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Hi Everyone,

                        I cannot believe it—I missed it! I missed the once in a lifetime chance to post a 5 million view YouTube short. It was a fight between a bull and a bullfrog—and the bullfrog won! I was told about it after the event happened—and to my grand dismay no one caught it on camera. It all started when Mama and Papa realized that Jabez, our South Poll Bull, was losing weight—which may account for the reason that we only got three calves from him this year (and we got 12 last year). So they decided to take him out of the herd and send him to the bull field where we can pamper him some, and take Eeyore (our back-up Murray Grey bull) and put him in with the Murray Grey girls. Eeyore must have looked a little mopey when he was young, for that is what Steve named him. Now he is a solid block of muscles and was quite happy to be put in “charge” of the ladies. Putting Jabez in the bull field didn’t go as smoothly though. In the bull field are three Murray Grey/South poll steers and our second Jersey bull—Bullfrog. You should hear him croak every morning, or whenever he gets upset! From what I heard when Jabez entered the field Bullfrog came to greet him—but not under friendly terms. Jabez is a friendly giant—tall and a little lanky. Bullfrog is short and stocky. Jabez is older, but Bullfrog came to tell Jabez who was in charge. They went head to head with all their might. Jabez pushed Bullfrog back a few feet. Bullfrog pushed Jabez back a few feet. Forward and backward they went until Bullfrog gave Jabez one good push and flipped Jabez over and Jabez fell flat on the ground. When Jabez got up he took off in the opposite direction away from Bullfrog. Yep—a Bullfrog was stronger than a bull, and I missed the fight!

                        Seasons: Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, “To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.” There is Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter—and there are seasons where I have to milk all my cows and seasons where I only have to milk a few of my cows, and seasons where I have to milk most of my cows. Right now I am in the season where I have to milk half of my cows—for two are first time heifers waiting to have their first calf, one I dried off because I hope she is due to calve soon (I say hope because she is not showing signs of calving soon, but the calendar says she is due this week), and two are nursing their calves who are saving us no milk. I bring in the two nursing cows first and this gives me a little bit of time to run over to the greenhouse—which is only about 30 steps away—and I can water, plant or pot up depending on whatever needs done that day. On Monday I potted up cabbage and snapdragon starts, and on Friday it was broccoli starts. On Thursday I ran out to the East Garden before I milked and quickly planted around 1400 carrot seeds—thankfully the bed was already prepared, so I just had to mark the rows, drop the seeds and lightly cover them up. I wanted to get them planted before Micah turned on the sprinklers. Once I got the cows into eat I started filling some 128-cell seed trays with soil. I think that I got around three done before it was time to start milking. After milking I returned to the greenhouse to finish filling up the ten trays with soil. Then I began the tedious job of planting 599 Duster Onion seeds, 502 Texas Sweet onion seeds, and 250 Red Creole onion seeds. That is about 1350 little black onion seeds—and how thankful I am for “reading” glasses so that I could see those little seeds. To keep from getting bored I constantly swapped up the counting method. I could count to 128—the number of cells in each tray. I could count to 8—the number of cells in each short row. I could learn my 8 time tables—8x1=8, x2=16, x3=24, x4=32, x5=40, x10=80. I could also count to 16—the number of cells in each long row. I could even go at an angle—and I am sure you get the point. Before I could put the seed trays on the shelves I had to do a little rearranging. The greenhouse shelves were already full of trays of collards, Swiss chard, broccoli, cabbage, flowers, and herbs. I had no space left—maybe enough for two trays, but not ten. Each shelf (and I have seven of them), holds four seed trays—but a few years back I was having problem with rats eating my seedlings and I built rat proof cages on the top shelves. This helped save my seedlings—but I was only able to get two trays on a shelf because of the cages. I have not had any rodent problems of late, and nothing has been eating the seedlings that are on the other shelves without cages so I decided to take down the cages—which gave me all the room that I needed for the seed trays. It is such a joy to walk through the greenhouse every morning to see what has sprouted, and how much they are growing. I should be able to start transplanting some of the starts out to the Market garden this week. Micah and I started prepping those beds last week. I got the beds weeded—which thankfully wasn’t too hard since I had not watered the garden all summer so nothing had really grown except for on the edges where the rain gets. Did I say rain? Well we haven’t had any of that in a month it seems. The grasses are turning unseasonably brown in places. The good news is that the dryer grasses make the cows and sheep fat since their food isn’t so watered down.

                        Back in the early spring we bought 300 laying hen chicks—and sold almost 50 of them. We have around 250 left and we have been anxiously awaiting them to start laying eggs. I hate not having enough of an item to go around, and it seems that we have been short on eggs all summer. A few weeks ago the new laying hens laid their first egg—or should I say that one of the laying hens laid its first egg. Last week that number increased to around 40 to 60 new eggs a day, and for the first time in months we had enough eggs to go around. I think that we shall have plenty of eggs this year for everyone’s holiday baking!

                        I hope that you have enjoyed a small glimpse into my everyday life here on the farm. I had a friend write me last week saying, “I wonder how many people realized that much of your journal this week centered on only the first few hours of your day. There is never a dull moment all day long!” So true she was—what I write is just a glimpse of the bigger picture.

Serving you with Gladness,

Tiare