Category: Farm Life

Signs of Spring

Leaves on the Lilacs
Blooms on the Forsythia, my favorite spring shrub.
New chicks

Frightful on the left behind the waterer. Three are Redtail Hawk colored, one is more black and gray with just a bit of reddish brown in her wings.

The four new Americauna pullets were picked up today. Not wanting to order chicks, set up the brooder and raise them until they could go outside, I spotted a post on one of my Facebook Groups from a lady who offered to include your order in hers and you could pick up your day old chicks from her for cost or she would raise them to 8 weeks for a fee. Wanting to keep a heritage flock of the Buffys, but missing the green eggs from the Olive Egger, I ordered 4 Americaunas from her and agreed to pay the fee to let her raise them til feathered and able to be outside. By fall we should have green, blue or pink eggs.

Daughter and I used a roll of heavy mil plastic and stapled it to the sides of the chicken tractor, put the food and water inside and introduced them to their new temporary home. In a few days, they will be released into the pen to run around and graze and get acquainted with the Buffys through the fence. In 8 more weeks, once they can have the whole grain feed mixed with layer pellets, they will move to the coop. I hope by then that one or more of the Buffys decide to get broody and sit a nest. They will be moved to the brooder pen once they hatch which might expedite moving the Americaunas. Daughter has decided that the largest one with the Retail Hawk like coloring and the dark head should be named Frightful after the Falcon in My Side of the Mountain. The other three are still unnamed. I don’t name birds that I know will eventually end up in the stew pot, so I don’t know if they will be named.

The Buffys got free range time while all of this was going on and every time I moved toward the house or back out toward the pens, I felt like the Pied Piper with the flock so close to my feet that I had to walk with a shuffle to keep from stepping on a hen. They will eat out of my hand, but they don’t want to be petted.

April 6, 2015
A Weekend of Play, Responsibility, and Loss

The loss was not too significant, given that we still have about 6 weeks until we can plant tender plants outdoors, but as we were leaving for two days, one night, I left the light on my starter flat of tomatoes, tomatillos, and peppers. Most of the tomatoes and the tomatillos had sprouted, only a few of the peppers had shown any sign of sprouting. The light was very close to the clear lid on the sprouts and given the south facing window as well, it must have gotten too hot especially for the ones that had gotten tall enough to reach the lid. I still have a few Jalapeno sprouts, one leggy tomatillo, but the rest are a burned loss. This morning, I clipped the dead sprouts and replanted seeds. This time, I am leaving the lid off and just spritzing the surface a few times each day.

Our away was a trip with the two grandchildren living with us to go to Northern Virginia to pick up our eldest grandson for his week of spring break. We arrived mid afternoon and checked into the hotel just two short blocks from our son’s apartment. The only things positive that I can say about the hotel were its convenience and its price. We were on the front of the building, right across from the office with a busy street out front. The beds had no foundation and were uncomfortably soft and unstable and the wall mounted heating unit, needed because the temperature dropped into the 20’s and the door had no weather stripping (we could see light around all 4 sides) sounded like a wind machine. The thermostat in the unit did not work, so it was either too hot or too cold depending on whether I turned it on or off during the night. The kids slept, fortunately, but Mountaingdad and I did not get 4 hours of sleep between us. The kids were well behaved on the drive up and once we arrived at son’s apartment. All of us went out to dinner together before separating for the night. Son’s research showed us that a bus to the Metro left from in front of our hotel at 8:35 a.m. and he and eldest grandson were going to join us for a walking tour of the monuments on Sunday morning. The car was packed and we were trying to make do with the free breakfast (bagels and grocery store donuts) when son texted that they found a bus a half hour earlier and could we be ready.

The Florida born grandkids thought the Fairfax connector bus and the Metro were great. We got off on the Metro stop that put us nearest the Lincoln Memorial, a city walk of about a dozen blocks. A lot of hand holding and herding were necessary to keep those two safe on Washington DC streets, especially since that grandson wanted to do everything that his almost two year older cousin was doing.

A bit of heavy reading on a man just studied in 2nd grade.

Cousins posing in front of Lincoln.

More monuments, the Korean War memorial, Martin Luther King memorial (also a recently studied topic), a history recitation by the eldest grandson on Jefferson as we looked across the water at that memorial, too far to walk with kids, and a little one who soon gave out, taking turns being carried by an adult, Uncle being the preferred carrier.

With a bit of coaxing and challenges to race, we got her on the ground again as we hit the homestretch, around the Washington monument with a jog up it’s hill to actually get to touch it and on to the Smithsonian Metro station for the train back to Vienna for the trip home last evening. Many miles walked and tired kids.

The second grader was excited to see Washington. Eldest grandson excited to be able to spend spring break on the farm, son and daughter-in-law relieved to be able to work and study this week without trying to find daycare for him and entertain him at night, and us pleased to be able to have 3/5 of our grandchildren in our home at one time with the responsibility to keep them safe and cared for in their parents’ absence.

Daughter and son-in-law are in route with a truck full of their household goods, hopefully taking it slowly and safely to arrive here tomorrow night.

While we were away, our haying farmer neighbor took out several cedar and locust trees that have interfered with mowing and haying and removed about a dozen boulder size rocks that have knocked more than one tooth off of his sickle bar and caused more than one nick in our brush hog blade. His haying and our mowing should be an easier job this year.

March 30, 2015
Baby Calves and Spinning Wheels

Granddaughter is fascinated with all of the spring calves and lambs and is often asking us to drive by one of the many fields with babies. The foals at the Virginia Tech Horse Center haven’t arrived in the fields yet, but we did see a whole field of tiny black lambs a couple of weeks ago. It looked like most of the ewes had twins as there were many more lambs than ewes. Most of the calves are too far away from the car to see except as small lumps lying in the grass, but our neighbor’s herd is next door and our gravel road runs right through her property, so we can often drive up and see them right by the road. This morning, we drove up the road and the herd was right there with all of the babies nearby. There are six calves less than 2 weeks old and a couple more that were born right at the beginning of the year.

We parked along the side of the road and watched as they ate hay, nursed and were bathed by the cows. She doesn’t quite understand why she can’t pet them as they are all smaller than our Mastiff that she adores.

In the past week, I have gotten back on my spinning wheel. I had some roving that I had purchased at the Fiber retreat in February that is for my daughter. As I had ordered a jumbo flyer for my spinning wheel and wanted to wait for it to ply the two very full bobbins of Dorset lamb that I was spinning at the retreat, I began on her roving. The roving that I purchased was called Mystery Sheep. A flock of sheep had been abandoned in a nearby town and had been rescued by a kindly citizen. Two of the ladies at the retreat have a shop selling roving from their own sheep and also selling from the rescued flock. Twenty percent of the sale of that roving goes back to helping provide feed and vet care for the rescued flock. It felt good to buy some fiber that was going to help out. It was only 2 ounces of fiber and spun up into only about 116 yards of yarn, but enough for my daughter to make herself a slouchy hat, which is a project she wants to start as soon as her house is packed up and moved.

The fiber was soft Easter egg blue and green and made a nice yarn.

Now on my wheel is a very soft Merino just in time for the Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington D.C. It is a nice cherry red and is spinning to about worsted weight. It is 4 ounces of fiber and should made a nice skein that will soon appear on my Etsy shop.

On the knitting front, I am slowly completing the yoke on my newest sweater, but it has taken me weeks to do the 7 inches that I have accomplished, just too many other things going on in our lives right now.

March 24, 2015
Out Like A Lion

At least it isn’t sticking. After 4 beautiful spring like days, today is a return to winter. It was supposed to be rain and perhaps will turn to rain before it ends, but not more snow.
Mountaingdad is on the road with Daughter, so hopefully the roads aren’t getting messy.
The roads were fine a couple of hours ago when I went out to lunch with a friend. In fact, it hadn’t started then, we watched the snow showers start while we ate. We enjoyed some social time for a hour or so, then home as today begins nearly two weeks of full time grand parenting while daughter and her husband pack up their house that they sold in Florida. I’m glad we had a couple of months of them living here before they had to be left in our care. We will do fine.

March 19, 2015
Busy Days

Another beautiful day. It was supposed to rain according to yesterday’s forecast, but this morning, it had changed and was a mostly sunny day with only the lightest of sprinkles. I grabbed half a dozen raspberry canes and put them in water as Son #2 would like some of the ones we pulled up. As soon as I can find some cheap pots, I will put them in soil and prune them to give them a chance to establish roots before I can deliver them in April. That was done early when the chicken chores were being completed.

Before Daughter and Mountaingdad got up, I had made two new soap recipes, one with Oatmeal, Lavender buds, and Black Walnut powder. This will be a great body scrub soap once it cures. The other is a Jasmine Green Tea soap. Neither of these soaps have any essential oils or dyes, so they will be good for those with sensitive skin.

After lunch, we experimented with a recipe for Beard Oils for my Etsy shop. Daughter’s husband uses Beard Oil and we thought they might make a good addition to the shop. The lotion bar molds arrived yesterday, so a new batch of Hand Butter bars were also made to add to the shop. The lotion bars, Hand Butter bars and Beard Oils can all be personalized with a customer’s favorite scent or scents or made unscented.

Daughter and I planted the Lacinato Kale, Purple Top Turnips and a 4 X 4′ bed of Daikon Radishes for kimchi this afternoon. They are the last early spring seed.

March 17, 2015
Garden Season

Though we are still 6 to 8 weeks from our last frost, some garden tasks and a few vegetables can be planted now. For the past two days, we have had dry warm spring like days. As there are more mouths to feed in our household now, we decided to expand the garden, nearly double in size. To facilitate doing this, we first decided to move the grapevines from the north edge of the garden to the north edge of the orchard. The Raspberry canes that I had planted several years ago in the row near the south edge of the garden had become overwhelming, so we moved 6 plants along the chicken run and dug out the remainder of the canes to discard.

Raspberries along chicken run

Grapevines pruned and moved, needing new trellis.

Two of our helpers throwing weeds to the chooks from the now empty Raspberry bed.

Our day was waning, dinner prep needed doing, so we planted 40-50 young onion starts and a half dozen kale plants, erected a row cover bubble over the kale to keep out the cabbage moths/worms,

Tomorrow if we can get it done before the rain starts, we will plant Daikon radishes, turnips, and Lacinato Kale seed. On our next dry stretch, we will deconstruct the 4 remaining compost bins, collect some rock, perhaps rent a tiller and finish the expansion. A good day of labor. After our dinner prep and clean up, we planted tomato and pepper seeds in the indoor flats, put them on the warming tray and set the grow light over them.

Once the last frost date passes, hopefully we will have beds ready for twice as many tomatoes and peppers as last year, the peas and beans, sunflowers, and herbs will be planted. The winter squash are going to be planted in the orchard this year and allowed to spread at will. I may have to extend the electric fence around the orchard again to keep the deer out.

March 16, 2015
Welcome change

A warm sunny day! Yay. Much of last week’s snow melted today, though the driveway is a muddy mess developing deep ruts in several places. The chooks are happy to have more than a few square feet to move about. We are happy because they had school for the first time in two full weeks and grandson returned. The extended weather forecast is looking generally more positive with milder temperatures during the days, but still a lot of nights that are very cold and will freeze then thaw cycle. We still have a treacherous path to the house both the front door and the garage doors as the areas that were “cleared” by the tractor developed ice several inches thick.

The beast, our 210 lb English Mastiff is finding the walk in and out of the house scary as he has slipped a few times. The German Shepherd and the Golden Retriever both bound over it like it isn’t there. I tried to break it up today, but even when the chunks were manageable, they pulled up the sparse grass just off the front stoop.

We fear at least a late start for school tomorrow as we are expecting frozen rain and sleet tonight. We are ready for spring, dry yards and driveways and a garden that can be worked.

March 2, 2015
All closed up

Our entire region is shut down. No school, many businesses, and community services are closed today. The region doesn’t handle more than a couple of inches of snow, especially when they can’t pretreat the roads. Our 4 wheel drive SUV would probably be able to get up our gravel driveway and our gravel road but the paved road is likely an ice and snow covered downhill slick.
The sun is trying to come out, broken clouds still flurrying, the wind is howling and blowing the snow we got everywhere. The official count for our community was 9″ but going over to do chicken chores, the snow in the yard is over my barn boots and they are 11″ high.

Because the chickens have been cooped up for three days, I attempted to get them outside. Spoiled hay was spread in the run and food put outside in a pan so it wouldn’t disappear 11″ down.

Yesterday they fouled their water pan I used so I could knock the ice out of it each time I went to give them more, so today I hung a waterer inside and spread a new foot of straw in the coop. Between scratching for feed and kicking it out when the coop door is open, the foot thick layer from last week was only a couple inches deep of finely broken straw.
In spite of my efforts, they would go out the return immediately to the coop. They are still laying, we are getting 6 top 8 a day.
The grands want to go play in the snow, but with it in the teens and the wind blowing, it is a bit too cold for much time outside.
We have had our good snow, now I’m ready for spring. I can’t even imagine being in Boston this winter.

February 17, 2015
Winter’s Roar

Our winter has been unusual to say the least. Until a couple of weeks ago, I think the temperatures had been above normal with occasional snow flurries, a few barely covered the ground snow falls that didn’t last. Then things changed. We haven’t seen daytime temperatures rising above 20° (-6.7°c) and night time temperatures near zero (-17.8°c) in more than a week. On Saturday, we were expecting flurries and got several inches with sharp temperature drops. We had driven in to town to a nice restaurant to celebrate our 37th Valentine Day and Anniversary and the drive back home was a white knuckle ride.

Yesterday we took Son#1 and Grandson#1 to the bus to return home from bringing my car home and a weekend visit and it was brutally cold and windy, wind chills in the double digit negatives.
There were severe weather warnings posted for today and the school makeup day that had been scheduled for today was canceled.

We woke to the expected snow. So far about 5″ with the heaviest part of the system due this evening and overnight. We may be looking at a foot or more with extremely cold temperatures and expected to drop to -10°f (-23.3°c) Thursday night. We aren’t used to that type of temperature. Our firewood supply is running low and our heat pump is struggling.
My chooks won’t come out of the coop when there is snow on the ground and with the temperatures as they are, I didn’t even open the pop door today. I have gone out 3 times to change out the frozen water, twice to throw down a scoop of feed into the straw and collect the eggs before they freeze.
Our neighbor has two very pregnant cows and we saw her go down to check on them before the snow cover got too deep. Our steep gravel road will be difficult to traverse in a couple more inches of snow. I hope the cows don’t calve before we have a moderation in weather back to around freezing this weekend.
The grands are playing in the rec room, I am knitting, reading, and cooking stew and homemade bread. A good way to spend a frigid snowy day.

February 16, 2015
Winter Disappointments

By this time in winter, we have seen several snowfalls. Sometimes a dusting, others a real snow, but this winter has been mostly rain or freezing rain We went to bed last night listening to the dire warning being issued in the Northeast USA and a forecast for snow to fall beginning around midnight and accumulating up to 5″ here in Southwest Virginia. We awoke to no snow on the ground, no snow falling and broken clouds. Granddaughter hoping for snow later in the morning but wanting to wear her short sleeve, frilly “Frozen” dress, created a most interesting outfit.

Her leggings are black and white with zigzags, hearts and other patterns, the boots as you can see are black and pink with multicolored polka dots. She was ready to go out.

Daughter has commented that she needed slippers and warmer taller socks to wear, so we decided to venture out early to return something we purchased yesterday on our girls afternoon out while Mountaingdad and Grandson went to a movie. We also were seeking socks and slippers for her. Did you know that slippers are an item like gloves that are purchased by stores for Christmas and are not available year round? We finally found her a pair at the third store we tried.

While we were out, the chickens were free ranging, but when we returned home a bit after noon, she and I lured them back to the pen so the dogs could wander. Our dogs don’t mess with them usually, but their Golden Retriever by nature wants to chase them and barks at them even if he sees them coming and going from the coop. When we went to lock them up and check for eggs, the coop smelled damp and too strongly of ammonia. My two large round bales of hay that were set aside for coop use this winter and garden use in the spring have gotten wet and moldy and can’t be used in the coop anymore. The local feed and seed had square bales of straw so I drove in to purchase two. We are due for more very cold weather and I have already seen some frostbite damage on Romeo the rooster’s comb, so I had to do more cleaning than just adding layers to the coop and stirring up the layers. Trying to leave at least some of the composting layer in the bottom, most of the hay was shoveled out and tossed into the run and into the compost bin, including the nesting box hay. About a third of a bale of straw, clean and dry put a nice deep layer in the coop so hopefully the gang will stay warm and dry in the upcoming cold.

Though I don’t like to put food or water in the coop, I have been tossing a handful of scratch into the coop in the late afternoon to encourage the chooks to keep the bedding stirred up and broken down and the corn they eat helps them stay warm.

I guess the spoiled hay will be used to keep the run drier and less muddy and in the spring to mulch the garden. I hate having to buy straw when we harvest 80 to 100 round bales of hay each spring. Next year, I will find a better way to store it.

This afternoon, it has begun to rain off and on with a snow flurries expected as the temperature plummets to the teens tonight. More is expected later this week and weekend, just as I have to ride a bus to Northern Virginia to babysit Grandson #1 and pick up my car from Son #1 who has been using it for a bit.

I really hope we have at least one good snowfall for the kids.

January 26, 2015