Cabin Crafted

Author: Cabincrafted1

  • Almost there, but not quite

    Up too early for a Saturday morning, but the young one had to be at Basketball Camp at 8:45 a.m. and it is a bout an hour drive over if there is no traffic, no accidents on the interstate, and they aren’t actively working on the expansion and sound barriers that involve the last 15 or 20 miles of the trip. Before we left, I had to make his lunch, pack a cooler with enough drinks and ice to last him til 5 p.m., get the 16 year old out of bed (no small feat in itself), gather laundry for a load, fix him breakfast that he could eat in the car. We made it and got back to the Farmer’s Market only a bit later than usual for a Saturday and yet many of the goodies I wanted were already sold out. Oh well, there will be another day.

    On our way home from the market, we stopped to get a few more paint brushes that hadn’t been in the oil based stain so we could start on the front porch rails, balusters, kickboards, and floor that still needed to be done with the latex stain. We don’t want to wait too long as it was freshly washed Thursday evening.

    Hubby and I got it all done except for the floor. He had to quit to go pick up the camper and when I opened the two old cans of stain, one was so separated it couldn’t be remixed even with the paint stirrer on the power drill. The other can that had never been opened except to tint it had sat too long (several years) and it was the consistency of set up pudding. We had one new can and used slightly more than half of it, so there certainly wasn’t enough to do the whole floor. We have thunderstorms, much needed, predicted for tomorrow, so I guess we will go get more stain on Monday and try to finish the job. What we got done looks good and the floor should be easier because it is flat and we don’t have to worry about drips or getting latex stain on the parts that were oil based stained. I’m hoping that by Monday or Tuesday, the staining on the house will be done for this summer. Still have the coop to go, but I will get my tall 16 year old helper to assist on that.

    I will be glad when it is done and this furniture put back on the porch.

    The pullets have been allowed to free range for the past few days. At first, they stayed very near their coop and pen. Today they have ventured over toward the house, especially if they see me come outside to set sprinklers on the flower bed and vegetable garden. I don’t want them to get as comfortable around the flower garden as the old hens did. I don’t need 13 of them digging up the bed. They are a prolific lot. I have gotten at least 8 or 9 eggs from them every day this week. That’s a lot of eggs, but there are folks that appreciate them.

    Here is a basketful, but not all of this week’s as a dozen and a half went to daughter’s house, there are a dozen in a wire basket, we have eaten nearly a dozen this week. The spindle and ball of wool were added to the basket for the last day of July spinning challenge. We had to put our spindle with something that was too many to count. I did this, then also did seashells, because there are too many of them to count. And here are gals that provided them right after they were lured in from free ranging this evening. They still aren’t real good at that skill.

    One more day of travel to and from camp and then some other chores can be done.

  • Freezer Camp

    Yesterday afternoon, Son 1 and Grandson 1 arrived. Son 1 only to stay one night, but get a lot done. We had rented a 3000 psi power washer and he scoured the front porch floor and railing. They will be repainted with the latex stain this week to finish the summer maintenance on the house. The coop still needs to be stained and I will enlist the aid of Grandson 1 who will be staying with us for about two more weeks, going to Basketball camp this weekend, then here for fun and work. He and hubby returned the washer, purchased the Gatorade that I forgot yesterday, but he will need at camp, bought an ethernet cable so Grandson 1’s computer which does not have WIFI can be used to continue with what he learned at Coding and Gaming residential camps while he was back home for a few weeks.

    While they were out running errands, Son 1 and I set up a makeshift processing station. We had designed the perfect one a few years ago, but it requires a unit of scaffolding and a walkboard and we have loaned all of ours out to a friend trying to get siding and guttering on a house they are building.

    All 8 of the old hens and the two young roosters were slated for freezer camp today. I went to the Palace to grab the first one and in the flutter, they got the door open and one of the roosters escaped into the yard. I have never seen a chicken run so fast or so far. He took off across the east field and almost crossed into the next farm. After the other 8 were done, Son 1 and I decided to see if we could get him. He would run up into the rock piles, over into the woods with a 41 year old man and a 73 year old woman running after him. Finally laughing, we decided our chase was silly and we needed lunch, so we broke down the makeshift processing station and were hosing down the grill we use to heat the dunking pot on the side burner, tying up the bag of feathers and stuff, hosing down the area we used when Roo 2 crowed. With my hearing impairment and hearing aid, I have difficulty with sound direction and was headed down to see if he can gone into the Palace looking for his ladies when Son spotted him under the pullet’s coop inside the fenced and covered run. We quickly closed the gate, grabbed the big fishing/butterfly net used as a last ditch means of catching the last few and with me holding the one area that a panicked chicken can flutter between the fence and top, he caught Roo 2. If he had waited one more minute to show himself, he would have lived another two weeks until Son 1 returned. Instead, we worked together without our station to get him processed and in the freezer. As we were working, we realized that one of the hens was polydactile.

    She had the normal 3 front toes, but had two back toes, quite odd. In the past week, those 8 hens produced on 12 eggs total and ate 15 pounds of food, not economical.

    Last night I finished putting twenty of my squares together for the breed blanket. There are enough to do more, but I have to evaluate what fibers I have left, what colors they are to get the pattern for the last rounds. The next row will go down the right side in the photo.

    There are still two dyed squares and several gray and white squares remaining already spun, plyed, and knitted. I may use them randomly.

    Early in the week, I was able to purchase another Jenkins spindle in their newest design and size. It is so much larger than my others that it will take some getting used to and will probably be used for plying only. It is a pretty spindle.

    I tired from the morning’s efforts, need a shower and clothes change so we can drive to the “big city” as folks here call Roanoke to take Grandson 1 to his introductory evening of camp.

  • Sore, stiff bodies

    It is a good thing thunderstorms are forecast today and tomorrow as we are both too sore to stain today. My sore hip didn’t take kindly to the acrobatic contortions I had to do to stain the step stringers and the joist to which they are attached. The pecs and biceps are sore, and I don’t want to lift my arms above my head, but they will be okay in another day. We will finish the deck job on the next dry day.

    I went out to the garden late this afternoon to see if I could find another cucumber for a salad I saw online and came in with 13+ pounds of potatoes. I had 4 or 5 potatoes that had sprouted last late winter, most were Kennebecks, one was a red. I had a new deep bed I had made that was perfect to plant them. Each was cut with at least 2 eyes, cured for a day and planted. Once they sprouted, I put straw layers over them. A week or so ago, I dug under one plant to pull out a few small new potatoes for dinner one night. The dry weather had most of the plants drying and brown so with a garden fork, I turned the plants over. The potatoes range from marble size to huge. A few are burned with solanine but not so bad that it can’t be pared off. I don’t know if we can eat that many potatoes before they begin to sprout.

    That isn’t a bad return on about 2 pounds of potatoes.

    The new girls are really providing us with eggs now. A typical day I bring in about 9 eggs from them (only 1 from the old 6 girls). There are two more old gals in with the new kids, but they are producing 6 to 8 eggs per week. I should move them back, but I just can’t sort them out at night when the are perched and easy to approach. I love the colors, blue, green, tan, light and dark brown, and pink.

    After getting the upper and most of the lower part of the raw wood parts of the deck stained yesterday, I spruced up the flowers in the pots today. The geraniums are still looking good, the pansys that self seeded are hanging in and the Autumn Joy that has been in a pot on the deck for years thrives on neglect. The strawberry pot with “hen and chicks” and a red sedum is doing very well. The petunias and nasturiums were dead or looking sorry, so the healthier nasturiums were transplanted to a smaller pot, a red coneflower put in the larger pot they had been in and two other red annuals, Pentas, added to smaller ceramic pots that had been in the garage. It put some nice color in the back on the deck. The walled garden has Shasta daisies, Blue button flower, Sneezeweed, Rudbeckia, a sedum, and Dianthus all blooming. My little rose has a few more flowers and buds on it. The Baptisia (false indigo) has wonderful seed pods that as soon as they begin to dry will be cut, some used for dyeing, some for decorating. The comfrey really shouldn’t have been planted in that garden, it is spreading much too quickly. I think I will dig it out and move it to outside the fence in the corner of the garden where more is growing inside the fence. I will look for some fall blooming perennials or maybe more coneflower, the nursery had beautiful red ones today.

    I had finally convinced myself to get a table umbrella for this deck and had been looking at them for a while at Kroger. They are all gone. Unless I can find one at a reasonable price and color elsewhere, I may have to wait another year.

    It sounds like a lot was done today, but it has really been a day of sit and recuperate, even potting flowers and digging potatoes were done while sitting on the steps for the flowers and the side of the garden box to dig the potatoes.

    We will tackle the rest of the deck support staining in a few days, then enjoy having Son 1 and Grandson 1 here next weekend, doing what we can to get the rest of the front porch done.

    On the fiber front, I managed to purchased the newest style of Jenkins spindle a couple of nights ago. It is a larger spindle than I have preferred, but the weight isn’t too heavy, so I am hoping I will love it when it arrives. It is Manzanita wood. I have 5 of their sizes now, different for various fibers and spins. A variety of woods, all beautiful hand made wooden tools that provide me hours of pleasure and produces yarn that can be sold or used to weave or knit.

  • They say, “you are never too old”…

    I beg to disagree. The summer chore list was long this year. Many major projects needed to be done to preserve the integrity of our house, to have a garden that required less maintenance, and to get a coat of stain on the coop to try to extend it’s life. Spring was spent getting the garden ready with new boxes from reclaimed wood, filling them with soil dug from old beds, compost, and some bagged soil. Paths were lined with weed mat or cardboard and about an inch of mulch placed over it. The beds are fine and fairly easy to maintain as most are sturdy enough for me to sit on the side to weed. The paths needed several inches more mulch, but buying it by the bag is neither economical nor environmentally friendly, I need to find a load or two of woodchips from a tree service and have it dumped to move by wheelbarrow.

    The house needed all 4 sides of the garage, the east wall, the north dormers, and all surfaces of the roofed front porch powerwashed and stained, as well as staining all the raw wood from the deck rebuild two years ago. Son 1 and grandson 1 got it all powerwashed and Son 1 stained the east wall, the walls of the garage, and the dormers. Hubby and I got the garage doors done, but the porch was still in need. Thursday, we decided to try tobegin to finish everything but the railing and floor which take a latex stain, probably a mistake years and years ago. While hubby stained the posts, I did the ceiling. Friday, we set up again, and got the front porch log wall, the windows and door frame done. Today we started on the deck. Hubby did the upper work while I did the frame underneath and outside parts from an 8 foot ladder. Most of it has been done, but there are still the joists under the floorboards that were not on outside edges that probably should still be done, but it is going to have to wait for a few days. Our arms, necks, shoulders, and backs are screaming.

    We still need to get the floor done, the railing also. I guess in a few days, the remaining joists under the deck floor will get a coat of stain too. The chicken coop has had wood repaired, but it still needs to be stained too. The list is getting shorter, but isn’t done yet.

  • “Our Town”

    We live in a Village in a county of only about 15000 folks, but are closer to a town in the next county than to our county seat where Walmart has run most of the local business out of business. The town is a University town and other than a couple grocers, fast food, and CVS, it is locally owned businesses.

    Several years ago, Main Street and College Avenue were renovated, with brick sidewalks, old style lamp posts that each have two hanging basket hooks and a flag pole holder. In the spring, every post is adorned with baskets overflowing with flowers, the medians are planted with flowers and a crew maintains them with weeding, pruning, and watering regularly. The flag holders hold flags for various events. For the local high school football games and graduation, each has a flag that has BHS for Blacksburg High School. On national holidays, American flags are displayed. Virginia Tech flags for their home football games. International flags when the University is celebrating international events.

    This is the town I moved into while our house was being build and while hubby was still across the state until he retired. We consider it our town. It is where the Farmer’s Market is, where the restaurants we frequent are located, and a small single screen movie theater that has been there since my father was a student here in the 1940’s.

    This afternoon, we spent a few hours staining the ceiling and posts of our front porch and after all was done and cleaned up, including us, we went to town for dinner. About once a week since the weather warmed and we can dine outdoors, we have reinstated that into our lives. On Friday nights there is live music on the hill in the first photo.

    We love the local feel of this town and the opportunities for plays, concerts, and sporting events if we feel the urge through the University. The adjacent town to this one has all of the big box stores and chain movie theaters, so if we can’t find what we need in town, it is a short drive over.

    As we sat with our drinks, awaiting the service of our dinner, I pulled out a spindle and did a bit of spin in public time. My spindles are often pulled out around town for a spin time. Sometimes it draws a question or comment, sometimes I just see someone watching from a distance, tonight, one of the ladies from my spinning group and her hubby arrived to dine on the same patio. Small towns, the best.

  • Putting by

    An archaic term that means to set aside; to save. The term was used in many old households to mean storing and preserving of provisions for the cold non productive months. Before the introduction of home freezers, much of this putting by was drying, salting, smoking, fermenting, and canning with procedures that give the USDA shuddering nightmares.

    And now we have the huge grocery stores that ship in “fresh” produce out of season from thousands of miles away. Produce that has been genetically altered to make it shelf stable for far longer than it takes to move it across the country or from other countries to your table. And commercial canning allows aisles of produce of every description packed in metal cans lined with suspect plastics for your ease in food preparation. So many people, don’t even know how food is grown or where.

    I have always in my adult life had a garden of some sort, if only a few feet of tomatoes and peppers off the patio of a townhouse, and I made Pomegrante jelly once a year with my Dad, an afternoon that I looked forward to every year as we improved on the technique each year. But when we bought our farm property and I moved across the state to work for the last few years before retirement and to help with babysitting so Son 1 and DIL could work on our house, or spending an evening or weekend day helping put up interior siding, making floor wax, or other assistance I could provide, my outlook on food changed. During this time, I discovered a program that Virginia Tech was doing where the entire Freshman class was assigned a book to read for discussion. The year I moved, the book was the recently published, Animal Vegetable Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver about her family’s attempt to eat only local, seasonally available food that they grew or could purchase at their local Farmer’s Market. I purchased the book, devoured it and it changed my whole outlook on the food system. Son 1 and DIL had put in a huge garden on the farm, and once living here, I have added fruit trees, vines, and canes as well as chickens for eggs. I made a point to get to know the vendors at our Farmer’s Market, what they provide, how they manage their farms, and what will be available when. I maintain a much smaller garden than the kids put in, located many wild berry patches, learned to make soap and healing salves, and set a goal to “put by” as much as I can to reduce our footprint and reduce the amount of food and other goods that come into our home from thousands of miles away, packaged in containers that may or may not be recyclable.

    Not everything that goes on our shelves or in our freezer is grown here, but it is grown locally if possible. Meats, cheeses, vegetables I don’t grow, fruits when mine fail. Beans and peas are frozen in the spring and summer. Berries and fruit are turned into jams and sauces. Tomatoes are canned as pasta sauce, pizza sauce, or tomatoes to be used in chili or other recipes. Hot peppers are canned, pickled or dried to be used throughout the year until the next crop. Sweet peppers are diced or sliced and frozen. Butter and cheese are stockpiled during the productive season for the winter, most of the meats are available year round. We tend to eat more seasonally now, not to the extent that was accomplished in the book, but certainly more so than before I read it.

    Once of the produce vendors at the Farmer’s Market has a CSA program with different tiers. The one I chose, I get to select what I want in the quantity I want as long as I spend a certain amount. Right now eggplant is in season. I can’t grow eggplant to save me. Everytime I plant it, the flea beetles feast, so I buy mine from them. I’m not a fan of frozen eggplant, but making a casserole and freezing it, or fermenting a few jars of it when it is available is an option. The same for asparagus, I don’t like them frozen or canned, so they are enjoyed in season and a couple jars pickled for later.

    Last week’s CSA had two eggplants in my selection. One was made into Eggplant Parmesan made with locally made parmesan and mozarella. Half was eaten and enjoyed, the second half frozen for some other meal in the future. The second eggplant is being fermented to enjoy on a pickle plate or on a salad.

    The eggplant ferment needs a smaller jar. Off to the basement to see what is available. Not everyone can grow their own, but we can all make an effort to support what is local, to support the farmer’s you can get to know.

  • Slower start

    My Facebook memory posts for the past week have shown baskets of goodies from the garden, canning of berry jams, pickles, and other staples. We got peas from the early garden, but not nearly as many as last year for the freezer. I pick beans every couple of days, but only a couple hands full at a time so not as many of them going in the freezer. Some of my peppers aren’t any larger than the day they were planted and two died. There are two in pots in the herb garden that are doing great though. One bell pepper in the garden has a green pepper on it, it is a red variety, so I hope it will continue to mature and ripen. A couple of the hot peppers have started to get some size and I see flowers and the beginnings of tiny peppers. They will thrive when the weather cools some.

    This was a gardener’s mistake. Using the Square Foot technique and Florida trellis system, I thought I could put 3 ground cherries, 3 bush cucumbers, 3 tomatillos, and 3 Cilantro plants in a 4 by 6 foot bed. I’ve only harvested two cucumbers.

    The ground cherries don’t like to be trellised and have sprawled everywhere, the cucumbers are vining outward into the comfrey and the bed where I pulled the onions, and I can’t stay on top of trellising the tomatillos which are full of fruit and blooms. The cilantro was forgotten in the jungle and is about to set seed, so I guess I should pull it as I use very little coriander and I don’t want it to self seed there.

    The popcorn and bush Hubbard squash are thriving while the cabbage worms are doing in the kale and cabbage at the end of that bed.

    More of the pullets are laying each day and a few of them are getting some decent size on them. The two hens in with them layed 14 eggs in 9 days, today a total of 7 pullet eggs and 1 hen egg in the coop. The six mature hens in the Palace have produced only 11 eggs in the same 9 days total. It is frustrating to feed them pounds of feed each day and get nothing in return.

    The bean beetles are devouring the bean leaves, the second planting has all germinated and not quite as densely planted. Maybe a third planting will go in where the onions were, if I can get the cucumbers to redirect up the path.

    Though my beds that I made are nice and sturdy, there aren’t enough wood chips in the paths to keep the grass and weeds out. The new asparagus bed did not produce a single sprout, I think the crowns from Home Depot may have been old and dried out. The old bed is still thick with the ferns. I will make another attempt in late fall or early spring to move some of them to the new bed and try to finish digging the old bed out. It will likely mean no or few asparagus next year.

    I need to seek out a load or two of wood chips and hire a teenage grandson to help me spread them several inches thick on the paths.

    The walled garden is filling in nicely with the perennials that I planted there, but I am going to have to remove or at least thin the comfrey or it is going to take over and choke out some of the other plants. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to remove once planted.

    The cultivated berries are drying on the canes as fast as they develop. Though we are getting pop up showers frequently, it isn’t putting enough water in the ground. I will go to a local pick your own berries farm to put some in the freezer, probably not making much jam as I eat very little of it. The tomatoes and tomatillos as they begin to ripen will be put in bags in the freezer until there are enough to make a batch of sauce or salsa. There are many green tomatoes and the plum tomatoes are beginning to ripen. Since I planted determinate varieties this year, they will all ripen about the same time and when they do, the kitchen will become a sauce factory. With Son 1 and DIL having their own nice gardens now and a freezer for storage, I won’t need to can quite as much for the two of us.

    I think I am going to be overwhelmed with apples, pears, and the first peaches and as we don’t eat cobblers or fruit pies and there is only so much applesauce and pear sauce we can consume, there may be lots of fruit fall for the deer.

  • Opportunities

    I haven’t done any living history since March, but next weekend, an opportunity is there. Saturday is at Wilderness Road Regional Museum, and Sunday will be small group tours of Ingles Tavern at Ingles Ferry (the Ingles of Mary Draper Ingles fame) by reservation. I can’t do both and will do the Sunday at Ingles Tavern, not taking a wheel, just a basket of fluff, my tools, and a couple of spindles. I can sit in the shade of one of the huge trees or walk around and spin while groups come and go.

    Conversation about this opportunity also initiated discussion about doing a class of some sort at the museum. As I have already done salve making, and spinning, we will offer an old fashioned lard soap class to be taught by me at the museum on August 12 from 5:30-7. Information will be forthcoming on their Facebook page and website. There will be a small cost to cover materials, but you will go home with a bar of soap and the museum will have soap to sell once it cures.

    After such a dry spell of not doing any of these activities, I love that this has presented itself to go along with the Heritage Day sponsored by Montgomery Museum on August 21, where I will demonstrate spinning on spindles and a wheel as well as vend, and the following weekend getting to go to a fiber retreat, visit with friends, spin, socialize, and set up a table of items to vend.

    In the meantime, I’m finishing up a square for my blanket, not a wool I want close to my skin, so definitely not on an edge. I love when I finally have enough stitches to knit it on to a 16″ needle instead of doing magic loop on a 32″ needle.

    And I gave up on the mitts, frogged them and am using that yarn to knit a small shawl.

    I will get back to mitts using finer yarn and a single ball, it was getting so tangled I made an error that wasn’t worth the effort to try to fix since I only had about 2″ of the mitts done.

    The Tour de Fleece challenge ends today with final posts due by Tuesday morning, mine is already in and tomorrow we start a mini challenge to go through the end of July. I have 8 beautiful ounces of Falklands wool, I will begin a spin on it with one of my Jenkins spindles to finish out the month, maybe be able to use it during August, and it will go with me to the retreat. I don’t want to use it for the demonstrations as it is a dyed braid and I generally use natural colored wools for demonstrations and washed locks if I am going to card or comb as part of the event.

    On an unrelated side note. When I went to gather eggs this afternoon, I checked the potato patch and dug up 4 medium egg sized Kennebeck potatoes that were roasted with rainbow carrots, kohlrabi, and chicken breasts for dinner. It looks like it is about time to dig that bed and store some spuds for good eating. I also bought a couple of pounds of red beets at the Farmer’s Market yesterday and boiled them to have the first of the season beets. I don’t know why I don’t grow them myself.

  • Successes and Epic Failures

    I began making soap many years ago after a friend who makes great soaps offered to teach me. Have I thanked you lately, Cat? A great afternoon spent and a batch of soap to keep along with some of the necessary tools and a new skill came home with me that day. I subsequently have taught a few other folks to make soap and make sure they go home with some supplies, a batch of soap, and a new skill. I can’t count how many batches I have made at this point, but it is in the dozens. For the past three days, I have made two batches a day. I limited it to two because I wanted to use the loaf molds, not wanting to spoon soap batter into shaped molds, so I was having to wait 24 hours to unmold, wash the molds, dry them, then make two more batches. I have only had a few epic failures, one when I forgot and measured by volume instead of weight, one when I used ground cinnamon as a colorant and the soap seized, and one of yesterday’s batches for unknown reasons.

    Five successful batches curing in the guest room.
    One epic fail, no that isn’t french toast in syrup.

    I could tell that this batch wasn’t quite right as it took forever to come to trace and even then, the consistency was off. It was a batch of Goatmilk, Oatmeal, and Honey soap. I know the goatmilk powder was old, but used it as I didn’t have any fresh milk (I have used the powder before), maybe the match between the temperature of the oil and caustic liquid were off. Whatever the reason, this batch separated and is still caustic. The container will be well wrapped in newspaper, double bagged, and disposed of, it is unsalvagable. If I want a batch of that type of soap, I will have to purchase more goatmilk. I wish I had checked it before we went to the Farmer’s Market.

    All the equipment has been cleaned up to store away, it may come back out if I can get some goat milk. The equipment sits out overnight so the next day I am cleaning up soap, not caustic soap batter. It is easier on the hands and the septic system to do it that way. There are two pots, the immersion blender, a couple of plastic scrapers that get wiped down with newpaper or paper towels and allowed to saponify overnight.

    Day before yesterday, I noticed the onion tops were folding down so the onions were pulled and left on the soil surface overnight. Yesterday, pop up storms were forecast, so the onions were gathered and brought into the garage to finish curing. It was a nice mix of red and yellow onions, some as large as softballs, some barely larger than the bulbs that were planted, two that were showing some stem rot were peeled, cut, and used in two subsequent dinners. Yesterday also produced the first two cucumbers. I guess pickle making will occur soon. Last year I made so many fermented and refrigerator pickles that the weight of the jars, broke the 13 year old support glides that hold the produce bin in the refrigerator. That part was ordered and I replaced it, but I guess this year, most of the pickles will be canned so they are shelf stable to keep the weight off the refrigerator shelves.

    As soon as all of the stems have dried and the skins have papered, these will be moved to the basement shelves to join the garlic that was spread on the hardware cloth shelf down there yesterday.

    When I began raising a few chickens for our eggs, I started with too many and ended up with a lot of randy young males, thus learning that “freezer camp” was the solution. I kept one young rooster so we could maintain a sustainable flock without having to purchase chicks and I banded their legs so we could keep track of ages with the idea of never keeping more than a dozen birds at a time. A few years ago, after having several batches of chicks hatch and all of them falling victim to predators of some sort, some as tiny chicks, some as “teenagers”, I decided to just keep females and replace them every two or three years as their egg production dropped. This was the year to replace them and “all” pullet chicks were purchased in February. By May, it was clear that two of the pullets, the two Oliver eggers were roos, not pullets. I enjoy the female birds, most are friendly and the pullets are beginning to lay small colorful eggs now, but the two young roosters are driving me crazy. A crowing rooster first thing in the morning doesn’t bother me, these two compete all day long every day. I’m ready for them to be gone. They are beautiful birds, but oh so annoying. When the pullets were reaching the point where I thought they would begin to lay eggs, I put two of the mature hens in with them to help teach them where to lay each day. When freezer camp time occurs soon, I have to get them back out of the coop and into the Palace with the roosters and other mature hens. I thought this would be easy, but they are also Olive eggers and in the coop at night, I can’t tell them apart from a couple of the Marans. They have green legs, but the Marans have black legs and they can’t be distinguished by flashlight, both have black feathers, and some of the Marans have the gold necklace. This may be a challenge, but the coop really isn’t large enough for 15 birds. It really isn’t large enough for the 13 pullets.

  • Preparations

    Events start up in August, two of them within a week. Trying to get goods for my shop prepared requires beginning early as soap takes a month to 6 weeks to fully cure and it takes time to spin and knit items. My focus in the first half of the year has been on spinning challenges and not a lot of items have been knit, a mini shawl here, a hat there. This month’s theme was to challenge ourselves to spin, ply, and create an item. To challenge myself, I learned a new technique called Ply on the Fly where you spin singles and ply immediately. Learning this produced a thicker yarn than I usually spin and ply, but it was perfect for knitting a hat. A bit of left over yarn from knitting blanket squares gave me enough to add a couple of stripes.

    In my scrap bin, I uncovered most of three skeins from spinning for the Shave ‘Em 2 Save ‘Em event, parts of those skeins were used in my half hap shawl that I knit. Those three wools coordinated well, so I used them to knit a cowl.

    And then divided what was left from them to knit mitts two at a time, so I am shuffling 6 balls of wool.

    The past two days have also been spent making soap, a project that I have neglected since last November. Yesterday I made 20 bars, today, 20 more, and tomorrow, at least 10 more will be made, perhaps 20 more. Prices for the ingredients have increased dramatically. Some of the oils were provided by Son 1 and DIL in part in payment for soap I made for them and in part as a gift and that helps.

    I have been striving to eliminate non biodegradable disposables in packaging my products. One of my favorite moisturizers is Cocoa Butter which because of it’s crumbly texture is difficult to use, but a bit of formulation experimentation, I came up with a lotion bar, but it still would crumble when it got thin. I found some cardboard tubes and created lotion tubes that apply like a deodorant stick and do not crumble.

    Each tube holds 2 ounces and when used up, the tube is biodegradable.

    With a supply of herbal salves, some yarn, and products being produced, I hope I will have enough to make a nice display. I will have to slow down my Breed Blanket square making and focus more on items for the shop. The blanket already has 31 squares which will make it 40 X 48″ and there are still 5 months so a minimum of 5 more squares to make. That would be a 48 X 48″ blanket even if I only make one a month.