Last night, according to the indoor/outdoor thermometer didn’t reach low enough for frost. I was lazy and slept in until it was fully light out, so I can’t attest to whether there was or wasn’t any frost on the grass, but the windshields were clear. The covers were all removed from the garden and the fig. The inside of the fig shelter was like the inside of a tropical greenhouse and it looks great. I might get those figs yet.
Because I lacked enough clear plastic, the larger Jalapenos were covered with garbage bags, black ones. I probably should have removed them yesterday and put them back on last night because the very top leaves are “sunburned.” Though it never got above the mid 50’s yesterday, the sun was out. Those peppers will keep maturing for the next couple of weeks and more harvested.
The peas and other peppers had a single 10 foot wide sheet of heavy mil translucent plastic over them and they look great. The ground cherries are a semi tropical plant, they were covered with a single sheet of thinner of clearer plastic and they don’t look so good. All of the tops are badly burned, the lower leaves look ok. They will be watched for a day or two, but maybe just cut my losses, harvest the immature fruit and plant them earlier next year, the extended season I was hoping for didn’t happen this year, instead we got an early frost.
With nearly two weeks of mild weather and relatively warm nights, there is hope for the peas and more peppers.
The sweater gift is coming along. Only about 2 more inches until I need to make sleeves and move on up to the upper body. If I spent more time knitting and less spinning, I could get it wrapped up in a week.
But alas, I like spinning more than knitting, so this …
The full 4 ounce braid of the Shenandoah colorway of Falklands that I ordered from the virtual fiber festival was spun in just over 2 weeks with two 5+ gram samples, some Moorit Shetland, and some Jacob thrown in for good measure. That bowlful are all my favorite tools, photographed for my third challenge update of the month with 17 days worth of spinning. The Shenandoah will sit until after the final challenge post and I decide if I want to ply it as the gradient or use half of the singles in order and mix up the other half.
After a beautiful day yesterday, my timing to go lock up the hens for the night was perfect, just as the huge red sun was slowly dropping behind the hill to the west, dotted with the neighbor’s cows. You can barely see a couple just to the left and below the setting sun.
Two more weekends and I will have to adjust my bio clock again, that gets more difficult every year, and adjust to the new norm for locking up hens, preparing dinner, and other routine events. I still think Daylight Saving time is worthless.
After dinner last night, we got a walk in just before it got dark. It was getting quite chilly by the time we returned to the car. Instead of the nearly road wide path to the pond that we usually take, we went the opposite direction down a winding path used for bicycles and horses. Much narrower, more contour, and I feel, a nicer walk through the woods. We only encountered two mountain bikers headed back up to the parking lot until we got to the pond where there were too many unmasked people as we did a single loop and back up the wider path to the car, so a huge loop instead of in and out the same path. The pond had dozens of geese and a few ducks. The geese must be the ones that overwinter in the pond because they don’t even move off the path when you walk by them, so they are used to people. I guess we will see them regularly through the winter walks.
We ended our walk with a stop at the local village store for ice cream. There is one employee who refuses to wear a mask, an older man. His paper mask, probably the same one every day is under his chin, never, ever on. Last night he got a call requesting if they had an item and he came out from behind their plastic shower curtain shield, still unmasked, got right in my face, made a joking comment, laughed and walked on to check for the item. This morning, on our way to the Farmer’s Market pickup, we stopped there for a newspaper and the proprietor, his young employee, and the sole customer were all unmasked. This is after a week where our tiny county has had a surge of about 15 cases and 2 more hospitalizations. I know we live in a Trump dominated county, but if he would be honest about the virus and support mask wearing, I would feel safer.
When we got up this morning, the hunters were here, so the pups had to be let out on leashes, the grass was crystalline and crunchy, the indoor/outdoor thermometer showed it was cold.
As happens, the temperature dropped one more degree before it started warming up. The trip to the Farmer’s Market required window scraping.
When we returned home with our week’s supply of veggies, butter, cheese, and a bit of meat and it had warmed to comfortable in a light jacket, I checked on the garden. Everything I covered survived nicely, except the branch I apparently broke off of the big Serrano pepper. Even the uncovered bush beans don’t seem to have been badly burned and it didn’t bother the marigolds. They will remain covered until it warms tomorrow, then I will put the covers away and let nature take it’s course. It is supposed to warm back up for about 10 days, then the peppers will be done. I may continue to cover the ground cherries and peas at night when the night temps stay in the upper 30’s and see if they produce enough to harvest. After checking on it, the walled garden was in need of light weeding, there are deer tracks through out the garden and several plants have been nibbled to the ground. This garden is right up against the house and deck. I need to get a solar motion sensor light to keep them out if I plan to use it for herbs, dye garden, and flowers.
Being a gorgeous day, and living in a heavenly part of the state, we ventured a few thousand feet elevation farther up the mountain and took a walk in the woods. It was peaceful, serene, and unpopulated.
As we were finishing lunch and tonight’s chili was being prepped, I spotted the hens charging across the yard from their free ranging. Once the chili was in the slow cooker, I went out to see what was going on. A Red Tailed Hawk, smaller than any of the hens was sitting in the Forsythia, 9 hens huddled under the thick foliage. The hawk flew off, the hens were too frightened to follow me back to the secure run and coop. It took lures, long poles to poke around under the shrubs, the hose on full jet being sprayed under to get them out. They were finally herded into security. Have you ever herded chickens, like herding cats, but they are secure again.
While doing that, I realized that the temperature is dropping rapidly and it is raining lightly so I hauled the plastic sheeting, the mylar sheet, and stakes out to the garden. The wind made putting plastic over the surviving plants like wrestling an octopus, very challenging. The fig was closed in, the peppers, except for the two branches I broke off one of the Serranos, the peas, and the ground cherries were all covered.
Again, planning ahead for next year would allow me to make a tunnel over a long 3 or 4 foot wide bed with the wide sheet of plastic. I think I will note this in my gardening journal and put the plants that might still be producing in October in one bed.
That basket filled and the green ones were pickled in a half gallon jar for hubby to enjoy over the winter. There are 3 half gallon jars and 1 quart jar of them in the refrigerator and that won’t get him through the winter until next season.
The sunflower heads that were dried in the garage, need to be contained. I have found two of them on the floor mostly eaten, so there must be a very fat mouse in the garage or able to get in the garage.
Garlic is a flavorful and healthy crop to grow in the garden. First, you know where and how it was grown, and no fossil fuels are required to pull it, cure it, and carry it from garden to house. Garlic is delicious sauteed, roasted, grated or minced into almost any savory food dish. Today, we use it mostly for the culinary benefits, but historically, it was mostly used medicinally. According to studies, it is high in Manganese, Vitamin B6, Vitamin C, Selenium, and a source of fiber. It is touted to help combat the common cold, lower blood pressure, improve cholesterol levels, may help prevent Alzheimers, and many other uses.
Garlic is always in my garden. It gets moved around to different locations, part of the crop rotation for soil health and to try to prevent the tiny nematodes that can sometimes get in garlic or onions and cause them to spoil. Garlic is planted in the fall to give it time to produce rootlets, then as the soil begins to warm in spring, the clove that was planted will produce the bulb that is harvested in late June. Sometimes, tiny bulblets will form atop the green leaves. They are like seeds and can be planted in fall, pulled the following summer, and the small cloves then replanted that fall and will produce bulbs the second year. Two of my softneck garlics produced bulblets and I saved them to plant with my seed garlic this year.
Yesterday morning, the box that contained most of the tomatoes this year was thoroughly cleared of weeds and large roots. This morning, a good load of compost was dug in, digging out a couple of brick sized rocks that had escaped prior preparation of that area. This was the first year that corner of the garden had been planted, it had previously been the compost pile and after seeing how the asparagus shaded that spot, it probably should still be the compost area, but the garlic will mature before the asparagus gets tall, then I will likely move the box to another area and return that spot to compost as the asparagus bed can’t be moved.
The box was planted with 16 Romanian Red cloves, a bulb that produces only 5 or 6 huge cloves, 22 German Hardy cloves each bulb had 6 to 8 cloves, 30 unknown hardneck cloves from garlic purchased at the Farmer’s Market, 20 soft neck cloves from garlic I planted and harvested, plus the 6 bulblets to see if that process actually works. With any luck, I will harvest 88 bulbs of garlic next summer and 6 mini bulbs to replant.
The fall peas weren’t trellised, they were planted around the perimeter of the box with carrots in the middle. They are full of blooms. Today is predicted to be 75 f and only about 48 f tonight. Tomorrow’s high is 52 f and the low 34 f. Tomorrow afternoon I will cover them and hope for the best.
This box had several peppers planted in it, a row of marigolds, and the cucumbers. Once the cucumbers were done, the marigolds took over. They sheltered out the two bell pepper plants. The taller pepper plants are Jalapenos and still blooming, so they too will be covered.
The Thai peppers aren’t blooming and each day more ripen red to be picked and strung to dry. Those two plants may be pulled and hung upside down in the garage where most of the remaining peppers will continue to ripen. The Serrano planted next to them is so heavy with peppers that the branches are near breaking point. It is near the box with the ground cherries, so that area may be covered. Saturday night is also in the 30’s but the day time temp will rise near 60. Those two nights are followed by about 2 weeks of 60s to mid 70s days and upper 40s to mid 50s nights, so if I can save the plants through those two nights, there will be more harvest. Then it drops back into the 30s at night again and it may be the end for the season. The area behind and to the right of the marigolds is the old mint bed that still lacks definition and the potato bed that has been weeded and weeded, but never replanted. I guess the winter and early spring will be spent clearing those areas again, supplementing it with compost and beds created to plant in for the spring garden. Next year, I want more space between my tomatoes and also between my peppers. I probably won’t try to grow corn again unless it is popcorn which I have had success with in the past. Potatoes were a fluke only because I had a few pounds sprouting, but they did so well, I might repeat them. The potato onions were a fun experiment, but the onions are so small they are only good for skewering for grilled veggies, so I will return to planting organic sets that produce decent sized onions. For years I have tried to use the Square Foot Garden method with limited success as some plants overgrow others in the same box thus reducing instead of improving the yield. I’m leaning towards 4 foot wide beds the width of the garden and planting in rows or big blocks. To do that, I will have to unstack and pull out serviceable wood salvaged from the old deck and restack what is too short or too heavy for me to work with.
Each year the garden morphs slightly into a different format, but it still provides me hours of healthy work and many pounds of produce. It is slowing being put to bed for the winter, trying to eek out as much produce as possible before the night freezes do it in entirely.
Today, we visited the local farm equipment sales and service to inquire about a new 5 foot brush hog and tractor servicing. The price on the brush hog was much higher than we expected and I’m not sure the amount of use it would get with the local farmer haying and brush hogging many areas, that the expense is justified. We may continue to wait on that purchase and see if we can find a better price elsewhere.
After two days of steady rain and steady temperature of 61 f, today dawned gray and thick but not raining. On the way to giving the hens their daily freedom, a harvest basket was grabbed. The garden is fading away, one crop at a time, but still providing some goodness for the larder. The peas are bright and full of flowers, the Jalapenos are still blooming, the Thai and Serrano peppers are ripening with hundreds of Thai peppers and dozens of Serrano peppers still green on the plants. The ends of the branches so full that the rains pulled them down, sagging over the paths. There aren’t any broken branches. All of the ripe red ones were plucked off, breaking off a clump of still green ones in the process. The last three slicing tomatoes were picked and the plants pulled and tossed on the burn pile. The last of the basil clipped and added to the basket. The Tomatillo plants are bare of leaves so the last fruits of any size were pulled. Those plants should be pulled as well and the stakes removed to store. Friday and Saturday nights will be cold enough for frost. The arrangement of the peas, Thai peppers, one Serrano pepper, and Ground Cherries in three 4 X 4 foot boxes in a row will allow me to cover them with a sheet of plastic. The Jalapenos and the non productive Serrano pepper are across a wide path but in a single 4 x 4 box, so they can be covered as well. The top of the fig shelter will be closed over. After those two nights, there will be another mild period. There are dozens of ground cherries forming, so there is still hope for a small batch of jam to see if that is a plant I want to plant in the future.
Everything was washed, the basil leaves stripped and put in a drying basket, the red Thai peppers strung, filling the 4th string drying inside the south French door. The Jalapenos were brined in hot brine to pickle. The Tomatillos blanched and put in the freezer, making 2 gallon sized bags for Son 1’s family. The green Thai peppers and the Serranos were started as another hot pepper ferment.
If the peas, ground cherries, and remaining peppers can be nursed through the two nights in the 30’s, there may be more peppers to dry and pickle, a batch of jam to make, and fresh peas to enjoy. One of the garden boxes needs to be thoroughly cleaned up, supplemented with more compost, and planted with next year’s garlic crop, then covered with straw and a mesh panel to hold the straw down. If it ever dries out, the burn pile needs to be reduced to ash, the raspberry volunteers that have escaped the barrels pulled. Once those canes are bare of leaves, they will be pruned back. Since the wooden barrels have all deteriorated to just sides with no bottoms, I am again trying to figure out how to have raspberries without them taking over the garden. The barrel idea was good until the bottoms rotted out. There is a large old galvanized tub hanging in the garage that has a hole where the bottom and side seams meet, so it doesn’t hold water, perhaps it can be buried a few inches and half filled with soil, planted with canes and used to control their spread. I love the fruit, but not trying to control them.
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It is a Saturday, gloomy, gray, light rain, but the morning to run into town and pick up the preorders from the Farmer’s Market. The pups were let out, the hunter’s didn’t come, so no need for leashes, fortunately. They were fed, the chickens loosed into the yard to hunt for bugs, seeds, and scratch in the bare spots.
A few of them are so motley looking and they trail feathers wherever they go, a few have grown their new winter feathers and look so fresh and full, I even got 1 egg yesterday. When I let them out, they make a bee line for the front yard and usually disappear under the two cedar trees at least for a while.
With raincoat on, the run through the market was damp, but not too crowded and the goodies look wonderful. On Saturday mornings, we get drive thru breakfast and sitting in the parking lot with the car off, the rain distorting the view of the street lights on, the tree with it’s red leaves, and the faux granite stone on the Art Center, made an interesting photo.
The street sign was a distractor, but still an interesting shot.
The market goods were brought home, put away and back out we went to pick up some socks from the local outfitter’s sale that ends tomorrow on Darn Tough socks, my favorites, then on to pick up chicken scratch and bird seed from Tractor Supply.
There will be no walk today, probably not tomorrow either, but plenty of time to spin, read, knit, maybe take a nap.
Tonight we will feast on a pan of fresh roasted veggies, hubby with a chop, me with some local cheese, perhaps a slice or two of the bread made a few days ago, sliced and frozen to keep it fresh.
It will be a lazy weekend. When the rain stops, I will prepare the bed that will grow next year’s garlic. Peppers and anything else ripe will be brought in to string, can, freeze, or eat fresh. The peas are beginning to form. Only 5 more days until a frost is expected, two nights in a row. I am torn whether to try to extend the season by covering plants or call it a year.
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The past 7 months have significantly altered our routines. It is so difficult to adjust. We used to go out for lunch several times a week and out to dinner about twice a month. We would grocery shop once a week, go to the Farmer’s Market on Saturday. I would go to my spinning group on Thursday afternoon, thought nothing of going to the yarn shop, went to a couple of fiber retreats each year and at least one fiber festival. My shop wasn’t just online, there were half a dozen in person craft or holiday markets where I would set up and sell my wares. I would participate in many living history events, dressing in period costume and demonstrating fiber preparation and spinning while talking about how different fiber and fabric preparation were and how they were utilized. We would visit our kids or our kids would visit us, I would babysit grands sometimes for a week at a time.
Now, there are no retreats, no festivals, no craft markets. We haven’t been in a restaurant in 7 months. Lunches “out” are drive thru, eaten in the car. Any shopping is done on line and delivered or picked up curbside. To go to the Farmer’s Market, which is outdoors, I have to pre order so that I can be in the first hour, dash through picking up pre selected, pre paid items while masked. I have not participated in a living history event since last Christmas. We haven’t seen Son 1 and his family since Christmas, Son 2 in a parking lot in May to meet our already by then 5 month old grandson as they headed to a family wedding. We see our daughter and her kids distantly in their yard or ours for brief visits all masked. We will not be able to host the annual family Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner.
I know we are not alone, but we are trying to do our part to help end this disaster our world is facing, our country is not taking seriously. I see pictures and posts of folks I know traveling, on vacation, possibly safely, but are they bringing back more virus.
Usually this time of year, we go to the pharmacy and get our flu shots. This year, we have made an appointment with our family physician where we will wait in the car until time to go in masked, get our shot and leave quickly, and hopefully safely.
It hurts me that so many are brushing this deadly virus off as “just the flu,” “why are you wearing a mask outdoors,” “I don’t need a mask, I’m not sick,” “I don’t need to wear my mask over my nose, I don’t breathe through my nose.”
For only the second time since I was old enough to vote, and then it was 21 years old, I didn’t go to the polls on election day. The first time I was in college and then you voted by absentee ballot that had to be witnessed and not just by a family member or friend. This time we did early in person voting because we didn’t want our ballot to be delayed in the mail, marked unable to scan for some arbitrary reason or to be counted late.
I don’t like these times. I fear for our country’s health and it’s democracy.
Disclaimer: though I avoid politics in my blog and am currently avoiding Facebook, I am going to be lightly political here today.
About the time the university opened in the adjacent town, the town established some safely protocols to try to help protect both the students and the full time town folk. Because of the protocols established by the university, making dining on campus more time consuming and perhaps more dangerous, many more students are eating in town, thus putting them on the town sidewalks. One of the new regulations was to post signage throughout town and even two electronic signs mandating mask wearing while on downtown sidewalks and no group gatherings of more than about 10 people.
At the time these were posted, when we elected to walk the old rail grade that runs from near the public library over into the next town, we commented to each other that we wished they had included the signage on that paved trail as well. Some sections of it are widely used. As seniors, but knowing that exercise and fresh air are important, we have been confining most of our walks to the pond in the state forest nearer our house, always masked or with mask in hand to put on if there are other people walking, jogging, or fishing there.
A couple of weeks ago, smaller, modified versions of the sign above appeared on the trail, much to our delight, but to our dismay, mostly ignored. There are two versions of the signage text, as below:
and one with two masked figures with a line between them labelled 6′.
Today we were in town and decided to walk the Huckleberry trail. Social media and the news began labeling entitled white women as “Karens.” While walking today with few masked individuals passing us, many joggers, several bicycles, one skateboard all unmasked, I jokingly said to hubby that I was going to start calling unmasked “entitled” folks “Donalds.” Do you think we can make it as viral as “Karens”?
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Though the temperature today was more like mild summer, when we went on our walk, the evidence of autumn is everywhere.
A cluster of red leaves from a broken oak branch amid the fallen leaves on the trail.
The wood ferns are all browning.
Leaves littering the path, geese resting in the pond before continuing their southward journey. Usually several spend the winter at the pond.
At home, the trees are turning and one young maple has already dropped it’s leaves.
The ridge line we see coming from town is the last to green up in the spring and the first to begin yellowing in the autumn. Soon the woods will be bare and the wildlife can be seen staying away from the open fields and in the edge of the woods. The woods to our north east have thinned enough to begin seeing our nearest neighbor’s house that can only be seen from our house in winter.
The temperatures will fall back after tomorrow to more fall like weather and we will get rain from Delta on the weekend. The frost that was predicted disappeared and I see no chance for at least 2 weeks.
Not antiques, but old none the less. We have two, by today’s standards, ancient cars. Mine is 16, hubby’s is 13 and both have well over 200,000 miles on them. His has been showing signs of it’s demise. It is losing oil, the check engine light stays on because of a bad catalytic converter, the car has several, the low tire pressure light stays on because all of the sensors were removed with a tire replacement several years ago. We keep the oil changed, get yearly inspections, make sure the brakes and tires are good.
Yesterday we drove two towns over, only about 20 miles to get drive thru Chick-fil-A for lunch. During the pandemic with the dining room closed, they have quite a system set up at busy times, with two drive thru lanes merging into one then separating again into two pick up lines. A path to get around to the queue to get into a drive thru line, sections set aside for app ordered pre orders and another for third party pick ups. After we got our food, we drove over to the shopping center parking lot to eat, put down our windows for air and had lunch. After we were finished, the car would not start. Daughter lives within shouting distance, but she is working from home with two kids getting virtual education, so we didn’t want to call her unless necessary. We have AAA and called them. We were told it would be about 64 minutes, that we would get three text messages, the first letting us know that the service order had been entered, the second that it had been assigned, and the third that the service was in route. Soon after the first text, a couple near our age in a pickup offered to jump us, but we declined. About 45 minutes into the wait, another car offered help and at this point, we figured we had waited that long, we would just wait. The hour came and went, no second text. A third person offered a jump and we took her up on it, got the car started, thanked her, called AAA back to let them know that we got tired of waiting and got help. The car though running, in neutral was racing then almost stalling. When driving it would surge and resume normal speed. Instead of going straight to get a new battery, we elected to get home, pick up my car and take the ailing one directly to our local repair place. If the dead battery just messed with the computer and it can be reset, if a battery is all it needs, we will have it fixed. If there are bigger issues, it is difficult to justify the money to repair a 13 year old car with 243,000 miles on it. We have been anticipating this, dreading the thought that at our ages and during a pandemic, we might have to purchase a new car and have car payments. For now, we will continue to drive the older one and hope it gets us through to spring.
Maybe, just maybe, this will be a less expensive repair and we can continue to get a bit more use out of it. As Son 1 says, “they are both in the bonus round.”
On a brighter note, since I don’t have an electric dehydrator to dry herbs and peppers, this is my solar dehydrator.
It works quite well for herbs and peppers, but I can’t do tomatoes. Maybe next year I will try the oven method with some of the Amish paste tomatoes, or if I can get a few pounds at the Farmers’ Market this weekend, maybe I will try it this year.
I think the salad mix needs thinning. Tonight, we will enjoy truly fresh salad and a few of the healthier plants will go in a window garden to harvest from until they get tall and bitter.
I moved into our home 14 years ago last month, while hubby was still working toward his retirement across the state. I had been here for 15 months in various rentals during the construction. Some of the later temporary housing was sharing space with Son 1 and his family, who moved in here with me as they finished the inside of the house. One of the shared spaces was a sublet from friends of theirs who had purchased a home with about a month left on their lease. When they left, they abandoned a very large Jade plant that ended up here. Each winter it came in to sit out the cold indoors and each summer it lived on the west end of the north facing front porch. The pot it was in was 18-20″ in diameter and the plant so large it didn’t fit through the front door without breaking off a few smaller branches and so heavy it had to be on a roller for me to move it in and out. With daughter and her family living with us for a couple of years, toddler and young elementary school age, their dog and our two, there just wasn’t enough room for the additional activity, so I advertised the plant on Craigslist and a young man wanted it. In the process of moving it out for him to pick up, a thumb sized branch broke off and I told him I was keeping the branch. It was potted up and survived. Though it is no where near as large as the parent plant, here it is today, again getting too big for the convenient sunny winter spots in the house, especially since the doors in these photos are where the big pup, our aging Mastiff spends most of his days in “his sunny spot.”
Cabin Crafted 