Author: Cabincrafted1

Olio – October 28, 2014

Olio: a miscellaneous collection of things.

We have had two absolutely gorgeous days in a row with mild nights. It has been windy off and on, but Mountaingdad has had two great motorcycle outings, probably the last two of the season. Tomorrow we return to fall weather, late fall weather, if the weather prognosticators are correct we will see snow flurries on Saturday. I am definitely not ready for the white stuff or any frozen form of precipitation. If it does happen, the pumpkins vines will finish dying off and the rest of the harvest will be made, the pepper plants and tomatillo plants will be tossed in the chicken pen for them to pick over. I really need to get the garlic planted and well mulched before the ground freezes.

While Mountaingdad was off riding, I was enjoying quiet time at home. Having planned on running errands and perhaps getting lunch out, instead I read, ate leftovers and did a bit of yard and garden work. Late yesterday, a package I had been awaiting arrived, a Turkish Spindle from Snyder Spindles on Etsy. I learned to spin on a top whorl spindle and wish I had learned on a Turkish spindle. After watching a You Tube to see how to set it up, I was off quickly spinning some maroon colored Merino. I love the way you wind the single on the spindle to create a center pull ball that can then be plied with another ball or plied off of itself. Though most of my spinning is done on a wheel, it is nice to have a spindle that is portable to take when visiting our kids. A few ounces of fiber and the spindle take up little room in my bag.

As I was spinning the fiber, I realized how similar in color it is to the yarn that I am using to knit the fingerless mitts to go with my hat and scarf. I had hoped that the mitts wouldn’t be needed for quite a while yet, but they may be welcome in just a day or two. I was unhappy with the first one and selected a different pattern to make it over and make the second one. I don’t really have enough done to show them off yet.

On Sunday, we were notified by one neighbor that another neighbor who we knew had been sick and hospitalized but released and home for a few days had been taken back to the hospital by ambulance and his prognosis was poor. This saddened us as he was one of the first neighbors we met and though we were wary of him at first, he and his wife had become friendly with the strangers in their midst. We were even more saddened to learn yesterday morning that he had passed Sunday evening with his family by his side. He and his wife are our age contemporaries on the mountain. He has had several health issues over the past couple of years and their cumulative effect were more than his body could take this time. Our hearts go out to his family at this time.

Today we found out that the company proposing the pipeline has filed their preliminary paperwork with FERC, so letter writing will occupy our time for a few days. Tonight we are attending a meeting on our legal rights. There may be nothing we can do, but we are going to fight to the end on this project. As oil prices drop, fracking become less desirable and new wells aren’t drilled. Keep hoping that the oil prices drop low enough to stop this. A sign we saw in town says it all, “Stop the fracking pipeline. Preserve the NRV.” If you want to read more about this issue, go to http://www.preservethenrv.com. While you are looking, do a search for the pipeline explosion in Appomattox, VA in 2008 and look at the photos of the damage that a much smaller pipeline explosion wrought.

October 28, 2014
Pumpkin Soup
I thought the pressure canner had been stored away for the year, but then the winter squash started appearing through the jungle of leaves and I realized that I had so much more winter squash than the two of us will ever eat. Mountaingdad likes pumpkin pie at holidays and will tolerate about two small baked pumpkins stuffed with rice, sausage, etc. each winter, but that will hardly put a dent in the harvest. Last night I texted Son#1 and asked for suggestions and he was quick to suggest pumpkin soup, and if I canned it, he would eat a couple quarts a week as he takes his lunch to work with him. This seemed like a splendid idea as soup is my favorite food, if it is not commercially canned soup. We have a local restaurant that always has chili and two soups made fresh at the restaurant and they are unique and rarely duplicated on the menu. In the years we have lived here, I have only gotten one soup there that I did not like so I set out to make a creative pumpkin soup. Here is the recipe, I hope to soon be able to insert my recipes in a printable card, but not yet.

Spicy Pumpkin Soup
- 5 c cubed, pared raw winter squash or 3 c cooked winter squash
- 2 1/2 c vegetable stock
- 1/4 c onion
- 1 Tbs. oil
- 1 Tbs. minced ginger
- 1 Tbs. minced garlic
- 1 Habanero (may be omitted or use a less pungent pepper for a milder soup)
- 1 1/2 tsp whole cumin
- 1 tsp whole coriander
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 c dried milk
If you use raw squash, cook it in the broth until soft. Blend or puree the cooked squash and put it back in the soup pot. Retain 1 cup in the blender and blend in the milk powder until smooth and creamy.

Toast the cumin and coriander until fragrant and then grind. Saute the onion in the oil until soft but not browned, add the garlic and ginger until softened. (You may use garlic paste and ginger paste as a substitute, but just add it with the ground spices) Add the ground spices and the sauteed onion and stir to blend in. Add the puree with the milk into the soup and bring back to a simmer. It will stick if you let it boil. Yields about 8 cups

I doubled the recipe and the result is slightly spicy and delicious. With two cantaloupe sized pumpkins, I made the 4 quarts of the soup for canning and had just enough left over to savor myself.

I guess it would be a bisque as it is blended smooth and contains milk. My plan is to alter the seasonings with each batch for variety, make and can until I run out of jars again. Son#1 said we could bring down another load from his house when I go pick the up for Thanksgiving and they would help me peel and seed the squash and pumpkins to make more while they are here. It is rather time consuming, peeling and seeding 2 pumpkins, but it occurred to me after I was done that I could have just as easily split and baked them and used the baked flesh instead of boiling it soft, but I do like the flavor the broth added to the soup.

NOTE: canning failure. You can’t can pumpkin puree or soup, just chunks of pumpkin. The soup is in the freezer and will be enjoyed after thawing the jars. Lesson learned, I guess we just can the pumpkin chunks and make our soup later.
October 26, 2014
It keeps on giving

that wonderous garden of ours. I asked my favorite farmer friends at the Market this morning when our average first frost date was, because my memory told me it was around October 10 and they confirmed that we were past it, so far without a frost on their farm in our county or ours. They still have tomatoes and flowers growing! Of course I had to buy a tomato and a bunch of flowers. Don’t they look great on the fall table cover?

We are getting mid 30’s nights, but no frost and the garden keeps giving of bush beans, broccoli, peppers, tomatillos, turnips and greens. The big crop of harvest now are the winter squash.

Seminole pumpkins and Burgess Buttercup squash. There are so many out there that I still cannot get to and though the plants are beginning to die back, there are still flowers on some of the plants. There will be many softball size squash and pumpkins to feed the chickens over the next couple of months and many more larger ones that we will never be able to eat them all.

Though it was getting dark when I went out last night to lock up the laying hens, the sun setting behind the west hill and casting it’s last glow on the gold of these trees stopped me for a few moments of time to enjoy the chilling night and the beautiful color. By the time I walked back, the sun had set and the side yard was dark. It is indeed a beautiful time of the year, though it is short and soon the trees will be skeletons in the woods and we will be able to see lights from our nearest neighbor’s houses through the woods.

Lovin’ life on our mountain farm.

October 25, 2014
Olio – October 24, 2014

Olio: a miscellaneous collection of things.

Our internet issues seem to be finally resolved, many months and many mistakes later, we are back with our original cell provider and our original internet/phone provider. The lines have been repaired, the speed boosted as much as it can be boosted given our physical distance from the nearest booster from our small community cooperative telephone/internet provider. They also provide cable TV service, but their HD is not HD, so we opt to receive cable elsewhere. Life was so much simpler with an antenna, a house phone line, no internet and no cell phones; cheaper too.

The sweater was ripped out and restarted using a yoke pattern instead of a raglan pattern, the sleeves have been put on waste yarn and the body is being worked slowly. This pattern is from one of Ann Budd’s formula books, so it should fit.

The twisty rib pattern at the top is interesting. Hopefully it will block into a nice yoke for the sweater that is otherwise very plain.

As the sweater has already gotten too bulky to want to tote around with me when I am the car passenger, I finally started the mitts that are made of Unplanned Peacock Superwash Merino in a colorway named for me as it was dyed especially for me to match a skein I purchased from her several years ago and from which I designed and made Ruby Hat (http://goo.gl/yAfQV) and later Ruby Scarf (http://goo.gl/uzjTFo), both free patterns on Ravelry. Ruby Hat is my favorite hat and has its own story, but that is for another day. The mitts are also being made from one of Ann Budd’s formula books to wear with the hat and scarf or just around the house at night when my hands get cold. They are the perfect portable pocket project for the car.

I am frequently amused at questions I get from folks that I know have grown up their entire lives in this rural county. Today, the phone/internet installer saw my chickens wandering about the yard and ask me very innocently if my hens were laying now that the weather is cooling down. My response was yes, except for the one who was molting. I could tell from his expression that he didn’t have a clue what I was talking about and he said his egg production from 10 hens was down to only a couple each day. I asked him how old his hens were and most of them are only about a year and a half old, so experiencing their first molt this season, thus his lack of eggs. He also wasn’t feeding them any calcium, not even giving them back their own shells. He left educated by the city girl with a ziplock sack of crushed oyster shell to free feed his hens and a promise that once their feathers were back in that he would start seeing eggs again. He also was surprised that Son#1 and I could kill and process our culls and meat birds. He said though he could shoot and dress a deer, he wasn’t sure he could do a chicken. Our flock is enjoying their daily freedom to dig in the gardens, to look for bugs and tender blades of grass. When we need them safely away from the dogs or driveway, I just go out like the Pied Piper with my little cup of scratch that I shake and they come running and follow me back to the safety of the electric fence.

The pumpkin vines are dying back more each day and revealing more of the winter squash. I thought that only the Burgess Buttercup survived and that I didn’t get any Seminole pumpkins, but realize that it is a half and half mix, except the pumpkins for the most part haven’t turned tan. The ones that I picked and put on the picnic table are beginning to turn. The wormy ones get split with a hatchet and thrown into the chicken run for them to enjoy. A side benefit is that the seeds are a natural anti parasitic for the chickens. The peppers and tomatillos survived the cold nights predicted in the last post. I am letting the remaining fruits mature until we are threatened again and I will do another harvest. The last batch was made into another 4 pints of Tomatillo/Habanero sauce, the hottest batch yet. Maybe I should change it’s name from XXX to Insanity. I sure can’t eat it, but Son#1 will love it. The Farmers’ Market last week had many vendors of apples. I came home with another peck of mixed crisp red apples and realizing that they would not stay crisp until we finished them all, I used about a third to make another batch of Apple Cranberry Chutney (http://wp.me/p3JVVn-Ja), using 1 cup of honey instead of brown sugar this time. The shelves are full of goodies even after having taken two crates of canned goodness to Northern Virginia on the last two trips to return son and grandson.

Lovin’ life on our mountain farm and continuing to gather knowledge to fight the pipeline.

October 24, 2014
Rippit, Rippit, Rippit

No, we don’t have a frog in the house. Rippit is a sound that knitters don’t like. There are times when a project just isn’t right. If it is a little error not to far back, you can Tink (Knit backwards) and correct your error. Sometimes you find a big error too far back and have to just rip it out.

The sweater that I have been making for myself to go with the lovely Hitchhiker scarf at the top of the photo had progressed to sleeves by early this week. By Wednesday night, half of one sleeve was complete and I tried the sweater on to check the sleeve length. What I found was a sweater a bit too large in the body with huge sleeves. I had followed the pattern and was very frustrated that the sleeves were so large. The Knit Night crew suggested not adding the stitches under the sleeve, but the pattern wouldn’t let you just knit around, so I picked up the stitches and did significant decreases in the first couple of rows in the underarm area. Once I had one sleeve long enough to try again, it was better, but I just didn’t like the size of the whole sweater.

This was on the heels of having just given away a sweater I made last spring that was too small through the back and shoulders. Rather than spend more hours finishing this sweater that I knew I would not ever enjoy, tonight’s decision was to Rippit. About half of the sweater is now rolled back into balls. The rest sitting in my lap awaiting the same fate. Rather than try this pattern again in a smaller size, I have found a different pattern. The new pattern will use much less yardage, but that is okay. I have two granddaughters who might like sweaters for Christmas, so I will just continue to Rippit. . .and then enjoy the process of knitting sweaters that will be worn.

October 19, 2014
Garden’s Swan Song

We are past our “Frost Date” and have had mild nights except a couple of weeks ago. The garden survived those two nights with row cover fabric draped over the peppers and tomatillos. We are expecting two nights in the 30’s tonight and tomorrow night and nothing is going to be done to protect what is left. If the plants survive, great, we might get a few more tomatillos and peppers, the greens will be fine for a while. If they freeze, it has been a good year.

To prepare, a harvest of 5 types of peppers, a basket of tomatillos, a handful of bush beans and two golfball sized turnips were brought in. The Jalapeños were pickled into two more pints for winter. The bell peppers sliced and frozen except for a few to stuff tomorrow. The Anchos have been put in the window sill hoping they will turn red and can then be dried for Enchilada sauce. The tomatillos and habeneros will be cooked down with onion and garlic for more of Son #1’s favorite XXX sauce.

With the garden waning, the chickens get to visit, eating bugs, weed seed and scratching around leaving chicken fertilizer. When they aren’t in the garden, they wander around the orchard, the yards and out into the fields, but not too far from the house.

They are healthy, producing plenty of eggs each day and live a good life.

On Saturdays, we generally go to town, have breakfast at the local diner then shop the Farmers’ Market. We came home with some beef and pork for the freezer, a peck of eating apples and some carrots and onions.

Between our garden goodness and the Farmers’ Market take, we will eat well.

Lovin’ life on our mountain farm.

October 18, 2014
SAY NO TO THE PIPELINE

Last night Mountaingdad and I attended the county Board of Supervisors meeting in opposition to the proposed “natural” gas pipeline. We were heartened that the gallery was full to overflowing with residents of our county, the adjacent county, and the county that successfully blocked it. There were more than 100 people in attendance and 16 spoke, including Mountaingdad. Though this wasn’t a hearing on the topic, I feel the Board was given some good information, not just the sales propaganda from the Mountain Valley Pipeline people. We were also heartened to learn that we don’t have to try to start the resistance moving in our community, that there is already a group made up of folks from 4 counties and we just need to jump on the band wagon.

The statistics and data that we heard are frightening, regarding the dangers of even a smaller 30-32″ pipeline and they are talking about an experimental 42″ pipeline. The map showing the proposed route and the question and answer sheet that was provided from the presentation they made to the county representative several days ago, shows that they are not going to directly use the power line easement, but rather take land near it by eminent domain and depending on which side of the easement they choose, they could be on our land or very near our farm and perhaps will take our land for the road access as they come in to destroy a 125 foot wide swathe of forest and dig a 10′ deep trench through the rock and karst topography and along a fault line of our county. Needless to say we are alarmed. Construction blasting and digging or a pipeline accident with a pipeline of that size could wipe out from our home past the only major road through the county, virtually isolating some of the county residents. This in a large mostly rural county with only 4 small volunteer fire and rescue companies. The route crosses the New River and two major creeks feeding the New River numerous time, threatening over 250 historical sites including 2 of the 3 covered bridges. The estimated property impact is in the billions of dollars. This is for a pipeline to carry gas recovered through fracking (a groundwater destroyer) and they won’t guarantee that the gas won’t be shipped overseas instead of for domestic use. The estimated lifetime of this pipeline is only 20 years.

The Cascades

Bridge built in 1912 and designated as a Historical Landmark.

Built in 1916, designated as a Historical landmark.

Historical farmhouse

Historical farmhouse

The two bridges and the two houses are all within the probably easement as are many other historical sites.

There have been over 360 incidents resulting in at least $40,000 damage to property per incident (the figure that is put on declaring it an incident) in the US alone including one that killed 8 people and destroyed an entire neighborhood in California just within the past few years from fracking or the transmission of the gas recovered by this process.

This pipeline won’t even be giving jobs to our region as the installation of such a pipeline requires specially trained workers that are brought in with their own temporary housing during the construction.

Our county has been striving to present itself as a recreation, vacation and wilderness area with over 45 miles of the New River for kayaking, canoeing, tubing and fishing; the wonderous Cascade Waterfalls, Mountain Lake and Lodge, and more than 50 miles of the Appalachian Trail including one of the trail towns. The forest destruction will definitely impact the desirability of this area as a vacation spot or wilderness retreat.

If you are one of my local readers, please join the cause against this pipeline and share this information with friends and neighbors. We need all of the support that we can get. More info is available at Preserve the NRV on Facebook.

October 17, 2014
Issues and finishes

About a week ago, we learned that a proposed natural gas pipeline route had been relocated to cross our county. As best we can tell, just below our property following the easement that the power company has for heavy load transmission lines, does that make sense, to run a gas line under electrical lines? This gas will be coming from fracking in West Virginia and transported across our county and several adjacent counties to one south and east of us. This is clearly not something that we support and hope that at tonight’s Board of Supervisors’ meeting, there will be strong and vocal opposition. In addition to the 40+” buried pipeline, there will be several pumping stations, the locations of which have not been decided or at least not revealed. One of the counties that was on the original route were so adamantly opposed and raised valid enough opposition that the route was reconsidered. The two counties that it is slated to pass through after our county have mounted opposition groups.

On my trip home on Tuesday, I passed through a county that is on a different proposed pipeline route and every property has opposition signs along the roadway and about 1/3 of the properties were for sale before property values plummet if the pipeline goes through their county.

We fear for our property value, but also for our groundwater and physical safety if the line does indeed go beneath the electrical lines. Our county sits on limestone and is riddled with caves and sinkholes. It is subject to rare, but recorded earthquakes. If there were a breach in the pipeline due to a sinkhole or other disaster, it could ruin the groundwater on which this county relies as most residents get their water from springs or wells.

To add to this threat, we experienced another torrential rain two nights ago that made our state maintained gravel road look like it had been clawed out by a giant cat with gullies up to a foot deep traversing across it back and forth. Mountaingdad has spoken with a VDOT representative on the road about the issue that the road swale tips in one direction then the other with no rain bars or culverts to direct the flow. It tips toward our driveway about 20 feet up the hill and our culvert fills with gravel and mud from the road several times a year. We have hand dug it out, had VDOT dig it out and now we are getting gravel building up on the downhill side of the culvert in our yard. VDOT says they can’t do anything but regrade it with the same swale and won’t seem to consider adding culverts to direct the flow. This is another battle we will have to again fight.

I did finish the never ending Socks On A Plane today. They have been on the needles for at least a year.

They have a lovely little cable down the outside edge of each foot that the yarn totally swallowed. And to add insult to injury, they are too small for my foot, so I am going to have to find a new owner for them whose foot is smaller than an 8.

Last night at Knit Night, I ripped out the entire sleeve on the sweater I have been knitting as the armhole was so ginormous that I could put 4 of my upper arms in each one. I have started them again following a decrease patter that has brought the sleeve size down to one that is still large, but might actually fit inside my winter coats. My sweater knitting has not been very good for the last year. One I made for me was too small and found a new owner in a knitter friend. This one is too large, but I don’t want to rip it all out, so if I can make the sleeves work, I will just wear it.

October 16, 2014
Return

Sunday eve found Son#1, Grandson#1, and me motoring back to Northern Virginia. The original plan had been to work on the scaffolding and sharpen knives on Saturday, deal with the meat chickens on Sunday, and have some hiking or other recreation on Monday, Columbus Day, and then I was going to take them home. Friday as Son#1 was preparing to leave work for home and then the bus trip here, he realized that he wasn’t off on Monday, but Grandson#1 didn’t have school. Plans changed, we accomplished the Saturday and Sunday plan and took off on Sunday eve for their house. I spent two nights there to provide care for Grandson#1. Leaving for home early this morning and encountering much semi traffic and intermittent rain, I decided to take a non interstate route home, at least most of the way.

The route was a beautiful drive, though it took about 90 minutes longer and I drove through a few very severe storms. The route took me through a good portion of the poultry raising parts of Shenandoah. This is why I humanely raise and kill my own chickens and buy our turkey from a local free range farmer.

This is one of hundreds of poultry “houses” along the route. The sign that I tried to capture said, “Absolute no trespassing, no visitors.”

