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Hi Everyone,
It seems that the most popular colors outside lately are: blue, and gray and green! The sky is many shades of blue and gray and the fields have a slight tinge of green from the winter grasses that we planted. You can truly say that if you do not like the weather just wait a few days—for we have had a few days of beautiful balmy weather, a few days of rain and a few days of winter chills. We used to make fun of my brother who would bundle up like an Eskimo when the temps were in the 50’s, but would be in short sleeves when the temps were in the 30’s and 40’s. I think that I have finally figured it out. When the temperature outside is in the 50’s and it is cloudy and the north wind is blowing—it is downright freezing outside. When it is in the 40’s outside and the sun is out and the wind is not blowing the weather isn’t that bad. I have to admit that gray skies and northerly winds are not my favorite time of the year. Give me sunshine, balmy temps and a gentle south breeze and life is grand. It is easier to stay warm outside when you are working—like pulling weeds in the garden, prepping the garden beds for planting (those chores create heat), but milking cows is a sit down job and it can get pretty cold when the north winds blow on you while you are sitting still milking your cows—and to think that winter has just begun. O well, February is just six weeks away and the weather outside then is always beautiful.
What is growing on in the Garden?
I will say that most of our time in the garden is spent weeding—and sorry, but Florida has weeds growing year round. This time of the year there is a lot of Hen-bit, Carolina Geranium, and Chickweed. The first two come up real easy, but chickweed has an intricate root system that creates a mass of roots that do not let go of the dirt too easily. Weeds are not the only thing growing though—we have collards, mustard greens, broccoli, lettuce, kale, spinach, onions, cabbage, Swiss chard, and carrots. The mustard greens and the Swiss chard have a slug problem and look quite Swiss (full of holes like Swiss cheese). Everything but the spinach, kale and the onions are growing in the garden tunnels. I have a bed of carrots growing in the tunnel that should be ready to harvest in about a month. Then last Saturday I planted a bed of carrots in “Martha’s Vineyard” that should be ready to harvest in the spring. Carrots, onions, and spinach can all handle our freezes with no problems. While the kale is cold hardy, some of the leaves do turn whitish when they get a heavy freezing frost, which is why we grow the collards and other greens in the tunnels so we do not have to throw out leaves every time it freezes.
Two months ago (October) I started a tray of lettuce and another tray of cabbage in the greenhouse, and then I was supposed to transplant them out last month (November). It didn’t happen as planned, but thankfully I was finally able to get around to that last week. I just hope that they grow properly and that they are not stunted and will not grow. Monday I was able to get Steve to cover the beds with compost, and then on Thursday he broadforked them and I tilthed them before I transplanted the 102 little cabbage plants and 99 little lettuce plants. For the last two years I have been having some trouble getting plants to really grow once they sprout in the greenhouse. When I start the seeds in the greenhouse the seedlings are about an inch to two inches tall in a month. When I start them in seed beds in the garden they are a good 6 inches to a foot tall in a month. Hmm, Maybe I should ditch the seed trays?
When things turn Upside down
Have you ever made a schedule like: Clean bathrooms on Monday, Vacuum on Tuesday, Iron on Wednesday, Sew on Thursday, Garden on Friday, and Play on Saturday? Somethings never get done if you do not set aside a scheduled time to do them—like if I didn’t set aside Sunday nights to send out the Larder email and write my journal then they would never happen. I once heard a lady say that it is good to schedule a certain time to do certain chores otherwise you will never get around to them because you will never feel like doing them. As she said: “Whoever feels like cleaning the bathroom, but if you set aside a time to do it then it will get done.” Around here it isn’t that I do not want to do certain jobs, it is just finding the time for them. So a few months back I made a loose schedule for when to do certain chores—like vacuuming! To my dismay not one Tuesday since that schedule was made has gone picture perfectly. Last Tuesday morning I headed over to the milk house to set up the milking equipment when I remembered that the pulsators that make the milking equipment milk the cows were not working right. So I decided to take them all apart, clean them up and replace some old parts with brand new parts. It didn’t go as fast as I had hoped and when breakfast was done all I managed to have done was all four pulsators taken apart and rinsed off. Then after breakfast it took another two hours to put them all back together and get the milk tanks assembled for milking. It was going on 10:00 by the time we finally got around to milking—but to my horror the pulsators were working worse than before I had cleaned them out. I wanted to tear them apart again—but Mom would have none of it. Thankfully they had just enough suction power to get the cows milked. Then to make matters worse, Penny was home sick so we didn’t have her help with setting up to bottle the milk and the kefir and to wash all the milking equipment. I got the kefir bottled and then I had to wash up all the jars and utensils. Tuesday is the day that I have set aside to vacuum—but it was 12:30 by now and time was running out. Should I just go to the garden, answer emails, or see how much I could get vacuumed? I had an hour until I had to bottle the yogurt and eat lunch before the egg party at 2:00. I decided to grab the vacuum cleaner and do a quick run through the house. When the egg party was over I needed to go harvest greens out of the garden—but Mom had let Steve go home early, and Mom and I needed to tear apart the pulsators again and figure out what was wrong with them. It took us until around 5:00 that evening to get the pulsators fixed—the new rubber seals didn’t fit tight enough and therefore they wouldn’t make a good seal that didn’t leak air. We put the old rubbers back on and we were back in business. The greens would have to wait until Wednesday morning for it was now time for dinner and then I had to sort through the Jacksonville orders.
Wednesday morning I headed to the garden bright and early. I only had about 15 minutes to harvest everything, and I quickly learned that I did not have time to bag the produce too. So I picked all the collards and laid them in the tub in bunches of ten, and then I cut the lettuce and piled them in another tub. I then placed them in the walk-in cooler until later when I could have a second set of hands to open the bags while I inserted the greens. Penny was still sick—and was for the rest of the week.
Blessings of Abundance
While we were milking the cows Wednesday morning, a neighbor stopped by to see if we wanted any bananas. He usually gets old food for his pigs, but for some reason a store thought that quite a few cases of Organic bananas was more fit to throw out than to sell—yet 98% of the bananas were in perfect condition and since this neighbor knew that we eat organic he said that he couldn’t help but to stop by and offer us some of his find. We took a case and shared a few cases with friends and family. So Thursday morning was spent peeling bananas. To my dismay bananas do not last very long and they always seem to get over ripe before they are all gone. So we saved a few bunches for fresh eating and then we froze the rest for kefir smoothies. While we were in the kitchen putting up bananas we also took the time to slice up some blocks of cheese and slice up a turkey breast into luncheon meat. The morning was spent in the kitchen and the afternoon was spent transplanting in the garden.
Doing her Job
I was heading outside to milk the cows Thursday morning and Mom was standing in front of the kitchen window at the sink doing the breakfast dishes when Mom looked out the window and saw a blue heeler dog in our pastures. She was running all over the place investigating everything and trying to figure out where she belonged. By the time I made it out to the milking parlor she had made her way into the chicken field where Yasha was and Aliya was supposed to be. Aliya takes morning strolls around the property every morning checking things out, and when the dog entered the chicken field Aliya was two fields over sniffing around. I just happened to be looking when Aliya noticed the stray dog. She starred for a little bit and then she took off out of that field, under the hot wire, down the lane, and under the hot wire into the chicken field. Yasha saw Aliya running through the field and ran to join her. The stray dog saw them coming and took off—but they caught up with her and she just cowered down and they stood there barking at her until Papa arrived. It wasn’t long before the dog had found her way off of our property—and I do not think that she will be back.
The Biggest, the Best and the Last
We processed our first batch of chickens this year in March, and last Friday we processed the last batch for 2023. We have had more problems with chickens this year than ever before—and so has everyone else that we have talked too. They would arrive dead, or they would be puny and half of them would die in the first two weeks, they didn’t grow big enough, and to make up for all the loses we had to order two extra batches and process in December—when we are usually done two weeks before Thanksgiving. For many years we have been known for raising chickens that range from 5 to 6 pounds. Small chickens are not something we usually have in abundance—until this year. In 2022 the average weight of our chickens was in the 6 pound range—and they were getting so big that sometimes we had to process them at 7 weeks instead of 8 weeks. Then 2023 arrived and our average bird weight was probably in the four pound range. I was told that due to the so called “avian flu” where they kill all the birds instead of just the sick ones, a lot of good chicken genetics were lost and there was a great shortage of hatching eggs. Therefore, the eggs that could be bought were from chickens with not the best of genetics. Then the last batch of chickens for the year arrived—and out of 70 birds we only lost eight, instead of 30. As the weeks went by they grew bigger and bigger. When we processed them there were only a few three and four pound chickens—the majority was 5, 6 and 7 pound chickens. What a blessing!
Learning new skills
Cooking over an open fire is truly the oldest method of cooking that there is. Then the cook stove was invented and they ran off of coal and wood—depending on the model. Then we had gas stoves and then electric stoves. I have cooked on an electric stove my whole life, but when the last one broke we were forced to swap to a gas stove. It is like cooking over an open fire—and we are learning that wooden handles burn, metal handles become too hot to touch, things still boil when turned on low, and that chicken broth will not boil on the simmer burner but chowder soup will burn to the pot and almost boil over on the same simmer burner. Eggs do cook better on a gas stove, but it takes longer to bring a pot to a boil on a gas stove, or let me rephrase that—the big pot of water never comes to a roaring boil. It is truly a new learning curve. Down in the oven things are a little bit different. It is electric—but it seems to have a mind of its own. Since when does an oven know when your food is cooked to perfection and turns off the oven for you? It was nice to cook a roast with the meat thermometer hooked to the oven—when it hit 160 degrees the oven turned off. That was nice! BUT . . . when I put a stock pot of chicken bones and water in the oven to make broth overnight I was totally shocked when the oven turned off all by itself the next morning. Evidently the oven said that nothing needs to cook more than 12 hours and it deemed the broth done and turned itself off. Please tell me what happened to the stoves where you just turned the knobs and they were on or off. Does everything have to be computerized today? I will say that the oven baked a perfect pot pie—never before have I seen a crust turn out so golden, and the built-in air fryer does make good sweet potato fries.
Deck the Halls!
Usually we change our décor the first of the seasonal month: Spring is March 1st, summer is June 1st, fall is September 1st, and winter is December 1st. This year we have been late with every month—but we at least manage to get the décor changed out before the first day of each season. I just couldn’t get into the winter mood when December started, and when I did Mom’s back was hurting too bad or we just didn’t have the time to make a mess and tidy up. With the first day of winter approaching this week I had a goal to get the décor changed by Saturday night. Yes, there was a ton of other things to be done, but I turned a blind eye their way and focused on our winter décor. I took all the fall décor down first and put them on the dining room table. Then I got the empty boxes and let Mom pack them all up. Then I exchanged the fall boxes for the winter boxes and we had fun putting out all the winter pretties. It was a rainy and gloomy day outside so it was perfect for putting on some Christmas music and decorating.
Turning Trees into Lumber
The saw mill finally showed up at the 1915 house to turn an old dying pine tree into lumber to rebuild the front porch and to trim around the windows. Then the oak trees that Hurricane Idalia felled were cut up into long logs to be turned into lumber for a boardwalk in the garden and other projects on the farm. The wood is so pretty—and I have to say that the big slabs are absolutely gorgeous for table tops. It has been fascinating to stop by and watch the man mill the trees into lumber.
I hope that you have a wonderful week and enjoy the wonderful winter weather—if you think that winter weather can be wonderful.
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare