Cookies, sickness, pallets, the garden

Right after Mama and I got back to the farm from bus calling early Saturday afternoon, Alex and the girls came over to make cookies. Alex is looking for ways to save money at his restaurant as well as add some traditional American items to the buffet. Cookies would fill that need, especially for kids, but Alex does not know how to choose the recipes or bake the cookies. So, he enlisted Mama’s help. The girls come to help but end up playing most of the time. Any excuse to be at Mama Kim’s house is good enough. I was outside working while the baking was going on and was just about to take a break and visit with Alex when I heard the car doors open and close. I was in the shop with the doors closed because of the cold misty day. When I came out to check they had gone. Mama told me Cheyenne got sick, so Alex was taking her to the doctor. She had been feeling poorly off and on for a couple days, complaining of her tummy hurting. The girls did not go to church with us yesterday, so we did not get and update, but there is a lot of sickness going around right now.


I prepared a very ambitious list for this weekend. Unfortunately, I got very little accomplished that was related to that list. I did get a frame build to the doors on the goat barn, but nothing else. I had Mama call the business just done the road from us Saturday morning. They have pallets stacked beside their horse barn and we wanted to see how much the owners might want for those pallets. Mama left a message and we went bus calling. When the owner called back later that morning, he told Mama we could have all the pallets for twenty dollars, but we had to take all of them. We agreed and later that afternoon we took the utility trailer and got our first load. We were only able to get about forty of the over one hundred pallets onto the trailer. So, to handle the remaining four tall stacks of pallets, I will take the tractor and use our pallet/hay fork attachment to transport the remaining stacks to the farm. We did not think of that Saturday until after we had handled the load we put on the trailer. Which now needs to be unloaded. Using the tractor will save us handling them twice just to get them to the farm. I will slowly disassemble most of the pallets, many of which are made of heavy oak wood, and repurpose the wood. Some of the pallets will remain intact because we always find uses for pallets around the farm. Mama was fun to watch as we loaded the trailer. Some of the pallets weighed ten pounds while others weighed seventy pounds. There was a comment for each pallet. But I appreciated the help – especially with the heavy ones.


We had a couple hard overnight freezes last week, so I was surprised to see how many plants had sprouted in the raised bed despite the temperatures. However, when I took Mama to see the progress, I was surprised to find the raised bed empty of any sprouts. Thinking the freeze might has killed them off I let it go. But that afternoon when I let the chickens out, one of our white chickens made a bee line for the raised bed and began hunting the young plants. Mama almost lost a chicken in that moment. Last week, I had put wire over the raised bed to keep the chickens from scratching in the soil. I did not anticipate them acting like crows, pulling up and eating the new plants. Years ago, when we had our hundred-acre farm in a hollow in West Virginia, we planted the meadow in corn. The crop did poorly. Partly because of the soil and partly because a flock of crows came in and pulled the starting plants up and eating the corn seed that had sprouted. Those plants that matured were devastated by raccoons. It was not a good year for corn. This year is not looking like a good year for a garden. I am not sure how much effort to put into protecting our little garden from chickens, rabbits, raccoons and deer. We will see how ambitious Mama and I get at animal-proofing our garden plot. It is not like fresh vegetables are hard to come by.


If we forge ahead with the garden, Mama and I will put out potatoes later this week. We’ll see.