Farm – Page 92 – Cabin Crafted

We found summer

Garden and lawn tasks must be done in the early morning or after the sun is low in the sky. It is hot and humid, though neither as hot, nor as humid as summers were when we lived on the coast. Yesterday morning, after I had actually rested well the night before, I mowed the front “lawn” of the house.

Since this aerial photo was taken by our Realtor after we bought our farm, we have built the house, gardens, bought a coop and fenced a run, planted an orchard to the east of the house, and many pines, maples, and redbuds between the barn and to the northwest of the house. Our farm is the L shaped series of hayfields containing the buildings and down to a line in the woods to the south. This is 30 acres, for the sports minded reader, about 27 American football fields. I mow about 5 acres (about 4.5 football fields) as our lawn, from south of the barn to below the septic field and from the orchard to 25 feet or so to the west of the house. The area above the barn is too rocky to mow or hay and without animals grazing on it, trees have volunteered in the 15 years we have lived here. The rest of our farm is hayfields. We have woods and cattle fields as neighbors to the west, hayfields to the east, woods to the south. This morning before it got too hot and muggy, I mowed the west and south sides of the house and around the orchard, garden, and chicken pen. It takes about 3 hours total to do the lawn on the riding mower. Another couple of hours to clean up with the line trimmer which I still haven’t done.

As I mow, I love to see what is seasonally blooming, as soon the hay will come down and so will the wildflowers within.

The 3rd planting of corn is up about 6 inches but still there are sparce spots and the pumpkins failed again. I am still in the window to plant corn in this zone, so I guess I will fill in the empty spaces and our corn will come in not all at once, which I guess is a good thing. I may give up on the pumpkins, I don’t have any more seed.

During the heat of the day, I spin and make masks, though my sewing corner in the bedroom dormer gets hot with the iron on. I need to look for one of the little portable fans that are stowed away somewhere in the house.

Stay safe, wear your mask, wash your hands. We want to be able to go out again at some point and see our children and grandchildren. Phone calls and video calls are nice, but just not as good as hugs.

The one that didn’t get away

Last year about this time, grandson 1 came to spend part of the summer with us. He enjoys doing so because he gets to use the riding mower and drive the tractor, but he also has to help me with farm chores. He helped move some fencing, work in the garden, and just about anything I ask him to do. He cooks some as well and gets lessons and new recipes to add to his book of Grandmom’s Spells and Magic that he got for Christmas a couple of years ago, a loose leafed recipe book with cards that can be filled out and filed, all in my handwriting that my kids and he call a font that should be on the computer. He and I were about to start work on some project last summer when I looked in the egg door of the coop and a 6 foot long Black Rat Snake that I had seen outside of the coop about a week earlier was in one of the nesting boxes. It had gotten eggs the first time and had come back for more. I wasn’t going to have that happen, so without telling him why, I sent him to our tool area to get my leather garden gloves and an empty 5 gallon bucket with lid. When he returned with them, I had him open the egg door from the other end from the snake while I reached in and grabbed it behind it’s head and snatched it from the coop. His eyes got huge and his response was, “Grandmom, what kind of magic was that.” We put the snake in the bucket, put the lid on and he held it from falling over while I drove a bit more than a half a mile away to the woods and turned it loose.

Well, because of COVID, he can’t visit this summer and I miss his help. This afternoon, I got the part of dinner that was going in the oven prepared and put in the oven and grabbed a basket to go gather peas and whatever eggs were under Miss Broody and when I opened the egg door, I spotted movement in an empty nesting box. I hurried back over to the house, grabbed the same gloves, a 5 gallon bucket with lid, and called up to hubby to grab his keys and his phone. He questioned why and I gave him a quick explanation as I dashed back to the coop, opened and hooked the egg door up and snatched this one out of the coop just as he arrived to snap a couple of pictures.

Not as long as last year’s, this one was only about 5 feet and where the one last year was lethargic, this one was a writhing mess, trying to wrap around my arm. Once calmed down and picture taken, it was plopped in the bucket, lidded and back to the same spot the last one was taken. Last year, I had to dump the snake out of the bucket and it didn’t even move away very fast. As soon as I got the lid off today, it went over the rim and off into the woods. While there, I spotted these cool black mushrooms.

I love mushrooms, but I would never gather them for food. Back home, the peas were picked and shelled in time to plunge them into boiling water for 3 minutes to enjoy with our dinner. The plants aren’t blooming anymore, but there are still many peas to pick, enjoy, and freeze.

I would never kill a snake that wasn’t directly threatening me, the dogs, or a family member, but they don’t get to be in my coop and eat the eggs.

Be safe. I wear a mask for your safely, please wear one for mine.

Wonder

I have enjoyed watching the Finch care for her nest of 4 tiny mouths to feed. Once they hatched, I quit looking for a while so she could care for them. Over the weekend, I peeked again and instead of large gapeing mouths popping up, there were little feathered birds with proportional heads and big black beady eyes looking back at me.

It is amazing how quickly they go from awkward disproportioned nearly naked bodies to little feathered well proportioned birds. In the midst of the nasty weather this week, chilly, gray, and periodic heavy, heavy rain, she fledged these 4 little creatures out into the world. The nest is empty, the hanging pot can again be watered.

I know that the birdhouses by the garden have supported two nests of Tree Swallows and one nest of Eastern Bluebirds, the Barberry bush had the nest of Caroline Wrens, and these little finches. I think a Hummingbird has a nest in the breezeway garden, one flies from there to the feeder and back often, but I haven’t attempted to find it in the rain.

One of the wonders of spring is watching the nests of baby birds, the tiny rabbits kits, and the fawns. I discovered this year that something, probably the deer like Sunflower shoots. There were dozens in the walled garden under the feeders and everyone of them has been clipped off just above the primary leaves. I haven’t been weed wacking in there to let them grow. I guess it will get mowed down as soon as it dries up. I will then put down cardboard, move some rocks to the back side of the wall and start filling it with leaf mulch or compost. And still no corn. Two packages of seed from the feed store and both seem to be bad even though they were packaged for 2020. It is probably too late to try to find corn seed elsewhere and plant it now, though we have about 4 months til first frost.