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Hi Everyone,
If you have ever called our house and got our answering machine you have probably heard my message: “Hi, you have reached Tom, Tarri and Tiare Street at Shepherd’s Hill Farm we are probably out milking the cows or playing in the garden . . .” Well, last week I only managed to find about 15 minutes to play in the garden! Last Saturday I finished making three of my salves, so come Monday I needed to finish the other two without the stress of trying to cook dinner at the same time. So while Mom weeded in the garden and Papa and Steve stacked wood in the lean-to I worked in the kitchen making the Relief Salve and the Virus Salve. Things didn’t go too smoothly though. The oil had been straining out of the herbs since Saturday, so they were ready for the beeswax. First I had to measure the oil so that I knew how much beeswax to add to the oil. That part went smoothly, but . . . The Virus Salve had a full four cups of herbal oil, and by the time I added the beeswax to the oil the old glass coffee pot was pretty full. I decided to put a small round metal pan under the glass pot just in case I spilled it putting it in the oven or getting it out. About forty-five minutes later when I went back to check on the melting process I found that the virus oil had boiled out of the pot—but thankfully not over the little edge of the metal tray. I carefully took the tray out of the oven with the oil and placed it on the counter. It was then that I realized that the oil didn’t boil out—but the beeswax! As the tray cooled the beeswax hardened. Thankfully the majority of the beeswax was still in the oil and I was able to give it a stir and fill the little glass jars with the Virus Salve. Then the fun began! How do you get beeswax off of a metal tray and off of the outside of the glass coffee pot and off of the kitchen counter that it had dripped on. When the beeswax is mixed with the oil it wipes off the counter and out of the pots real easy—but by itself it is hard until heated. So I lined the tray with paper towels and put the tray back into the oven and melted the beeswax. The paper towels absorbed the beeswax as it melted. This helped with the majority of the beeswax, but there was still a waxy coat on the tray. I decided to pour olive oil on the tray and put it back in the oven with more paper towels so that when the beeswax melted it would mix with the oil and be easy to wipe off. It worked great! I decided to rub the beeswax spots on the counter with oil and that worked great to get it off the countertops. The final thing to clean was the glass coffee pot. I lined the metal tray with paper towels again and placed the coffee pot upside down on the tray—after I had rubbed it with oil. In the end I conquered the beeswax and I had a clean metal tray, a clean coffee pot, and a clean kitchen counter, and a garbage can full of paper towels. By the time the afternoon was over I had five trays on the dining room table holding five different kinds of salves—and each bottle needing to be labeled, but Mom and I were both too exhausted to label the jars. While the saying goes “Don’t put off to tomorrow what you can do today”, we decided to use a different saying “It will be there tomorrow” for we honestly had no more energy to do it that day. So we relaxed for the rest of the evening, and as soon as we finished breakfast Tuesday morning Mom and I had a sticker party. There were 101 little salve jars that needed to be labeled. Mom pulled the stickers off the paper, and I stuck them on the jars.
When the milking was done Tuesday morning Mom once again headed to the garden and I bottled kefir and worked on orders. Steve picked up the grass that Mom had mowed and shoveled the dirt out of the East Tunnel so that I could mark the planting rows and walkways. The manure spreader was full so Papa hooked it up to the tractor and spread it out on the pasture. When lunch was done it was time for an egg party but I didn’t get to attend because we needed some groceries and since Papa had to go to town for some ice and dog food I decided to ride with him and get some groceries. I didn’t want to go to town until after the egg party, but Mom wanted us home in time to cook dinner and do the evening chores. So we left at 2:00 instead of 3:00, and got home at 4:20 in time for me to start dinner so that it was done by 6:00. That night was not spent relaxing! Tuesday nights are spent finalizing the orders and making a receipt for all the customers (some 45 to 57 people). When there is plenty of eggs and milk to go around this is an enjoyable task—but when products are lacking and the demand is high it is a very daunting job. Thankfully the egg production is increasing daily so I do not have to limit them anymore—but the milk production is a different story. I put every order on the spreadsheet—and then I print it. I call that my “Wish List.” Then I check the cooler to see how many kefirs, yogurts, half gallons and gallons of milk we have for sale. Then I compare the “want” total with the “have” total and estimate how many more I can get the next morning after we milk—and then the fun (or should I say nightmare) begins. If the demand is higher than the supply then I have to cut orders, or delete orders and neither is easy. I hate telling people “Sorry, sold out” and I hate not being able to give people everything they ask for. Every week is different. Some weeks the cows give more milk, some weeks they give less. Some weeks we have orders for 28 yogurts and then the next week we only have orders for 6—but I was prepared for 28. Some weeks the kefir sells out, and some weeks nobody wants any. Running a business really requires you to have the ability to foretell the future—but that is impossible, so we do our best to guess at how many yogurts to make or not to make, or how many kefirs to let one person have, or how many gallons of milk can one person have so that someone else can have some too—and guess what, sometimes we make the wrong choice.
Wednesday brought in some much needed rain. It started raining around 9:00 Wednesday night and rained off and on until Thursday afternoon. We almost got a whole 3 inches of rain—didn’t need to water the garden for the rest of the week (except for the West Tunnel for it was under cover). Mom and I spent the day in the kitchen. We cleaned off counters and we made messes as we tested recipes for Thanksgiving. We bought some fall décor silicon molds (our first ever silicone molds). We can make little cakes, or muffins—but I wanted to try jello first. I made up a batch of Roselle Jello. We didn’t grow any roselle hibiscus this year because last year we put up 50 quart jars of roselle tea to drink and make jello with. We have probably only consumed half—so we didn’t need any more. I left out the walnuts and apples and instead of apple juice I used orange juice. With the jello made and the molds in the fridge we then moved on to hand pies. Mom had bought some pumpkin hand pie molds and she wanted to try them out. To start things off on a bad note—the dough wouldn’t mix just right. Do rainy days require more water to be added to pie dough? We had some pears so we made a pear filling. We ended up making nine hand pies, and it took us until the last two to actually figure out how to use the mold. They looked very pretty.
When lunch was over at 3:00 Papa headed outside to put up a new strand of hot wire and I headed for the garden to stake out the rows and walkways in the east side of the East Tunnel. Well, I intended to head to the garden, but it took me an hour to get there. I knew that my step stakes were all in use marking other rows and beds, so I needed some more. I looked through the piles of “farm junk” in the barn and found some long ½ inch PVC pipes. I grabbed a piece, hopped into the Gravely and drove down pasture to ask Papa if I could use them. He said yes and I headed back to the barn to measure and cut them to length. What I thought were PVC cutters were not doing the job—so I headed back down pasture to ask Papa how in the world to cut PVC pipes. The tool I had happened to be a very dull metal pipe cutter and all it was doing was crushing the PVC pipe. Papa told me where to find the PVC pipe cutter and I headed back to the house. Mom met me outside wondering what I was up to and with her help I finally got the PVC pipes cut to length. Then I grabbed my measuring stick and headed to the East Tunnel to mark the rows. It took all of fifteen minutes and then I was back at the house in time to cook dinner. It was my brother Charles’ 40th Birthday and since the two sisters were out of town and the other brother was sick, we had just Charles over for dinner. We had an enjoyable evening together. The dinner turned out very delicious---Spaghetti with Chicken Alfredo sauce. The jello tasted real good—but it did not come out of the molds very well so it didn’t look pretty. The hand pies were too doughy and there wasn’t enough filling—but my brother eats just about everything and always did eat our bread flops.
We processed chickens on Friday and that leaves us with only three more batches of chickens to process this year plus the Thanksgiving Turkeys. The last batch of broiler chicks arrived Friday morning so I can easily say that eight weeks from now we will be done for the year. How the year is flying by.
Saturday was so busy bottling kefir before we milked, packaging lots more eggs in order to fill the Saturday orders, and then after milking we had to pack the orders for the Gainesville delivery. We were busy packing orders until 1:00 and washing equipment and packaging eggs until 2:00. Then we grabbed a little snack and relaxed a little before the afternoon customers arrived. I did get some time to play the piano and then it was time for dinner.
Last night was the New Moon and the gardening planting schedule has flipped from root crops to above ground. Therefore the next week and a half we will be devoting to getting the collards, kale, lettuce, zinnias, bok choy and broccoli transplanted in the garden. I plan on starting more lettuce and more cabbage in the green house. Do you have any garden plans this week?
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare