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Hi Everyone,
I never know what a week may behold, but sometimes I have an idea of what I would like to get accomplished. Last week I had a goal to get the west side of the West Garden Tunnel weeded and prepped for summer planting. There are four planting rows that are 30 inches wide and 18 feet long. One had garlic and weeds growing in it, two were pretty empty, and the last one had been overtaken by crab grass. Crab grass isn’t the easiest to pull up—but neither is it the hardest. As I looked down the 18 foot long row I had to remind myself that elephants are eaten one bite at a time. The first thing I did was to broadfork the row in order to loosen the dirt and make pulling the grass a little easier. Then I grabbed my claw tool and went to work. Progress was slow—and the temps were high. When we headed to the garden there was a nice cool breeze, but once we made it to the garden the breeze quit—or so we thought. I was working in the tunnel and Steve was removing the Spanish needle on the outside edge. Mom was helping to pull weeds for a little while until Papa arrived and then they headed over to “Martha’s Vineyard” to put in the rest of the posts for the grape vineyard. As Mom was walking over to the vineyard she commented on the nice breeze. It was then that Steve and I realized that the wind did not die down once we got to the garden—the tunnel was blocking all the wind from getting to us. I inched my way down the row of crab grass, and every once in a while I would stand up to take a breather. It was so easy to see the negative side—how much was still left to pull up, but I had to convince myself to look on the positive side—all this was already done, and what was left was steadily shrinking in size. I hate it when crab grass takes over the garden—but at least once you pull it up it is gone, unlike nutgrass and betony that seem to come over and over again if you leave one little piece. My problem with crab grass though is that I do not like to pull one inch tall weeds, and then a few weeks go by and those tiny weeds are now monster plants—at least that is the way summer weeds grow. I did manage to get the row of crab grass weeded out and then after lunch I worked on weeding the nut grass and the betony from the other rows. I was three quarters of the way done by the end of the day, and was able to finish the rest of it on Tuesday. Mom and Papa did manage to get all the posts in the ground for the grapevines.
Before I could go back to the garden on Tuesday I had to first milk the cows. Then there was kefir to bottle, yogurt to make, and eggs to package. I ended up missing the egg party though because a family dropped in to see the farm and get some supplies and it was almost 2:00 when I finished with them and I still had to make the yogurt. By the time I finished the yogurt they were almost done packaging eggs—but at least I did get to visit with the family who came to help us with the eggs. Then we headed back to the garden. By the time I left the garden on Tuesday the area was ready for me to prepare it to plant some zinnias and some sweet potatoes. It was Thursday before I got to head back to the garden and I grabbed some stakes, some measuring cables, and a measuring stick and I began to mark out the rows and walkways. We used to have four planting rows and five walkways—but the walkways were only about 14 inches wide. We wanted wider walkways so I redesigned the area to have four rows and three walkways. I put two of the rows on the edge of the tunnel which enabled me to make the three remaining walkways two feet wide. Once I had the rows and walkways all marked I had Steve bring me some chicken manure compost to put in the two middle rows where I planned on growing some zinnias. I didn’t need to add any compost to the two outer rows because sweet potatoes do not need very rich soil—they thrive in less fertile soil. While I was working in the tunnel, Steve and Mom were working in “Martha’s Vineyard”. The pumpkins are planted in the middle of the area and they were working at weeding the area around the pumpkins—they are slowly creeping their way across the garden bed. Once I had some compost on the rows I then broadforked them and ran the tilther up and down them. It was close to 4:30 when I was done and the tunnel area was ready for some summer beauty. On our way back to the house we stopped by the mailbox and to my delight the sweet potato slips had arrived. We are trying a new variety this year. It is a variety called Covington. The Covington Sweet Potato has an excellent yield of uniformly shaped potatoes with beautiful rose-colored skin and bright orange flesh. The resistance flesh is sweet and slightly darker than a Beauregard. The Covington is known for its longer storage time, uniform shape, and disease resistance. We changed varieties this year because we heard about bush varieties of sweet potatoes and since one of the problems we have is the vines going everywhere and making perfect homes for rats, we decided to go with a bush variety this year. We were told about two varieties of sweet potatoes: the Vardaman and the Covington and we thought that both were bush varieties. I liked the description of the Covington best so I ordered those—I think that the Vardaman’s were sold out also. So we ordered 50 Covington sweet potato slips and spent Saturday afternoon planting them and as I am sitting here writing this journal I wanted to insert some info on the Covington sweet potatoes and I just happened to see that they grow 6 to 12 feet—that means they are the vining kind not the bush kind. Well . . . I guess I goofed and who knows how growing sweet potatoes will go this year. Mom says that maybe we can keep the vines cut back out of the walkways—we shall see, for they sometimes grow faster than we have hours in our days.
A few weeks ago two Great Pyrenees dogs were dropped off near our driveway—dirt roads in the middle of the country are perfect places to drop off unwanted pets (or so people seem to think, but farmers do not agree). The male dog had a broken back and died within a few days. We tried our best to befriend the female by sweet talking her and feeding her twice a day, but after four days she left and never came back. The neighbors across the street found her at their house and before they fed her called to ask if she was ours. We told them that she wasn’t, but that we would love to adopt her if she could be tamed. Last Tuesday night we got a message on our phone: “Hey, this is your neighbor and I am over here petting your new dog, you should come over and meet her.” We didn’t get the message until the following morning, but the neighbor did come over later that night and told Papa about the dog. So Wednesday afternoon Mom and I grabbed a pocket full of doggie biscuits and headed next door to get acquainted with our “new dog”. She was sleeping in the bushes beside their front door and she got right up and came out to meet us. She let us pet her forever! She was more interested in love than doggie biscuits. While we were petting her we realized that she is definitely an older dog for most of her front teeth are missing—no wonder she preferred the raw meat and only liked our dog food if I soaked it in beef broth. Thursday night after dinner we all headed next door with a leash to bring home our new dog. Papa decided to call her Annie—as in Orphan Annie. Annie was hanging out with them and their male Labrador. For her to bond with a male dog was not surprising since she was so loyal to her male buddy until he died. She was glad to see us—but was not too sure about a leash. It took a few tries but they finally succeeded and Jimmy and Papa walked the dog down the road to our house. Mom and I followed in the golf-cart. They walked into the pasture all the way to the field where the chickens and Yasha were. Yasha came up to greet her—but was really more interested in getting some loving from Papa and Jimmy. Yasha and Annie sniffed each other out and seemed to be quite happy to be friends. We took the leash off of Annie and the two dogs went off to get acquainted with each other. Papa took Jimmy home and Mom and I came inside. About 30 minutes later Mom saw Annie go through the hotwire fence. Those dogs have so much thick hair on them that the hotwire only affects them if they touch it with their head or nose. Annie ran around that field for a little bit and then she ran back through the hotwire to be with Yasha. It wasn’t five minutes later before she ran back through the hotwire and headed to the next fence and ran through that hotwire and headed to the next fence and ran through that hotwire and then she came upon our perimeter fence and a gate. You cannot walk through a gate, nor can you walk through a field wire fence—so she came to a halt. By this time she had caught Papa’s attention and he was heading through the fields to get to her. As soon as Papa entered the last field Annie panicked and ran circles in front of the gate. Then quicker than you can blink she darted through the small opening between the gate and the gate post—and she beelined it back down the road to our neighbors house who she had adopted. A few minutes later our neighbor called to let us know that Annie had come back to them. It was too late to try again, so we waited until Friday. We talked about it though and knowing the nature of a Great Pyrenees we decided not to try to make her like us. We have no way to contain her—and if those dogs want out they will find a way (over, thru, or under). The neighbors have mixed ideas about her—one wants to keep her because she is so sweet, but the other wants to find another home for her because she digs huge holes behind the bushes beside the front door covering the front porch in dirt.
Milk production has its ebbs and flows throughout the year. When it is low there is never enough to go around to all our customers, but you do not have to worry about overflowing a milk tank. When we are getting an abundance of milk we have to keep a close eye on the milk tanks to make sure that we do not overflow them. When the milk tank get full the air hose then sucks out the milk sending it to the vacuum pump motor. Thankfully there is a large PVC pipe before it reaches the motor so that minor mistakes don’t ruin the engine. A few months back Mom overflowed her milk tank when she milked too many cows in one of her milking stalls. There was more than a gallon that overflowed that day and the engine had to be cleaned out with diesel fluid. Last Thursday I made the same mistake—but thankfully not that bad. Papa had been waiting for Mom to finish milking so that she could help him move the horned steer “Hamburger” up to the chestnut field where the Murray Greys beef cows were. When we put Jabez (our South Poll bull) in with the Murray Grey cows we had removed Hamburger because we didn’t want him fighting with our new bull since he had horns. I guess we didn’t need to worry about it, because when they put Hamburger in with the beef cows Jabez came up and chased him all over the field—and Hamburger tucked tail and ran. The other steer was younger and had no horns so we put him in with the Jersey heifers so that he could continue to be fed some alfalfa. Our Anatolian/Great Pyrenees cross guard dog Aliyah had been “guarding” the bulls for the last few months because she has an appetite for chickens. We decided to make her a Cattle Dog and she went with Hamburger up to the Murray Greys. One of the mama cows wasn’t too sure of her and chased her around for a while. That was a few days ago though and now you can look out there and see Aliyah sitting with her herd of cows. Sometimes she might be up on a hill looking down on all her cows. She does great with cows—but at the moment is still too puppy to be trusted with chickens or sheep.
Anyway, back to my mess. While Mom and Papa moved the steers I was determined to clean up my mess. First it required washing out the air hose with a water hose to wash out all the milk. Then I had to blow the water out of the air hose with the air compressor. Finally I had to open up the PVC pipe and wash out the milk from inside of it. How hard could that be! I had seen it done many times, and I had helped Mom many times to clean it out—so surely I could do this all by myself. I grabbed the water hose and hooked it up to the end of the air hose and turned on the water. To my dismay the joint where one air hose connected to another air hose blew apart. I figured that I was on the wrong side of the air hose so I drug the water hose over to the vacuum pump and hooked it up to that end of the air hose. I turned on the water and waited—but since the end of the air hose was about 20 feet away in the back room of my milking parlor I couldn’t see if it was coming out. When I took the water hose off of the air hose milky water came shooting back all over me. I did this about three times until I gave up and went inside the milk house and asked Steve to please come out and tell me when the water starts to come out of the air hose in my room. I turned on the water and waited. Steve waited. Nothing happened—besides me getting soaked again. Then Steve noticed a very important thing—the on/off valve was in the closed position. UGH! He opened it up, I put the air hose back inside my water hose and turned on the water and the water finally came out the other end and I ran it until the water was clear and no longer milky. Then I headed to the house to get the air compressor. I had never used it before in my life. I did know how to turn it on and off though. I put it on a dolly and lugged it over to the milking parlor. I realized that the attachment on the end of the air hose was an attachment that was used to put air in tires. I knew that I didn’t need that so I tried to take it off by unscrewing it—but it wouldn’t unscrew. I tried to unscrew different sections of the connectors but without success. I feared breaking it so I again went inside the milk house to ask Steve for help. He said, “O that it easy!” Easy if you know how it goes together. They were joined by a quick connect. So with the part off I headed on to the air hose in my milking parlor. I turned on the air compressor but no air would come out of the hose. I couldn’t figure it out—so I headed back to the milk house (where Steve was trying to get the milk bottled) and asked Steve for more help. He said that I needed another attachment—and we went off to the garage to find it. He put the attachment on for me and then he went back to the milk and I pushed water out of the air hose with a bunch of air. By this time Mom and Papa were back and they helped me finish up and get everything put back together. I am sure that to some people it was common sense how to disconnect the attachment and it was common sense that I would need another attachment to get air out of the compressor—May I say that common sense only applies to things that you know something about! If you do not know that the tank comes off the back of a toilet you cannot change the flush valves—ask me how I know. Mom told me that it was common sense—and I swear that you have to know something about something before you can have any common sense about it. Thankfully I didn’t get any milk in the engine—because I have NO KNOWLEDGE about those things.
I hope that you are enjoying your summer—you can catch a glimpse of summer on the farm on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/shepherdshillfarmfl Remember that little bull that was born to Sally? Well we finally named him and you can see a picture of him and find out his name on our Facebook page too!
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare