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Hi Everyone,
Okay, I do not care what anyone says—winter arrived last week. If you do not believe me, just go outside and look into the sky and listen for a little while—the Sandhill cranes are flying south. I can only find two places to truly get warm—the sewing room and the milk house (both because they have their own little heaters in them). The house is cold, the milking parlor is cold, the garden is cold—I am ready for summer!
Winter Preparations
The weather website said that it was supposed to get down to 36 degrees on Tuesday night—at that temperature we could get a pretty heavy frost. Therefore, we had to prepare the garden for a possible frost. As soon as the milking was done on Monday Steve, Mom and I headed to the garden. Mom and Steve harvested the calyxes off of the Roselle hibiscus, and I harvested the lemongrass. We shall have plenty of herbs to have lots of hot cups of tea—or even cold glasses of herbal punch. After lunch Papa helped us put the greenhouse plastic back on top of the caterpillar tunnel.
Tuesday morning Sue and Leo came over to help in the garden. Leo worked at weeding the beds in the tunnel and then he weeded around the outside edges of the caterpillar tunnel. Sue saw that the kale and bok choy were on the lush and abundance side so she harvested half of each so that we could sell them to our customers in Jacksonville on Wednesday. After lunch Steve, Mom and I sat on the front porch separating the red flesh of the calyx from the seed pod so that we could put them on the dehydrator. As we sat on the porch we could feel the temperature dropping very quickly. My piano student arrived at 3:30, and while her Mom and sister waited for her they talked with the turkeys. It is very easy to carry on a conversation with a turkey. You can gobble—and they will gobble back. Then when you laugh—they will gobble again. You can keep this up for quite some time, and the turkeys do not get tired of it.
New Calves here—and on the way!
Wednesday morning dawned windy and cold. Those north winds can be brutal when the temperatures are in the 30’s or 40’s or 50’s—and if it is blowing when the temperature drops into the 20’s I would rather be a bear and be found hibernating with a good book in front of the fireplace—but we are privileged to be farmers, and those cows must be milked every day of the week—rain or shine, hot or cold. So we grabbed the extra warm jackets, ear muffs, turtlenecks, heavy jumpers, wool socks, and insulated boots—you cannot wear gloves while you milk, so thankfully the udder of the cow is warm. The worst part is that rain makes mud, and then the cows need a bath before we can milk them. We are in need of a large concrete pad around the milking parlor—along with a concrete floor in the milking parlors (because the wooden one is rotting out). Why do “needs” have to cost so much? We have had two new calves in the last few weeks, of which we are very grateful. Sunshine had a little bull that we named Sundance—and we plan to raise him up for a replacement bull. Then last Monday Ellie Mae came up with all the milk cows to eat her breakfast, and as soon as she stepped foot into the waiting area she gave birth to a little heifer. We always try to name the calf in a way that we know who the mother is. Ellie Mae’s last four calves have been heifers, and after Emma, Ella, and Mabel I was out of matching names. Mom came to the rescue with Macy. In a week or two Decci should give birth to her first calf. I am hoping for a girl, and since it is around Thanksgiving, I want to name her Merci—French for Thank You. Right now we have 25 cows that come into the milking parlor every morning—twelve of them we milk, one is a bull, and the others just get fed for they are waiting to calve. Six of them are first time heifers waiting to get bred, or are bred and are getting fed well for the next nine months. Three of them we are still working hard to get used to coming in to the milking parlor to eat. So—milking doesn’t get done in less than ninety minutes. That isn’t bad when the weather is nice—but when the cold north winds blow you cannot wait to get back inside.
Hibernating
Come Thursday the sun was gone and the temperatures refused to get out of the 50’s. It had rained all night and we were blessed to get almost 5 inches of rain—we have been dry for so long. We got the milking done, and then we bottled the milk and helped Moises wash up the milking equipment. After lunch we hibernated in the house. It was misty rain all day, and although Papa needed to plant winter grass seed and Mom and I needed to prep a garden bed for the Vidalia onions—we all stayed inside. We spent our afternoon on the computer and the phone—being the best detectives that we could be. My brother Charles left the beginning of September to head to Washington State to be a part of a 30 Day Survival Challenge. He didn’t have very many details about the Challenge, and didn’t know the name of the company. He only found out about it two weeks before he took his trek west. Most everyone that knew him tried to talk him out of it—but to no avail. So we decided to give him two months—long enough to finish the 30 day challenge, and then if we didn’t hear from him, we would look into it. Well—there was no 30 day challenge going on in Omak, Washington (which happens to be a very small town in the middle of nowhere). Someone had their phone GPS hooked up to his phone GPS and while Charles said he was going to Omak, WA, and his last Facebook post said that he was in Ellensburg, WA waiting for a bus to take him to Omak—a few days later the GPS said that he was in Anchorage, Alaska. When asked why he was there—he gave no answer. When called—his phone was dead. We called Police offices, survival TV reality shows, bosses, friends, family—and no one can figure out where he is or why. Ever since Charles was a little boy he has been fascinated with living in the woods. For the last few years he has dreamed of walking the whole Appalachian Trail. So when the possibility of a 30 day survival challenge came up—I guess he was thrilled. What we don’t know is if the Challenge was a scam to get Charles in the wrong place at the wrong time, or if it was Charles idea to go live in the wilderness of Alaska we do not know. My sister was living with him at the time he left, and she said that he had spent two weeks talking with someone about the challenge—I just wish that we knew who.
Friday’s weather was no different than Thursday’s, but we did manage to get some things done. While Papa braved the elements to plant some winter grass seed, Mom and I hibernated inside. Mom canned some dried beans and I made kombucha and yogurt. Then I headed upstairs to the sewing room. It has been a good nine months or more since I last sewed—and the first thing I had to do was evict some unwanted guests. Spiders do seem to find themselves homes everywhere that they are not welcome. I vacuumed the floors, and rearranged one whole side of the room so that we could use the table again.
716 Onion Plants
Saturday was still misty with gray skies and cold. We milked the cows and then while Mom and Papa bottled the milk, I bottled the kefir. Then I packed the orders and Mom and I headed to the garden to harvest some bok choy and kale for the Gainesville orders. Once the receipts were all printed and Papa was heading to Gainesville, Mom and I rested a wee little bit and then we HAD TO BRAVE THE ELEMENTS and go outside to plant the onions. A month ago we planted 310 yellow onions, and now we had 5 bundles of Vidalia onion starts. First we had to go down to the chicken house and get some well composted chicken manure and wood chips—for onions like chicken manure. Mom shoveled it into the back of the Gravely and then once we got it to the garden she shoveled it into the wheelbarrow. Next she coated the garden bed with it and I broadforked it in. Once it was all leveled off, Mom ran the gridder down the row and we planted the onions—and we planted the onions, and prepared another bed, and planted the onions, and planted the onions and prepared another bed and planted more onions. In the end we counted up 406 onions. Now we sit back and wait till May to see how they turn out—well we don’t sit back completely, for we must keep them weeded or they will not grow big. Now the bulk of the heavy planting is done until February when it will be time to plant the white Irish potatoes.
This week will find us harvesting the last of the fall harvests—sweet potatoes and turkeys. We have lots and lots of sweet potato vines; I just hope that we can find lots of sweet potatoes. I already know that the rats have been busy making tunnels in the mounds—so hopefully they didn’t eat them all. We shall see tomorrow……….and I will tell you all about it next week.
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare