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Hi Everyone,

               We may not live in Tennessee—the Volunteer State, but we will gladly accept someone’s request to come and volunteer here on the farm. Last weekend we had a request from a family who wanted to spend a portion of their spring break helping out on the farm. We said “yes” and the plan was for them to come spend a few hours with us on Monday. It was a family of four—father, mother, sister, brother. They arrived around 10:00 and ended up staying until around 2:00. We were still milking when they arrived, and they were eager to get to work. Mom has been telling me for years that I need to dig up the turmeric and the pinecone “shampoo” ginger on the side of the brooder house because it was taking over. I have never seemed to have anytime for the job—and truth be told was not very interested in removing my Tropical jungle garden. In the winter it is just bare dirt, then come May the roots sprout and beautiful greenery starts to appear. They love their location and they have a tendency to grow four to seven feet tall—hanging over the sidewalk. In order to get to the Poultry kitchen from the milk house you have to walk through a jungle of overgrown leaves. The best part is that the pinecone ginger sends up red pinecones and the turmeric sends of beautiful tropical white and yellow flowers. I just love them, and I love their wildness—but that is exactly what Mom does not enjoy. When it comes to flowers, Mom is the neat and tidy gardener, and I am the chaotic and wild gardener. So with a family of four staring at us looking for something to do Mom seized the opportunity and asked them to dig up the turmeric and the ginger. A few hours later there was a small pile of turmeric, and two mountains of pinecone ginger roots. Thankfully the husband was good and strong—because those ginger roots were determined to stay where they were. Mom tried to dig up the first section—but they didn’t budge. The husband would dig up a section and his wife and children would sort through the dirt making piles of roots. In the end we had a nicely smoothed out bed—with no broken waterlines (for the water lines were tucked a few feet under the ground—under the ginger and turmeric).

When I was done with the milking I was planning on helping with the removal of my summer Tropical jungle—but Mom needed my help in the kitchen. When Steve was moving the chicken pens that morning he noticed that a chicken had some string wrapped around its tongue. He tried to get it out—but his fingers were too big. So Mom and I spent a good thirty minutes in the kitchen working to untie the chickens tongue. We finally accomplished it—and I wish that I could say that all ended well, but it didn’t. The tongue swelled up so much that the poor chicken was dead the next day. There are always firsts in life—and that was the first time we ever had a chicken get tongue tied (literally).

Once we were done doing what we could to rescue the chicken we took the family with us to the garden—they were not volunteered out yet. It is time to start getting the garden ready for spring planting and one of the largest rows in “Martha’s Vineyard” needed to be weeded so that we could plant in it this week. They tackled the row—for everything had to go in it. Mom meticulously weeded the onions and I meticulously weeded the carrots. I think that it was close to 2:00 when we stopped for lunch. The family had a picnic lunch in the back yard in the row of blooming flax and wheat. It is where the little girl wanted to eat her lunch. How often do you get to eat your lunch in a field of flowers? After lunch they went home and we went back to the garden. Papa and my brother-in-law where getting another load of hay, so Mom couldn’t work on staining a picnic table (no man power to flip the table for her). So she got to weed in the garden with me. After I finished the carrot row, I headed over to the West Garden Tunnel and weeded my “nursery” row. Instead of starting flowers and lettuces in the greenhouse, I had started them in a row in the garden tunnel. The lettuces had long since been transplanted on to bigger beds, but the flowers were slower in growing and the weeds were taking over. So I spent the next few hours meticulously pulling weeds and leaving behind the hidden flowers. I guess you can say that I was playing Hide and Seek with the flowers. In the end they had no place left to hide.

Tuesday dawned a beautiful spring day! As soon as the milking was done and the kefir was bottled I headed to the garden to weed—but when I got there I realized that it was a picture perfect day for burning. Over time we had pulled up twigs, or pruned trees and thrown them in the fire pit in the middle of the garden—waiting for a good time to burn them. All over the garden were the remains of last summer’s weeds (dog fennel, wild grasses, and Spanish needle). The rose bushes needed pruned, the grapevines needed to be pruned, and the October Daisies flower stalks were now dead and woody—needing to be pulled up so that the new growth could take off for this year. Seeing that the weather was perfect for burning—not windy, I came back up to the house to get Papa’s permission to burn. He readily gave it with the caution to make sure I had a water hose close by. I grabbed the blow torch and some paper and headed back to the garden. It took a little bit to get the pile ignited—but once it took off I had a roaring fire on my hands. My biggest fear was that the surrounding dead weeds would catch fire before I could get them pulled and thrown in the fire pit. The Lord was merciful and that never happened. The fire pit is surrounded by ten feet of concrete—which was very nice to work with. I didn’t have to work the fire by myself for too long, for once Steve was finished in the milk house he joined me. Steve made weeds vanish very quickly as he worked his way from bed to bed in the garden. When we first got to the garden we were met with a wall of weeds, but a few hours later there was lots of open space and a huge pile of wood ash in the fire pit. It was almost 2:00 when Papa called us up to the house. It was lunch time—and it was egg party time. I skipped lunch and went straight to join the egg packaging party. Steve headed to lunch. Mom was busy staining the fifth picnic table. An hour later I headed inside to make the yogurt, while everyone else finished up the eggs. Then I grabbed a quick bite to eat and Steve and I headed to the garden to harvest some veggies for the JAX order. Now last week I told about all the things that I had lost Sunday morning—I never did find the lost hour due to the time change, but I did find my missing ear muffs. When I put on my harvesting apron to go out to the garden to harvest Tuesday afternoon I found them buried in the bottom of the apron. I was so very excited! They will come in grand handy the next few days when the temps drop down into the 30’s again.

When we got back to the milk house we managed to get three bags tied shut before the phone rang. It was Papa—he had run out of gas in his truck and needed me to come rescue him. The gas gauge was acting up. One minute it would say empty, and the next it would say half full. In the end—it was truly empty. On my way to take Papa some gas, I passed by a section of road where I could see our old house through the woods. To my delight I could tell that someone new had bought it and they had repainted it a beautiful gray/blue with white trim. After I gave Papa the gas I told him that I wanted to drive through our old neighborhood and see the house up close. The first people that had bought it from us 25 years ago had painted it an ugly peachy, orange brown color. The neighbor even complained to us that the house was no longer pretty to look at—but an eye sore. When we built the house Mom had chosen to paint it a country blue with cream trim and red doors. So when I saw that the ugly orange was gone I just had to go see it up close. Not only had the people given the house a facelift, they also had the five acres mowed, and the barn visible—two things that haven’t been done in years. It was nice to see that someone was really caring for the place again. When I got home I told Mom about the house and her first reaction was “I want to go see it too”—and she meant “right now”. Papa suggested that we go and say “Hi” to them—but I knew that Mom was already planning on doing that. So Mom and I jumped in the van and drove the four miles back to our old house. I lived there from 13 to 23 years old. It was there that I spent my free time riding horses, disappeared to the neighbor’s house for lunch when tomatoes and corn on the cob were in season, learned to drive (on two wheel’s to Mom’s horror), graduated from high school, became a big sister to my four adoptive siblings, and many more precious memories. When we arrived at the house the new owner was outside and as we got out of our van he asked us how he could help us. I told him that we were the ones who had built the house—and his face lit up with grand excitement. He couldn’t wait to introduce us to his wife and show us the house. He said that he had so many questions since he bought the house—and here were the very people who could answer his questions. I have to say that the neatest part was to see the post and beam barn that Mom and Dad had built. One third of it was horse stalls and the other two-thirds were concreted work space. The chicken pen was still on the side of the barn and the original chicken house was still standing. Mom and I had rigged it together real quick as we were fixing to go on vacation and the chickens needed a secure place to sleep while we were gone. We used scraps from building the house and it looked pretty rickety—so rickety that I was totally confused years later when I heard someone tell the story that when they got married they remodeled a chicken house and lived in it. The only chicken house I had ever seen was ours—and it was only a 4 ft. by 8 ft. building and I had no idea how anyone could live in that. Anyway, we had a very nice visit with the family. When we got home my sister Nichole had stopped in for a visit. She was quite envious that she didn’t get to go along for the tour of our old house. It was a very late night, for we got home late, and then it was 8:30 before Papa announced that he had to go to town to get ice for the deliveries. My sister left a little after that and then we started dinner. It was going on 9:30 when we sat down to eat and then I had to make all the receipts for the Jacksonville orders. What a late night!

Thursday was the last day to get ready for the Farm Tour Friday. I had to make two batches of yogurt—and this time I remembered to culture them. Mom and Steve mowed the lawn, and then they worked on sanding the pieces to the last picnic table and then after Steve left Papa finished sanding and then mom put it together. Papa also went to pick up beef from the butcher and when he got back we all pitched in to get it organized into the freezer. Another chore Papa had to do was to put the hot wire netting up around the backyard. It was over grown with flax, wheat, brassicas, and other weeds that had sprouted from the duck feed (the ducks are being rotated through the backyard). It was perfect food for the sheep—and since the backyard has ankle twisting holes from when Aliyah was a puppy—we thought that it would be a great idea for us to fence the backyard off so that no children could run through it and break a leg. Plus, it would give a close up view of the sheep. The last thing we did outside was to wash the pollen off of the picnic tables and then cover them with the tablecloths.

Friday was the big day and there was still so much to do. Thankfully Friday is garbage day which means that breakfast is at 8:00 instead of 7:30. That gave me extra time to bottle the kefir after I set up the milking equipment—all before breakfast. Then once breakfast was done we milked the cows. Papa, Steve and Mom got a wash sink set up at the bathroom and a few other odds and ends done. The people were starting to arrive just as we finished milking the cows. One of the things we wanted to do with the “tourists” was to put our pet heifer—Merry, in an area so that all the children could pet her. We ran out of time for all our plans for a holding pen on Thursday—but Friday morning Papa brought the sheep shade up near the garden and then as soon as I was done milking I grabbed some step stakes and a reel of hot wire and headed out to the shade. I wrapped the hot wire around and around and around the shade structure making a three strand “fence”. It wasn’t hot—but it gave a boundary for the children and the cow. Once everyone had arrived Papa brought the sheep into the backyard. Then they toured the milking parlor, the milk house, and the walk-in cooler. How many children get to stand in their refrigerator? Then there were the baby chicks to see—some that were two weeks old and some that were four days old. The next stop was the poultry kitchen—where we process chickens and turkeys. We then walked out to the garden and everyone got to look into the garden tunnels and see the rows of collards, mustard greens, lettuce, potatoes, and green beans. Then I took them into the East Garden Tunnel where everyone lined up down the carrot row and they got to pull a carrot out of the ground. Those children (and adults) were so excited to eat a fresh carrot. After everyone had a carrot they then lined up at the water hose so that we could rinse the dirt off. Then it was crunch, crunch, crunch as they enjoyed their carrots. We then loaded onto the hay wagon—all 37 of us and went for a ride around the farm. When we got back to the garden, Papa and I headed out to the heifer field and I put a halter on Merry and walked her up to the shade and on the inside section of the wire fence. I then walked her around and let everyone pet her. She just loved it. She was never eager to walk on—she just stood there and soaked up all the loving, and munched on the carrot tops that some of the children were still caring around. The Farm Tour was then over and while some families headed on home, some stayed for a picnic lunch in our new dining area. One little four year old girl, whose Mother buys products from us, said that “she didn’t know that Farmer Tom lived so far away”. They drove two hours to come to the farm tour. It was a very enjoyable day—and to me the best part was meeting customers that Papa has told us about but who Mom and I had never met.

We were done with the farm tour by 2:00. We got something to eat and rested a little bit. Then I made some banana bread—finally found a cassava flour recipe that is perfect for using overly ripe bananas. Mom had some odds and ends things to do, and so did Papa. The afternoon wasn’t too busy, but we did manage to stay on the go.

Saturday was a catch up day and I worked at uploading the pictures from the Farm Tour onto the computer. Mom got a video of me walking Merry around and the children petting her. To my dismay though—either the camera was malfunctioning, or our computer is for it doesn’t play very smoothly. Then to make matters worse, our computer must have done some unasked for update and removed my video editing program—the one that was so easy a kindergartener could have used it. So I wasn’t able to share the video—yet. If you missed the farm tour keep your eye open for we hope to do more soon.

Serving you with Gladness,

Tiare