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Hi Everyone,
August has arrived, and while summer is now in full swing my mind is already jumping ahead to the fact that fall is just four short weeks away. From here the year will fly by faster than you can blink. While for many August means that it is time to go back to school—here on the farm August means that it is time to start gearing up for fall. Papa has been busy planting cow peas so that when October rolls around and the grasses are not growing so fast—the milk cows have something to eat to keep their milk production up. In the garden it means getting the beds ready for cool season crops. Last Monday Mom and I spent the day in the West Tunnel eradicating the weeds—and to the sorrow of my heart the zinnia flowers too. Since I have not been able to really plant any flowers all year, I rejoiced when some volunteer zinnia plants came up in the West Tunnel in the area where Clayton, our intern from last year, planted two rows of zinnias last September. I love flowers that will reappear year after year and all you have to do is ignore them and let them go to seed. So I have enjoyed the zinnias since spring—but it is time to prepare the beds for a fall crop of white potatoes and green beans. The first thing that Mom and I did was to get a five gallon bucket, a water can and some clippers—and cut off all the good flowers so that we could enjoy them in the house. I am comforted to know that a few weeks ago I did manage to plant a bed of zinnias—so it will not be long before we have more flowers to cut. When flowers come up as volunteers I treat them as flowers and let them bloom where they are planted—but if I need the space for food or they are in the walkway I may transplant them if they are small or I may have to treat them as a weed, and pull them up. With all the flowers safe in buckets of water, I then put on my garden gloves and treated everything as a weed or a spent plant—and pulled them up. There were last winter’s celery plants that do not like the summer heat, some struggling parsley plants, the zinnia plants, and a ton of weeds. Well, maybe not a ton of weeds for the celery and the zinnias really did a good job at keeping back some weed growth. Over in the East Tunnel there is a ton of weeds. You can see for yourself in my newest YouTube video August Garden Tour 2023. I am hoping that it will be the first of many monthly garden tours so that you can see what is growing on in the gardens each month—the good, the bad, and the ugly and edible. Anyway, I do believe it took Mom and I until 4:30 or 5:00 to finish weeding in the tunnel—and thankfully we were weeding in the tunnel or the rain would have put a halt to our progress. The rain did put a halt to Papa and Steve’s progress on the shade roof for the beef cows.
I spent Tuesday morning milking the cows, bottling kefir and making yogurt. After lunch I was ready to head to the garden and mark the walkways and garden beds in the area of the West Tunnel that we had managed to make weed free. Steve and Mom were busy mowing and Papa was working on cleaning out the Poultry barn. The brooder house is divided into three sections and the back third was full of 200 laying hen chicks that were quickly out growing their space. The middle third has 30 Thanksgiving turkeys, and the front third has 70 broiler chicks (meat birds). We were scheduled to receive another batch of 70 meat chicks on Thursday—but the brooder was full. The 200 laying hens were ready for a bigger space—but the Poultry barn where we raise our new laying hens until they start to lay eggs was full. The Poultry barn was housing 100 new laying hens that are just starting to lay eggs—we are desperately trying to increase our egg production as fast as we can, but it just happens to take five to six months for a chick to be big enough to start laying her own eggs. In order to move the 200 new laying hen chicks to the Poultry barn, we had to move the 100 new laying hens to a portable hen house. The hen house is home to 100 laying hens that just started laying eggs last Christmas—and they were fixing to get 100 new roommates. Papa got that house cleaned out, and one morning Steve, Mom and Papa moved the 100 hens from the barn to the hen house. Then Papa spent Tuesday cleaning out the Poultry barn. On Wednesday the Tavernari’s helped Steve move the 200 hens from the brooder to the Poultry barn—and it only took them 15 minutes (many hands really do make light work). Then Steve was able to clean out the back third of the brooder house and get fresh bedding down just in time for the new chicks to arrive Thursday morning.
Wednesday our friends the Crane’s came over and we were able to give them a tour of our 1915 house and barn. There is so much work to be done on the house—but I am thankful to say that it is a work in progress. Thursday afternoon when Mom and I came up from the garden Steve told us that Papa had gone to get gas—Mom had mowed until there was no more gas to mow. Mom had me drop her off in the field at the lawn mower so that she could wait for Papa to get back with the gas and she could continue mowing. I headed inside to cool off and start dinner. We had spent the last few hours in the Cottage garden weeding the raised beds and it was hot and I do not know how to work at a steady pace—it is always full speed ahead. I knew that I should stop, but I kept seeing this weed and that weed and here a weed and there a weed. I finally closed my eyes and grabbed the big broom and pushed all the weeds into one pile in the walkway—and couldn’t wait to get inside. I was inside cooling off, and Mom was outside getting hotter and hotter sitting on the lawn mower waiting for Papa to get back with the gas. After about 20 minutes Mom finally gave up and walked up to the house. I was expecting a customer and since Mom was now at the house I figured that I would go get a shower—but when I poked my head out the door to tell Mom my plans she was gone. I figured that she had headed down to our 1915 house—when it is only a hop, a skip and a jump away it is pretty easy to hop in the golf-cart and head over. I decided to start dinner—though I had no idea where my Papa was (for it doesn’t take long to go to the gas station and come back with gas) and I had no idea how long Mom would be at the house. To my delight both my parents showed up just as dinner was done—but they both headed for the shower. Mom had gone down to the house to see if the dumpster had been picked up, and while there she found Papa! He was helping our partner owners take down all the insulation out of the ceiling and bag it up for the trash pick up the next day. We had rejoiced when we first walked through the house that no rodents had taken up house in the house—but once the ceiling tiles came down and the insulation was removed those joys were squashed. I do believe though that the rodent residents were not of the rat kind—but of the squirrel kind for there was a nice stash of pecans.
Friday was a rainy day and I spent most of the day taking care of customers. We thankfully had pulled the calves away the night before—so we had plenty of milk, but the chickens are not laying enough eggs so we ran out of them quickly. We got 19 gallons of milk Friday morning, and by Friday night we only had 2 gallons left. The chicken eggs go faster because we are only getting 6 to 7 dozen a day. I am looking forward to the days when we once again get 20 dozen a day. When I wasn’t taking care of customers I was sitting at the computer doing “administrative work”. When people come to the farm to buy products we make them a handwritten receipt. Then I have to come inside and transfer the order to QuickBooks—but sometimes I get so busy that I don’t want to take the time to input receipts and they begin to pile up. Well, I procrastinated the whole month of July, and it is now time to pay our sales tax to the state—but I had to add all the receipts to QuickBooks before we could figure that out. I know that it took me at least an hour—but possibly more. It would only take a few minutes at a time if I would do it immediately. O well, at least it is done.
Saturday morning was a little chaotic for me. I slept in until a little after 7:00 and by the time I reached the kitchen Mom and Papa were busy cooking breakfast. That meant that I didn’t have time to go next door to the milk house and set up the milking equipment. It was about 8:15 by the time I was done with breakfast and could head over to set up for milking. Saturday’s of late are so busy that I have learned that the best time to bottle kefir is 8:30 in the morning while Papa brings in the cows and Steve sets up the milking parlor—but it was almost 9:00 by the time I got the equipment put together. I figured that it would be best to just go start milking. Then half way through milking Mom had to run inside and I stepped over to let her cow out and out of the corner of my eye I notice that the cow I was milking was backing out of her milking stall. I had forgotten to tie the rope around her rump—but the milk claws were hooked up to her udder and her leg was tied back. I rushed over to try to unclip the leg rope, but I was too late. Rosepetal had completely backed out of her stall dragging the milk tank with her. The tank fell over, and the claws fell off and Rosepetal stood in the walkway kicking her foot. I up righted the milk tank—thankfully only about a cup leaked out and hung up the claws. Then I worked on calming down the cow so I could unhook the rope. I tried to give her some more food to lure her back into the stall—but that didn’t work. She finally stopped kicking and moved a little closer and I was able to get the rope unhooked from the pipe—but not her leg. Then to my delight Rosepetal came back into her stall and I tied her in, retied her foot and was able to finish milking her. Thankfully she acted as if nothing had happened. Before I could milk the next cow I needed to clean up the pulsators—the part that enables the claws to milk a cow. When the tank fell over, milk poured milk into the pulsator. I couldn’t find the bit for the drill to get the screw out, and Mom finally told me to just milk the rest of the cows with my other set of claws—which meant I could only milk one cow at a time—which made me get done milking very late. It was going on 11:30 and the order needed to be packed, the kefir needed to be bottled, the eggs needed to be packaged, and the milk needed to be bottled and the receipts finished all before 1:00 when Papa left for the Gainesville delivery. It took teamwork—but we accomplished it. Mom and I then relaxed for a little bit before we headed outside to pull weeds and trim plants in the courtyard. Thankfully the rest of the day went a lot smoother, and I even had time to play the piano.
Yes, last week was full to the max—but that is okay for it means that we do not have time to get bored. Joel Salatin says that if you are bored you are not dreaming big enough—and of late, Mom and I are dreaming awfully BIG!
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare