Cabin Crafted

Category: farm

  • Getting it done

    The various summer projects are slowly being completed. Son 1 with some help from Grandson 1 and from me got most of the staining done. This is the last time he will do it, we will hire it out in the future, it just isn’t fair to him to deal with it.

    When he returned home on Tuesday morning, he left me a 16 year old worker, who so far will do just about anything I ask of him.

    Son 1 dug out the septic tank top and found the cleanout so we could get it pumped out and to eliminate the hassle in the future of finding it and digging it out of the hard rocky soil, once it was pumped, Grandson 1 and I erected a baffle and filled the parts that wouldn’t have been needed to be dug if we had known. We sorted out rocks and filled in with the soil and gravel sized rock. Yesterday we purchased topsoil in bags, some edging, and a couple large flower pots and some perinnials to plant in them. We also purchased a small bag of grass seed and I seeded around the new bed. It was well watered in yesterday afternoon and straw sprinkled over it. The hens will all remain cooped or penned up until the grass emerges. The topsoil we purchased was all my car could handle and wasn’t enough, so today another load was picked up and we finished placing the edging, filling with soil, mulching over with wood chips, and placing the potted plants on the bed.

    There is now a well defined and much smaller area that will have to be dug out of easy to dig soil in a few years when we have to do it again.

    Last evening, the tall worker also helped me get hay down in both chicken runs and in the Chicken Palace. Still up on our agenda, next week, is to deconstruct the collapsing Chicken Tractor, salvaging what we can, burning the rest. And to make repairs on the coop and get it stained.

    It is nice having a strong back to lift 40-45 pound sacks and work with me to get the jobs done.

    The pullets have begun to lay eggs. I have been getting a small blue egg each day from the Easter Eggers. The New Hampshire reds look like they are about to add to it.

    The hay guys are finishing up the fields down from us. We should be up next and the fields will again be clear enough to walk.

    I have spent the last hour or so setting up two new phones for hubby and me. Our phones were at least 5 years old and failing.

  • They came, they went

    And now Grandson 1 and I are sifting fist sized rocks from the dirt pile created by clearing out the top of the tank, refilling the parts that don’t have to be accessed again using that same soil, moving the rocks behind the larger stones of the rock wall. When we are done, the oval left over the observation port and the clean out top will be filled with bagged soil that has no rock or gravel in it and marked with an edging of some sort. Annual flowers or a couple of half barrels of flowers that can be moved will be placed there to mark the spot and so digging next time will be an easier task. Because of the slope of our property, the high side is 2-2.5 feet and the low side about 15- 18″.

    The leaky galvanized tub is protecting the lid so we don’t dump rock and subsoil on it. The plywood is providing a baffle to build a firm soil wall behind it. Grandson 1 worked hard without complaint as we worked for about an hour. There is more to do, but it was time to prepare dinner, blanch and prepare peas for the freezer, and get the table set.

    The peas planted in the corner of the onion bed did not do well. Actually, most of the veggies I planted in bagged soil used to fill some of the new beds aren’t doing very well. I pulled those pea plants today and tucked in the edge of the onions, and behind the peas, I found a ground nest with two eggs and two baby birds. I quietly left the area so Mom bird could return. I will steer clear of them for a couple of weeks and hope that a raccoon, skunk, or neighbor cat doesn’t get into the garden and find them.

    The other bed of peas produced a basket full, along with the last spears of asparagus that will be harvested this year, and the hens provided some protein. The pullet that layed her first egg yesterday, layed a perfect little blue egg today.

    With the scaffolding down on the east side of the garage, you can finally see some of the Day lilies in bloom.

    Two different cultivars of red, one with much larger blooms, both with yellow throats.

    The yellow Stellas have taken a beating from the placement of the scaffolding and for some reason the chickens prefer to dig there. They will recover next year if I protect them for the rest of this season. The very tall yellow one is among the last to bloom and the ones under the scaffolding on the south side of the garage haven’t opened yet.

    This never got posted last night, so today Grandson 1 and I will try to finish the work around the septic tank. Yesterday and today are cool enough that the work isn’t too onerous. The rest of the scaffolding comes down today and is going out to help some friends with a job they have.

    After our dinner last night, the three of us drove to town and took a cool late evening walk on the Huckleberry and the Stadium Woods trail back to the car. We arrived back at the car at exactly the minute the weather app said the sun set.

    We love having our grandkids visit and this guy is a great helper, willing to do just about anything I need him to do as long as I still give him time to plant his face in his phone.

  • Olio- 6/22/2021

    Olio: a miscellaneous collection of things

    Son 1 and Grandson 1 arrived on the weekend for some work and some play. Son 1 and I did some staining, trying to get parts of the log house stained that didn’t get done year before last and that the pandemic prevented from getting done last year. We also needed to have our septic tank pumped and hubby and I were unable to dig down through our rocky soil to get to the tank top, so a couple weeks ago when Son 1 was also here working, we used the site map to try to locate it, used a metal detector to confirm the location based on a length of buried rebar, and attempted to hire someone to come dig it out.

    Now mind you, we live near a University town and there are Help needed signs posted everywhere. There aren’t many students here in the summer and I guess the ones that are either are struggling to stay in school or trying to get ahead and don’t want jobs. I posted a paid gig on Craigslist and one guy said he would come out, but wanted $25 more than we offered. We agreed, he showed up almost at dark, dug for 5 minutes with our tools, said he would be back the next morning at 8 a.m. with a helper and “more equipment” and we never saw him again. The second inquiry also was a no show. Son 1 upon his afternoon arrival went to work and the tank top lid and observation port were uncovered, working together, we freed the lid yesterday afternoon, and the pumping crew came and did their stinky job this morning. Grandson 1 and I will pick rocks from the soil pile and refill the hole and we are going to put in a small flower bed of annuals on topsoil right over the lid and port so it will be easy to find and easier to dig in a couple years when we have to have a repeat pumping session. The lid is about 28″ down. Son 1 us a gem to leave his home, his own tasks, and come on his weekends, away from his job to help us get these tasks done. It is a shame that we can’t get people locally to come out for pay to do them.

    Grandson 1 will stay with us for a couple weeks to help me with some other tasks, but Son 1 headed home this morning.

    For fun, after we worked on Sunday with staining, we cleaned up and with Daughter, took a couple hour kayak trip on the New River.

    After we were back at Daughter’s house with the kayaks and they were rehung, Son 1 and I went out and bought all the fixings for a fantastic Father’s Day meal for hubby and Son 1 that we prepared and ate at Daughter’s house.

    Grandson 1 on his first afternoon here used the riding mower to finish mowing our lawn that I had barely begun the day before and yesterday, mowed Daughter’s lawn with her AWD lawnmower, a necessity as her lawn has a steep hill in the front and a serious though not too steep slope in the back.

    Last night at egg collection time, I found the first pullet egg from the littles. It was from an Easter egger and will be blue when she figures it all out.

    Her first attempt is kind of green, blue, and gray speckled, but it had a nice hard shell and it did have a yolk. A couple more of the pullets look like they are about ready too, but most look like they may still need a few more weeks.

    I had gotten frustrated with Ms. Houdini’s escape and attempts to get under or on the porch and caught her, putting her in the enclosed run with the pullets. That lasted only 24 hours until she managed to escape from there too and spent the day yesterday again trying to get on or under the porch, then all of the free rangers got into the walled garden yesterday afternoon and started digging up my flowers. They were treated with a hose spraying to send them into and over the mesh fence to get out and away from the jet of water. It is raining today, but when it ends, I will have to repair their damage to the bed and restring the mesh. I really like for them to wander the grounds eating bugs and ticks, but hate for them to get into the gardens and wreck havoc, and also when they are unrestricted free ranging, they hide their eggs and I may or may not find them. Yesterday there was only 1 from them, 1 hen and 1 pullet from the coop and penned ones. Maybe I need to use electric fence around the orchard and both coops and have controlled free range time. Soon the two roosters and the old hens will find their way to freezer camp. They are farm birds after all, not pets.

  • Bunnies and Birds

    This spring has brought to mind the 1970’s book Watership Down. I’m sure many of you have read it or seen the movie. I don’t think we are having war and gore, but I have never seen so many bunnies around, two or three at a time in the front and more in the back. I am not hearing the coyotes as much this spring as in the past and the hay on our fields is still standing, tall enough that when a doe is walking through, all you can see are her ears. I’m sure once the hay is down and there are fewer places to hide, the hawks will start after them and they will go farther away from the mowed areas for protection.

    After moving the two Olive eggers to the coop and the two new Olive egger “pullets” that are young randy roosters, I left the older hens and the two roosters penned up for many days. Ms. Houdini never figured out how to get out, but two of the New Hampshire reds did, so yesterday I worked more to block off beneath the front porch and turned them loose to free range. Even penned up, egg production was way down. Today I found only 1 egg in the Palace, but then found 3 in a hidey hole in a flower bed and 1 laid on the cushion of one of the chairs on the porch. In spite of my efforts to thwart Ms. Houdini, since she couldn’t get under the porch, she managed to get on it and damaged the cushion before laying her pink egg.

    Here are the two roosters with one of the reds. They start crowing at 5:15 each morning and crow off and on all day. I really don’t like their crowing, and they won’t stay part of the flocks.

    The pullets are beginning to sound like hens and several have nice red combs now, but they are a reluctant lot in the evening. I usually can’t get the last one in the coop until it is almost too dark to see them in the pen.

    The reds are much darker than the mature reds and the Buff Orpingtons range from pale yellowish to dark butterscotch in color. The Marans vary also, some have a gold necklace, some are almost irridescent. One has a red comb, the others still have small dark combs. And they vary hugely in size. One Buff is quite small as are an Easter egger and the two reds, one Maran is huge, but not as large as the roosters. There is a bit of dominance play going on in that pen, but the two older hens stay out of it, they don’t dominate nor do they get picked on.

  • A Day in the Life

    There was no aggression in the pullet pen with the two mature hens. It didn’t appear that any was going on in the Palace either, though they were left locked in today. I caught the right two Oliver Eggers last night and got two green eggs in the coop today and two brown eggs in the Palace. Still low production from 8 hens.

    Today’s walk between early morning rain and late afternoon rain took us along the river and the wildflowers were gorgeous, but my cell phone photos washed out all of the blues and purples of the Virginia Dayflowers and Cornflowers.

    I think the tall yellow one is called tickseed.

    Evening visitors include the over abundance of rabbits this year and does, still not seen with their fawns yet.

    When she walked through the hayfield on her way over to browse the edge, all you could see were the tips of her ears.

    More rain expected tomorrow, then a clear off and heat back up next week.

  • Shuffling after Dark

    This Olive Egger discovered his voice last weekend and he is too randy for the much smaller pullets. The other Oliver Egger may also be a young roo who has not yet found his voice. Both are half again larger and are picking on the others. Tonight after it was dark, we went out with a flashlight, only to discover one of the small Buff Orpingtons has been hiding at lock up time and was on the ramp unhappy. I decided to move two of the older Oliver eggers to the coop, they are calm and laying so they will set an example for the pullets who are getting close, and the roo and maybe roo moved to the Palace with the older hens. I don’t know how it will go, but I am hopeful that it will work out. As it was dark, they were easy to catch, but the roo and maybe roo were most unhappy at being grabbed. The two older hens just took it in stride. I’m sure there will be some dominance behaviors demonstrated, but hopefully nothing serious.

  • Busy Weekend

    We rented a cherry picker and Son 1 came to work on staining the parts of our home that didn’t get done two years ago. The plan had been to finish last summer, then COVID happened. Hubby and I managed the garage doors just before he and the cherry picker arrived within an hour of each other, but neither of us can go up on the scaffolding or the cherry picker and paint higher than our shoulders. It was brutally hot up on the roof areas where he was working and I know he is exhausted. The house looks so much better. There is still some to do, but it can be done with ladders or scaffolding.

    My main jobs are keeping him fed and hydrated and being a gofer, opening windows, gathering items he needs. I know he knows how much we appreciate his work, but I want it said out publicly.

    He loves this area and helped build this house, doing all the stone work with stone from our farm, doing all the interior carpentry, laying floors, building cabinets, and all of the interior doors, grading and yard work, and started the area that now has my garden, and it is a much loved home.

    Last night and tonight, we drove down to get ice cream after dinner and both nights we saw black bears. This is on top of having the bear damage to my bird feeders a couple of weeks ago. There must be a lot of them this year in the area.

    Coming in from gathering eggs this afternoon, I spotted my first Day lily of the season.

    My little anniversary rose bush from year before last has dozens of flowers and buds.

    It is a miniature bush that was thimble sized when he gave it to me. The scent is light and I am saving petals in a bowl.

    Well, it turns out that this Olive Egger isn’t a pullet. HE discovered his voice over the weekend. It is like an teenage boy with his changing voice, but I won’t keep a rooster here. That will leave me with 14 egg layers soon to be. Ms. Houdini continued to escape, but two more escape holes have been blocked and she stayed in today after spending last night out in the wild AWOL.

    With Son here, I cut lettuce for salad and greens for dinner from the garden. There are lots of pea pods that will fill in and provide us with goodness. The greens were sauteed with a green garlic bulb from the garden as well.

  • Plumbing Update

    If you ever need to buy faucets and other plumbing items, buy Kohler, they are expensive, but keep reading. After DD and I saturated the valve with PB Blaster this morning, banged on it, both tried to free it, and gave up before we broke it beyond even the trickle and shower capability, we drove to Ferguson with a piece of the handle for color. Telling Sara, the showroom consulant that we needed to buy a new faucet set and why, she looked them up. First they make our faucet still but not in that color anymore, but it is $360+ and a 6 to 8 week wait to receive it. They do make one that would work in the area at the corner of the tub in the correct brushed bronze color, but it started at $800+ just for the faucet, not the handles and also a wait to get it, but she told us that Kohler had a lifetime warranty and to call them, providing us with the model name, number, and color.

    I spent 10 minutes on hold listening to various Kohler ads, instructions on using their website after going through all the robot instructions on how to get where I needed to be, but was greeted by a pleasant young woman who promptly ordered a new cold water body and valve cartridge to be shipped directly to our house FREE to us under their warranty. We will still have to hire a plumber, but not to come out and tell us we needed a new unit or to break the one we have so we had to order a new one and wait for it’s arrival. We can still use the trickle and cold water from the shower to cool off the tub water until that can be done. It did give me an opportunity to clean up under and around the handles.

    We will wait for the new unit, thankful for two reputable companies and the wisdom to have purchased quality in the first place when we built our house.

  • Olio

    Olio: a miscellaneous collection of things

    I finally gave up on trying to contain the mature hens. Ms. Houdini and Ms. Apprentice could get out no matter what I did to prevent it and the small area in front of the Palace was getting dug up to a hazardous state for my old bones. I took the plastic fence “gate” and put it on two step in posts across the front porch opening. The shorter pieces of plastic fence that had been protecting flower gardens but had to be removed to put the scaffolding up are being used to block the holes under that same porch to prevent the hens from going underneath. Those two hens will probably hide their eggs, but the production from the hens fell sharply when I stopped them from free ranging.

    Yesterday, the wild birds had no feeders up. Today we went to Lowes to replace the Niger seed feeder and the suet feeder and instead I found a large tube feeder that was divided similar to the one that was destroyed by the bear, so again the three favored feeds are hanging from the double shepherd’s crook pole and they will be brought in every night. The Finches, Titmice, and Woodpeckers have already found them and started visiting again. The Chickadees which I favor, quit coming to the feeder in spring and summer and will rejoin the other small birds in the late fall and winter.

    A couple of days ago, I finished my May spindle challenge spinning and plied the yarn on my wheel, gave it a wash and hung to dry. It is a pretty 4 ounce skein of turquoise Falklands dyed wool, about 485 yards. I haven’t measured it’s WPI since it’s bath, but it was about 18 prior.

    I haven’t decided whether to knit it or sell it as yarn. Falklands is a nice spin and very soft.

    Last week, I purchased a destashed Jenkins spindle that was in Sweden and figured it would take at least 3 weeks to arrive here. According to tracking, it has already been processed in Chicago, so I may see it by the middle or end of this week. It is a size that I don’t currently have and a weight that is within my preference.

    This is a photo that the seller sent. It is Birdseye Maple, a very pretty spindle. It is only 9 grams, so it will be my lightest, though not my smallest spindle.

    One of hubby and my walks is a section of an old paved over railgrade through part of Blacksburg and into Christiansburg. Since I moved here, it has been expanded from the original 7 miles to more than double that. There are two sections that we often walk, in both cases going out and returning on the same trail. The one at the origin point takes you to right across from the University stadium and last night we left the trail, took the sidewalk up a known road and picked the trail back up at the bridge that crosses that road. In doing it, we saw another trail that appeared to go along the edge of Stadium Woods, so once back to the car, we drove back toward the facilities buildings near the stadium to see if we could find it’s origin. In doing so, we discovered three streets with a cross street paralleling the one we had been on that we didn’t even know were back there and the trail and decided that the trail that we had seen from the stadium must be the origin. Today, we again walked out the section of the railgrade to the stadium and took the paved trail we had seen the night before. It wasn’t the same one. The one today took us on the other side of Stadium Woods parallel to the one we had found last night in our exploration, but it eventually brought us out near the same termination point and we walked back through the neighborhood to our car. I had hubby drive back to were we had seen it last night near the facilities building and let me out while he drove around back to the stadium parking and I walked it toward the stadium to see where it originated. I beat him to the parking lot as it seems that where he let me out was less than 1/10th of a mile from the origin and I walked out to the lot to wait for him. It looks like it will be a nice walk to do on another day. It will give us some variety, making an out and back walk into a shady loop.

  • Unwelcome visitor

    And unhappy birds. I had become complacent about bringing in the bird feeders at night. This morning as I sat down to my yogurt and looked out to watch the flock of various Finches that gather there, the scene was off. From the back deck, it was obvious that we had a strong visitor in the night. The half barrel of rocks and soil was tipped over and it is so heavy I can barely move it, the feeder that had small mesh on one side and larger mesh on the other for Niger seed and black oil sunflower seed was crushed and destroyed. The suet feeder tube was torn to pieces and crushed out in the yard.

    It had to have been a bear and it came in under the scaffolding, took down the bird mesh around the walled garden that keeps the chickens out, damaged a few plants in the processes.

    You can see how close to the house and deck it came. It is disappointing that the feeders were destroyed. Upsetting that a bear has found them and will come back looking again. The feeders were perfect for the double shepherd’s crook pole as it allowed the three favorite feeds to be put out. The birds will have to fend for themselves for a while. The feeders replaced and brought in every single night from now on. We enjoy watching them from the kitchen window and from the dining table.

    I love seeing the bears here on the mountain, but I don’t want to contribute to them coming to homes to seek out food. Our garbage is secured inside the garage and the compost pile is inside the garden with electric wire around the top, so neither of them are attractants. I don’t leave chicken feed out in the open, it is inside the two coops as is their water. We don’t raise bees so there are no hives to attract them, but obviously, a hungry beast took advantange of my complacency. And the dogs that bark at even us coming down the driveway, didn’t make a sound.