Author: Cabincrafted1

Egg hunts

Do you remember the excitement of an Easter Egg hunt? Each morning brings that momentary thrill when I walk over to the chicken’s coop area, laden down with a bucket of water for their dish, another of feed pellets for their feeder and whatever leftovers they are getting as a treat, today it was sauteed cabbage and a few green peas with the last piece of cornbread crumbled into the dish. Once the waterdish is filled, the feeder hung outside the coop for sunny days and under the coop on bad weather days, the treat dish placed somewhere in the run, just for variety, I open the pop door and greet each hen with a back scratch as they exit and a good morning. Cogburn only tolerates being touched when terrified like the day recently when the dogs charged and everyone scattered amid yells and barks.

After the feeding and greeting chores are done, the straw in the coop must be forked over and freshened with new straw on top about twice a week.

Then, I get the thrill of peeking into the nesting boxes. There are 6 boxes, but generally the hens only use one, adding their egg to the clutch that has been started. Sometimes a hen can’t await her turn and will use the next nest over, or lay her egg just outside the boxes, probably while the box was occupied. Some days, there is only one egg when I let them out, or none, but as the day progresses, several more will appear, always in the same nest. Last thing at night as they are being closed up, one last check is done and sometimes there is a late treasure.

This time of year, there are generally 4 to 6 laid during the day, one day last week there were 8 and yesterday after being on strike since October then molting in late November into December, the Olive egger left us a green egg (no ham on the menu today.)

The hen gems are all varied in hue and shape. One hen lays a nearly round egg, one hen’s eggs are sharply pointed. One hen lays eggs that are lightly speckled with darker brown confetti, one hen’s dyer is faulty and she leaves a darker brown spot on the wide end. One hen’s eggs are rough textured and others so smooth that they are difficult to remove from the deep reusable cartons they are stored in once the counter bowl gets too full to use in a couple of days. I have tried to figure out who is laying what so that this spring when one hen gets broody, I can tuck a collection of Buff Orpington eggs under her and raise babies the natural way and not have to buy chicks this year, but I just can’t be sure. Perhaps I will have to buy pullets this year, then next year when all I have are Buff Orpingtons and Easter eggers, I will know. Until then, the egg hunt continues to delight me each day.

Life is good on our mountain farm.

January 17, 2014
Weird Weather Year and It’s problems

Yesterday it was snowing here. We didn’t get much accumulation, just a dusting as each of the other snows this year have been. This snow triggered a memory of one of my first blog posts, a voyeuristic peek into the bare woods that nearly surround our homestead. Our 30 acre farm is primarily hay fields. There is a rock bar at the top of the property above the barn, a sink hole that swallows our two creeks to the west of that rock bar. The upper part of the property is returning to woods, the west side and south edge of the property are wooded, the upper east side belongs to a neighbor and it is also wooded. These woods give us a sense of isolation, we can’t see our neighbor’s houses at all in the summer and can see their lights at night in the winter, but the winter with the falling of the leaves, clears the view the brush obscures during the summer and we can see the wildlife that a mountain side farm supports.

Last summer, we thought we were going to need to build a boat if the rain didn’t stop. It rained well into the time of the summer that is usually too dry here and it affected the garden, severely reducing the produce from some of the crops. The young pullets and cockrell that we had started in March spent most of their day under the coop and the design of the coop, allowed rain to enter the drop down window on the east side.

I struggled with an idea for sheltering that window so that the chickens didn’t get wet when perched below it inside. My solution was to tack an 8 foot tarp just under the roof on that side, stretch it over three flexible poles that were anchored to the fence with cable ties. That seemed to work for a few months, providing shade and rain shelter on that side of the coop. This winter, however, we have had wind. The farm is in a hollow on the south flank of John’s Creek/Salt Pond Mountain and it funnels the wind sharply across our land. The wind tore the tarp free at two points and the flapping raised 3 of the fence stakes from the ground on the coldest day this winter, when our high only reached single digits. The fence came down, the ground was too frozen to hammer the stakes back in, but the chickens were cooped to try to keep them from frostbite. Unfortunately, the rooster and one hen suffered some on their combs and wattles anyway. Our winter has alternated between mild, up into the 50’s days and frigid windy weather. Today is the later, the sky is clear and gorgeous and 22 f.

The coop problem however, still exists. Generally the rain comes from the west and the west side of the coop has two glass windows that can be raised opposite the perches and an overhang that helps shelter them from all but a horizontal driving rain. The fence posts have been reanchored, but the fence is really inadequate and has no real gate. I guess when the weather and budget allow, we will begin the fencing for our pastures and at that time, perhaps the orchard in which the coop sits and the garden on the edge of it, will be fenced as well and the chickens will be able to have a larger area to free range. Right now, their free range must be supervised because of our dogs, the neighbor dogs and the coyotes.

For now they have to enjoy the bugs that hide in the old hay in their run, the pumpkins and other treats that I offer and the supervised outdoor time they can be afforded when the weather permits supervision.

Life is good on our mountain farm.

January 16, 2014
Today’s Frustration

It is snowing here today and that snow reminded me of one of my first blog posts a few years ago. Perhaps you actually got to read today’s post after it was published and before the blog gremlins made it disappear. Thus today’s frustration with modern technology.

January 15, 2014
Details

I have posted a number of times about various topics related to the construction of our home on our retirement homestead. The house is a log home, pictured at the banner of this blog at various seasons. The site work, log erection, and rough carpentry were performed by a contractor we hired and later banned from our site. The interior carpentry and stone masonry were performed by our eldest son, his wife and an assortment of “helpers” from grad students at the nearby university to neighbors to me. The finish site work was contracted by us after we had lived here for a couple of years to a neighbor who finally got the drainage around the house right, repaired/constructed a driveway that didn’t threaten the oilpans on our vehicles, and smoothed the septic field so that it could be mowed without feeling that you were about to be bucked off the tractor.

Our son visualized many of the problems that had been wrought by the contractor, some where he blindly followed the blueprints from the log home company without seeing the issues those plans would have caused. Some of these issues were corrected by our son after the contractor was off the site, some are still issues that we can not deal with such as the water pipes in the utility room (last week’s post entitled Deep Freeze and the Thaw) and the water that somehow seeps below the metal roof to run down the logs on the front of the house where the 8 foot deep porch joins the house. Eldest son was a stickler for detail. Several times work that others did was redone by him later.

One of the issues he caught and fixed was that the hall wall made the kitchen so narrow that the stove and the refrigerator would have touched.

He deconstructed the contractor’s wall and moved it over far enough to put a narrow drawer cabinet between the appliances. This also gave us a narrow upper cabinet that is perfect for the storage of oils and vinegars used in cooking.

All of the upper cabinets were hand built by him. My vision was open shelves on which to store the pottery dishes, glass jars of colorful beans and grains, cookbooks and space above for seldom used large objects such as the roaster, wok and some larger pottery pieces. He took my vision and built the cabinets, lined them with cedar, trimmed them with oak and hand oiled them all. The only upper cabinet that is commercial is the one over the microwave that hides the ductwork and provides storage for cleaners that I want to keep out of the reach of grandkids.

Two of his challenges were the dormers and the doors. The house has 3 dormers on the front. The right hand one as you face the house is in our master bedroom, but the other two are off the heavy timber cathedral ceiling in the living room. After all the work had been done installing cedar, pine and log siding on interior walls, we couldn’t bring ourselves to install cheap commercial doors, so he hand built each of the interior bedroom and bathroom doors from a sandwich of yellow poplar, aromatic cedar siding and local red cedar trim. I helped him with the last of these doors and realize what a labor of love they are.

Son is not formally trained in the construction field. He finished high school with honors, entered The College of William and Mary and was graduated in 5 semesters in English, again with honors. He spent the next several years learning construction as a helper then independent contractor and learned the stone mason skills the same way. After finishing most of the house, he enrolled back in college and earned his master’s degree in English and he now working on his PhD working as a Graduate Teaching Assistant. He still comes home for parts of summers and holidays to do projects, such as the stone fireplace in the basement prior to the finishing of that area as a recreation room.

And to change out a light fixture over the dining table and installing a fan with light as recently as the past holidays. We wouldn’t have this beautiful retirement home if it wasn’t for his effort and his attention to detail.

Life is good on our mountain farm.

January 13, 2014
Another food day

Today was a rainy day. It started with frozen rain and a slick walk to the chicken coop to let them out, but then the rain set in. Rainy days are comfort food days and as I had put away tomatoes in the freezer last summer and fall, after blanching, peeling and crushing them, I decided it would be a good day for a big pot of pasta sauce. There are onions in the house, carrots in the fridge, celery that I had chopped and frozen, lots of garlic from last summer’s garden and the herb and spice supply well stocked. I don’t use jarred sauce, well not commercial jarred sauce. Instead, when I make sauce, I make plenty, jar up the extra in wide mouth pint jars and then either can or freeze it for a quick meal on another day. My sauce takes many hours of simmering, but is so worth the effort.

Our use of the post holiday discount that we got from the local grocery had resupplied the dry pasta supply as well, so homemade sauce and angel hair was the meal of the evening.

Pasta Sauce

2 medium onions chopped

1 head of garlic peeled and minced

4 stalks of celery chopped

2 carrots, diced

12 cups of crushed tomatoes

1-2 Tbs dried oregano

1-2 Tbs dried basil

1 Tbs fennel seed

1/2 tsp crushed red pepper

2 tsp salt (if tomatoes are unsalted)

EVOO to coat the bottom of a heavy pot

Saute the onions, celery and carrots until the onions are translucent. Add the garlic and stir for a minute or two until the garlic is fragrant. Add the tomatoes, herbs, fennel and salt, bring to a low boil and reduce to a low simmer for several hours, stirring occasionally to keep from sticking. As the sauce thickens, break up the tomatoes and adjust seasoning to taste.

At this point, precooked Italian sausage links or crumbled sausage can be added if desired. Hubby likes it with meat, I am just as happy with it as it.

Serve over the pasta of your choice and top with shredded Parmesan or Romano cheese and more crushed red pepper if you want more spice.

This comfort meal provided a great meal for 2 plus 5 pint jars of sauce for the freezer for an easy meal on another night.

January 10, 2014
Today, I’m going to start something!

By preference, I eat little meat. I probably wouldn’t cook it at all if hubby wasn’t by choice a “meat and potatoes” man. In fact, when we met, I wasn’t eating meat at all and realized that he wasn’t going to live on vegetables, beans, eggs and cheese. I can’t call myself a vegetarian, certainly not a vegan, I do enjoy cheese, use milk in my coffee and some teas, and eat eggs from my hens. If I prepare meat for him or for guests, I will generally eat a small portion, but will like as not, order a meatless meal when we go out and often will fix him a meat portion and just eat the vegetables myself.

I understand that people choose not to eat meat or any animal protein for various reasons. Some for ethical reasons, some for health, others I just don’t understand. When shopping in the local grocery, in the “hippy section,” to get milk and butter, I see vegan “cheese” and TVP shaped like chicken nuggets or hamburgers and I don’t understand. If you like the taste and texture of meat and cheese, then eat meat and cheese. If you are avoiding animal products for ethical reasons, then why pretend that you are eating animal protein. You don’t need soya products to get your protein. It can be easily obtained by selection of beans, rice, legumes and vegetables.

If you are a TVP eating vegan or vegetarian, please explain to me your rational, I just don’t get it.

January 9, 2014
The Thaw

The last couple of days have been, well, tough. A taste of long ago without central heating and water that fills our glass at the turn of a knob. We experienced sub zero temperatures two nights in a row like a good portion of the USA. With those temperatures, or lack thereof, we also had strong wind, thus serious wind chill and power loss. Last summer’s efforts by the power company to clear trees and branches from near the power lines has helped with the outages, but in the rural mountains, they are the inevitable. We buried our lines when we build, but that is rare here, except in new development in the nearby town.

We build our home with an efficient fireplace on the main level and a woodstove in the basement rec room and a good thing we did. The house is total electric, heated with a heat pump. The electricity started flickering early in the morning and failed right after I got my coffee made. Due to expense overrun during construction, the whole house generator was scrapped. The other construction flaw is a utility room joining the main house and the garage. It is not real logs like the house, but log siding and unheated except for a wall installed space heater. We keep the door open to the house, so it stays warm without the space heater during normal winter temperatures. Our contractor, foolishly put the water pipes in a poorly insulated north wall instead of flipping the room and facing the pipes south to benefit from passive solar warming. When the temperatures are expected to dip, I leave the laundry sink dripping, and I did, but the hot water line froze anyway and during the day with the power out, thus no water pump and no space heater, the cold water line froze too.

We spent the day hauling wood from the bin in the garage to keep the wood stove and fireplace going. Dashed into town for gallons of water and lunch and home to keep the fires blazing. The house holds heat well and we stayed comfortable until they restored our electricity in about 6 hours, but the pipes are still frozen.

It dropped to -3°f again last night, but is supposed to get above freezing today. There is a heat lamp on under the utility sink, the space heater is on high, probably causing the electric meter to spin off the wall. If it warms up some more, I need to go repair the chicken pen, the wind took down part of the fence. After one day of being literally cooped up, the girls went on strike and only layed 2 eggs and in the cold, I managed to drop and break one of them. This morning when I finally freed them, there were 5 and again I dropped one with my cold hands. They are glad to be out again, we are glad to see the warm sun and to watch the outdoor thermometer climb already well above yesterday’s high.

Hopefully, the pipes will thaw without incident.

January 8, 2014
The Deep Freeze

The wind howls,

The snow blows ( wish it would stick),

Chickens are locked in their coop with extra straw, food, water and scratch grain for entertainment and digestive warmth,

The wood stove is blazing and will stay stoked

As the temperature plunges to the negatives.

Wish I could stay in and enjoy, but eggs will quickly freeze in these temps so forays to the coop will have to happen til late afternoon.

Stay warm and safe my friends.

January 6, 2014
A Blog is a Blog

Blogs take on many forms I have realized as I read more and more of them. Some are religious in nature, some trying to promote someone’s business, a few are story tellers, many are online journals.

I tried journal writing beginning the year I moved to the mountains, alone, to help supervise the construction of our retirement log home on a small farm and to unretire from education and reenter the school counseling field for another 3 1/2 years until my hubby had finally sold his practice, retired and moved into our home with me. For three years, we had visited back and forth across the state, hard on the cars and our emotions. I thought journal writing would provide me with the necessary outlet, but I couldn’t get my thoughts down on paper fast enough and looking back at my efforts, it was mostly a pity party and complaints. I had retired from Virginia Beach City schools as a school counselor in 2004. This was just about the time that the state mandated testing set in motion by No Child Left Behind was starting to have teeth, affecting whether a child could graduate with a diploma or just leave school after 12 years with a Certificate of Attendance. The Testing Director for the city at that time had met with all of the counselors by school and told us that if there was a mistake made, that it would be our names in the paper, not his. I was dedicated to my job, a good counselor, a stickler for details when it came to record keeping and I also ran the Advanced Placement Testing program for our school, being responsible to the students, their parents who paid dearly for those tests and to the College Board, who took their exam process very seriously. That meeting was the straw that broke the camel’s back and I decided that since I had enough cumulative years and age to retire from the school system, that I would quietly go at the end of the school year. I was burned out, stressed. For the next two years, I worked a part time job for a non profit organization, but the third year, it would no longer be part time, and our house was under construction, thus my move. I was hired by the adjacent county’s school system as the lead counselor in a high school, again in charge of AP testing, but now also in charge of the Standard’s of Learning (yep SOL) testing for the school. My stress level again rose, the paper journal writing was not doing it for me, so I started using a feature in Facebook called notes. Then your posts in Facebook were limited to a set number of words.

About 3 or 4 years ago, I discovered blogging. This was the outlet I had been seeking, a place where I could journal, be creative, and put down the info quickly enough to get my thoughts on paper, you see, I type much faster than I could ever write by a factor of 4 or 5. My blog is my journal. I do publish it in a few places and yes, I like to see if anyone is reading it, but it is really for me, my journal writing outlet. Blogging helped me through the years until I retired with my hubby permanently and has continued as a creative outlet, a place to publish knitting patterns that I create, a place to write about the life on our little homestead, a place to share the new things we learn.

What is a blog? It is personal to each and every blogger. I love reading those of others and I keep adding more and more to my daily list to check for new posts but I shall continue to blog as my personal journal.

January 5, 2014
Selfish knitting

The holiday knitting was completed, the baby set, the finger puppets, 3 pair of kids socks, the scarf for my sister. That one required that I first spin the wool/silk blend, ply it, then knit the scarf.

Now it is my turn. A couple of years ago, I purchased a 3 1\3 ounce bag of wool/silk blend fiber from Green Dragon Yarns at a fiber festival. The color way was called Tidal Pool, predominately teal with other seaside accent colors. This bag of fiber has been in my stash since then. Today I decided to spin it into a single. Santa brought me a new wool coat for Christmas, so I don’t always look like the marshmallow man when I go out in my ski coat. My Ruby scarf and hat look great with it, but I wanted choice and decided that this new yarn to be is a good color.

I know there isn’t enough to ply for a hat and scarf. Recently when looking for yarn for the baby outfit, I purchased two skeins of Green Dragon Yarns fingering weight called Cypress.

The colors looked very complementary and though I have never plyed homespun to commercial yarn before, I knew it could be done and decided that was an excellent way to extend the homespun and make a yarn that would look great as a hat and scarf.

This is one skein of the plyed result. This is about 245 yards of yarn. When the rest is plyed, it should be enough for the scarf and bottom couple of inches of the hat, with the crown just the Cypress color.

The scarf is The Yarn Harlot’s pattern, One Row. Homespun Scarf. The hat will be a new design utilizing her stitch pattern from the scarf.

January 3, 2014