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Hi Everyone,
One of the joys of gardening is eating fresh produce. For at least three meals last week I grabbed a basket and some clippers and headed to the garden to harvest fresh garden goodies for dinner. Twice I knew what I wanted, and once I just walked through the garden harvesting whatever looked good. Wednesday night I grabbed my basket and walked through the West Tunnel and harvested some spinach—of which is so sweet and delicate in flavor when harvested fresh from your own garden. I also picked some celery, broccoli floret, carrots and parsley. Out in the Food Pyramid of “Martha’s Vineyard” I harvested some sweet onions. Then I couldn’t stop with just vegetables, so I gathered some flowers too. Over in the East Tunnel the Forget-me-nots were brightly blue and looking so cheery so I snipped a few. I strolled through the raised bed cottage garden and found some “Teasing Georgia” roses in perfect bloom for picking and then I grabbed a handful of apple mint which just makes a floral bouquet blend so nicely together. When I got inside I quickly put all the flowers and greenery in a vase and we are still enjoying their smell and beauty. I took a picture because I just had to share it with you. The “Teasing Georgia” rose is one of my favorites. A friend (and customer) knew I had a dream of having a yellow rose and one day she sent a “Yellow” rose home with Papa when he was making deliveries. When I went to plant it in the garden I found that the rose had two tags on it. One was a “yellow rose” which would have been very hard to take care of. Then buried down at the bottom of the rose bush—among all the thorns was another tag that said “David Austin Roses—Teasing Georgia”. She is a very easy care rose—and quite beautiful and full of aroma. I had to wait until it bloomed to see just which rose I had—and may I say that I was most delighted to find it was “Teasing Georgia.” What a blessing!
The basket of veggies that I picked we ended up cooking all together and mixing them with some white sweet potatoes. The result was very sweet, creamy and tasty. Come Friday night I headed back to the garden—but I will tell you about that later. This afternoon I wanted to make some Chicken noodle soup for lunch. I had left over chicken in the fridge and noodles in the cupboard—but out in the garden is where I went to find the rest of the ingredients. The celery plants are lush and green and so I grabbed a few stalks. The parsley is dark green and bigger than I have ever seen it—so I grabbed a stem of it. In the back of the West tunnel the Bolero carrots are getting close to harvesting, so I pulled up three of them. Then I headed over to the Food Pyramid and harvested a sweet onion and some green onions to sprinkle on top of the soup. I then came back inside with my basket of goodies and washed them up and shredded the carrots, chopped the onion and the celery and added them to the pot with some butter—maybe a lot of butter and some salt and pepper! Once they were sautéed I added the chopped up chicken and the parsley that I had cut up with my herb scissors (three blades in one pair of scissors—perfect for chopping herbs). I then poured four cups of Homemade Chicken Broth and two cups of water on top of everything and brought it to a boil before I added a cup of Tinkyada Rice Noodles. Then I cooked it for twenty minutes. In the meantime I chopped up the green onions and placed them in a little dish, and then I made some garlic bread to eat with our soup. The only thing we had to buy for the soup was the salt, pepper and noodles—the rest came right off our farm!
Monday found us swimming in milk so we spent the morning creaming the milk. Then Mom and Steve headed to the garden to mow and I spent some time in the West Tunnel weeding the broccoli. It has been planted since last fall, and while portions of it have been weeded, this was the first time that the whole row was completely weeded. Some of the broccoli plants were done, so I pulled them up in order to give more space to the celery that I honestly planted too close to the broccoli. When you plant little plants it doesn’t look bad—but Mom told me they were too close and I have to admit I did agree. The celery that had space is much bigger than the celery that was competing with the broccoli. We had a late lunch and then Steve helped me bring the bird bath and some daylilies up to the courtyard from the Cottage garden. Mom worked on transplanting the flowers that we had bought. She filled an old metal water tank with a white iris, some mauve Angelonia’s, some pink Gerbera daisies, some pink verbena, and a few other flowers. The results are quite breath taking. Mom also planted some more of the roses that we bought last year. I was glad to get them out of the green house. I planted the daylilies that I had dug up out of the garden—they needed to be rescued from a section where the weeds are winning and it doesn’t look like we will be battling them anytime soon. So I figured the best thing was to move them from the weeds to the courtyard—and now I just hope that they survive.
Tuesday found me milking cows (with Mom), bottling kefir, making yogurt and packaging eggs. Steve moved the chicks to the pasture (they spend the first two to three weeks in the brooder house). Mom worked in the courtyard. When the eggs were done Papa and I headed to town. I had a list of things that I needed—which required muscles to get. There were bags of Cyprus mulch for the courtyard, and a bag of peat moss for the potting soil mix I make to start my seeds in the greenhouse. I needed some compost and garden soil also. Mom had suggested getting it in bags, but I couldn’t find the compost and I hated the price of the soil so I didn’t get either of those. On our way home we stopped to get ten bags of ice for the deliveries the next day.
Thursday we got the milking done and then Mom headed to the courtyard to weed and mulch. I headed to town to pick up a yard of mushroom compost/composted trees (top soil) mix. When I was coming home I passed Steve heading to his home. I was not expecting him to have a short day—and here I was with a yard of dirt in the back end of Papa’s truck. I needed to mix up some potting soil: 3 five gallon buckets of peat moss, 2 buckets of vermiculite or perlite, 3 buckets of the compost mix, and some blood meal and bone meal. The buckets of peat moss and the vermiculite/perlites are light as feathers—but a five gallon bucket of dirt is quite heavy. The only muscles on the farm belonged to Papa, and he was busy pressure washing the milking parlor and attempting to pressure wash the Poultry kitchen. Mom helped me bring the BIG orange wheelbarrow up from the garden and I began to mix the soil myself. Since the buckets of dirt were too heavy, I pushed the wheelbarrow up close to the truck and placed the bucket inside the wheelbarrow and filled it up. Then all I had to do was dump it over in the wheelbarrow—sometimes you have to use your brain when you don’t have any brawn. I will admit though that the hardest part was mixing everything together. I didn’t realize what a strain it would be on my arms and hands. I did get it all accomplished and one bucket at a time I got the big metal can in my greenhouse filled up with the mix. Then I was able to plant some Roselle, cayenne peppers, green peppers, and some more lettuce.
Friday we had to cream again and bottle kefir and make yogurt. Then Papa spent his afternoon fertilizing the pastures with the skim milk and EM-1. Mom spent her afternoon in the courtyard—and boy is it really looking nice. I spent my afternoon in the kitchen. I did a lot of multitasking—and I wasn’t 100% successful at it (but close). The first thing I did in the kitchen was make yogurt. Then I started some kombucha and an apple crisp. I got the water going for the kombucha, and then turned on the oven for the apple crisp. I opened the oven door to make sure that the oven rack was in the right place and to my horror I found the stock pot sitting in there. We were almost out of chicken broth and so I had made a large pot of it the night before, and since I know my recipe by heart I didn’t read the line in my online recipe that say: “place it in the oven, and set the oven at 250 F and bake it for 12 hours—overnight works best for me. Whatever you do “DON”T FORGET TO TURN ON YOUR OVEN!!!!!” How sad it was to have to throw out all those precious ingredients. I took the pot out of the oven and set it to the side and continued on with my other cooking plans. With the kombucha started I began to peel the apples. A family that recently bought two Jersey heifers from us is new to the area and was having a housewarming party on Saturday. When we scanned her “wish list” Mom and I both thought that the pie plate was the perfect gift—and I thought that to make it even more perfect I should fill it with an apple crisp. The kombucha water came to a boil, and I took care of it. I had to fill another “Press and Seal” tea bag with some loose green and black tea and then I was back to peeling apples. When the timer went off for the tea I was almost done peeling apples and I wanted to get them coated with the lemon juice—so I finished up before I went to take the tea bags out of the water. When I did make it over to the water I found that I had forgotten to put the tea bags into the hot water. UGH! So I added the tea bags and went back to the apple crisp. The pie plate was a large pie plate, so it took a recipe and a half to fill it—but I made two recipes and put half a recipe in a small casserole dish for us. The crisp was finished and put in the oven to bake and I was able to finish up the kombucha. Once the crisp was out of the oven I grabbed a basket and some clippers and headed to the garden to harvest some Swiss chard and some lettuce. I then came back to the kitchen and fixed a casserole with chicken, onions and Swiss chard smothered in a cheesy milk sauce. Then we made a salad to go with it and of course we had some apple crisp for dessert. Before I went to bed I had to fill the stock pot with more chicken broth ingredients—and this time Mom made sure the oven was turned on.
Saturday morning we woke up and two of us got up and going just fine—but Mom had a terrible case of vertigo and a few other problems and she was bed ridden until almost one o’clock. For the first time I had to milk all the cows—but Papa came to help. As soon as breakfast was over Papa headed outside to feed his chickens and move the sheep. Then he came to the milking parlor to give me whatever help I needed. I would milk two on my side, and have some dry cows eating on Mom’s side. Then I would milk two on Mom’s side and feed some dry cows on my side. Then when all the dry cows were fed Papa would bring in two on Mom’s side and get them tied in and then I would clean them up and hook up the milk claws while Papa brought in two cows on my side and got them tied in. Then Papa would watch the two cows on Mom’s side while I cleaned up the two cows on my side and got the milk claws hooked up to them. Then I would go back and finish up Mom’s two cows while Papa watched my two cows. The system worked very smoothly and we were able to bring 25 cows into the milking parlor in two hours with 17 of them being milked. I then had to pack the orders and finish the receipts for the Gainesville delivery that Papa would be taking at 1:00. Around 1:30 Mom was finally ready to eat something—well, I should say drink something for a big mug of chicken broth was all she wanted. I was planning on going to the Housewarming party by myself, but Mom was feeling somewhat better and decided to go along after all. We had a lovely time getting to know the family better. How blessed they were to have just moved into the area and already have a community of friends—not too hard if you homeschool, homestead, and go to church for those three circles have a built in community that is very welcoming to new comers.
That was my week in a nutshell! Next week we will start planting the spring garden—it is squash time!
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare