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Hi Everyone,
Getting off the farm in a timely manner is never easy. It seems that the earliest time we can manage to get everything done is 9:00—and on a rare day it may be 8:45. Lately with Mom’s back preventing her from helping with any outside chores it is taking us a little longer to get things done because Papa has to help me in the milking parlor while I milk the cows—and then he can go do his chores. This morning was one of those rare days when it takes even longer than longer, because something goes wrong. We were all finished milking and Papa was in the front pasture feeding and moving the broiler chickens and ducks. I was cleaning up the milking parlor and putting the calves back with their mamas. A week ago Merci had a cute little heifer—that by the way is a very hungry calf; it took five days before Merci had enough milk to give me any. Anyway, the calf was missing this morning. Merci new which direction to moo for her—but when I went to look she was nowhere in sight. Mom saw from the kitchen window that Merci was looking for her calf, and that I couldn’t find her, so Mom came out to help look. In the process of looking we found out that the cows had exited their pasture last night and spent the night roaming in the Market Garden pasture. I am so glad that the garden is completely closed up so that no critters can get in. We looked all over that field for the calf, but could not find it. Forty-five minutes later Mom headed inside to finish breakfast and told me that I had better come in too in order to get ready for church. Papa was still outside doing his chores, but a little while later Mom saw from the kitchen window Papa bringing Merci her calf. When Papa came inside we asked him where he found her, and he told us that he wasn’t going to tell us—for if he did we would be as smart as him. We begged and he had fun stretching the suspense a little longer. Finally he told us that as he got out of the golf-cart to close the gate to the back pasture that he saw the calf off to the side in a briar patch—and I know that I had looked there but somehow missed her. We were greatly relieved to have found the missing calf. Yes, the calf does have a name. Her mother’s name is Merci—French for Thank you, because Merci was born Thanksgiving week. Sticking with the “French” idea we decided to name the calf Noel—because she was born during the Christmas season.
Papa had spent last Saturday stacking 42 round rolls of hay in the sheep barn—but there are no walls on that barn so if it rains the hay could get wet. So Papa spent Monday attaching plastic to the sides to keep the rain out. Mom helped him some and Steve helped him some. I spent my morning answering emails and then after lunch I headed to the gardens. First I cleaned up one of the lettuce beds where all the heads had been harvested. I had to dig up all the root balls. As I worked my way down the lettuce row I also cleaned up the collard rows—picking off old leaves. Then I headed to the other tunnel and pulled up all the green bean plants. The freezes had killed them—or so I had thought. When I began to pull them up I realized that only the top layer of leaves had been killed by the freezes. The bottom layer was still green—and so was the stalk. To my dismay I realized that I could have had another harvest of green beans if I had picked them a week earlier. I thought that the beans had frozen—so I didn’t harvest anymore. Then as I was pulling them up I thought that if I had left the bean plants in the ground for another month I would have dried beans to harvest for next year’s seeds. Since I had already started pulling them up I never could convince myself to leave the rest of them. So needless to say the chickens had a feast. Next in line to clean up was the West Garden—the sunflowers were done. I was amazed at the massive root ball on them. I had to use a garden fork to get them out of the ground. I fed them to the chickens also—they could eat all the seeds out of the heads. I grew single stem sunflowers for the first time, and I grew three different kinds—a pale yellow one, a bright yellow one and a red one. I found out that I do not like red sunflowers—they have no “cheer” to them. I did like the two yellow ones, and I have grown yellow sunflowers with red accents and I do like them—a sunflower must have yellow on it in my opinion. I also found out that I prefer multi-branched sunflowers over the single stem sunflowers. I was shocked at how big the stalks of the single stem sunflowers actually get—well not all of them got that big. One kind was small, one was medium, and one was huge. The other negative with a single stem sunflower is after you pick it there will not be another one. With the branching kind I can gets lots of sunflowers over an extended period of time.
While I wanted to work in the garden some more on Tuesday, our computer decided that it was not hungry anymore. It wouldn’t save anymore data, and it wouldn’t open up our QuickBooks file. The error note said that in order to fix the QuickBooks problem I would have to download something—but the computer was too full to download anything. Upon investigation we found out that the C Drive had no free space on it—we had used up all the space. So Papa and I went to work deleting files that were not necessary. When we were done we had freed up ¼ of the drive, and we were back in business. We probably still need to do some more cleaning and transferring data to a different drive, but for now we can at least use the computer. I learned that videos take up a LOT of space on a computer. I did manage to make it to the garden after the kefir was bottled, the yogurt was made and the eggs were packaged—for I had to harvest the veggies for the Jacksonville delivery the next day.
The last of the 200 rolls of hay was delivered Tuesday morning and after Papa got it all stacked in the barn he started on the next project—putting up a hot-wire fence for the heifers. The old fence was rusted and torn up from the hurricane, ants, and Bullfrog (the bull); and in order to put the heifers in the field where their hay barn is we had to have a new fence. The hot-wire fence is not a permanent solution, but it is a temporary fix until we can have the time and money for the permanent fence. It took Papa a few days to get all the old t-posts pulled up and the new fence strung up. Then the hay barn needed to be cleaned out of all the old hay and manure. By Friday night the heifers were finally moved into their field where they could get all the hay that their bellies desired. Now we have to get the bulls a hay shelter—yet Papa also has to plant the winter grass seeds.
A few Wednesday’s ago I attempted to do all the evening chores for Papa so that he didn’t have to do any when he got home from deliveries at 7:30 that night—but all the vehicles were on strike and I had no way to finish all the chores. This week though I did manage to get all the chores done—the truck was full of gas! I fed the dogs, locked up the chickens—all three houses, locked up the ducks and the goose, fed the bulls and the heifers some alfalfa pellets and hay, and separated the calves. Separating the calves didn’t go too smoothly though. For some reason some of the cows and the bull think that it is fun to go with the calves to the barn. It is easy to shoo out the cows—but Dijon has decided to become a bully of late. He bellows and groans while he beats up the panel gate and the metal head gate that we catch the cows in when we need to deal with them. The head gate is pretty sturdy, but the panel gate (which is the entrance/exit of the panel pens) swings and is kind of wobbly. Papa told me that when Dijon gets in the panel pens he just goes in there and commands him to get out. I ended up with a few milk cows, the three calves and the bull in the panel pens. I marched in there like I owned the place and commanded everyone to get out—well everyone but the three calves. The cows left with no problem, but Dijon looked at me and started bucking and jumping and bellowing. Of course I melted right away wondering if I could jump a six foot fence before he took me out. Thankfully Dijon really isn’t a mean bull, just intimidating sometimes. I managed to get to the outside of the panel pen and on the other side of the netting. When Dijon came over toward the gate I was hoping that he would just leave and go back to his pasture—but that was not his plan. Instead of going out the gate he decided to beat the gate up. The gate is one section of a long wall of panels connected together—and not very sturdy. So while Dijon beats up the gate the whole panel wall rocks back and forth. I tried yelling at him to stop—but it did no good. Dijon beat up the gate until he managed to close it. As soon as it clicked he stopped and backed off. I was standing just a few feet outside the gate, so I reached over the netting and pushed the gate open in hopes that he would come out. Instead he began to beat up the gate again—until it clicked shut and I pushed it back open. After about the fourth time I began to wonder if he was playing a game with me. I am sure we played at least six rounds of shut/open the gate. Then he got bored and started to walk toward the barn. I was sure that if he got into the barn that he would tear everything up. Since Dijon was closer to the barn I went back inside the panel pen and opened another gate into another pen and shooed the three calves into that pen—and I stood in there with them. Dijon did go into the barn, but he did no damage and he finally got bored and left the panel pens and went back to his field. Then I could finish all the chores. I was very glad that I was able to get all the chores done that night because Papa didn’t get home until 8:30 that night because one of our customers got into a wreck just a block away from the pickup location and Papa had to wait in order to get him his order.
I did manage to get some more gardening done on Thursday and I was grateful for the help that Steve was able to give me. He got all the buckets of compost that I needed. Then I broadforked and tilthed the beds before I transplanted 32 mullein plants. Once they were planted I headed to the green house to start some more lettuce, kale, and spinach in the seed trays. I try to plant a new batch of lettuce once a month. I have found a few varieties that I really like to grow.
Friday we had a lemon juicing party. We had harvested 15 crates of lemons off of the Ponderosa lemon tree a few weeks ago, and this was our first chance to get them all juiced. We had two families come over and help. Some washed the lemons, three of us women peeled the lemons for zest, and the rest of the crew used four or five juicers to juice the lemons. In the end we had 68 quarts of lemon juice.
It was a busy week—but I was very grateful for the warmer weather. I hope that you are having a lovely December!
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare