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Hi Everyone,
What I do every morning is the same every day of the year—I wake up, I eat breakfast, and I milk cows. Not always in that order, though I do always wake up first, and not always that simple—most of the week there is Bible Study time, most days there is laundry, and some days something crazy might happen like a missing calf, sheep escaping, or a cow in labor. Papa is still my milking partner for Mama is still having back issues. As long as she “behaves” she does fine, but as soon as she leans the wrong way, she is not fine. When Mama had to take a leave of absence from milking I was milking nine cows and she was milking five cows. Since then I have had to put one of my cows on maternity leave, and two of her cows have come off of maternity leave. Merci had a calf two weeks ago, and Ana had a calf this afternoon. Both of them had heifers—and they are most adorable with their red and white markings. Noel (Merci’s calf) is a spit fire ball of energy. Papa says that when he goes to separate the three older calves at night time that if Noel tags along she is prone to cause trouble. He says that about the time they get to the gate Noel bolts and takes off running back the other way—and her excitement causes the other calves to kick up their heels and take off skipping and running too. Starting tomorrow I will be milking 15 cows every morning, and as the month of January rolls by we shall have four more cows freshen if the Lord wills. It is a blessing to have enough customers that we are able to sell all of our products—but O how I long for the day when I can fill every ones order just the way they ordered it. Last Wednesday we were 60 gallons short for the Jacksonville orders. Cutting orders in half isn’t as bad as having to tell people that we have absolutely nothing for them. I am grateful for every customer that understands the ebb and flow of the seasons, and losing ten milk cows in the last two years has not been helpful at all. Lord willing we will be adding two new heifers to the milk tank next month as they are due to calve in January. This week we will be bringing in one or two heifers so that they can get bred and hopefully have calves next fall which will add two more milk cows to the herd.
While I am a daily milk maid, the rest of my days are spent in many different ways. At least one day a week I get the joy of being a gardener. Sometimes I get to spend two to four days a week in the garden. Last week I got to spend three days in the garden—and every day I did something different. Monday was spent in Martha’s Vineyard prepping for next year’s pumpkin patch. First I had to pull up all the dead Roselle plants—after I plucked off a few of the ripe seed pods. Next I pulled up all the big weeds, and then I wound up the long cables that had marked the rows of the “Food Pyramids”. Come next spring I plan on replacing the Food Pyramids with a pumpkin patch. I have not had a place to grow pumpkins lately, and Martha’s Vineyard is the best place for now. To prepare the soil I lined the middle area with big sheets of cardboard and then Steve and I dumped a large tote bag of chestnut leaves from last year’s harvest on top of the cardboard. After that we went up to the milking parlor concrete to load a huge pile of cow manure into the back end of the truck. When the tractor was broke Papa couldn’t empty the manure spreader, and my brother-in-law didn’t need any, so the manure spreader got full and then when the tractor did come back Papa was too busy playing catch up so the “overflow” of manure from when we milk was just piled up on the concrete beside the manure spreader. Last week Papa finally got a chance to empty the spreader, but I wanted the pile for the garden, and shoveling it off of the concrete was much easier than shoveling it out of the manure spreader which is what we have done for the last two years. By the time the center of the garden was covered with cardboard, leaves and cow manure the day was over. I still want to top it off with wood chips, soak it down and then tarp it for the next few months.
My garden work on Tuesday comprised of harvesting the rest of the Ponderosa lemons out of the Cottage garden before lunch, and harvesting the vegetables out of the Market Garden for the Jacksonville delivery after our egg party. Yes, I said egg party. The new laying hens are finally laying enough eggs that we can have the Tavernari family back to help us package the eggs. I gathered 211 eggs last Sunday night from all three houses.
I did not get to go to the garden on Wednesday, but I did get to work with something that came from the garden. When we had our juicing party a week ago three of us thinly peeled the lemons and I dehydrated the peels. On Wednesday I had to grind those peels to powder. The 15 crates of lemons that produced 68 quarts of lemon juice, and that filled 18 large dehydrator trays with lemon peel produced three quarts of ground lemon peel. Before I ground the peels to powder they filled an old fashioned white enamel wash tub to the top. It is amazing how the shape of something determines how much space it takes up.
Come Thursday I made it back out to the garden to harvest and plant. Before lunch I dug up the potatoes that I had planted back the end of August. I was really pleased with their multiplication and their size. One plant had 16 fist size potatoes on it and another had 13. I dug them up and set them on the dirt, and then I went back and brushed off some of the dirt and placed them on a large sheet of cardboard. Then later that afternoon Steve and I brushed off the rest of the now dried dirt and packed them in baskets and put them in our storage room. I think that Papa and I planted about 80 potatoes—but not all of them sprouted. I harvested a heaping bushel of potatoes. Now we will have to get them canned for long term storage. Later that day Steve helped me prep a bed for me to plant carrots in the West Garden. We had composted the bed with manure compost a few months back, and it was now time to dust it with wood ash, broadfork it and tilth it. Then we topped it with some of the new organic compost that we got for the Market Garden tunnels. Then I marked out four rows and sprinkled some Imperator carrot seeds down them and covered them up and we were done. Now I got to remember to keep them watered and wait for them to sprout.
Every other Friday most of the year I wear a butchering apron, and last Friday was one of those days. Next Friday we will process the last batch of chickens for the year, and then we will have a few months break before we start back up in March—Lord willing. We make plans, but it is the Lord that directs our steps and allows our plans to come to fruition or be changed.
A milk maid, a gardener, a butcher, a cook, a washer woman, a writer, a seamstress—these are all job descriptions that describe what I do. For the last 26 years I have had another title “Piano Teacher.” I grew up taking piano lessons from the age of 6 to 21. I should have been a concert pianist after all those years—but I am not. I am just a simple piano player. I had one goal while taking piano—to be able to play the piano for church. One teacher refused to teach me, but I am forever grateful to my last piano teacher who not only taught me how to play hymns, but he also taught me how to count and sight read music. I never dreamed of teaching piano lessons, but right before I turned 23 a friend of ours asked if I would teach her two daughters piano lessons. I had no idea how to teach, but my teacher Mr. Alfonso Levy believed in me and loaned me a book on Piano Pedagogy. He gave me all the encouragement I needed. As long as my siblings were still taking piano lessons from him he took me and my little group of piano students under his wing and every spring when he had his piano recitals he invited my students to join in and he even supplied the trophies. I remember one recital that he told the audience that I may not have a college education to teach piano lessons—but that I didn’t need one because I had been one of his students. What faith he had in me. I was to start teaching just the two daughters, but their brother didn’t want to be left out—so I had three students. As the years passed by I realized that my limitations were not my students’ limitations as two of my students excelled me greatly. There were nine children in that family, and my job was to teach all of them (but one who was not interested) to play the piano. Over the years I taught a few more families off and on, but I always had the Johnston family. There were only about four children in the family when I started teaching, but as the years went by more children were born and when they turned six they started taking piano lessons. I have seen them grow up, get jobs, get married, and have children. The youngest turns 18 next April and when she came for piano lessons last Wednesday I was told that it was her last lesson. For the last 26 years I have taught someone in that family every week for about ten months of the year. It is sad to see the weekly times spent together come to an end—but thankfully our friendship is still there.
Life is always changing—nothing is forever. A New Year is right around the corner, and I am wondering just what the Lord has for me as this New Year begins. In the meantime, let us enjoy the Christmas Season remembering that Jesus is the Reason for the season because God sent forth his Son to be born of a virgin and his name was called Emmanuel which means God with us who came to save his people from their sins. So—Merry Christmas!
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare