I am extremely careful on the internet, social media, with online purchases, and very judicious with the use of a credit or debit card out in the world, yet once again, my credit card has been breached. We belong to USAA and they are great at catching the fraudulent use, catching 3 attempts to use it for about $1600 worth of ticket purchases in Houston. However, they did not notify me this time, we saw the declined attempts on our statement when another suspicious pending charge appeared. My card has yet again been shut down and a new one being processed for me. This is a tough time of year for it to happen, with the holiday’s approaching, as I don’t like to shop, don’t care for crowds, and currently due to DH’s injury, don’t leave the house for any length of time short of quick grocery or med runs.
Then to add to this frustration, today we went to pick up a regular prescription for DH to find that with the Rx insurance for which we pay dearly, the 90 days refill was more than double what it was last time it was refilled. Without insurance, the med was less than the old insurance cost. So we pay almost 3 times the med cost to use the insurance that we pay for to reduce or help pay for the medications required. I don’t understand how the insurance companies get away with that. It approaches fraud. How can the co-pay be much more than the cost of the medication.
How can other countries provide free or inexpensive medical care and free or inexpensive medications while our costs continue to rise.
Toward the end of October, my love tripped over the base of a broken sign on a public street and broke his collarbone enough to displace it 2 cm. It took them 11 days to schedule surgery to put in a plate to hold it together. It has been a week since surgery and he is still only minimally functional, requiring lots of assistance. Fortunately it was his non dominant arm, but is still very uncomfortable for him. He is 18 days in from the injury and facing several more weeks of wearing a sling. We hope that the pain settles soon so we can begin to get him out and walking again. He had just finished a 5.5 mile walk when the accident occurred. We don’t want him to lose all of the good he had done for his health since last spring.
The 18 days have mostly been home confinement and as I don’t want to leave him here alone while he requires assistance, my ventures out have been short and necessary such as picking up online ordered groceries or prescriptions and bandage material for the daily incision care.
This has allowed a lot of reading time and crafting time. A gal that does history education with me at the museum is a self published author and I have gone through 3 of her historical novels. I finished spinning a skein of yarn, spindle spun the start of another, knit about half of a Nordic star scarf with wool my daughter and SIL brought me from their honeymoon in Iceland (I was the teen supervisor for her kiddos), and started a hat from some previously spun yarns.
The weather has turned from mild and dry to cold and wet this week. The rain is much needed, though we only got a little more than an inch. There is some more predicted in the next week including our first snow shower possibility. As Thanksgiving approaches, the seasonal cactus is showing it’s beauty.
This is the month of family birthdays, with Thanksgiving crammed in the midst and a wedding to add to the festivities. We are hoping that though hubby will still be in a sling, he will feel well enough to fully participate in all of the celebrations. It will be fun having everyone together here and at daughter’s home.
So life goes on here, though my blogging as been sporadic.
This month brought cataract surgery for hubby. He can now see better than he ever has in his life and no longer needs glasses, except low strength readers in some instances.
It took me to the podiatrist regarding my summer long foot discomfort and those two visits were unproductive as I had already done the elevated resting, ice, better supportive shoes, good arch supporting insoles, so she really didn’t know what to say except my 76+ year old feet have arthritis, some bony overgrowth that comes with age, bone spurs on my heels, and to keep doing what I have been doing.
Helene was kinder to us than so many millions of people. We got a lot of rain, wind gusts to 60 MPH that took down trees in the region, but none on our farm that we have seen so far. The ones on our road and the road leading down the mountain have at least been cut back, though many trunks are still leaning over the roadway. Our state maintained gravel road has a 12 to 14″ deep rut that runs from the neighbor above us beyond the one across and down from us. It ran gullies down our driveway that slopes down about 200′ elevation from the top to the house, but I have already regraded with the tractor and blade and improved it, not repaired it. We did lose power for 56 hours. The refrigerator freezer was not opened and the meat in the bottom bin with blue ice blocks remained frozen. Some of the bagged veggies and fruit higher in the freezer thawed and was thrown out. The bags of tomatoes were beginning to thaw so the skins were slipped off, the tomatoes put in a large pot and today I have finally tackled the job of canning 9 pints of them. A bucket of apples was picked, sliced and cooked down for applesauce. The large pot to the right of the tomatoes ended up 6.5 pints of applesauce. The half will be served with tonight’s homecooked meal, the first since Thursday night. The two quart bags of chili paste used as an enchilada sauce base were cooked down and put in half pint jars that will go in the freezer as I don’t have a pressure canner.
The power was out for 56 hours. With no power, we have no water as we are on a well. We do have a gravity fed yard hydrant down near the bottom field, fed from a water catchment system near the house that contains the rain water from the roof. Though that water is not potable, 5 gallon buckets were filled and hauled up to the house to use for handwashing and toilet flushing. Our daughter, 25 minutes away didn’t lose power and she fed us Saturday night, though now since they are are town water, they have a boil notice. Today, we had an appointment in the county seat and the parking lot of the little shopping center had about 25 power company trucks, all from Oklahoma. We made sure to go by and thank the guys standing in the lot, probably awaiting their next assignment as some left while we were there. They seemed surprised that we were thanking them and not yelling at them. That has to be a tough job, working 16 hour shifts in the rain only to be yelled at by people who didn’t get their power back first.
As I said, we were lucky. Several communities in our county and adjacent counties along the New River were flooded and roads blocked off. There are a number of semi permanent campgrounds and people lost their campers, some vehicles, and houses close to the river. It crested as much as 17 feet above flood plain. The news said it is the second highest since records have been kept, the highest was in the 1940’s. The creek at the bottom of our mountain flooded, but didn’t breach the bridge. When will people realize that climate change is fueling these more intense storms. I have friends in western North Carolina that are totally cut off due to washed out bridges and roads. Long lines at grocery stores, taking only cash, and no fuel for generators. We all need to be thankful if we are safe and send good thoughts, goods, and money to help those who have lost it all.
On to a new month tomorrow. Hopefully no more severe storms aimed at the areas already suffering.
The week has been a teaser of autumn to come. The week plus in the sturdier shoes and insoles has allowed me to walk a couple miles about half the days this past week. Two of the days wearing long pants and a light sweater. I’m sure we will have more hot weather before it settles into autumn, but I’ll take last week and the upcoming week for now.
We managed to get to the Farmer’s Market yesterday in spite of it being a home football game day. Every parking lot near campus is closed to public parking and reserved for paid football day parking and tailgating. That makes the market a challenge.
The week has been used making 9 batches of cold process soap. If you have never made soap, cold process soap is still hot, the lye solution is hot, the oils and plant butters have to be melted, so it seems a misnomer, but the processes are different. Nine batches makes more than 80 bars of soap, and no we don’t personally use that many a year. A big boxful goes to Son 1 for gift giving and their use. He gets me large containers of some of the oils in exchange. A batch goes to a friend in town, a batch for SIL, and some for our annual use.
The 4 boards cover 4 molds just prior to being covered with the towels to saponify overnight. Beyond them are 5 batches already cut and curing from yesterday and earlier in the week. They have to cure for about a month before they are hard enough to not just dissolve with use. The longer they cure, the harder they become. The next couple of weeks will be used making the labels for most of them.
Last night when the kitchen scraps were taken out to the chickens, I realized that the day lilies leaves have all been eaten to the ground by the deer. The day lily bed is right up against the east wall of the garage. This morning, I saw these two and another doe just a few feet behind the house devouring the Tithonia that used to be where they are.
Periodically, the doe would pounce toward the fawn who would then do zoomies around the back yard before returning to the doe.
Also out there was a large groundhog. It was a frequent visitor during the spring, but has been absent since the hay was mowed in July. The hay is tall again and it was back.
The tomatoes are reaching the last few. This basket has been bagged and put in the freezer, the Ghost peppers are infusing in olive oil with garlic and sage. And the cayennes and remaining Ghost peppers strung to dry. Some day soon, all the bags will be hauled out of the freezer, the tomatoes peeled, and a big pot of sauce made. Probably left plain so that it can become chili with peppers added, pasta sauce with onion, garlic, and herbs, or cooked down for pizza sauce.
This week, the tomato vines will be pulled down and chopped for compost, that bed weeded and covered with hay for winter. That leaves the sweet potatoes that went in so late there may be none to harvest before the first frost. It is about time to chop the corn and sunflower stalks down and call it a year unless I can get some winter greens in a bed that can be covered for the early frosts.
And this week, I can get back to some crafting. Some knitting and some spinning have been done. A lot of reading, trying to finish The Rose Code before it is due back to the library. It is an interesting historical fiction, I recommend it.
Yesterday was the beginning of meteorological autumn, not the autumn marked on your wall calendar if you still have one. And right on cue, we started seeing the trees beginning to show their color, or at least we noticed it. The first to turn are the Tulip Poplars and the Locust trees. This Poplar acts like a Ginkgo and turns yellow all at once in a matter of a couple of days.
And loses it’s leaves first.
After being away for two weekends and hobbling around for 7 weeks, I finally got out into the garden this week. The heat and time of year ended the cucumbers and bush beans, but the tomatoes and peppers are producing wildly.
Every day a basket like this is brought in and frozen. Once they are all ripe, I will make a pot of sauce. Two pounds of peppers were cut and put in the fermenting crock to make into hot sauce in about 5 or 6 weeks.
Yesterday afternoon, the popcorn was harvested, shucked in place and brought in. It is now in two crisscrossed layers in two large baskets to finish drying for about 2 or 3 weeks, then we will have more than a year’s worth of popcorn. It is fun to put a cob in a brown paper lunch bag and pop it in the microwave for a couple of minutes. Then you have a bag full of air popped corn.
Fall is also the time to make soap. Soap for gift giving, soap for a friend who loves my soap, soap for us for a year. There will be 8 or 9 batches made over the next week and cut to cure in a guest room. The first two batches were made yesterday, cut today, and set to cure. I am awaiting an order of essential oils and shea butter to continue the process, but the first two batches are unscented.
Today it much milder outdoors and as my foot still isn’t allowing exercise walks and since I did have my physical training session this morning, I tackled some garden chores. The cucumber and bean plants were pulled, given to the chickens, the bed that grew the peas in the spring and has been idle was weeded and the weeds put in a large tub to die off before being added back to that bed as compost. That bed also got a wheel barrow of chicken coop cleanings a month or so ago and it was spread out over the surface. There are now two and a half idle beds. One will likely have some fall veggies, the others covered in straw unless I can get a cover crop in quickly. The corn stalks won’t be cut until the Tithonia and sunflowers planted in a row up the middle of them finish blooming. There are so many hot peppers already canned that the rest will be allowed to turn red. The Ghost peppers will be infused in olive oil with sage and garlic, the jalapenos and cayennes will be crushed once dried for crushed red pepper. There are two tiny ornamental Thai pepper that are full of red peppers but they are very hard to harvest, though hot if you can get some.
The chicken tunnel has been mostly a success. There are a few plants that grow into the tunnel they won’t eat, but do keep mostly scratched down, and the creeping charlie and smartweed that are reachable through the wire, they ignore so another day will have to be spent clearing the blueberry bed. The raspberry and blackberry half barrels were mostly a failure, though I see some volunteers outside the barrels. With all the wineberries and wild blackberries that are on the property, I should just not bother with the barrels. There are also several you pick berry farms around here.
Not much spinning was done last month. Reading, a little travel to visit Son 1 and then to a retreat where I did spin both on my wheel and spindles, knit, and took both a wet felting class to make a small bowl and a project bag sewing class occupied my time with visiting friends I see only rarely. If I ever finish the knitting project, I will finish spinning the fiber I have worked on for two months slowly. I got a lovely braid to spin as a door prize at the retreat and a bag of felting wool from the gift exchange game.
So you see from this, I am alive and well, not posting much here, on Facebook, or Instagram, but still here. Take care, enjoy the fall colors if you live where they occur, and get ready for another winter.
There isn’t much physical rambling going on with me right now. The boot is off, though the tendonitis isn’t totally gone, and wearing the boot, threw off my gait, and caused plantar fasciitis in the other foot. I hobble around like Tim Conway’s character after I sit for a little while or right after I get up in the morning. I am still going to work out with my trainer once a week and we are working on core and upper body on machines, balance and stretching with squats and other stretching exercises. On a good day, I can walk about a mile, not the 4 I was doing 6 weeks ago. It is so very frustrating.
The July Jenkins spindle challenge is our scavenger hunt for Tour de Fleece. A social media friend proxy shopped for me at Black Sheep Gathering in Oregon in late June and purchased a lovely Salmonberry Chickadee spindle, Ed Jenkins’ newest model. Slightly smaller than my other favorites, the Finches, and with a thicker body. It has been my spindle of choice for the past 10 days or so.
That fiber is finished and the 8 golf ball sized cops have been wound into a ply ball and will be plyed on my spinning wheel as soon as the bobbin of Shetland now on the wheel is full. I find that I can spin for hours on the spindles, but only about an hour on the wheel.
The pullets are almost all laying now. It is interesting trying to figure out who lays what these days. The 4 older hens lay an olive colored egg, a chocolate brown egg, and two that I called blue, until the newest Americana began laying and hers is robin’s egg blue, making the other two appear greenish. The Calicos all lay a light pinkish brown egg.
Suddenly, I have more eggs than daughter’s family and we can eat and with no pups in the house to share eggs with, I have a couple dozen being shared with the spinning group or visiting family members. I did get their coop cleaned out this week in spite of the heat. A good addition to one of the idle garden beds that was weeded before adding the cleaning to the bed.
The garden is producing copious quantities of cucumbers and jalapenos, though they aren’t very spicy. A gallon of pickled peppers is in the refrigerator as well as 4 quarts of dill pickles. The first crop of green beans are not producing many now and the second crop hasn’t begun to produce. Every now and then, a cucumber evades my daily search and gets too large and yellow for us, but the chickens love them when I break them in half and toss into their run. Yesterday, I found 3 tomato horn worms on the plants, the chickens gobbled one up and ignored the other two, each as large as my thumb around and about 4 inches long. Maybe they went back to them later, at least they are off the tomato plants.
The milkweed that creates a fairly large patch on the edge of one of the areas that get’s hayed was mowed down with the hay, but has come back up again and is beginning to bloom.
The daily thunderstorms we were having have stopped and again we are reaching drought level dryness. The last two or three thunderstorms came right after VDOT graded our state road and the run off caused serious gullies in our driveway. Using the blade on the tractor, I was able to improve the drive surface to a safer level. It has been a year since I asked VDOT to clear our culvert and it hasn’t been done. To replace the culvert with another or a cattle grate requires a permit and to hire someone to do it.
We have several more days of brutally hot, humid weather before we get a reprieve for a few days. We need rain.
Take care and stay cool. Be safe from the newest round of Covid. I guess we are going to live with it and hope it doesn’t get worse.
This phrase is used in our local Farmer’s Market advertising. It is amazing to me to go to our market and know that Thomas, Pete, Mike, Cedric, Kat, and others call me by name. They see hundreds of shoppers each week. They know what I am looking for and will “save” the item for my shopping. Each week, I spend $75-100 at the Farmer’s Market on locally grown vegetables, grass fed and finished meats, locally made sourdough breads, and locally made cheese from locally milked cows. This is added to the produce coming from our vegetable garden and orchard.
I know that my food did not travel across the country or worse across country borders to feed us. The menu varies with the seasons to take advantage of what is being grown. The market allows us to enjoy items I don’t want to be bothered with growing as they produce too much too fast and don’t freeze well, or not having growing tunnels at home, grow foods earlier or later than I can get them from the garden.
Currently, I am pickling cucumbers and jalapenos from our garden. Blanching and freezing green beans to add to the peas done earlier. Other peppers that will become dried peppers for winter cooking, or hot sauces are still growing in the garden. The tomatoes are still green, but mature ones can be purchased at the market. The market providing summer squash, broccoli and cauliflower, sweet corn (I only grow popcorn), scallions, lettuces to go with our harvests. Soon there will be peaches, then Asian pears, and finally apples from the orchard. The plums are nearly gone, the early blueberries mostly harvested.
Later this summer, some fall vegetables will be planted, and there is a lull in salad mid winter, but the rotation variety makes salads less missed in the mid winter months.
The weather is hot. And dry. We did benefit from some rain a few days ago that was spotty around the area, but did give us a little respite from the heat and the dryness.
Yesterday, I was sitting on the front porch with Randy. Randy was our postal carrier for most of the years since we built and moved here, but he retired a few years ago. He also runs cattle with two younger men, men about our sons’ ages. He had come over to let us know that they were going to mow our hay today so I wouldn’t let critters out that might be harmed by huge mowers and we were just sitting and visiting when he looked beyond me and asked if that was a snake on the porch rail. Sure enough, a black rat snake about 6- 6.5 feet long, just chillin’ on the rail behind me. Black rat snakes are our friends as long as they stay out of the house and out of the coop. He probably had been feasting on the chipmunks that have taken over since the dogs and barn cats have all passed away. The snake had been hanging out up near the barn, but had moseyed on down to the house. I went through the house, grabbed leather garden gloves, a 5 gallon bucket, and lid and came back out to relocate it. Randy looked at me like I was nuts and said, “Don’t ask me to help.” He did take the photo though.
This is the 5th one that we have relocated from the house or coop. The bucket was taken a couple miles away and the snake turned loose in the woods by a field.
Last night I did finish the June spinning challenge and finished plying the rainbow yarn.
It ended up 558 yards almost 4 ounces done totally on the spindles in the photo in 18 days. A project has already been begun.
The mowers did arrive this afternoon, two mowers and a tractor with a tedder to fluff up what was mowed. They will return Friday and bale it. I don’t think they are going to have a very good harvest as it didn’t get mowed in the fall and it didn’t get fertilized this spring. Randy said they are already about 60 bales short of what they usually get before reaching us, so he may not have much to sell this year, hopefully enough for their cattle.
The dry heat had caused the pea vines to yellow, so while they mowed, I harvested peas, the potatoes that were in one of the pea beds, a handful of Jalapenos, and a basket of plums. There are about that many more plums still ripening. They sure are good, not very large, but very sweet. And I also pulled the pea vines to be chopped up and put in the compost. My clippers are old and dull and wouldn’t do the job, so I may ask to borrow my daughter’s.
It took 3 hours to shell all of those peas, filling a bucket with empty pods, and yielding several quarts of peas. We enjoyed some for dinner and the rest frozen for meals when fresh veggies aren’t available except trucked across the country. In a couple of days, the tiny green beans will be large enough to start enjoying them and freezing more for later meals. The tomatoes have flowers, but no fruit yet and flowers on the cucumbers, but again, no fruit yet. One of the pea beds will be planted with more green beans, the other covered with old hay until cooler weather allows fall greens to be started.
We saw the doe with the singleton fawn, still a tiny one after the mowers left. Probably wondering where their tall grass covering had gone.
While I was talking to one of the younger mowers, we realized that a large branch in the top of one of my Asian pears is totally dead with pears on it, so recently dead. It doesn’t look like a lightening strike, but at some point it is going to have to be cut out. I don’t know what caused it. It is concerning as that is the tree that produces the most pears.
More heat and no rain for the next 10 days. At least the grass doesn’t grow fast when it is hot and dry.
Much to our delight, the hayfields mowed and baled just before ours were done late this week and there is no rain in the forecast next week, so we might actually have our fields cleared this week. It is going to be brutally hot though, highs in the 90’s every day. That will make garden time happen only in the early morning and I will have to be sure the chicken’s water stays filled. They already are digging dust bath holes in the shade of the asparagus that are now more than 5 feet tall and full fern mode.
Every day, a cup of blueberries, a basket of peas, a few new potatoes, and a handful of delicious plums come in. The tomatoes and cucumbers have flowers. The green beans are full height and blooming, and there are small hot peppers on several of the plants. A few Jalapenos were brought in this week. The peas are reaching the end of their season and most of the potatoes had already died back and been dug. There are peas in the freezer and we have been enjoying fresh ones a few times a week. There may only be 1 more basket full to harvest, then the vines will be pulled and chopped for compost, the bed covered with straw until it cools enough to plant some fall crops later in the season.
Trying to stay out of the boot in the house as much as possible means that when I go downstairs in the morning to fix my coffee and breakfast, I often sit on the couch looking out the front windows, up the driveway. The doe with a singleton fawn was out there a couple days ago, standing patiently on the edge of the driveway, while her little one nursed. I have never seen that happen out in the open, so with no dogs here, she must feel safe.
Not the best photo as it was taken from inside the house, through the screen, and zoomed so as not to chase her off. She would periodically turn and clean the little one while it ate.
This morning was Farmer’s Market Day and every week, we purchase some flowers from our friends that grow flowers for market and weddings. Once a month, I get the larger bouquet and today’s one is so colorful and gorgeous.
We are halfway through the month and I am almost finished with the June Jenkins spindle challenge to spin a rainbow. We were challenged to spin at least 10 grams of each of the 7 colors, but I have chosen to spin the entire pigtail of each one, about 16 to 18 grams per color. The photo shows the 5 finished ones and the indigo ready to spin, but it is now more than half spun. Once it is done, only the violet will remain.
Next month we do a daily scavenger hunt and post our spindle with the found object. It usually only requires a single gram per day but I’m sure more will actually be spun. I need to get back to work on the pound of gray Shetland wool that is on my spinning wheel, but I think I need to give my foot another week to heal first.
I did resume my sessions with my physical trainer this week after 3 weeks off with us having had visitors, her going on vacation, and me wearing a new boot. We did only upper body on the various machines. The area where we usually train with hand weights is getting new flooring, so all the machines and equipment are moved out of that area. About 2/3 of the gym has thick padded glued down rubber mat type flooring. The other 1/3 had carpet with rolled out mat pads that had shifted due to the movement of the equipment and there were wrinkles that were hazardous if you weren’t paying attention. All the carpet and old rolled out mat pads are being removed and that area is getting the same type of flooring as the rest of the gym. It makes using areas awkward but the end result will be great. At home, I continue to use resistance bands and hand weights.
Stay safe, and if travelling, be careful until we meet here again.
The PC visit went about how I figured. She is reasonably sure I have a stress fracture in a metatarsal but sent me for Xrays to make sure there wasn’t a more significant break or dislocation. When I get up in the morning, I think all is well, but 10-15 minutes walking around or standing to prepare a meal without the boot sends the throbbing ache back with a vengeance. The Xray did not show dislocation and most stress fractures don’t show in them, so my PC feels the best way to treat the issue is an Orthopedic Walking boot for at least 4 weeks and to stay off of it as much as possible. She said I can walk around as needed in the boot. What she didn’t say and I didn’t know from experience is that the boot throws your posture off and more than a little while walking in it causes back pain. So, I guess, other than meal prep, necessary errands and grocery shopping, I will spend a lot of time for the next 4 weeks in my recliner with my feet up. I can still go to my trainer, but we have to work only on upper body and core. Maybe I will join the Rec Center pool so I can at least get some cardio without impact to further aggravate my foot. Definitely not how I planned to spend my summer. I guess that is what I get for pushing myself to over 4 mph on the treadmill as a septuagenarian.
The time down has allowed me to spin more on the rainbow challenge.
The red and orange are done, a total of 155 yards of spun and plyed yarn and the yellow has been started.
The rain we have been getting had the grass getting entirely too tall and thick, and since mowing means riding around on the riding mower, I did get it done today while we have a milder, dryer day. The trimming with the line trimmer will have to wait a few weeks. While mowing, I notice the Dogwood, I think a Japanese Dogwood, that blooms well after all of the natives, has red speckled petals.
I have never noticed that before and don’t know if it is a natural occurrence or a disease. The tan spots are a sign of disease. I hate that we might lose this little tree.
Also while mowing, I survey the development of the various fruits. Most of the apple trees have lots of young fruit. One of the Asian pears is bearing, though for the second year, the other one is sparse. There are peaches coming, grapes on the vines, though the deer are eating the grape leaves. The plums are ripening and I ate the first two of the season while riding around. Maybe after dinner, I will hobble over to gather whatever berries have ripened in the past couple days if the birds haven’t beat me to them. This week there should be shelling peas and plenty more Sugar snap peas to enjoy. The tomatoes need to be tied up higher on the trellis, the cucumbers urged to grow up their trellis and not sprawl on the ground. Soon there will be onions and probably some new potatoes can be teased out from the plants. Green beans are growing, but not blooming yet but there are blooms on some of the peppers. I’m so glad, the young couple helped me get the cardboard and old hay down in the paths, so the garden maintenance is minimal.
No one is mowing hay on our mountain yet. I guess it will be July before they get to us again this year. The tall hay hides the fawns and Turkey poults as they trail along behind their Mom’s. We have seen a doe with a single fawn and another with twins. This morning, a hen Turkey with poults, but all you could see was the grass moving, so I don’t know how many she has. In a few weeks, they will be tall enough to see and count. Spring on the farm.
Cabin Crafted 