This is what the inside of a “free range” building looks like. Photo from the internet, source unknown.

A poultry processing factory, it covered about 2 blocks. The entire town smelled like death and stench.
One of half a dozen trucks I passed going to the factory, each with 120 of these cages so low the turkeys can’t stand in them and each cage holding about a dozen turkeys.
The birds beaks were clipped so they couldn’t harm each other. This is grocery store poultry.

On a more pleasant note, though the rain was intense at times, part of the route paralleled the Maury River.

The leaves were beautiful, the river sometimes well below the road like the picture above and at other times it was only feet from the edge of the road. It was a certainly a prettier trip than the interstate, but the trip expanded to 6 hours instead of the usual 4 1/2. Was it worth avoiding the semis? I guess it was, but I’m glad to be home again.

October 14, 2014
Changes

My childhood was spent in a semi rural area that is now suburbs of Virginia Beach. I was typical of a child of that era that was not raised on a farm. Produce came in cans or fresh during farmers market season, meat was wrapped in butcher paper or plastic from the meat case at the grocery. There was no thought as to how it was raised, where it came from, or how it got to the grocery.
At some point, my Dad and I did start a small garden, but not too successfully at first.
After I finished college and was out on my own, I began to become more aware of what was in our food, concern about packaging waste and harm and the treatment of animals for food. I bulk shopped for beans, rice, and grains from a local food coop, using my own jars and canvas bags. I quit eating meat, but living in the city at this point, still bought eggs from commercial markets.
My husband was raised in a city with a similar food upbringing, but he is an ardent meat and starch man. I reintroduced meat into my diet because I didn’t want to prepare two different meals and because we started a family and I didn’t feel well versed enough on nutrition balance to think I could raise children without animal protein, though we ate smaller portions often added to stews, goulash, pasta sauce with beans or vegetables making up the main part of the meal.
As a working Mom, convenience food sometimes slipped in our diet but was usually short lived as I returned to preparing food from scratch, generally baking our bread as well.
Never in my wildest dreams could I see myself where I am now. As we approached retirement, we discussed having a mountain home on 5 to10 acres. Mostly woods with space for a garden. We found ourselves instead on a 30 acre farm with a pole barn and no house. The house was built, the large garden started by Son #1 and family during their part in construction continued to be used and providing a good portion of our produce. I read Barbara Kingsolver’s book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and became even more committed to eating locally, eliminating more and more items that are processed or trucked in to the grocer. My concern about the treatment of animals raised for meat, milk, and eggs drove me to buy only meat from local farmers, humanely raised on grass not grain, eggs from local farmers that often free range their hens, and milk products from a local dairy. As I was paying $4 a dozen for eggs and $20-25 for a humanely raised chicken and having 30 acres of land of mostly pasture being mowed for hay for other local farmers, I ventured into raising a few chickens. Like most new chicken raisers, I bought what was cute or laid pretty eggs. The flock has evolved to a dozen heritage Buff Orpington hens and a rooster with the goal of the flock becoming self sustaining. Son#1 asked if I would raise some meat chickens, that he would “do the deed,” though I was a Biology major/teacher before becoming a school counselor, I didn’t think I wanted to participate in this process. Then I watched him process a deer, helped package it for freezing and decided that I could become involved. The first meat chicks were all of the cockrells and hens that weren’t fulfilling their end of the deal. The first batch we did, I spent most of my time in the kitchen doing finish plucking, packaging, and freezing. The entire process revolted me and I couldn’t eat any of them. In fact, I returned to eating much less meat, eating only the sides and salads that I was preparing for our meals, but enjoying our eggs and local cheeses. The next batch, I could more fully participate in the process. Now I could do most of the steps in taking a bird from the coop to the table but I might make as mess of the inside cleaning as I haven’t done one. I know where these chickens were raised, what supplemental feed they are fed. I know how much coop space they have and how it is kept. I know how much free range, true free range time they get, and I know they are raised well and humanely killed. I still don’t eat much meat, but when I do, I feel better about where and how it was raised and treated. If and when Son#1 returns to our area to live, we will raise our own pigs and cows too. And they will be treated kindly during their lives as well.

October 13, 2014