Cabin Crafted

Category: crafting

  • All Good Things Must End

    Yesterday was the beginning of meteorological autumn, not the autumn marked on your wall calendar if you still have one. And right on cue, we started seeing the trees beginning to show their color, or at least we noticed it. The first to turn are the Tulip Poplars and the Locust trees. This Poplar acts like a Ginkgo and turns yellow all at once in a matter of a couple of days.

    And loses it’s leaves first.

    After being away for two weekends and hobbling around for 7 weeks, I finally got out into the garden this week. The heat and time of year ended the cucumbers and bush beans, but the tomatoes and peppers are producing wildly.

    Every day a basket like this is brought in and frozen. Once they are all ripe, I will make a pot of sauce. Two pounds of peppers were cut and put in the fermenting crock to make into hot sauce in about 5 or 6 weeks.

    Yesterday afternoon, the popcorn was harvested, shucked in place and brought in. It is now in two crisscrossed layers in two large baskets to finish drying for about 2 or 3 weeks, then we will have more than a year’s worth of popcorn. It is fun to put a cob in a brown paper lunch bag and pop it in the microwave for a couple of minutes. Then you have a bag full of air popped corn.

    Fall is also the time to make soap. Soap for gift giving, soap for a friend who loves my soap, soap for us for a year. There will be 8 or 9 batches made over the next week and cut to cure in a guest room. The first two batches were made yesterday, cut today, and set to cure. I am awaiting an order of essential oils and shea butter to continue the process, but the first two batches are unscented.

    Today it much milder outdoors and as my foot still isn’t allowing exercise walks and since I did have my physical training session this morning, I tackled some garden chores. The cucumber and bean plants were pulled, given to the chickens, the bed that grew the peas in the spring and has been idle was weeded and the weeds put in a large tub to die off before being added back to that bed as compost. That bed also got a wheel barrow of chicken coop cleanings a month or so ago and it was spread out over the surface. There are now two and a half idle beds. One will likely have some fall veggies, the others covered in straw unless I can get a cover crop in quickly. The corn stalks won’t be cut until the Tithonia and sunflowers planted in a row up the middle of them finish blooming. There are so many hot peppers already canned that the rest will be allowed to turn red. The Ghost peppers will be infused in olive oil with sage and garlic, the jalapenos and cayennes will be crushed once dried for crushed red pepper. There are two tiny ornamental Thai pepper that are full of red peppers but they are very hard to harvest, though hot if you can get some.

    The chicken tunnel has been mostly a success. There are a few plants that grow into the tunnel they won’t eat, but do keep mostly scratched down, and the creeping charlie and smartweed that are reachable through the wire, they ignore so another day will have to be spent clearing the blueberry bed. The raspberry and blackberry half barrels were mostly a failure, though I see some volunteers outside the barrels. With all the wineberries and wild blackberries that are on the property, I should just not bother with the barrels. There are also several you pick berry farms around here.

    Not much spinning was done last month. Reading, a little travel to visit Son 1 and then to a retreat where I did spin both on my wheel and spindles, knit, and took both a wet felting class to make a small bowl and a project bag sewing class occupied my time with visiting friends I see only rarely. If I ever finish the knitting project, I will finish spinning the fiber I have worked on for two months slowly. I got a lovely braid to spin as a door prize at the retreat and a bag of felting wool from the gift exchange game.

    So you see from this, I am alive and well, not posting much here, on Facebook, or Instagram, but still here. Take care, enjoy the fall colors if you live where they occur, and get ready for another winter.

  • Sunday ramblings of the mind

    There isn’t much physical rambling going on with me right now. The boot is off, though the tendonitis isn’t totally gone, and wearing the boot, threw off my gait, and caused plantar fasciitis in the other foot. I hobble around like Tim Conway’s character after I sit for a little while or right after I get up in the morning. I am still going to work out with my trainer once a week and we are working on core and upper body on machines, balance and stretching with squats and other stretching exercises. On a good day, I can walk about a mile, not the 4 I was doing 6 weeks ago. It is so very frustrating.

    The July Jenkins spindle challenge is our scavenger hunt for Tour de Fleece. A social media friend proxy shopped for me at Black Sheep Gathering in Oregon in late June and purchased a lovely Salmonberry Chickadee spindle, Ed Jenkins’ newest model. Slightly smaller than my other favorites, the Finches, and with a thicker body. It has been my spindle of choice for the past 10 days or so.

    That fiber is finished and the 8 golf ball sized cops have been wound into a ply ball and will be plyed on my spinning wheel as soon as the bobbin of Shetland now on the wheel is full. I find that I can spin for hours on the spindles, but only about an hour on the wheel.

    The pullets are almost all laying now. It is interesting trying to figure out who lays what these days. The 4 older hens lay an olive colored egg, a chocolate brown egg, and two that I called blue, until the newest Americana began laying and hers is robin’s egg blue, making the other two appear greenish. The Calicos all lay a light pinkish brown egg.

    Suddenly, I have more eggs than daughter’s family and we can eat and with no pups in the house to share eggs with, I have a couple dozen being shared with the spinning group or visiting family members. I did get their coop cleaned out this week in spite of the heat. A good addition to one of the idle garden beds that was weeded before adding the cleaning to the bed.

    The garden is producing copious quantities of cucumbers and jalapenos, though they aren’t very spicy. A gallon of pickled peppers is in the refrigerator as well as 4 quarts of dill pickles. The first crop of green beans are not producing many now and the second crop hasn’t begun to produce. Every now and then, a cucumber evades my daily search and gets too large and yellow for us, but the chickens love them when I break them in half and toss into their run. Yesterday, I found 3 tomato horn worms on the plants, the chickens gobbled one up and ignored the other two, each as large as my thumb around and about 4 inches long. Maybe they went back to them later, at least they are off the tomato plants.

    The milkweed that creates a fairly large patch on the edge of one of the areas that get’s hayed was mowed down with the hay, but has come back up again and is beginning to bloom.

    The daily thunderstorms we were having have stopped and again we are reaching drought level dryness. The last two or three thunderstorms came right after VDOT graded our state road and the run off caused serious gullies in our driveway. Using the blade on the tractor, I was able to improve the drive surface to a safer level. It has been a year since I asked VDOT to clear our culvert and it hasn’t been done. To replace the culvert with another or a cattle grate requires a permit and to hire someone to do it.

    We have several more days of brutally hot, humid weather before we get a reprieve for a few days. We need rain.

    Take care and stay cool. Be safe from the newest round of Covid. I guess we are going to live with it and hope it doesn’t get worse.

  • Summer before the Solstice

    The weather is hot. And dry. We did benefit from some rain a few days ago that was spotty around the area, but did give us a little respite from the heat and the dryness.

    Yesterday, I was sitting on the front porch with Randy. Randy was our postal carrier for most of the years since we built and moved here, but he retired a few years ago. He also runs cattle with two younger men, men about our sons’ ages. He had come over to let us know that they were going to mow our hay today so I wouldn’t let critters out that might be harmed by huge mowers and we were just sitting and visiting when he looked beyond me and asked if that was a snake on the porch rail. Sure enough, a black rat snake about 6- 6.5 feet long, just chillin’ on the rail behind me. Black rat snakes are our friends as long as they stay out of the house and out of the coop. He probably had been feasting on the chipmunks that have taken over since the dogs and barn cats have all passed away. The snake had been hanging out up near the barn, but had moseyed on down to the house. I went through the house, grabbed leather garden gloves, a 5 gallon bucket, and lid and came back out to relocate it. Randy looked at me like I was nuts and said, “Don’t ask me to help.” He did take the photo though.

    This is the 5th one that we have relocated from the house or coop. The bucket was taken a couple miles away and the snake turned loose in the woods by a field.

    Last night I did finish the June spinning challenge and finished plying the rainbow yarn.

    It ended up 558 yards almost 4 ounces done totally on the spindles in the photo in 18 days. A project has already been begun.

    The mowers did arrive this afternoon, two mowers and a tractor with a tedder to fluff up what was mowed. They will return Friday and bale it. I don’t think they are going to have a very good harvest as it didn’t get mowed in the fall and it didn’t get fertilized this spring. Randy said they are already about 60 bales short of what they usually get before reaching us, so he may not have much to sell this year, hopefully enough for their cattle.

    The dry heat had caused the pea vines to yellow, so while they mowed, I harvested peas, the potatoes that were in one of the pea beds, a handful of Jalapenos, and a basket of plums. There are about that many more plums still ripening. They sure are good, not very large, but very sweet. And I also pulled the pea vines to be chopped up and put in the compost. My clippers are old and dull and wouldn’t do the job, so I may ask to borrow my daughter’s.

    It took 3 hours to shell all of those peas, filling a bucket with empty pods, and yielding several quarts of peas. We enjoyed some for dinner and the rest frozen for meals when fresh veggies aren’t available except trucked across the country. In a couple of days, the tiny green beans will be large enough to start enjoying them and freezing more for later meals. The tomatoes have flowers, but no fruit yet and flowers on the cucumbers, but again, no fruit yet. One of the pea beds will be planted with more green beans, the other covered with old hay until cooler weather allows fall greens to be started.

    We saw the doe with the singleton fawn, still a tiny one after the mowers left. Probably wondering where their tall grass covering had gone.

    While I was talking to one of the younger mowers, we realized that a large branch in the top of one of my Asian pears is totally dead with pears on it, so recently dead. It doesn’t look like a lightening strike, but at some point it is going to have to be cut out. I don’t know what caused it. It is concerning as that is the tree that produces the most pears.

    More heat and no rain for the next 10 days. At least the grass doesn’t grow fast when it is hot and dry.

    Take care, stay cool, be safe.

  • Hot Weather and Harvest time

    Much to our delight, the hayfields mowed and baled just before ours were done late this week and there is no rain in the forecast next week, so we might actually have our fields cleared this week. It is going to be brutally hot though, highs in the 90’s every day. That will make garden time happen only in the early morning and I will have to be sure the chicken’s water stays filled. They already are digging dust bath holes in the shade of the asparagus that are now more than 5 feet tall and full fern mode.

    Every day, a cup of blueberries, a basket of peas, a few new potatoes, and a handful of delicious plums come in. The tomatoes and cucumbers have flowers. The green beans are full height and blooming, and there are small hot peppers on several of the plants. A few Jalapenos were brought in this week. The peas are reaching the end of their season and most of the potatoes had already died back and been dug. There are peas in the freezer and we have been enjoying fresh ones a few times a week. There may only be 1 more basket full to harvest, then the vines will be pulled and chopped for compost, the bed covered with straw until it cools enough to plant some fall crops later in the season.

    Trying to stay out of the boot in the house as much as possible means that when I go downstairs in the morning to fix my coffee and breakfast, I often sit on the couch looking out the front windows, up the driveway. The doe with a singleton fawn was out there a couple days ago, standing patiently on the edge of the driveway, while her little one nursed. I have never seen that happen out in the open, so with no dogs here, she must feel safe.

    Not the best photo as it was taken from inside the house, through the screen, and zoomed so as not to chase her off. She would periodically turn and clean the little one while it ate.

    This morning was Farmer’s Market Day and every week, we purchase some flowers from our friends that grow flowers for market and weddings. Once a month, I get the larger bouquet and today’s one is so colorful and gorgeous.

    We are halfway through the month and I am almost finished with the June Jenkins spindle challenge to spin a rainbow. We were challenged to spin at least 10 grams of each of the 7 colors, but I have chosen to spin the entire pigtail of each one, about 16 to 18 grams per color. The photo shows the 5 finished ones and the indigo ready to spin, but it is now more than half spun. Once it is done, only the violet will remain.

    Next month we do a daily scavenger hunt and post our spindle with the found object. It usually only requires a single gram per day but I’m sure more will actually be spun. I need to get back to work on the pound of gray Shetland wool that is on my spinning wheel, but I think I need to give my foot another week to heal first.

    I did resume my sessions with my physical trainer this week after 3 weeks off with us having had visitors, her going on vacation, and me wearing a new boot. We did only upper body on the various machines. The area where we usually train with hand weights is getting new flooring, so all the machines and equipment are moved out of that area. About 2/3 of the gym has thick padded glued down rubber mat type flooring. The other 1/3 had carpet with rolled out mat pads that had shifted due to the movement of the equipment and there were wrinkles that were hazardous if you weren’t paying attention. All the carpet and old rolled out mat pads are being removed and that area is getting the same type of flooring as the rest of the gym. It makes using areas awkward but the end result will be great. At home, I continue to use resistance bands and hand weights.

    Stay safe, and if travelling, be careful until we meet here again.

  • Another Week Goes By

    It has been a cool week with two record breaking lows at night, but not low enough to damage the garden. Things are warming back up this week to come.

    Going out to gather eggs this evening, I spied a few ripe raspberries in the garden and once in there, realized there were a few ripe blueberries also. The cultivated berry season is short and over before the wild wineberries and blackberries are ripe, though I can’t get to any of them until the hay is mowed and the hay men haven’t even begun the near fields. We are among the last on the list, so maybe as late as early July. By then, the wineberries are gone, but blackberries will still be available. I will start watching the schedule for the local berry farms and go pick there.

    And while in the garden, the Sugar Snap peas are ready to begin harvest, so nice fresh veggies this week and some for the freezer too. The shelling peas aren’t ready quite yet.

    The Iris, both bearded and Dutch have finished, just in time for the Daylilies to begin to come into bloom.

    The spindle challenge this month is to spin a rainbow. An indie dyer prepped and dyed pigtails of the 7 colors, for anyone in the challenge group that wanted to purchase them. The red is a bit too pink, but the rest of the colors are great.

    I divided each color half to make two ply mini skeins. The blue and purple fiber on the left was some I bought last month to spin for a shawlette or scarf. Part of it has already been spun, but I couldn’t start on the rainbow until yesterday. Our local spinning group had an annual porch spin in and potluck lunch at one of the member’s homes yesterday. It was a beautiful day and a chance to see some friends that either come into town for this event or due to other commitments can’t make it to the Thursday afternoon sessions. It was a great afternoon. Some of the gray Shetland I am spinning was worked on the wheel while the red for the rainbow was started on a spindle.

    My walks are on hiatus as I have either developed tendonitis or a stress fracture in my left foot. Tomorrow, I will explore with my PC whether I need to have it checked or just continue with elevation, ice, and Tylenol (can’t take NSAIDs). It is frustrating because we enjoy our 4 miles walks together and it is going to impact what I can do with my trainer.

    When I got home from the spin in yesterday, we had another small swarm of bees enter the house. As much as I hate killing pollinators, there is no choice but to use the shop vac and a very long tube to extract them from the windows of the dormer in the living room, about 12 feet up. We noted where they entered from outside, so this week, the local grandson is going to come climb the ladder to fill the gap with “Great Stuff.” We had a swarm last year about this time and again this year. They need to find a better place to settle than inside the house.

    It will be another 6 weeks before I can expect eggs from the young birds. It won’t be too soon as the two old ladies (about 3 1/2 years old) are really slowing down on production. The two 1 year olds are providing most of the current egg production and barely meeting daughter’s and my needs.

    Until we meet again here, have a good, safe time.

  • Olio-May 18,2024

    Olio: a miscellaneous collection of things (thoughts)

    Last Sunday was Mother’s Day and my love gave me a fitness tracker watch to add to the motivation of the daily walks and workouts from my Physical Trainer. She is an great young woman and Mom who was a perfect match to work with this senior citizen with a bad shoulder and bicep. My strength and flexibility have greatly improved. On gym days, which is my training day and any day too rainy for outdoor walks, I prefer the treadmill. I can do 4 miles in an hour and push myself much faster than outdoor walks with hubby. I have more than met my goal of 8000 steps a day every day, usually more like 11500-12000.

    For Mother’s Day evening, daughter and her two kiddos came and we went to the restaurant at Mountain Lake Lodge for a meal treat together. After dinner, we walked the old lake bed and up through the grounds of the Lodge. The creeks in the lake bed were full of tadpoles. Maybe someday the lake will return. It has emptied and refilled in the past but I doubt we will ever see it full again. It was a real lake when we purchased our land.

    During the week, which has been a very wet one, too wet for gardening, I finished the Kantha quilt that I have been working on for the past 6 or 8 weeks. I wish I had made it somewhat larger, but it is large enough to cover my legs and lap when stretched out in my recliner on cool nights.

    Work on it has taken priority over spinning or knitting, though there are projects of both being done; a scarf from my Christmas gift fiber spun in January and early February, and about 20 grams of singles spun on spindles from a sample batt that came with some other fiber I had purchased.

    It still needs to be plyed, skeined, measured, and washed to see if there is enough to even make fingerless mitts, or if I will have to use it as trim on something else.

    Now that there are no barn cats and no dogs meandering the farm, and with the chickens penned up to protect them from the hawk, we have been invaded by several of these adorable, destructive little ground squirrels/chipmunks. They dig up my flower pots and I keep having to sprinkle hot pepper powder on the pots to deter them. At least two chipmunks have taken up residence in the stone wall behind the deck and scurry around the deck and stone patio behind the house. They don’t like hot pepper or vinegar, so all extra vinegar from pickles or canned jalapenos is used as weed killer on the patio. Perhaps a new barn cat would discourage their residence, but we really don’t want to take on any more pets.

    Last weekend, my frustration with the line trimmer we own resulted in me being near tears as it “ate” the line every couple of feet of attempted edging of the stone walled garden and stoops around the house. We ended up going out and discussing the problem with the guy at the hardware store that sells that brand and another and the consensus was that it just wasn’t designed for that level of use, but rather for very light trimming on a small townhouse or home with a very small yard. We purchased a beefier one of the other brand and in two sessions (the battery lasts about 30 minutes of use) I got nearly everything that needed done trimmed finally. It really didn’t get done last year at all because of the inefficient trimmer. I still have a small section of fence at the vegetable garden and around the Chicken Palace to finish if it ever stops raining. Though heavier than the older one, it is so much easier to use and it is a self winding model, so no trying to wind the wire on and hold it in place while reassembling the head.

    The Calico popcorn that was planted in the garden did not come up and the bed, though it has peas and sugar snap peas as well as a volunteer potato or two growing well at the other end of the 15′ bed, has quarter sized holes throughout. That end of the bed has a piece of welded wire fence over the wooden frame to deter crows and other seed eating intruders, but the holes seem to come from below, so I suspect voles have gotten into the bed. This is the third year in a row of having corn fail. A little research indicated that if you aren’t planting an entire field of it, that it can be started indoors and transplanted later that will discourage the seed eaters. A few days ago, 36 seeds were planted in Jiffy plugs and set on the heat mat. There are now 36 one to two inch seedlings under a grow light. When they get some size and roots begin to appear in the sides of the plugs, a transplant session will be held. Maybe the torrential rain will end before then so they don’t float away.

    Some of the sunflowers and Tithonia have come up in that bed but I think more will be started in more of the plugs and transplanted at the same time. I love having sunflowers in the garden to attract the native bees, which are so docile, they buzz around while I am gardening and show me no aggression.

    In rereading above, I have complained about the rain, but in truth, it is much needed. Parts of Virginia are in drought lasting a few years and here in SW Virginia, we were on the verge of drought. This isn’t Camelot, so we can’t rule that it only rain after sundown and end by morning.

    Until I visit here again, have a safe spring and good health.

  • Catching Up

    The garden is planted except for the corn. It probably should have gone in yesterday as we finally have rain today and off and on for the rest of the week. In looking in the freezer in the basement to see what was left, it looks pretty barren. There are two frozen pizzas that were purchased nearly a year ago for a grandson that was staying with us for a couple of weeks, several quart bags of enchilada sauce I made with dried peppers from one of the local Latin stores, and a gallon bag of frozen whole unpeeled tomatoes. There was a second bag of tomatoes in the refrigerator freezer. At the Farmer’s Market this morning, a bag of beets was purchased. Since it is a rainy day, the beets were cooked, peeled, sliced and some of them frozen for future meals and the tomatoes were dumped in a sink of water so the peels would come off. While they partially thawed; onions, fresh basil and oregano from the garden and a pot in the house were sauteed in a bit of olive oil then the peeled tomatoes added. Once thawed through a quick whir with the immersion blender and a few hours simmer time and 5 pints of pasta sauce are jarred up. I had to use wide mouth pints as there were no new lids available and they will have to be frozen instead of canned, but we now have enough pasta sauce to last until this year’s crop of tomatoes begin to come in. I guess lids need to go on the grocery list. There are plenty of jars and rings to use as produce starts coming in. I think before much is added to the freezer, I need to put the items in it in a cooler and thoroughly clean the bottom and defrost the sides.

    The peas are about a foot tall, but not flowering yet. Potatoes are up and the transplanted peppers look like they all set in nicely.

    The 6 littles and the 4 mature hens have established some level of peace treaty. Though they still sleep at opposite ends of the perch, they cohabitate in the run and tunnel and will even eat together if scratch or kitchen scraps are provided. My best guess is they are about 10 or 11 weeks old now, so another 10 weeks to go before we start seeing pullet eggs.

    My physical trainer and I had decided on a 4 workouts about 6 weeks ago and this week determined that that rotation was too spread out, so beginning this week, there will be two whole body workouts to rotate, adding reps or weight as tolerated as we go forward. There is also going to be a new beginner yoga class that I am going to attend once a week. Shoulder and bicep exercises that I could only handle a 3 pound weight on when I began, I am now up to 8 pounds, and ones I was using 7.5 or 10 on, I’m now using 15 and 20 with many more reps, so I guess progress is being made. We are still doing daily walks. On bad weather and PT days, I do about 2-2.5 miles at an average of 3.9 mph on the treadmill. When we are outdoors, it is generally about 3.5 to 4 miles, but not at that pace.

    The Kantha quilt is progressing, though it is getting too warm to want to stitch with it in my lap at night.

    The monthly challenge for the spindle group has me plying what I spun in late March and through April and spinning a sample I received with a fiber order on another spindle.

    The local grandson has agreed to come assist me with extending the chicken’s tunnel. And I need to get the line trimmer to work with a level of consistency so that the now very tall grass up against the foundation and around the gardens can be brought under control. It is pushing toward summer and I don’t do well in the heat, so the heavier chores need to get done now.

  • Olio – 2/25/2024

    Olio: a miscellaneous collection of things (thoughts)

    It has been almost a week since hubby was released from the hospital for the second time in 3 weeks. Diagnosis has been all over the map, from Covid related, to pneumonia, to autoimmune disease. The tests mostly ruled out pneumonia and tilt toward autoimmune issues likely caused by immunotherapy treatments. We see our primary tomorrow with lots of questions as the various test results come in.

    The hospitalization required me to miss a week of personal trainer, but a return this week to a serious kick butt lower body workout. I found muscles that walking and stair climbing miss, but hide in the thighs and hips.

    The stress is causing the shoulder with bursitis and a torn bicep tendon to tighten up. This happened last year at the fiber retreat and my yoga teaching friend did a Vulcan Death grip on that area and it magically released. I will have to ask Megan, my PT for a stretch that isn’t already in my workouts that might help with it as my friend lives more than 3 hours away.

    The sit and wait times last weekend and this week sent me back to a Sashiko panel I started over a year ago. Some time ago, I had the idea to make the panel into a Turkish Spindle case. Night before last, the stitching was finished and yesterday, a case was made using pre-quilted white fabric as the interior. Pockets were stitched and each shaft for a spindle has the thin end protected by a length of rigid soda straw.

    Often, I am dissatisfied with project like this, but this time, I am very pleased.

    Also while sitting in the hospital room with hubby, and in my spare time at home, I finished spinning the wool blend he gave me for Christmas. The entire amount was spun on the tiny Jenkins Finch spindle he gave me for our 45th anniversary last year.

    The finished skein with the tiny spindle now working on a different fiber. The spindle lives in my bag with some wool. In the spindle photos, you can see the soda straw that protect the fragile end of the shaft when it is removed for travel. There are other spindles that get pulled out for use, but I seem to migrate to this one most often.

    I have one more 6 block Sashiko panel that I finished long ago and plenty of the white quilted fabric, I need to figure out a project to use them, maybe a case for my fixed circular knitting needles or crochet hooks. And the skein of yarn to be knit into something requiring about 400 yards of lace weight yarn.

    The two beautiful roosters no longer reside at this address. Between their noise, and the fact that one was aggressive toward me and the other young rooster encouraged me to send them on their way. A Craigslist ad brought a Ukranian refugee living with his daughter and her sons to pick them up. Whether they became part of a flock or part of a meal worries me not at all. The hens seem happier not to be ganged up on and eggs are back in good supply even though the youngest Marans was recently killed by some predator. The remaining 6 provide 2 to 5 eggs daily, enough for us and for daughter’s household.

    Four of the hens are now 3 years old, I guess they will have to be replaced soon. Only one of them is providing more than 1 or 2 eggs a week. The carton for daughter has many more blue and green eggs than brown, though there are as many brown layers as colored layers. I don’t want 6 more chicks, only about 4, but you are required to purchase at least 6 chicks at a time. If I can find a local that wants a couple of pullets, I will buy 6 and raise them to coop introduction size and give away the extras. I guess if a hen goes broody on me this summer, I can let her sit false eggs for 3 weeks and introduce day old chicks under her and let her raise them for me. She will protect them and teach them if she thinks they are her own.

    Yesterday, they predicted snow after a week of spring like temperatures. We got mostly rain with a little slushy bit added in, but nothing on the ground. The temperatures are again climbing to spring like weather after a night in the low 20’s. Another 3 or 4 weeks, it will be time to start the tomatoes and peppers seedlings. The Aerogarden was planted this week with mixed Romaine lettuces and a window seed starter has deer tongue lettuce and spinach starts. Soon they will go in pots to be nurtured until I can plant them out under some sort of cover. Since my little garden green house blew off and was destroyed by the wind, I need to improvise. I keep seeing an idea on social media to use plastic milk cartons, but I don’t buy milk in plastic, so maybe a mini hoop house can be created with plastic sheeting and later row cover.

    Enough meanderings of my mind. Have a great week.

  • Time passes in my absence

    My activity here has been sparse lately. This in part because of trying to get ready for the holidays between having cataract surgery first on my left eye in mid November and my right eye two days ago. The first one produced lots of swelling of my cornea, proving to be quite uncomfortable the day of surgery, like someone rubbing sandpaper on my eye every time I blinked. Thus, much of that day was spent reclined with my eyes closed and dozing. It then produced 5 days of very blurry vision in that eye. As soon as the vision cleared, I realized that my brain just would not/could not adapt to the disparity of vision between the eyes. At the two week re check, when I discussed it with the surgeon, she did a quick check on my right eye acuity and scheduled me for a more comprehensive exam and surgery on the the right eye. My vision had significantly deteriorated in the three months since the exam that generated the referral to her in the first place, or the initial exam from elsewhere was flawed. Now two days out from that surgery, there is only slight vision fuzz, no discomfort, and cheap reading glasses stashed all over the place as I can no longer see any text closer than several feet away. As she and my eldest said, I now have bionic eyes.

    In between the surgeries, Thanksgiving dinner was prepared and enjoyed here for 8 family members and Christmas gifts wrapped and sorted, one box mailed off. The stocking stuffers have mostly been gathered and sorted by recipient. We were set to go look for our Christmas tree sometime during the first week of December, only to find out that the two local cut your own farms both shut down, one on November 26, the other on December 3. I guess the drought from the summer affected their trees’ health. As a result, we ended up buying an artificial prelit tree on sale. Both of us were finding the cold hike through the farms taxing now, so we will just use this tree as long as it lasts.

    Also in the middle of the two surgeries, we celebrate several family birthdays. At my birthday dinner, local grandson approached me and ask for assistance on a project. Forty odd years ago, we purchased candy cane yarn rope garland for our tree. Ever since daughter was on her own with her own tree, she has coveted the garland. Her son has tried for several years to locate some and purchase it for her to no avail. His project was to see if his wool spinning grandmother could help him make some. Challenge accepted after my search for it was also futile. A huge ball of super bulky chenille white yarn and another of red were purchased. I attempted to make one length on my own but wasn’t happy with it. He was invited over so we could figure it out together and between his intelligent engineering oriented mind and my spinning knowledge and equipment, we succeeded in making 12 very long garlands.

    There is an awesome video that hubby took for the process of making one, but I can’t get it to load here.

    And a few days ago, we had our first snow of the winter, about the most we received in all of 2023 and it was only a couple of inches after a day of 3 inches of rain.

    Hopefully, the rain and the snow are omens of more wet to follow and hopefully break the 2023 drought.

    The littles are all grown, the two hatchlings both young roosters. They haven’t started crowing yet, but at 20-21 weeks old, it will happen any time now. The young pullets haven’t begun laying yet, but they should start soon. The old girls are all in stages of molt, so eggs had to be purchased at the Farmer’s Market last weekend.

    We continue our daily walks outdoors unless it is too cold or raining. Then we walk the mall or go to the gym 1/9th mile track and walk a numbing 36 laps.

    Right now it is quiet on the farm. We will have some of our family here for Christmas and Christmas dinner and look forward to that.

    Wishing you all happy holidays, depending on which you celebrate.

  • Day to day

    Every day, hubby and I take a walk. We aim for 4 miles and enjoy walking outdoors when the weather allows. If it is rainy, we do have a 1/9th mile track in the local gym, but 36 laps gets boring quickly. Generally, we walk one of several sections of the Huckleberry Trail, a rails to trails paved path that covers about 15 miles in the county adjacent to ours. One of our walks takes us through part of the Virginia Tech campus and through the Hahn Gardens on campus. The gardens have been beautiful with flowers, shrubs, trees, and art displays that can be voted on, some sculptures, some hanging banners in the trees. When there isn’t an event going on in the gardens, the Pavilion is open with restrooms and a water fountain.

    Today while crossing the creek in the gardens, this display of mushrooms was found beneath a tree.

    And just on the other side of the creek, a display of ceramic mushrooms.

    The bees are being fed 2:1 syrup to help them prepare for the upcoming winter. Two quart jar feeders were placed in each hive about a week ago and today a gallon of syrup was carried down to refill the jars. Three of the jars were mostly empty, one still had a few ounces. The bees were very active around the feeders, but these are the most gentle bees ever. I did wear my veil and gloves, but didn’t remember to put on my boots with my pants tucked in, yet there was no aggression.

    While refilling the syrup feeders, I added the sugar trays which give the jars a little extra room, they are the narrow box just below the top boxes under the lids. When it gets too cold for the syrup, sugar bricks will be placed on the sugar trays on top of the top box of frames to give them more help through the winter. If we end up with a week of single digit weather with sub zero temperatures like last Christmas, I may take a couple of kid size sleeping bags we have stored and wrap the hives. So far they are successful this year and it would be nice to keep it that way.

    This evening, I had the opportunity to teach a hand’s on soap making class at the museum where I volunteer. Five folks worked to learn to make traditional Lye soap, of course with a bit of history on Colonial soap making and we even melted the lard in a cast iron spider pot on a small fire in the yard.

    Fun, a new skill, and great folks enjoyed the evening.