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Hi Everyone,
I have a little late start at the computer tonight because we had to round up some sheep. I was hoping to take some sheep to the butcher in October or November, and since it is next to impossible to get into the butcher without a six month waiting list, I decided that I had best go ahead and give the butcher a call and hope that a three months’ notice would be good enough. The lady that answered the phone told me that I could bring them in on the 28th. I asked her of which month and she left me speechless when she told me—August! Here I was hoping to be able to make an appointment for three months from now—and they had an opening two weeks from when I called. Since it is breeding season, and we have a good handful of nice size rams that are all competing to be “THE” ram on the block, it was really a nice time. A few weeks ago we lost a ram. Papa looked out the window and saw a sheep on its side and immediately had a feeling of trouble. I went with him between rain showers to check it out. It was a big ram—and evidently there had been a fight over some ewes and he had lost. Rams are known to butt heads pretty hard, and the impact can be so hard that death is the result. Being able to take some rams to the butcher would enable us to choose which ram that we wanted to breed all the ewes. There were five nice size rams from last spring’s lambing season that we decided to take to the butcher, and that left us with the Big Daddy ram, and two smaller rams that were born latter in the season and had not grown as big yet. Sunday is a long day since we have to get up at 5:00 in order to milk the cows so that we can leave the house by 9:00 in order to get to church on time. We do not get back home until around 2:30 and then we rest for a little while before we cook dinner. We were grateful that the gathering of the rams went very smooth—for lots of energy is usually not in excess on a Sunday afternoon.
Last week was definitely another HOT one, but those types of days are numbered. Fall is right around the corner, and once this storm hits it looks like the temps will be in the 80’s and 60’s. I think that we just might be able to get the East Tunnel weeded without dying of heat after all. I spent the beginning of last week getting things ready for the fall garden. Monday morning I headed to town shortly after the milking was done. I needed some gardening dirt so that I could mix up my potting soil mixture—I needed vermiculite and peat moss too. While looking for the peat moss and vermiculite I took some time to look at the decorative pots. I had three fig trees and two grapefruit trees that needed to be potted in bigger pots—and I hadn’t been able to find any in my budget. I was tempted to plant them in 55 gallon barrels that Papa could cut in half for me—they would be ugly, but free. To my delight I managed to find five white pots with decorative lattice work on the sides—for just $25 apiece. I grabbed them up and then I headed cross town to get a half yard of compost mix. After lunch Steve helped me mix together the potting soil recipe:
· 3 buckets of peat moss
· 2 buckets of perlite or vermiculite
· 2 buckets of compost
· 1 bucket of garden soil
· 1 cup blood meal
· ½ cup agricultural limestone
We use a five gallon bucket and mix it all together in a BIG orange wheelbarrow. Then we fill a large metal garbage can with it and stash it in a corner of the greenhouse. When we were finished with that I headed upstairs to my sewing room and put my fixed sewing machine to the test. It purred beautifully and I was able to get a little bit of sewing done before it was time to cook dinner. After dinner I headed back upstairs to do some more sewing—but by 8:00 I realized that I was done for the day—done in that is. I laid on the sofa for about 40 minutes while we watched an 1800’s house restoration video, and then I drug myself to my room to get myself ready for bed. I was so tired and couldn’t wait to climb into bed—but alas I spotted a spider! I went to take care of it (for my rules for spiders are: you stay hidden you live, you show yourself you die)—but it ran under my dresser. May I say that I was no longer tired! I declared war and grabbed the vacuum cleaner out and vacuumed my whole room and pulled out my dresser, bookcase, and bedside table and vacuumed every inch of everything—under and behind. I won my war and still managed to get myself into bed by 10:00—and I slept really great that night!
Tuesday I milked the cows and bottled the kefir and then I headed to the greenhouse to clean it up so that I could start planting fall seeds. When I have left over dirt in seed trays or pots I usually dump it beside the big propane tank, and if I have plants that are looking pathetic I plant them on the side of the propane tank. Last spring I put a puny parsley plant there, and two pathetic looking cayenne pepper plants. They began to grow and to my delight I was actually able to go and snip some sprigs of parsley for some of my dinner dishes. They were tucked under the propane tank just enough that Steve had managed to miss them with the mower—he didn’t know they were there. Once everyone found out I had plants growing around the propane tank they didn’t mow so close, but then the grass got very tall and started to suffocate the little plants. Mom told me that I needed to get it weeded. So last Tuesday I grabbed some grass clippers and began trimming and weeding until I had created a nice little garden bed. In my digging I found an onion plant growing. The parsley plant was still tiny, but the cayenne pepper plants were two feet tall with ripe peppers on them. I added a bug eaten bell pepper plant, and some close to dead strawberry plants. Then I headed down the road to our 1915 house to grab some old bricks to make a boarder around the bed to make it easier to mow around. Finally I mulched the whole bed with woodchips and I named the bed “My Misfit Garden”. While I was working on the Misfit Garden, Mama and Papa were busy sealing the concrete under the lean-to beside the hay barn. They couldn’t stop in the middle of the job to take lunch, so I grabbed me a bowl of granola and then I finished making the yogurt. Then I headed back outside to the greenhouse—I was finally ready to fill the seed trays with potting soil and seeds. I planted bok choy, collards, cabbage, kale, lettuce, celery, Swiss chard, and mustard. By the end of the week some of those seeds had already sprouted.
Wednesday evening I made sure that Mom and I separated the calves. The Wednesday before we didn’t separate the calves and we only got 8 gallons of milk on Thursday. We needed more milk than 8 gallons, so we went thru the trouble to separate the calves. Papa usually does it—but he was busy making deliveries in the Jacksonville area. Last week was really a challenge with filling our milk orders. Every week we ended up with a few more new customers—but the milk supply is not doubling. We are slowly increasing our egg supply with a hundred new chickens just starting to lay eggs in the last few weeks—but we still do not have enough for the demand. Thankfully we have 200 new chicks, that Lord willing will be laying eggs in time for the holidays. Anyway I find it hard to have to tell people that we are sold out—but I had two customers last week who were so excited that our customer base was growing and that we were able to sell all of our products. They helped me see things from a different perspective. There has been many a year that we have had to cream four days a week because we had more milk than we could sell—and then we ended up with more cream than we could sell. We were losing lots of money, but having to do a lot more work. So I shall look on the bright side as our customers are encouraging us to do—but I still do not like telling people that I am sold out.
We were not inside very long Wednesday night when I walked past the AC closet and heard running water—and you are not supposed to hear water in an AC closet! I opened up the vent door and to our dismay the closet floor was about two inches deep with water. I ran outside to check the drainage pipe and I found it 100% clogged. They tell us to pour vinegar down the pipe once a month—but we never can remember. I cleaned out the drainage pipe and Mama soaked up all the water in the closet. Then for two days the water continued to drain out of the air conditioner and puddle up in the closet floor. During this time we could not run the AC—and did I say earlier that last week was HOT outside. Thankfully we have ceiling fans! It wasn’t too bad the first night. We are outside most of the day anyway. The second evening it was cooler on the back porch than it was inside. We tried to open some windows to let the breeze blow through—but it must have been blowing from the wrong direction because we could not get it to blow through the house. So we decided to eat dinner on the porch. By Friday night the house was beginning to feel too hot—it was 87 inside. Thankfully though the AC had stopped leaking and we were able to turn the unit back on, and cool the house back down to 78.
Mama spent Thursday mowing and Steve and I worked at potting trees. I was glad for his help for there was a lot of mixing up of dirt, peat moss, vermiculite and compost in the wheelbarrow. I had planted Ponderosa lemon seeds in a large metal tub in the greenhouse back in December, and fourteen of them sprouted. The trees are now about two feet tall and they were in need of being potted up into their own pots. Years ago we planted some grapefruit seeds and we had nine sprout. I have potted them up a couple of times so far—but it was time to pick two to keep and get them potted up into bigger pots. We plan on planting some of the others on our 1915 house property. Then I had four fig trees that needed to be potted up for they were majorly root bound. They went from 2 gallon pots to 20 gallon pots and I hope that they shall be very happy there. We ate figs off of one of the trees this summer.
In the midst of potting up trees a young man named Zach showed up to pick up some things for Clayton (last year’s intern), and since Clayton had told him so much about the farm he was very interested in seeing the farm. Mama took him on a tour of the farm and he was really impressed with it all. When they got back and I asked him if anything really stood out to him he said the pond—for it had taken him totally by surprise and really is a beautiful little oasis surrounded by trees in the middle of our open pastures. Zach hopes to be able to help out on the farm sometime in the near future.
We spent Friday milking cows, processing chickens and visiting a friend’s garden. With only 42 chickens to process it didn’t take us very long—so Mama wanted to go visit a garden. Our friend has told us about her gardens and last Wednesday she showed Mama some pictures of her garden and with a little extra time on our hands Mama decided to go see the gardens in person. I was going to spend my time sewing—but alas I wasn’t about to let Mama go and enjoy the gardens without me. It is always nice to see how much beauty someone can pack into a small place. We got home around 6:30 and I wasn’t too sure what to do for dinner. I had some ground beef thawed out—and I needed something quick and easy to do with it. So I decided to make some chili. I am sure that my Papa thought that I was crazy serving hot chili on a hot day in August in a hot house that had no running air-conditioner. They say that Mexicans eat a lot of spicy food and it is hot there and the spices actually help cool them off—so I was hoping that we would all survive chili for dinner on a hot day. Papa ended up having seconds, so I guess we faired just fine.
Saturday was one busy day. I usually sleep in until 7:00 on Saturday’s but I needed a shower and then I needed to be next door at 7:00 to set up the milking equipment so that I could be back inside by 7:30 for breakfast. Then as soon as breakfast was over Mama headed to the milk house to package eggs—we needed 33 dozen, but we only managed to get 19 dozen. We were able to substitute some with duck eggs, but we had to cut orders too. While Mama did the eggs, I bottled the kefir. Then at 9:00 we headed to the milking parlor to milk the cows. Once the cows were milked we had to get the orders packed, and then I had to get the greenhouse and all the potted trees watered so that they didn’t shrivel up in the heat. Then we had to get ready for a wedding! One of my piano students was getting married. I have known her since she was born, and I taught her piano from the time she was 6 years old, until last December when all of a sudden her life got too busy. There are nine children in her family, and I have taught all but one piano lessons. Some took longer than others, and a few have excelled far beyond my skills. It was a real blessing when I realized that the teacher’s limitations are not the student’s limitations. One of the nice things about weddings is that you get to visit with people that you do not get to see all the time. It was really nice to catch up with a friend who used to live here in town, but moved away about 20 years ago.
Tomorrow I plan on planting some green beans—and it looks like we may have to start preparing for a possible hurricane or tropical storm that they say should arrive sometime Tuesday.
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare