556
Hi Everyone,
There is no doubt that winter is here, and sorry to say—but no we are not enjoying it. Ever since December 1 our morning temperatures have been in the 20’s. Anything below 50 is too cold for us—or maybe I should rephrase that and say that anything below 60 is too cold. The other morning it was in the 50’s, but the wind was blowing and the wind chill was freezing. Many times we have realized that 25 with no wind is warmer than 55 with wind. While the mornings have been frigid, most afternoons have been perfect temperatures. Truth be told though—I really didn’t get to enjoy the great outdoors that much last week. Winter has arrived and since Mom is cooped up inside she was eager to start taking down the Fall Décor and putting up the Winter Décor. So while Steve spent the afternoon taking down and old rusty and worn out fence so that we can put up a new one to hold the heifer in; and Papa rode the tractor round and round planting winter grass seeds—Mom and I stayed inside cleaning and decorating. I will admit that taking down a fence sounded like more fun than dusting all the furniture, but it was fun to see the creativity that came from Mom’s fingertips as she added touches of red and greenery here and there. There wasn’t enough time in that day to finish everything—and the rest of the week got so crazy that we never got another chance to continue with our decorating binge.
Papa has become my new milking buddy. Mom is still on light duty, and therefore she cannot help me milk. The positive of her being stuck inside is that she has been able to work at getting the kitchen cleaned up from all our canning adventures. The bad part is that every time she gets one canning mess cleaned up it is time to can another batch—or make salves, or kombucha or cook a meal. Thankful she is doing better, but she still has to be very careful what she does and she cannot lean to the right without horrible pain. Sometimes just sitting down is a painful experience. Anyway, Pa has been a delight to work with. He adds a touch of humor, and does a good job policing the cows that think they want to come back in for seconds. Papa has learned that milking the cows can be one of the coldest jobs on the farm—because 75% of the time you are standing still or sitting. He has been so cold that he decided that we needed a propane heater in the milking parlor. Don’t know how it will work since we have an open parlor, but we shall find out when it arrives.
Wednesday afternoon I canned up seven quarts of the turkey broth that I had made from the carcass of our Thanksgiving turkey. I also started draining the oil out of the herbs for the Soothing Salve and the Relief Salve that I make. The herbs had been soaking in the olive oil for a few weeks, and I need to fill some orders and I had sold the last of them so it was time to strain and make more. I did get some time to rest and relax when all that was done. Then around 5:00 I headed outside to do the evening chores. Usually when Papa gets home from deliveries he has to go out to pasture and lock up the laying hens and feed the dogs—because most of the year it is light outside when he comes home. Right now it is dark by 6:00, and Papa doesn’t get home until after 7:30. I was determined this week to do all the chores—normally I just separate the calves and lock up the ducks and goose (I used to have to lock up the turkeys but they are long gone now). I was planning on separating the calves, feeding the bulls, moving the Jersey milk cows to a new pasture (or should I say a different hay rack), feeding the heifers, locking up the ducks and goose, and locking up all the laying hens. I headed outside and climbed in the golf-cart and backed out of the garage—but the golf-cart seemed to be in slow mode. I could press the go pedal to the floor, but the cart didn’t go any faster. So I parked it back in the garage and plugged it in to charge and grabbed the keys to the truck. When I got in the truck there was a strange smell that I couldn’t figure out. I drove it to the barn and loaded up all the hay, dog food, and alfalfa pellets. When I climbed back into the truck I still smelled something strange so I checked the gauges. All looked fine—but the Low Fuel light was on. The gas gauge said that it had a quarter of a tank—but I also knew that it was prone to lying, and I also knew that it was prone to running out of gas out in the pastures. Since I am not strong enough to pick up the gas can to fill up the truck with gas, I abandoned the truck and decided to use the tractor. I got in the tractor and began to back it out of the barn when I realized that I forgot to pick up the bucket. So I stopped and went to pick up the bucket—but it was too cold and the tractor hadn’t warmed up enough for the hydraulics to work so I couldn’t pick up the bucket. The Gravely is in the shop so there was literally no vehicle for me to use to go do the evening chores. I thought about pulling the little old-fashioned wagon cart—but the heifers are in the back 40 and that was too far to pull the wagon full of hay and alfalfa. So I decided to just go separate the calves. I had parked the truck at the barn and was halfway to the house when I remembered that the calf food was back in the truck—so I walked back to the barn. Once I had the food I thought that it would be easier if I cut through the chicken field, and the sheep field in order to get to the cow field so that I could open up the wires in the lane so when I let the cows out they could go down the lane and get into that field where there was hay. Then I walked up the lane toward where the cows and the calves were and about the time I reached the sheep barn I was joined by Aliyah, the guard dog, who wanted some attention. So I gave her some loving and told her to go back to her field—but she still wanted to hang out with me. I was sure that she would be a terrible hindrance to me with the cows, for I thought that they just might charge her—cows can be territorial to “predators”. When I opened the wires for the cows I managed to have Aliyah on the other side, so getting the cows out went smoothly. I just had to keep the calves from coming out with the cows. I did manage that, but when I went to pull the gate across the lane the calves followed and because I forgot to open the gate into the barn area the calves turned around and went back into the field that they had been in--and because Aliyah was now on their side of the fence I did have a little bit of trouble getting them back out. Once that mission was accomplished I moved the bulls out of their field into the field where the cows had been so that they could eat the hay in the hay rack. We need to build a new hay rack for the bulls—but we also need to put up a new fence in the heifer field so that we can get the heifers to their hay barn so that they can have access to as much hay as they need. Anyway, once the bulls were in with the hay I was going to go lock up the new laying hens, but I had left the bucket back at the panel pens and had to go back to get it. Then since I still had Aliyah with me I decided to just go back to the truck and get the dog food. We then cut back through the chicken field, the sheep field, and the cow field before we finally made it to the chicken/dog field. Yasha came to greet me and after I gave her some much needed loving then I fed the dogs. Since I was in the chicken field and it was getting dark I decided to go ahead and lock up the laying hens. By this time I was done walking all over the farm and had to admit that I would not be able to accomplish what I had set out to do—but hey, Papa only had to lock up the new laying hens and feed the heifers. When Papa got home he said that the truck was perfectly fine to drive, and he used it to drive out to the back 40 to feed the heifers. I was totally exhausted from my wild adventures, and was able to rest a little before Papa called and let us know that he would be home soon—which meant that it was time to cook dinner. We decided to do pancakes—but my trials were not over. I needed eggs—which meant a trip over to the milk house. Then once the batter was mixed up I needed butter for greasing the griddle, but we were out of butter in the house—which meant another trip back over to the milk house cooler. Then my first batch of pancakes burned, and I was done! I was thankful that Mom could finish the meal for I had experienced more drama for one night than I cared to experience.
On Tuesday we got a phone call from our hay farmers—the cleanup crew had arrived to start cleaning up all the demolished barns so that they could start building new ones. Our 200 rolls of hay were still in one of his barns, and all of it needed to be moved to our farm—NOW! Back in the summer our barn was too full of other things to bring the hay over. Then our tractor was out of commission for a month or so. Thankfully our barn had been cleaned out and our tractor was back in use—so we were ready to get the hay, but we already had about 100 rolls of hay in our barn and it would not hold 200 more. That didn’t matter though—the hay was coming. They brought 78 rolls of hay on Thursday, and Papa spent all day stacking hay in the big hay barn. I spent some time inside turning my herbal oils in to salves. Then Mom and I had to go and pick up our Azure order. When we got back I had to go separate the calves and Mom had to go get more alfalfa so that Papa could keep stacking hay. Friday rolled around and they brought 90 more rolls of hay. I had forgot to have Papa stop by the container place in JAX on Wednesday to get a few more bags of milk jugs, so Mom and I had to go to Jacksonville to get more jugs. It took us until 2:00 to get everything done before we could leave (we had customer orders to prepare for them to pick up while we were gone). It takes 90 minutes to get there, about 20 to 30 minutes to get everything paid for and loaded , and 90 minutes to get home—or at least that is the way it is supposed to go, but on the way home we ran into bumper to bumper traffic and an extra 30 minutes was added to our trip. Around 6:00 a desperate Papa called us to see where we were. We were supposed to stop and pick up some dog food and cat food and some honey on our way home, but Papa kind of gave us an SOS plea to come home because he was swimming in more hay than he knew what to do with. So we just headed straight home. When we got home it was dark outside and the hay farmer was parked in our pastures and Papa was unloading a trailer of 30 rolls of hay. The pasture had two long rows of hay bales, and two stacks of hay bales. The original plan was for Papa to put the hay in the sheep barn—but since the barn had not been cleaned out the more Papa drove in it the more he sunk in the muck. On the surface the ground was hard and dry, but underneath was soft and mushy. Papa got a few bales of hay in the barn, but then the driving condition was so bad that he had to stop to muck out the barn. Twenty loads of muck latter, that ground was better—but the ground was much lower and he couldn’t put the third bale of hay on top of the stack because the tractor bucket wouldn’t reach. This is when it got dark and he had to quit trying to stack hay in the barn, and another 30 rolls of hay arrived. It was dark 30 and very cold by the time the hay was all unloaded—but none of the evening chores had been done. Mom and I came inside and made a nice hot pot of fish chowder while Papa did the chores. Dinner was almost done when Papa came in desperately needing a paper towel because he was bleeding. He was trying to get the calves separated and when he went to walk past the tractor the lights blinded him and he ran into the corner of the tractor bucket making a small gash in his chin and a small gash under his eye. When we asked him how he managed to walk into the tractor bucket he said, “Have you ever heard of a deer in the headlights?”
With 60 bales of hay scattered around the pasture Papa had to spend Saturday stacking hay into the barns—therefore Mom and I had to make the Gainesville deliveries. While Papa and I got the cows milked, Mom packaged eggs. Thankfully the new chickens are laying more and more every day, but we still do not have enough to fill the demand. Mom finished with the eggs just in time for me to use the table to bottle the kefir, and then she packed the Gainesville order. While we were gone Papa was able to successfully stack 42 rolls of hay into the sheep barn and 26 more into the big hay barn. We have more hay on our farm right now than we ever have had at one time. Usually we bring it in in shifts—but the hay farmer lost his barn in Hurricane Helene so we have to store it all here this winter. The last 26 rolls of hay are due to arrive on Tuesday. Tomorrow will be spent hanging plastic on the barn walls to keep the rain off the hay.
Life here on the farm is busier than we know what to do with, and just when we think it is going to calm down—some new surprise project pops up. Speaking of surprises, Merci gave birth to a beautiful red and white heifer this morning. So Lord willing, there is going to be more milk soon!
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare