Cabin Crafted

Author: Cabincrafted1

  • Startled Awake

    At 3 a.m., we were startled awake by the smoke alarm blaring and screaming “FIRE, FIRE.” It stopped very quickly, like someone had pushed the test button, but no one was here but hubby and me and we were both soundly asleep. Needless to say, I bolted from bed, I didn’t see flames, didn’t smell smoke, but still went into every room, touched every outlet, checked the utility area of the finished basement, and the circuit breaker boxes, peered into the garage, even stepped out on the rear deck to look at the heat pump and to determine if I smelled smoke as many of the folks up here heat with wood, some indoors, some in the outdoor wood furnaces. There was no indication of fire, no smoke visible or by smell, so back into bed with the adrenalin pumping. The detector in our bedroom was flashing a red light every 10 seconds.

    After a few hours of restless tossing and turning, I finally dozed back off, the alarms silent, the red light flashing.

    A google search of the manual indicated the flashing light was a low battery indicator, but there was no accompanying chirp, so I guess it triggered the alarm. The alarms themselves are only about a year old. Son 1 when he was here one weekend replaced all the 16 year old alarms with new ones, but the batteries hadn’t been changed since then. Most of the alarms are easy for me to reach with or without a low stool, but the two in the loft and our bedroom are very high. The 8 foot ladder is a challenge for my senior body with achy shoulders, but changing those batteries was a necessity so hauling it upstairs had to be done. It requires negotiating it around the stair railing and not knocking the wall, avoiding ceiling fans and hanging light fixtures once it is upstairs to climb up.

    During the restless early morning hours of tossing and turning, wondering what we would do if there really was a fire and could my anxious brain remember everything for the insurance company. I know there are some very, very old photos from prior houses with some of the furniture in them stashed in the safe as an inventory, but this morning as soon as I was up and dressed, I created an album in my Google photos of pictures taken at various times of the rooms in this house and filling in with photos this morning of areas not found and uploaded them to the cloud. To accompany the photos, a Goggle Doc written inventory by room is in the works. These could be accessed by us on any computer at any time should we ever have to prove what was in the house.

    With the batteries changed, the light quit flashing. With the morning efforts underway, my mind is more settled. We do have fire extinguishers throughout the house, in easy reach, but hope never to have to use them.

    This is third time I have been startled awake by smoke alarms. The first was in my single days when my Dad and I bought a duplex that I lived in the upper half and we rented out the lower half. My tenants were less than stellar, playing loud music all night, and it turned out doing hard drugs down there, setting a chair on fire with a lit cigarette (before laws that prohibited smoking in rentals) after falling into a drug induced stupor and setting off the alarm. I had never heard one before, they were a new invention then. The second time woke us and our three children and it turned out to be a carbon monoxide alarm had failed. We ended up going to the all night pharmacy and buying a new one to make sure we didn’t actually have a carbon monoxide issue.

    Hopefully, this will not happen again, but I was one battery short of replacing all six so tomorrow one more will be acquired and that one is a bit more challenging to change, but not as bad as the upstairs two.

  • False Spring

    After typical winter for weeks with cold, damp, gray days and lots of wind, today is glorious. It is 50f (10c), clear, sunny, and calm. A couple of springs ago, a new metal raised bed was added to the garden with the idea of restarting the asparagus bed in a controlled area. Nothing came up from the crowns that were planted there and the bed was not in a good location. I moved it out of the way last year, moving the soil with it and put the third planting of beans in it that the bean beetles destroyed before they could produce. Where I moved it was also not a good location because it was hard up against the fence, an area with every noxious weed under the fence, and in a position that prevented getting the wheelbarrow to the compost pile. Last fall, Son 1 turned the compost pile for me and as I had moved a non productive bed box over my blueberries and heavily mulched them, he moved my raspberry and blackberry half barrels to where the old bed had been and it created the perfect spot for the raised bed.

    Today because it was too nice to stay indoors, I moved the metal box frame to it’s new and permanent location and since I wanted it full, not just a couple inches of soil, it became a Hugelkultur bed. The sunflower stalks and corn stalks from last year’s garden were cut and layered in the bottom on a cardboard base and a layer of wood chips fouled with chicken manure shoveled on top.

    On top of that, a layer of straw:

    On top of the straw was a wheelbarrow full of the compost from the turned pile.

    Then the soil that had been in the box was weeded and shoveled into the barrow and added on top and top dressed with another layer of compost to fill the box nicely and have it ready for early peas in another month or so.

    While out there, the bed that had the flying greenhouse in it was weeded, hoping that with this week’s potential snow that it will stay clear, and another 4 X 8 bed that had a layer of old chicken bedding piled in it was turned to help it break down. Finally, the compost pile was shoveled back into a pile, trying to turn it a bit more to add to the bed nearest it when the weather warms a bit and the kitchen scrap pile beside it was fenced off with temporary fencing and top and an opening from the chicken run created to allow them to eat the weeds and kitchen scraps and make more compost in that location.

    It didn’t take the hens long to discover the new territory.

    As I was coming back in the house, I saw a text from a west coast friend, asking if we could chat as there is no Zoom session today and ended up with a delightful half hour or so on the phone, sitting in the warm sun on the front porch and sharing stories. Such a delightful way to end an afternoon outdoors.

    Tomorrow the weather takes a turn back to cooler and rainy with wintery mix, possibly snow mid week. We will see, there hasn’t been any so far this winter.

  • Failure

    The local bee group is offering pollen cakes for sale this weekend. Before I made the effort to get there and possibly have a chance to get one or two, I decided to check on my last remaining hive. I hadn’t checked since before the Christmas week Arctic freeze, actually, when I installed the sugar board to feed them. It wasn’t very strong then, but I hoped that with 10 pounds of food, they would struggle through the winter and hopefully survive to thrive this spring. At first I just listened to try to detect a hum, no sound. I popped the outer lid and peeked under the inner lid to see if I saw or heard any activity or if they had eaten any of the sugar. No activity and no sound. Fearing the worst, I removed the sugar board and the bottom cover and only saw dead bees. So, my first year of bee keeping was a total failure.

    That hive will be dismantled and the frames put in the freezer for a few days then sealed in black plastic contractor bags. One or two nuks of bees will be ordered from one of the local beekeepers and I will try again this spring with only one or two hives, much more knowledge, and in medium boxes that I can handle. That is going to leave 8 deep boxes some with new frames, some built out frames that Son 2 purchased that he can take for his use, or sell as he wishes. I will keep the medium boxes and frames to try to get a couple of hives thriving.

    At least the two bears we saw on the farm this summer left them alone, so I guess our 12V charger is doing it’s job.

  • Karen or Ken

    Why have we become such an entitled society that such terms exist? I would hate to have the name or have named one of my children one of those names. I think it is unconscionable that names have been used to define those that feel entitled. Posts on social media are rife with stories of those that feel so entitled to cause physical or emotional pain or inconvenience to others.

    Recently a social media friend made an offer to make a purchase for me from a craftsman that lives thousands of miles from me and whose shop I could not possible visit. She reached out to several other friends to purchase for them as well. My new fiber tool arrived yesterday and it is gorgeous, but I kept it to myself, only letting the friend know it arrived. This particular craftsman does a few events on the West Coast near their home, does online updates of their products where dozens of folks vie to make a purchase when the update goes live, and often offers their products as prizes for challenges for an online group of their followers. Additionally, they provide some of their tools to a couple of their grandchildren for them to sell and learn economics and earn money for big events. The friend that made the purchases and another friend who benefited from her visit posted their new tools online, so I did also. The friend then received a not nice message from someone who felt that it was unfair that they didn’t have the opportunity as well. As a result, we took our shares down from the site. To me, this is just another example of feeling entitled and it was a very petty expression of the message sender as my friend had been invited to the craftsman’s house to make the purchases.

    Folks, life isn’t always about you. It isn’t always “fair.” Practice restraint and kindness, it goes a long way to making this a better world.

  • The Wind, Oh the Wind

    Lately, it has been plentiful. Today is very mild, almost spring like, dry, and calm, but that has been the exception not the rule.

    Yesterday when I went out to deal with the hens, something looked “off.” It took me a minute to realize that my little greenhouse was gone, the poly cord that had secured it over the ridgepole in several places was snapped. It used to reside in the NW bed of the garden and extended the growing season by a little on each end, but it was missing.

    Today after our walk and errands, the little Honda was driven around the perimeter of the upper fields and there it’s mangled body was wedged, on the south side of a brush covered rock pile. It appears that most of the plastic connectors are snapped, though the metal poles seem ok. The cover is ripped along a seam, but that can be restitched. Perhaps there is a solution for reassembling the poles with something other than the plastic sockets, or perhaps maybe just purchasing some flexible plex pipe, anchored in the ground on rebar pieces or even the vertical poles from the frame. The whole pile is in the garage until a solution is developed. Fortunately, nothing was growing in it right now and won’t be for at least another 8 or 10 weeks, so plenty of time to solve the problem. It wasn’t expensive and has provided two years of service, but a couple more would be great.

    We have one more mild day, though a high chance of rain, then the storm fronts return with wind and winter temperatures, maybe even a chance of snow. My photo memory from a year ago had me out playing/sledding in the snow. So far this year there have only been a couple of light dustings that didn’t even coat the grass.

  • What is wrong with Healthcare in the US?

    With recent health issues in our household, there have been a couple of hospitalizations and a whole new pharmacy on the dresser top. We are senior citizens and have Medicare plus a supplemental health plan and an Rx plan that is supposed to reduce the cost of prescription medications. The Medicare and supplemental plan have prevented any out of pocket expenses so far, though one of the doctor’s from the first hospitalization has billed Medicare for something for which they have already paid and Medicare declined to pay it a second time obviously. It still shows up on our summaries with a zero balance, but shows a declined expense. The pharmacy side is another story. We pay a significant monthly fee to have the medications at least partially paid for by the insurance plan, a three tier system that lets us know what our co-pay is for each med in the tier, but if we ask the pharmacy what the cash price is, it is often half what the co-pay would be. If we use the insurance, we are paying not only the monthly payment for the plan, but double the cost of paying cash on top of it. This just doesn’t make any sense to us. Fortunately, we know to ask what the difference would be and have paid cash for several of the scripts that have been called in.

    Also, scripts never have a refill number on them anymore and most, except antibiotics, come in 90 supplies so a large bill every three months instead of spreading it out. To get a refill, you must contact the pharmacy who then contacts the physician for authorization on a medication that you know you will be required to take long term (not pain meds, but maintenance meds to prevent the condition from worsening). If you call the physician’s office, the robot voice tells you to contact the pharmacy.

    The surgeon tells you to call and schedule a follow up in 4 weeks and the soonest they can see you is 5 weeks or more.

    Our system is broken and we are among the lucky ones to be able to have and afford insurance to cover our issues. I don’t know what the solution is, but certainly not the way it is being done now.

  • The Hawk returns yet again

    This morning as I was cleaning window sills on the west side of the house, the large Redtailed Hawk swooped down and got a rabbit or squirrel, I wasn’t quite sure which as it was just in the edge of the thicket and disappeared deeper into the thicket as the flock of crows gathered above raising quite a stir. I never saw the hawk reappear and the crows moved to another tree higher above the thicket and stayed there for a very long while. Squirrels and rabbits are fair game for the hawks, my chickens are not, though when penned in their run, they are certainly easier to catch.

    After lunch and bit of warm up in daily temperatures, to a point where working without gloves though uncomfortable, was doable, the run cover was finished alone. The need to work without gloves was to manipulate the 8″ cable ties though the web of the erosion fence to secure the sections together and to the upper edge of the 4′ high wire fence. The green plastic erosion fence has 1″ octagonal holes and each strip is 3 feet wide, stapled to the upper edge of the coop and angled down to the fence top. Once the strips were in place, the triangular spaces at the gate and the east side had to be filled with smaller pieces, the top of the metal gate closed in as well so chickens can’t get out and the hawk can’t get in. Though their run footprint is smaller now, it is still an L shape about 4 feet wide on the east, 5 feet wide on the south and open under the 4 X 8 foot coop that has had welded wire from the bottom of the coop to the ground since it was put there about a decade ago.

    The chickens are out for the first time in two days. Once the shrubs are leafed out again so there are places to hide, they will get free range time, but living in the midst of hayfields, there aren’t many hiding places for them in the winter.

    Some of the old fence from the larger footprint run was used to put a deer barrier around the young plum tree and with heavier T posts to fasten the fence to, the plum was pulled more erect. In it’s first year of so of being planted there, the deer chewed off the primary leader, so a secondary branch took over and shoots out too far to the side. I have hoped to redirect it more vertically and if it doesn’t work, the top will be pruned back to force more side branches out. There is a lot of new growth and I don’t want it chewed on anymore. When the spring gardening supplies come in, a weed ring is going to be purchased to put around the trunk to try to get the grass load around the plum down.

    Day before yesterday in the freezing rain, the first turkeys seen since hunting season were in the two lower fields. I could count 19, but with the growth along the fence line and the rock pile, there may have been more.

    One more day of semi mild weather, followed by rain and possible snow flurries on the weekend.

  • Another one bites the dust

    Yesterday was a miserable day, rain, freezing rain, sleet, all freezing on surfaces. The hens had been let into their run, not free ranging as I didn’t want them out in the weather and because Grandson and I had pulled up a couple Barberry shrubs the day before and there were areas of loose soil in garden beds that I didn’t want them digging up. When I went out at dusk to lock them up and gather the couple of eggs that are being provided now that molt is mostly over, I found my most timid Marans dead in the run with damage that looked like that of a hawk that couldn’t carry off a full grown hen. Today they were left in the coop all day.

    We drove the hour to the city to take Grandson to the Pinball Museum and to get lunch only to discover they aren’t open on Monday, so a long drive in both directions for a mediocre lunch. On the way home, we stopped and purchased erosion fencing, staples, and cable ties to try to secure the run. Once home, first step was to tighten up the 4 foot fence and set a few more posts, removing the part of an earlier solo attempt to cover the run, securing the tightened fence wire to the new posts. The erosion fencing is being stapled to the top of the coop, just below the roof, his 6’2″ + height useful for this and having the extra pair of hands to pull fence tight and handing cable ties also nice. We didn’t finish, it was cold and reached dinner prep time, but about 2/3 of the open top is now covered securely. When we walked over to begin, the hawk was in the empty run where it had killed the hen the day before. It flew into a pear tree, then off to the lower field. Tomorrow is to be a bit warmer and hopefully, the remaining top can be covered so the hens can be released again.

    The coop had been cleaned on Saturday, and the spoiled wood chips added as mulch to the daylily bed and I don’t want the hens scratching through that either. They have scratched there so much the soil in that bed is several inches lower than the stoop and the surrounding grass. It needs to be built up and enriched. The metal fence pulled down in our efforts today will be used to provide a protective ring around the young plum and any remaining erosion fence used to protect the daylily bed from deer and hens.

    Yesterday did provide an afternoon to socialize with my two local spinning friends, enjoying hot tea, each other’s company, and a lesson in a new skill for one of them. One of the gals, as soon as she learned to spin, made two great Turkish spindles, an amazing feat that I couldn’t do.

    Today my new hearing aids arrived, now wearing two instead of just one and these are bluetooth enabled so they can be controlled by my smart phone. It is nice to be able to be in a different area of the house and hear hubby or grandson speaking to me.

    I hope we can finish the hen run tomorrow. I’m toying with putting a temporary fence around the compost pile and an opening from the run to it on the other side of their fence so they can stir it up. When they are given access to it, a tarp or cover will have to protect them from the aerial predatory.

    We continue taking one day at a time with hope that Wednesday morning, the Cardiology specialist may be able to open at least hubby’s most blocked artery.

  • Out with the old, in with the new

    We happily said goodbye to 2022, the last quarter of the year having been a medical nightmare. We welcome 2023 with hopes of heart repair, a reprieve for a few months from the immunotherapy treatments that have produced more extreme side effects for longer periods of time.

    Traditionally, the holiday decorations were put away on New Year’s Day as school often resumed the next day. This year, the process was begun half a week ago, just after Son 1 returned to his job. The tree was left standing until today and it too has been stripped of his ornaments and lights, removed to the cedar thicket on the edge of the woods, and the needles vacuumed.

    The Dyson decided it didn’t want to do the job, so the old Oreck was hauled upstairs and did a much better job of even removing the dog hair from the rug than even the newer Dyson when it is working at it’s best. The Dyson has been disassembled and every washable part banged free of dust and washed, set aside to dry for a few days.

    The closet beneath the basement stairs needs to be cleaned out, some ductwork retaped, then the crates will be moved down for storage for the next 11 months.

    The bottom left one will go straight to daughter’s house next Christmas, it has about half of my Santa’s in it that I chose not to place this year and are ready to move on to her collection. The tree ornaments got new storage this year that allows a separate cell for each ornament so they don’t have to be individually wrapped, which made the put away simpler and will allow easier decisions on what will go on the next tree if it is too small for all of them.

    The Christmas Amaryllis gift is beautifully blooming, a total of 7 lovely red blooms.

    Now that the holidays are behind us, more time will be spent working on the shawl that is from Jenkins Turkish spindle spun Alpaca, Merino, and Silk. It was begun in mid December once all Christmas knitting was complete. The spindle is holding a lovely blue wool of unknown origin, spinning enough to double the thickness of the hat that is my preferred one when the weather is cold.

    After last weekend’s weather tried to destroy us with single digit temperatures and high winds, today feels like spring with mostly sunny skies. We managed to get a walk in before the tree came down and out. We have a couple more warmish days, mostly with rain, then a return to more normal winter temperatures here with low 40’s f during the day and 20’s at night. Life moves on, we continue to taking it one day at a time.

  • Friends

    Most of my friends live far away, but a few have been made through my various fiber arts and two of them are very local to me and women that I have taught to spin, one on spindles and a wheel, the other newer and just on spindles.

    The main group of spinner/knitter/weavers that gather in the adjacent town are more casual friends and with Covid and then hubby’s health issues, have been seen only very sporadically. My plan had been to attend the annual holiday social with them last Thursday and the freezing rain/ice storm caused it to be postponed until this week. There is another storm brewing to potentially cancel or postpone it again and family obligations might prevent me from attending anyway. I had planned to take one of the local friends with me last week, the other was away midweek, but neither of them are available this week.

    We try to get together as often as possible to spin, knit, chat, and have a cup of tea. Sometimes it is the three of us, usually at our home, sometimes just two of us, but always a pleasure. Because of the week’s foiled plans, we decided to have our own little social yesterday. The house is decorated, I baked another small batch of Ginger Nut cookies and the house was fragrant with the smell of fresh baked ginger. The tea kettle hot when they arrived and we gathered to visit and craft together. Some small gifts exchanged, my first Christmas present, a wax coated Amaryllis bulb almost in bloom. It doesn’t require soil or water, just placed in bright light and allowed to bloom.

    Once it has bloomed out, I will remove the wax and treat the bulb in a more traditional manner and hope it will bloom again next year and the year following.

    The afternoon was a treat, the two ladies, true friends. The cookies enjoyed. We will gather again when we are all available, likely not until after Christmas, but the anticipation of further gatherings tides me over.

    Taking one day at a time.