Author: Cabincrafted1

Another Sunny Growing Day

before the next rain and drop back to normal temperatures. After Grandson was dispatched via school bus and breakfast was prepared, eaten and cleaned up for Granddaughter, we set out on errands.

One errand was to locate some inexpensive pots to plant the salvaged raspberry canes in for Son #2. It was sticker shock to see how much clay pots cost these days, even the cheap plastic ones were much more than I had hoped, but 5 were purchased as they are after all for Son #2.

Raspberries, neatly pruned and potted and awaiting transport to him in April.

The next errand was to get a new chess set. Decades ago, I gave Mountaingdad a carved Olivewood chess set. The pieces have always been close in stain, but the years have faded them to an almost imperceptible shade difference making playing with the set difficult even in good light. About a decade ago, while in El Paso for a family funeral, we travelled by bus over to the markets in Juarez when it was still safe to do so and came home with a huge set of the Aztecs vs the Conquistadors which safely made it back to Virginia on the plane, but it too is difficult to distinguish the pieces. We have a leather suitcase set that had backgammon, checkers and chess, but the grands have lost two pieces from that set, making it also unusable. Mountaingdad enjoys playing with the grandsons, working with them on strategy and confidence, so off to Target we went and came home with a folding wooden box that has the board on the outside and pieces for chess and checkers that are white and dark brown. The grandson living here will be delighted tonight.

While there, we found a tiny clay flower pot with a grow pellet and a packet of sunflower seeds in it. Grandson is growing a seed at school, so granddaughter gets to grow one at home. Little miss with her newly planted dwarf sunflower. Now to keep her out of it as it grows. She insisted for a few minutes that she was going to stand there and wait for it to sprout, a reminder that 3 year olds don’t have the concept of time yet. Each time we leave the house, she comments that her Mom will be home when we get back, though her Mom won’t be back for 8 more days and we have repeated that over and over, even showing her on the calendar.

The planting efforts outside resulted in some weeding and the chooks got a green treat of their favorite snack, fresh chickweed.

If I could control where they grazed, I would direct them to the front shrub bed that is quickly being engulfed by chickweed. In between other tasks, another 2 five gallon buckets of whole grain chicken feed were mixed, so they have a good diet to hold them until we can let them free range again and just supplement their feed.

I need to make a batch of hand scrubbing soap for the household. With gardening chores and weeding beginning, the dirt stained fingers and nails will soon be in need of good scrubbing each day.

March 23, 2015
Whew, We Survived!

The kids are in bed and we survived the entire weekend. We were not young parents, which makes us not young grandparents, but we are healthy and stay active.

The weather cooperated, and the kids had a lot of free outside play time. They have moved from a neighborhood with a street in front of the house and a canal that was home to the occasional alligator in the back, so playing outside without an adult nearby just didn’t happen. Here on our farm, they have boundaries about where they can go alone and rules about not climbing on the rock piles, but are allowed to dig, run, romp and roll, and play make believe games to their heart’s content.

We are still introducing them to the region, so after lunch and quiet time, we took them to the Huckleberry Trail, a paved former rail grade that is still a work in progress, connecting more and more areas of the region, but the original portion, runs from the town library to the mall area in the next town, about 7 miles. The trail is an asphalt path used by bicycles, joggers, dog walkers and people just out for a stroll. We started at the library and walked only 3/4 mile to the gazebo. By then, the three year old was done. She had walked and run on the outward leg. She was coaxed, challenged to races and monkey backed on the way back to the car.

Home for some more outdoor play, dinner prep and clean up, a couple of chess games with Mountaingdad, baths and bed. We are now recuperating before I have to get up early to get grandson to his bus for school.

March 22, 2015
Weekend with the Grands

This is our first solo weekend with the grandkids that are living with us now. During the week, one of them is in school so we still outnumber the other one. Our Saturday morning tradition, even most winter Saturday’s is to go into the town and have breakfast at one of the local restaurants then walk over to the Farmers’ Market to support the farmer’s that brave the cold with their meats, breads, and cold storage vegetables. As we are only two weeks from the full season return of the market, there are still only a few stalls, but more today than in the past weeks, including a new addition to the market with heritage pork. Turns out we know that farmer, so we supported her with a purchase of the thickest pork chops I have ever seen. I hope I don’t overcook them. They are thawing for a meal in a couple of days.

We took the back way home and let the kids see all of the brand new calves in the fields around our farm. This brought us back to speculating about how many we could raise, how much it would cost us to have our field hayed when we kept the hay instead of giving it to the farmer for his work and whether we could make a small profit by raising a small herd for our own meat and to sell maybe 4 or 5 head each year.

Once back home, some chicken chores to add straw to the coop and hay to the extremely muddy run were done while the kids play outside in the sunshine. I want to let the chickens free range, but we just planted some seed in the garden and it is only fenced with two strands of electric which doesn’t even slow the chooks down. I don’t need them digging up my freshly dug, weeded, and seeded beds, or the newly transplanted raspberries, so they will have to remain penned until daughter returns. We will then expand the garden and string plastic poultry fence around the vegetables and let the girls wander again. Or perhaps we can just make poultry netting tunnels over the beds and let the chickens keep the weeds and bugs at bay between the beds. The egg production is up, having gotten 18 eggs in the past two days from the dozen hens. I am hoping that one of the girls gets to feeling broody soon, and I will let her sit a clutch of about 8 eggs to hatch. This will be our first year allowing this and hoping that we will be able to cull some of the older hens and the cockrells that hatch for the freezer instead of raising purchased meat chicks. If this doesn’t happen, I will buy meat chicks later in the summer and raise them until the fall for the freezer. Freedom Rangers or Rainbow Rangers only take about 11 weeks to freezer size and that is what we raised last year and found them to be an excellent table bird.

The seeds we started indoors are beginning to sprout. The flat is on a heat mat in a south facing doorway with a grow lamp. The Roma and Purple Cherokee tomatoes, and the Tomatillos are showing. So far the 6 kinds of hot peppers are still buried, but we hope to see them sprout soon too. Four of the varieties of peppers there are only a couple of plants and they are experimental for us heritage varieties. The others are of many pots of Jalapenos and several Habenos for salsa and chili tomatoes to be canned this summer.

Tomorrow is supposed to be another beautiful day, so perhaps we will take the kids for a walk on the Huckleberry Trail or a hike in the woods if it has dried enough.

Next Saturday we will all drive to Northern Virginia and pick up the eldest grandson for a week too. We will have a house full of younguns to keep us young or run us ragged.

March 21, 2015
Out Like A Lion

At least it isn’t sticking. After 4 beautiful spring like days, today is a return to winter. It was supposed to be rain and perhaps will turn to rain before it ends, but not more snow.
Mountaingdad is on the road with Daughter, so hopefully the roads aren’t getting messy.
The roads were fine a couple of hours ago when I went out to lunch with a friend. In fact, it hadn’t started then, we watched the snow showers start while we ate. We enjoyed some social time for a hour or so, then home as today begins nearly two weeks of full time grand parenting while daughter and her husband pack up their house that they sold in Florida. I’m glad we had a couple of months of them living here before they had to be left in our care. We will do fine.

March 19, 2015
Busy Days

Another beautiful day. It was supposed to rain according to yesterday’s forecast, but this morning, it had changed and was a mostly sunny day with only the lightest of sprinkles. I grabbed half a dozen raspberry canes and put them in water as Son #2 would like some of the ones we pulled up. As soon as I can find some cheap pots, I will put them in soil and prune them to give them a chance to establish roots before I can deliver them in April. That was done early when the chicken chores were being completed.

Before Daughter and Mountaingdad got up, I had made two new soap recipes, one with Oatmeal, Lavender buds, and Black Walnut powder. This will be a great body scrub soap once it cures. The other is a Jasmine Green Tea soap. Neither of these soaps have any essential oils or dyes, so they will be good for those with sensitive skin.

After lunch, we experimented with a recipe for Beard Oils for my Etsy shop. Daughter’s husband uses Beard Oil and we thought they might make a good addition to the shop. The lotion bar molds arrived yesterday, so a new batch of Hand Butter bars were also made to add to the shop. The lotion bars, Hand Butter bars and Beard Oils can all be personalized with a customer’s favorite scent or scents or made unscented.

Daughter and I planted the Lacinato Kale, Purple Top Turnips and a 4 X 4′ bed of Daikon Radishes for kimchi this afternoon. They are the last early spring seed.

March 17, 2015
Garden Season

Though we are still 6 to 8 weeks from our last frost, some garden tasks and a few vegetables can be planted now. For the past two days, we have had dry warm spring like days. As there are more mouths to feed in our household now, we decided to expand the garden, nearly double in size. To facilitate doing this, we first decided to move the grapevines from the north edge of the garden to the north edge of the orchard. The Raspberry canes that I had planted several years ago in the row near the south edge of the garden had become overwhelming, so we moved 6 plants along the chicken run and dug out the remainder of the canes to discard.

Raspberries along chicken run

Grapevines pruned and moved, needing new trellis.

Two of our helpers throwing weeds to the chooks from the now empty Raspberry bed.

Our day was waning, dinner prep needed doing, so we planted 40-50 young onion starts and a half dozen kale plants, erected a row cover bubble over the kale to keep out the cabbage moths/worms,

Tomorrow if we can get it done before the rain starts, we will plant Daikon radishes, turnips, and Lacinato Kale seed. On our next dry stretch, we will deconstruct the 4 remaining compost bins, collect some rock, perhaps rent a tiller and finish the expansion. A good day of labor. After our dinner prep and clean up, we planted tomato and pepper seeds in the indoor flats, put them on the warming tray and set the grow light over them.

Once the last frost date passes, hopefully we will have beds ready for twice as many tomatoes and peppers as last year, the peas and beans, sunflowers, and herbs will be planted. The winter squash are going to be planted in the orchard this year and allowed to spread at will. I may have to extend the electric fence around the orchard again to keep the deer out.

March 16, 2015
The Chair

Years ago, we laughed at episodes of the TV show Frazier, with “the chair.” The chair belonged to his father, a ratty, striped recliner with duct tape holding it together. In one episode, Frazier, bothered by the look of the chair in his very modern svelte apartment, removed it to the building’s storage room and replaced it with a new leather version. Dad was not happy and the episode revolved around the search for the taped up old chair to return to the apartment. The story line going much deeper, but for my purposes, we will leave it here.

About 16 or 17 years ago, while still living in Virginia Beach, Mountaingdad found a ginormous rocking recliner in Sam’s Club. Every time we went to shop, he went to see if the chair was still there, sitting in it and wishing. Daughter and I decided that it would make a great Christmas present for him, drove my minivan to Sam’s Club and purchased the last one, a hulking leather monstrosity and wheeled it out to the car. It wouldn’t fit in the van in the box. We unpacked it and with much Tetris like activity, got it into the van, but didn’t want to abandon the box in the parking lot as that went so totally against my hippy, you must recycle it mindset. I ended up leaving the box and my 16 year old daughter in the parking lot, drove the chair home and unloaded it in the garage, drove the few miles back and picked up daughter and box and drove to the recycle center to leave the box. Back home, we approached a neighbor about storing it in their garage until Christmas Eve. On Christmas Eve early in the day, we removed it back to our garage and covered it back in an area in front of my mini van, hoping that Mountaingdad would not spot it. That night, it was hauled into the house, set in place and a big bow taped to the back.

That chair has been his favorite. It moved from that house to the rental we took after selling the house to build this one. Moved again to two different apartments that he occupied after I moved up here to work and supervise the construction of our new home. It moved again to our log home upon his retirement and continued to be his favorite spot to use his laptop, watch TV and recuperate from surgery then a broken humerus. After all of the years and all of the moves, the chair’s leather began to split. We tried Frazier’s Dad’s approach and bought some dark brown duct tape to try to repair it. It held for a little while, but not for long. It became a place where Mountaingdad and Ranger shared time at night.

But alas, it was just falling apart. About a year ago, I started suggesting it was time to replace it, but he wasn’t ready. A week ago, I received a coupon for 20% off a furniture item from Grand Furnishings as we have bought several mattresses and the grandkids bunk bed from them in the past couple of years. The end of last week, he admitted that it was time.

The seat and arms of the chair as it awaits disposal.

Sunday, we used the coupon to buy him a new leather recliner. Large and comfy, but not quite as massive as The Chair. Today it arrived at the local Grand and was picked up.

I don’t know if Mountaingdad and Ranger will both fit in this one. I hope it provides at least Mountaingdad comfort for as long as The Chair did.

March 11, 2015
Away, No Not Really

Have I been away? No, just focusing on other projects at the moment. Last month when I attended the Fiber Festival, I took 2 bars of homemade soap with 2 homemade lotion bars as my gift exchange and gave my roommate another bar of soap and lotion bar. They were well received and the conversation turned to whether I should be a vendor at the next Festival. The trouble with this is that several of the participants are sensitive to scents and the smell of raw fleece, so if you vend those items, they must be kept in your room, not in the Festival area. This prompted more discussion and I began toying with the idea of opening an Etsy shop through which to vend soap, lotion bars and handspun yarn.

After arriving back home, my daughter and I discussed it more and with her business knowledge, we began the process of setting this project in motion. A shop name had to be selected and my first choice was already taken. Labels had to be created and business cards designed and ordered.

As my supply of soap is limited right now to the last two batches that we made together about 6 weeks ago, we started making more cold process soaps as they must cure for about 4 to 6 weeks to dry enough to not dissolved too quickly in a bath. First we ordered 2 more loaf style soap molds and 2 molds that will make 2 1/4″ disc shaped soaps or can be used for the lotion bars that fit in a tin. We ventured down to the local Michael’s and used 2 coupons for 40% off to purchase 2 more loaf style molds. That will give us 5 to work with. Yesterday, I experimented with a batch of hot process soap as they can be used right away, but benefit from a curing period to harden as well. When cutting the soap from the loaf molds, there are always ends that are too small to sell and some of them we use at home or grate to use in our homemade laundry detergent. The rest of these slivers and small bars collect in a jar and this afternoon, we played with two different recipes of rebatched soap to create Oatmeal and spice scrubbing muffins and flower imprinted bars of Lavender scented guest soaps. These will be usable immediately and will be packaged creatively to add to the shop.

Last evening and this morning, photos were taken of the soaps and hand-spun yarns that are ready for listing. A learning curve as I set up a business Paypal account and began to populate the shop. A spreadsheet was developed to track the supply purchases and the sales when they happen. Many more batches of soap will be made. Lotion bars will follow as soon as the molds arrive. As yarn that I am not planning on using myself or making for my daughter is spun, it will be added to the shop.

Late last night, my shop went live. This will help me indulge my love of the old homestead crafts and hopefully earn a little money that can help me continue making more. If you want to check it out, it is http://www.etsy.com/shop/CabinCrafted.

March 10, 2015
The Crystal Palace

The storm of yesterday has passed, again creating a snow covered swathe diagonally up across Virginia and to the north east. Today the sun is brilliant and the day so far is frigid. Yesterday afternoon, the chickens were huddled underneath the coop as the snow fell, they were soaked and I was worried about frostbite. Have you ever tried to herd chickens? Not an easy task, but one by one they were prodded out from under the coop to a small patch that I cleared right by their ladder and most willingly went inside. A few had to be picked up and placed inside, the pop door closed and a couple of extra scoops of whole grain feed tossed down to both entertain and warm them as I hoped they would dry before the single digit cold arrived and arrive it did. We plunged from the mid 30’s yesterday morning to 6f (-14.5c) early this morning.

The brilliant sun is causing the ice coated trees and shrubs to sparkle and glitter, the snow blindingly white. Our total on this storm was only about 6″, but it is on ice. The muddy ruts that had formed in our driveway are now frozen ruts but the next week is going to be spring like with a few periods of rain, so the ruts will return.

The chickens pen was cleared of enough snow to toss down their grain and coax them out to feed.

School has been cancelled for the second day in a row, the 14th day this school year. Only one of those days has been made up and only 4 more make up days are currently in the schedule. Their options are to extend the school day or add more days on to the end of the year. They don’t really haven’t any vacation days built in to take that haven’t already been taken. Spring break is only the Friday and Monday bracketing Easter Sunday.

The day is beautiful and the scenery is photo worthy, we didn’t lose power, but I am ready for winter to exit.

March 6, 2015
Go Away, Just Go Away

Spring is just around the corner, I know it is. The calendar shows First Day Of Spring in just a couple of weeks. I know that we will have continued periods of cold, even snow flurries well into April and can’t put most things into the garden until mid May, but winter needs to stop already. We had a reprieve for a day or two and last week’s snow mostly melted, but between the melt, the roof drip off and the rain, the county is now under a flood watch. This isn’t a problem for us as we are high on the side of the mountain and our creek flows into a sink hole that when flooded, rushes down the west side of our property, still well below the house.

The roadsides that are steep from blasting to put the 4 lane main road through the valley are seeing minor mudslides, but the ground is totally saturated and pudding soft, so the fear of a more major mudslide that could block our ingress to town is possible.

Yesterday it rained, then sleeted, then rained and sleeted again and this is ongoing today. The high for the day, right at freezing and headed down about 30 degrees by midnight is turning the rain to more freezing rain and sleet with another 5 inches of snow due by nightfall.

The trees and shrubs are ice coated and if we really get a few inches of wet snow, there will be branches breaking and threats of loss of power. We have enough firewood to get us through a couple of days, but that is all. The grill’s propane tank is about half full and we have plenty of beans, rice, and frozen foods to make meals.

When I went over for chicken chores this morning, I realized that a small 5 year old dogwood near the side of the house has been seriously gnawed, probably by hungry deer. It was sleeting out and the ground is still too hard to try to pound in stakes to put a piece of fence around it, but I was able to force a couple of fiberglass poles around it and drape a piece of row cover fabric over it to thwart more chewing until I can get a fence around it to try to protect it. Perhaps I should check my fruit trees as well.

March 5, 2015