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Hi Everyone,

Merry Christmas!

For unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given . . . and his name shall be called Emmanuel . . . and he shall save his people from their sins . . . the Savior of the world . . . God with us!

They say that this is “the most wonderful time of the year”, but it isn’t because of sleigh rides, caroling, parties, open fires and wishing everyone to be of good cheer—it is because this is the time of year when we celebrate the fact that God sent forth His Son to be born of a virgin so that he might live a sinless life and then die on the cross for our sins, and then rise again so that we might have eternal life if we but believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, our Saviour, our Shepherd, our King! So may we rejoice that when the fullness of time was come God sent forth his promised Son to redeem us so that with those angels of long ago we can truly say: Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men!

Last week was so busy that I am not sure if we knew when we were coming or when we were going! Monday started off at 5:00 in the morning because we had to milk the cows early so that Mom could make it to her doctor’s appointment in Gainesville at 11:00—she had to leave the house by 9:30. She finally found a place to get an x-ray of her back that is still hurting her from her fall off the lawnmower two months ago. We were glad to learn that she had not broken anything—but had badly sprained the ligaments that hold her hip and pelvis together. Whenever she bends certain ways the joint would pop out and she would be in terrible pain until she could stretch and bend over and they would pop back into place. The doctor said that active people take longer to heal—and may I say that Mom is far from being called a lazy person. The doctor did say that time would heal the injury, and a therapist said that she needs someone to do her chores for the next six weeks. Hmm? Not too sure how that would happen. No dishes, no milking, no catching manure, no weeding, no packaging eggs, no working at the counter—no living as Pollyanna would say.

While Mom and Papa were off to the doctors I used the hours to catch up on little odds and ends that just were not getting done inside the house. Steve finished his morning chores about the time I had reached my limit of inside work and I thought that it was the best time to finally get around to planting the 100 strawberry plugs that we had bought back in October. They were supposed to be planted around Halloween—but that didn’t happen, and then Thanksgiving came and went and I wasn’t about to let Christmas pass us up for the strawberries are supposed to be big enough to be producing by Valentines. First we had to unstack the two GreenStalk garden towers. Then I had to dig out the old strawberry plants and put them in a big round tub so that Mom could transplant them to Martha’s Vineyard later. Steve and I then took the trays full of dirt out to the garden and dumped them where the strawberries and grapes are to be planted. The next thing that we had to do was to wash all the trays. My sister Samantha had come over for a visit around this time so I had good entertainment while I scrubbed the trays clean. Mom and Papa were home in time for lunch. After lunch Papa was going to start emptying the chicken house of the well composted chicken manure. The plans were to dump it in our concrete compost bins—but I also wanted to mix it with layers of cow manure from the manure spreader and leaves from the chestnuts. I had one problem though—I didn’t have anyone to shovel the manure out of the manure spreader. Last year Clayton (our intern) was living with us and he gladly layered the cow manure with the chestnut leaves into the concrete compost bins. I am not allowed to do the shoveling because after flipping my horse when I was 15 my shoulders and neck cannot handle the heavy strain. Papa could have just backed the manure spreader up to the compost bin and let it empty itself into the compost bin—but when Mom redesigned the garden the tractor can no longer get to the compost bins until Mom installs a new gate. I was ready to cut a hole in the fence—but that wasn’t going to happen yet either. Getting the leaves was the easy part, so I resigned myself to have no cow manure and to just mix the chicken manure compost with the chestnut leaves. Then I realized that I was in the middle of my strawberry project and if I abandoned it I may never get another chance to plant the new strawberries in the garden towers. So I gave up totally on my trio compost plan and went back to the strawberries—but it was okay because after one bucket load of chicken compost Papa had to quit and head down to the 1915 house and transport all the wood up to our barn that had been sawmilled—and there was a lot of it. We did manage to get the towers all planted with strawberries and stacked back together in the greenhouse. For the last year the strawberry towers have stood under the roof beside the milking parlor—and we made the mistake of never turning them and the plants that were against the wall all died. So we moved them back to the greenhouse where they will get light on all sides. We grew them there for a few years, but the greenhouse really isn’t big enough for them and I got tired of them taking up space so I moved them out. Now we moved them back inside the greenhouse and I shall continue with my dream of a bigger greenhouse.

Tuesday was one cold day—and I was more than happy to hibernate inside. I had limes to juice, yogurt to make, cow info to update and I had to melt the beeswax in the herbal oil in order to finish making a new batch of Relief Salve. After lunch there was an egg party to attend and then Steve and I headed to the garden to harvest the veggies for the Jacksonville delivery.

Last Christmas we had a little calf born that we called Merry—and she was the friendliest calf we have ever had. She would hang out with us in the milking parlor while we milked. She wanted lots of love and attention. Mom got her trained to a halter and can walk her all over the farm on a lead rope. To this day Merry still loves to get lots of attention. Then last month Merry became a big sister (though she doesn’t know it). Macy, Merry’s mama, gave birth to a heifer that we named Heidi—because she was in hiding the first day. Heidi is a wild thing. Heidi has a mind of her own—and plans to live her life doing as she pleases. Heidi does not enjoy human love and attention and prefers to be left alone—but Mom had other plans for her. So when Heidi was two days old Mom decided to start halter breaking her. We would stake her out while we milked. Then Mom would walk her around the yard before sending her back out to her mama. As Heidi grew she got smart. She would see us coming and bolt off down field in order to not be caught up and taught how to walk on a lead rope and not be touched by a human. Some days we caught her and some days we didn’t—and when you did you had to watch out for her back feet, for she didn’t think twice about using them on you to make you keep your distance from her. Then Heidi reached a month old and it was time that she could join the older calves in the panel pens at night so that we could get more milk from her mama in the morning (mama cows know how to share, but calves hog it all). Well, Heidi is not too sure about going off with the big calves—and in one week we have only accomplished it twice! Poor Papa would come inside late and tell us stories of chasing the calves from one end of the field to the other end, back and forth ten and eleven times. Once Heidi left the field with the other calves—but she turned left instead of right and Papa had to chase her around the other fields just to get her back in with her mama. Wednesday nights I have to separate the calves because Papa is in Jacksonville making deliveries. So I headed out to do the evening chores of locking up the ducks and the calves. The ducks went easy, and the three older calves went easy—but Heidi gave me a run for my money. She would reach the gate then dart back, circle around all the other cows, hide behind the bull, zig-zag that way and this way—and I started to count. Papa had said he chased her back and forth at least ten times, and I was on round four so I only had six more times to go. Then Heidi joined up with another young calf (two weeks old) and the two of them played race cars running lickity split all over the field. Finally Heidi started to slow down and headed for the gate—but at the last minute she darted to the left and when I darted after her she made a quick turn to the right and ran right under the strand of hotwire that is positioned too high (or should I say just high enough for little calves to run underneath). I thought “Great, now I have her and all I have to do now is run her back down the lane and straight into the panel pens.” I closed up the rope gate and parked the golf-cart in front of it so that Heidi could not run back in. Then I locked up the older three calves in the barn so that I could leave the gate open and run Heidi in. By this time Heidi was over in a different field and I had to go shoo her out of it and back into the lane. All went perfect . . . until Heidi reached the section of wire that she had escaped from and back underneath she darted and ran back up to her mama just as happy as she could be. The little stinker!!! I came inside and jokingly told Mom that it was her fault that Heidi was impossible to catch, and that hopefully by the time Heidi is two years old she has forgotten that we ever tried to tame her. As stubborn as she is now I can only imagine what it will be like to train her to come into the milking parlor in two years.

We had grand plans for Thursday—but as soon as we were done milking Mom went to the barn and noticed that the rats were eating the sweet potatoes. UGH!!! We had rejoiced that for once the rats did not eat the sweet potatoes in the garden—but to our dismay they waited for us to harvest them and “store” them in the barn just for them. Tuesday was when Mom had actually found out that the rats were eating the sweet potatoes that were stored on the open racks near the ground. We moved them from the bottom rack to the top racks under a big thick wool blanket—and hoped that all would be well. We think that the rats ate about two five gallon buckets of potatoes before we found out—what a loss! All was well on Wednesday—but come Thursday Mom found that the rat had chewed a hole through the two layers of the wool blanket and had gnawed on some of the sweet potatoes. That meant that we needed to make a rat proof storage bin for sweet potatoes. Mom found an old rabbit hutch and we spent the whole day wrapping it with ½ inch hardware cloth. Then we moved the sweet potatoes inside. The next day Mom and Steve found that the potatoes closest to the sides had been nibbled on, so they moved everything away from the sides.

While Mom and I rat proofed the sweet potatoes, Papa and Steve worked on escape proofing the perimeter fence where the sheep and the bulls are. They were doing a good job smashing the fence down and the sheep were also doing a great job of sneaking over to the bulls’ side of the field. Once the cage was finished Mom headed to the garden to weed for an hour while I put all the sweet potatoes in the cage and took care of customers. Then Mom and I headed an hour north in the dark to a farm that was very much out in the country to buy some honey. We had met a new bee keeper at the Sugarcane festival in White Springs a month ago and we really liked the quality of his honey—so we were willing to drive the distance to get us a five gallon bucket of raw wildflower honey. We got lost a few times—because finding street signs in the dark isn’t easy, especially when the streets don’t even have signs. Our old GPS quit working after everything went to 5G capabilities, and Papa was supposed to find himself a new GPS  for his birthday—but that never happened. It is much easier to find places when Mrs. GPS tells you to turn here. Thankfully we did have a phone so that we could keep calling asking for more detailed directions. We made it home by 8:00 and some home canned carrot soup with some garlic bread for Mom and I and a turkey sandwich for Papa was the quickest meal that we could cook.

My Friday’s “To Do List” had one thing on it—to deliver the bull calf to new owner. We had hoped to do a lot more, but life happened and instead of being home by 1:00 in the afternoon we didn’t leave until after 1:00. There were customers to take care of, and other little things. So we ate lunch first and then we headed out. Once again we found ourselves missing our turn because the address was nowhere near the road to tell us where their driveway was—and finding a place to turn around when you are pulling a big cattle trailer isn’t always easy. Thankfully there was another farm that had a big enough section in front of one of their gates so that we could turn around. The lady was very excited about her new little calf. Her two milk cows need to be bred back, but she does not have a bull and cannot get anyone to AI them. So I guess in about a year she will have a bull that can service her cows.

Saturday afternoon we spent a couple of hours with my sister Nichole and her family. The children had a blast running all over the yard—using up lots of energy to their parents delight. When they left, Mom and I headed to the kitchen to make some fermented garlic. We had bought a whole bag of garlic a month ago—but we didn’t have any honey to pour over the cloves. So with a five gallon bucket of honey in our possession we were ready to take care of some garlic. For about two hours we separated the cloves, smacked them good under a knife to loosen the skins, peeled them and filled up two quart jars. We thought that we would never get enough garlic peeled to fill up those two jars. Our hands were sticky and our fingers were being glued together. Did you know that garlic juice can be used to glue broken pieces of porcelain back together? Once the jars were full we poured honey over the garlic until the jar was full. Now we wait four weeks until it is fermented and then the garlic will be sweet and ready to take to help in sickness or add flavor to a recipe. I cannot wait to try one.

I hope that you all have a very Merry Christmas, and that you enjoy the rest of the year.

Serving you with Gladness,

Tiare