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Hi Everyone,
Have you ever stepped back in time? Well we did last week, and I had mixed emotions about it. The week before our washing machine broke, and trying to find time to go to town to wash laundry just wasn’t happening. Our washing machine wouldn’t agitate, but it still filed up with water and spun out the water. So in desperation Mom would fill the washing machine up with water and our dirty cow towels and agitate the water and towels with a metal broom stick. It worked, but it didn’t work. The towels were a little cleaner—but not exactly clean. When we called our appliance repair man he told us over the phone that our transmission on our washing machine had probably broke and that a new one would cost almost $700. We don’t have a fancy washing machine—just an American made Speed Queen that fills up with water, has a lovely agitator, and has no computer parts. We were told that it is the last good washer that Speed Queen made. The newer models are computerized and don’t use as much water. We have had our washing machine for 10 years (it was Papa’s retirement gift—well, the company gave him so much money and Papa chose to spend it on me who was begging for a quick and great quality washing machine). It has worked great, and a load can be washed in 30 minutes if it doesn’t need to pre-wash or extra rinse. We were seriously thinking about fixing our washing machine—but 1. We couldn’t afford it until next month or January, and 2. Our appliance man said that he didn’t want to do the labor to fix the problem. So on Monday my brother-in-law brought over one of his old wringer washers and we set it up on our back porch. It was around 3:00 in the afternoon when we started the first load (and by Monday we were very behind in laundry). We were told to fill the washer up with water (from a garden hose) and then add detergent and the laundry. Next you pulled out a knob on the side and that activated the agitator—and may I say that it can REALLY agitate! Then something happened that we had never seen before—the water turned mucky. Our first load to wash was a load of cow towels—the towels that we use to wash the cows udders before milking, and they were dirty. You are supposed to let the washer agitate for 8 minutes, and then you run all the laundry through the wringer to squeeze out all the water. Then you drain the washer and fill it back up with water and add your laundry back in the washer and agitate it for another 8 minutes. Then you wring them out, drain the water, fill it back up, add the laundry back in, agitate it for 5 minutes, and wring them out. At this time the laundry is supposed to be clean and ready for the dryer—but our loads would either be still mucky or full of soap. Sometimes it would take five, six or eight times before the load was clean and enough soap was out so that we could finally put them in the dryer. That first day we might have accomplished about three loads of laundry done and we started at 3:00 and quit around 8:00. I kept telling Mom that it would be quicker to take all the laundry to the laundry mat and be done in three hours. She never agreed.
The next day I was in need of some of my clothes being washed so as soon as I was done milking I started a load of my dresses. They were not too dirty so they washed pretty quickly. When I took them out of the dryer later I had a meltdown—I couldn’t get the zippers on two of my favorite dresses to unzip! The rollers had smashed them. The rollers in the wringer washer are pretty close together and when an article of laundry comes out the other side it really is quite flat. If an article of clothing had buttons or zippers you had to make sure that you folded them in a very bulky way so as to cushion the button or zipper. The first load of dresses that Mom did she forgot about the button and it came out broken. I thought that I had folded my dress well enough, but there isn’t a lot of material thickness in a dress so it wasn’t good enough. I thought for sure that I had lost two of my best dresses. After shedding a few tears and acquiring a new hate for the wringer washer, I left my dresses and went on about my day. Later that day in passing I decided to try the zippers again and with lots of force I was able to “break” the bond and get the zippers to go up and down again. Yeah!!! I still didn’t want to wash anymore dresses in that washer and so I was purposely wearing jumpers that didn’t have buttons or zippers.
Wednesday was another looonnnngggg wash day. We started washing laundry around 11:00 in the morning and quit at 6:30—and no, all our laundry was not washed by then. We did find out that sheets really do wash up according to the 8 min. agitate, run through the ringer; 8 min. agitate, run through the ringer; 5 min. agitate, run through the ringer and ready for the dryer. That night though we received an email from the “Next-door Neighbor” email group and an Appliance man was advertising his services—and Mom gave him a call. He came out to check out the washing machine Thursday morning and found out that the belt and the pulley were broken—not the transmission. He fixed what he could that day, but then he had to go get some more parts and he came back Saturday and finished the repairs—and the parts and labor only cost around $290. I was very happy to have my washing machine back so that I could do laundry and get other things done at the same time. I have finally realized why “Monday” used to be wash day. When you wash laundry by hand, or with a wringer washer you have to stay with the washer the whole time—nothing else gets done. With both Mom and I running the washer one of us could go off to do something else for a little bit. I did manage to cook dinner one night while running back and forth out the back door every 8 minutes. We never did manage to get all of our laundry caught up using the wringer washer—but with our washing machine fixed I can say that as of tonight all our laundry is finally caught up. We have noticed though that the wringer washer actually cleans the cow towels cleaner—so Mom is still washing them in the wringer washer.
It seems like all we did last week was laundry, but when we were not doing laundry we were getting a lot done on the farm. I spent Monday morning in the greenhouse planting onion seeds. I have grown a yellow Duster Onion from seed for the last three years at least. I really like them for their flavor and their storage ability. We also usually get some sweet onion plants and plant them around Thanksgiving—but this year I found a new variety of sweet onion and I am growing them by seed. I am sure that I should start my onion seeds in September, but my brain doesn’t think onions until Thanksgiving so that is when I start seeds. Then I transplant them out in late January. I was wanting to grow a bunch of onions for sale this year—and was going to go buy a couple hundred onion plants but when I grabbed my packet of Duster Onion seeds I found a packet of sweet onion seeds that I had bought from Baker Creek a few months ago. I had totally forgotten about them. The Duster Onion seed packet says that it contains about 250 seeds—and it was true for I planted around 270 seeds in seed trays. The Unzen early flat onion packet said that it had a min. of 300 seeds—well I had to keep filling tray, after tray, after tray and even began to double the seeds in a cell before I ran out of seeds. I ended up planting around 574 of the unzen onion seeds. If all grows well I think that we should have some onions for sale come spring.
Monday and Tuesday were spent preparing the Market Garden Tunnels for their plastic covering. We were pushing to get them done before the first frost of the season. Tuesday afternoon we got the cover on the second tunnel—because it had green beans in it. Then come Thursday we put the plastic on the first tunnel—but we had problems with it. We have rolls of plastic everywhere, but to our dismay none of them were long enough to cover the length of the tunnel. When we finally found one that was 52 feet long (the tunnels are 50 feet long), it didn’t cover all the way to the ground. It was better than nothing, so while I ordered a new piece of plastic, they put the temporary plastic on. The next morning when we woke up the ground was covered in heavy frost and it was 32 degrees outside. Friday morning it was white again and it was 29 degrees. We were so thankful for the tunnels being done—plastic, end walls, and structure. Actually we have one door left to install and the correct plastic covering and then they will be 100% done. When they went to install the door they found it to be 32 inches instead of 36 inches so they had to order another one. We started the tunnels the beginning of June, and five months later we are finally done—we went from a grassy pasture, to dirt to a thriving Market Garden. Before I harvested all the green for the first time I made a quick garden video to share the beauty of it with everyone. By the time I finished harvesting 40 bags of greens on Tuesday and 24 bags on Friday the plants look a lot different.
With winter fast approaching—or shall I say our first frost and freeze predicted to arrive I spent Thursday harvesting all the roselle before they froze and I had to harvest the green beans because they were ready, (the plastic covering will keep them good until the plants are done (or a hard freeze occurs). While the garden has been top priority, other things have slipped through the cracks. Hay season has arrived—and we are not prepared for many reasons. Thankfully we still have some hay left over from last year—because we have not been able to pick up this year’s hay from our hay farmer yet. When the hay is first baled—our barn was too full of other things. Then when we got the barn cleaned out—our tractor broke (and is still in the shop). Thankfully a friend brought us over his tractor last Tuesday so that Papa could have a way to take hay out to the animals. The sheep barn needs a major cleaning out before we can put hay in there—so the sheep are in a field where their hay rack can be in the woods. The bulls need a place for their hay—and we were going to build a bull hay barn last year, but the idea was scrapped when Mom thought that we would put the new Market Garden tunnels in that field (of which the field ended up being too slopped for a garden so we put the garden in a different field). So now we need to build a place for the bulls hay. The heifers have a barn—but it needs cleaned out and the fence that surrounds their field needs to be taken down and a new one put up. It is so old and the weather and the ants have corroded it, Bullfrog (the new bull) has scrunched it up by going under it, and Hurricane Helene sent the Duck house through and over it smashing it and bending the t-post. Then it is time to plant the winter grasses so that the animals have something green to eat during the winter—but we need the tractor back. It should come home sometime this week, and then Papa needs to get the rest of the seed bought and then he should be ready to plant. Thankfully the animals have done an excellent job grazing the grasses down short enough so that Papa can plant. There is never a dull moment here on the farm—and there are never enough hands to do all that needs to be done.
Friday was graduation day for the Thanksgiving turkeys. We had 22 turkeys to process and 13 chickens (they were too small a few weeks ago when we processed the rest of their batch). We started setting up around 11:00 in the morning and we were done around 4:00 with the cleanup. The turkeys were not starved this year—their weights proved that they ate their fair share of bugs and feed. Our smallest bird was 16.62 pounds, and then one was 18.30, all the rest weighed from 20 pounds to 27 pounds. Processing turkeys definitely requires a lot of muscle power. After the day of processing, I came inside and did some paperwork before I headed to the garden to harvest some veggies to fill some orders. It was close to 6:30 by the time I came inside ready to cook dinner—but I really just wanted to go out to eat and have a maid come in while we were gone. We had been so very busy since the day before that we had not done Thursday’s dinner dishes, or Friday’s breakfast dishes. I had also made a batch of broth on Thursday and a batch of yogurt—so that made for three big stock pots also that were dirty. Every counter was full of dirty or clean dishes and the table was full of dirty dishes. It was late and I needed to cook dinner—but how and where? I finally managed to put most of the dirty dishes on the island which gave me a clean sink, a clean counter and a clean table—and then I could cook dinner. When Mom got back from a trip to town she moved the dirty dishes from the counter to the dishwasher.
Saturday was spent taking care of customers—here on the farm and by way of a delivery to Alachua and Gainesville. With egg production down we have to package eggs quite a few times throughout the week, so that takes up a lot of time. Once all the packing was done for the deliveries Mom and I worked in the kitchen the rest of the afternoon—except for when we had a customer to take care of. By the end of the day the counters looked better—and yet they were still full. While all the canning jars from our last dinner finally made their way back upstairs to storage, the space was filled up with more canning jars that were freshly washed for canning green beans. Then there is the first batch of green beans that we canned last week (we snapped them while we waited for those 8 and 5 minutes between wash cycles). We managed to get the jars washed, now they need labeled. Then the island was filled up with a few crockpots and our Instant Pot for we had Thanksgiving dinner at church today and I had to assemble everything I would need to cook green beans, sweet potatoes, and chicken legs. I had also made some pineapple/orange jello. While it would be nice to walk into the kitchen and see nothing but white countertops—it is a working kitchen on a working farm in a family that cooks everything from scratch. Tomorrow we shall be busy in it making lip balm, canning green beans and making roselle punch and jam. There is always something to do, and I am thankful.
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare