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Hi Everyone,
Today is Father’s Day and we are not very good at doing special things for holidays—but it doesn’t mean that I am not grateful for my Papa. For 47 years my Papa has been there for me thru thick and thin. Over the years he has supported my dreams and I can remember when I was a little girl and I asked for a little radio for my birthday—my Papa went out and bought me a Boom box (back in the 80’s when they were just coming out). That Boom box saw its last day many years ago, but it represented what kind of Papa I had. Years later when I began to sew quilts and decided that I needed a quilting machine to make it easier to sew the three layers of the quilts together—my Papa did the research to help me find the best one for me. If I was going to spend lots of money on something, he wanted to make sure that I spent it wisely. The latest of Papa’s “upgrades” came a few years ago when we built our Poultry Kitchen—our chicken and turkey butchering facility. For years I had dreamed of a building or a portable trailer so that we could get the 20,000 poultry exemption license to process our chickens legally. I could never dream bigger than something that was 16 x 20 feet. Yes, it would be tight quarters, but that was okay as long as I had a building and a license. Then one day Papa visited another farm and came home and told Mom and I to go check out their facility—he wanted to build one just like there’s (32 x 32 feet—with three rooms)! How much wiser my Papa was than me. That building has been such a blessing and it allows us to have a crew to help process the chickens and we have even hosted seminars in the building. In some things I just never seem to dream big enough, but Papa makes up for that if he thinks the dream is worth fulfilling. Not only does my Papa support my dreams—but he has supported me. The American way is for the children to turn 18 and leave home—but my parents didn’t believe that way. So often young people leave home and build up debts just to make it on their own. Then they end up making many unwise choices or get caught up in some dangerous situations—because they have no protector. I graduated from High School 30 years ago, and while I have always desired to be married, for some reason or other it has never been God’s will to supply a husband for me—but how grateful I am that my Papa has been my provider and protector all these years. Thank you Papa for everything!
If you have ever wondered how Floridians survive the summer heat—it can be explained in one word—RAIN! The summer rains bring with them a cloud cover and cool breezes that make working outside really nice—when it isn’t raining. The beginning of last week was bright and sunny and we got lots of work done outside. On Monday I finally got around to harvesting the first picking of okra. Usually I grow Clemson Spineless okra—but if you forget it the okra gets big and woody. This year I planted Burmese okra and the description said, “9-12 in. slender pods are curved and virtually spineless. Pods mature from light green to creamy yellow-green. At 10 in. long they are tender, sweet, and spineless enough to be eaten raw or added to salads.” So far the description has proven to be true—and they taste really good too. I also had to harvest some collards for I had a large order for them since a customer wanted to can some, but before I headed to the garden I had to make a batch of kombucha. Every day when I finish milking I head inside and pour myself a tall glass of kombucha. Well . . . there was no kombucha in the fridge in the house, so I headed out to get a jar from the walk-in cooler. I found no kombucha on the shelf there either. So I headed back to the house realizing that it was time to make the kombucha that I had been ignoring. When I did make it to the garden to work I started working on clearing out the weeds in one of the rows in the East Tunnel where I am going to need to transplant out some lettuce later this week. The rains and the heat have arrived and the summer weeds are growing by leap and bounds. While I was weeding Steve and Mom were busy mowing the grass in the garden. We didn’t get to spend the whole afternoon in the garden because we had to stop early so that we could go pick up our Azure order. Steve finished mowing and then he headed home.
Tuesday rolled around and I had kefir to bottle, yogurt to make and eggs to package—plus I had to make another batch of Relief Salve and a batch of Radiant Balm. Years ago one of our customers had cancer and was getting radiation treatments she used our Soothing Salve and some other herbal ointments and the doctors were amazed at how well her skin dealt with the radiation. Years later a friend of ours had cancer on his neck and had to have radiation. I gathered all the ingredients in the Soothing Salve and the ingredients that were in the other ointments and made a salve. I have also found it to be helpful for regular burns and sunburns as well. I named the salve—Radiant Balm (a balm for burns from radiation). While I was busy working in the kitchen Mom was busy mowing—well, trying to mow. Our lawn mower is a commercial Husqvarna zero-turn riding lawn mower. It is probably 20 years old, and for the last five or six years it has spent many a summer in the shop—or Papa has had to learn a lot of mechanical skills to fix different things that had broken. A few years ago a brand new engine was installed, and then this year the hydraulic fluid that controls the steering started to leak. We tried to get it fixed, but they no longer make parts for it—so Mom just had Papa keep filling it up with hydraulic fluid. The seat was falling apart and you could no longer sit on it to make it start—so Papa had to rig a switch off to the side so that the lawn mower would start (which was dangerous because now that the switch wasn’t connected to the seat if you fell off the lawn mower it would keep running instead of stopping for safety reasons). Then Tuesday when Mom was mowing the lawn mower quit—it just died! The decision was made that it was finally time to purchase a new lawn mower. Papa headed to the computer to do his research for the best lawn mower for our needs. A few hours later Papa and Mom headed into the local lawn mower store to pick out a new Bobcat commercial zero-turn lawn mower. As soon as they got it home and unloaded Mom was back on it and putting it to the test. We have all agreed that the seat is top of the line comfortable. Penny said that she wishes she could just have the seat in her living room.
Some days I think that it would be possible to milk the cows in a white dress and actually keep the dress white—but other days I could use a plastic black dress because the manure flies a little more than I would like. Last Wednesday was one of those days where white would have been most inappropriate—my country blue was not the best of colors as it was. I do not know how many cows decided to repaint the milking parlor, or thought that we might need a load of organic matter on the concrete but we got splattered quite a few times—but one cow let it loose in such a way that I was splattered from head to toe. I had to finish milking that cow, and then clean up the parlor. Then I did what many people who work on a dairy farm cannot do—I put two cows in the stalls that just eat and I ran for the house to take a quick shower and change my clothes. I was back before the cows had finished eating. The life of milking—you just have to love it!
It threatened to rain all day Thursday. Mom had mowed so much on Monday and Tuesday that there were piles of grass that needed to be raked up before the rain hit, and she had a few more paddocks to mow before the rain hit—so she did a lot of praying that the Lord would hold off the rain until everyone was done outside. I on the other hand didn’t mind the idea of rain because I had other plans for a rainy day—sewing. I didn’t feel like getting caught in the rain that looked like it would drop at any moment so I decided to head up to the sewing room instead of heading to the garden to get some weeding done before the rains arrived. It has been quite a few years since I have sewed myself some new clothes and one by one my dresses are rotting and finding their way into the trash can. I had been collecting some new material though and the first thing I did was to sort out what pieces I would turn into dresses, what I would use to make jumpers, and what I would use for blouses. Then I eyeballed a piece of black material that had sunflowers all over it that we had bought years ago at an estate sale in Tennessee. I needed three yards to make a dress or a jumper—but there was only a little more than two and a half yards. I was determined to make a dress out of that piece of fabric so I brainstormed a little. I could make sleeves and a collar out of a solid black—but the black I had didn’t compliment it well. Then I thought that I could use a yellow—and thankfully I had a stash of yellow. I cut out the dress and began sewing the pieces together when I ran out of black thread. If I hadn’t decided to sew a black decorative stitching on the yellow collar and sew on a black piece of lace on the sleeves I would have gladly just used a navy blue thread—but I needed black. I had some cones of black thread that I use on my serger, but it didn’t take long to realize that a sewing machine is not designed to use cones of thread. I then remembered seeing little stands that people used beside their sewing machines in order to use the cones—but I didn’t have one of those. I decided to make do with the spike on a standing wrought iron lamp stand. It kind of worked—but the thread kept getting wrapped around the spike and breaking. I came downstairs to finish up the yogurt and to grab a tall skinny candlestick to use as a thread stand. I told Mom about running out of black thread and she had the perfect solution—she was fixing to go to town and I could go with her and go by Hobby Lobby and get some more thread. Perfect! I quickly got the yogurt finished and then it was going on 4:00 and we needed to get to the bank and the lawn mower place before they both closed at 5:00. I knew that there was a possibility that I might need other colors of thread, zippers and a few more pieces of material to finish out my new wardrobe—but I didn’t have time to go through everything to make a list of what I needed. So I did the craziest thing and grabbed up my pile of aprons needing new dresses, material needing matching fabrics, my whole material stash, my zipper box, my thread storage container and a piece of paper. My arms were loaded to the max and my parents thought that I was crazy—I was and I wasn’t! I figured that I could use the fifteen minutes to town to sort through everything and figure out what I needed—and it worked just fine. When we got to the lawn mower place to pick up our receipt the man told Mom that he guesses she didn’t get to use the new lawn mower any that day since it had rained all day. She laughed and told him that we hadn’t had any rain at our house all day. He was shocked because it had rained in town all day! The Lord had answered Mom’s prayers to hold off the rain. When we got home from town it was raining at the house—and in the two hours that we were gone we received an inch and a half of rain. Praise the Lord!
Friday was a very interesting day—and did not go as planned. A mother at our church had just given birth to her twelfth child and we had planned to fix dinner for her. Her family also was interested in getting their own milk cow and they had been talking with us since December about buying one of our bred Jersey heifers. Melba (a cow whose mother’s name was Jam—and what goes best with Jam besides “Jam and bread”—so we called her Melba Toast) was picked out to be their future milk cow. The beginning of May we put Melba in with the bull and a few weeks later she was bred. We waited four more weeks and it just so happened that she was ready for delivery when we were scheduled to take them a meal. So when the milking was done, the kefir was bottled and more eggs were packaged (because we sold out of all of them on Wednesday) Mom and I headed to the kitchen to cook. I made a big batch of Shepherd’s Pie (enough to make a large casserole for them with some left over to make a small casserole for us) and Mom made a large salad. We finished in the kitchen at 2:00 and then it started to rain and we fixed us something for lunch. It was 3:00 before we were finally able to head outside to load up Melba into the cattle trailer. Since it is an hour drive to their house I wished that I had some sewing to take with me. So while Mom and Papa headed down to the panel pens to load up Melba I ran upstairs to the sewing room to do a little sewing so that I could gather the skirt and get it pinned on to the top while we travelled. It didn’t take but five or ten minutes for me to be ready but they were not back yet. I looked out back toward the panel pens and found that Melba had escaped. The trailer couldn’t back all the way up to the panel pen, so Papa had put up some small panels to lead the cow into the trailer—but Melba decided to jump them instead. For the next hour and a half Melba ran from one end of the pastures to the other jumping wires and fences to go from one paddock to the next. She ran round and round trees with Mom chasing her in the golf-cart. Finally she walked back into the panel pen and we locked the gate and Papa did a little rigging so that Mom could back up the trailer all the way till it was touching the panel pens. Then Papa climbed over the panels in order to shoo Melba into the holding area and Melba went crazy. She tried to bust through the panels as she slammed her weight into them head first—she literally was bouncing off the walls. Then she took a flying leap to jump over the panels but only managed to get all four legs caught in the panel. She wiggled and jumped and the panels shook back and forth leaning more and more over. I was afraid that she would break her neck or a leg, or that the panel wall would come crashing down to the ground—but she finally managed to get herself out of the panel and Papa called it quits. Melba was not the cow for our friends with twelve children ranging from 15 to newborn. It was going on 4:30 and we had to get their dinner to them so Mom and I left, and Papa stayed home to do the evening chores and put Melba back with the herd. The next day Melba was back to her normal self—a little skittish but ready to eat. She has a long ways to go in order to be broke to be a milk cow—and I hope that it is possible because I really like her blood line.
Saturday it rained and Mom and I worked on some Patriotic summer décor crafts, and then I finished sewing my new dress. Papa made the deliveries to Gainesville. Then starting around 5:30 it began to rain—and it rained, and it rained, and it rained—harder, and harder, and harder! By the time 9:30 rolled around we had received almost 4 inches of rain. When Papa headed outside in the rain to lock up all the animals he found out that the rain had washed gullies in our middle lane where all our transporting of animals and infrastructure is moved from field to field every day. It washed the dirt away so deep that the water pipes that were buried two feet deep are exposed in some places. In the past when it has been washed out Papa was able to use the tractor bucket and bring the dirt back and semi-fix the problem—this time he says that the problem is bigger than he can fix. Tomorrow he is going to have to call a company to have them come and fix the problem—and we are supposed to get more rain every day this week. Welcome to the summer rainy season!
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare