For my post on a typical spring day, I decided to keep a diary for one day. Most of my chores are the same every day during the winter and late spring and any extra projects that get done are weather dependent. Meaning do I want to work outside or inside? Or in other words – no monsoon or monsoon, or even snow this last week. I try to get at least one “job” done each day outside of regular farm/household duties. These could range from hauling in more firewood, to sorting through stored apples or digging the weeks root crops for the house and the milk cow.
5:00 am – get up and start the fire in the cookstove, so I can have my coffee and make breakfast.
While I’m waiting for the cook stove to heat up, I check emails and read East coast blogs that I check in on daily, and generally enjoy the blessed quiet. I am a total morning person.
5:30 am – start breakfast, and go open the perches for the hens so they can start their laying.
5:45 am – wake-up hubby and child, he packs his lunch and we all eat and visit.
6:15 am – hubby leaves for work and we close the gate behind him and let the dogs loose to run to their hearts content.
6:30 am – wash morning dishes and put away, and get jars out for milking. Straighten the house up and fight the kid for the computer, or go over her on-line school work and log that into the computer. Check the web-mails from her teachers and take care of any school business that needs immediate attention.
7:30 am – feed the bucket calf and milk the cow, and leave her to eat her special hay and to finish her roots. I am only milking once day, so I can milk later than I normally would, since I don’t have to milk at night.
7:50 am – process the milk and wash up the buckets.
8:00 am – scan the obits for my name, and catch up on the local news.
8:15 am – go back to the barn and fill the feeder for the milk cow, her yearling steer, bucket calf, and MCIT (milk cow in training). By this time the horse and the milk cow have finished their feed that we don’t want them to share – the milk cow goes to the shed with the others and the horse is turned out.
After that, we walk up to the other barn and shoo the cows out, and while my daughter beds the loafing shed, I fill the feeders, water trough and feed/move the sheep, and check the hens feed, water and bedding. When the shed is bedded we let the cows back in to eat.
Every morning while we are at the barn/greenhouse area, we check on the seedlings in the greenhouse, water, and uncover the flats if the day will be warm enough. On cold days, we are still leaving the heat mat on.
9:00 am – now that the regular chores are done, my daughter usually starts her school work and I am free to do whatever project needs doing that day. It was raining, so the extra task of the day will be inside.
However, since it is spring vacation, I collared her to help me harvest the last of the cabbage in the greenhouse. She didn’t mind too much, since she can eat a 1/4 head of braised cabbage for lunch.
Contrary to popular belief, I’m not too much of a slave driver – we talk and visit while we work, and she took quite a few photos for me of the different stages of the harvest.
We harvested all we could for the house, and pulled some partially rotted cabbage heads for the hens, and sheep.
11:30 am – time for lunch, she fixed cabbage for herself, and I had an apple and some carrots.
We both read during our lunch break, and I started a load of laundry.
12:30 pm – I wanted to take a nap since it was such a cloudy day, but I knew the cabbage would not wrap itself in plastic wrap and store itself in the refrigerator, so I finished up the cabbage and jotted down notes from the harvest in my garden notebook. Amazing! Little seeds I started last June are still supplying us with meaningful work and food 10 months later!
1:30 pm – back up to the barn to flip the hay back in the feeders for the cows and top off their water. Usually at this time, I check for eggs too.
It is also a good time to wander into the greenhouse and look at the seedlings and dream of warmer days to come. I never get tired of looking at those little seedlings struggling to break ground.
2:00 pm – this time in the afternoon I can work on bookwork, bills and general paperwork, and make or return phone calls.
3:30 pm – back to the barn to check on the cows and gather the final eggs, and close the nest box perches. I button up the seedlings for the night. After putting away the eggs, I feed the bucket calf again and put more hay in the feeder for the motley crew at the house barn.
4:00 pm – this time of year, I start a fire in the furnace to take the chill off of the rest of the house. I straighten the house up again, and start dinner, and hang up any laundry that needs drying over the heat registers.
5:00 pm – hubby comes home from work, and needs to decompress, so he tells us of his day, while dinner is cooking. After we have all settled down, we eat.
Some evenings we watch TV or a movie, read, or stay up late writing posts on the computer 🙂
Bedtime comes at 11:00 –
This was a rainy day post, but if the weather was nice, we would be back outside after dinner and working on something until dark, those days will be here soon enough though, so a slow day harvesting cabbage and doing regular chores feels kind of good!
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