Cabin Crafted

Author: Cabincrafted1

  • Time to uncoop

    It has been 6 weeks since our self isolation began, since we have been able to sit with and hug our kids and grands. This week, I was supposed to demonstrate at the museum for classes from one of the local schools. In a week, we were supposed to go to 2 plays at the American Shakespeare Center with Son 1 and family and bring eldest grand back for a weekend basketball camp. In two weeks we were supposed to take 3 of the grands to Great Wolf Lodge for two nights, their Christmas gift from us. None of that will happen. Nor did the trip to see Son 2 and his family, including our youngest grandson who we haven’t been able to meet, but we did get an adorable photo of him with two of his sisters.

    Very little additional work has been done on the garden since digging up the mint. I hoped that the Carolina Wren would return to her two remaining eggs, but she has not, so when we have a day that isn’t raining or under wind advisories, I will finish weeding the box she was in, work more on the mint that is popping up everywhere there was a piece of root left, and dig out the area for the corn and climbing beans. We are still about 3 weeks from last frost date and we had a frost Sunday morning that nearly did the begonias in because I didn’t cover them. It also damaged all the asparagus tips that were up and made them inedible. There are more sprouting, so a few days from now, they can be harvested if it doesn’t freeze again. It is supposed to be cold tonight, but not cold enough for frost and we have a wind advisory again. I tucked the begonias up against the house and covered them with a beach towel.

    The dogwoods on the mountain are blooming and seeing them and the elderberry flowers on my walks is a pleasure.

    The hummingbirds are here and frequenting the feeder in the front. A red bellied woodpecker has started feeding on the suet cake hung with the feeders in the back. Compared to the tiny songbirds, it looks huge, though I know they are only a medium sized woodpecker. I’m still not hearing the owls at night which is a spring and summer pleasure.

    When I’m not cooking or baking, I am spinning on the spindles. Working to get enough spindle spun yarn to knit a sweater for me. It slows my production by not using the wheel. The tiny Kuchulu turkish spindle by Ed Jenkins is my favorite to play with, but I can only get about 42 yards of yarn per cop on it.

    Kuchulu in front is about 2″ diameter, the middle one is a Lark, the back one a Wren and they are both about 4″ diameter.
    My isolation mini skein collection.
    The shawl is coming along when I knit. I am on the second skein and not until I uploaded this did I realize how neutral the colors were.

    I worry about the small local businesses that have had to be closed and whether they will ever be able to reopen, but also worry that reopening while the virus is still spreading will just cause a surge of cases and more deaths. It is a frightening time.

  • Is it Sunday, the day of rest?

    Each morning, I have to look at my phone to see what day of the week it is. They all run together now. It was somewhat of a problem after I retired, but there were a few regular things we did that helped keep them straight.

    We woke to a spring frost. It was pretty, but I forgot to cover the begonias last night and they don’t look happy today.

    It started warming up quickly and I took string out to make trellis for the peas before they start sprawling on the ground.

    After lunch, I tackled a project that has been sitting around for months. When I first started Rev War reenactment, I purchased a skirt/petticoat and some of the other components of the outfit online, mostly from Etsy. The petticoat was a navy and oatmeal checkered patterns and after aligning myself with the local militia group, learned that the pattern was not period appropriate and cotton wasn’t widely used, so I made myself a navy linen one. The checkered one hung over the back of my sewing chair with the plan of using the yards and yards of fabric to make some valences for some of the windows where we had removed the stained and nasty Roman shades. I finally took the time to cut the fabric and sew the seams. I had two pressure rods that fit the windows in question and a job done. I should have lined them, but had no appropriate lining fabric. When it is safe to be out and about again, I will buy some unbleached muslin and add a lining layer.

    There is enough left to make a valence for the double living room window as well, but I want to put drapes up first, so the old Roman Shades will hang until they can be purchased and a double rod bought.

    Since I had the sewing machine out and still have plenty of the quilting cotton I made masks from, I tackled the fitted kind with a filter pocket. The pleated kind I made first, with elastic loops, pulls my hearing aid out and fogs my glasses. I tried making one of the ribbon with buttons on both ends to hold it on, but it still caused the same issue. The one I made today is tied on with a strip that runs though casings on both edges. I used one long piece of grosgrain ribbon stitched lengthwise in half for the ties.

    Using a folded pipe cleaner in the nose bridge pocket, it can be molded enough to not cause much fogging and if I put my long hair up in a high twist, the tie is held high enough to not pull out my hearing aid. Win win. There is still a lot of that fabric, so I think a second one will be made so there is one to wear when one is in the wash. I learned from my mistakes on this one, so a second one should be a breeze.

  • Return to Simpler Times

    I have blogged in the past about being a bit hippy in the sense that I have always had a garden, been a recycler before it was popular or required, used up/reused before throwing away. Long before I met my husband, I cooked from scratch, baked my own bread, and was vegetarian by choice, though that aspect is more limited as he is a definite omnivore and cooking two different meals is too onerous. We do have meatless meals occasionally, I do make sides such as macaroni and cheese or au gratin potatoes that I can eat as my meal and he as a side. During my earlier days of omitting meat from my diet, I read several books, bought a couple. Only one of them has stayed in my library, a nutrition guideline and recipe book full of vital information and anecdotes of the lifestyle changes of the authors. The book is “Laurel’s Kitchen.”

    My copy is 2 years older than our marriage, 4 years older than my eldest child, well worn, well loved, and cherished. Though I rarely refer to a recipe anymore in my cooking, it is still pulled off the shelf to check my intuition when returning to cooking something I have let lapse over time.

    One of those processes that lapsed after the kids were grown and less bread consumed, was bread baking. By that time, artisan loaves and whole grain breads could be purchased in the grocer or at the Farmers’ Markets. With us at home and away from others, bread baking has returned to my routine. The internet has a wealth of recipes and instructions on “how to” but I love my old book. Yesterday, I blogged that with our Natural Foods Store doing email orders and no touch curbside delivery, I bought the fixings for a meatless Mediterranean dinner, but needed to make Pita. When I first moved into this home with hubby still working across the state, Son 1 and his family were living here with me and still doing interior work on the house. They were very amenable to meatless meals and both very good cooks, so we would buy Dolmas and olives, they would make hummus and tabbouleh, and I would make Pita bread and we would feast. I haven’t made Pita in at least a dozen years, but knew that when I made them then, the recipe did not come from the internet, but from my beloved book. This morning, I pulled it back off the shelf to refresh my memory. The recipe in the book makes 24 Pitas, or if half of the dough is formed into a loaf, a dozen Pitas and a loaf of bread. I may go for half a dozen Pitas, a loaf of bread and half a dozen sandwich rolls.

    When I was making bread for our growing family, hubby bought me a giant pottery bowl.

    I would mix up 3 or 4 loaves of bread, beating the dough with a large wooden spoon and breaking a few of them over the years as the dough got stiff. Kneading in more flour in the bowl by hand until the dough was not sticky and turning it on a floured board or counter to finish kneading it. At a craft fair at some point, hubby bought me a wooden dough bowl.

    The final kneading and rising could be done in the bowl. It was all done by hand, but alas, a wrist break, wrist surgery, and arthritis make if nearly impossible to do the entire process by hand anymore. I can do the artisan type breads, but that dough doesn’t make good rolls or Pita so we bought me a Kitchen Aid stand mixer.

    It is not a commercial grade one and it struggles toward the end of kneading dough, so it gets the bread started and then I turn it into the wooden dough bowl to do the final kneading and proofing. The dough is proofing covered in that precious wooden dough bowl as I write. Later it will be divided and prepared for baking the bread for dinner and meals later in the week. A slow down in time, a return to a simpler life. There is some good come from this staying at home.

  • Today’s Walk

    Today was a glorious spring day. Tomorrow is wet and cooler again, then we warm up to spring for a while. Taking advantage of the beautiful weather, I transplanted the Calendula seedlings, some in the bed with the volunteers, some in a big pot on the deck. Also the Echinachea was given a partial bed and some in the same big pot. A few sprinkles of marigold seed were added to the pot and one of the flower beds. I want flowers, lots of flowers to brighten our days. It is still way too early to move the tomatoes, peppers, and tomatillos out to the garden, but the spinach starts were added to one of the half barrels that have lettuce, radishes, and Chinese cabbages in them. There are a few other spinach plants that were direct seeded in one of the beds with peas, but most of them became victims of the hens the first time they got in the garden.

    Since dinner out isn’t an option anymore and since Eat’s Natural Food Store, one of my favorite local businesses, is providing email ordering and curbside pick up, I resupplied on Yogurt, nuts, herbs, and a selection of Mediterranean goodies like olives, hummus, Dolmas, and Feta. Tomorrow I will make Pita bread and we will have Greek salads and hummus with Pita for dinner. Since I don’t have to cook any of it except the Pita, it is almost like dinner out.

    This evening, before the rain and wind resume, I wandered our hills again. Each adventure out has something new to see. I could hear one of the neighbor’s cows bawling well away from the road and spotted 3 of the spring calves trotting in her direction. I didn’t get a photo of them today. The recent wind had brought down a dead limb that the woodpeckers had really worked over.

    When we had our perk test done for our septic during pre-construction, the soil scientist told us that we had really good soil because we were on the leading edge of an alluvial field from the last ice age. When you walk our road, you can see evidence of it in the huge scattered, eroded rocks.

    On our way home from the grocery pick up, we drove across the top of our field to see how the grass for hay is coming along. It is so emerald green now. It will sprout seed heads which will brown off before it is mowed and it will either green up again if we have rain or remain brown for the rest of the summer. This is looking west back toward the orchard, coop, and house.

    One of the bluebirds was visiting the feeders this evening.

    I was hopeful that they got one of the nesting boxes by the garden, but it appears that both are occupied by tree swallows again. On the hillside in the distance, you can see the trees beginning to leaf out, and the very green shrub in the rock pile directly behind the bluebird is Autumn Olive. It is an invasive shrub that was deliberately introduced to the state as an ornamental shrub for landscaping. You can’t kill it my cutting it down, it has to be pulled up by the roots. On my way out to walk, I started the tractor for the first time this spring. If I can get a pin for the hitch, I will use a long piece of chain that we have to wrap around some of them and pull them up this spring. They can be burned after they dry and the hay has been mowed.

    Whenever we go out away from home, not often recently, but I always carry with me a small knitting project or a drop spindle. My favorite one to take is one of my newer ones, the diminutive 2″ spindle in my last post. Because it is so small and fragile, I worry about breaking it, and today, I emptied a small 3″ diameter by 3″ tall round tin that had tea in it. It is the perfect size to fit the spindle and a couple ounces of fiber and is protected in my bag in the car.

    My spring walks are improving my stamina. The road is not flat and the hills are not gentle. When I started earlier this spring, I would have to stop and catch my breath a couple times. I still slow down on the steepest part on the way back home, but I no longer stop.

    Until we visit again. Goodnight from the mountains.

  • Olio – April 16, 2020

    After the rain and wind of several days ago, we returned to late winter/early spring like weather, freezing or near freezing at night, maybe up to 50f daytimes but the wind has howled constantly. Plants have been brought in or covered and taken out or uncovered. The wind has blown so hard the seedlings have been kept indoors. We are still about 3 weeks maybe a tad more from the average last frost.

    The chickens have gone back to penned during the day, free range in the late afternoons until they go to coop on their own. Last night when I went out to shut them in, they were all gathered around and on the coop because the gate had blown shut and they couldn’t get in. As soon as I opened it, they all hurriedly trotted right up the ramp to bed. They lost their run around the garden when I found several in the garden three times. That would be okay if they would just scratch the paths, but they scratch the beds too and tender shoots don’t tolerate that well. When the wind calms and the daytime warms some, I will again try to figure out how they are getting in and hopefully give them their run back. Mama Carolina Wren is still tucked down on the ground in the corner of the box on her nest. She has 4 eggs. She has been hailed on, and snowed on twice, gully washing rain for 10 hours. What a good little Mama. I hope she successfully raises those littles. She doesn’t like me in the garden and since it has been chilly, I have stayed out so she won’t leave the nest. The other Wren in the Barberry bush is more protected. The bush is tucked back in the set back where the utility room connects the house and garage, so not as windy, though still unshielded from the rain, hail, and snow. She had 3 eggs the day I checked and I haven’t disturbed her to look again.

    The riding mower was finally returned from the shop yesterday and in spite of the cold wind, everything that can be mowed with it was mowed. The grass was so tall and thick that it nearly choked it out even set on the tallest setting. It will have to be mowed again soon to bring it down to normal mowing height and to break up the drying clots of heavy grass that are about the yard.

    This morning we had 3 “visitors.” First was the turkey hunter and our contact with him only a text message that he said it was too cold and he quit today. The second, a friend came by and picked up a dozen eggs from the front porch with a shouted hello across the front yard. The third, our daughter, who kindly brought us some supplies from the grocer, including TP which we didn’t need yet, but since they had it, she bought a package for us. She also picked up our utility trailer for use this weekend putting some stuff in a storage unit for a bit until some house repairs are finished. We actually got to talk with her, wearing masks and keeping at least 6 feet social distancing. Groceries were wiped down and put away and we are set again for a while. We certainly appreciate her doing that for us. The social isolation is difficult when you don’t know when it will end. Since pleasure rides aren’t essential travel, we are pretty much stuck at home, though when we take our garbage and recycling down to the drop off center, we take the “long” way home, an additional mile or two of scenic road through rural farmland.

    The lilacs are blooming, but this is the least scented one I have ever been around. The bearded iris are beginning to bud, soon there will be bearded iris and then Dutch iris blooms for the table. The wild dogwoods are starting to bloom, but the one planted in the yard hasn’t. The wild plum is full of blooms, maybe this will be a year for fruit. It has produced only once in the 14 years we have been here.

    Many friends are posting morel mushroom pictures harvested so I went wandering the woods yesterday where the oak leaves fall and the May apples bloom looking, but I didn’t find a single one.

    The slowing of life with social isolation has me spinning more on the spindles. I ended up doing a trade of one with a gal in N. Dakota and ended up with a beautiful new one to play with. It is made of Marblewood.

    This tiny one has been fun to spin and it’s diminutive 2″ size still spun 38 yards of fine yarn.

    When I was in college, grad school and a new teacher, I wrote entirely with a fountain pen. The staying at home and cleaning up the house, I found both of my fountain pens and renewed my interest in using them instead of non refillable rollerballs.

    Life is slow and deliberate right now. It is nice, but at times emotional not being able to visit with our families.

  • The Rain Fell, The Wind Blew

    Ten hours of heavy rain. Wind, but not as bad as we have seen.

    Woods flowers and wild plums.

    This “lake” in our sink hole is usually dry except for the two creeks running down the edges.

    This run off creek is usually a trickle easy to cross if it is flowing at all. The bigger creek is on the other side of the hill and flows into the same sink hole. Today, it ran so hard, it went down the old dry creek bed. The big creek at the bottom of the mountain overflowed it’s banks. We were far luckier than many in the country. I hope you all stayed safe in the storm.

  • I Walk These Hills

    I Walk These Hills

    Two of my favorite books, Follow the River by James Alexander Thom and She Walks These Hills by Sharyn McCrumb are based at least loosely on the capture and escape of Mary Draper Ingles. Her capture was only a short few miles from here and after her escape and following the New River back, she was found even closer to here.

    Each time I go off into the fields and woods of these mountains, I think of those two books. Today we are awaiting the arrival of more threatening weather, so my walk was right after lunch.

    Some firsts, purple violets, buttercups (did you put them under a friend’s chin and tell them whether they liked butter), Virginia Bluebells at the mouth of the cave, Elderberry, wild daisies.

    The wind picked up while I was walking and the sky is darkening, though the worst of the weather isn’t due until overnight. Not wanting to deal with a storm warning in the middle of the night and since we can’t go anywhere during the stay at home order, I went ahead and put the cars back in the garage.

    It was actually much easier after the clean up of last week. I was able to get out without trouble and walk around them.

  • The Big Chill and Foiled again

    I know that the last frost date for our area is around Mother’s Day. I know this fact, but in the 15 years I have been here, it has never been that late. Last week’s warmth almost fooled me, but instead I just put out a couple of over wintered plants. The past two nights have played around freezing, those plants were tucked tight up against the house and covered with a beach towel at night.

    Instead of being tempted by the warmth to plant seeds, I nurtured the seedlings indoors or out in filtered sun for part of the day and worked on the fencing. I thought I had it so the chickens could keep the weeds around the garden scratched down and help reduce the bug load. A few nights ago when I went out to lock them up for the evening, most of them were in the garden, scratching around my pea shoots and spinach. I chased them out through the gate, in the chicken pen gate and worked the next morning at figuring out how they got in. There was a spot where the fencing was bent about 3 inches off the ground and they must have gone under. An electric fence step in post was used to force the bend down and a large rock added to block the hole. All was good, I thought. They continued to scratch down the weeds, clearing the path around the garden. Last night in the cold and very gusty wind, I went out and one was on the egg door, one in the middle of the peas again. The one on the egg door was an Olive Egger and they will let me pick them up, so it was put in the coop. The other was a Welsummer and they won’t let me close to them, so again, she was chased out the gate and right in to the run gate and into the coop. I went out this morning and I can not see where she got through the fence or the other one out. This morning, they are blocked from the new run. If the day warms up enough, I will go investigate more.

    Today and tomorrow are warmer with milder nights, but we have severe weather warnings for tomorrow night into Monday morning, then another chill down. For now, I will shift and cover plants, nurture the seedlings, and continue to prepare the last bit of the garden for seeding and transplanting when true spring comes.

    LATER:

    I did go back out and found another place the hens had dug under the fence so I filled it and blocked it with a board and big rock. After dinner when I took the garbage out, they had all gotten around the barricade and into the run and two of them were in the garden again. I guess my idea is just not a good one. They may be confined to their pen again until dinner time after the dogs have been out, then they get yard time til dark.

    I harvested my first asparagus spears this afternoon and enjoyed all 4 of them. There are many coming up and I know that soon I will have more than I can eat and will begin giving them away. I do enjoy fresh from the garden asparagus. Like peas, potatoes, and corn, even a few hours from harvest changes their taste from natural sweet to starchy.

    Our Easter tradition has been for daughter to prepare ham, potatoes, asparagus (if they are up by then) or peas, and deviled eggs and I prepare pineapple upside down cake and we eat together. Not this year, sadly. I will prepare a half of pork tenderloin, au gratin potatoes, peas, deviled eggs, and rolls for just the two of us. I won’t bother with dessert. Maybe next year, family traditions will have returned. Or will we be living a new normal?

  • Wild and Woolly Afternoon

    Yesterday morning it rained lightly alternating with periods of sunshine. By early afternoon, you could see the storm coming. The photo below was taken right after our phones alarmed simultaneously of severe thunderstorm warning with ping pong ball sized hail.

    Our house has a large 2 plus car garage, but like most garages, it has too much other stuff in it and normally only houses the motorcycle. There are two large built in work benches, a built in floor to ceiling shelving unit, many sets of scaffolding with it’s braces and walk boards, scrap wood, various 5 gallon buckets (well more than a dozen), my garden cart with tools, the gas mower and weed wacker. One wall has pegs with hanging tools another wall has two high shelves of camping and outdoor gear. Of course, all the wild bird food, chicken food, and a half bale of pine shavings for their coop. There are 3 ladders, and the two bicycles were also in there. When the alert came, we scrambled to try to get the two cars in there too. Items were shoved and shifted willy nilly, the bicycles moved to a large unused coop and my car was put in on the tighter size as it is the smaller of the two. Hubby with much back and forth moved the motorcycle to the middle and stayed on it while I drove his larger car in.

    To get out of my car, I had to climb over to the passenger side to get out and very carefully slid out the driver’s side of his car. There was no room to move around in there at all. We had just accomplished this, closed the doors and come back in when the phones alarmed a tornado warning in our area. We have a basement, but our dogs know it is off limits, so they had to be lead around the house and in the back door one at a time. There is a TV down there so we turned it on to monitor the storm and waited out the all clear.

    Because I had spent a good portion of the day making two batches of sandwich rolls, I had decided to make spicy sloppy joe for dinner and started it and some hash browns. The sloppy joe was barely done and I was right at the end of the frying for the potatoes when the power went out. It was early for dinner, but eat we did and as the wind howled, the rain started, then the hail. Fortunately it was pea sized, not ping pong ball sized and doesn’t seem to have done any damage.

    This is not typical weather for us, tornado warnings are very rare and I don’t remember large hail ever since we have lived here.

    The power stayed out for about 3 hours and the clouds thinned, the wind continued. In the early morning hours this morning, it again rained, thundered, and flashed and the wind was scary sounding. I kept waiting for the phone to alarm again, but it didn’t, I just couldn’t sleep well with the storms. Today is mostly clear, still very windy and cooler, but comfortable with a near freezing night tonight and tomorrow night.

    After lunch, I moved the cars carefully back out into the driveway and committed to clean up and reorganize the garage in case we are faced again with having to quickly put the cars in. The scaffolding braces were tightened up, my craft show shelter finally put back in its bag, scrap wood organized and tightened up, cans better organized and out of the way but so that chicken feed can still be accessed even with cars in there. A large rolling plastic crate that was purchased several years ago to move new chicks to the warm basement during a late fall cold snap was moved back to the utility area of the basement where it can be stored until it is needed for that use again. The mower and garden cart arranged tightly against the scaffolding. The only vehicle in the garage now is the motorcycle and it is still in the middle as there are no plans for it to go out. Usually, the riding mower is parked on the side where my car was yesterday, but the repair folks had picked it up. It will go back in the garage when it is returned, but if another warning comes, I will drive it up to the bay of the barn that has the tractor parked in it, it will be okay there for short periods, but I don’t want mice in the engine compartment. I would like to organize shelves and workbenches better, but I needed a break. If we had to quickly put the cars in now, it would be much easier and still be able to get through the garage.

    Now I need to go get the house plants protected, it is going down to 35 tonight.

  • Our daily bread

    The self isolation has prompted a return to bread baking and consumption of homemade bread. When we knew that we would be staying at home and began our supply stocking, some sandwich type rolls and a loaf of sourdough bread were purchased and frozen. A month into the isolation, those supplies are long gone which prompted a resurrection of the sourdough. While the sourdough was being fed and restored, a couple of loaves of no knead artisan bread were made, then the starter was ready and several loaves have been baked, giving one to the neighbor that helped with the mower. This morning, I realized that there were no sandwich rolls left, so the starter discard was put to use to mix up a batch of dough for them. There are two recipes that I use for rolls, one with sourdough and one without. The sourdough ones take longer to make but use up the daily discard. The ones below are the yeast raised ones.

    The yeast raised ones are done, the sourdough have 4 more hours plus baking time. Think I will stick to yeast raised for sandwich buns.

    The bread making helps pass the time and since we aren’t going anywhere, there is plenty of that. Because flour is a rare commodity, I can’t go out to get it, I’m using so much of it, I ordered fresh stone milled organic flour. It comes from a mill where a blogger friend works and it arrived today. I just sprayed the outer box with 1% bleach spray and will open it with gloves on once it is dry and bring my 4 three pound bags in. Can’t wait to try it, but with one each of the roll recipes rising on the counter that will make 12 buns, and about a half a loaf of sourdough remaining from yesterday’s baking, it will have to wait a day or two and will probably be a loaf of sandwich bread.

    This morning, the mower repair people came and picked up the riding mower to take in to fix and when I stepped out to yell up to the guy to see if we paid for the pick up now or when it was returned, I saw our neighborly mower had again jumped her fence and come to visit.

    If she is going to come mow, I wish she would at least come down to an area that I have to mow, not an area that is saved for hay. Of course it had just started raining when I called her owner to let her know where “Bad” Penny was. She is due to calf in May so maybe she will stay home and not leave her little one then.

    The time at home has my garden in a better place than it has ever been this early in the spring, but we have two days of rain followed by a chilly day and near freezing night ahead, so it will sit idle. The asparagus look like they will provide enough for a meal soon, then they will overwhelm and I only like them fresh, so freezing or otherwise preserving is not going to happen. I know daughter and granddaughter love them and I’m sure she will be glad to come out to pick up a bag full and a dozen eggs. I need to get out between rain showers and string some trellis for the peas.