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Hi Everyone,
The other morning as we were setting the table for breakfast, I noticed a bald eagle sitting on the fence post in the field right behind our house. I grabbed the camera and carefully opened the back door just enough to poke the lens out and zoom in real close. It was foggy outside—and the zoom made the fogginess around the eagle even foggier than it really was. I got the picture though. As we sat their eating breakfast I was watching as the sun began to warm things up and the fog began to dissipate. Just as I finished eating my eggs I jumped up from the table and grabbed the camera and headed for the back door once again. I cracked the door, stuck out the camera, zoomed in and pressed the button to take a picture—but the camera delayed the “snap”. To my dismay the eagle flew off. When I looked at the picture I had just taken I was greatly surprised that I had caught the eagle just as it was taking flight—and I thought that my camera had failed me once again (for I miss many perfect pictures because it will not take it as soon as I push the button).
For months I have had on my calendar to transplant my onions on Monday, November 17. So as soon as lunch was over Papa headed to JAX to pick up some more milk jugs, Mama and Grandpa headed to a doctor’s appointment—and Micah and I headed to the garden to finish weeding a bed and plant the onions. We stopped at the Garden Shed to get our tools—and I got sidetracked. Back in the summer Mama had the opportunity to use a back hoe and she decided to dig up all the roses on the west border of the Cottage Garden—the weeds were choking them and we wanted to plant them in front of the new Barn. We temporarily put them in large tubs of water—and it was only supposed to be for a few days until we could prepare the area in order to plant the roses. Then Mama changed her mind and didn’t want to plant the roses there. They put on new leaves in there water baths, and they even bloomed—and then they began to die. I was not the happiest of campers, because in my opinion they could have stayed right where they were in their weedy beds. I didn’t know where to plant them, so they continued to soak. Well . . . on Monday I got a plan and Micah and I made it happen. There were two empty beds on either side of the south entrance to the Cottage Garden and I decided to plant four roses on each side of the entrance. Then I had Micah go and dig up my two camellias that I got for my 40th Birthday—10 years ago. They had never thrived where I had planted them because they were in full sun. The south entrance was under a large oak tree. It was going on 4:00 by the time we got the last rose and the second camellia planted—and we were thirty minutes late for our daily egg party. We packaged what eggs we could in the thirty minutes we had—but we didn’t meet our Monday quota (Friday and Saturday’s eggs). Needless to say—we never got the onions transplanted either.
I love growing flowers—but I am not good at picking them for bouquets in the house unless I have a special person visiting or need them for a gift for someone. When I do pick flowers for the house I have the hardest time throwing them out once they are spent. Back in October I cut four stems off of the roselle plants that were full of calyxes. I wanted to use them in a floral arrangement for the Farm to Table Dinner—but to my dismay that floral arrangement never happened because I ran out of time (we were still pulling out the plates and bowls when the guests started to arrive). So those four stems remained in a vase on a tea cart in our dining room. Then one night we started to be bombed by little bugs when we were eating dinner, and the next night, and the next night. We couldn’t figure out where they were coming from. There were piles of them in the light cups of the chandelier. Then one morning Mama found them congregating on our French doors and we knew that we just had to find where they were coming from. I searched some boxes of noodles—nothing. Then I walked back into the dining room and walked over to the calyxes and was astonished to find them and everything around them solidly covered with these little bugs. Oops! I took them outside to the trash, and Mama and I took all the dishes to the sink to wash off the bugs. How grateful we were to finally solve the bug mystery. Maybe it is better for me to enjoy the flowers more outside than inside.
When we were done milking the cows Tuesday morning I bottled the kefir and then I headed to the garden to transplant 166 yellow onions that I had started form seed a few months ago. The bed was already prepared so I just had to grid it and plant. It has been so dry of late though that I felt like I was planting the onions more in the compost chips that in any soil. I have decided that the onions had better be resilient or they will not survive. When I got back inside it was time to make the yogurt. Then Micah and I headed to the Market Garden to harvest collards and lettuce for the JAX delivery. Once again we were late for our egg packaging which meant we were still behind. Thankfully Micah was able to spend a lot of time catching up on the eggs on Wednesday.
We have been trying to sell some heifers for the last six months in order to get more money to finish our new barn: milk house, feed room, bathroom, brooder, cooler, and storage. Many people have asked about them, some even scheduled to come and pick them up—but they never showed up. Then the feed store quit carrying our brand (the brand the cows like) of alfalfa pellets and one of the cows was so upset over the new feed that she ended up stressing out and getting mastitis in all four quarters. We had one heifer that we had just brought in to be bred back in September, and we had been trying to sell her as a bred heifer (more money)—but when Gail got mastitis we decided “nope, we are not selling her”. The very next week someone showed up and asked to buy her—and we agreed. So on Thursday Heidi went to her new home. The buyer had a lot of questions and Micah finished his lunch way before me—which gave him the chance to head out to the West Garden and finish weeding the last row for the onions. Then he composted and wood ashed the bed before he broadforked it. I finished my lunch the same time he finished and I was then able to tilth the bed and then we transplanted the onions. Yeah! I finally got all 300 onions transplanted. I didn’t know whether to be sad or happy that not all of the onion seeds I planted had sprouted. I planted around 1500 seeds—but only 300 sprouted. That was not a very good germination success—but it also meant that I only needed two beds to plant onions in instead of ten. Once the onions were all planted we headed over to the Market Garden and harvested the potatoes that we had planted back in August. We didn’t harvest very many—but I think that we at least harvested more than I had planted. The potatoes that I planted were well past the planting stage (they were almost spent), and to my dismay the worms really had a hay day eating the potato plants. The potato plants that had not been eaten definitely produced more potatoes that those that had been eaten. When we finished the potatoes we had about thirty minutes before we needed to stat packaging eggs so we weeded one of the ten by ten beds in the Cottage Garden. All the summer flowers I had planted had died in the last freeze so it was time to pull them up so that I can replace them with winter flowers.
Friday was the big turkey day—but this year it wasn’t as big as it has been. We lost our processing help this year so Mama decided that there was no way that we could process 50 turkeys by ourselves. We cancelled our order for 50 turkeys and we got 6 instead—and all 6 lived until harvest day. There were just four of us (Papa, Mama, Micah and me). It took us one hour to process them and about twenty minutes to package them. We spent more time setting up and cleaning up than we did processing the turkeys. We were done by 3:30—and we could have been done earlier but Mama came and told us that a heifer calf (a young one who was still nursing) was in heat. So Micah and I headed out to separate the last two nursing calves that were 7 months and 6 months old—ready for weaning. Those Mama’s should give us little bit more milk. We also had a new calf born last week. Merci had a beautiful little red and white heifer calf. She likes to hang out in the milking parlor too, and if you are slow you can pet her too. Merci was born the week of Thanksgiving—so I named her Merci (Thank you in French). When Merci had a calf born last Christmas I named it Noel (French for Christmas). Well, since Merci’s newest one was born the week before Thanksgiving I decided to try Thank you in another language. Spanish was the only one that made any sense—but I still wasn’t crazy about naming a calf Gracias. So I decided to call her Gracie. You can see sweet little Gracie in my newest YouTube short called “Intruder in the Milking Parlor!”
I hope that you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving. I am not sure yet what we are doing—besides cooking our turkey. This week though we get to celebrate two holidays—Thanksgiving and then the very next day (November 28) I turn 50! Not sure how I shall spend my birthday either. I had a dear friend (Lydia) who was supposed to come and spend the week with me—but she injured her back at work and now she cannot come. So now we need a plan B.
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare