Category: Farm Life

This morning is glorious.

The sky is a beautiful shade of blue, nearly cloudless.  The fields and fir trees still wearing the greens of summer, the deciduous trees bare of their foliage, a light haze on the distant mountains, the haze that named a nearby mountain chain The Blue Ridge.  It is mild this morning, only the lightest skim of ice on the chickens water tub and expected to reach near 60f today, the fierce winds of yesterday have calmed.

In the mountains, weather systems don’t last long, this beautiful fall weather will end today.  Tomorrow, the weather prognosticators say we could see up to 2″ of snow.  It is early for snow, the earliest recorded measurable snow for nearby Roanoke was October 10, 1979.  The average first snow is December 15th.  Meteorologic winter begins on November 21st, my birthday and the winter solstice, the official first day of winter and the shortest day, a month later.

Regardless of the season and the weather it brings, this is still the most beautiful place in the world.  We love it year round.  Life is good on our mountain farm.

Living in a mountainous rural area, we often hear gunfire.  The frequency of this noise increases as the various hunting seasons roll around.  Most of our neighbors hunt, wild turkey and deer primarily, but also bear, raccoons, squirrels and rabbits. Bow season for deer began in early October, this is followed by muzzle loaded gun hunting in early November then on to other firearms for the last couple of weeks in November, then the seasons reverse, ending in December.  When this begins, we see fewer deer on our property, it almost like they go into hiding.  One doe has been hanging around for a couple of years.  We know she is the same one because she has a gimpy left hind leg.  In spite of this, she has raised twin fawns last year and a single fawn this year.  She sticks close to the upper part of our property and we often see her with her current young near our barn.  As we drove out late this morning to deliver eggs and to resupply the various animal foods and get a few items for our larder, she and her fawn were grazing near the barn. It surprises me that she has survived the seasons.  I hope that she makes it through this cycle as well.  This evening, there is one in the lower hayfield.   During this season, we don’t venture far from the house without wearing a blaze orange hat or vest even to go to the chicken coop or garden.  We consider putting a blaze vest on our mastiff as he is of similar size and coloration to the local deer.

Fuzzy butt, Buttercup and Buffy are the last two to lay and both have finally figured it out. Now if they will just socialize with the other girls and Cogburn when they go off to free range, I would feel better about their safety.

I’ll spare you the gory details.

From this to

This, 75 lbs of chicken in the freezer.

And this to 6 winter dinners.

Rain beating on a tin roof;
Clouds scuttering along the mountain tops and valleys from west to east;
Wind whipping the dry leaves from the trees;
Blessed relief from the past couple of days of unseasonable heat;
As the tropical storm from the Gulf of Mexico blows itself out across the mountains and plods toward the shore.

This is often a favored season. Cooling temperatures, vivid leaf changes, the start of the holiday season. This year just isn’t right. The temperatures are cooling, 40s and 50s at night, but still reaching mid to upper 70s during the day, but the foliage isn’t doing it’s part. Instead of vivid colors, the leaves are browning and dropping from the trees.

The large maple that is usually the first to show bright gold and orange is barren without ever turning. This year was unusually wet after two years of dry conditions. Perhaps that stressed the trees. Hopefully it doesn’t mean that huge tree on the edge of our woods is dying. Under that tree is where we camped the first summer we owned the property. It provided shade for our brand new 9 week old grandson, our first. It sheltered our tents and picnic table as we met with a soil scientist for the perk test and interviewed several well drillers to get water for our planned home. We were sitting under that tree when we met our first neighbor as he and his son came down the tractor road to get his half of the hay that had been mowed with his equipment by his cousin. That tree has been the focus of many photographs from blogposts.

In spite of the government shutdown, I will venture up on the Blue Ridge Parkway in route to Meadows of Dan on Saturday, to visit a friend and to purchase some corn meal, winter squash, and Ashe County cheese. As the elevation is slightly higher than here, perhaps, there will be at least a glimpse of fall color.

     We are in the midst of mowing our hay fields for winter.  The summer rains have produced very thick grass and the mowing seems to be taking longer than usual.

     The chicken project is yielding 6 to 8 eggs per day, with one pullet still not producing.  I thought that number of birds would produce an excessive number of eggs, but find with the availability of fresh from the nest eggs, that we are using many more than when they came from the grocery or farmer’s market.  One dozen is dedicated each week to one of our farmer neighbors who is always willing to help us when we need it and any other extras are gladly purchased by friends with whom I knit or spin. The meat chicks continue to grow at an alarming rate. The breed grows so quickly that some of them are already having difficulty supporting their own weight and they have 2 1/2 more weeks before they go to freezer camp. I have decided that I would rather grow a heritage breed, maybe a dual purpose breed that will produce eggs and later meat, even if they take longer to mature, but will have the sense to get up on perches out of the weather.

     Today, one of those friends, invited me to have a cold process soap lesson.  I made two six pound batches of soap under her supervision and now feel confident to make my next batch of soap by this process instead of the melt and pour process that I had originally learned.  It is so great to know exactly what goes into the products that we use for our personal use and for the household cleansing.  From these two batches, she sent me home with two molds of curing soap.  The rest of the batches will go to her daughter for a craft fair or for her personal use.

     The day ended, knitting with the group of friends that meet on Wednesday nights at a local coffee shop for some social time, dinner, and knitting.

     Each newly learned skill brings us one step closer to independence.

     Life is good on our mountain farm.

After our Horsemaster’s Club ride yesterday, we both arose sore, facing a 10 a.m. lesson. A biscuit and newspaper in town to fuel our bodies and minds, we arrived a bit early, knowing which horses we were riding today and mine being Daisy that I rode yesterday, in the top field, I dropped off hubby at the arena, grabbed a halter and rope and drove to the top field to get her. Yesterday, she was at the top edge of that very steep field, today since I was at the top, she was at the bottom, requiring a scramble down the slope to get her. The roan in the paddock with her wanted to be my friend today and tried to put her head in the halter, then followed me like a puppy as I led Daisy out. Our instructor arrived and we worked on some skills, both complaining of being sore, so she went and got a horse and tacked up and we took our first trail ride. Our first ride out of the confines of the huge enclosed and roofed arena. It was so much fun and once at the top of their property, realized that we could see the power tower that is closest to our house. As the crow flies, we couldn’t have been more than a mile from home.
A few errands to get chicken feed and we arrived home to farm work. As it is fall, the locals are either doing a fall haying, in some cases, their only haying this year due to the summer rain, or as we do, mowing the now very tall grass down for the winter. It will make better spring hay. Today was the day we began to mow our fields. This is always bitter sweet as we will now be able to walk our property, we will be able to see the deer and turkey, but the mowing takes out thousands of white Queen Anne’s Lace, Daisies, and clover; purple thistle and red clover; golden flowers of the hated stickweed and goldenrod; and the cornflower blue of Chickory. The tall seed heads of the grasses standing above the tops of the tall rear wheels of the tractor.
A dinner break of a homemade pizza with tomatoes, basil, peppers and onions from our garden, hot Italian sausage from the Farmer’s market and a couple of lumps of fresh mozarella. It was delicious.

After dinner, some more mowing as the sun deepened the shadows as the sun dropped below the west ridge, leaving the eastern ridges still glowing from the setting sun.

Life is good on our mountain farm.

     Though officially still a few days away, fall has come to the mountains.  After a cool, rainy summer, we have had a dry spell of several weeks, today is chilly and foggy with a slight chance of afternoon showers as another front moves through.  It is unlikely that the colors will be stunning this year.  After two years of dry conditions and the stress of too much water this year, the trees that normally color first are browning and dropping their leaves instead

There are hints of color change, the emerald greens of summer are now dull, hints of rust and reds appearing.
The weather lore is that the morning fogs we have been experiencing for several weeks portend early and heavy snow. Last autumn, we had a school closing snow in October. Hopefully that won’t be the case this year since I went to the effort of putting in a fall garden. We have only lived in the mountains for 8 years and I have noticed that none of our farmer neighbors put in fall gardens. As I was pulling spent summer plants, weeding beds and dumping the weeds in the chicken pen, I wondered if by now, they are just tired of their gardens, or if by experience, they know that the weather will win. Most of them don’t work to keep the weeds at bay after their plants are established. They till it all in come spring, or they put down huge sheets of black plastic, punch holes in it and plant through the holes. I don’t want my food growing in beds that have plastic leeching into them. I will continue to weed, mulch and hope for the best. Perhaps, one of the huge round bales of hay should be spread around the trees in the orchard and over the fallow beds and aisles soon.