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Hi Everyone,
Last week was composed of many surprises—none on the good side.
1. Winter arrived! Some people may rejoice, but when it comes to cold weather I prefer to act like a bear and hibernate—but when cows need to be milked, calves separated, veggies planted or harvested, chickens fed, cows fed, you have no choice but to go outside and “enjoy” the cold weather. This morning that cold weather was mixed with some rain too. I cannot complain about the rain because we need it so bad. People say we need cold winters to kill the bugs—but I do not believe them because up north still has bugs. Friday morning dropped down to 17 degrees here and some of the plants in the Market Garden didn’t fair too well. Some of the celery got a little droopy—as well as the broccoli and the calendula. The kale leaves turned yellow which was a BIG surprise to me. In the greenhouse the ripe strawberries froze and became mushy—I ate them anyway.
2. When you live on a farm and have portable chicken houses that need to be moved to fresh ground, and 700 pound rolls of hay that need to be fed to the cows—you need a tractor, and one that is dependable is much nicer than one that is not. Last Monday the tractor stranded Papa with a flat tire—and the tractor tire man had to come out and fix it. Then on Thursday Papa ran out of diesel and had to walk up to get the diesel can—but the tractor didn’t feel like doing any more work that day and refused to start again. Papa primed and pumped to no avail. My brother-in-law worked on it for a few hours—to no avail. Papa was trying to bring the chicken house up to the yard for we had a buyer coming to purchase our old laying hens to make broth with. Since the tractor died we had to drive out to pasture to gather the chickens. Since Papa was fixing to leave for the JAX delivery and Micah and I would have to handle the sale, I asked Papa if I had to worry about our dogs being too protective of their chickens for we used to have a dog that would attack you if you looked at his chickens. Papa told me that we wouldn’t have any problems as long as the buyer didn’t bring a dog. I guess you can imagine my thoughts when the man arrived with a chocolate lab in the back of the trailer where he was going to put the chickens. To my relief his dog was locked in the area of the trailer . . . and all the dogs behaved beautifully. Aliyah and Yasha were calm and polite to the buyer, and Aliyah kept trying to introduce herself to his dog by putting her paws on the trailer and looking in staring at the other dog. I was glad that all went well. On Friday Papa and I were supposed to make errands to get beeswax, planting potatoes, and animal salt—but with the tractor not working we had to postpone the trip so that Papa could find someone to fix the tractor. The cows were out of hay and it was cold, so we had to have a way to give them hay. Around 4:00 Papa had to go outside and push the third roll of hay off the stack, roll it out of the barn and then back the Gravely up to the stack of hay, and push the second roll of hay into the bed of the Gravely then take it out and dump it in the hay rack for the cows. He had to do this three times. He could only use the roll of hay from the second row because there was no way to pick up the bottom roll of hay, and if he pushed the third row of hay off into the Gravely it was liable to smash the Gravely instead because of the height—so only a roll of hay from the second row would work. It was almost 6:00 before the mechanic showed up to fix the tractor and to our delight he was able to get it running again.
3. Credit cards are just about a necessary part of life these days—especially when so much of the things we use do not come from the local feed store or shopping center. Sometimes though someone else gets ahold of your credit card info and makes life a little complicated for you—and that is what happened last Tuesday. Fraud alert called and in the end our credit card was cancelled and a new one is on the way. How thankful I was that I had already ordered the next two tons of feed for the chickens—for it just might be too late before the new cards arrived and we would run the risk of running out of feed which is what happened last month because I procrastinated a few days too many before placing the order. Thankfully the chickens only had to go half the day without feed—but they still protested by not giving us as many eggs the next few days. They finally forgave me and are back to their regular laying amounts.
4. Monday morning I got an email from a friend telling me that our intern from three years ago was in an accident. If you were reading my journals three years ago, or purchasing our products you may remember Clayton. He came to us to learn farming and spent six months as my gardening and milking sidekick. He had a heart to learn and an eagerness to help—watching was not what he was here to do and many a heavy tool was removed from my hands by him and he proceeded to do the task at hand. Two weeks ago today Clayton was thrown from a side by side vehicle that was going pretty fast. He suffered serious brain injuries and fractured his skull. He has had two surgeries on his brain so far, and they almost lost him a few times. Thankfully he has no other broken bones, and is recovering—but he has a long healing journey ahead.
On the positive side I did manage to plant more carrot seeds—and if they do well I just might share. I also planted radish seeds for the first time in a few years. They are supposed to be the easiest thing to grow, but alas I haven’t had much success of late so I quit trying. I am ready to give them a try again this year. I had harvested most of the ginger from the garden for the Roselle Ginger Mocktail that is served at our Farm to Table dinners—therefore I had to purchase some fresh ginger to plant in order to have more available next fall. I also managed to harvest a second picking of the plantain that is growing lushly in the Market Garden tunnel away from the pesky chickens. Now I just need a secure place to grow my comfrey—away from the chickens.
Well . . . a new week has dawned and we shall see what it beholds.
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare