The trek to better health kicked off with a bang on Monday when I hiked with Daughter and her two kiddos. It was a great morning that reminded me what a sluggard I had been all winter. Over the past couple of years, I have let a few pounds settle around my middle. My BMI is still normal, but the pictures of me on Monday and the many stops to catch my breath on the ascent caused me to pause and re evaluate. Every weekday this past week and today, there was a good walk taken, my diet again cleaned up of bad habits I was slipping into such as grabbing a few Wheat Thins or a graham cracker a couple times a day, going out for ice cream or making popcorn too many nights a week, not drinking enough water. I don’t need those snacks, I’m not hungry when I get them. If I get hungry, I will eat an ounce of Pistachio nuts that I have to crack from the shell and wash them down with a HydroFlask of water. I’ve started carrying that bottle with me all the time now. In less than a week, progress is being seen. I can again walk up the hill to the mailbox without stopping part way to catch my breath. I have seen a few pounds slide back off my frame. There are a few more to go.
Yesterday was Market day and though I didn’t need much, we enjoy the change in routine on Saturday’s. I had preordered some more garden starts and to reach the minimum sale order, added a bag of lettuce mix and a bunch of salad turnips. The starts were my cabbage plants and some leaf lettuce from which you can repeatedly cut for salads or sandwiches. They were tucked in the bed that will eventually have the popcorn and winter squash at the other end, the longest of the new beds, and covered with the floating row cover over the new poles. They get light, water, and a barrier to the cabbage moth that lays her eggs to produce the little green cabbage worms that make lace from the brassicas. The row cover protected the other lettuce, spinach, and kale from a hail storm on Friday. Last night they were well watered in with heavy rain storms. While I was tucking the new plants in, I noticed at least a dozen raspberry canes coming up in and around the blueberry bed which is next to where the failed barrels that had contained the raspberries had been sitting. They were all dug out and I will have to be vigilant to continue to remove them until the runners all die off.
It took the hens less than a day to remove every blade of grass in the temporary pen. This morning, I took one of the rolls of fencing that I have yet to remove to storage, mostly because the tractor still hasn’t been returned, and enlarged their temporary pen. I’m sure by nightfall, it will be barren too. I may try again tomorrow to open it and see if they will return to that coop by nightfall. I can’t keep them penned in there forever. I really should purchase a 100 foot roll of electric mesh and just move them around each day or two to protect them from domestic and wild predators. That way they are in grass each day but safe.
I finished spinning two breeds for the Breed Blanket Project. The official one for the month was North Ronaldsay, a sheep breed from Scotland and the Orkney Islands. They roam the coast, will eat seaweed, and get sand and other material in their wool. Much of it is processed in a small mill in the Orkney Islands. It wasn’t too bad to spin, and it knit up nicely, but I sure wouldn’t want to wear it next to my skin nor knit it on the edge of the blanket.
The second breed is Finn, dyed in dark colors. It is spun and plied and I just began my first square of it last night. The smaller blanket above the squares is using up the scraps, each breed marked with a deer antler button on which the breed is written. It will be for display use when done and probably will not contain all the breeds in the big blanket.
