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Hi Everyone,
Well, it happened . . . my favorite month of the year came to a close-and what a beautiful month it was. Thankfully March is starting right where February left off—everything is green and blooming with delicious temps. This morning I was notified that the time changes next Sunday. It totally took me by surprise, for I was not even thinking about it so soon. Hopefully this week will not be as busy as last week since I will be losing an hour of precious sleep!
I do not believe that we could have packed one more thing into last week. I had one goal for the week—get the cabbage, parsley, snapdragons, strawflowers, mullein, chamomile and lettuce transplanted into the garden tunnels and out of the greenhouse. I also wanted to plant a few rows of green beans as a trial run to see if I can start the growing season two months earlier if I plant them in the garden tunnel. Usually you plant green beans the end of March or the beginning of April—but since I managed to successfully grow green beans in the garden tunnel from October thru December I decided to give them and early spring try. Therefore we spent Monday preparing the rows. Some of the rows needed to be weeded; some needed spent plants removed (like cabbage, greens and broccoli). Then Steve topped the rows with an inch of composted chicken manure and I broadforked them to mix it in. Mom and I took turns using the tilther to give the rows a nice smooth fluffy surface to plant in. We were not able to return to the garden again until Thursday and I finished tilthing the rows and had to clear out the old broccoli plants out of one row where I already had celery and parsley growing in between them. Once the broccoli plants were gone I top dressed the soil with some chicken compost and mixed it in with a potato fork—since there was already some celery and parsley in the row I couldn’t use the broadfork or the tilther. Then I planted a bunch of parsley plants in the empty sections. Mom was busy transplanting cabbage and we both planted a row of green beans. That was all in the West Tunnel. Over in the East Tunnel we planted lettuce, snapdragons, strawflowers, chamomile and mullein. We must have transplanted a couple hundred little plants—I could have hired a little dog to dig the holes for me.
Tuesday’s on the farm are ALWAYS filled to the brim! We milk the cows, work in the garden, make yogurt, bottle kefir, package eggs, harvest garden veggies for Wednesday’s delivery, Papa goes to town to buy ice and run a few errands, cook dinner, do the evening chores, answer all the emails, put together the orders and make the receipts—that is a typical Tuesday. Last Tuesday we never did make it to the garden because we had to cream the milk and Mom ended up being very sick with some strange nasty virus—or a severe allergic reaction to something (never could figure it out). Creaming took up most of the garden time, and then being with Mom took up the rest of the time—but everything else that we normally do on a Tuesday did get accomplished. After the egg packaging party I headed to the garden to harvest some collards and broccoli. The beginning of the season the broccoli produces large leaves, then after the plant produces the main central broccoli head the leaves get smaller and the plant begins to send out piles of little broccoli flowerets. I enjoy packaging those—for I feel like I am placing little surprises in the customers broccoli leaves.
Wednesday rolled around and a new month came with it. It was March 1st and in my book spring begins March 1st—actually I think that it begins February 1st here in North Florida. We change the décor in our dining room with each season—and it was now time to exchange the winter décor for the spring décor. As soon as we had Papa all packed and on the road to deliver our goods to our customers in Jacksonville, I ran upstairs to grab the empty boxes so that we could pack up the winter décor. We have one box of summer décor, quite a few fall décor boxes, and even more winter décor boxes—but no spring boxes. Our dining room theme is rabbits anyway—so we just pull them out of the corners and put them front and center. Then the table gets a pastel pink tablecloth and some heirloom crocheted linens. Sweet and dainty seems to be the theme of spring. We find ourselves eating on China more as we enjoy the simplicity and elegance of spring. We also take more time to enjoy lunch on the back porch. Everything is new and fresh in spring, and the dining room seems to reflect that atmosphere. Winter décor is always thick and heavy with greenery and lights, but as spring rolls around the days are longer and we no longer need the doors trimmed in little white lights because it is daylight outside when we eat dinner so the garlands of pine and lights are replaced with garlands of soft greenery and dainty white flowers. Yes, the room is sweet and refreshing.
We were to have company for dinner Friday night, and there was so much to do to prepare. Company always gives us an excuse to do a little more house cleaning than normal—like vacuum and dust, but before we could start inside we had lots of outside chores to do. Of course we milk the cows every morning, but this morning was a little different. The builders would be here early to start prepping the milking parlor “waiting room”. They plan on pouring concrete tomorrow, and they had to scrape off the grass, mud and weeds from the area where the cows wait for their turn to be milked. When it is not raining, we have no problem—but Florida does get around 50 inches of rain a year so we do deal with quite a bit of mud after it rains. We are tired of cleaning poopy mud off of the cows feet and udders when they come into be milked so we are expanding our concrete to cover the whole waiting room. In order for the men to prep the area we had to move the cows to the come in on the east side of the milking parlor instead of the west—which meant moving the hot wires all around. Have I ever told you that cows DO NOT like change? Let’s just say that there are smart cows and then there are dumb cows. The smart cows were eagerly standing on the concrete at the new gate eagerly awaiting their turn to come in to be milked. The dumb cows were standing off in the semi-muddy dirt refusing to come in. Some could be coaxed in, but two of the cows Papa had to rope and drag them in—or at least to the new opening. Gail was one of the dumb cows. We called and called to no avail. We sent Steve to get Papa who was out moving the chickens. Papa chased her around a little, but she refused to go through the entrance area. He then got the rope and looped it over her head and around her neck and began to pull her in. Once Gail got on the concrete she got down on her knees and as Papa pulled, she crawled. Once she got past the entrance she jumped up and ran into her milking stall eager to be milked. We laughed and laughed for she acted so very crazy. It is amazing how much they hate change. Trust me—the difference was no different than if you moved the front door to your house over four feet—it is not like you all of a sudden had to go through a dark tunnel under ground to get to your front door. When we finally got the milking done, then I had to bottle the kefir and we helped Steve wash up some of the equipment since Penny was visiting her Mother. Then we came inside to dust and vacuum. Shortly after lunch the electricity went out—but we had nothing to fear because we have a generator. Sure enough a few seconds later the generator clicked on—but no electricity came on with it. Uh-Oh! Still after a few minutes we had no electricity but the generator was running. We thought that we would just call the generator service company—but what was their name? No problem, they were just out a month ago to service the generator and they emailed us a receipt—but the computer was down with the electricity. We had an old telephone book—but what was the name of the company? The Lord was gracious to put the name in my head, and to our delight the company was old enough to be in the telephone book. I gave them a call and thankfully it was as easy as flipping a switch and the lights came on. YEAH!! I was beginning to get a little worried about cooking dinner without electricity. Later in the afternoon I had to make yogurt and then it was time to cook dinner. Thankfully Mom had planned a very easy meal: Shepherd’s Pie and Salad. At the last minute I decided that it would be a good idea to have a Peach Cobbler—you can find my recipe here. Our company arrived a little after 6:00 and stayed until 10:00. It was a young couple who had interned and apprenticed at Joel Salatin’s Polyface Farm in Virginia for a year and a half. We wanted to pick their brains on interns since we are very interested in starting an intern program here on our farm. We learned a lot and had a very enjoyable visit with them.
Getting up Saturday morning was a little rough after so many days of going full speed ahead and getting to bed late two days in a row—but thankfully we normally sleep in a little on Saturdays anyway. We woke up to rain, but it was thankfully done by the time we headed out to do the morning chores. Wally came over to restock our supply of peanut butter and peanuts—to which I was most thankful because I do not like being sold out of a good product. As we were packing the order for the Gainesville delivery we had a delivery of our own show up. We have been out of hay for the last week or so, and we couldn’t get the delivery man to deliver us our hay. He finally showed up around 12:45 Saturday afternoon which meant that Papa would not be able to make the Gainesville delivery—which meant I wouldn’t be staying home and taking a nap! Mom and I made the deliveries so that Papa could unload the hay and stack it in the barn. It was nice to meet some of the customers that we had never met before, and to see old faces of those who have been with us for years. When we were done with the deliveries we made a detour into Hobby Lobby to look at the spring décor—but didn’t find any that struck our fancy.
That wraps up our week, and now it is time to prepare for a new one by getting a good night sleep.
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare