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Hi Everyone,

               Speaking fast has always been my forte—or should I say one of my downfalls. Depends on if the person you are talking to can comprehend what you are saying. When I was a young teenager I had a friend who also talked real fast and we could carry on conversations that others couldn’t understand—we could also talk fluent pig Latin.  I have had a long day with church, company and phone calls and so I am a little (a lot) late in starting my journal . . . so put on your listening ears and hold onto your seats while I try to tell you as fast as I can about my week here on the farm.

               The week started just as it had ended the week before—with Mama on the excavator. Years ago we put up a temporary plastic fence to keep the animals out of the garden. That fence became majorly overgrown with weeds, grass, and a mimosa tree. Mama decided that it was time to clean it up since she had the excavator, so she and Papa tackled the job while Jessie mowed and Steve and I creamed the milk. After lunch Jessie and I had the job of cleaning up the tree and taking it to the compost pile. Football practice started last week, so Jessie had to leave every day at 3:00. When Jessie left, Papa headed out to mow some of the pastures (if you do not mow down what the cows didn’t eat, then when they return they will only eat what they ate last time—but if you mow it they will eat all of it and the grass will be healthier). Mama and I decided to dig up a row of Louis Philippe roses out of the West border of the Cottage Garden (raised beds). Coastal grass, goldenrod, cat claw vine, blackberries, grapevines and all kinds of other weeds had taken over the roses for years—and we thought that they would make a great border on the front of our new Communal Barn (a barn that will house the feed room, brooder, milk house, storage, bathroom and walk-in cooler and freezers). The easiest way into a briar patch is with the excavator—so Mama began digging up the roses. The first two or three was real easy and so we thought that it would be no problem. Then Mama couldn’t find one after digging around and needed me to come point it out. I found it okay and got her pointed in the right direction. The next one over had just about been destroyed by all the weeds and some wild critter that had dug a den.  Then Mama began to dig her way on the long stretch, but soon told me that there were no roses left there. I knew that I had seen them in bloom under all the weeds so I walked over to get a closer look. To my dismay Mama had totally destroyed one rose—all I found was a branch here and a branch there, but no root system that they were attached to. Then I noticed that all down the row she had dug right up to each rose—but missed them. I ended up digging up the rest with a shovel since Mama had practically knocked down all the surrounding weeds—though that is not to say that I still didn’t have some run-ins with the local cat’s claw vines. In the end we managed to dig up 15 roses. I think that we had only planted 8 roses. Two were destroyed, but some had multiplied. We cleaned them up to make sure that no nasty weeds were hiding in their roots and trimmed them back and then we placed them in tubs of water until we can transplant them.

               November 1 is our Fall Farm to Table Dinner—and now is the time to start preparing the gardens so that there will be food to eat and flowers to enjoy come November. This coming week I will start lots of veggies and flowers in the seed trays in the greenhouse—but last week was the time to plant some sunflowers. I had to weed out a bed first—or should I say pull up old mullein plants before I could plant any sunflower seeds. I managed to get that done before it was time to make yogurt and package eggs. Then after eggs Mama and I spent the rest of the afternoon pitting and cutting cherries for the dehydrator. My hands were stained an ugly reddish brown and I remembered that we three girls used to say that we shouldn’t pit cherries the day before our wedding—maybe the week before because it took a good four days before the stains washed away. I never got back out to the garden to plant my sunflower seeds, and to my dismay it poured down rain that night and all I could think was that if the seeds were in the ground they would have been well watered and sprouted in a few days. I did manage to get them planted on Wednesday—and it rained on them. I do not know, but they just might be sprouted by now.

               Harvesting the garden in the summer can be a challenge for me. Right now I am harvesting cayenne peppers, Seminole pumpkins, tomatoes, and pepperoncini peppers. The pumpkins require muscles to harvest—for they weigh 5 to 10 pounds each, but once harvested I just have to put them in the barn on a rack to cure. The cayenne peppers require stamina to harvest for I either have to practically stand on my head to find the peppers or I have to crawl around on the ground to pick through the plants to pull off all the ripe red cayenne peppers. Then I have to rinse them off and spread them out on the dehydrator trays. Then a few days later I have to pop off each stem and drop the dried cayenne into a large glass jar for future torture sessions when I don a couple of masks and try not to breath while grinding the peppers to powder. The tomatoes I have learned to harvest when they start to blush, and then we eat them as they ripen. If left to ripen on the vine they rot and the bugs or rats eat them. I spent hours on Thursday weeding the pepperoncini peppers and harvesting them—I got a huge basket full. It was late when I finished, so we just put them in the cooler. We processed chickens on Friday, so it was Saturday before we could get around to pickling the peppers. I have never grown pepperoncini’s before, so I was really excited about giving them a try, and was happy with how well they produced. We got a late start pickling because we had customers to take care of, family to talk to (for Mama’s sister and Dad are both in the hospital), and friends to talk to—so it was 5:00 at night when we started. We had to wash, trim the stem, cut a slice in the side, stuff them in jars, add some garlic and seasoning, pour the boiling brine over the top, and water bath them for 10 minutes. Thankfully I had an easy dinner planned—chicken and yellow rice (made with herbs and spices) and green peas and tomatoes. It was 8:00 by the time we were done.

               Friday was chicken graduation day again—but this time we had lots of help. We had a mother and son from Jacksonville come over to help and they were a big help once we learned their strengths. It was Jessie’s last day, because school starts back in a week, and football practice is in full swing—but another young man who is interested in working on our farm showed up for the day (he and his family have helped us process chickens for the last four years until they quit a few months back).  To our delight we had all the chickens processed, cut up, packaged and the building cleaned up by 5:00. I could hardly believe that we really accomplished it all that day.

               Well, I hope you were able to keep up with me—I managed to get it all down in an hour (and sometimes it can take me three hours to type a journal)—that must be when I am writing with a Southern drawl. I hope you have a great week and for those with children I hope you enjoy your last week of summer vacation.

Serving you with Gladness,

Tiare