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Hi Everyone,

               My alarm clock goes off at 6:00—and I roll over and turn it off and turn on my bedside lamp. Then I roll back over snuggle into my pillow and pull the covers securely over me. A few minutes later my radio comes on and I am serenaded by hymns and songs of praise to my God from my radio station BBN (Bible Broadcasting Network). Five, ten, fifteen minutes later I finally climb out of bed and start my day. I used to be the one who jumped out of bed as soon as the alarm clock went off—but a severe illness at 31 changed that habit. Once my bed is made and I am dressed for the day I start a load of laundry, get a glass of water and head back to my room for some Bible reading time. At 7:00 I head next door to set up the milking equipment, and most days Mama joins me—and everyday Papa makes breakfast. We usually eat breakfast between 7:30 and 8:00, and after a hearty breakfast of eggs and oatmeal I head over to the computer with my cup of hot chicken broth (some people start their day with coffee or tea, we start ours with chicken broth). I answer a few emails while I sip my broth and then I help Mama with the dishes. The goal is for me to be outside by 8:30—but that only happens on perfect days. The cows are usually waiting for me at the milking parlor when I do get outside and are most eager to come in and get milked and enjoy a treat of alfalfa pellets. They are very particular about their brand of alfalfa pellets too. Some are not picky—but some refuse to enter the milking stall if the wrong brand of alfalfa pellets has been served. Once I arrive at the milking parlor I add some salt to their water tub—for minerals, and then I fill the feed troughs (and some extra buckets) with the alfalfa pellets. I then open the wires and bring the cows into the holding area on the concrete around the milking parlor and the morning ritual begins. I open the wire to the parlor and call the first four cows to come in. Right now the first ones are Fiesta, Abby, Liberty, and Dijon (the Bull). If a cow is in heat, then Dijon is not first for he is busy off flirting, and therefore Melba comes in. The first six cows on Mama’s side just eat—they are either waiting to calve or have calves that are drinking all of their milk (we have enough milk right now to fill orders that we do not have to separate the calves at nighttime). My first two cows are also just eaters, and since I am not needed to milk just yet lately I have headed a few feet away to the greenhouse where I water my seedlings and pot up whatever is ready to pot up. I get about 20 minutes before I have to start milking—although it is not 20 minutes of uninterrupted garden fun, because I have to keep checking on the cows and swapping out Mama’s as they finish eating and leave. The older cows are not the only ones of late who like to come into the parlor to eat—two of the young calves do too: Miss Bea and Petals. Petals is much calmer than Miss Bea, and she loves to give you kisses and be scratched behind the ears. Not only does she like to nibble out of a bucket of alfalfa pellets, she also likes to drink out of my bucket of soapy water. Miss Bea is like a typical toddler. She nibbles a little, she drinks a lot—getting soap bubble beards and mustaches, she licks everything and constantly tries to sneak into the back room and eat out of the feed barrel. Chaos begins to break out as I try to keep Miss Bea from mischief and start milking my cows. Then chaos really happens when one of the cows finishes eating and backs out and finds the calves’ bucket of feed. Some are easy to push on—but Merry is quite cantankerous and isn’t so easily pushed around. Every day is different—some days no chaos, some days managed chaos, and some days the chaos just gets out of control. Guess what—I caught one of those days on camera. I was filming Petals eating and drinking—all was peaceful and cute, and then the cows started to leave and chaos broke out. You can watch for yourself here: A few seconds of cuteness--and then chaos breaks out in the Parlor!

               Gardening is in full swing. If I am not starting seeds or potting up seedlings, then I am transplanting little veggie starts into the garden. Last week I potted up collards, broccoli, and Swiss chard seedlings. I transplanted mustard and bok choy out to the gardens. The beds for the mustards were mostly prepared—just had to broadfork and tilth them before I could transplant. The bok choy beds required a lot more work. I had been growing okra in those beds—but the plants were dead so I pulled them up. The Bright Lights cosmos is growing in a bed beside the okra bed—but they were getting lazy and instead of standing tall they were beginning to lay down on the job. So I had to trim off the stems that were lying down, and then I used some hay rope to help the rest of the plants to stand tall and bloom pretty. That opened up the walkway and the garden bed beside them. Then I had to weed the two beds, compost them, broadfork and tilth them. In the end I only needed one bed to transplant over 100 bok choy plants—and in the very end I was exhausted. Mama and I had planned on going to town together, but she had to go without me (I could hardly move).

               We processed chickens on Friday—and there was only the four of us (Papa, Mama, Micah and me). We got started with set up around 11:30 and were done with cleanup by 6:30. We stream lined the process a little better this time. Papa worked the killing cones, the scalder, and the plucker. Mama prepped the birds for me to eviscerate them. Then Micah rinsed them and put them in the chilling barrels. It went much smoother. I think that we could go faster with at least 2 more people on the team. We processed 64 chickens, and cut up 30 of them into parts. Micah said that we could cut up 30 chickens in 30 minutes. With two of us doing it that would mean that we would have to cut up a chicken in 2 minutes. It took us 40 minutes—so a little over 2.5 minutes per bird. I finished first—but as Mama was getting to the end of packaging the parts she found that we were missing a chicken thigh. Once before that happened and we found out that it had been packaged as a chicken breasts—thankfully it was a package we were eating. We checked around for an extra thigh, but couldn’t find it until Mama picked up a chicken back and found that the thigh was still attached along with both chicken breasts. Oops! No wonder I finished first.

               We are not exactly raising Thanksgiving turkeys this year because of lack of help and lack of funds—but we do have 6 turkeys and they were ready to be moved out to pasture last week. The problem was that after last year’s hurricane we really didn’t have any extra hoop houses to put them in. Our ducks are many years old and are really not laying eggs anymore—one here and there, so Papa decided that it was time to retire them and give their house to the turkeys. I wasn’t ready to retire all of them though. Eight of them never leave the hoop house—though the door is open for them every day. They have never gone outside of their house. The original ducks, and Goose, left the house every day to roam the farm and would return at night to go to bed. I wanted to keep the roaming five and Goose—so papa took the eight down to the pond and we fixed up the old turkey house (the front room of the Poultry barn where I used to raise Heritage turkeys) and made a nice house for the five roaming ducks and Goose to sleep at night. Papa says the eight ducks are doing fine at the pond—they are swimming all around. I am sure that the turkeys are enjoying chasing bugs too.

               When Papa woke me up this morning at 5:00, so we could get our chores done early in order to make it to church, he told me that it was 61 degrees and had dropped to 60 by the time we went outside. It was a little nippy outside, but I was cozy with an extra layer of clothing on. Fall cozy is okay—but winter bundled is no fun. Every day seems to feel and look a little bit more like fall.

Serving you with Gladness,

Tiare