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Hi Everyone,
“Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise: Which having no guide, overseer, or ruler, Provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest.” Proverbs 6:6-8
There has definitely been no time for being a sluggard of late. The garden has been ripe unto harvest with celery, onions, carrots, potatoes, and herbs. So often we harvest the potatoes and then we only manage to get about three-quarters of them canned and then the rest is forgotten until months later when I find them sprouted and ready to be planted. The positive is that we are able to plant those forgotten sprouted potatoes and harvest many more three months later. This spring I wanted to can the majority of them and hand pick 100 of them to purposely save for planting in August in order to harvest in November, in order to save some to plant again in February in order to harvest them in May. This will be my year to experiment. I want to not have to buy seed potatoes, but to produce my own every year. The potatoes that are harvested in May will not last until February in order to plant them. If I plant them in October, then they are ready to harvest in January—but they are not ready to be planted in February. So I am hoping that planting in August will allow me to harvest in November which will give the potatoes long enough time to sprout and be ready to plant in February. So last week my goal was to get the rest of the potatoes canned—our preferred method for preserving the harvest (they do not shrivel up and sprout if they are cooked and tucked away in a jar). I was hoping on Monday to get help from Mom, Steve, and Papa—but the weather was too pretty outside and I couldn’t get them to come inside, which is usually the reason why we never finish our canning. You want to can on rainy days, and work outside on pretty days—but not all rainy days fall on good days for canning. So I determined this year to just stay inside until all the canning was done—whether I had help or not. I almost thought that I would have help on Monday because it rained a little on and off—but in the end it was “off” and Steve and Mom chose to mow and weed eat outside, while Papa worked on clearing weeds, grass and ant hills off of one of our hot wire fences that we were not able to make hot. It was 3:00 after we had a late lunch (late lunch because I had this grand idea to put a big concrete pad in front of one of the doors to the poultry kitchen, and what I thought would be easy-peasy took over an hour as they had to dig up dirt, level it, and break some smaller stepping stones to fill in gaps on the stepping stone sidewalk). Anyway at 3:00 I sat at the lunch table wondering what I would do. I could go to the garden and get a bed ready to transplant some lettuce—but I really didn’t have that much energy. I could vacuum the house before we have to start buying rabbit food for all the bunnies running loose on our wood floors—but I really didn’t have that much energy. My small hands and a bummed thumb really prevent me from peeling potatoes by myself—or do they? Hmm! If I used to apple peeler I could quickly peel the potatoes. I am the one that usually cubes them and packs them in the jars anyway. So I quickly got the dishes done and the canner set up and I grabbed out the apple peeler and got to work. Yes, in my mind standing in one place at the kitchen counter peeling potatoes required a lot less energy than vacuuming, weeding and broadforking. It was almost 5:00 by the time Mom came inside and I had a batch of 16 pint jars of potatoes in the canner building up pressure.
Tuesday morning when Papa brought in the milk cows he told me that we had one more cow than we had the day before. That is much better info than telling me that we have two less cows than the day before due to lightning. Not only did we have one more cow, but we also had one more sheep. The rams seemed to be pretty busy back in January and we have had two of the cutest little lambs born in the last few weeks. The new cow belonged to Sally—and he is the cutest bull ever. He has his mother’s perfect Jersey eyes, and he has white markings strategically spaced all over his red body. Not sure yet if we will be selling him or raising him to be a bull. Sally’s mama was Pollywog—because one day Papa came inside and said “Pollyanna just had a Pollywog” and the name stuck. So when Pollywog gave birth we named her calf Sallymander—and we call her Sally. So I am not sure if we should call Sally’s calf Newt or Tad—as in tadpole. Sally was the second cow to give birth after we lost two of our milk cows to lightning. Last Sunday we were getting about 14 gallons of milk a day—not enough to supply the demand. By Wednesday we were able to add America to the milk tanks, and on Saturday we added Sally and we got almost 20 gallons of milk. Praise the Lord!
Once the milking was done on Tuesday I made yogurt and bottled the kefir. Then it was time for lunch, because at 1:30 a family was showing up to help us can potatoes. Monday afternoon I got an email from a friend asking for help. She had bought a pressure canner but was terrified of it and therefore it was still in the box (totally understand because Mom bought a meat grinder about two years ago and is terrified of it so it is still in the box). Anyway, the ladies potatoes and carrots were soon to be ready for harvesting and she desperately wanted to can them—but she didn’t know how. When I told Mom about the email her immediate response was, “Tell her to come over tomorrow for we will be canning potatoes.” So I emailed her back and long story short she showed up Tuesday afternoon with her four children and helped us can up the rest of the potatoes (16 more pint jars and 7 more quart jars). This arrangement helped us accomplish a large task, and it gave her the hands on experience and the confidence that she needed to go home and get her canner out of the box and use it. Guess what—it was a rainy afternoon too!
How often do you have “One of those days?” Well, last Wednesday was one of those days for me. The day seemed to start out just fine, but shortly after I got all the alfalfa pellets served into the troughs for the milk cows and went to turn on the milking machine life turned sour. I opened the electrical box and reached my hand for the switch to turn on the machine when my eyes set their sight on what I call an octopus spider. It was inside the box just under the switch. Needless to say I dropped the lid and let out a scream—yes, I am all girl at times—especially when it comes to a spider whose body is the size of a quarter and very thick and juicy, and whose legs are extra big and extra-long. I just cannot handle them unless there is no one to come to my rescue or the other person doesn’t want to deal with it either. Then I can pull myself together and be brave and rid my area from the intruding terror. Wednesday morning though Steve wasn’t too far away and when he looked up to see what the problem was I said, “I do not do octopus spiders!!” To my delight he came over to my rescue. When he opened the box the spider had moved himself to the middle of the box and spread himself out to cover the whole electrical box. Steve asked what to do, and I told him to close the lid until we could figure that out. We decided to get a bucket and Steve would shoo the spider out of the electrical outlet box and into the bucket. Well . . . that was the plan. He shooed, and the spider moved south toward the bucket . . . but then to my dismay it totally disappeared to we couldn’t tell where. The only comfort I had with the spider getting away was that it was on Mom’s side of the milking parlor. I know that sounds terrible, but it was the only comfort I had. I finally got around to milking and after a while Mom joined me. We never did see that spider again, but we had other problems to deal with. The cows forgot that you are not supposed to go potty in the same room that you eat—well, that is at least the way we humans think. Anyway, they kept going poo and pee and were giving us no warning and Mom and I were getting quite speckled—and after you get too speckled you really start to wish that you were done milking because your patience is wearing thin. When we finally did finish milking it was time to pack the Jacksonville orders—but we were so short of milk that we needed all the milk from that mornings milking to go with us. Steve bottled the milk, while Mom packed the veggies and the meat and I packed what dairy was already on the shelves. When orders come in Sunday through Tuesday I put them down on a spreadsheet. Then come Tuesday night I print what I call “The Wish List.” If we do not have enough milk or yogurt to fill the orders then I have to slash the orders until I reach an amount that I think that we can fill. Last Wednesday I needed 16.5 gallons of milk in order to fill the “altered orders” and we were only getting about 14 gallons a day. I was able to keep America’s milk (she was past the colostrum stage) and Papa went out early to separate Merry from the cows because at five months of age she has decided that her mama doesn’t have enough milk for her so she goes around nursing on the other cows. To my delight we got 18 gallons of milk that morning—more than we needed which allowed me to go back to the “Wish List” and see who I could add back milk to their order. By this time it was going on 11:45 and Papa is supposed to leave no later than 12:00. It took a while to figure out whose orders to adjust, and then to update all the receipts with the meat weights and the milk additions. Then I had a mathematical error that I couldn’t figure out and it was getting later and later. At 12:15 I finally printed the receipts and sent Papa on his way—30 minutes late. Then Mom and I sat down to find the mistake. The QuickBooks total didn’t compare correctly with the spreadsheet total—but all the items were the same. In the end I found out that when I had added a new customer to the spreadsheet I forgot to make the totaling spaces total so that order was not being added up. So thankfully all the receipts were fine and the problem was easily fixed. Then my piano student showed up and life finally calmed down.
Thursday I finally made it back to the garden after a two to three week absence as I made salves and canned. I worked in the greenhouse after milking. I potted up some green peppers and some cayenne peppers, and then I started a new tray of lettuce. After lunch I headed to the garden and weeded a row, manure composted it, broadforked it, tilthed it and transplanted close to 100 lettuce starts. By the time I came in for dinner I was exhausted. I got dinner cooked, and the dishes done—but I turned a blind eye to the laundry that needed to be folded and a few other things that needed to be done and sat down and relaxed and read a book until bedtime instead.
Friday was Mom’s birthday and we spent it in a very farmy way—milking cows and processing chickens. The cows wished her Happy Birthday in most disagreeable ways—kicking and pooping. The processing went a whole lot better. My friend Lydia came up with her friend Judy and helped us process the chickens. We ordered 70, but only 22 lived long enough to make it to freezer camp. We do not know why but we lost the majority of them in the first week. So since it was Mom’s birthday and we had to process chickens on her birthday it was nice to only have 22 of them. While we were processing my sister Samantha came over to spend time with Mom. When we were done with the chickens we headed to the house and cooked and early dinner: Leg of Lamb, canned potatoes, canned green beans and a garden fresh salad. Just as we finished eating Emily (Lydia’s sister) came over with her children to wish Mom a Happy Birthday. Then a lady and her son showed up to buy America’s bull calf, and before they all left my sister Nichole showed up to spend some time with Mom on her birthday. Mom said that all the people helped to make her day special.
Saturday found me ready to crash—it had been a long busy week. I made it through milking, bottling kefir, printing receipts and eating lunch—but then I just had to lie down. Mom said I could rest for 30 minutes and then we were going to have to tackle the kitchen. All the jars of canned food were all over the kitchen counters in need of being washed so that we could label them and put them in the cupboards and pantry. My 30 minutes wasn’t as restful as I had hoped. Papa had problems at the delivery and called twice (Mom was outside on the porch reading in the swing and never heard the phone). Then someone called who is interested in buying our young bull Milkyway. By then my 30 minutes was up and a customer showed up. Mom started washing the jars and an hour later I came back inside after the customer left and I had watered the greenhouse. I washed out the canners and made some labels for the jars and then it was dinner time. After dinner and the dishes were done I tackled some long neglected ironing before I headed off to bed.
. . . And speaking of bed—I must head there now if I am going to function tomorrow.
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare