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Hi Everyone,
On your mark, get set, go . . . Once last week began it just kept going, faster and faster as the week went by. Around 8:30 Monday morning I headed outside to begin milking the cows. It is something I do every day of the week, every day of the month, and every day of the year. Thankfully it is something I greatly enjoy doing—except maybe when it is freezing cold outside, but then I still like milking I just don’t like doing it in the cold. The nice thing about milking is that it cannot be rushed—which means if your life is very busy, it comes to a halt the minute you step foot in the milking parlor. Once I am in the parlor nothing else matters—it is just Mom and I and the cows. Each day is the same, and each day is different. Every day we milk cows, and we kind of have a set order—but some days a cow will barge in insisting that it is her turn. Some days we stay clean and dry, and other days we end up all wet because we had to rinse our dresses off because the cows thought our clothes would look better with brown spots all over them. I never know how many cows I am milking. This week it may be 7, and then next week it may be 9 because 2 cows calved, and then the next week it may be 7 again because we had to dry off a few cows. We calve year round in hopes of keeping a steady supply of milk year round—at least that is the dream, but reality is that winter arrives and there just isn’t any green grass to make lots of milk, and then spring arrives and the grass turns green and the milk supply increases and then the rains do not fall and the temps stay too cool and the grass doesn’t grow and the milk production drops—which is exactly what happened last week. Two weeks ago we were getting 18 to 20 gallons of milk a day, then on Sunday we dropped to 15 and the rest of the week was 16 to 17 gallons of milk. I was thankful to see that the milk production was up to 18 this morning (it is usually the lowest on a Sunday because we milk 3 hours earlier so we can get to church). I guess the three inches of rain we got last week was a big help—or was it that we have two freshened cows? Wednesday packing for the Jacksonville delivery was very stressful. I will admit that I am a sucker for taking last minute orders—if I have the milk I would rather sell it than leave it in the fridge, and if I have the veggies I would rather sell them instead of taking the chances of them getting to old or buggy to sell. Most of the time late orders really are not a problem—but if you are already short on milk and you get more orders in I cannot say “Sorry sold out” until the cows are milked and the milk is bottled Wednesday morning and I know how much milk we will have available to sell. That was last Wednesday! I needed a total of 28 gallons of milk to fill the remaining orders, but we were only getting 16 gallons. YIKES! I waited until the last minute to see how much milk we got before I cut orders and told some of the last minute orders that we were sold out. That meant that I was late in getting the orders packed and the receipts finished. The only positive was that since the milk was all bottled we had all hands on deck to help pack. Usually the milk needs bottled the same time the ice chests need packed in the van and iced down. Sometimes Papa is available, and sometimes he is not. Last fall we had an intern, Clayton, and I didn’t realize how much we needed his extra hands on a Wednesday until all of sudden poor Steve had to juggle bottling and packing at the same time. Many hands do make light work and I guess we need another pair of hands attached to some strong muscles to help out.
The garden is growing so well right now, and we are blessed to be able to share with our customers the abundance of the harvest. We have been pulling up carrots, picking cabbages—and trying to cram the heads into a bag that is really too small, snapping off collard leaves and cutting heads of lettuce. Our milk house looked like a produce stand a few times last week as we harvested so many veggies for the Jacksonville and Gainesville deliveries. Not only have we been harvesting, but I have also been planting in hope of future harvests. Last Monday I planted a row of okra and transplanted out another tray of lettuce. The tray was half Sweet Valentine Romaine (a red leaf lettuce) and half Nevada (a summer crisp lettuce). The Nevada makes a very tender, crisp, lettuce, and I have never grown the Sweet Valentine so I will be interested in seeing how well it does. I had fun planting the lettuces alternately—red green, red green. Over in the ginger bed in the raised bed garden I planted more cucumbers on the trellises. The last ones I planted something ate as soon as they sprouted—and I have a sneaky suspicion it was the ducks. I need to remember to fence them off so the ducks cannot get to them. In the greenhouse I planted another tray of lettuce, and I potted up some green pepper and some cayenne pepper plants. I still have to pot up the Roselle’s and plant some lemon squash (a yellow squash that is the size of a lemon). I also have to figure out where to grow pumpkin—Mom has decided to close in the side of the barn where I have grown pumpkins for the last five or so years. The place needs part sun, rich soil, little weeds, no animals, and lots of space—and at the moment I am still clueless. While I am trying to figure out where to plant the pumpkins, I am also wondering how in the world we are going to harvest the green beans that will be ready to start picking tomorrow. The green bean plants are over two feet high and are a good three feet wide. I planted them in the row against the edge of the garden tunnel. When I planted the beans I figured that we could easily reach over a few feet to harvest both rows in the bed—since we can only walk down the side of one row (the other row boarders a fence). Well, I didn’t imagine how big the plants would get and that they would totally consume the walkway—and I didn’t imagine how big the zucchini plants would get that I planted in the row that is on the other side of the walkway from the green beans. Let’s just say that there is no walkway and that the green beans and the zucchini plants are embraced in a BIG hug. We shall figure it out somehow—for we have to harvest the green beans and the first meal of the season will be eaten tomorrow night for Papa’s Birthday dinner (May 1st).
Every day the egg mobiles are moved to a new pasture and the chickens are let out to roam as far and wide as they please—just as long as they take the time to scratch through the cow’s manure and eat the fly larvae. Once in a while a chicken or a rooster will decide that they do not care to “hang out” with the rest of the flock. We have had a rooster and a few hens decide that they would rather roost on the bench on our front porch than spend the night in the chicken house. My Aunt spent the night with us once when these renegade chickens were camping out on our porch and she said that the rooster crowed every hour—so much for getting up when the cock crows. When someone stopped in at the farm one day to see if we had any chickens for sale, we quickly told them “yes”, but to come back at dusk and we caught them up as they began to roost on the porch for the last time. Another time we had a chicken that was anything but pretty, who decided to camp out in our garage. She slept on the steering wheel of the golf-cart. Wanting the chicken to have at least a pretty name I asked our Puerto Rican worker how to say pretty in Spanish—and so her name became “Bonita”. She even laid her eggs in the back box of the golf-cart where there was usually a pile of hay. Then there was the chicken that we called our “Hardware” chicken. She laid an egg every day on the tool shelves in our garage. We kept finding piles of nails and screws and other paraphernalia on the shelf. We would clean it up, and then the next day they would be strewn all over again. Then one day an egg appeared! The chicken was making her a nest of whatever she could find on the shelf—screws, nails, string, whatever. I will admit that when you need an extra egg it is nice to only have to go into the garage to find one. It has been awhile since we have had any house chickens, but a few months ago a rooster got beat up pretty bad in one of the chicken houses—and he decided to become a loner by day. We call him George. George sleeps in the chicken house at night, but as soon as the trap door is open in the morning George heads off to roam the pastures. He visits the ducks and he visits the broiler chickens—eating the feed that they leave behind on the ground once their hoop houses are moved to clean ground. In the afternoon you will find George hanging out under the big oak tree at the garden, then around 4:00 he starts heading back down pasture to wherever the egg mobiles are and he waits until dusk and slips in to bed for the night. If by chance he cannot find his way through a fence he may just hunker down in the middle of a briar patch. The other afternoon Steve and I were heading to the garden to harvest and we saw George running lickity split across the field toward the garden. Then a little bit later I saw a Bald Eagle flying over us. Evidently George saw the eagle long before we did and he ran for shelter. When we got up to the garden gate I expected to see George on the other side of the truck bed full of logs—but he wasn’t there. Beside the truck bed was a little orange wagon and one end was sitting on the ground. That is where we found George—under the tightest part of the wagon. George is determined to live!
We are processing chickens every other week on Friday, but last week we had a homeschool graduation to attend at our church on Friday night so we processed on Thursday. The day started dark and early as Papa and Mom headed out to collect the birds. I printed labels and cooked breakfast. After we ate my parents had to take the van in to get a new radiator. When they got back we all worked to get our morning chores done so that we would be ready to help set up the Poultry kitchen so that we would be ready to begin at noon. It turned out to be a rainy day and what better place to be than inside.
Friday I had to make a “To Do List” in order to get everything done that needed to be done. There was yogurt to make, emails to answer, seeds to plant and plants to pot up. My sister came over to visit for a few hours, and Papa had to work on the golf-cart. We were to make finger food for the graduation so I grabbed the ingredients that I needed and made a batch of fudgy brownies. I think that I have truly found my favorite desert. I would have been perfectly happy if no one wanted to eat any. We had to have dinner and chores done and ready to leave by 5:30—and to my delight we accomplished it for the piano player cannot be late. The graduation was really nice, but it was a very late night.
Well, it is 10:00 at night, and my sisters are here visiting and I am out of words—so I hope that you have a wonderful week.
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare