Chores and Crafts

Yes, I am a senior in the upper half of my 70’s, but I can still work when needed. We have a couple of days of thaw and temperatures in the mid 40’s and we have about 25 fireplace logs unsplit from dead Ash trees that our south neighbor took down when he was fencing along the south border between our farms. A lot of smaller branches were cut by him and stacked for us, but the logs were in 10 foot lengths. Our young hay guy, a great and helpful man, came to remove an oak blow down that was in one of the fields he hays. While he was here, he cut the Ash into fireplace lengths and stacked them where they had been laid. We have some brutal cold expected Monday through Wednesday or Thursday of next week with single digit daytime temperatures. To be prepared to assist the heat pump and hopefully just be a supplemental heat (as long as the power stays on), I tackled the stack today and managed to get about 6 of the logs split, hauled down to the house and stacked on the front porch. The rolling wood rack was filled with older wood from the wood stack and also moved to the porch. This was an additional workout as there is still snow and ice from the past couple weeks of nastiness which makes doing anything a bit of a hazard.

This pile is about twice as large as when the photo was taken and the rolling wood rack is on the other side of the doorway.

All of this effort was followed with a coop clean out. They spent about 10 days without ever even peeking outside. Every day has required carrying a 3 gallon bucket of water over to them and bringing the frozen one back to thaw. The coop is a few feet higher than the garage with a several foot dip between so it was trekking up the hill without slipping on the ice. As that is the east side of the house and the house blocks the hill in the afternoon, the ice lingered.

The driveway is finally thawing and more ground and gravel is seen every day. With today’s slightly warmer temperatures and sunshine, the ice is becoming mud. Tomorrow evening we have rain then a couple inches of snow, but hopefully warm enough to not turn to ice.

The cold icy weather has allowed a lot of crafting time. The December “Fibre Snack” scarf has been the primary knitting project and is now about 2/3 finished. The base color is running out, it is wheel spun and there is more unspun that I will have to tackle it soon to finish the scarf. It is going to be generous, warm, and colorful when finished as I have used the daily December snack in the order they were spun.

It has gotten too large to take to hubby’s appointments, so it is an at home only project. Spindles and fiber travel to entertain me while I wait. And it often entertains many others in the waiting rooms as well.

Tomorrow before the rain begins, more wood will be split and covered to keep it dry in case it is needed next week.

Stay safe, stay warm. Take care.

Winter Hit Hard

Fortunately it isn’t going to last long and has been dry except for snow flurries, often with the sun shining.

We had a wedding and reception here last weekend with about 45 guests. The bride, groom, their sons, and her parents stayed here for 4 nights a few extra guests for dinner the night before and lunch the day after and it was cold, but not as cold as it became a couple of days later. We haven’t gotten up to freezing for several days and a few mid teens nights. It is supposed to temper back to more normal for this time of year weather for the next week.

I have mentioned that the deer population seems to be extremely high this year and they must have figured out that they can’t get shot if they are on our farm.

As I was preparing dinner a day or two ago, I looked down the hill to our lower hay field and there were at least 20 deer grazing down there. The hunting around here doesn’t seem to be reducing the impact. With chronic wasting disease and hemorrhagic disease in deer both spreading across Virginia, it will reduce the load, but will make it more dangerous to take the meat through hunting. So far there is no evidence that the prions from chronic wasting disease has or can be spread to humans, but if it does, it would produce the same type of brain deterioration that Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease does. Wisdom would require that deer taken for meat should be checked and if infected, not eaten.

The monthly Jenkins challenge is two fold. Those of us who wanted to participate, sent 4 ounces of fiber to one of two “Elves” who spent a couple of days together preparing small 5 gram packages labelled with the first 25 days of December and returned them to the participants. Alternatively you could just spin for 15 minutes per day. I elected to participate in the Fibre Sample group and have enjoyed the surprise and pleasure of opening the little package each morning, spinning, plying, and skeining it into a mini skein. At the end of the month, I will need to find a plan for the 25 mini skeins of yarn from different breeds, different breeds, and a variety of colors.

Along with the daily spinning, a couple of Christmas gifts are being made.

This afternoon, Christmas cards were written and prepared to be mailed tomorrow. The house is finally decorated except for the tree which I still need to set up and decorate. Most of the gifts have been purchased or made, but a couple still are undecided. The ones that had to be mailed have been. Christmas is coming up too fast.

Another Month gone by

This month brought cataract surgery for hubby. He can now see better than he ever has in his life and no longer needs glasses, except low strength readers in some instances.

It took me to the podiatrist regarding my summer long foot discomfort and those two visits were unproductive as I had already done the elevated resting, ice, better supportive shoes, good arch supporting insoles, so she really didn’t know what to say except my 76+ year old feet have arthritis, some bony overgrowth that comes with age, bone spurs on my heels, and to keep doing what I have been doing.

Helene was kinder to us than so many millions of people. We got a lot of rain, wind gusts to 60 MPH that took down trees in the region, but none on our farm that we have seen so far. The ones on our road and the road leading down the mountain have at least been cut back, though many trunks are still leaning over the roadway. Our state maintained gravel road has a 12 to 14″ deep rut that runs from the neighbor above us beyond the one across and down from us. It ran gullies down our driveway that slopes down about 200′ elevation from the top to the house, but I have already regraded with the tractor and blade and improved it, not repaired it. We did lose power for 56 hours. The refrigerator freezer was not opened and the meat in the bottom bin with blue ice blocks remained frozen. Some of the bagged veggies and fruit higher in the freezer thawed and was thrown out. The bags of tomatoes were beginning to thaw so the skins were slipped off, the tomatoes put in a large pot and today I have finally tackled the job of canning 9 pints of them. A bucket of apples was picked, sliced and cooked down for applesauce. The large pot to the right of the tomatoes ended up 6.5 pints of applesauce. The half will be served with tonight’s homecooked meal, the first since Thursday night. The two quart bags of chili paste used as an enchilada sauce base were cooked down and put in half pint jars that will go in the freezer as I don’t have a pressure canner.

The power was out for 56 hours. With no power, we have no water as we are on a well. We do have a gravity fed yard hydrant down near the bottom field, fed from a water catchment system near the house that contains the rain water from the roof. Though that water is not potable, 5 gallon buckets were filled and hauled up to the house to use for handwashing and toilet flushing. Our daughter, 25 minutes away didn’t lose power and she fed us Saturday night, though now since they are are town water, they have a boil notice. Today, we had an appointment in the county seat and the parking lot of the little shopping center had about 25 power company trucks, all from Oklahoma. We made sure to go by and thank the guys standing in the lot, probably awaiting their next assignment as some left while we were there. They seemed surprised that we were thanking them and not yelling at them. That has to be a tough job, working 16 hour shifts in the rain only to be yelled at by people who didn’t get their power back first.

As I said, we were lucky. Several communities in our county and adjacent counties along the New River were flooded and roads blocked off. There are a number of semi permanent campgrounds and people lost their campers, some vehicles, and houses close to the river. It crested as much as 17 feet above flood plain. The news said it is the second highest since records have been kept, the highest was in the 1940’s. The creek at the bottom of our mountain flooded, but didn’t breach the bridge. When will people realize that climate change is fueling these more intense storms. I have friends in western North Carolina that are totally cut off due to washed out bridges and roads. Long lines at grocery stores, taking only cash, and no fuel for generators. We all need to be thankful if we are safe and send good thoughts, goods, and money to help those who have lost it all.

On to a new month tomorrow. Hopefully no more severe storms aimed at the areas already suffering.