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Hi Everyone,
In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, He also created the sun, moon and stars. Each has its purpose, and each does its purpose perfectly—and always will until God calls it to an end. One of the unique purposes of the sun is that it gives us light by day—and when it disappears from our sight, it is night. For thousands of years the sun has marked days, and the moon has marked months. You went to bed when the sun went to bed, and you got up when the sun got up. The time of day was determined by a sundial—of which I would love to have a real working sundial in the garden. Then someone invented the clock. Then someone invented electricity. Then man decided to play around with the clock—and they invented Daylight Savings Time. Now twice a year most of us lose and hour in the spring and gain an hour in the fall. Some states just stick to one time, and Florida is planning to do the same someday. For those that live in the city and work in town I can understand the idea of them liking Daylight Savings Time best. In the summer it gets dark a little after 9:00—so they have plenty of time to do things outside after work. My Papa on the other hand would love it if it got dark at 8:00 in the summer—because he cannot go to bed until the chickens are locked up for the night. Chickens do not go to bed until it gets dark, and since we have free ranging chickens—and chickens cannot be herded like geese and ducks, he cannot lock them up until after 9:00 in the summer. Therefore Papa was glad when the sun started setting earlier. There is also the other side of the day though—morning. Not everyone knows that it actually begins around 6:00 a.m.—but farmers do, and children who have to catch the bus for school do. If you remember, before the clocks where changed back last Sunday, the sun was coming up after 7:30. The sun naturally comes up a little later every day until we reach the shortest day of the year, then it reverses to come up a little earlier every day. If we stay on Daylight Savings time all year, then in the dead of winter the sun will not come up before 8:30. To me, if a state wants to not change the clock back and forth—that is great—but please do not leave us in Daylight Savings time. God naturally designed the summer days to be long and the winter days to be short, but when man starts messing with the clock—things do not work so smoothly. That is exactly how our week began—not so smoothly.
What time is it?
Sunday morning when we came in from milking the cows, Mom looked at the clock and it said that it was 9:00. She thought that we had to leave in 30 minutes in order for me to get to church on time to play the piano. Then my sister called and told us that it was only 8:00—we didn’t have to rush anymore. Monday morning Papa’s alarm went off and when he looked at his clock that has a light to it—it said that it was 6:00. So he and Mom got up, made their bed, got dressed for the day and read the Bible together. When they were done, they noticed that it was still pretty dark outside. Papa went over to see what time it was, and the mantle clock read 6:00. Papa had not changed the time on his flashlight clock, and he had forgotten to change his alarm clock from Sunday’s 5:00 to Monday’s 6:00 Rise and Shine time. So Papa and Mom took an early morning nap on the sofa. Tuesday afternoon we were working out in the garden, and when we checked the time it said 1:45. Mom said that the clock had not been changed back, so it was only 12:45—and we kept working. An hour later we came inside and I was making yogurt and Mom was fixing lunch. I looked at the clock and it read 3:00, after some thought I realized that I had changed that clock and so it really was 3:00. YIKES! I had 30 minutes to make the yogurt and fix and eat my lunch before I needed to be teaching piano lessons at 3:30. Later we asked Papa if he had changed the clock on the Gravely—and he had. Therefore, it really was 1:45 when I checked the clock in the garden. By Wednesday all the clocks were fixed and we were on time again. Getting things done at the right time was not our only problem with the time change—on Monday not a one of us felt like doing anything. How did an extra hour of time equate to feeling like we had lost 20 hours of sleep. Everyone—Papa, Mom, Steve, Moises and I would have all been happy to have found a hammock hanging between two trees with a sign that read “Come and Sleep a Spell”. We did manage to get our work done—but I think that it was all in slow motion.
Moving Day
When we finished milking the cows on Tuesday morning, we bottled the milk and the kefir and then we headed to the garden. I have lots of wildflower seeds and other winter sown flower seeds that need to be planted—and I needed to find beds to plant them in. Sometimes when we plant something, we think that it is permanent, but I have been learning from friends and gardeners that if you do not like a plant in one spot, then dig it up and move it. When we first started planting roses in the garden we spaced them out. One 30 foot bed I wanted to turn into a rose garden—so I planted four roses in it. Then I saw a ladies rose garden and I realized that it looks so much better when the roses rub elbows, and mingle with other of different colors. Now I am on a quest for more roses—for I want to fill that 30 foot long bed with roses (easy care, old-fashioned, good smelling roses). Another garden area had three little roses all spaced out down the middle of two beds. They were short, so it was hard to plant any big plants in the beds for they would swallow up the roses. So I decided to dig up two of the roses and group them around the other rose—filling up one bed. The now empty bed I would plant with wildflower seeds. First we had to weed the two beds, and then we had to fill them up with fresh compost. When we dug up one of the rose bushes, we found out that it was actually two rose bushes. We separated them and planted them with the one rose. The fourth rose bush we dug up and took it over to the 30 foot bed and planted it in the same bed with my rose called “Poet’s Wife”—a pale yellow with the most intoxicating smell. Next we dug up another rose called “Rose At Last” –an apricot rose, and transplanted it also to the “Poet’s Wife” bed. Now we sit back and wait for them to grow big and bushy—like next spring and summer. Right now all the roses in the garden are blooming—and they are breath taking, by sight and smell.
Recipes
Wednesday afternoon I spent at the computer typing. For a couple of months I have wanted a recipe page on our website. The page got made a month ago—but I forgot all about it. I want to post a recipe a month, but things don’t happen unless you take the time to actually do it. Thankfully I already had all the pictures that I needed for the recipe blog entry—I just needed all the words. After a few hours of working on it a little here and there, I finally finished it and was able to post it and send it on its way. The first recipe for the blog was Fried Apples and Oatmeal. One night I made Fried apples for dinner and we put them on top of yogurt and sprinkled nuts on top. Yum! Yum!
Time to MOO-ve on
Thursday Mom and I spent the day moving animals around. Penelope’s calves were ready to be weaned, the yearlings needed more grass to eat, the older heifers were around two and needed to be moved in with the milking herd so that they could hang out with the bull, and Yasha needed a different job. Moving the yearlings to new pasture was the easiest—all we had to do was open the gate, go do something else, and come back later and shut the gate behind them. Penelope’s calves were a different story. Two of them needed to be caught and ear tagged so that as they grow up we know who they are. Bonnie was easy to catch, but Polly gave us a run for our money. Papa finally got her cornered, and Mom was able to tag her. Later when we came back to move them to a new field, we had to run them all over the place to get them into the sheep barn in order to get them out the gate. The weeds in the area that they were in were about four feet tall, and chasing them through those weeds was not easy. I was so grateful for the Lord’s protection when I came upon a 5 inch diameter wasp nest on the top of one of those weeds. Once we got them out of the sheep barn, we took them down the lane and into the back field. The idea was to put them in the back corner field where the winter hay barn is—but getting three wild calves to see a twelve foot opening in the middle of two acres is a little difficult. For a little while they all ran from one end of the field to the other. Then two got near the opening, which is right beside the poultry barn compost yard. Some of the chickens were running around in the field and one of the calves went over to investigate one of them. That chicken led Ava and Bonnie—who was following Ava, right through the opening and into the field where we needed them to go. That left Polly running around by herself. After a few more trips up and down the field, Ava and Bonnie were starting to come back out of the back field and Polly saw them and joined them—and we closed the gate.
Moving the two year old heifers wasn’t hard either—we just opened the wires and they headed down the lane and ended up outside the wire where the milk cows were. So we opened the wires and let them in. Jenny is a little over two years old, and America and Ella will be two in January. Friday morning I got to do the very thing that I have waited two years for—I got to say, “Good morning America!” as America came into the milking parlor to eat. To my delight she is one of the easiest cows that we have trained. She came right into the stall with very little coaxing. Ella on the other hand won’t even look at the bucket of alfalfa pellets. We now have seven heifers that we have added to the milking herd. One was put in there nine months ago—and Miss Decci is due with her calf this week.
Growing Up
Yasha is our newest guardian dog. She is a Great Pyrenees. In the past we have put the dogs out to pasture when they are two to three months old and make them bond with the animals instead of people. In the end, we ended up with an aggressive dog. So when we got Sheba, I raised her in the back yard until she was about six months old and I socialized her with everyone that came to the farm. We put her with sheep first—but she was too playful with them that if we didn’t remove her she would become a predator instead of a guard dog. We put her in with Jill and the chickens, and she has been a great chicken guardian ever since—and she is very sweet with everyone. When we got Yasha, we decided to train her the same way—but we really want her to guard the sheep. Yasha means to “make secure,” and it is my prayer that she will live up to her name. We were not ready to put Yasha in with the sheep, but she needed to get out of her kennel. So we put her out to guard the turkeys by day, but I locked her in her kennel by night. She was doing great—until last Sunday. It all started when the chickens were moved into the field beside the turkeys. Some chickens would come over to visit the turkeys and Yasha would chase them back to the chicken side—where Sheba and Jill would greet her. Then the chickens were moved to a different field, and a few must have hid in the woods, for they got left behind. Looking for food they came over to the turkey side and Yasha would chase them off. Without having Sheba and Jill to keep her in check, one day Yasha caught one of the chickens and I found her giving it a good mouthing. The next day we caught the chickens and took them back to the chicken house. One came back, and we had to catch it again the next day. Then last Sunday night when I went to bring her in for the night I found some blood on her shoulder. I then went and checked the turkeys and sure enough, one had its back all tore up. If the turkeys were not to be eaten for Thanksgiving, we might have been willing to spend time training her to leave them alone—but we cannot afford to have too many dog toothed turkeys. So, Yasha spent most of the week in her kennel—digging holes. On Thursday Mom decided that it was time to try Yasha out with the sheep. We went and got Jill—who was raised to guard goats, and is old and set in her ways. Mom had Jill on a leash and I had Yasha on a leash. We walked them up to the sheep and then we let them off of their leash. Yasha was so ecstatic to have another dog to play with that she eagerly ran over to greet Jill. After a few sniffs, Jill quickly told Yasha that she was boss and Yasha came running back with a bloody lip yelping all the way. She sat down on Mom’s feet hiding behind her skirts. We felt sorry for her, but she had learned her lesson. After we left, Yasha could be seen following Jill at a safe distance. Jill has found a hole to sleep in, and Yasha can be found sitting beside it guarding Jill. So far she is leaving the sheep alone—which is very good.
Grab your coats, winter is coming!
Friday was a cloudy, rainy, chilly fall day. We decided it was a good day to go through our wardrobes to see what we have and what we need to stay warm all winter. Thankfully we found that we had more than we thought we had, and didn’t need as much as we thought. I do need to do some sewing though, some mending, and we need to order a few new things—like Mom needs some new boots to keep her feet warm in the winter. I call them moon boots. Speaking of boots—they are my hardest thing to get ready for the winter. I hate spiders—well most spiders. I didn’t mind “Charlotte” (a banana spider) who had a nice big web above the feeding trough in one of my milking stalls. We would gather a bunch of flies off of the cows back and throw them in her web and watch her come and eat them for breakfast. Back in September we found her dead one morning—it was sad. From the looks of it, she took a good section of her web and laid a bunch of eggs and hung them in the rafters of the milking parlor. Maybe we shall have another “Charlotte” next summer. Anyway, as one intern said about our spiders here on the farm—we have some wickedly ugly chocolate brown spiders that live in too many places in our garage. Therefore, I refuse to leave my shoes outside. I store them in the laundry room. Once winter is over I usually cover my shoes with a pair of socks to keep spiders from moving in. Last year I forgot, and although I had a pair of socks in the bottom of my boots, when I went to put them on last week I found that one of those wicked spiders had taken up residence in my boot. Thanks to Papa, he found his way out of my boot.
Planning for the Future
Saturday afternoon Mom and I headed outside to the green house and we replanted winter savory and horehound—which were refusing to sprout from the last planting. Then Mom transplanted the thyme which was growing with leaps and bounds. Next we planted a whole tray (72 cells) of lettuce—six different kinds. Finally I planted two and half trays of flowers so that we can have flowers come spring. There are snapdragons, California poppies, Forget-me-nots, Shasta daisies, baby’s breath, and cornflower. Now we water and wait.
The weather is supposed to be pretty cold some this week—with possibilities of frost. Therefore, we shall be harvesting the Roselle and lemon grass this week. Mom says that the caterpillar tunnel needs its cover put on it, so it sounds like we shall be busy.
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare