Cabin Crafted

Category: books

  • Still here

    The garden is cleaned up, the peas, lettuce, and spinach planted and awaiting more stable weather without fear of frost to plant beans, tomatoes, peppers, popcorn, and gourds. The asparagus are providing more than I can eat now, so some freshness from the garden. Both of my Asian pears are failing, both with large areas of dead branches. They produced nicely for a few years, then basically stopped production, and now seem to be dying. It is too early to tell it the freeze that happened a few days after the plum bloomed will prevent fruit. The peaches and apples waited to bloom until later, and the blueberries have lots of blooms.

    This week is summer type weather with three nights of near freezing later this weekend into early next week. One day it is shorts, tees, and sandals, then a few days later, jeans, long sleeve shirts, socks, and sweaters.

    It is only mid April and the lawn has had to be mowed twice already. Not my favorite job, but if it doesn’t get done, even the riding mower struggles to cut it down.

    The young chickens are now about 16 weeks old and a few weeks ago, I noted that one of the Buff Orpingtons was larger than the rest and already developing a vivid red comb. This morning, my suspicions that she was a he was confirmed with crowing. Now I have to decide if I want to keep a rooster with the remaining 9 pullets or find a new place for him to live.

    One of the all black Mystics is pure evil, not toward me, but very aggressive and dominant toward some of the other pullets. They will have to settle their own “pecking order,” without my intervention. We are about 6 or 7 weeks from starting to see eggs.

    One of my fellow re-enactors is a published author of historical novels, Carol Amorosi. She has a 3 book Celtic series, and a 5 book series that begins with the surveying of the Mason Dixon line and the most recent, I just finished reading, brings it up to the brink of the American Revolution. If you are a lover of historical fiction, her books can be found on Amazon in paperback or e-book formats.

    And it is school visit time at the museum, several Friday’s in a row with varying age groups and group sizes. This week are 6th graders, about 100 of them. They will be broken into 8 groups and rotated through 8 stations to visit and learn about life on the frontier about 250 years ago. This week, the slip, petticoat, short gown, long socks, and cap will be quite warm to wear with the 80+ degree heat.

    With these sessions, I generally spin on a Dealghan spindle or a wooden drop spindle as they would be more historically correct, and demonstrate the Lucet for making braided cords. These skills would be ones that young people would have been taught to help contribute to the family’s cord and yarn needs for tying bags, carrying tools, and for weaving the homespun that was a necessity away from the larger town ports after the Wool Act.

    We continue taking a daily walk, sometimes about 2 1/4 miles, other times we extend it to more than 3. As it gets hot, we often shift our walk time to late evening to avoid being in the hot sun during peak hours, and start making sure we have a bottle of water to stay hydrated.

    Stay well my friends.

  • It’s Gone

    For the past several years, our youngest son and his family have kept their RV parked on our farm. It leaves occasionally for them to use as a mobile hotel and was often used for them to stay in when visiting us. The last couple of times they were here, they stayed in the house due to some repair issues on the RV. I would start up the generator every few weeks, keep mouse traps baited and cleared, but otherwise just mowed around it. They now have a mini homestead and have moved it home. It is odd driving down the driveway and not seeing it, or doing a double take out the front window when noticing it isn’t there. In addition to the RV leaving, a pile of roof and vent repair items that have been in our garage left with it.

    Weekend before last was the only fiber festival that the Jenkins, makers of my favorite spindles attend. A distant friend that attends each year has offered and proxy shopped for me several times as the festival is in Oregon and I am in Virginia, so attending in person hasn’t happened. This new plum spindle will soon join the spinning fun.

    The Jenkins spindle group to which I belong on social media holds a fun scavenger hunt each year during Tour de France, called Tour de Fleece. Many groups hold versions of Tour de Fleece, many with challenges on who or what team can spin the most, but our version is more laid back and more fun. Each day, we are given an object to find and photograph with our spindle in progress on a spin. Each day the spindle needs to have more spun or plyed fiber on it than the day before. I have several small Jenkins Turkish spindles that will be used during this period. There are prizes donated by members of the group if you find enough of the items and post your photo within the 24 hour window. This year, I am doing it just for the fun of it and have asked not to be included in the prize drawing if I find enough items and follow through with the daily posting.

    During DH’s broken clavicle healing, my trigger finger surgery healing, and our cruise, I didn’t post much in the group. It is fun to be back involved with them.

    Most of my evenings have been spent knitting on a shawl with a skein of handspun. Last night, I began the Old Shale Lace border using a different skein of handspun alternating with the other skein as there isn’t enough of it to finish without adding the skein of similar colors. One 4 row repeat of the border has been done and the next begun. We will have to see how many repeats I do before I either tire of it or it begins to distort the triangular shape of the shawl. It is difficult to tell with it scrunched up on the needle.

    After days and days of heavy rain that damaged our driveway, filled the ditch above our culvert (again), and damaged the state road that had recently been graded, it is dry. The garden will need to be watered if we don’t get a thunderstorm soon. Yesterday was a mild day in the upper 70’s, today it is nearly 90. That is usually a recipe for a thunderstorm, at least I’m hoping so.

    My current read is a new release called “Reckoning Hour” by Peter O’Mahoney and as I read it, I feel like I have read it before, though it was just released in April. A bit of research and I think it is very reminiscent (almost too much so) of a Grisham book.

  • Small but generous

    This year, the garden is small, only 5 metal raised beds that vary from 3×3′ to 3.5×5′ plus a small patch of corn and sunflowers and the bed of blueberry bushes. Oh and the asparagus bed that is now tall ferns putting nutrients in the roots for next year’s crop.

    Yesterday in the heat, the first green beans were harvested, enough to freeze some and share some with daughter’s family. The cucumbers are producing faster than I can pickle them, but only one has gotten large enough to discard to the remaining 6 chickens. It is one of their favorite summer time treats.

    The weeds had gotten tall in the paths and unused part of the garden again, so before it got hot this morning, the line trimmer was put to use and cleared the paths and near the pumpkins with some hand weeding around the bases of them. They are not being very successful competing with the weeds. Also this morning, the tomatoes were trimmed and tied to the trellis, more green beans, onions, cucumbers, and the volunteer potatoes were brought in.

    The assistance of the local grandson has been requested and the chicken tunnel fence is going to be moved to allow them in the parts of the garden that don’t have the raised beds that are productive. They will enjoy the fresh greens, scratch the roots up and clean that area up. It will likely mean the loss of the pumpkins, but as I only use a couple a year to make pies, I can purchase them at the Farmer’s Market this fall.

    The volunteer potatoes had pushed some to the surface and they had developed the green solanine, so those were replanted in the bed that had the peas and onions earlier, as we are still within the potato planting window here. The bed that had earlier grown the garlic was replanted with a second planting of green beans and as we are approaching bean beetle season, they will likely be covered in row cover as soon as they emerge. Often, the second planting is destroyed by the beetles before they can really produce.

    I just finished reading “The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World” by Robin Kimmerer. An expansion of an essay she wrote on gift and service economy. We should all spend more time giving of our excess and our time and less of the consumer economy in which we live. I try with giving eggs and produce to family and friends, and time as a volunteer at the museum, but more could be given.