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Hi Everyone,
On my short little walk to “work” every morning I pass the Meyers lemon tree—which is loaded with lemons this year, an assortment of daylilies, and a fair share of roses. The garage door is usually still down at 7:00 in the morning when I head over to the milk house to set up the milking equipment. Therefore, I make my exit from the house through the laundry room door that opens onto the front porch. Then I get the joy of walking through the courtyard when the “dew is still on the roses.” Some mornings it is dark, and some mornings the sun is already up and shining. Lately the sun has been rising above the tree line just a little after 6:30 in the morning—so it is bright and sunshiny when I head next door. For the past few weeks a different kind of flower has been in bloom in the courtyard—and its fragrance is very sweet and inviting. It may sound strange to say that a flower reminds me of myself—but if you knew the story behind my name, then you would understand. You see, when my Mom was pregnant with me my parents were determined that my name had to start with a T. Mom’s name is Tarri, and Papa’s name is Thomas (Tom)—so of course my name had to be T____. My Mom, like her Mom liked different names, so the search was on. One day in July my Mom and her younger sister came across my name in an obituary. I was always told that there had been a house fire and the little girl died from a falling balcony. The little girl’s name was Tiare. The name caught their attention and when I was born they named me Tiare. Growing up I never came across another person with my name—which was perfectly fine with me for I like having a unique name that was all my own. May I say that I have always loved telling people that my parents found my name in the obituary column! I was in my late teens when Mom came home from the health food store with a bar of soap that had my name on it. That is when I found out that my name came from the tiare mā’ohi flower—a gardenia. It wasn’t until I was in my 30’s that I did a little more research and found that my name was very popular in Polynesian culture (when my brother was stationed in Hawaii he said that it was everywhere). The Tiare gardenia is the national flower of Tahiti and is used to make lei’s to greet tourist, and is used to make a perfume. Growing up people would always ask me what my name meant—and I had to say that I had no idea. Some people would say that it must be like a tiara—and mean a crown. Others would compare it to terra and say that it had something to do with the earth. Well, I just found out that the name Tiare is derived from the word “tiara,” suggesting that the tiare flower is the queen of all the flowers in French Polynesia. In Tahitian, “ti” refers to a strong presence and “are” means perfume, scent or fragrance. By putting the words together, Tiare quite literally means, ‘a strong fragrance.’ I can say one more thing that I definitely have in common with my flower namesake—it thrives in the warm tropical weather, not in cold weather. I much prefer summer weather over winter any day of the year . . . and speaking of summer I do believe that it has arrived.
While we have not had a lot of rain I can truly say that we have had enough rain to turn the summer grasses green and start them on their race to see how tall they can get before the animals graze them down or the lawn mower makes its swipe over them. We have four summer projects: one for May, one for June, one for July, and one for August. We are moving our Market Garden to a new location and the goal is to have all four garden tunnels assembled by September—one a month. Last Monday Mom and Papa started putting up the first tunnel. The first day was spent marking the four corners and getting a few stakes pounded into the ground. The second day they got a few more posts pounded in—and then they had to quit because the tool used to pound in the posts broke in two. I laughed because they were not keeping track of the time and Papa was supposed to leave by 1:15 in order to go pickup our Azure order. The tool broke a little after 1:00—which gave them just enough time to come inside, clean up, and get him something to eat before he skedaddled at 1:30. I told them that if the tool hadn’t broken he would have never gotten there. Thankfully the company was able to replace the tool free of charge and they shipped it overnight—so they were back in business on Thursday.
I had one goal on Monday—and I accomplished it, though I was barely moving by the end of the day. There were four beds left to weed in the Summer Gardens, and I wanted to get them weeded and planted with zipper peas, sunflowers and zinnias by the days end. I have been told that I should work at a slower pace—but sometimes I really do find it impossible (especially when I have set upon myself an unrealistic time line). I grabbed my tools and I pulled those weeds up and stuffed them in buckets as fast as I could. Steve was able to help only a little by taking some overgrown borage plants to the chickens, and raking up some weeds that I had pulled on the outside edge of the garden bed. He also emptied my full weed buckets into some empty feed sacks. Then he had to go and move the chicks out of the brooder house and into the movable chicken hoop houses. When he got back I was all done weeding and was busy broadforking. Then Steve helped me tilth the rows—he carried the tilther to a bed and I drove it down. I was getting pretty tuckered out, and my strength was waning fast—so I was grateful that he could carry the heavy stuff. Then while Steve put away all the tools I planted the seeds, and the day was over.
On Tuesday I headed back to the garden—but this time at a slower pace. The marjoram was ready for harvesting. For years I thought that I had a really nice oregano plant, but after visiting the Organic herb nursery a few months ago I found out that it was a marjoram plant instead of oregano. I had two Greek oregano plants once but I hated the way they took over the garden bed—so I had an intern dig them all up. I guess I made a mistake, for now I want to plant the very bed it was growing in with a few more oregano plants. The lemon grass bed has a hard time with weed overgrowth—and since the Greek oregano grows as a thick ground cover I think that it will be the perfect plant to grow there (which just happens to be the very bed I had it eradicated from years ago).
Once I was done harvesting the marjoram, I decided to start weeding the walkways in the Cottage garden. When Steve came out to mow in “Martha’s Vineyard”, I asked him to go get the tree trimmers and he helped me trim back the giant oak that shades a third of the garden. When the cucumbers won’t grow up the trellis because they are reaching far away for some sunshine, and when you have to duck around some of the tree branches—it is time to trim them back. I didn’t get to work in the garden very long that day because it was Tuesday and the eggs needed to be packaged after lunch. Then I had to finish making my Relief Salve, and I had to make a few batches of yogurt. The yogurt should have been made earlier that day—but I totally forgot about it.
As soon as we were done eating breakfast Thursday morning the Post Office called to tell us that the chicks had arrived—so Mom headed to town to pick them up while I did the dishes and a few other things around the house. It was close to 9:30 by the time I started with the milking and mom got home with the chicks. Once the milking was done Mom jumped on the lawn mower and I grabbed the dehydrator trays and headed to the back field to harvest more plantain. I am so excited about all the “free” plantain and I want to get as much harvested as I can. For years we have heard Joel Salatin talk about Salad Bar Beef—which means that his cows have a wide variety of grasses, weeds and wildflowers to graze on in every square foot of his grazing pastures. Here is Florida our pastures are known for mono-cultures: Bahia grass or Bermuda grass. If you do not take care of your pastures weeds do have a tendency to take over—but they are not the yummy delicious weeds of the north. Well, last year we bought some large rolls of hay from a friend in Tennessee and we fed them to our Jersey milk cows all winter and spring. The rolls of hay were full of seeds, and once in a while Mom and I would gather the seeds by the handfuls and scatter them around in hopes that some of it would sprout. To our delight our winter sacrifice field is a polyculture of grasses, weeds, and wildflowers. There is the Bahia and the pigweed—but there is also plantain, chicory, Timothy grass, Queen Anne’s Lace, Red clover, and many more that we do not know the names of. What a treat!
Perseverance was the key word for Friday! The day started at 6:00 with Mom and Papa heading out to pasture to round up the chickens that we were to process latter that day. I printed labels and set up the milking equipment. We got started with the milking a little after 9:00, and we were done by 10:30. The next hour was spent cleaning up the milking parlor (Papa), sharpening knives (Papa), taking care of customers, and starting a batch of yogurt—which I had forgotten to start early that morning, and setting up the Poultry kitchen. By noon we were ready to begin. We did 53 chickens and we were done with everything by 3:00. I then headed inside to make some banana bread—a good use for overly ripe bananas. Then I started a batch of what I call “Cowbucha”. We have not been able to afford to get apple cider vinegar for a year now. Last year we delivered a calf to a lady who was making kombucha for her cows—because she couldn’t afford apple cider vinegar. I thought it was a nice idea, but I never got around to it. Then a few months ago we had a surplus of kombucha so I let a batch go a month before I bottled it—but then it was way too strong to drink. A few weeks ago I needed to mix some minerals in with the milk cows’ food—but I didn’t have any liquid to mix it with. Then I remembered the strong kombucha and I went and grabbed it and poured it over the cows’ alfalfa pellets and mixed it with their minerals—and the cows liked it. Perfect!—and it only costs pennies to make. I have always bought purified water to make the kombucha because I was told that I couldn’t use well water. Well, I am not going to buy water to make Cowbucha, so the other day when I made some kombucha for us I saved the two extra kombucha SCOBY’s and decided to give them a try with our well water. If it works—I won’t have to buy water anymore. I guess I shall find out in three weeks.
Once I was done milking the cows, processing chickens, making banana bread and Cowbucha I have to say that I literally crashed on the sofa and took a nap. When I woke up it was time to finish making the yogurt and cook dinner. It was a very long day, and when I went to bed that night I slept until almost 7:00 the next morning. While Saturday started off slow, it was pretty packed with things to do. When breakfast was over Mom and Papa had to go round up two lambs (a male and a female); for we had a family coming to pick them up later that morning. Then we had to milk the cows and Papa had to do his morning chores—feed the dogs; move, feed and let out the laying hens; feed the sheep their alfalfa; feed his “pet” fish at the pond; and move the cows. We were just finishing up milking the cows when the people showed up to pick up the lambs. While Mom and Papa helped them, I cleaned up the milking parlor, and packed the Gainesville order. Then there were also customers to take care of. Once Papa was on his way we took care of some “Administrative business” of balancing the books, and then we headed to the kitchen. The lemon squash (a yellow squash the size and shape of a lemon) is producing very well and we had bookoodles of them. So we decided to slice and freeze them for later use. Once we had the squash from the fridge all cut up we headed to the garden to pick all the ripe ones—and fill the basket again. When we got back we cut them up too and placed the trays of sliced squash in the freezer. Then Mom headed out to mow and I set up to iron—but first the plantain that I had harvested and dehydrated was all dry and I had to get it bottled.
Yep, it was a busy, exhausting week and if you are exhausted just from reading this I hope that it is evening when you read this so that you can go get some rest. If by chance you are reading it in the morning I hope that it inspires you to get outside and dig in the dirt and grow something.
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare