382
Hi Everyone,
This has been one of those weeks that make for great journaling—but a week that you never want to repeat.
Monday morning I took a video of me trying to count calves—there are 12 of them and keeping up with them is a chore. The grasses are waist high and in some places the weeds are over our head, and between the grass and the weeds the calves have plenty of places to hide. I wanted to post the video on Facebook, but alas my camera refuses to upload anything—it says “communication error”. I was hoping it was the USB cable—so I ordered a new one, but had the same problem. I am a little lost now, and camera-less. The camera still takes and stores pictures and videos—but I cannot transfer them to the computer. Anyway, I think that the calves’ favorite game is “Hide and Seek”—but I do not think that they like to be found. Every morning when Papa brings them up he has to count them to make sure that none are left behind in the pasture to get run over by the tractor when Papa moves the shade, and then when we finish milking their mama’s he has to count them again to make sure that none are left in the milking area. Most days it never fails that you hear something like this, “I could only find 9 calves, and can you come help me find the rest?” Then whoever is available heads out to the tall grasses and weeds to join the “search and find” them. Disappearing calves is not the only problem with 12 calves running around—trying to figure out which calf goes to which mama cow is another problem. I told Mom that we need to lock all the calves up overnight, tag their ears with a number, and then let them loose. They will be hungry, and then we just have to walk around and write down the number of the calf beside the name of the mama. Some of the calves have distinct markings that help us to identify which calf is who—but some are just all brown and we can easily get them mixed up. Sugar has two little white stripes on her side and her tail is white, Bonita has a big white patch on her forehead and a white tail, quite a few of them are all brown with a little white dot on their forehead, Liberty is one of those with a white dot on her forehead but she has two distinct characteristics that the others do not have (she is red—not brown, and she has a crooked nose and some stitches). Two of those twelve calves are bulls: one is red (and I call him Mr. Red), and the other is brown and white (and I call him Milkyway). We have seven calves that we do not know who they belong to—five of them have names: Dolly (mama is Sally), Elsa (Ella), Rosetta (Rosepetal), Dimah (Penny) and Melba (Jam), but Sunshine and Jenny’s calves are still nameless.
We made a trip to the Post Office twice last week—once on Wednesday to pick up another batch of 50 broiler chicks (meat chickens), and once on Thursday to pick up 50 turkeys. Yes—Thanksgiving turkeys are here!!!! I want a picture of a turkey standing in someone’s left hand and a chicken in their right hand—so you can see the difference (but I need a camera that will upload pictures first). They are only a day apart in age, but the turkeys are bigger—and they eat a whole lot more too. To help supplement their need for protein we feed the turkey’s kefir—and they literally lick their platter clean.
Six weeks ago we were contacted by Barn2Door to see about using them to open up an online store—it is supposed to make ordering easier for our customers, easier for us (and is supposed to compare to ordering through Amazon). We listened to their “spill” and decided to give it a try. It didn’t take longer than a week for Mom and me to realize that this platform wouldn’t work for us — so we cancelled— and Barn2Door called us up and asked why. I gave them the reasons, and they said okay—but then they called us back with ideas that they thought would help to make their platform work for us. We wanted a private store, we didn’t want anyone to pay for their order until after we verified that we had everything and had the meat weights added to their invoice—but because Barn2Door is set up to pay when you order, we had to set everything as a $0.00 deposit. This caused a lot of headache, and made it hard to use some of the other functions. Then come Tuesday night we had another problem (17 of our customers couldn’t view the online store—so they sent us their order by email). Only 15 people successfully placed an order through Barn2Door. We had half the order online and half the orders on QuickBooks—thankfully all the orders were on a spreadsheet so that we could see what we actually needed to pack. I probably spent 20 hours as a secretary last week dealing with Barn2Door and the problems we were having—and I grew to dislike it heavily. Every time I sat down at the computer I found another area that was just too complicated, and my list of cons was growing rapidly, while my list of pros stayed at “the people have pretty pictures to look at when they place an order.” When I was talking with one customer who was having trouble getting onto the website she asked me, “Why did you decide to do an online store?” The only answer I could give her was, “because all the other farms use online stores.” Talk about a lame excuse! The final straw was when I realized that a customer ordered 3 items by email, but when I asked her to order through the online store she only ordered 1 item. Upon closer investigation I realized that the other two items were “out of stock” on the online inventory—but since we had just processed chickens that day, I had plenty of those items in the freezer. Alas the stress that it was causing brought us to the conclusion that “keeping up with the Joneses” wasn’t for us. The way we have done orders for the last 15 years has been very easy. Our family talked and we decided that an online store is just not for us—sending out a Larder email, and having people email us their orders is very easy, and works very smoothly and efficiently for us. Besides, it is so much more personal to receive orders by email—our customers get to communicate with their farmers, and we get to communicate with our customers.
We managed to head to bed at 10:30 Tuesday night. Mom suggested that I get a shower in the morning—but I told her I couldn’t because since I had spent so much time on Barn2Door I hadn’t had a chance to harvest the zinnias for the deliveries the next day. I planned to head to the garden shortly after I got up at 6:00 in the morning. Mom didn’t have to encourage me too much to just go to bed—but I was so stressed out from dealing with the computer that sleep didn’t come too fast. I decided to set my alarm for 5:45 instead of 6:00. I quickly grabbed a shower, spent a little bit of time in my Bible, and since at 6:30 it was still a little too dark outside I decided to head to the milk house to set up the milking equipment. It was a little after 7:00, when I was able to head to the garden and pick a bucket full of purple, pink, red, orange, and white zinnias. I managed to get back inside in time for breakfast.
The rain came down and the floods came up!!!! On Thursday the clouds rolled in and it rained, and rained, and rained. We ended up with 4 inches of rain—which caused our lane to wash out even more, and created a few extra “ponds” around the farm. The turkeys were at the Post Office, but the brooder house needed to be cleaned out before we could put the turkeys in it—but the manure spreader was full, and before Steve could empty out the brooder Papa had to empty the manure spreader. Papa hooked the manure spreader up to the tractor and headed out to pasture to spread it—but before he got to his destination he had to go around a large water puddle. He decided to go around it on the fence side, but the next thing he knew the tractor fell in a hole and got stuck. In order to get back to the house he had to walk through the water—that thankfully didn’t go over his boots. He called the neighbor to see about using his tractor, and he thankfully said “yes”. I drove Papa over in the golf-cart, so he could drive the neighbor’s tractor home and pull our tractor out of the mud. The next day we processed chickens and when we were all done Papa loaded all the guts and feathers into the tractor bucket and headed down field to bury them in our “compost heap”. It wasn’t long before he was walking up—after he had the waste buried the tractor sunk in the soft dirt. When he tried to back up all he did was spin tires—so he tried to go forward, but then the tractor sunk in the mounds of old hay and muck. He drove over to the neighbor’s house, and he was outside working in the yard. Papa told him, “Thanks for letting me use your tractor yesterday.” The neighbor said, “Sure, any time.” Papa said, “I just set you up—I am stuck again!” They laughed and the neighbor drove his tractor over and pulled our tractor out.
I was grateful that the rains took a break for a few hours from noon to 2:00—because Thursday was the day I had marked on my calendar to plant the multiplying onions. I had thankfully managed to get the bed weeded on Tuesday, so I only had to add compost and wood ash. Once I worked that into the soil I leveled it out, marked the rows and buried 42 little onion bulbs.
Friday afternoon Papa and Mom had to take Liberty back to the vet to get her stitches out (well, most of them). Liberty is so full of life, that you would never realize that she had been injured. Her nose is a little crooked—and boy did she do some big yawning and licking after her stitches came out. The vets are all in love with her and even teased that they needed to hospitalize her for a while so that they could get all the calf love that they could. They say that she is their favorite patient right now—all they usually deal with are horses.
Saturday morning I was fixing to milk my last cow. I called Jenny, and she was coming—but just as she got to the gate another cow decided to leave, and she kicked over the poop bucket right in front of Jenny. The confusion that followed caused Jenny to turn around and leave. I called and called, Papa tried to direct her back in—but the chase was on! You may remember the story of “Jenny” from last spring when Papa jumped fences, chased her down, roped her, and drug her back to the milking parlor—well, this is that Jenny. Every time Jenny came to a fence—she didn’t turn, but went right through it. Thirty minutes later she had torn out all the hotwire around the milking parlor—and we never did catch her. It was noon and Papa looked at Mom and told her that she was going to have to make the Gainesville delivery—because he had to fix all the fences. The first thing Papa did was to mow down all the tall grasses and weeds—for they drain the fence charger battery. Then he buried a big corner post to put the solar panel fence charger upon it—the calves keep chewing up all the wires which cause the hotwire not to work. It was well after dark before Papa ever finished stringing up the new hotwire. Now we need a few very sunny days to charge the solar panel to hopefully make the wires hot enough so that the cows will stop barging through them. Right now some of the cows know that the wire is not hot, and when they decide that it is their turn to be milked—they just walk right through the wires. They have lost their manners completely! By the way, Jenny came in this morning like nothing had ever happened.
We are looking forward to a calmer week—at least it will not be computer complicated. Maybe I can pull some weeds—do you want to join me in the garden?
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare