273
Hi Everyone,
“One potato, two potatoes, three potatoes, four. Five potatoes, six potatoes, seven potatoes, more.” That is how we spent our Monday—counting sweet potato vines. Actually, that is what we did at the end of the day. As soon as milking was done, Mom jumped on the lawn mower, and spent her day going round and round in the yard. Steve and I headed to the garden where it was hot and humid. Every once in a while we got a breeze—and for some reason at the end of the day when we were cleaning up the clouds rolled in, the wind began to blow, and the temps dropped nicely. The temperature was in the 100’s most of the day. The chore for the day was to plant two rows of white sweet potatoes—our new favorite food. We had never heard of a white sweet potato until we harvested them out of the garden last year. I had ordered red sweet potato slips, and they came and we planted them in May. When November rolled around and we began to harvest the sweet potatoes we were greatly discouraged to unearth white ones. Talk about taking the joy out of harvesting! That was until we tasted them—and then we were in love. So this year we planted two rows of red sweet potatoes and two rows of white sweet potatoes. I had to order slips for the red ones, but we missed harvesting so many sweet potatoes last year, that we had plenty of vines to cut up and transplant into rows. An old-time farmer taught me to plant my sweet potatoes around July 4th, and to cut the vines two feet long, make a U out of them, and bury them about 6 to 8 inches deep. It works every time! I just need to go get a refresher on when to plant some old sweet potatoes in order to get enough vines to cut for starters. You always keep some potatoes from the last year’s crop in order to propagate this year’s crop. Back in March I had mapped out on paper just where I wanted to plant all of our crops, and by July 1 everything was planted but the white sweet potatoes and the Roselle Hibiscus. So, on Monday Steve and I first weeded the bed, and then Steve ran the tiller through it a good three to four times. Then we pulled out all the weeds and grass that we had tilled under. I was wishing that we had hand weeded everything before he had tilled. It seemed that we were constantly unearthing another pile of weeds and grass. After we leveled off the area, then I put in two metal stakes about 27 feet apart. I attached some orange hay rope to them to mark a straight row. Then Steve and I both grabbed a shovel and went down either side of the string throwing shovels full of dirt under the string to make a mound. Then I raked up the sides, and we shoveled another row of dirt, and I raked up the sides again. Once our mound was high enough, I ran the rake down the middle of it to flatten out the peak. I went and cut me some sweet potato vines and spaced them a foot apart, and then buried them about 6 inches in the top of the mound. Once all the aerobics (shoveling dirt), deep knee bends (pulling out another pile of weeds, or planting the vines), and sweating in the heat was over, then the easy part began—just add water and watch them grow!
Tuesday always seems to be the busiest day of the week. I do not know why, but it just seems to get the most things packed into its 12 to 14 hours of busyness. Mom and I got the milking done with Moises’ help and then Steve and I bottled the milk. Mom headed to the garden to mow, and Steve followed once the milk was bottled. I bottled up the kefir, and then I headed to the garden. I had four pots of Roselle to plant at the end of the bed where the white sweet potatoes are planted. In the past I have prepared a section of ground in April, and dropped some Roselle seeds right into the ground. For the most part, they do come up—but the weeds always seem to take over and we have to do some serious searching, saving, and weeding in order for them to grow into their nice big Roselle bushes. This year I tried something different. I grabbed about six pots, filled them with compost, planted three seeds in each pot and placed them in the shade on the rubber walkways in the raised bed garden. That way the sprinklers that are ran by a timer would keep them watered, and no weeds would over grow them. I had perfect success. The plants were a good two feet tall when we planted them in the ground on Tuesday. They will not have to be competing with weeds this year. I wish you could see this garden bed. Every square inch is used. The “front door” leads down a 4 foot path into a corridor of trellises centered in the middle of the bed where cucumbers, Christmas lima beans, yard long beans, watermelon and Everglade tomatoes are growing upwards instead of sprawling all over the ground. Along that corridor between the trellises are growing orange cosmos. On either side of the “front door” are zinnias in all their glory. The space between the trellises and the side of the garden bed are where the sweet potato rows are (about 4 feet wide of space that will soon be completely covered with sweet potato vines). At the end of the trellis corridor is the row of Roselle Hibiscus—and they get a good 6 to 7 feet tall and about 4 to 5 feet wide. So, when everything is full grown I do not know how we shall harvest both sides of the tomato trellis or pick all the Roselle. O well, that is a question for another day.
Once the Roselle’s were planted it was time for lunch. Then we had an egg party. I left the egg party at 4:45 and headed to town to buy some groceries—we only had a teaspoon of butter in the house and a roll or two of toilet paper, not to mention we had no fruit or vinegar for our laundry (our natural fabric softener which also helps get the soap out). While in town I stopped by Hobby Lobby to see if they had any decent looking fake red geraniums. We had bought some real ones to decorate the dining room table with—but we soon found out that the pebble rocks that Mom put on top of the dirt caused it to retain moisture, and Geraniums do not like wet feet. Once they started to turn yellow we removed the rocks so that they could dry out, but it was too late—they died instead. Well, two died, and one Mom planted outside in the courtyard in hopes that it will perk back up before it dies too. So, I was on the lookout for some fake geranium flowers that would look nice and not—well, fake. I finally found some, and a few days later Mom was able to turn the two flower batches that I bought into three nice looking “potted” plants. While it only took me 15 minutes in Hobby Lobby, I was surprised to find myself coming out of Publix almost an hour later. When you are out of everything, I guess the clock ticks real fast. I was hoping to only spend an hour in town—for I wanted to be home by 6:00 so that I could cook dinner. I got home at 6:45 and while Mom put away the groceries, I made a big salad, fried up some chicken strips and cooked some maple sweetened taco spicy kidney bean to go on top of the salad. Once dinner was over, I had all the Jacksonville orders and receipts to make for the following days delivery.
Our Independence Day was spent relaxing. Poor Mom was sick with a cold, but thankfully she could help me milk the cows. Then Moises helped me bottle the milk, and I helped him wash up all the equipment so that he could get home early and we could sit back and relax while we enjoyed the festivities in Washington, D.C. from the air-conditioned comfort of our living room. How grateful I am for people who down through the years have given their all to make a nation that stands for liberty and justice for all.
Friday was another chicken processing day. We milked the cows, bottled the milk and the kefir, and then we broke for lunch. After lunch we set up to process—and spent the rest of the day getting the chickens ready for the freezer. Our new poultry kitchen is working out really nice for us. It will be even nicer when we can have the money to buy all the sinks and tables so that we do not have to keep robbing Peter (the milk house table) to pay Paul (to be used in the poultry kitchen). There is one thing that we haven’t figured out yet though—and that is how to stay dry. I never got wet when we processed on the side walk outside the milk house or on the concrete in front of the garage. We end up soaked in the poultry kitchen though. One thing we didn’t have outside was overhead spray nozzles. We only had one hose nozzle that everyone had to share. I like the extra water for cleanliness—but while it is nice to be wet in the heat of summer, I do not believe that we shall like it in the cold of winter. The new sink tables will be nice when we get them, because they will have sides that prevent the water from running off the table and onto us. Then again those sprayers have some nice water flow, and the mist gets you wet very quickly if you turn it on to hard (like I am prone to do-just ask Mom who gets wet from me). I know that edged tables will help, and I am sure that somewhere we can find the perfect waterproof aprons. Until then—we shall stay cool in the summer heat and humidity!
Saturday was another busy day—though we all wanted a relaxing day. We milked the cows then while Mom bottled the milk I packed the Gainesville order and ran out to the garden to harvest some yard long beans for the orders. Then I made a kefir shake to drink while I finished the receipts. After a little while my brother David and his birth mother (he is adopted and just recently has found his birth parents)showed up to borrow the air hose to see if he could fix a leak in his cars air conditioner. I had to do some more harvesting in the garden, and asked his Mom if she would like to join me. It was nice getting to know her a little better and to share a little about her children’s childhood that she missed out on. There was okra, beans, acorn squash, spaghetti squash, lemon yellow squash and tiny Everglade tomatoes to harvest. After they left Mom and I headed to the Poultry Kitchen to package all the chickens. That only took an hour, and then I got to practice my piano a little before it was time to cook dinner.
Saturday morning’s milking did not start out very smoothly. When Moises went to turn on the milking machine it didn’t work. A few weeks ago we had that problem, because the ants had destroyed the outlet. The lights still worked though, and an extension cord fixed the problem until Papa could replace the outlet later that day. This time though, we had no lights and the extension cord plugged into another outlet wasn’t working. We called Papa out of the field to fix our problem—but alas all he could do was drag the extension cord into the Poultry kitchen where it did work and the milk machine roared away. The day before, just as we finished processing the last chickens, the outlets quit working in half of the building—the plucker didn’t work and our big fan turned off. So, since we had two electrical problems, we called our friends the Cranes, who had done the electrical work for us. They gladly jumped in their car, and drove the hour and a half our way to “fix” the problem. Now may I quickly say that it does everyone some good to have a little bit of electrical schooling! The problems were fixed in two minutes. The milking parlor has a GFI outlet—and the rains from the night before had gotten it wet and tripped it. We didn’t realize that all we had to do was push the reset button. UGH!!! The poultry kitchen outlet had also gotten wet, and while it tripped the breaker, we couldn’t get it to stay flipped on—because we didn’t unplug the wet cord. The nice thing—our friends made no complaints that they had just wasted a little over three hours of their day to come and fix our problem that only took a few minutes to have back up and running. I think that they shall do real good in business once they get it started this fall—how many businesses are willing to go out of their way to do a perfect job, and not complain even when it is hard labor, or wasted time?
I hope that you are enjoying your summer—I know that we are, heat and all!
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare