569
Hi Everyone,
My week did not start out as I had planned. My heart was set on transplanting lettuce, weeding, and starting new lettuce seeds—but alas I found myself doing computer work all day because I was struggling with air-hunger. As long as I was sitting down calmly I felt just fine, but as soon as I got up and walked around or tried to do something, or take care of a customer, I found myself very short on breath. It is a problem I have dealt with before, and is triggered by stress—emotional, physical or allergy. Right now is my high allergy season with the oaks pollenating, and evidentially it is affecting me a little differently this year. So I am learning to take life calmly—don’t get too excited, too upset, don’t rush—point blank don’t be me. Ha! Ha!
One of the things I found to do on the computer was to search out tarps for the lean-to barn dining room where we would be hosting our Pizza Dinner. The weatherman forecasted rain for the event and we wanted to eat in the barn and not in the Poultry kitchen like we did for the Winter Farm to Table Dinner. The Barn lean-to would allow our chef’s to set up out of the rain, and give everyone the chance to watch them cook the pizzas—but the last hurricane took down two of the tarps in the area where the dinner preparations would be and the area where the tables sit never had any protection. So my job was to figure out what size tarps to order and what kind. Mama and Papa did help me figure out the size of the tarps—but then I had to search and search to find the right kind. How thankful I am for reviews on Amazon products for they helped me to find the right quality of tarp. I needed two heavy duty silver tarps for the cooking side and three heavy duty clear tarps for the dining area—and there were tons of choices. I finally found what seemed to be the best and got them ordered. They started arriving on Wednesday and Papa spent Thursday and Friday putting up the tarps.
While I was lying low—Steve and Mama worked on weeding (Steve in the Cottage Garden and Mama in the courtyard). Papa worked on fixing the hot-wire fence along the property line. Then a couple showed up to look at the sheep because they were interested in buying two ewe lambs—they came back Tuesday to pick them up.
Tuesday found me feeling better, not perfect, but well enough to head out to the Market Garden to transplant some lettuce—but before I headed to the garden I had to bottle the kefir, and when I got back from the garden I had to finish making the yogurt. Then there were eggs to package and veggies to harvest before I cooked dinner and made the receipts for the Jacksonville order.
Rain or shine cows still get milked; chickens, dogs and sheep still get fed; and we do our best to stay dry—but sometimes we get soaked too. Wednesday morning found us doing chores in the rain, but thankfully it let up when the packing needed to be done. Packing is a little different of late. Instead of Papa going to town every Tuesday to spend $40 on ice, we decided to pay a one lump sum of $1800 and get free ice for the rest of our lives (well, maybe). We bought an ice machine! It makes tons of ice and has a storage unit that holds over 400 pounds of ice. Now Papa doesn’t have to do any late night trips to town to get ice because he was too busy all day to go to town.
Mama didn’t feel too great on Thursday, but she used her down time to make some spring floral arrangements. We are very slowly taking down our Winter Décor and replacing it with our Spring Décor. I had to spend some time figuring out if we had any heifers for sale—and which ones we would be willing to part with, while still having plenty to grow our herd. We have people asking for heifers and milk cows all the time. We do not sell our milk cows—I think that our customers would shoot us if we sold any cows that were producing milk since we are so low on milk. We figured out that we could part with four of them—and we already have buyers for about three of them. Once I got the heifer paperwork figured out I had some “shopping” to do. Brett and Jenni (the pizza chef’s) had sent us their “grocery” list of items that they needed for the Pizza Dinner. I had to gather lamb, chicken, lime juice, and lemon juice from the freezer; kombucha, carrots, milk, yogurt, and eggs from the cooler. Then I had to go to the garden to harvest Spinach, Parsley, Thyme, Winter Savory, Chard, Kale, Green Onions, and lettuce.
Papa asked the refrigerator mechanic to come over to talk about the cooling unit for the freezer/cooler and the plans for the new freezer/cooler combo. He told us that our current freezer/cooler was in perfect condition and that it would be a shame to tear it down. So that meant that we needed to go back to the drawing board. Keeping our walk-in unit would save us a lot of money. Since it is not big enough we decided to turn our current walk-in to 100% freezer, and then we would buy a new unit to be our walk-in cooler. This change also opened up more space which meant we needed to rearrange the Milk house, storage room and bathroom. Then our builder said that it would be more efficient to build a 30 x 48 foot building instead of a 30 x 40 foot building—so of course that meant back to the drawing board again. The delays and ideas are very helpful for they help us to figure out just what we need and don’t need.
Friday found us mowing, hanging tarps, cleaning, and making yogurt and kombucha, in order to get ready for the Pizza Dinner Saturday night. Come Saturday we just had to wash down the tables, get all the dishes and glasses ready, set the tables and wash all the lettuce for the salad. I was going to pick chamomile flowers for the table bouquets but to my dismay they were all closed up when I went to pick them. I am forbidden to use the narcissus in the garden—which is in full bloom, but has a very pungent smell (which is why I cannot use them). So I decided to have bouquets of parsley. The parsley patch is so lush and I just knew that they would make lovely centerpieces—and I could dry them when the dinner was over. At 4:00 our first dinner guests arrived (some of our building team for the new project). They came early to talk about the building. The chefs arrived around 4:30 and the rest of the guests arrived at 6:00. We started with a fresh garden salad and bruschetta—made form fresh sourdough bread topped with fresh tomatoes and balsamic vinegar. Then they brought out five different flavored pizzas—one at a time. There was Classic Margherita, Green’s and Garlic, Chicken Florentine, Greek Lamb, and Off-White (lots of cheeses). Then for dessert they served cannolis stuffed with fresh ricotta cheese made from our milk and sprinkled with pistachios crumbs. The food was so scrumptious, and the fellowship was sweet.
We are now suffering from Time change and are ready to go to bed. We went to bed last night old time 10:00, new time 11:00—but we got up this morning at old time 4:00, new time 5:00. It is now new time 10:40 and Mama must edit this before I can send it and we can go to bed. So I hope that you have a wonderful week.
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare