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Hi Everyone,
The last week of the year was spent . . . well, farming! We did start the week off celebrating Christmas with our dear friends the Crane’s. We ladies spent the day in the kitchen and the men folk had fun with their toys (guns and a canon). Yes, Papa took his signal canon and fired it off a few times. Someone actually caught it in slow motion and you can check it out here: Celebrating with a BANG! We got home around 8:00 that night and we were not sure if we would be able to separate the calves—which would mean less milk to fill the orders. Mom and I decided to give it a try anyway, even though it was dark outside. The moon did manage to give us just enough light to see what we were doing and for the calves to see us. When you use a flashlight the calves scatter away from their shadows making the task impossible. Papa set everything up for us and then all Mom and I had to do was walk the calves out of the field and into the panel pens—and Praise the Lord, it went that smoothly.
The first lamb of the season was born Tuesday morning, and by Friday afternoon there were a total of four little lambs in the pasture. So far two are ewes and two are rams. Papa spent his day putting up some hotwire on the top of the perimeter fencing to keep the neighbors cows on their side and our cows from pushing the fence down on our side. Steve and I headed up to the chestnuts to collect the first tarp full of chestnut leaves for the compost bin.
To my delight that compost bin did get filled up with my dream concoction. Papa had a chicken tractor to clean out and he was going to be dumping it in the compost bin—but I so wanted to mix some cow manure and chestnut leaves in with the chicken compost. Last week the manure spreader was full of cow manure—perfect for mixing into the compost bin, but no one wanted to shovel the manure out of the spreader (and even though I was willing, I was not allowed because of my troubled neck and arms). There is no gate for the tractor to get to the front of the compost bin, so Papa couldn’t just back the manure spreader up to the front of the compost bin and turn it on to self-empty. So to my dismay the manure spreader was emptied out on the pastures. So I thought of another way to collect cow manure. The manure spreader is filled up from all the manure collected in the milking parlor while we milk—but what if instead of dumping the manure into the manure spreader we collected it in five gallon buckets and dumped them in the compost bin? To my delight everyone was in agreement of that idea! Thursday was the BIG compost day. I had headed out to the garden with Mom to pull weeds and to collect the green bean pods that I was saving for seeds. Then I saw that Papa was emptying the chicken tractor and I went and looked inside the compost bin (an 8ft. by 8ft. concrete pad with 4ft. high concrete walls on three sides). The chicken compost was getting pretty high and it desperately needed a layer of chestnut leaves added to it. Steve was busy in the milk house washing the milking equipment and I didn’t have anyone else to help—or so I thought. I asked Papa if he would help me rake up some leaves and to my delight he said “yes”. He went and got the rakes and the tarp and I jumped on the tractor with him and we drove up to the chestnut orchard. Just as soon as we arrived at our destination it started to rain! So we sat in the tractor until it stopped. Then we drug the tarp all around under the trees and raked leaves onto it. When the tarp was heaping full we tied it shut and carried it back and dumped it in the compost bin. Later that day when Papa finished emptying the chicken tractor Steve and I headed back up to the chestnuts to get another tarp full of leaves. Once we dumped it in the compost bin he topped it off with the five gallon buckets of cow manure and the compost bin was full to the top—shame on me for not getting a picture yet! Give the pile six months or longer and we will have plenty of black gold to help our thumbs be green.
Friday we were blessed with volunteer help from a lady who hopes to be able to help out on the farm a few days a week for a few months to lighten Mom’s load so her back can heal. What a blessing!!!! I greatly enjoyed spending my day with her and we were able to get the duck eggs packaged—a job that really makes Mom’s back hurt. Then she helped us with the milking and the washing of all the equipment. After lunch we headed to the garden where we pulled up all the old green bean plants—and added them to the already full compost bin. Then while she raked I hoed the beds to knock back some baby weeds. Then we weeded the row of dying zinnias. To my delight we didn’t leave the bed flowerless. The forget-me-nots were doing a great job coming up as weeds in the bed, so we weeded out all the weeds and left the forget-me-nots so that they could grow and bloom. I will probably plant some snapdragons and bachelor buttons to mix in with the forget-me-nots.
The last workday of the year was spent canning pumpkin. We had three pumpkins that were starting to go bad around the stem so we cut off their tops and canned up the rest. It was our first time canning on our new gas stove and the nice part was that both canners fit side by side on the stove top making it possible to can two batches at the same time in the same room. Usually when we cook two batches one person mans the canner in the kitchen and the other mans the canner in the pantry. It was a little hard to get the gas turned down low enough, but they really did can much smoother on the gas than the electric—but they rattled 100 times more on the gas and our nerves were just about shot with all the noise by the time 90 minutes was up.
The last day of the year was definitely our coldest morning milking so far this winter. It got down to 27 degrees and when you are sitting still outside in the cold with no gloves on your hands you can get pretty cold. Usually by the time we go outside to milk the cows it has warmed up nicely, but today was Sunday and in order to get to church we have to be outside by 5:30 in the morning when the cold temps are still dropping. I was very glad when I was done and could go inside to a nice warm breakfast.
To God Be the Glory—Great things He has Done!!!
Can you believe that 2023 has come to an end already? When 2023 began we had no idea what kind of year it would be. We did know that we didn’t have enough eggs to supply our customers demand—but we were not the only farmers who had an egg shortage. All across America there was an egg shortage and I remember checking out another farmer’s website once and on their front page they said something like “Please be patient for we are raising more chickens for eggs”. That is eggs-actly what we were doing too. We bought 100 new chicks in the spring and 200 in the summer. Now as 2023 comes to an end we can rejoice that all those chickens are now laying eggs and we once again have an abundance of eggs to supply our customers demand.
As 2023 began our phone was ringing off the hook. So many people were moving to Florida, and so many people were moving to the country to homestead and they all had one thing in common—they wanted a family milk cow! We sold around 20 cows over the course of a few months—new born calves, weaned calves, yearlings and bred two year old heifers. We even sold a few milk cows in order to get us closer to having a 100% A2 milk herd. At the moment we have only one A1 cow, all the other 20 plus cows are A2. Then tragedy struck in May and lightning struck two of our precious milk cows. Mabel and Decci were giving us lots of milk each—and their deaths were a big blow to our milk supply. We immediately put a stop to all cow sales as we realized that we probably had sold a few too many. We were not alone in our loss though, for we personally knew two other farmers who lost two of their cows to lightning. We heard of a few other farmers who lost whole herds to lightning. While we moaned the loss of our two—we truly praised the Lord for preserving the rest of our herd and keeping us in the milking business. As the year continued our milking woes did too. For the first time in the 28 years that we have owned our property we had an encounter with a rattlesnake. One of our cows was bit by a pygmy rattlesnake in the early summer and was out of commission for about six weeks. Everyone expected her to die, or to become so lame that we had to put her down, and the vet even told us to dry her off—but I had faith that she would pull through and when she did I still wanted her to be in milk. So for about six weeks I milked her every day and threw out the milk, and then the vet visited again and pronounced her healthy enough to keep her milk. It took at least three months before she was actually walking on her foot--but Emma is still alive, giving milk and you should see how spunky she can get when she starts kicking up her heals and jumping and skipping around. For most of this year we have had a very limited supply of milk. We were only able to cream maybe three times the whole year—but once again we are not the only farm suffering from lack of milk. Not too long ago another farm called asking us if we had a surplus of milk. No one knows why—but the cows just haven’t produced the volume of milk this year like they have in other years, but we are so grateful for every drop that they have produced.
From February to December we brought in 70 broiler chicks every other week. I had hoped to expand our supply this year—but keeping the chickens alive became a yearlong struggle. The chickens seemed to look for every excuse to check out of life early. Those that did survive to processing day didn’t grow out as big as we would have liked—yet, once again we were not the only farmers experiencing this trial. All over America people were having a hard time getting their chicks to survive and grow to the right size. The “avian flu” scare resulted in the government killing off millions of breeding chickens, and genetics were sacrificed and loss.
It seemed that 2023 brought trial after trial on the homestead front all across America. We were not alone in our trials—for in the midst of our trials we saw the hand of God at work and by God’s grace our bills were still met every week and month. As the year comes to a close we can rejoice that we still have cows in milk, the chickens are laying lots of eggs, the new batch of broiler chicks is looking strong and healthy in the brooder house, the garden is producing delicious greens and the cupboards are full of green beans, pumpkin, and potatoes that we canned from our own garden and the sweet potatoes produced abundantly last year.
Tomorrow we start a new year—and we have no idea what it will behold. We can whole heartedly say: “Hitherto hath the LORD helped us” (1 Samuel 7:12) and “The Lord, he it is that doth go before (us); he will be with (us), he will not fail (us).” (Deuteronomy 31:8). Therefore we shall say, “If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that.” (James 4:15) And yes, we have lots of plans for 2024!
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare