—you will never have to work a day in your life. If you would do your job even if you didn’t get paid for it, then I guess you could say that you have found your dream job. I will say that I absolutely love farming—and I do not get paid to do it (well at least not in cash—for I do get to eat scrumptious food that we grow and raise, I get to breath fresh country air, pet a cow every day, and I am privileged to be able to dig in the dirt and walk barefoot in the grass). Yet, there are those chores on a farm that I will admit that I would not do them any place else on earth even if I was paid $200 an hour. While weeding in general can be very addicting, I have to say that I have no fondness for weeding Nutgrass or Florida betony—and parts of the garden has more than its fair share. I also know that gardening is not for everyone, but I am a firm believer that if you give someone a seed and they plant it and take care of it and get the joy of harvesting what they planted that they just might get bit by the gardening bug after all. When our newest intern Clayton arrived a month ago he arrived in time to plant green beans—to only have them be eaten by deer, replanted and nibbled on by a rabbit. We finally got the area “critter” proof and the green beans are producing new leaves quite nicely. Lord willing Clayton shall get to help harvest those green beans, eat those green beans and hopefully can some too. Clayton also arrived when the garden looks its worse because of all the summer rains that make the weeds multiply quicker than we can keep up with them. It is hard to see beauty in the midst of chaos, and it is hard to find a purpose in a garden where the main chore is weeding right now. Yes, we did plant some collards and bok choy (of which the bok choy is actually big enough to eat), but most of the crops that we are planting right now probably will not be ready for harvest before Clayton’s time here is over. Yet, how do you teach a love for gardening if you do not get to enjoy the fruit of your labors? Clayton answered that question for me last week when he asked me about the flowers that we grow for bouquets—which usually are harvested in the spring and summer. He wondered if there were any flowers that he could plant now that would be blooming before he left, and after checking my seed stash I told him that zinnias and sunflowers would be just the seeds for him. This was a win-win situation: he gets to grow something in the garden that he will enjoy, and we get to have flowers blooming in the fall—who would say no to that request? Not me! Monday rolled around and our one goal was to plant flower seeds—but it was a rainy drizzly day. It wasn’t too hot though and when the rain was coming down the hardest we worked in the garden tunnel where the zinnias were being planted. Then when it wasn’t raining we worked out of the tunnel planting the sunflowers. When we returned to the garden on Thursday I found Clayton walking down the rows weeding out any weeds and looking for any signs of zinnias sprouting—of which there were quite a few. By Friday night the sunflowers had sprouted and now we watch and wait.
A few weeks ago we got a phone call that when Mom saw the caller ID she thought that it would be spam for sure—but it wasn’t. One of our sheep customers happens to be friends with Justin Rhodes from (The Great American Farm Tour) and Justin was calling us asking to buy some sheep. He wanted five ewe lambs and last Wednesday morning Rebekah’s parents showed up a little after 8:00 in the morning to pick them up and take the sheep on a road trip to North Carolina where their new home will be. We had brought the lambs up to the yard Monday, and had them grazing behind hotwire. Wednesday morning Papa funneled them into the hoop house and they were caught and ready for loading. Once Rebekah’s parents had the dog kennel in the back of the truck open and secured Steve, Clayton and Papa went into the hoop house to each catch a lamb and I held the gate to let them out. Once they each caught a lamb Papa came out with his lamb and then when I opened the door to let the next person out one of the uncaught lambs bolted through the door. I tried to shut it, but it was too late and everyone’s hands were full so no one could grab her. Papa put his lamb back in the hoop house and Clayton and Steve set theirs back down and came out to help catch the loose lamb who had a huge yard to run around in—plenty of space to run from us. The goal was to corner her, but she would not be cornered and like a quarterback running with the football through the opponents to get to the goal she bolted toward us and through us—but not through all of us, for quicker than a wink our Defensive lineman made a running jump and tackled her. Yep, Clayton was the hero for the day. With the ewe caught we then went back to collect the rest and load them up in the truck—and the second time went much smoother. We had a nice little visit with Rebekah’s parents and then they were off and we were too—that is off to do our morning chores and get everything packed up for the Jacksonville delivery.
I know that we still have a week until fall officially arrives, but it sure has been nice weather of late with a touch of fall in the air. When the milking was done and all the milking equipment was washed on Thursday we then headed to the garden to weed, and weed, and weed. Mom and Steve worked on weeding “Martha’s Vineyard” (the new garden bed designed after one of Martha Washington’s gardens and of which will house our grape vineyard), and Clayton and I weeded the West Tunnel. The nice thing about the tunnels is that they are frost proof—and they are deer and rabbit proof! As the day came to a close Clayton and I took a huge pile of weeds to the compost hole and then we drove up to the chestnuts to check them out. Someone wanted to come and gather them on Friday and we had to make sure that there were chestnuts to pick—and boy was there!!!!! We were only supposed to check on them but how could we not grab up every last chestnut that we saw. I would fill my hands and dump them in the back of the Gravely bed, and Clayton would fill every pocket that he had until he looked like a chipmunk and then he would dump his pockets in the back of the Gravely too. We did this over and over for about forty-five minutes. We both commented that picking chestnuts was quite addicting. When I checked the time it was almost 5:00 and I told him that we had best close our eyes and head home—for if we couldn’t see any more chestnuts then we wouldn’t be tempted to pick any more chestnuts. We picked close to 17 pounds of chestnuts and Friday night Clayton cut a pot full of them in half and we boiled them for 20 minutes. Then Mom and Clayton peeled the skins off and put them in bowls—I on the other hand kept picking out one here and one there salting it, adding a dab of honey and eating it. I definitely was not much help, but they tasted O so good!
Friday we processed chickens and for once all year we had a full batch to butcher (71 total) and we were able to put some on our side—it has been amazing how fast the chicken is selling this year and we have had so many “technical difficulties” that is has been hard to keep up with the demand. We really have a nice crew and when everyone is cheerfully working together it really makes for an enjoyable day.
For two weeks Steve, Clayton, Mom and I have been washing the milking equipment because our washer, Penny (Steve’s wife) has been very, very, sick. I do not believe that I have ever taken her for granted, but these last two weeks have definitely reminded us just what a blessing Penny is and just how much she does for us. Penny folds towels, washes and packages the duck eggs, cleans the windows of spider webs and dead bugs, gets down the milk jugs and puts labels on them, efficiently washes all the milking equipment, gets the yogurt containers ready, sweeps and mops the floors and reminds me not to make kefir on Wednesday if we are going to butcher chickens on Friday when I would usually bottle the kefir. Yes, she was not here last Wednesday and I made the mistake of making kefir on Wednesday instead of Thursday (when it could have been bottled on Saturday). Needless to say, we had a little extra work to do before we could start processing chickens and while Mom had most of the milking equipment washed by 11:30 there were still a lot of things for Steve to wash by himself since Mom, Clayton and I would be processing chickens and Steve would not be. Saturday morning though we all rejoiced when Penny arrived back to work.
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare