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Hi Everyone,

“To Do List”---do you have one, or two, or three? Not everyone likes to know what needs to be done—but I can guarantee you that everyone likes to cross a chore off when it is done. Everyday there are cows to milk, chickens to feed, move and let out, dishes to wash, and meals to fix—so I never put them on my “To Do List.” My sister Nichole used to say that her day never started until after the cows were milked. Then the lists came out and we worked to accomplish as much as we could before the day was done. Some days we get everything on the list done, and some days nothing on the list gets done—and those days you write on the list what you actually did get accomplished so that you have something to mark off of your list. One rule of list making is: “If you don’t get it done today—there is always tomorrow.” I used to make lists on single sheets of paper, but they have a tendency to get buried and lost, or put in a place that I never return to. Some people use their computers—but the less I have to do with technology the better. So earlier this year I came up with the idea of using a little fat notebook and I write the day and date at the top of the page and then list out what needs to be done. I can do it daily, the night before or a week or two in advance. This works great for me and if something isn’t marked off the list is safe in my book, and when the page is all marked off I tear it out and throw it away.

Monday and Tuesday had two big goals—prep the garden for onions and carrots, and prep the barn for more hay. Both require many hours of hard labor, and both had a dead line. The garden had to be prepped by Tuesday so that the carrots and onions could be planted before the day was over. The barn had to be prepped by Thursday night when more hay was expected to be delivered. So when we were done milking Monday morning Mom and I headed to the garden. The first goal was to get the south “Food Pyramid” in “Martha’s Vineyard” weeded. We grew onions there last fall, and pumpkins grew there all summer. Thankfully keeping it weeded last fall really paid off—for there really were not a lot of weeds (at least not where we had mulched for the pumpkins). The un-mulched areas were much weedier. One thing we learned while weeding was that the bamboo poles that were being used as braces for the grapevines were not going to work—the wasps were building condominiums in them, and they do not like trespassers (so I found out). Once the area was weeded then I could mark off the rows and walkways—but we didn’t accomplish all the weeding Monday because after lunch we had to head to the barn to start emptying it out. We are putting more hay in the barn than we have in the past, so we need as much space as possible—which means everything that is not hay has to be moved out and into the new lean-to on the east side of the barn. I told Mom that it would take a month to empty that barn for it sure took more than a few days to put everything in it that we are storing there. She won’t believe me though. Working in the barn was really not my forte. I can organize a spice cupboard, a sewing room, a house, a garden shed, a milk house and milking parlor, a poultry kitchen and my clothes closet and dresser drawers. When it comes to organizing wood, tools, electric fence supplies, and other farm paraphernalia I am out of my comfort zone—and out of my “know how” zone. What I consider junk—they consider treasure! So I would look for things to take care of that I knew what to do with—like a stash of electrical fence step stakes. I knew that if they were broken you throw them away and if they were in good condition you put them in a pile to keep. I found a box that had a mixture of screws and dead grass—a probable salvage from an accidental drop. I knew how to sort the screws out of the grass and put them in a new container. I knew how to sort through a wagon full of “good” junk and “bad” junk—and when someone tried to help me I had to tell them to go find their own job to tackle for this was something I “could do!” I couldn’t sort through wood, but I could fold tarps. I couldn’t move heavy objects, but I could pile light ones into a wagon and tote them over to the lean-to. By the end of the day we had made a lot of progress in the barn—but we still had a long ways to go.

Tuesday Steve and Papa cleaned out the wood piles on the west side of the barn—scraping what was rotten and moving the good pieces to the lean-to. Mom and I spent our day in the garden. We had to finish weeding before I could mark off the rows and walkways. Then we raked the woodchips off the bed and added some good compost dirt, chicken compost and wood ash. Then we broadforked it all together, smoothed it out, marked our rows and planted multiplying onion bulbs. With the onions planted we could now focus on the carrots—but first we had to reattach the metal fence panels to the side walls of the East Garden Tunnel. The hurricane had snapped the zip ties and moved the wall over a few feet. Papa had put the wall back in its proper place—but hadn’t had a chance to reattach the metal panels. So Mom and I worked our way down the wall and got the panels all attached one zip tie at a time. Thankfully the carrot bed was already weeded; we just needed to add some compost and some wood ash. Then I broadforked it and tilthed it and it was going on 5:00 by the time I finally got the seeds planted. It was a long day—but we had accomplished our goal of having the carrots and onions planted by Tuesday night.

The hay was due to arrive Thursday evening around 5:30 so Papa spent the day making the last finishing touches to the barn. The area where the hay needed to go was successfully cleaned up and a lot of the outer edges were cleaned up too—but the hay did not show up at 5:30. Due to some traffic accidents and other travelling problems our hay man didn’t arrive until 8:00 that night. It was dark—and the hay had to be rolled (pushed) out of a big semi-truck trailer. That took until about 9:00 or later and then Papa had to stack all the big round rolls of hay into the barn—thankfully with the tractor. I remember when we first bought our farm we didn’t own a tractor. Someone else would bale hay for us and leave us half to sell or use. When someone would buy a bale of hay we children would heave and ho that big round roll (which would usually be flat on one side) and we would do our best to roll it onto a trailer. Sometimes we had to use a come along to winch the hay roll up onto the trailer—but we got it done. That is about what the family that we are buying hay from is having to do to load it. You see—you can use a tractor to load hay onto a flatbed trailer—but you cannot stack hay with a tractor inside a semi-truck box. The nice thing is that the hay can be delivered and you do not have to worry about it getting rained on—for it is covered from all sides.

I spent a lot of time Thursday working on the newest YouTube video. It was time for the “October Garden Tour”. Things were not growing very well in the greenhouse so a few weeks ago I planted some seed beds in the East Garden Tunnel. They have sprouted nicely and in a few weeks will be ready to transplant throughout the other garden beds. The green beans are starting to flower and the sweet potatoes are still growing. I checked in the dirt and couldn’t find any sweet potatoes yet. While there might not be anything for us to eat in the garden right now—there is a large food forest that is in full bloom for every insect imaginable (butterflies, bees, wasps, etc.). The goldenrod, wild morning glories, and Spanish needle are in full bloom.

Mom spent a lot of the day weeding in the garden, and then toward the end of the day she hopped on the lawn mower and headed out to pasture to mow some fields that the cows had been moved out of.  If the animals would eat the grass evenly then we wouldn’t have to mow behind them—but since they leave patches we have to mow it to make it even because if we do not then when they come back to the field they will only eat the short patches. I was inside cooking by the time Mom finished and Papa was doing chores. Mowing went very smoothly for Mom—but trouble hit when she went to climb off the lawn mower so that she could close the wires behind her. When Mom went to step off the lawnmower her foot slipped out from under her and she went flying. She hit her head on something, and landed on her shoulder and stomach on top of two strands of wire—that were very alive! When Mom came to all she could think about was that she had to get off of the hotwire! She managed to roll over and get off of the wire, but had to lie there a little longer before she was able to get up. She did manage to get herself back on the lawn mower and back up to the barn where she had Papa come and get her to bring her up to the house. Needless to say, her back and leg are not doing very well—but they have not stopped her from milking every morning or mowing more pastures.

Mom and I spent the majority of Friday weeding in the garden. We need to get the rest of the East Tunnel prepped for planting—but there is a huge pile of dirt in the middle of it from digging out the walkways on the other side of the tunnel. Parts of “Martha’s Vineyard” are very low—so they need lots of dirt to level them out, but before we can add dirt (like the pile in the East Tunnel) we have to weed. So Mom and I spent the day tackling the West Food Pyramid. We managed to get a little more than half of the triangle weeded. We had lots of company while we weeded—of the creepy crawly kind! Mom has said that with all the bugs in the garden it is a good thing that the garden is so far away from the house. When fat roaches find their way into your hair and earwigs take a family vacation in your clothes and hair it is a little much. When we came into get showers Mom said she found 25 earwigs in her clothes—they must really like woodchips!

Saturday’s “To Do List” was very long! There was kefir to bottle, orders to pack, my piano to practice, duck eggs to package, laundry to fold, clothes to iron, salves to make and trees to water—O and don’t forget dinner to cook! I managed to get the kefir bottled before I milked, but I had to wash up all the dishes once the milking was done. Then I packed the orders and finished the receipts. It was 1:00 when I was able to strain the herbs from the oils for the Relief salve and the Virus Salve. The Soothing salve oil, Black Drawing Salve oil, and the Radiant Balm oil were already strained and ready for me to add the extra ingredients and beeswax. That took me hours! The Soothing salve is a simple recipe, but the Black Drawing salve and the Radiant Balm are a little more detailed and labor intensive. Once I got all the ingredients in the oils then I put them in the oven in order to melt the beeswax, and then I ironed. It was 4:30 when I headed back to the kitchen. The salves were ready to finish and bottle—but it was also time to cook dinner. I looked at the “To Do List” and noticed that Mom had added: Clean Kitchen. I laughed, for I was fixing to do the total opposite—make it a complete disaster! I bottled the Soothing Salve first, and then I mixed up the rest of the ingredients to the Radiant Balm so that it could cool it the fridge for an hour before I creamed it. When that was done I made a meatloaf with apples in it because it is fall and I was on an apple kick. Then I made an apple cobbler. I was thinking about making an Apple Galette for dessert, but I have been craving a spice cake—so I decided to make some fried apples and put them inside a cobbler mix and add some spices to the mix. I used my Grandma’s Cobbler Recipe but made a few adjustments. For the fruit I used some fried apples, and to the mix I added a teaspoon of cinnamon and a teaspoon of ground ginger, and a few dashes of allspice. The result was perfectly delicious! By this time the Black Salve was starting to set and I had to get it thinned back down so that I could pour it into the bottles. That required reheating it and constantly stirring it. I got it bottled just as it was time to start the pumpkin soup, and then the timer went off and the Radiant Balm was ready to cream and bottle. It was going on 7:00 and the Salves were done and so was dinner. Mom had spent her afternoon mowing, and Papa had made deliveries. Now they were both hanging tarps on the lean-to in order to protect the stuff from the barn from the elements. We were supposed to have it walled in, but the money had to go to fixing the drive lane in the middle of the farm. So for now the tarps will help us figure out if the design will really work after all.  The trees never got watered, the eggs never got packages, and the laundry never got folded—but I did manage to make the kitchen a complete mess! Thankfully that mess was cleaned up before we went to bed that night.

Bedtime—yes I believe that it has arrived and I must be rested up for there are more weeds to pull and more of the barn to organize.

Serving you with Gladness,

Tiare