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Hi Everyone,
It finally happened! We got our first snow of the year—that is Florida snow as our Pastor’s wife calls it. I have seen the pictures from up north, and I have seen the videos of farmers who deal with feet of snow—and I am content to only have to deal with “Florida Snow”—aka frost! Tuesday morning when we woke up the ground was all white, and it was 28 degrees outside. It was a beautiful sight to behold, but it was awful cold to be outside milking cows or riding around in the open tractor. I was thankful that the cold temps were not accompanied by bitter northerly winds. For the next three days we found the ground covered in frost every morning—thankfully it warmed up every day to at least the 60’s. It definitely made all the grass turn brown, and the animals are now on hay. We are praying for rain so that the winter rye grass can grow and the animals will once again have green grass to eat. It seems strange to say that we are in a drought—when we have had almost 43 inches of rain this year, and Arizona only gets 12 inches of rain a year. Since Florida usually gets from 55 to 60 inches of rain a year—I guess you can say that we are 10 to 15 inches of rain short. While some people have been under water for most of the year, we have been high and a little too dry. The winter rye grass is sprouting, but without rain it will die. No green grass in the winter means more hay, and less milk.
A Surprise in the Pasture
Speaking of milk though—I was tickled pink the other night as I walked out to the garden to harvest some vegetables for dinner. The cows are on their winter hay field now, so in order to get to the garden I have to walk through their field. I came up on the backside of one of our oldest cows, Amy, and I noticed that she was starting to bag up. Amy has not calved since October of 2017, and she is now 13 years old. She was on our list to sell (because she hadn’t bred back, and because she is an A1/A2 gene cow)—but last March the bull paid her some special attention and we marked the calendar in hopes that she would end up pregnant. Her due date is January 1st. By the looks of her bag, and the fact that she is getting a little floppy in the bottom, I think that she shall be right on schedule. It is really exciting when you think that a cow is done, and she ends up giving you another calf. Amy has always been an excellent milker, and she has never had a problem with mastitis. A good portion of our herd has her bloodline. While Amy carries the A1/A2 gene, most of her calves are born carrying the A2/A2 gene—because our bull is A2/A2. At the beginning of the year Mom had a goal to have a totally A2 herd by the end of the year, but as the year progressed we realized that it would cost us dearly to accomplish that. We sold most of our A1 cows—because they had other problems, but our last three A1 cows are some of our best milkers (Penelope, Lucy, and Amy). Penelope spent most of her year nursing three calves. When they were old enough to be weaned we considered drying Penelope off—but her udder was so big and she was giving a good gallon and a half of milk, we decided to milk her. We thought that when we dried off Lucy, that we would sell her as a bred cow—but then we would only be getting about 8 gallons of milk a day, and we would have to tell too many people that we do not have enough milk to go around. Then of course we thought that Amy was finished—but alas that is not the case. While it is good to set goals, sometimes you have to be willing to accept that the timing to accomplish the goal was not in our timeline. I am sure that one day we shall have a whole herd of A2 dairy cows—but until then, we shall continue to milk the cows that God has blessed us with. While we have a herd of about thirty Jersey milk cows, we did not buy one of them knowing that they carried an A2 gene. The blessing is that of all thirty of them, we only have 3 that carry the A1 gene.
The Wild, Wild West
While we are enjoying all the little calves that are being born lately, we also had the opportunity to sell one of our steers to a family who wanted to stock their freezer. He had to go to the butcher on Tuesday morning, so Monday afternoon Papa, Steve and I had the adventure of a lifetime. We headed up to the cow field where the job was to separate the steer from the herd. He was supposed to be in a separate field with the other steers—but he had escaped. Once he figured out that we wanted him—he became his wild self. Ever since he was little he has been hard to manage. Papa decided to take the whole herd so that we could get him—but while the gate was opened all the sheep left their field and came and joined the cows. Ugh! Telling about 20 cows that they needed to leave the field that they were happy in was not going very smoothly. They just scattered here and there. Then low and behold the steer and another cow headed for the gate and we followed close on their heels. Once we got them out the gate, Papa ran up ahead and ran the second cow back into the field. The steer did not enjoy being by himself, and he took off running. Steve ran to get the Gravely that we had left in the middle of the field, and then we followed after the steer. I stopped at the top of the hill to block the lane back to the herd, while Steve and Papa walked him down the field toward the opening to the lane that goes to the holding pens. The steer didn’t head toward the opening though—but headed off to the other corner. Just as Papa told Steve that the steer was a fence jumper—the steer went up and over the fence. He headed toward the pond, and I knew that if he jumped another fence he would make it back up to the gate that led back to the herd. So I took off running back down the high lane past paddock number one, past paddock number two, and down the two acres of paddock number three. That was the field that the sheep were supposed to be in—but Yasha and Jill were still there. Yasha was doing her share of barking at the steer, so I encouraged her to run with me to deter the steer from coming into that field. There at the bottom of the field stood the steer—eyeballing us. As we got closer, he turned and jumped the fence behind him—a good three feet from a stand still. Papa said that this steer has been jumping fences and panels for ever—maybe I should have learned how to ride him. In my younger years when we had horses, I always dreamed of jumping. I actually had a professional jumper, but I didn’t have any jumps, and shortly afterward my knees got too bad to ride. Anyway, Papa arrived to help get the steer out of that field, and it headed back around the pond. I ran back up the two acre field to move the Gravely out of the way. Once I got to the top of the hill, and back down the lane, the steer had jumped another fence and was coming up my way. Papa was right behind him, and as soon as I got the gravely moved, Papa opened the wires to let the steer out in the right direction. Now we were back to square one—the steer in the last field going down the hill to the open wire that led to the lane that led to the holding pens. He ran up, and down, and up and down. At one point he came to a dead standstill—and I saw that there was a chicken in the middle of the field. I remembered that it was a chicken that led one of the heifers into a pasture that we needed her to go into, so I prayed that God would allow that chicken to lead that steer out of the field—and it did. My biggest fear was that Sheba would scare him away for she had a good case of the jumpies right there on the other side of the fence. After much holding of the breath, the steer made it into the lane and we quickly followed it to close the gate behind him when he got to the holding pen. I am pretty sure that the whole process took a good hour or more. Every once in a while we really could use a good cowboy on horseback—or a good cow dog. We watched a video the other night where two dogs brought six bulls from way out in the pasture up to a trailer and loaded them in it—in the middle of the field. The cowboy just stood on his trailer and gave commands until it was time to close the gates.
Sheer Delight
For years I have not seen the blessings of owning a whole orchard of chestnut trees—for they are the hardest nut to harvest, and not the easiest to sell. Then last year when I was desperate for some leaves to mulch the garlic I found out that the chestnuts shed all of their leaves and gave us six acres of leaves to use to our hearts desire. This year I couldn’t wait to harvest the leaves, and my desire is gather as many as I possibly can. They make great mulch all over the garden, and then in my new garden books I read about making leafmould. Monty Don says that they make it with almost fanatical zeal, gathering as many leaves as they can. I truly understand, for I am like a little kid up there in those leaves—I cannot help but to jump for joy at the abundance of so many leaves. On Tuesday Steve, Mom and I hooked Grandpa’s big trailer behind the truck and headed up to the chestnuts. We all had a rake and we each raked up a huge pile of leaves—in no time flat. Then we laid the tarp beside the pile and we raked the pile onto the tarp. Once it was heaping, we gathered the four corners and dumped it in the trailer. After three loads the trailer was full. We topped it with the tarp and I climbed in and rolled all over it mashing down the leaves. Then we loaded three more piles and called it full. The whole process took about thirty minutes—but not a second more for there are tons of leaves and they rake up quickly. We had gathered our first trailer load, but now we had to figure out where to store it. We contemplated here, and we contemplated there—but no idea was perfect, so we stopped for lunch. After lunch we did more contemplating and we decided to clean up one section of our old blueberry patch—old because all but two or three bushes have died. We grabbed a shovel and dug out the over sized roots of the dog fennel, and then we dug up as much nut grass and coastal grass as we could in a very quick amount of time. Once the area was cleared we covered it with cardboard, put posts in the ground and wrapped it with 2 x 4 inch wire that is 5 feet tall. Then all the leaves were moved from the trailer to the pen—and it was only about a quarter of the way full. On Thursday Papa and I headed back up and gathered another trailer load of leaves. Someone suggested I take pictures—but I forgot my camera. There are tons more leaves for the raking—so maybe I will get a picture after all.
Out with the Old, In with the New
The garden had a good setback with the freezes, and it is time to start cleaning up from the summer flowers and vegetables. Steve and I spent some time on Monday cleaning out all the left behind sweet potato vines, the spent zinnias, everglade tomato plants (that grow as weeds in the garden), and other weeds. Getting the big weeds out went real quick, but getting the small weeds out is more tedious and slow. Steve broadforked it and I pulled up the weeds. We didn’t get finished—but there is always tomorrow. On Saturday we had the privilege of spending the day with my two and half year old nephew—Josiah. After his nap he helped us in the green house. Mom was busy transplanting lettuce from the little seed trays to bigger pots. I transplanted some fig trees to bigger pots, and some Hibiscus flowers. We had some Philippine Petunias coming up from seed in the fig tree pots, so before I transplanted the figs, I transplanted them into their own pots. Josiah helped me put dirt in the pots, and if I used the water—he wanted his hands washed. He also found a feather and dipped it in the mud that I had made and painted the new apple cider vinegar barrel. Now that is true farm art! We ran out of time before we could get all the flowers transplanted into bigger pots—but there is always tomorrow.
Preserving the Harvest
Mom is on a canning kick—and her favorite item to can right now is dried beans. Our local stores no longer carry the Eden brand of organic beans, so she decided that it was time to can our own. It is really very simple. So we spent Friday canning beans. We ended up with three canner loads of beans—navy beans, kidney beans, black beans, and our homegrown Christmas Lima Beans. We had a batch already harvested, but they still needed to be shelled. So we shelled them, and then I headed out to the garden to see if there were any more ready to harvest. I decided to harvest some of the bean pods that had not dried out—because with the freezes I was not sure if they would finish growing. We didn’t can the fresh ones, but cooked up a pot of fresh garlicky Lima beans and they were scrumptious.
Relaxing
I have been blessed lately with finding time to relax and read my new gardening books. I was also blessed with the Prairie Homestead Cookbook by Jill Winger. I just love a cookbook that is more than a cookbook. I love it when they share everyday life in the pages also—a cookbook that shares stories is the best. While most of my reading time is found in the evening, I have to say that the most peaceful time of the day has to be about 5:30 in the morning—at least it is here in the country. I only get to experience on Sunday mornings, and for only a few minutes before we get going milking. This morning when we went outside it was so quiet. There were no cars, no crickets, no frogs, no birds—just an occasional rooster crowing or cow mooing. I tell you if there was a time of “night” that I could sleep in a hammock it would be between 5:00 and 6:00 in the morning. I dislike bugs too much to attempt it all night.
I hope that you have a great week. We have lots to do, but I already know that there is not enough time in our day to do everything that we need to do. I seriously think that we need a few more hours in the day, a few more hours to sleep, and a few more days in the week.
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare