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Hi Everyone,

               This journal is extremely late in getting started because . . . Mom wanted me to drive her down to our 1915 house so that she could look at it. We sat in the golf-cart and dreamed, and I crawled around on the ground looking under the house checking out the hand hewed beams that support the house all the way around. We were able to figure out what parts of the house are from 1915, and what parts were added on when they remodeled and moved the bathroom and the kitchen into the house—they used to be separate buildings. On our way home we stopped to talk with our neighbor. We got home around 6:30 and then Papa and I headed out to pasture to separate the calves for the first time. We have needed to separate the calves at night time for about a month—but our center lane got washed out and we have not been able to use it, so we had no way to separate the calves. The crew showed up Monday morning to fill in the trench (gully) with dump truck LOADS of dirt, and it took them until Wednesday morning to get the gully filled in and topped with a thick layer of asphalt millings. We now have a nice hard lane that will not wash—which is very important since Papa drives it every day and it is on slope. So with the lane fixed we were finally able to separate the calves. I would have started Thursday night—but we were busy cleaning up down at the 1915 house, and we were there again Friday night. We do not separate on Saturday nights so that Sunday can go as smooth as possible. So tonight was the night—because 14 gallons of milk a day does not fill orders or pay bills. We got to the barn and set up the netting across the lane in order to direct the calves into the panel pens, and then Papa noticed that the chickens were escaping their hotwire netting. So we abandoned the calf project and headed over to shoo the chickens back into their netted area. They are behind a hotwire net because our 100 new laying hens started laying eggs last week, and it was therefore time to move them into the portable egg mobile with the 100 hens that started laying eggs last December—and in order to train them to stay near the house and go to bed in the house we have to enclose them behind hot wire netting. It was perfect timing because the 200 new laying hen chicks that are in the brooder house are ready to be moved out to the Poultry barn so they have more space to run around and grow. Anyway—back to the escaping chickens. Papa and I managed to shoo them back to the inside of the netting and Papa found out that there was no electricity running to the netting. So he headed up to grab another energizer. Then upon more investigation Papa found out the hotwire on a big portion of the property wasn’t hot at all. With the chickens back where they belong we headed out to pasture to separate the calves. HA! HA! Those calves had no idea what was going on—and to walk away from their mama was totally against their will. The grass was lush in the pasture—so the mama cows were not interested in chaperoning their calves to the “nursery”. We managed to weed out the six calves that we needed (two are too young to separate), and a few big cows and the bull. They were walking toward the lane just perfectly, and they were almost all at the lane when one heifer bolted, and then a calf, and then the bull and they were all lost. Papa walked back to the other end of the field and I started calling all the cows to come. Thankfully they did! Once we had all the calves out of the field we then shooed everyone into the panel pens—then we ran the adults out and kept the calves in. It was like parents dropping off their children at daycare—but this was night care. It was 7:30 by the time I came back in and I was hot and sweaty and covered in a little bit of manure from walking through the tall grasses. So I headed for a shower, grabbed me a bite to eat and then it was 8:30 and time to send out the Larder email and start journaling. That was 45 minutes ago and I have just told you about tonight!

               Monday and Tuesday I only went outside to milk the cows. The rest of the day I spent inside making yogurt, bottling kefir, making salves and lotion bars, labeling the salves and packaging and labeling the lotion bars. Our afternoons were spent in the kitchen canning pears. Our friend Emily has two trees that are loaded, and she graciously shared them with us.

               Thursday and Friday made up for all the time I spent inside Monday and Tuesday—but before I could spend my day outside Thursday I had to help wash up some of the milking equipment and finish making some granola. Also a customer called and needed some eggs—but all the packaged eggs had been sold to Jacksonville the day before so I had to package up Wednesday’s eggs. After lunch I finally made it outside. The first thing I had to do was to cut some metal panels to make a little fence to go around one of the raised beds that I had planted in lettuce, zinnias, basil and bell peppers last week. To my delight the lettuce had actually sprouted (the bed is in part shade), but to my dismay something had got into the bed and was digging holes (probably a skunk). So I figured that a little metal fence would deter the critter—at least it worked in the ginger bed. Once the garden bed was fenced I then transplanted some lettuce starts in the west tunnel. I had started them back in June—but it was so hot they never sprouted. Then I stuck the seed tray in the poultry kitchen and the Nevada lettuce sprouted. The tray was put in the back of the room when we were processing chickens so when they did sprout they were pretty leggy. I moved them to the green house and to my delight they continued to grow and put on big leaves. They were finally ready to transplant out to the garden—and hopefully this time I will get them harvested before they get bitter. Then I helped Mom and Steve put cardboard, chicken manure and woodchips in the pumpkin patch. The pumpkins are growing faster than we can keep up with them.

               Friday morning Mom and I headed down to the 1915 house to get a video of the inside of the house—because the video that Mom took the evening before was all black thanks to there being no electricity in the house. This time I carried two flashlights and they only helped some—so I took pictures with the flash so that I could add them to the video. You can check it out here: Inside Tour of our 1915 House. Then after milking we went back to the house to empty out the kitchen cupboards. We had three piles: usable, trash, and Goodwill. We finished that job around 1:00 and when we got back to the house I had to make yogurt, we grabbed a bite to eat and then we headed to town to the Title Company to sign the papers on the house. It was a lot of fun for me—for I was the only one in the room who had never signed her name on a piece of property or house. Once the house was ours we ran a few errands in town and then we headed home and headed over to the house to help tear out the cat claw vines and roots, azalea bushes, and weedy trees in front of the house. It made a remarkable difference to the front of the house. I am pretty sure that we have to level the house first—and then the contractor is very eager to get the porch added back on to the front of the house.

               We spent Saturday working on our farm. Mom weeded in the courtyard, and I worked on the computer updating contacts and editing the video.  

               It is now after 10:00 and we are all ready for bed—with hopes that the lightning that keeps flashing all around us doesn’t keep us awake.

Serving you with Gladness,

Tiare