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Hi Everyone,

               We didn’t make it to church this morning, because Friday night we found out that we were to have company arriving tonight, and she would be hanging out for the week. She is a very unwelcome guest—but we really have no say so on when she comes and how long she stays. When she comes we have to have everything in tip top shape—which is why we didn’t make it to church this morning. As I said we only found out she was coming Friday night. We didn’t get much time to prepare on Saturday. Mom and I had to make the deliveries to Gainesville because the hot wire was not working and Papa had to spend the afternoon fixing the fence. The sheep were in with the cows and the cows were getting out too. Papa did manage to move the animals to higher ground—because when this particular visitor comes we like to have our animals up close to the house so we can keep an eye on them. This visitor also likes to have everything clean and orderly. She reminds me of my Mom when we were younger—if our bed was not made perfect, she stripped it and we had to start all over; if our drawers were messy she dumped them and we had to reorganize them. If everything is not put up and secured this visitor is known to throw anything she can get her hands on. You may ask why we would even allow such company on our farm to begin with—but as I said earlier, we really have no control over her visits. It has been twelve years since she last visited us, and what a nightmare she left behind. Miss Debby paid us a visit one night in June of 2012, and we will never forget that visit. When we went to bed that night it was raining, and when we woke up it was still raining. My Papa left for work before the sun was up—which meant we had to deal with Miss Debby and the chaos that she had accomplished overnight. Our small pond was quickly turning into a 15 acre lake, and the turkey house and the goose house was in the midst of it. Mom and I had to wade out through the water (dodging floating islands of fire ants) in order to let the turkeys and the geese out of their houses. We rescued two turkeys and brought them up to the house, but before we could go back for the others we had to stop and bottle the milk (my sister and a worker had been doing the milking). I had to change my clothes first, and to my horror I found large spiders and roaches were sharing my dress with me. It is one thing to be doing something when you do not know how horrible it is, but to know that once the milk was filtered I would have to go back down into that bug infested water to rescue the rest of my turkeys did not sound too fun to me. When I entered the milk house I was met with the sound of a waterfall. Miss Debby had flooded us with 24 inches of rain in 12 hours and the water table was so high that the water was pouring into the cellar under the milk house. We called Papa at work and told him that he needed to come home—but he wasn’t sure if he could make it because the Suwannee river had risen 20 feet and was rising fast, all roads home would soon be under water. We told him that he had best leave now for we desperately needed him. Thankfully he did get home and he spent the rest of the day rescuing the turkeys and the cows that were stuck on the wrong side of the new lake. We had extra lakes all over our farm as we realized that everyone else’s property drained onto our farm. Our neighbors had told us that at one time our farm was a swamp—and we feared that it was quickly returning to that condition. Our neighbors behind us had their whole 80 acre farm under water, and all the roads out were under water. There were even whole neighborhoods under water because they built their houses in an old dried up lake bed. We did not know how long it would take for the water to recede, and in actuality some places took months. There were other places that dried up in a short amount of time because a sink hole opened up and swallowed up all the water—which is what happened on our neighbors farm and ours. The neighbor was sitting on her porch when she saw what looked like a geyser exploding out of the water—and then the water began to disappear. She said that it was scary knowing that just the day before they had been kayaking all over their new lake. Their sinkhole was big enough to swallow a house—but we only had two open up on our farm. Thankfully they were only about five feet in diameter. It was because of them that our lake shrunk by quite a few acres. They called it a 500 year flood—but that was only 12 years ago and Miss Debby has returned and once again she is expected to stall and drop a bunch of water.

               We got up at 6:00 this morning and headed straight outside to get the milking and morning chores done. It was 9:00 by the time we got back inside to fix breakfast. At 10:00 we headed back outside to storm prep. My job was to go around looking for objects that might fly around in the 20 to 30 mph winds that they are expecting—unless she changes her course and then we could get 60 to 70 mph winds. Mom and Papa had to clean out the drainage pipes from the milking parlor. The weeds had grown up pretty thick, and the trench had filled in with sludge—and the pipes were pretty full too. We have needed to clean them for some time now—but we have never found the time. Today we had no choice but to make the time because the 10 inches or so of rain that we are predicted to get needed a place to go or we would have had a flooded milking parlor—and yes, by the way we still have to go out and milk the cows in the morning no matter how strong the wind is blowing or how hard it is raining. It took hours to clean the drain field, and then we had to empty the furniture off of the porch and secure an empty chicken hoop house. There was a deep trench coming off the sidewalk from the milking parlor—and while it was dry today, it would be a pond tomorrow, so I dumped a few tractor bucket loads of woodchips in it while Mom and Papa spread it out. It was close to 2:30 by the time we finished our storm prep and were able to come inside and get cleaned up, and at 3:15 Tropical Storm Debby arrived—our most unwelcomed visitor. It is now 9:00 at night and we have seen winds up to 24 mph, and so far we have received 2.38 inches of rain. The worst isn’t expected until tomorrow, but the rains are supposed to be with us all week. I think that I shall rejoice over one thing—we shall finally get some canning done. To my dismay we have not been able to can the potatoes that we harvested in May, but with rainy days ahead it seems like the only thing we “can” do.

               Last week was so busy that I do not believe that there was one night that I didn’t crawl in bed from total exhaustion. Tuesday I do believe was the worst. Mom and Papa had dentist appointments in Clearwater (four hours south), so we got up at 6:00 and headed outside to milk the cows and get the morning chores done. By 9:00 we were back inside for breakfast and by 10:00 they were on the road. I needed to make another pot Homemade Chicken Broth and get two pots of yogurt started before I headed over to the milk house to bottle the kefir. While the milk for the yogurt heated up I ran over to the milk house to bottle the kefir. I finished up the kefir just in time to run back over and take care of the yogurt milk. Then I worked on some dishes before I returned to the milk house to bottle some kefir that I had made for the turkeys. I think that it was going on noon by the time I finished everything and then I headed to the garden to pull some weeds. I had spent all day Monday in the garden weeding in “Martha’s Vineyard”, and I had one corner bed left to weed—the top of the “Food Pyramid” (although right now it is a flower pyramid with Roselle hibiscus, zinnias and marigolds. The other food pyramid is two-thirds food with the top being marigolds and the other two sections growing okra and cayenne peppers. When I got to the garden though I saw that the deer had gotten into my really pretty sweet potato bed so the first thing I had to do was fence that little bed off. On a side note, the week before I had strung the flower netting over the top of all the sweet potatoes in the East Garden—which means that the only way into the sweet potato rows is to crawl in, which it didn’t matter since I weed on my hands and knees anyway. When I was weeding in the garden Thursday I saw that one of the rows of netting was missing. The deer had gotten into the garden and had gotten tangled in the netting and took off running dragging the netting with it—posts and all. I found the netting strewn on top of the peas—and I hope that the deer was scared so bad that it will never return! Back to Tuesday—I had one more thing to do before I could start weeding, and that was to string some flower support netting over the zinnias in Martha’s Vineyard. Then I tackled the weeds, and tackled is the correct term to use. That bed was solid nutgrass and solid crabgrass. I did not mind the crabgrass—but I HATE nutgrass. I have weeded that section so many times and it still grows just as thick. At least when I pull up the crabgrass it doesn’t return. By 1:15 it as time to head inside for I needed to get a bite to eat before it was time for the Tuesday afternoon egg party at 2:00. The Tavernari’s showed up as always and for the next hour we packaged the week’s supply of eggs. Then Steve went and gathered the eggs and went home. I headed inside to work on the Jacksonville orders for a little while. Then the timer went off and it was time to strain my chicken broth and add the culture to the yogurt and bottle it. My goal was to head outside at 6:00 to separate the calves—and my prayer was that it would go smoothly for I had no help besides God. Those plans were changed when at 5:40 I noticed a storm was brewing and I headed outside early. When I got to the cows I noticed that the neighbor’s goat was stuck in the fence—so I had to go and help it get out. I walked fast for the sky was getting darker and the wind was picking up. The Lord was very merciful and the calves cooperated very nicely. I made it back inside before the storm arrived—which ended up being just a drop here and there. Once back inside I had to cook my dinner. Then at 7:00 I sat down at the computer with my dinner as I attended a Cool Season Flower webinar. That lasted until 8:30, and then I had to head back outside to lock up the ducks and goose, put the chickens to bed and feed the dogs. I got back inside a little after 9:00 and I had to do the dishes—my lunch dishes, the yogurt dishes, and my dinner dishes. I was still working on the dishes when my parents got home around 9:30. I was so exhausted—but my day was not over yet. Once the dishes were done I had to make all the receipts. I had put the orders all in—and found that we still needed 44 more gallons to fill the order, and we only get about 17 per day. That meant that I had to cut orders—which isn’t very fun. It was after 10:00 by the time I climbed into bed and to my delight Mom finished the receipts . . . and speaking of climbing into bed I am ready to do that right now after this long day. So I better close for now so that Mom can edit this journal and I can send it out and go to bed. Next week I will tell you how we faired our visit from our unwelcomed visitor.

Serving you with Gladness,

Tiare