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Hi Everyone,
Spring truly is right around the corner—and I am running late on pruning the roses. Last Monday I had a goal to prune all the roses, and I think that we have over 40 of them. Well, there are around ten of them that I do not plan on pruning, but the rest I do plan on pruning. I was thankful that it was cool outside so that I could bundle up and wear one of Papa’s old blue jean shirts. Usually I look like I got in a cat fight and lost every time I prune roses, so I was grateful that it was cold enough for me to wear long sleeves. I had some gardening gloves on—but they were not strong enough to keep the thorns from poking through. When the day was over Mom told me about a pair of leather gloves. I guess I will use them when I finish pruning the other half of the roses. I started in the courtyard going from rose to rose turning rose bushes that are full of leaves and starting to bud down to sticks. I have pruned roses many times, and I never know if I am doing it right or wrong. You almost have to look at it like cutting hair—if it is wrong, O well, it will grow back. This year a company that we have bought roses from sent out emails on how to prune roses—and I found it so helpful that I thought that I would share it with you: https://heirloomroses.com/blogs/how-to-articles/pruning. I managed to get all 15 of the roses in the courtyard pruned by dinner time on Monday. I had hoped to prune another 15 roses in the Cottage Garden on Friday—but it was so cold and windy that I decided to postpone it until Monday (tomorrow—of which it looks like rain). The wind was a problem because I planned on burning the pruned off rose branches in the garden’s fire pit.
Papa spent Monday and Tuesday mowing the front yard with the tractor and hay cutter. Our lawn mower broke last year and Mama never got a chance to get the yard mowed before winter set in. The grass was a good foot tall, and very thick so when the a new lawn mower arrived Mom couldn’t mow until Papa and Steve had time to rake up the grass—which was never. So Papa had the idea to mow it with the hay cutter and then to pick it up with the hay baler. The idea was great—but it didn’t go very smoothly. The belts on the hay cutter broke and fell off, so Papa had to spend a lot of time fixing the problem. It wasn’t perfect in the end, for he could only work with half the belts, but he did manage to get the rest of the yard mowed. Then the next day when he needed to bale the hay the hay baler had problems too—it would not wrap the string around the bale so Papa just had to drive down to the compost hole and dump the hay out there. Two bales did manage to wrap just enough so that Papa could actually put them in the chicken yard for good bedding.
Mama has been able to work in the courtyard garden a little bit here and there; her health doesn’t permit her to do too much gardening of late. I have been very thankful for those who have volunteered to come and help in the gardens on Monday and Thursday afternoons—and if you want to come and help me in the garden just drop me an email letting me know when you can come. Last Thursday a lady I have never met before came to help in the garden. We had a lovely time working together and getting to know each other. The back section of the first Market Garden tunnel had never been weeded and covered with compost—so we tackled it. Then when Steve finished washing the milking equipment and putting the fig trees in the Poultry Kitchen to prevent the freeze from destroying their new leaves, he joined us and we covered the foot tall potato plants with a giant frost cloth and then we covered the green beans with a strip of plastic. It is a little early in the season to have tall potato plants and to be growing green beans—but I am taking my chances. Growing them in the caterpillar tunnels allows us to start things earlier. This works just fine—unless the temps are going down into the 20’s like they predicted for last Thursday night. I do not know if I needed to put the extra coverings over the potatoes and beans—but I didn’t want to find out the hard way. Thankfully they survived just fine, and I hope that we have seen the last of the 20 degree temps.
Friday I had hoped to finish pruning the roses—but due to the wind I decided to postpone pruning until Monday. Just minutes after I made that decision my brothers popped in for a visit. My brother David is moving to Iowa on Tuesday, and my brother Charles is moving back to Alaska the end of April—so it was really nice to get the chance to visit with them. They stayed for lunch, and we visited around the table for hours. They left a little after 3:00. About an hour later a friend showed up to pick up his order and discuss the plans for our new building project that he and his sons will be greatly involved in. Our milk house has rotted. It is 30+ years old. It started out as a shed that we bought to do school in because my Great-Grandma kept interrupting our homeschooling every 15 minutes—so we bought the shed and finished it up real nice and turned it into a one room school house. Then when we moved to our current farm we brought it with us. Great-Grandma had passed away a few months shy of 101, and we had specifically designed a room in our new house to be the school room. Therefore, we turned the shed into our feed room. Ten years later when we built a walk-in cooler and freezer we turned the shed into our milk house. Concrete was poured around the outside walls to keep mucky rain water from flowing underneath and filling up our cellar. Then when the floor rotted out we replaced it with a concrete floor which left our building walls encased in concrete on the inside and the outside—which over time created a moisture problem and caused the walls to rot. So now we need a new Milk House. Our original idea was to just tear down the milk house and rebuild another one in the same place—but our friends had another idea. They knew that we were running out of space in the cooler and freezer, and they knew that our feed room was not big enough and it was not capable of storing our one ton totes in so we have been storing them in our garage. So instead of rebuilding just a milking parlor they came up with the idea of clearing out the whole “block” which houses our Brooder house, Feed Room, Milk house, cooler and freezer. Then building a big 30 x 40 foot barn and divide it into a large room where we can store all our feed, a room for our Brooder, a bigger freezer and cooler, a real bathroom, a store room and a room for our Milk house—plus stairs to a second story. The trouble is figuring out pricing, who will do the work, and all the little details—like do we rent a portable cooler and freezer so that we can do the whole project at once, or do we build in sections with the idea of getting the new freezer and cooler built before the old one is torn down. There is a lot to think about and pray about.
Before we were finished talking through building ideas our new ice maker arrived. For years Papa has travelled to town every Tuesday to buy ice for deliveries and chicken processing. With our days being so busy, some days it is after dinner before Papa gets a chance to go for the ice. Those days are over—for a friend put together a really nice ice maker that will supply us with all the ice we need. Praise the Lord!
Saturday I headed out to the Market Gardens bright and early to uncover the beans and the potatoes, which to my delight had survived real well. I had to get them uncovered so that they didn’t over heat and so that we could water the tunnels. Then I set up the milking equipment and headed in for breakfast. After milking there was kefir to bottle and orders to pack. Off and on throughout the day we took care of customers. I was finally able to find some time to finish making another batch of Radiant Salve. I had started the herbs and oils months ago, but I had to add the beeswax and the remaining ingredients. I got everything melted together and then I am supposed to set it in the fridge to cool for an hour before I blend it—but when I went to put it in the fridge I had a collision with the fridge door and slopped it all down the front of the fridge and onto the floor. I was so glad that Mama was outside with a customer and was getting some building measurements—because the last thing I wanted her to see was that mess. I do not know how many paper towels I used to clean up the mess, but to my delight it was all cleaned up by the time Mama came back inside. I did tell her all about it after dinner, and of course Mama didn’t say anything she just shook her head at me. Clumsy could very well be my middle name.
I hope you have a great week!
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare