531
Hi Everyone,
You never know what a day will bring forth—let alone a week. Some weeks are hard and some are very enjoyable. Last week was one of those weeks’ worth talking about.
Help on the farm is always welcome—and last Monday a customer came to help out in the garden for the day. Most people that garden in Florida spend their early mornings and late evenings in the garden, but we are not most people—and most people do not have sixteen cows to milk, chickens to feed and other farm chores to do in the morning. Therefore, it is usually between 11:00 and 12:00 in the morning before we ever make our way to the garden. We will work for an hour or two and then come in for lunch and then go back out to the garden for another two to three hours. So we told our customer that she should arrive around 11:00 if she wanted to help in the garden—and that is just what she did. When she got here we gathered our garden supplies and headed to the garden. The sweet potato rows desperately needed to be weeded and Cecilia tackled it with determination. I had three rows to prepare for planting some zipper peas—but one of those rows I could not get to because the fence panels were covering it. So I weeded two of the beds and then I weeded the nasturtium bed that was next to the sweet potato beds so that I could visit with Cecilia. After lunch Mom and Papa worked on putting up the first garden tunnel in the new Market Garden, and the rest of us went back to the Summer Gardens. While Cecilia worked in the sweet potatoes, Steve and I put in t-posts to support the fence down the south side of the West Summer Garden. The Thursday prior Mom and Papa took down the West Tunnel which caused us to change the name of the garden area from the “West Tunnel” to the “West Summer Garden”—since we will only be growing summer crops in that area. The removal of the tunnel also left the garden with no water sprinkler. We had watered the garden area very good on Thursday—but with no rain it wasn’t taking long for the zinnias, celery, and cantaloupe to start drooping. My goal was to have sprinklers hooked up before Monday night—but we had to have the fence secure before we could hook up the sprinklers. We put a t-post in the ground on each end of the garden bed and then we tied a long string of hay rope from one t-post to the other t-post. This gave us a straight line so that we could put in more t-posts and attach the hog panels to the t-posts in a straight line. At one point we had to have Cecilia come and help hold up the fence panels because they wanted to fall over. When we finished with Cecilia’s help I forgot to tell her she didn’t need to hold the fence anymore—but she was very observant and wasted no time in asking if we still needed her or not because she had a goal to finish weeding all four rows of the sweet potatoes before she left. We laughed at her eagerness to be of such help. It was going on 4:00 by the time we finished with the fence—but we still needed to hook up two water sprinklers (but first we had to find them). As I scanned the garden over I saw that there was one sprinkler in a garden bed that we would not be using anymore—and it was the same size as the bed we just fenced which meant that we would only need the one sprinkler and not two. It took a little muscle power (Steve’s muscle power that is) to get the garden hose up out of the ground, but we managed it and then we took it over to the Summer Garden and attached it to the middle t-post and turned it on—and it didn’t work right. UGH!! It was going on 4:30 which meant the day was over, so we cleaned up all the weeding mess and Steve called it a day. Cecilia didn’t want to quit for she only had about six feet of weeding left—but my energy was done. Later that night Mom was able to run out to the garden and move a few things on the sprinkler head and it worked perfectly.
We headed out to milk the cows around 6:30 Tuesday morning because Papa was taking Mom to a 2:00 appointment with the Dentist in Clearwater (a four hour drive south)—and they had to be gone by 10:00. That meant I had to hold down the fort a day. Thankfully it wasn’t a one man show for Penny came in an hour early to wash the milking equipment; and Steve was here all day to help do what had to be done. One of those things was to move the chicks out of the brooder house and into one of the portable hoop houses in the pasture. While he did his morning chores I did the breakfast dishes—and since I had time I did a little deep cleaning of the windowsill and the kitchen counters. It is amazing how much clutter can collect on a counter when you really only have time to do the dishes and get out of the kitchen because there are so many other things to do. It was noon by the time I was finished inside and Steve was done with his chores. I grabbed my garden tools and headed to the garden—but I had a slight detour before I got there. Our bull “Bullfrog” had escaped his field in the night, so Papa had asked Steve to fix the fence. When I got to the garden Steve was looking for some metal t-post fence clips. It just so happened that we had used the last of them on the Summer Garden fence. We found a bucket of used ones in the garden shed—of which 75% of them belonged in the garbage which is exactly where I put them. Thankfully there were a few good and semi-good ones that we could use. Steve and I then set out together to fix the fence—well shall I say we tried our best to make the fence unescapable. That fence is so old, so smashed, so rusty, so missing wires, so down right rickety. At one point Steve said that we would be better off to take the fence down and put up a brand new one—but we had no time, clips, or experience to do that. We attached clips here and there and wove in a few step stakes here and there and I guess it worked for Bullfrog has not escaped again—or maybe he hasn’t escaped because Papa opened the gate and let them out to eat the grass on the other side of the fence. Once the fence was mended Steve cleaned up the milking parlor concrete from all the calling cards that the cows had left behind when they came to visit our milking parlor. I headed to the garden. I had some lettuce and green peppers to transplant to the Cottage Garden (a section made up of all raised beds where flowers, herbs, fruit and some vegetables grow). One section has a huge oak tree growing nearby giving some much needed shade to certain plants—apple mint, comfrey, ginger, hostas, oak leaf hydrangea, lemon balm and catnip. It is under the shade of that tree that I grow the cucumbers and green peppers, and this year I am growing two tomato plants and some lettuce. I am trying to find a variety of lettuce that I can grow in the summer heat here in Florida—and it is much cooler under the shade of the large oak tree. When I was done transplanting the lettuce it was lunch time for it was almost 1:30 and I had to be ready to help package eggs at 2:00. It was a few minutes after 2:00 when I arrived at the egg party—and to my surprise they were half way done. No one told me they were starting the party early. The Tavernari’s come every Tuesday to help us package the eggs—and sometimes they like to sneak in a little early. When the eggs were done being packaged Steve headed out to pasture to collect the days eggs since Papa wouldn’t home until late. I headed back to the garden to finish planting the bell peppers and then to get the three dirt beds ready so that I could plant some zipper peas. I talked Steve into broadforking two of the beds and weeding one of the beds (for I had broadforked one the day before and weeded the other two the day before also). Once the peppers were planted I headed over to the Summer Gardens. I leveled the clumps of dirt left behind from the broadfork and then I prepared the bed to plant the seeds by raking some dirt off to one side. Then I scattered the seeds down the bed and raked the dirt back over them. When Steve finished broadforking he called it a day and went home. I spent another thirty minutes planting and then I headed inside. First I cooled off with a glass of maple lemonade and then I had to finish cleaning up the kitchen sink. I had some dishes soaking in the sink that needed to be washed and rinsed before I could finish making the yogurt that I had started earlier—but before I could begin a customer arrived and then Mom called. It was 5:30 by the time I finally got it all done. I needed to place an Azure order and get a shower before I could put together all the orders and make the receipts for Wednesday’s Jacksonville delivery. I did manage to get a little bit of piano playing in before my parents got home—but I would have loved to have done a little sewing too and taken care of the jars of canned green beans that have been sitting on our counter for over a month waiting to be washed and put away. At the breakfast table that morning Mom had asked me if I had plans for the day and as I listed off the things that I hoped to do Papa laughed and said if I did just two of those things my day would be full. Well, I accomplished a lot anyway, and if I hadn’t have spent time cleaning off the kitchen counters maybe I could have gotten some sewing done—but the kitchen sure looks a lot better.
Wednesday morning as we were eating breakfast Mom told me that she had a surprise for me later that day. She said nothing else—and I asked no questions. A surprise! What could it be? Could it be a puppy or a new garden tool or plant? Maybe it was some new kind of food—or some ice cream treat. The day went by and I wondered just what it could be. Then the time arrived and Mom grabbed her purse and made sure that she had her driver’s license. Hint #1: we were leaving the property. Maybe it was a new puppy and they were hiding it at my sisters. Then Mom grabbed two water bottles. Hint #2: We would be gone a long time. I asked if I needed socks and shoes. Hint #3: yes I did need socks and shoes (we were not going to my sisters). Hint #4: Mom told me to grab the cameras. So I grabbed the cameras and my purse, shod my feet and loaded up into the truck. We drove 20 minutes out into the country down the road that they had taken on their way to the dentist. Then we came upon a little white building that said “Farm Stand” and beside it was a ten acre patch of zinnia flowers in full bloom. It was the Branford Farm Stand and they had a u-pick flower patch. For $10 you were given a paper basket/vase and allowed to walk down the rows of zinnias, marigolds, cosmos and sunflowers and pick as many flowers as you could fit into the paper holder. There were two men picking flowers for their wives, a couple picking flowers together, and a lady videoing in the middle of the field—and that was all that was there. It was breathtaking and gorgeous. I have always dreamed of having a field of wildflowers for a u-pick, but a field of zinnias is 100% better. You can check out our YouTube short of the flower field here. While the majority of the field was zinnias—of every color you can imagine, there was also a section of sunflowers and cosmos (but they were almost spent), and about eight rows of bright yellow, long stemmed marigolds. That much bright yellow was beautiful and smelled so good. I wanted to walk all the way to the other side of one of the zinnia rows, but to my dismay the clouds were getting blacker and blacker and the rain drops were starting to fall—here a little and there a little. We walked out of the flower patch twice to head back to the truck, only to have the rain stop and we turned back around and picked some more flowers. I could have stayed for hours, but the rain finally insisted on letting loose and we had to head home—but not before we had the biggest bouquet of flowers that we could squeeze into our flower basket. By the time we got home it was pouring heavy—and since we haven’t had rain in a while we were not complaining. We ended up getting almost 2 inches of rain. Once we were inside we grabbed vases from all over the house and started filling them with flowers. I managed to pick three sunflowers, but all the rest were zinnias. The afternoon truly was a pleasant surprise! I guess you could say that my love language is flowers and Mom and Papa knew it.
Thursday morning found us searching for another lost calf. Rosa had given birth to a little heifer and she decided to go missing in action while we milked the cows. We thought for sure that she was in with the sheep in the Salad Bar pasture—a field of grasses and weeds that is so thick you can barely walk through and so tall you cannot see over. Since Melba did such a good job finding her calf when it was lost in there, we decided to let Rosa in to help us find her calf—but Rosa kept going back to the milking parlor and looking over the fence. We would go get her and drive her back toward the weeds—and after a while she would be back at the fence. I had the camera with me videoing the whole search. After I had walked all through those thorny weeds I decided to head over and look over the fence—and there in the short grass beside the Poultry Kitchen was little Rosalee curled up sleeping. Rosa really did know where her calf was all along! With the video finished I quickly headed inside to upload it—but to my dismay 24 hours later the video was still in the process of uploading and because I had filmed it as a YouTube short it was not saved anywhere and the only thing I could do was push the delete button. How sad! The rest of the day I spent weeding in the garden and Mom and Papa worked more on the garden tunnel. I finished weeding all the sweet potato rows and then I worked on weeding a bed where I plan to plant some marigolds tomorrow. I have three beds to fill with flowers in “Martha’s Vineyard”. The two tips of the “Food Pyramids” will be planted in marigolds and then one of the long rows will be planted in zinnias. The other row will be for cayenne peppers and one has okra growing in it. I may plant some roselles where the lemon squash is growing and then all the layers of the “Food Pyramids” will be planted. I headed inside at 4:00 in order to turn some of the garden zucchini into Zucchini bread.
The Post Office in Lake City called us Friday morning to let us know that we had three boxes of baby chicks ready to be picked up—but we were supposed to have four. I had ordered 200 red sex-linked female chicks to replace the chickens in one of the egg mobiles come winter. We replace one house every year—which means we replace them when they are two years old. After breakfast Papa headed to town to run some errands and pick up the chicks. While he was gone the Post Office in Fort White called us to tell us that they had one box of chicks—our lost box was found. We called Papa and he was able to go to Fort White also. When Papa got home he had to do his morning chores and he didn’t get done until about 12:30. That was when I was finally able to head outside—but Mom was declaring it lunch time. I told her that Papa needed time to cool off and I was not hungry yet. So I headed to the garden and after Papa cooled off they started working on the tunnel. I had two weeding goals—the Echinacea bed and the bed where I plan on planting zinnias. I got the Echinacea bed weeded with no problem—and then I got side tracked. I wasn’t exactly ready to eat lunch yet—but I knew that the zinnia bed was too big to tackle before lunch. I knew that I had some Hyacinth bean seeds coming to plant on the garden trellis in the Cottage Garden, and I knew that the trellis was taken over by Spanish Needle—and I thought that I could pull them up before lunch. To get to the trellis was no easy feat. The walkways were overgrown with blackberries, Spanish needles, Black-eyed Susan’s and other weeds. Then the bed was solid Spanish needle—some little and some big. I started filling buckets with the weeds, and then when they got bigger I just started making piles for Steve to take to the “sinkhole” (a low spot on our farm). I was deep in the weeds when Steve yelled out that we had a customer. On my way up I confessed to Mom that I was ready for lunch finally (it was 2:00 in the afternoon). I did take time to wash my arms and hands before I met the customer—but I was covered in Spanish needle seeds from head to toe. I looked like a porcupine! At the lunch table Mom took one look at me and said that she thought that I was done outside for the day—but I totally disagreed because I wanted to finish that Spanish needle mess and not get covered in all those seeds another day too. So after lunch I returned to the garden and finished clearing out all the Spanish needles from the garden trellis bed. It was close to 5:00 when I dragged myself back up to the house. I was ready for a shower—but first I had to pull all the seeds out of my socks, off of my dress and apron, and out of my hair. When I got to the garage I smelled something off. I thought that it was gas—but when I checked the weed eater and the chainsaw they looked fine. Then when Papa came up the first thing out of his mouth was, “Why do I smell propane?” He went searching and found that the propane tank was leaking propane into the air. Mom called the gas company and they told us to evacuate the house and area. We decided that the barn was far enough away so we grabbed some water bottles and some books and got as comfy as we could at the picnic tables. The weather was beautiful and breezy. It was cooler under the barn lean-to and it was nice to just sit back and relax and read a new cookbook that I hadn’t had a chance to really look at. The only problem was it was getting late and I was getting hungry—and reading a cookbook sure wasn’t helping. It was going on 7:00 by the time we could get back into the house and get a shower—but it was close to 8:00 before we could use the stove and cook dinner, which we ended up not cooking since no one was really hungry and we ended up eating yogurt and zucchini bread.
I woke up early Saturday morning and headed over to the milk house and set up the milking equipment and bottled the kefir before breakfast. Then we milked the cows and packed the Gainesville order. We were given some cucumbers and then the cucumbers in our garden started to produce—and I had too many cucumbers. So I decided to make some pickle relish. I diced up all the cucumbers and then I found a recipe. The first recipe said to soak in salt for 12 hours—it was noon on Saturday, I did not have 12 hours. So I found another recipe that said 3 hours. Then a friend called and we talked for a while. Mom headed outside to mow and I headed to the kitchen to cook dinner for a family at church that just had their thirteenth child. It was after 4:30 by the time I finished cooking some pumpkin muffins and a Shepherd’s Pie. The cucumbers were ready to pickle and I needed to cook our dinner—but I was getting tired. Thankfully Mom came in just as the relish was ready to can, and I could focus on the dinner. I told Mom that the day really would have not been stressful—if I hadn’t tackled the pickle relish. I bit off more than I could chew—but thankfully Mom was there to lend a helping hand.
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare