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Hi Everyone,
Summer is in full swing, we are dead center in the middle of it—but you would have never known it with the temps being in the 80’s and 70’s last week. We did not complain about those cooler temps and when the temps stayed in the 70’s all morning last Thursday it was the perfect opportunity to send our new worker—Micah, to the Market Garden to clean out all the spent green beans, lettuce and summer squash plants. It has been way too hot to work in there, but in a few weeks it will be time to start planting the fall crops and the beds have got to be prepped and ready. So I was grateful for the chance to get one of them cleaned out. Jessie and I were able to get half of the other one cleaned out the beginning of summer and we tarped it right away to prevent any weeds from growing. Now I have to fine tune the beds in the second Market Garden tunnel and see what herbs have survived the summer in the first Market Garden tunnel before we clean out the other half.
Not much grows in a summer garden here in north Florida, but I find myself quite busy of late harvesting, preserving, dehydrating and eating what is growing. A few years back I had 10 cayenne pepper plants and got a bumper crop that was so big I didn’t have to grow any cayenne the next year. Then the following two years my cayenne pepper crops were not the best. This year I planted around 20 cayenne pepper plants and most of them are producing abundantly. I think that it takes me well over 30 minutes to harvest them. Washing them and getting them on the dehydrator doesn’t take too long, but once they are dry I have to pop off the stem end of every cayenne. I haven’t counted a harvest yet—well I tried, but lost count after about 13. I do know that every harvest fills a few more dehydrator trays than the last harvest.
My brain has been well tasked of late trying to figure out what I am going to grow in the gardens this year: food for us, food for the Farm to Table Dinners, and food for our customers. I do not usually worry too much about planting exactly on time—but I have to make sure that certain vegetables and flowers are producing by November 1 when we have our first dinner, so I have been studying old garden calendars to see when I planted what that year and when it was ready for harvest. It is amazing how much time can go into just planning: what to plant, how much to plant, when to plant, and where to plant—and why—“because I want to”. I have already planted a row of sunflowers—and most of the seeds have sprouted. Last week I harvested some seeds from some white, red, and orange zinnias and planted them in seed trays in the greenhouse. In a few weeks I will be planting potatoes, carrots, and onions in the gardens. The end of the month I will plant kale, collards, broccoli, cabbage, and chard seeds in the greenhouse. In a few weeks I will also start some cool season flower seeds like rudbeckia and snapdragons.
Another thing on the farm that declares that summer is in full swing is that the lawn mower is always hungry. Mama spends a lot of time mowing—and woe if she cannot find the time one week, for then the grass clippings have to be raked up. Mowing the lawn keeps it pretty and the weeds at bay, and mowing behind the animals keep the grass healthy and helps it to grow better for the next time the animals cycle through the field.
One of the things that make farms stay in business is the constant supply of new growth. New chicks arrive on the farm every two weeks, and lately we have had a baby calf born every week. A man who lives three hours away found us and is very excited to raise our bull calves. He says that there are a lot of dairies near him—but they are big and have Holstein milk cows. They may have 4 to 5 calves born a day, so they contract them out. When the man can get one of those calves he says that they are hard to keep alive. They are taken away from their mama’s as soon as they’re born, and without colostrum they are likely to get sick. We let our bull calves nurse on their mamas for one to two weeks—they get all the colostrum they want. A few weeks ago when Emma calved a friend at church asked me if I wanted the calf to be a bull or a heifer. I said that I didn’t care, so she asked me what we needed more: money or a heifer. I said money since the new barn building is breaking our bank. When we got home from church I went out to check and sure enough it was a little bull—I named him “Cash”. The next week at church the ladies asked if anymore cows were due and I said yes—Macy was due any day. Once again we talked about whether it should be a bull or a heifer, and then we talked about names. We try to match our calves’ names with their mama’s names. We couldn’t really come up with a girl’s name, but if we got a bull one lady said we should name him “Miles” since he would be traveling so many miles to his new home. Well, Macy gave birth Wednesday morning to a little bull—and we named him Miles. He will join his buddy Cash sometime this week.
Our days are filled with so many different “projects” and chores, and we wonder how we will ever get them all done—but we do not have to accomplish everything right now, so we take every day one step at a time and we seek the Lord’s guidance to help us accomplish just what He would have us accomplish each day—and often each moment.
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare