Author: Cabincrafted1

The Last Hurrah

This morning is glorious.

The sky is a beautiful shade of blue, nearly cloudless. The fields and fir trees still wearing the greens of summer, the deciduous trees bare of their foliage, a light haze on the distant mountains, the haze that named a nearby mountain chain The Blue Ridge. It is mild this morning, only the lightest skim of ice on the chickens water tub and expected to reach near 60f today, the fierce winds of yesterday have calmed.

In the mountains, weather systems don’t last long, this beautiful fall weather will end today. Tomorrow, the weather prognosticators say we could see up to 2″ of snow. It is early for snow, the earliest recorded measurable snow for nearby Roanoke was October 10, 1979. The average first snow is December 15th. Meteorologic winter begins on November 21st, my birthday and the winter solstice, the official first day of winter and the shortest day, a month later.

Regardless of the season and the weather it brings, this is still the most beautiful place in the world. We love it year round. Life is good on our mountain farm.

November 11, 2013
A (Half) Week on the Farm – November 9, 2013 (Goodnight Garden)

After a half week in Northern Virginia babysitting, this afternoon is the best of this season. Azure skies, wispy white clouds. Mild mid 50f temperatures. Knowing that the season is moving on toward winter, threats of snow showers to accumulated snow in our forecast for mid week, I decided it was my opportunity to plant the garlic for next year and put the rest of the garden and orchard to bed for winter.

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The last of the broccoli was harvested, the cabbages still hiding under a row cover. The garlic was planted in two square beds, about 85 cloves, a combination of three different red hardneck varieties. They were heavily mulched with straw then covered with row covers, not to protect it from the weather, but rather to protect it from the chickens.

While mulching, the grape, berry and other vegetable beds were given heavy layers of straw as well, mulch placed around the now dormant fruit trees. While I was working on this, the chickens were free ranging and trying to undo my work as fast as I was working to put the mulch down. The tomato cages and garden stakes were put to use to hold down the straw in the beds. The fruit trees may get rings of fencing if tomorrow as mild as predicted.

The chickens were given a bed of mulch in their pen to give them something to scratch in for entertainment to try to keep them out of my work. In spite of the nights that are consistently freezing the top surface of their water tub, they are still providing me with 5 to 8 eggs each day, except for the one who lays green eggs, she seems to be on strike, not having produced an egg all week.

November 9, 2013
This Moment

This idea is from SouleMama’s blog and will be a new feature on my blog page. A single photo from the past week, no words, that I wish to remember. If you are inspired to do so, leave a link to yours in the comments for others to see.

November 8, 2013
Hunting Season

Living in a mountainous rural area, we often hear gunfire. The frequency of this noise increases as the various hunting seasons roll around. Most of our neighbors hunt, wild turkey and deer primarily, but also bear, raccoons, squirrels and rabbits. Bow season for deer began in early October, this is followed by muzzle loaded gun hunting in early November then on to other firearms for the last couple of weeks in November, then the seasons reverse, ending in December. When this begins, we see fewer deer on our property, it almost like they go into hiding. One doe has been hanging around for a couple of years. We know she is the same one because she has a gimpy left hind leg. In spite of this, she has raised twin fawns last year and a single fawn this year. She sticks close to the upper part of our property and we often see her with her current young near our barn. As we drove out late this morning to deliver eggs and to resupply the various animal foods and get a few items for our larder, she and her fawn were grazing near the barn. It surprises me that she has survived the seasons. I hope that she makes it through this cycle as well. This evening, there is one in the lower hayfield. During this season, we don’t venture far from the house without wearing a blaze orange hat or vest even to go to the chicken coop or garden. We consider putting a blaze vest on our mastiff as he is of similar size and coloration to the local deer.

November 7, 2013
Home at last

The journey finally ends. After waking early, closing the suitcase for the last time on this trip, packing up the laptop, rolling the sleeping pad as I sleep on the floor in daughter in law’s studio when babysitting in NoVa, I fixed breakfast for grandson, took son to campus and headed for home. Son had told me that I would head northwest from his campus and not have to backtrack to I-66. This seemed like a good idea, giving me less time on the interstate. However, the Gods were against me making it home in a timely manner. As I pulled up the ramp onto the interstate, traffic was dead stopped as far as I could see to the west so I went right back down the off ramp and took off in a westerly direction on an unknown rural road. About 30 minutes later, I rejoined the interstate, clear of the accident or traffic blockage and traveled smoothly along for the next couple of hours.

As I approached the midway point of the trip, two interstates intersect and as I approached this area, an electronic warning board announced that I-81 S that I was on was totally blocked a few miles ahead. I rounded a curve, fortunately at an off ramp and sure enough, nothing but stopped traffic as far as I could see. Off again on a rural road looking for an alternate route home. Somehow, though no one seemed to be following me, a 20 minute jaunt through a rural part of the Shenandoah Valley, I spotted State Rd. 11, an alternate north/south route. Knowing this route would get me past what turned out to be a tractor trailer accident, I finally made my way the rest of the way home, about an hour and a half later than I expected.

During the 21 days gone, autumn, which was not very pretty this year left. The trees are barren, the garden gone, but the garlic did arrive and one last day will be spent getting it in the ground and mulched for next year’s crop.

November 6, 2013
An Outing

The morning dawned gray and quite chilly. Son was sluggish, but with a day of teaching to do, he mounted his bike to ride either to the campus or to the Metro station to catch the University Shuttle over to campus. Daughter in law has hours to put in on a piece of art due for a class tomorrow, but was slow moving to get to her campus. Grandson, who had the day off from school was up at the crack of dawn and stayed in the shower so long that I finally poked my head in the bathroom and asked him to turn off the water, so that the rest of us would have some hot water, then he snuggled under a towel on the floor of his bedroom until his Dad got up and asked him to please dress. The apartment is cool. They, like us, keep the thermostat low to keep their hard earned dollars out of the hands of the local power company and sweaters indoors are in order when the temperatures outdoors are low.

Once they left for their respective campus, grandson completed his homework with my supervision and practiced his guitar in preparation for his lesson later this week. We discussed how we wanted to spend this gloomy day, not just sitting inside. We agreed that a metro trip into the district was in order with the American History Museum the goal. First we needed to go mail a package to his cousins then decided to try to park at the Metro station instead of making the mile plus walk over to it. The garage lot indicated it was not full, but once in, it costs you a daily rate of $4.75 to get out. We took our chance and after driving every aisle on every deck twice, passing the same half dozen other cars looking for spots, decided that the garage was indeed full in spite of the sign and paid the fee to leave. The only other parking near the Metro station was a quarter for 15 minutes up to the limit of the meter, but the meter did not tell you what that limit was and I was unwilling to start feeding it quarters only to find out that the limit would be insufficient for us to make the round trip and see anything once we got there.

The other possible outing was to drive to Great Falls National Park, about 20-30 minutes away and check out the Potomac River gorge there, tour the visitor center and walk one of the paths through the woods along the side of the river. Three years ago, hubby and I both got Lifetime Passes to any National Park, available to seniors for a nominal fee. Prior to our cruise, we each emptied our wallets of all “extra” cards, to avoid their loss while on the trip. This card, sitting in my drawer at home, would have saved us the entry fee into the park, but the fee was a small price to pay for an outing with the eldest grandson. He is 8, an age of motion, fearlessness, and a desire to climb. It was fun watching him climb around on the rocks safely within the barrier walls, reminding him off and on to read the signage that implored him to not climb the railings or walk on the remnants of the C & O canal walls. Though we didn’t stay but about 90 minutes, he did expend some energy and I got some photos of the gorge and the grand enjoying the visit.

Entering the overlook that gives the best view of the falls, which we were told drop about 80 feet was this sign.

This sign was about 10 feet tall. Each number represents the year and the height of flood waters, that would put the water above the banks of the gorge with a total depth of 90 to 100 feet. The immensity of the volume and power of the water in those floods stages must be staggering. Oddly, the visitor center is within a flood stage depth that has occurred within the past 20 years.

Tomorrow, my 21 days away from home finally comes to an end. I will leave Northern Virginia when they all leave for school around 8 a.m. and will drive to our home, my own bed and the comfort of our own home. I have enjoyed the past 21 days, but I am looking forward to that.

November 5, 2013
Still Away

Today is day 17 of suitcase living. Leaving home 17 days ago with a suitcase packed for a cruise, a backpack packed for the week of fall weather in Virginia Beach and the half week of even cooler fall weather in Northern Virginia and my laptop, and a large leather tote style bag that serves as my travel tote with knitting, necessary papers, a lotion bar, anti inflamatory meds, anti seasickness meds, and antacids, just in case, a camera plus a paper back book. The backpack remained in Virginia Beach during the cruise and after the return week there, the suitcase was relieved of its summery cruise clothing which were sent home with hubby and repacked with the fall clothing. The backpack, then lightened to the laptop and the newly acquired bag of fiberfill as my knitting projects are finger puppets to go along with two story books for the 2 year old granddaughters for Christmas. The two stories have 5 of the same animals in them, so there will be two of each of them, then 3 other animals must be completed to make the two sets complete. They are quick knits, however, the first was done while I was a passenger in the car and my attention was not there, so it ended up looking less like a rabbit than I had hoped. It was knit from my homespun which I feel contributed to it being less than perfect. Today, while entertaining grandson, we went to a local yarn shop and bought a small ball of commercial cream colored yard to make rabbit # 2. The first Badger seems the correct scale and Badger #2 is on the needles. The girls should have fun with their puppets and their new books.

November 4, 2013
Homebody

I realized after two weeks of suitcase living, first on shipboard, then in son’s home that I am definitely a homebody. Not pathologically so, not to the extent of not wanting to leave the house, but certainly becoming more uncomfortable about the absence from home each day.

Retirement is quiet, the daily routines have become so ingrained that each passing day away has increased the stress on my system.

It was fun going on a cruise with son and his family and being there for Halloween and our grandson’s birthday. This is the first birthday since our son adopted his stepson.

This morning, hubby left to return to our home, to pick up our pups from the doggie camp where they have been for two weeks, to take over my chicken care for a few days. I left for Northern Virginia to help out with childcare as the eldest grandson is off of school for the next two days while his parents are not. On Wednesday morning, I too will get return to our quiet life for a while. While gone, there have been two nights of temperatures in the 20’s, so whatever was left in the garden is now gone. The garlic that was to be planted before the trip did not come prior to our leaving, hopefully it will have come while we were gone and there will be one last garden day to put it in the beds for the winter with a heavy mulch of straw to bed it down.

November 3, 2013
A Week (Not) on the Farm – October 29, 2013

For the past week this blog has been silent as we left home on October 19 to drive to Virginia Beach, spent the night at our youngest son’s home with his family and all left the next morning to drive to Baltimore, Maryland to embark on a week long Bahamas cruise together. Their two children believed that we were taking them home with us after their parents left on the cruise and were surprised when the ship horn blew to leave the dock with all of us still on board.
Two days at sea followed by one day in Port Canaverel, Florida with an airboat ride siting 2 alligators and hubby getting to hold a 17 year old dwarf alligator upon our return, he was only about 3 feet long.
The following two days were spent in Bahama ports of Nassau and Freeport. Very touristy, docked in industrial areas and requiring taxis to get to a beach, but an excursion on a semi sub over a reef by all of us was fun.

A short day in Freeport with a beach trip.

Another at sea day and a half and we returned to Baltimore.
While away, our doggies were in camp and a neighbor chicken watched for all the eggs she could carry home. It was our first cruise, maybe not exactly what we expected, but fun and with the use of Bonine and Sea Bands, I only got queasy once when the ship was cruising at 24 knots in windy conditions.

October 29, 2013
Travelling Companion

My favorite skirt for travelling and packing is a mid calf brightly colored crinkle skirt from TravelSmith. It can be worn with just about any color top you can imagine. Often when I am traveling and end up on a plane or in a restaurant, I get chilly from the air conditioning (we rarely need to use it up here on the mountain). About 2 years ago, I made a generous shawl that went everywhere with me and was used as a shoulder cover in restaurants, a pillow on a plane, or even a small blanket for my legs if I didn’t have on long pants or a long skirt. Within a couple of weeks of bringing the German Shepard into the household, she chewed two decent size holes right in the middle of it. The holes were too large for me to try to mend, so I pulled the shawl apart and began reknitting it in the same pattern. I just couldn’t get inspired to knit it again, and besides, it wasn’t very warm.
After reknitting daughter’s black lace sweater, the one that was ruined a few short weeks after it was made last year, and getting it mailed off to her, I tackled a different shawl with different, very colorful yarn. The colors are very jewel like, the pattern, the Travelling Companion Shawl, the yarn, 5 different skeins of Koigu, a Canadian yarn. My attention to lace knitting isn’t good, especially since I often knit in the car when hubby is driving, or in front of the TV or a book on my tablet, rarely giving it my full attention and when I got to the last section of the lace on this shawl, I was surprised that my stitch count was dead on, the last section seemed straight forward enough and off I went. About halfway through the section of 23 rows, two of the three sections were off stitch count. I unknitted the row, counted the stitches and at this point had well over 350 stitches on the needle and the count was wrong. If I were a really meticulous knitter, I would have ripped back to the last point that I knew I was correct and started that section over, but instead, I switched to a simpler lace that had been used earlier in the pattern and kept right on going. After reaching the requisite number of rows, the shawl didn’t seem quite large enough for me, so I added another couple of inches of garter stitch to complete the shawl. The colors are perfect for the skirt, the shawl is generous and very warm. I love it.

Now on to the baby sweater in my queue for a December baby and then two sets of finger puppets to go with books for granddaughters for Christmas. Maybe someday, I’ll finish the socks that are about half done and figure out what to do with the yarn from the chewed shawl, plus design the scarf to go with my favorite hat with the yarn that was specially dyed for me.

October 17, 2013