Author: Cabincrafted1

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
Resupply

As I have previously posted, we try to be locavores, living on the produce, eggs and chickens that we raise, the occasional deer taken by our son, or limiting our purchases to the local farmers. That said, there are items that we will not or can not do without. Items that if we were true rustic homesteaders, we would do without or find an alternate solution.

I don’t buy paper products, except for toilet paper and during cold season, an occasional box of tissues. I do make our soap and shampoo bars, but they require oils. We have barn cats, dogs, and chickens and they require at least some supplemental feeding and treats. Hubby likes sodas to drink and I like coffee, so the grocery store does get some of our business.

Prior to the Christmas holiday’s our local grocery chain ran a promotion that if a certain amount was spent during about a month long period, you would get a 10% discount on a single purchase of $25 or more during the first eleven days of the new year. The amount needed to be spent was moderate, just a couple hundred dollars and with son and his family here for both Thanksgiving and Christmas, we managed to barely meet their requirement. Today, we made a careful list of pet supplies, trash bags, dish soap, toilet paper, coffee, soda, a few cartons of broth and soup for emergencies and set out to make the most of the discount. The pantry shelves are stocked and we likely won’t need a grocery store run for quite a while. Don’t you love it when you find a bargain or benefit from a promotion? With the discount, plus using their reward card, we saved about a third of the total pre-discount bill.

January 2, 2014
Return to Normalcy?

Last night, instead of sitting home like a pair of old fogeys, we used the internet to find a party at a hotel in a nearby town with a buffet dinner, a comedy show, then a DJ with dancing and a champagne toast at midnight. It took the DJ an hour or so to realize we weren’t 18 years old and he finally found some rock and roll music that got more folks onto the floor including an 87 year old partier who danced with all the gals.

Our New Year’s day tradition starts with huevos rancheros for brunch and the beginning of the packing away of the holiday trappings.

The tree has been removed, the needles vacuumed and the furniture returned to its usual seating configuration. The shelves dusted, all the Santas carefully wrapped in bubble wrap and stored in their large plastic tote. The windows and sills have been wiped down, the Christmas linens washed, dried and folded for storage for another year. One guest bed linens have been laundered and the bed remade. The basement guest bed still remains to be done.

The Christmas leftovers were removed from the freezer and tonight we will enjoy hot turkey sandwiches with mashed potatoes and gravy with one of the green vegetables that I carefully froze and packed away last summer.

The helter skelter of the holidays is behind us to be remembered and savored until next year. The winter calm is settling over the house. The farm chores are returning to our daily schedule and it is good to be getting our own eggs again, instead of them leaving with the neighbor that cares for the chickens when we are away. We are glad to be home again.

Life is good on our mountain farm.

January 1, 2014
All Good Things Must End

The holidays are over and with it, the travel time. These past couple of months have been quite atypical for us. We travel little, other than my jaunts to Northern Virginia to babysit for a few days, we generally take a weeklong ski trip, boarding the pups and a week long visit to our daughter’s family with the dogs.

This fall we left on a two week adventure after boarding the pups. One week of that was a Bahamas cruise with our youngest son and his family, then spent an additional week with them in their home. The dogs like the boarding kennel we use, but were glad to be home.

That was followed with Thanksgiving at home with eldest son and his family visiting, then a week later, boarding the beasties again for our week long trip to Zihuatenajo Mexico.

Back home from that the second week of December in time to decorate and finish shopping for Christmas, we had a couple of weeks to recover.

Christmas brought eldest son and grandson back for a few days to celebrate together and Christmas noon, they left in my car headed north to home and we loaded up gifts, luggage, and dogs in Hubby’s SUV to drive south for 4 days with daughter’s family.

The visit was fun. The kids love the dogs, with our two plus their golden, it was a houseful of fur. Our pups stoically tolerate the 13 to 14 hours each way driving.

It has been great, but we are tired and ready to be home for the winter. My neighbor has gotten more of my eggs this fall than have we and the freezer is full of our produce we haven’t been home to eat.

All of this was on top of last February’s week trip skiing in Colorado, a 3 day ski trip in West Virginia, and the 3 day August trip for the family gathering. That has put us away from home in the past year for 42 days. We have exhausted our travel quota til our energy and budget recover.

December 30, 2013