480

Hi Everyone,

               As I was typing some dates a few minutes ago I was totally shocked to find out that next Saturday is July 1st. I couldn’t believe it. Last Wednesday officially marked the first day of summer and the longest day of the year—but it didn’t prepare me for the fact that July is less than a week away. Summer rains have definitely arrived and the grass is growing by leaps and bounds and Mom, Steve and Papa find themselves going round and round mowing the garden, the lawn and the fields behind the animals. I will admit that without a garden buddy it makes it very hard to go work in the garden by myself. I have managed to get some weeding done—but so much more needs to be done. On Monday I headed to the garden to finish weeding a row in the East Garden Tunnel so that I could transplant some lettuce there on Thursday—but when I arrived in the garden the first thing that I noticed was that the pumpkins were taking off into sections that had not been weeded yet. I pushed the lettuce bed weeding to the back burner and decided that it was now or never with the pumpkins. If the area around them didn’t get tackled last week it probably never would with all the rain and the speed that a pumpkin grows. I grabbed a few hoes—because I was not about to pull every weed by hand in a 20 by 20 foot area. I was hoping to be able to hoe them loose and then rake the weeds off. I soon learned that the ground was way too hard and the roots were way too thick for the hoe to really work with ease—but I gave it my best shot and have a blister to prove it. After getting the area closest to the pumpkin plants cleared of all the weeds I decided that it was time to till—and to my delight Steve had arrived with the push mower to mow the narrow spots in the garden. I asked him to mow around the pumpkins, and then he offered to till the area too. I was grateful—for I didn’t exactly feel like asking for help, but at the same time I was not sure that I could handle the tiller. To start with—I would have never been able to get it started. As I watched Steve’s arm muscles flex I knew that little O me was never going to be able to maneuver the tiller by myself. The weeds are so bad that the area could probably use to be tilled twice a week for a few weeks—but I only had a few hours to work and accomplish what I set out to do. Once the tilling was done I spread out huge sheets of cardboard around the pumpkin plant and then Steve topped them with composted chicken manure. It was now 3:45 and I had to get that compost covered with woodchips before night fall—and we didn’t have any woodchips. Mom was busy mowing the garden and so I told her that I was heading to town for a truck load of woodchips. She told me to make sure the company didn’t close at 4:00—and boy did I hope they didn’t. I came inside and found out that they closed at 5:00 and I grabbed some water, the keys and some money and I asked Papa to empty the pallet out of the back end of the truck and I was off. Before I made it out of the driveway Mom was parking the lawn mower in the barn and came over to say she wanted to go with me. So I had company on my trip to town for woodchips. While we were gone, Papa headed down to the local feed mill to get another load of large sheets of cardboard. When we got back Steve was gone home, so Papa came out to help. We covered all the compost with woodchips and put down more cardboard and topped it with more compost, of which we topped with more woodchips. The goal is to cover the whole area with cardboard, compost and woodchips—for the weeds are too thick and the soil is too poor.

               The rains have come and gone all week—and I will admit that they do prevent me from desiring to go work in the garden. If I only have a short amount of time to work in the garden—and it looks like it is fixing to rain, I will opt to go up to my sewing room and get some sewing done instead. I have no complaints, but Tuesday I did not have the option to sew for I needed to work in the kitchen to replenish the supply of Soothing Salve and Lip Balm—not to mention that the kefir needed to be bottled and the yogurt needed to be made. Once I was done in the kitchen though I did make it out to the garden to harvest some collards and the lettuce. I am once again trying to see just how long I can grow lettuce. I have learned that one month I start seeds in the green house, then a month later I transplant them out to the garden tunnel, and then a month later they are ready to harvest. Not all lettuce is created equal. Some lettuce only thrives in the cool weather and some survives in heat. Some bolts real quick, and some handles more heat and stress before it bolts. Some gets bitter fast, and others are still sweet even after they start to bolt. I had four kinds of lettuce growing in the garden tunnel and two weeks ago I did not think that they were ready—but last week most of them were past ready. Learning when to harvest lettuce is a skill I am trying to learn. I also had the tendency to think that I had to harvest the lettuce right before I ate it or sold it—and then I would lose quite a bit. I have since learned that I can harvest the lettuce at its peak and then store it in the walk-in cooler and it stays fresh and crisp. Anyway, back to the four types of lettuce—the Sweet Valentine Romaine and the Anuenue Batavian crisp were all bolted. The Jericho Romaine was 75% non-bolted, but the Nevada which is a Summer Crisp did the best. It is known for being slow to bolt and still being sweet and mild even after it bolts. It is my all-time favorite lettuce. The Sweet Valentine Romaine did excellent when it was cooler. To be able to grow lettuce year round here in Florida is a dream of mine—when it is hot outside you want to eat more salads, so we have got to be able to grow lettuce in July and August.

               Thursday was a very rainy day, and it was the beginning of Penny only working for us Sunday thru Wednesday. For the last so many months Penny has taken off every other Thursday thru Saturday in order to go and take care of her mother. Penny’s mother needs a little bit more care so Penny will now be going over to help out her mother every Thursday thru Saturday. Penny usually comes in around 10:00 in the morning and leaves between 12:00 and 1:00 depending on whether we made kefir or creamed. When Penny is gone we really miss her—for we have to do everything she does—and we get less done outside. So the time has come for us to start looking for another employee to work Thursday thru Saturdays. We know that it is kind of hard to find someone to work for you three days a week for just 2 to 3 hours a day, but since there is so much to do in the garden we could hire for longer Thursday and Fridays and half a day on Saturdays. We have never advertised for help—they usually knock on our door asking for a job, or once we hired a man who had lots of friends and relatives that he would hire for us every time we needed extra help. Twice we were desperate and found someone in the Classifieds who was looking for a job—but they didn’t work out very well. So we are definitely charting new territory and really don’t know where to start. I really like it best when they come knocking on our door asking for a job—they want to work and are faithful to be here (because guess what—there is work to do on a farm 365 days a year!)

               So back to our rainy Thursday—of which no one wanted to be outside, but on a farm that is where all the animals reside. When all those outside chores were done we took up residence in the milk house. It has been many months since we had enough milk to cream, but last Thursday we had a case of the plenty’s. So we decided to spend our rainy day creaming. Usually the rules were that we did not cream when Penny was not here—but it was raining outside and we really had nothing better to do than wash a bunch of dishes. We even managed to be entertained while we worked, because my brother David stopped in for a visit. I do believe that we finished in the milk house around 2:00. We then ate lunch and since the rain clouds were starting to build again I was planning on going upstairs to sew—but the lettuce needed to be transplanted to the garden that day or they would have to wait until Monday, because we would be processing chickens on Friday, busy with odds and ends on Saturday, and church on Sunday. I never did finish weeding the bed I wanted to plant them in—but I did have one bed already where I was hoping to plant some zinnias. So necessity won and Mom and I headed out to the garden and did some spot weeding, pulled the gridder over the bed and planted the lettuce in a very quick amount of time—and when we got back to the house I still had time to go sew.

               We processed chickens on Friday. It is amazing how far we have come since the first time we processed chickens. Our first batch was processed in a dirt floored horse coral, and the second was done in our grassy backyard using the clothesline to hang the chickens to bleed out. We then advanced to the concrete in front of our garage, but now we are in an air-conditioned building with metal walls and concrete floors. We first plucked the chickens by hand, and then we borrowed a one chicken at a time chicken plucker where you had to hold the chicken while the plucking fingers rolled. Now we have a plucker that is a large tub that can do four chickens at a time—all by itself. The first birds were dunked in a large pot of water one at a time while you held on to the feet. Then we bought a large tub that you could dunk a few chickens in at a time—while you still held the feet. Now we have a large turn table scalder that can do four chickens or two turkeys at a time and you do not have to hold the bird because a metal table rotates and dunks the birds in the hot water and then picks them back up. We used to package the chickens in 2 gallon Ziploc bags—and customers had to supply their own bags and pick up their chickens the day we processed them. Then we changed to larger twist tie bags—but the customer still had to come to the farm and pick up their chickens the day we processed them. Then we got a walk-in freezer—and we began to store and deliver chickens. Finally we purchased a vacuum sealer and what a game changer that was for packaging the birds. We used to raise a few batches of chickens in the spring and a few batches in the fall—but now we process 50 to 70 chickens every other week (and that really is a small amount compared to other farms). We are almost ready to scale up again. Packaging the chickens whole goes real quick—but when you cut up 20 chickens it can take some time to run everything thru the vacuum sealer. Therefore, we are about ready for a second vacuum sealer to cut down on packaging time for we come to a standstill with people standing around with nothing to do waiting for the parts to be vacuum sealed so that they can be labeled and placed in the freezer. It has almost been 30 years since we processed the first batch of chickens—and all these improvements didn’t happen overnight. I am grateful though for where the Lord has led us, and how much He has provided for us.

Serving you with Gladness,

Tiare