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Hi Everyone,
Did you know that in order to clean something up you first have to make a mess? The greenhouse has been an eye sore to me for some time—not to mention an aggravation because the rats keep eating my little seedlings. On Monday Steve and I emptied everything out of the greenhouse and then swept the floor clean—which was pretty nasty with rat droppings, fallen rose leaves, old crispy strawberry leaves, dirt, and dead grass. Then we had the hard part—putting everything back in the greenhouse. The strawberry towers have lived in the front corners of the greenhouse for over a year, but there really isn’t enough room for them. I dream of a bigger greenhouse with glass walls that are tall and straight. I decided that it was time for the strawberry towers to be moved to the concrete sidewalk around the milk house—and my timing couldn’t have been more perfect. I am being truly sarcastic, because two days after we moved the strawberries outside the temps dropped into the twenties. Thankfully the towers are on wheels and we could push them into the milking parlor and close the side flaps and they get great protection from the freeze and frosts, and then we just wheel them back out the next morning so that we can milk. While I was organizing in the greenhouse, Mom and Steve were cleaning up one of the strawberry towers. Clayton, Mom and I cleaned up one of them a few months ago—but we never got around to the other tower. They pulled off all the dead leaves, thinned the plants, added fresh dirt, and fertilized them. When Steve and I were carrying the tower out of the greenhouse we found a rat nest in one of the tiers—thankfully it was empty. Since we cleaned up the greenhouse I haven’t seen any new signs of rats. I am hoping that they have moved out—or became dinner for the cats, because it is time to start new seedlings and I do not want to lose them to rats. I lost about 80% of my fall seedlings to rats.
While I was working on the greenhouse, I was also running in and out of the house checking in on a man who was fixing my piano. It is an old antique baby grand piano and some of the keys get stuck from time to time and some of them didn’t even play—and one made a horrible sound. It was getting to where it was not a joy to play my piano. If I was playing hymns I didn’t really notice the problems, but when I would play classical pieces then I would run into problems because there are a lot of repeated notes in those pieces, where I use more arpeggios with hymns. It took a few hours and required taking the “guts” out of the piano in order to lubricate the hammers, but when he was finished all the notes played beautifully and in tune. It was a pleasure to play my piano once again.
Tuesday morning we had the vet out to dehorn some calves and my niece Makenna wanted to watch. She was full of questions and the vet was very patient in explaining everything to her. Before we were done her little brother Josiah showed up with my sister Nichole. Josiah didn’t quite know what to think of the whole procedure but Makenna was a great big sister who reassured her brother that all was okay and she explained to him all the knowledge that the vet had just taught her—they saw that the best way to learn is to teach! The cutest part was when Josiah saw the vet cut off the first horn Josiah began to rub his head as if he was the one whose horns had just been removed. We had just finished with the vet when a couple showed up to pick up one of our cows and her calf that they had purchased. Anne was a cow that we never got around to training—although she did come into the milking parlor to eat. We had her sold, but when she calved early the other family decided not to buy her. The new family wanted a cow in milk—so they were very excited to be able to purchase Anne since we usually do not sell our cows in milk. Since this family is used to training dogs—especially Belgium Malinois, I believe that they shall have no problem training Anne to be milked.
Wednesday was full speed ahead here on the farm—and I do not mean we were working at top speed, I mean that the wind was blowing all day long and the wind gusts were close to 30 mph. By 4:30 in the afternoon those winds had blown in a storm and we were blessed with some rain. I needed to separate the calves for the night, fluff up the hay for the sheep, feed the dogs and lock up the chickens—but I really didn’t want to get soaking wet . . . so I grabbed Papa’s green Gumby suit and put it on with his large rimmed farm hat. It is not the easiest jumpsuit to walk in because I do believe it is made for someone who is 6 foot tall and I am only 5’2”. When I got out to the cow field they were all huddled under their shelter staying as dry as they could. I was walking out to separate the calves when the cows took one look at me and began a stampede—thankfully in the opposite direction than me, but not for long. When they reached the other end of the field they turned around and began to run back toward me. I was walking back to the lane when I heard them coming toward me and I decided to run the last little bit in order to get to the other side of the wire before the cows got to me. Once I was safely on the outside I turned and looked at the cows as they came to a stop and looked at me. I talked to them for a little bit and they seemed fine—and then I moved and they stampeded back to the other end of the field and then back again. I gave up on the idea of separating the calves and headed on to fluff the hay for the sheep. They didn’t mind Gumby one bit—and neither did the dogs. As I was walking down the middle of the hay rack in order to fluff the hay over toward the sheep so that they could reach it I noticed that there were no sheep eating in the last four feet of the hay rack. As I got closer I saw that Yasha was sleeping alongside the hay rack staying warm, dry and cozy in the bed of hay. Yasha is a great sheep dog, and it was nice to see that the sheep and the dog were inside the barn together. I took Yasha out to her dog house in order to feed her dinner—but she would have no part of eating in the rain so I carried her bowl back to the barn and put it in a corner and she gladly ate it there.
Company arrived Thursday morning when we were just finishing up milking the cows. Penny came and told me that we had customers, but when they got out of their car we were delighted to see that it was our old worker Eli and his wife. Eli worked for us for quite a few years. He helped in the garden, he and I milked the cows together, and he was a lot of fun to work with. He needed insurance so he left to work another job. That insurance came in grand handy last summer when Eli was hospitalized with Covid, Spinal meningitis, and bronchitis. He was a very sick man and spent quite a while in ICU and then longer time in the hospital Covid unit. I shall greatly warn you—if you ever have a loved one in the hospital with Covid, do not leave them there alone. If Eli’s wife had not stayed with him 15 hours every day Eli would have died. She said that it was very hard because she could take no food or water into the hospital room with him and she could not leave to go to the bathroom or for any other reason or she would not be allowed back in for the day—but she said that the Lord gave her the grace she needed to be there for her husband. When you have Covid you do not get the help from the nurses that you would get otherwise. So, we were really grateful to get to visit with Eli this side of heaven. It has been over 6 months and he is still recovering but in great spirits.
Friday afternoon I had great plans of working in the greenhouse planting seeds and potting up baby plants—but while we were eating lunch the water quit working. We couldn’t do the dishes, I couldn’t wash the laundry—and I couldn’t play in the dirt. Papa was fixing to head to town to get a tire fixed that always seemed to be flat every time he needed to use the trailer—but he needed to find out why we didn’t have any water first. After resetting the well a few times Papa realized that he needed to call the well guys again. We waited for hours for them to call us back. In the meantime, I decided to clean up my seed basket. Back in the fall I put all the seeds that I needed to plant in a basket organized in clear pouches—but after I planted them I just threw the packets of seeds back into the basket. It was time to put the seeds back in the plastic boxes in my drawer where I store our garden seeds. Once I had all the seeds put away, and had made a pile of seeds that I needed to plant now I decided to head to the garden to harvest the broccoli. Mom wasn’t sure about me heading outside to the garden—she just knew that I would get dirty. I was thankful for her admonition to stay clean since there was no water to wash up with. I grabbed a basket and some clippers and walked out to the garden. The first thing I saw was the first big yellow daffodil of the season. The wind had bent it in half—so of course I just had to pic it and bring it inside to enjoy it better. As I walked through the garden I began to see weeds—but Mom’s words echoed in my head and I refrained from pulling them. I got the broccoli all harvested and then I headed back toward the house. I did manage to pull up one dreadful elderberry plant—but I stayed clean doing that. Once I was back in the house I grabbed a vase and put the daffodil in it, and then I panicked—how was I to fill the vase with water? I then remembered that I had three five gallon buckets full of rain water out behind the walk in cooler, so I took my vase outside and dipped it in the rainwater bucket and filled it up and put the daffodil back inside the vase and set it on the table so that we could enjoy it. It was close to 6:00 that night before we finally got water back—and some bad news. It looks like our pump has gone bad which is thousands of dollars to fix. It sure didn’t help that the next morning when we turned on the heater to take the chill out of the house that thirty minutes later the heater (as in the central heat to the house) quit working. We are praying that it is just the control box on the wall and not that the whole unit blew and we will need a new AC unit—for we were hoping to use the money from selling all the cows to get some much needed projects done (like pouring a concrete pad in order to keep the cows from having to stand in the mud while waiting to be milked during the rainy season), but we might have to use it to fix broken well pumps and AC units instead.
Saturday morning Wally showed up around 8:30 to turn some peanuts into peanut butter for us. This will give us the opportunity to add a new item to our larder list of things that we have for sell. We finished with our milking and order packing about the time that Wally finished his project and headed home. Once again I was hoping to work in the greenhouse and Mom was hoping to clean up the kitchen—when you have a working kitchen the countertops have a tendency to get well cluttered. While we were eating our lunch the phone rang. It was my sister Nichole and they had an emergency and needed Mom’s help. I was expecting a customer, so I stayed behind while Mom headed next door to my sisters to help with a sheep that seemed to be in labor but was having difficulties. A week ago a neighbors dogs got into the field with my sisters sheep and killed one of their lambs and injured two more—but evidently the stress of the attack had an ill effect on Belle (their first sheep) and she began to go downhill fast. Sheep cannot handle stress—have you ever wondered why God compares us to sheep? Belle was in labor, but the lamb was not turned right and it was coming too soon. Belle miscarried her lamb, and then about an hour later, Belle died too. It was a sad day for them—it is the part of farming that isn’t very fun.
While I was home waiting for the customer I decided to finish processing the cayenne peppers that I had started a few weeks ago. The Vita-Mixer has been out of commission since the last time I powdered cayenne peppers, because I didn’t want to clean it up until I had finished the whole jar. I think that powdering cayenne peppers has to be the most dangerous job on the farm. I had a mask on, but the cayenne powder still made it to my nose and caused some grand sneezing fits. If you think a mask will keep you from getting sick—think again for if it cannot keep out cayenne pepper dust it won’t keep out any germs! I ended up having to wrap a towel around my face too in order to help keep the cayenne dust out of my nose. I was glad when I finished—at least until the next jar needs to be turned into powder. I only grind a little at a time for it keeps it fresh longer.
Well, it is time to close so that Mom can edit this journal before I send it—because she and Papa are falling asleep on the sofa. So good-night until next month!
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare