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Hi Everyone,
Last week I was reminded that it was November—because the sky was cloudy and gray. Usually that is depressing, but last week we were rejoicing that we were finally getting rain. It rained for three days—but we barely got an inch of rain. The nice thing was that it never rained hard enough to do any damage. Knowing that the rains were coming meant that we needed to get some things prepped for the rain. The milking parlor drain field was clogged again—so before it rained Steve, Papa and Mom mowed down the grass and weeds, dug out the trench and washed out the pipes until all the sludge was cleaned out. We had our sweet potatoes curing on the back porch so I sat down and wiped off all the loose dirt and then I packed them up and moved them to the barn lean-to. Papa helped me set up my wash rack to lay the sweet potatoes on. The rack is made of half inch metal hardware cloth. Our regular drying racks have 2 x 4 inch holes so the sweet potatoes would have fallen through. While we were trying our best to lift up the drying rack that had the pumpkins on them in order to remove the drying rack that was under them so that we could pull out the second set of saw horses so that we could set up the rack for the sweet potatoes we heard a deep voice behind us ask, “Do you all need help?” We turned around to see one of our customers who had come to pick up an order. We told him that his timing was perfect. The racks were too heavy for me, so it was a blessing to receive some unexpected help.
The other thing that had to be done before the rain arrived was to plant some fields with winter grass seed. We would have loved to have already planted the fields—but it has been too dry. You do not want the seed to sprout and then die from lack of water. A lot of old time farmers will tell you though that around Thanksgiving is the time to plant your winter grasses. Papa was able to get one field planted Tuesday morning, and then another field planted Thursday. Then tonight one of our neighbors called to see if he could help us plant the rest of the fields for he owns a no-till seed driller. It would take him no time at all to plant and it would be better coverage and better soil to seed contact. What a blessing!
You may be wondering what is going on down at our 1915 Farmhouse—and the answer is lots, but not much to see (yet). The trees have been cleaned up that fell during Hurricane Idalia and Mom has plans to have the eight foot long logs turned into lumber to make a boardwalk in “Martha’s Vineyard” in the garden. So last Monday and Tuesday Mom and Papa met with two different saw mill owners to get prices and ideas for milling the lumber. They chose the second group because they set up the sawmill on your property and mill the lumber there—we will be sure to get a YouTube video of that. The other new of interest, but not of seeing, is that the contractor that we own the house with has started leveling the house. It sagged a little here and there, and leaned a little this way and that. So he has been jacking up the foundation to make it level.
With the days getting shorter, the nights being cooler, and no rain to account for of late the grasses are not growing very fast—so we have been supplementing the dairy cows with hay for the last two weeks. This year we have two different kinds of hay—Florida hay and Tennessee hay. The Florida hay is just coastal Bermuda grass. The Tennessee hay is a true Salad bar with Orchard grass, Timothy grass, Wildflowers, Fescue, clovers and who knows what other yummy tasting goodies. The Florida hay really doesn’t have much of a smell, but you can smell the sweetness of the Tennessee hay when you drive past the barn. We are hoping that the Tennessee hay will help make milk during the no green grass season. Mom figured out that we have enough Tennessee hay to give the Jersey cows (our milking herd) two rolls per week. So when we put the hay out for the cows we put the Tennessee hay in one hay rack and the Florida hay in the other hay rack. When the cows finished being milked they headed out to the “hay” pasture and the first hay rack that they came to was the Florida hay, but they only smelled it and moo-ved on to the Tennessee hay. You can see it for yourself on the YouTube video that Mom did: “Which Hay Do Cows like Best?” Florida grasses are not known to be the most nutritious—matter of fact they are known worldwide for how poor they are. Years ago when Mom was reading one of Pat Colby’s books on animal care she was reading about using copper sulfate, dolomite, and sulfur to worm and mineralize animals naturally. When you go to the store to buy the copper sulfate and sulfur, the bags have crossbones on them. Papa was convinced that since she was living in Australia that she meant something else than what we had here in America. So Papa told Mom to call Pat Colby and talk with her. Mom was like—“You want me to call this lady all the way in Australia?” So she did. When Pat Colby asked where Mom lived she was bewildered to hear that we live in Florida. She said that we should move someplace else for the grasses in Florida were just terrible. She was right about the grasses—but we just couldn’t take her advice about moving. Papa and I are Florida born and raised and prefer to die here too. Thankfully though this year we can bring a bit of Tennessee grasses to our farm and our cows and sheep will be most grateful. Tomorrow starts the third week on hay and Papa has put out four rolls of Tennessee hay, and only one roll of Florida hay—which they have only managed to eat a little more than half of it.
Tuesday morning the vet came out. We had a heifer that needed her horns removed, a sick calf that needed to be treated, and one cow and four heifers that needed to be pregnancy tested. To our delight the sick calf is doing much better. The pregnancy tests were good and bad. Ruby is due to go to a family soon—and is supposed to be bred. We wanted to make sure that she was, and to everyone’s delight she was. Dolly is a two year old heifer who is on the small size, so like her mother we want to wait until she is three before we breed her. Low and behold though, about seven weeks ago our South Poll beef bull, Jabez, jumped his fence and her fence in order to get to her when she was in heat. If she got pregnant by him she could die during delivery because the calf would be too big. To our delight—she was not pregnant. Melba is our wild cow who was supposed to go to a family at our church about six months ago—but she became so wild when we tried to load her that we decided that she was not the right cow for a family with a lot of children. Then a few months later we saw her come in heat again, and then I think again. So we were not sure if she was bred or not. The vet’s sonogram machine told him that she is three months pregnant. Yippee! Now we have to work on getting her tamed. At least she has been trained to come into the milking parlor and eat her food out of the trough—she just has to be trained to be tied in because right now she flies out of the stall real quick if she is startled even a little. The next cow to be tested was an eight year old milk cow named Rosepetal. I noticed that Rosepetal kept coming into heat off and on throughout the last year—but it has been a good nine months since she last came into heat. Her due date was the end of October, so I dried her off back in August. Her due date has come and gone—and we have seen no signs of her udder springing, and we have seen no little calf. So we had the vet check her and he said that the reason why she hasn’t calved yet is because she isn’t pregnant. UGH!!!!! It is hard not to think that I could still have been milking her—for we really could use more milk. So it looks like we may have lost another milk cow. The last one to be pregnancy tested was a heifer that has been in with the bull since January or February—and comes into heat every month or two. To our dismay she was found open also (not pregnant). Paisley is such a beautiful heifer—but it looks like she may never get the chance to be a milk cow.
Tuesday afternoon we all headed to town to do some shopping while there were sales to take advantage of. Our stove is in need of being replaced after some of the wires caught fire. We cannot find a suitable electric coil stove, and we do not like the glass top due to the fact that we can a lot and you are not supposed to can on a glass top—not to mention my klutziness would probably end up cracking the glass. So Papa decided to go with a gas stove top, and Mom decided to go with an electric oven—which meant that we needed a dual fuel stove. We headed to Lowe’s first—but found the salesmen not very helpful, yet very helpful. They didn’t help us find the right stove—but they did help us figure out what we didn’t want and what we did want. I learned real quickly that I needed a stove that had space for a middle griddle because the burners on those stoves were spaced farther apart than the stoves without the griddle space. The one man told me that it didn’t matter unless you used every burner at the same time—and I informed him that I did! After the second salesman told us to go home and search the internet ourselves we left and headed over to Home Depot. That man was very helpful and the first stove he brought up had everything that we wanted—and thanks to buying the house down the road we had a 15% off coupon to add to the sale price. To our delight they could deliver it Friday, and our hopes were to have it installed before Thanksgiving. Our house is somewhat plumbed for gas—but not to the kitchen. So the gas company manager came out Thursday to see what all needed to be done and then told us that it could take up to three weeks to get it done. At least we are not stove less—everything works but the front big burner.
It was a rainy afternoon when we headed to town on Tuesday—but I really needed to harvest the greens for the Wednesday delivery and a few other things, but alas I just couldn’t miss out on the stove shopping. It was almost 6:00 by the time we got home and darkness had arrived. The calves needed to be separated, the turkeys needed to be locked up, the ducks needed to be locked up, the eggs gathered and the dogs fed—but it was dark. Mom and I headed inside to get dinner cooked and start on the orders. When Papa came in for dinner he told us that he had not been very successful. He had chased the calves around for forty-five minutes but the flashlights in the dark scares them and without light they have no idea where they are supposed to go—so they were not separated. The ducks could not be found—so they were not locked up. He did manage to get everything else done. After dinner Papa and Mom headed back out to find the ducks while I worked on figuring out who could have milk and who couldn’t since the milk supply was so low—I would have rather looked for ducks in the dark. With the milk supply being so low I was quite anxious that we would have even less milk the next day since the calves were not separated. Papa and Mom said that they would go out at 5:00 the next morning and bring the cows in and leave the calves behind—but I was so worried that those calves would eat breakfast before my parents could get out there. The Lord was merciful though and the calves had not eaten breakfast by 5:00 the next morning.
Thursday we picked the green beans for the ninth time—which is a lot of harvesting times for a patch for green beans. It was still raining so Mom and I came inside and snapped the beans and canned them up. We got 12 pint jars and 6 quart jars. I also ran out to the garden and replanted some spinach seeds. The rabbit and deer had munched on most of the last batch that had sprouted. You can see what is growing in the garden by watching my latest YouTube video “A November Garden Tour”.
Friday was the big Turkey day. We had only 26 turkeys left out of the 50 that we had ordered. It wasn’t our worse year, but it wasn’t our best either. Turkeys like to look for ways to die, and we lost quite a few the first two weeks. Every turkey was spoken for—and then Wednesday morning when Steve went out to let them out he found them standing on a turkey pecking it to death. UGH!!! Two days from butcher day and they ruined him. A few cancellations actually worked out in our favor this time. Not only did we have 26 turkeys to process, we also had 21 chickens to process. We had done 40 chickens the week before, but they were growing so slow that we had to let some grow another week—which happened to fall on the same day as the turkeys. We originally thought that we would process the chickens on Thursday and the turkeys on Friday—but since there was only 26 turkeys and 21 chickens some of us thought that it would be possible to do them all the same day. The Lord was very merciful to supply us with lots of help. The Tavernari family helps us package eggs every Tuesday and they always help us process chickens and the turkeys. So we had their help—which was five very helpful people. Then we had another new farmer who wanted to learn how to process turkeys—he has been successfully doing chickens, but wanted to learn about turkeys before he got any. Then another young man who has been working and helping on other farms for the last two years wrote us last week and said that he would like to help out on the farm Friday, Saturday or Sunday. Since we are at church all day on Sunday, and we were processing on Friday it was a no brainer as to which day we would love for him to help us. Zac arrived around 8:30 and the first thing he did was help Steve move 60 chickens from their pens to the two empty pens to make it easier for Steve to move the pens every day. Then Zac came back and he helped Mom milk her cows. Then it was time to process the chickens and the turkeys and we were in the Poultry kitchen from 11:00 to 4:00. Then we had some nice fellowship time. Zac left around 5:00 and the other farmer left around 6:00. The day went very smoothly and everyone was a delightfully BIG help.
Saturday I think that I could have slept all day for I was quite exhausted after working with turkeys that mostly weighed over 20 pounds once they were gutted. Yet, there was excitement to be had out on the farm. After breakfast Papa looked out the front window and saw that there was a new little calf. Macy had finally had her calf two week late—or maybe it was one week early. Since it was just born Mom didn’t want Papa to bring Macy and her calf up to the milking parlor. When I went outside to milk the cows though Steve hollered at me from out in the pasture asking me where this cow came from. Macy was walking up the lane! I jumped in the golf-cart and headed out. We let Macy in the milking area and then we headed down to check on the calf—I hadn’t heard whether it was a bull or a heifer. We couldn’t find the calf in the field anywhere. Steve walked the whole field and I drove all over the field—but no calf. Steve said that if the calf was a girl we should call her Heidi, because she was hiding. AS we drove back up the lane we were looking all over for her. Steve saw some buzzards flying over one of the fields and when he looked below them he saw a large lump of something. We drove around to the back lane where the lump was and found it to be a ewe that was stuck on her side/back—it sometimes happens with a pregnant sheep. Steve stood her up, and she fell back over. So Steve stood her back up again, and worked with her until she wasn’t wobbly anymore. The ewe then took off down field to join the rest of the flock. Our adventures were well worth our time since we were able to rescue the sheep. It wasn’t until after we milked the cows, packed the orders and had Papa on his way that we were able to head back out and look for the hiding calf. When we took the cows back Macy was in the lead and headed straight to the back corner of the field and looked over the fence. How mamas know where their calves are hiding I will never know. I stepped over the fence and looked down to the far corner and there it was all curled up in a ball sleeping. I walked over and squatted down to pet her—yes it is a she and her name is Heidi. She let me pet her for a little bit and then she let out the biggest bawl. Then she jumped up and ran full speed ahead into my legs and then she headed back to her mama. This morning Heidi came into the milking parlor and Mom put a little halter on her and attempted to walk her back to her mama—but Heidi had other plans at first for she just plopped herself down flat on the concrete and Mom had to pick her up to get her to stand back up. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Mom finally did get Heidi back to Macy.
Well this is Thanksgiving week and I am sure that everyone has lots of plans and your ovens will be working hard. We are so thankful for all of you, and hope that you have much to be thankful for too.
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare