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Hi Everyone,
Life doesn’t always go as planned and sometimes that is okay, and sometimes it can be very aggravating. The difference lies in how the change personally affects you—if the change is to your liking it is easy to go with the flow, but if the change prevents you from getting something done that you really need to do, then it is harder to go with the flow. Last week I experienced both types of changes.
With just me, myself, and I managing the garden lately it is hard to get everything done that needs to be done now—like transplant the roselles, tomatoes, zinnias, and cosmos from the greenhouse to the gardens. Then I still need to plant the okra. The problem is that the beds where I need to tuck my plants into are not prepared. They are full of weeds or old plants and need to be freshened up. Monday’s and Thursday’s are my biggest gardening days, but the last two Mondays have not gone as planned. One I had to pick up my taxes on—but Mom made up for it on Thursday by helping me prepare the beds and plant the pumpkins and cucumbers. This Monday we had customers show up back to back to pick up some calves—two bulls and a heifer. Those sales started shortly after I finished milking, and lasted until 2:00. No sales are accomplished without some jolly talking involved—it isn’t friendly to just catch the animal and load it in their trailer and send them on their way. One of the bulls and the heifer were so blessed to move way down to south Florida where it never freezes and the grass is always green. By the time we finished loading calves and gabbing it was time for lunch (or should I say past time)—but before I came in for lunch I had a mission to accomplish. While I had been walking around in the heifer field I found a scattered collection of rocks. Mama has been giving the courtyard a facelift and a bunch of rocks would help define the border more. So I gathered all the rocks into the back of the Gravely—all but one that is. I managed to dig it up out of the ground, but that is where my strength failed. I could not pick it up. After lunch Steve helped Mama lay the rocks in the border around the flower beds in the courtyard, and I had some computer work to catch up on. The bread orders are due in every Monday by noon—and I hadn’t had the chance to answer one single email yet. So the next hour was spent answering forty something emails and getting the bread order sent off. It was 3:45 by the time I finished, which was too late to go to the garden, but just enough time to work in the greenhouse potting up the cosmos.
I was determined to get to the garden on Tuesday—but I wasn’t sure I would make it for my schedule kept me hopping the whole day. First I had to milk the cows, bottle the kefir, pick the green beans, make yogurt and package the eggs. By the time all that was done it was 3:30, which meant I had about an hour to an hour and a half before I needed to be inside to cook dinner. So I grabbed my garden tools, some weed buckets, my gloves and the broadfork and I headed to the West Garden to weed a bed where I intended to transplant zinnias to. By 5:00 I had the bed weeded and marked with the gridder—all ready for planting.
Wednesday afternoons are usually my “day off” where I get the chance to relax a bit—but since my last two Monday’s have not afforded me the chance to work in the garden I decided to forfeit my relaxing time for some gardening time. Once Papa was on his was to JAX I sliced me a thick slice of some fresh sourdough bread baked that morning by our chef friends. I heated it up and lathered it with a heaping amount of butter and then topped half of it with raspberry jelly and the other half with honey. I then poured me a glass of milk and enjoyed my lunch. Then I headed outside and gathered my garden tools and my trays of zinnias. It didn’t take me long to start planting because everything was already prepared. I had started seven different shades of zinnias in the seed trays in the greenhouse. I was able to plant five colors in the row I had prepared already. I had two colors left—but wasn’t sure where to plant them. I decided to head over to the raised bed Cottage Garden and clean up two of the squares around one of the rose bushes and plant each square with one color. Once all the zinnias were planted I then headed over to “Martha’s Vineyard” to start preparing the bed to plant okra. I grabbed the broadfork and took it to the first of five eight foot sections. My goal is to only clear enough area to plant the okra. When the whole area is overtaken with nutgrass it is impossible to conquer all of it—so I am only focusing on the areas that I want to plant in. I started pulling out the weeds once I had loosened up the ground and found that the Carolina geranium was so thick and in the dying stage that it was making it a little challenging to weed. I thought that if I could just mow around the bed and down the bed that I could weed much easier—but how was I to get the push mower from the barn to the garden (which was nowhere near each other). Steve was out gathering eggs—but he was fixing to go home for the day. If I asked him to bring me the lawn mower, I had no idea how I would return it to the barn. I thought about just pushing it from the barn to the garden—but that would use up all my energy and time. I decided to head to the barn and see if just maybe I could load it in the Gravely myself. I pushed the lawn mower over to the Gravely and bent over to pick it up—but that was as far as I got for it was truly too heavy for me to pick up. I scanned the barn for a ramp, a piece of wood, a piece of plywood—anything to make a ramp from the ground to the bed of the Gravely. I could find nothing though. I finally came up with the idea of tying the lawn mower to the back of the Gravely and dragging it behind as I drove back to the garden. I grabbed two pieces of hay string and tied one to one side of the lawn mower handle and then to one side of the Gravely, and then I took the second piece of hay string and did the same thing on the opposite side. To my delight the lawn mower followed me like a good puppy. I got the mowing done and then I managed to weed the section I had broadforked. It was then time to clean up and head inside—but I was grateful for all that I had accomplished. Thursday was a new day, and I was hoping to get the other four sections weeded so that I could plant the okra . . . but that is not what happened.
We woke up Thursday at 5:00 and headed outside to milk. The A/C mechanic was to show up at 8:30 to move the compressor unit for the walk-in freezer/cooler from where it was, to around the corner so that it would be out of the way of the new building. The nice thing about that schedule was that in the early morning the flies are not bad while milking the cows, it isn’t hot yet, and after breakfast I actually had time to take care of laundry and clean my bathroom. Mom and I were fixing to go to town to do some much needed shopping but our builder showed up to start demo on the concrete. He brought his skid steer and went to work removing the big four inch thick 8 ft. x 9 ft. concrete slabs that made up the side walk around the old Milk House. We wanted to salvage any that came out in one piece, and he actually managed to cut loose one of them whole. It was too heavy and big for the skid steer to carry it to its new home, so Papa grabbed his tractor and he picked it up with the forks on one side while the skid steer picked it up on the other side. Then they became a push me-pull me as they worked their way over to the Brooder house. They set it down about fifty feet from its destination and then the skid steer began to push it along the ground the rest of the way. When the concrete pad was about two feet from its resting place it broke in three pieces. We all groaned and moaned—we were so close. All we could say was, “We tried.” The side walk was the easy part to remove—it was only 4” thick. The floor to the old Milk House was 10 inches thick and the skid steer couldn’t break it or get under it, so the builder called it a day and went and bought what I called a new toy—a Hydraulic Hammer Breaker Attachment for his skid steer.
The electrical box that was in the old Milk House was just propped up on the concrete, and when the concrete was moved—the electrical box fell down. We had to call our electrician friends to come and move it and put it on a new post in the ground. They couldn’t do it earlier because the electrical wires were buried in and under the concrete. While they worked on that I was able to finally make my trip to town—but without my Mama. I must admit—I much prefer being chauffeured to being the driver.
Friday morning we once again got up at 5:00 so that we could be done milking the cows before the builders arrived and started jack hammering the concrete. Too much noise and the cows will not come in to be milked, and they will not be able to relax to let down their milk. When we started setting up to milk we realized that we had no hot water—so somewhere between 6:00 and 6:30 Mama called our electrician friends to let them know that we needed help. The wires to the hot water heater were cut when the compressor was moved the day before. Oops! They were here and gone before 8:15 with the problem all fixed. Then the concrete busters showed up and the action began. While I should have been in the garden weeding Thursday and Friday I was having a lot more fun watching concrete demo. I even got a video of the skid steer doing its job and you can watch it here: “Eating a concrete elephant one bite at a time!” We were amazed at how thick some of the concrete was—like 2 feet thick. The concrete hammer worked really good at busting it up—but those men got their gym work in for the day helping to load it in the bucket of the skid steer. Sometimes the bucket could pick up a pile by itself, but sometimes there wasn’t enough room to make a scoop and they had to load it all by hand. Around 11:00—just when Steve had finished his pasture chores and was coming up to wash the milking equipment—the skid steer broke a water line and we had a geyser. Thankfully it was the cold water geyser and not the hot water pipe. Mama had to call our electrician friends back—for they are also our plumbers, and they had to come and reroute the water lines. They needed to do it anyway, but they couldn’t find the water lines until after the concrete was busted up, for they were two feet under the concrete. Steve went on home, and later that day—around 3:00 we called him and he came back to wash up all the equipment. The rest of the day went smoother. By the end all the concrete was done, and our cellar was gone. Our old Milk House had a cellar under it--but is never worked. The ground temp here in Florida is 72 degrees year round--so we couldn't use it as a root cellar as we had intended. Then it was prone to flooding--so we couldn't use it for storage. Last Friday we watched as the cellar slowly disappeared. The side walls were busted out, and the cavity was filled up with some concrete and lots of dirt. We are very happy to be done with that headache. You can see some pictures of it on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/shepherdshillfarmfl
Our week was very busy with exciting things—things more exciting than weeding and planting. I will get those done, but sometimes you have to stop and smell the roses—I mean stop and watch some concrete busting!
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare