652
Hi Everyone,
They say if at first you don’t succeed try and try again! Last spring I planted 20 pounds of potatoes and the beginning of summer I harvested around 250 pounds of potatoes. I had a friend that wanted to learn to can—so she came over and we spent the afternoon canning potatoes. We got around 64 pint jars. Being busy outside on the farm the majority of the day, I rely a lot on fast food. No I do not mean the junk that you get at the local drive thru fast food place—but the food that we have spent a few hours one afternoon canning. Throughout the year we can green beans, field peas, potatoes, and pumpkin. Then when I am in a hurry I cook steaks, or chicken breasts, or fish (all meat that cooks up in minutes—like three minutes on each side)—and then I open some jars of canned goods and heat them up and dinner is served in 30 minutes. Once in a while I will cook some baked potatoes—but it is rare because they do not cook in an hour. So I rely greatly on canned potatoes. I can be real lazy and just heat them up and serve them in cubes (we can them as one inch cubes) with butter, or I can do a little extra and make mashed potatoes with them—or if I have a little extra time I can open a jar of potatoes, rinse them off and add them to a hot skillet with melted butter and season them with salt, pepper and paprika—and cook them until they are good and crisp on the outside. I can also open a jar of canned potatoes, rinse them off and add all the ingredients to make a quick potato salad. I could also make soup with the potatoes—but Mama is allergic to potatoes so when I make potato soup I use white sweet potatoes so that she can enjoy it too. Mama being allergic to potatoes is one of the reasons our family doesn’t use them a lot—which is why it is best for us to preserve our potatoes by canning them. To my dismay we never managed to get around to canning anymore potatoes last summer. Mama and I both got sick and we could barely get our daily chores done—let alone can potatoes. Then one day I entered my sewing room where we store all our root crops and pumpkins (because I keep the temp at 68 and I keep the room dark)—I noticed that the potatoes were sprouting. UGH! They were still great for eating—but there was more than we could possibly eat fresh. They were also great for planting—but there was more than I needed to plant. So, I sold the majority of them to our customers for I couldn’t stand the idea of wasting them—and then I planted 78 of them last Monday.
Yep, last Monday Shayne and I spent the afternoon in the garden. The week before, we had prepped the beds—(two 30 inch wide and 20 foot long beds). So all we had to do on Monday is mark two rows with my zipper tool. Then we used a tape measure set between the two rows to help us place the potatoes in the right spot—every twelve inches, starting at one foot on one row and 6 inches on the other row so that the potatoes were planted in a zig-zag pattern. Then I crawled on my hands and knees picking up each potato, then Shayne dug a hole with a post-hole digger and I dropped the potato in the hole and covered it up. My next step is to cover the beds with a few inches of compost—but it rained all day Tuesday, Wednesday was crazy, it rained all day on Thursday and we processed chickens on Friday. We will be processing chickens on Monday—so just maybe we can get it done of Tuesday for I do believe that it is supposed to be nice and sunny all week.
Rain—we haven’t had any for a while so last week’s nor’easter blessed us with cooler weather and about 3 inches of rain the beginning of the week. Then Hurricane Isaias—of which doesn’t everyone know that it is properly pronounced “I-zay-us”—blessed us with another 3 inches of rain the end of the week. We were thankful that Isaias only gently kissed us with soft rain and gentle breezes—the nor’easter had stronger winds and knocked over the garden trellis that was supporting the bleeding heart vine in the courtyard. Thankfully Papa was able to stand it back up and put it back together without ruining the plant.
Wednesday was crazy, and it made the rest of the week off schedule and a little stressful. Papa left on time to make his deliveries to Jacksonville—but 15 minutes later as he was stopped at the red light on HWY 90 in front of Publix the van just shut down. It wouldn’t start for nothing. The light turned green and the two cars in front of him went on—but the long line of vehicles behind him was stationary. He tried to figure out who to call—and he chose 911. They asked what his emergency was and he told them that he was stuck in traffic with a dead van. So they sent a few police officers to check on him. The first thing you are supposed to do is move your vehicle off the road—but even the police officer had to agree that there was no place off the road to go (it is a six lane highway that butts up to a sidewalk on each side). So they called a tow truck—the police officer said that if Papa called the tow truck it would take 2 hours to get there, but if the police officer called the tow truck it would take 15 minutes. Papa had the police officer call the tow truck—and it was there in 30 minutes.
While Papa waited he tried desperately to get Mama or me to answer the phone. Mama wasn’t available and I was outside with Wayland separating calves—Leeann is 6 months old now and needed to be moved to the heifer field away from the bulls. Then Next (yes Papa wanted a cow named Next so when we called her in to be milked we could say, “Next”) and Lacy were finally 2 years old and ready to be put in with the bull. Next and Lacy were easy—but moving Leeann was a different story. She is a bottle baby and she is not afraid of you. We couldn’t get her to run in front of us—and I forgot that she was halter broke. I sent Wayland to get a bottle and we used that to get her to follow us. That worked until we were about 50 feet from the heifer field and then she started grazing on the grass and somehow managed to touch the hotwire and then she took off lickity-split all the way back to the panel pens. When we got back to her she was not interested in the bottle anymore so Wayland and I had to take turns pushing her all the way back down the lane to the heifers. We got within 100 feet from the heifers and Leeann took off running lickity-split toward the heifers! We then let out Next and Lacy and sent them down the lane toward the milk herd. Once they passed the herd we let out the herd from the milking area and put them all back out to pasture. When they passed the barn we let the calves out to join their mamas—and Emmy our youngest bottle calf got to go out to pasture too. We held one calf behind though—Pistil (Blossom’s bull calf who is 6 months old). It was time to wean Pistil and put him in the bull field. Thankfully that went easy too—for the grass we had to walk through to get to the bulls was a good two feet tall. As soon as I got back I headed for the house and was fixing to clean out all the grass seed from inside my shoes when I heard the phone ring.
It was Papa trying for the 15th time. He needed me to call our neighborhood mechanic to see if he could have the van towed to him (of which the answer was yes). Then I had to call and email all our JAX customers to let them know that we would not be making a delivery that day. Mama and Shayne met Papa at the mechanics so that Papa and Shayne could transfer all the ice chests and egg crates from the van to the truck. When they got home we had to unpack everything and restock it on the shelves in the walk-in cooler—to be repacked the next morning. The van was temporarily fixed that night with a used part because the new part wouldn’t arrive in time to install it before Papa had to head back to JAX on Thursday. The problem—a sensory cable broke and shut the whole van down. Computers are nice—BUT THEY DO NOT BELONG IN VEHICLES!!!! At least that is my opinion. A computer cable should not determine whether a car works or doesn’t work--the first cars didn’t have computers.
We were supposed to process chickens on Thursday and Friday—but since Papa was in JAX on Thursday we decided to process them on Friday and Monday. Usually we do half on one day and half of the 90 on the other day—but we had a large amount of chickens ordered for Friday and Saturday so we had to process more than half on Friday—which made for a longer day. The other problem was that Steve doesn’t work on Mondays—which meant that Wayland and Shayne would have to bottle the milk and wash the milking equipment before they could help us process chickens—and that takes them until a little after 1:00. I wanted to ask Steve if he would swap around his days—but Mama said no. Then I found out that Steve was going on vacation for a week starting next Friday—and Mama agreed that it would be okay to ask him to come in Monday since he would be gone Friday thru the following Wednesday. So we should be able to get started at a decent hour tomorrow—and since we already processed more than half of the chickens it shouldn’t take too long.
I hope that you all fared well with Isaias—and may we all have a better week this coming week.
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare