Cabin Crafted

Category: family

  • It’s Been a While

    Not to anything dire, just not wanting to keep posting the same routine.

    It has been a hot, wet summer and the garden has suffered. Raccoons got every ear of corn and started on the tomatoes as they ripened. Green beans have been very prolific as were the cucumbers. The cucumber vines have now died off and were pulled from their trellis yesterday afternoon and the first planting of green beans also pulled as I had been away for 5 days and most of the ones on the plants were too large and soft to be desirable as we don’t like the “southern” way of cooking them with fat back until they are practically mush. The second planting has just begun to provide.

    We set about on Monday to get the lawn mowed after lunch. I sent DH out to get gas for a fill up, thinking there was enough to start while he was gone, but I backed the riding mower out of the garage and it sputtered to a stop. Instead of sitting idly by, the bed of flowers by the east side of the garage was a weedy mess and the grass was hanging over into it, so much bending, stooping, and sitting on a step stool that sent me into an unplanned hard landing on the grass, and all the grass and lambs quarters were pulled, a new edge dug. He began to mow while I was doing that so the line trimmer was used to go around the house and over to the vegetable garden that had lambs quarters, wild amaranth, and horse nettles as tall as me that the line trimmer couldn’t handle. This is the result of hand weeding all of it and the orchard grass growing in the paths.

    That pile is about 2.5 feet tall, what you see behind it is the same mess that is in the closed off chicken run that I can’t access until the fence is removed. I don’t know if it will compost as I had no means of chopping it up, so it is a stack of 5 to 6 feet long stalks mixed with mats of Creeping Charlie, Bermuda grass, Smart weed, and other unwanted greenery that had taken over the end of the garden not in use this summer. I’m thinking about trying to move the inner fence to cross just above the part of the garden in use and letting the chicken have at the rest. It will leave them unprotected from the hawks but that is a chance I am willing to take.

    Yesterday a very early venture over to the garden to harvest beans and tomatoes and finish weeding a small section I never got to Monday, found all of the Tithonia and Sunflowers full of sleeping wild bees.

    Yesterday afternoon, after a trip to the nursery, flats of spinach and Romaine lettuce seedling, a row of Little Gems lettuce seed, and three rows of turnips were planted in one of the empty raised beds. The one the first green beans were in will be reserved to plant garlic when it cools more.

    The reason for my 5 day absence was to travel to Black Mountain, North Carolina for my favorite Art and Fiber Retreat. We meet at the YMCA Blue Ridge Assembly. It was rejuvenating and a bit heartbreaking. The group is a wonderful mix of ladies that spin, knit, crochet, weave, and do other paper arts. The heartbreak was to see the damage caused by Helene and know that though they have worked hard to recover, only 40% occupancy is available still as they lost a couple of buildings and had damage to many others. The motel style lodge where we stay and where meals are prepared and served by the staff was the first to be repaired and reopened. Helene took out every power pole leading up to the buildings except for 3. It took them 4 weeks to get any power back. The creek that became a river down the west side, that damaged the old gym so badly it had to be torn down is now a gully 16 feet deep and washed through the woods taking out trees and rhododendron to now look like a dry river bed.

    This is an area above the retreat that is up the mountain. All of their hiking trails in that area are impassable still and a lower priority than restoring the rest of the buildings.

    Part of the repair is placing 14 foot arches where roads were to divert the flow, instead of smaller culverts that had always handled the creeks in the past. Also where two landslides sent mud into buildings, have new reinforced walls at the top and the slides seeded as they are now open meadows.

    In addition to visiting with friends I see seldom, I finished a skein of yarn I had been spindle spinning, took a needle felting class and made two little pumpkins, and started wheel spinning 8 ounces of Coopworth and Alpaca roving purchased from a friend that raises the animals and dyes the wool before the mill processes it into roving. Also some knitting on a pair of fingerless mitts was done with the wool I purchased in Alaska in May, spun on spindles and plyed on spindles.

    Now back home, my food consumption is focusing on smaller portions and healthier choices as we always have a snack table with too much sugar and fat on it, and though I did take a walk up as far as I could go up hill above the retreat one day, I consumed too much not so healthy snacks in addition to the three meals a day they provide. Now home, I have resumed my daily walks with DH of 2-2.5 miles. It has been so humid though, it feels like you are breathing fog.

    We have a cooler week of so ahead, it should help make the walks more enjoyable. We see early Autumn in the air as the early turning leaves are coloring and some are already falling. Until I have something new, stay safe.

  • Animal Behavior

    We have lived here for about 18 years now, and for 15 of them we had either barn cats or large dogs. All are gone now. Early on, because we have 30 acres of fields and woods, we allowed some hunting on the property, but after an incident when one of the young hunters, invited a friend we did not know and the friend then showed up alone with his 5 year old son, we cancelled hunting privileges for non family and no one in the family has hunted here for years. With no domestic animals in or near the house and no hunters on the land, the wild animal behaviors have changed.

    We used to park the cars in the driveway and every spring, we had to cover the side mirrors to keep the male cardinal, that calls the side yard his habitat, from constant attacks against the “intruder.” The cars now get parked in the garage.

    The male bird aggression is interesting. This morning a tiny sparrow repeatedly bashed his breast and head against the French doors of the dining room. I tried turning on the inside light, putting a dining room chair against the glass, and finally hung a paper owl from the back of the chair to keep it from a concussion or broken neck.

    We have always had deer foraging and crossing the property, but now they rest in the shade of the row of pine trees on the edge of the mowed lawn just to the west of the house and barely flinch when we go outside to water plants, fill hummingbird feeders, or go over to the chicken pen and coop. The hay is still high and unmowed and it is fawning season where the does drop their young. There is a new mom doe (probably a first time as she only has one fawn) that feels safe enough that she had her tiny little one near the house. As their behavior is to hide the fawn and move off from it, coming back to nurse a few times a day, and then moving the fawn to a new location, we have seen her bring the little one in to the mowed yard where it is easier to walk, then take it back into the tall grass to hide. We can tell approximately where the fawn is hidden by where she goes to graze.

    I won’t look for the fawn, there is no reason to disturb them, but we look out the south windows to see if we see where the doe is grazing. She is a brown hump in the tall grass when grazing and will look up if she hears a noise. The area she is using is about 2 football fields in size. After the fawn is about 3 weeks old and starting to eat more solid food, it will begin to follow the doe around and the two of them will like form a small herd with other does with fawns or other does that she is related to.

    The other wildlife whose behaviors have changed in the absence of cats and dogs are the rabbits and chipmunks that come right up to the house, the chipmunks even up on the deck. And we have a groundhog that seems to prefer the mowed lawn to graze but lives near or under a cedar tree right on the edge of the hayfield. I haven’t caught it out to take a photo lately, it has been rainy for the past 4 days.

    Last weekend, our eldest, his wife, and their son came to our local grandson’s high school graduation. His son is city born and city raised and he spent the entire weekend looking for o’possums and groundhogs to no avail. We did see rabbits and deer to show him and warned him about nighttime wandering to look for them due to skunks and coyotes. I haven’t heard the coyotes this spring yet.

    Life in a rural area is ever changing. The hen turkeys should be hatching poults soon and we will see them. The toms are in male groups now and if they are in the fields, we can’t see them due to the height and thickness of the hay. Within the next month, weather permitting, the hay will be mowed and baled, hauled off to other farms and the animals will be visible in the mowed fields again. I love the rural mountain life.

  • Winter Hit Hard

    Fortunately it isn’t going to last long and has been dry except for snow flurries, often with the sun shining.

    We had a wedding and reception here last weekend with about 45 guests. The bride, groom, their sons, and her parents stayed here for 4 nights a few extra guests for dinner the night before and lunch the day after and it was cold, but not as cold as it became a couple of days later. We haven’t gotten up to freezing for several days and a few mid teens nights. It is supposed to temper back to more normal for this time of year weather for the next week.

    I have mentioned that the deer population seems to be extremely high this year and they must have figured out that they can’t get shot if they are on our farm.

    As I was preparing dinner a day or two ago, I looked down the hill to our lower hay field and there were at least 20 deer grazing down there. The hunting around here doesn’t seem to be reducing the impact. With chronic wasting disease and hemorrhagic disease in deer both spreading across Virginia, it will reduce the load, but will make it more dangerous to take the meat through hunting. So far there is no evidence that the prions from chronic wasting disease has or can be spread to humans, but if it does, it would produce the same type of brain deterioration that Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease does. Wisdom would require that deer taken for meat should be checked and if infected, not eaten.

    The monthly Jenkins challenge is two fold. Those of us who wanted to participate, sent 4 ounces of fiber to one of two “Elves” who spent a couple of days together preparing small 5 gram packages labelled with the first 25 days of December and returned them to the participants. Alternatively you could just spin for 15 minutes per day. I elected to participate in the Fibre Sample group and have enjoyed the surprise and pleasure of opening the little package each morning, spinning, plying, and skeining it into a mini skein. At the end of the month, I will need to find a plan for the 25 mini skeins of yarn from different breeds, different breeds, and a variety of colors.

    Along with the daily spinning, a couple of Christmas gifts are being made.

    This afternoon, Christmas cards were written and prepared to be mailed tomorrow. The house is finally decorated except for the tree which I still need to set up and decorate. Most of the gifts have been purchased or made, but a couple still are undecided. The ones that had to be mailed have been. Christmas is coming up too fast.

  • Whew, end in sight

    On November 28, hubby took a spill in the road where a pedestrian crosswalk sign had been run down and only the rubber base remained. This spill resulted in a 2 cm displaced clavicle fracture, very near the shoulder end. Eleven days later, he finally had surgery to implant a hook plate to pull everything back together. Today 4 weeks post surgery he was told to stop wearing the sling and begin gentle use and schedule 6 weeks of PT to restore strength and range of motion.

    The past 5 1/2 weeks have required sleeping in a recliner, eating most meals on a tray in the recliner, and having assistance to shower and dress, mostly in pull on workout pants and shoulder surgery snap up the sides and shoulder shirts. When the weather turned cold, we bought him two button up the front flannel shirts and worked gently and carefully to get it over the injured arm and shoulder before putting the good arm in the shirt.

    Today for the first time, he put on the fleece jacket over the flannel putting both arms in the jacket as we were leaving the surgeon’s office. This is good because our high of 44 was at 4:30 a.m. and the temperature has been in free fall every since, aiming for 17 degrees f tonight. Tonight, we will attempt getting him comfortable in our bed, another step in the healing process.

    Soon, we will begin walking laps in the mall to start building his stamina back. When he stumbled, he had just walked 5.5 miles and was feeling great.

    I immediately contacted the town and reported the sign issue, it had been missing for weeks, and the next day, it was replaced. As we haven’t been walking there since the accident, we don’t know if it is still there, however, it seems to disappear regularly.

    We are both grateful that healing is happening and progress is being made in regaining normal use of his arm. The only positive, was it wasn’t his dominant arm and hand.

  • Preparations for love and joy

    November 19-30 are days filled with birthdays, Thanksgiving, and a wedding. The birthdays begin on the 19th with our newest granddaughter by the marriage of daughter to her new hubby in October, this one leaves her teens and turned 20. She is followed by my stepmom, me, granddaughter, daughter.

    On Wednesday, eldest son (the groom), his bride, his son, her son, and her parents will arrive to stay with the us for the long weekend of celebration. Daughter will host Thanksgiving for 16, with contributions of help by son to spatchcock and season the turkey, me to provide some sides, relishes, and pies, and extra chairs.

    Friday we have a traditional Ukrainian pre wedding dinner for those staying here and a few other guests and meeting up with daughter to give her a birthday card. The wedding will be in our home on Saturday with a light meal reception following. Sunday will have a traditional Ukrainian post wedding lunch.

    Today, all guest beds have been made with fresh sheets, all floors swept and mopped. The cheeses and crackers for the cheese board were purchased. Other food purchases that I am providing will be made as the week goes by so they are still fresh when ready to serve.

    Tomorrow, cranberries will be cooked, no canned cranberry sauce here, a couple of pumpkin pies also prepared and cooked. The brussels sprouts and sweet potatoes will wait until Thursday morning after breakfast for all the houseguests is done.

    Such an exciting time. Then on to preparing for Christmas. Family tradition forbids me from decorating until after daughter’s birthday and this year, the wedding in the house. Next week, the bins of Christmas decorations will be hauled upstairs and the house will be festive for that holiday for a month.

  • Still here, I think

    Toward the end of October, my love tripped over the base of a broken sign on a public street and broke his collarbone enough to displace it 2 cm. It took them 11 days to schedule surgery to put in a plate to hold it together. It has been a week since surgery and he is still only minimally functional, requiring lots of assistance. Fortunately it was his non dominant arm, but is still very uncomfortable for him. He is 18 days in from the injury and facing several more weeks of wearing a sling. We hope that the pain settles soon so we can begin to get him out and walking again. He had just finished a 5.5 mile walk when the accident occurred. We don’t want him to lose all of the good he had done for his health since last spring.

    The 18 days have mostly been home confinement and as I don’t want to leave him here alone while he requires assistance, my ventures out have been short and necessary such as picking up online ordered groceries or prescriptions and bandage material for the daily incision care.

    This has allowed a lot of reading time and crafting time. A gal that does history education with me at the museum is a self published author and I have gone through 3 of her historical novels. I finished spinning a skein of yarn, spindle spun the start of another, knit about half of a Nordic star scarf with wool my daughter and SIL brought me from their honeymoon in Iceland (I was the teen supervisor for her kiddos), and started a hat from some previously spun yarns.

    The weather has turned from mild and dry to cold and wet this week. The rain is much needed, though we only got a little more than an inch. There is some more predicted in the next week including our first snow shower possibility. As Thanksgiving approaches, the seasonal cactus is showing it’s beauty.

    This is the month of family birthdays, with Thanksgiving crammed in the midst and a wedding to add to the festivities. We are hoping that though hubby will still be in a sling, he will feel well enough to fully participate in all of the celebrations. It will be fun having everyone together here and at daughter’s home.

    So life goes on here, though my blogging as been sporadic.

  • 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.

  • Oh the wonders of youth

    This has been a week full of youth. Tuesday, Son2 and his family arrived with almost 2/3 of our grandkids. Lots of food, lots of noise, lots of hugs and snuggles. And they brought their beautiful young German Shepherd, so lots of puppy love. It is so cool to see the developmental changes in the younger kiddos. Going from throwing the blocks to the 4 year old intent on putting together the 4 sixteen piece puzzles and wanting to do it himself. Son 2 and I had to evict some mice from their RV stored here, so they slept in the house while we cleaned and trapped. The next day we worked to replace the water heater in the RV as the old one ruptured a while back in cold weather. This was a fun challenge as it wasn’t supposed to rain, but it started just as we opened the hole in the side of the RV. The big table umbrella came to our rescue , propped on the roof with me holding it in place with one hand while offering the other hand as an assistance.

    The next few days were used to wash sheets and remake the beds used by them and also the linens from the RV that had been “miced.” Their linens are now sealed in rigid totes until they need them again. Any dishes that were not put away in the RV were also sanitized in our dishwasher and put away. And daily trap checks are being done to make sure we got them all.

    There are often derogatory comments made about young adults. We loaned our scaffolding to a young couple that are friends of friends. As soon as they borrowed it, offers to do anything to help us were made. The wife has house and dog sat for us a couple of times, but still they asked for jobs to help. A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that I wanted to redo the chicken run but had to get the supplies. In the meantime, I decided to create a covered tunnel around most of the vegetable garden inside the fence so they could keep the weeds and bugs at bay. I had begun that task, but found pounding in T post to be challenging, so I quit with only about 12-15 feet done. There was a lot of old fence wire in the back of the barn. Early this week, plans were made for her and her husband to come assist me. There is now a tunnel around all of the garden except the gate area and enough room to the left of the gate to get to the wide path in the garden. And it is covered. Then the berry half barrels were moved, cardboard from daughter’s recent move laid every where there isn’t a tunnel or garden box, the half barrels put back in place on top where they had been, then most of a round bale of last year’s hay spread to cover all paths and all the cardboard as well as thick layer in the chicken run. We worked together for about 3.5-4 hours and did more work that I would have gotten done in weeks. All I have to do now is keep the beds weeded and that is very doable. They are going to come another weekend and help me dismantle the chicken tractor that blew over and broke a few years ago and get rid of the rotting wood, roll the hardware cloth to store. They were terrific and so gracious with their strength and energy.

    And the offer to come help anytime I need assistance on jobs that are more easily done with help is so welcome.

    The only error was not cutting an opening from the tunnel I had put in to the one we created today, but I think I have come up with a solution. Next up is creating a structure around the box where the galvanized tub is resting to become the compost piles.

    I am tired from the week, but rejuvenated by all of the youth in our lives this week. Tomorrow, daughter and I will join forces to make empanadas for dinner with her family and us. It is always fun to work in the kitchen with her.

  • 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.