Most of last week felt like spring. It looked like spring with daffodils, crocuses, snow drops, pussy willow all in bloom. With scrub beginning to leaf out, signs of swelling buds on the trees and bushes around the house and on our walks.
This morning when I awoke, it was 41 degrees f, the sun was shining, the sky was blue. Two and a half hours later, it was doing this…
If the temperature hadn’t hovered near 38 degrees all day, we would have 6 inches of snow, but instead, the ground would get coated, the sun would break through and it would melt, then it would snow again, repeat over and over.
This was much later in the afternoon after several snow bursts and melts. The birds clinging to the feeders as the wind howled. As it got dark and the temperature fell, the snow accumulated. It looks like about 3″ on the ground. The wind driven snow has blown all the way across the 8′ wide covered front porch, right over to the front door.
Tomorrow is clearer, no precipitation expected, but still fairly cold, but by Sunday, we are back in the mid 60’s.
We live in rural SW Virginia on a gravel road and a gravel driveway. The gravel road is about 8/10 of a mile long from the paved road to the end of state maintenance, we are about 2/10 of a mile from the paved road, all downhill. Our driveway is another 2/10 of a mile from the state road to the house, also downhill. About twice a year, the 4 houses beyond us call in VDOT because heavy rain, tractor use, and the steep hill between them and us cause the road to deteriorate to a rutted mess. From the paved road to our driveway generally fairs better, but when VDOT comes, they start at the paved road and work to the end, many, many passes with this…
As you can see, this road isn’t very wide, a car coming in the opposite direction requires one of the vehicles to back up to a wide spot or driveway. This guy doesn’t go anywhere in a hurry and I got home from helping daughter this morning, just as he was starting another pass down. He was here just beginning to work as I left 4 hours earlier. I inched down behind him, giving him plenty of room. Our driveway is still ahead of him. They always do the swale in the wrong direction, all the ditches are on the left, the road is highest on the left. Bet they leave our ditch and culvert blocked again and I will have to call them back to come clear it. I’m not going out there with a shovel to do it.
Our couple of beautiful warm springlike days are about to come to an abrupt end. A front is coming through, the temperature is already starting a sudden drop with a wind advisory and rain and snow flurries expected to begin within the next half hour or so. The next few days will be seasonably cold. Tomorrow’s high is 30 degrees f colder than today’s high. The wind has already begun.
Since our property slopes downhill from the top of the driveway to the bottom of the hay field, there is no natural level spot on the farm. As a result, my chicken run and garden slope downhill too. The garden isn’t too much of a problem because I have boxed raised beds and just the aisles are sloped with the gate about halfway down the slope. The chicken run is another issue. The coop is raised about 18″ off the ground on the uphill side and an extra cinder block higher on the downhill side. The uphill side has the large clean out door, the downhill side has the pop door. The gate to the fence is on the uphill side. The chickens have scratched every blade of green from their run when they are confined. They get a lot of free range time, but not when the dogs are out or when the Red Tailed Hawks are active. Because of their scratching and this winter’s rain, going from the gate to the pop door is taking your safety in your hands as your slip and slide down the side of the coop. When I know it is going to rain or snow, I try to toss down a thick layer of spoiled hay from the gate to the pop door. This provide endless entertainment for the hens as they scratch through it looking for bugs and seeds and in the process, making great compost as they scratch it downhill. I beat the rain with about a foot or so of old hay and the chickens are working at moving it away from our safe path.
With winter drawing to a close and with the longer days, all 9 of the hens are laying again. On my way back to the house from forking hay, I gathered 7 beautiful eggs. That is the second time this late winter I have gotten so many. There are plenty of eggs to eat now.
Earlier in my spinning adventures, I subscribed to a monthly fiber club. Each month I received 4 ounces of the fiber/color of the month. When daughter and her family were living with us, each time a skein that I spun was green or had green in it, she would oooh and aaah over it and she was just learning to knit, so several of those skeins ended up in her stash. But she is a working mom of elementary and middle school children, a Taekwondo instructor and youth soccer coach on the side, so she doesn’t have much time to knit. I struck a deal with her to reclaim a couple of those skeins. She gets a scarf and a hat, I get to make a second hat for my shop from the larger skein. The colors are gorgeous, my spinning I see has improved significantly, but they are clearly doable for the projects in queue.
The spindles are to show how much finer and more consistent my spinning is now, both on spindles and on the wheel.
My car is packed with my wheel and fiber, my suitcase is awaiting the dryer to finish. Everything that won’t freeze if it gets as cold as predicted tonight is in the car. A final tote and my purse will leave with me in the morning to go to Tennessee for a weekend of fiber fun with friends, leaving hubby in charge of the house, the critters, and to fend for himself. I love him in general, but really appreciate being given the freedom to go away a couple times each year for these retreats.
Today was a gorgeous day, perfect for lunch out and a walk on the Huckleberry Trail. The scrub bushes are beginning to leaf out, some of the trees are about to flower and it is too early. We will have a freeze but in the meantime, seeing the snowdrops, the crocuses, and the buds swelling on the daffodils is delightful.
The nice weather has the hens laying nearly as well as summer. A bad day now is 4 eggs from the 9 hens. A good day is 7. It always amuses me when all three Oliver Eggers lay the same day. One lays green eggs, one lays Khaki colored eggs, and one lays pink eggs.
Daughter had a “I want to move to Australia” week, so we had them over for dinner. Fifty years ago on a flight to Hawaii, I found a recipe for Hawaiian ribs. The recipe works equally well for pork chops, so that was on the menu along with egg noodles, peas, Naan bread liberally spread with homemade garlic butter. Daughter brought an Angel food cake, strawberries, and whipped cream, so we had dessert too.
Some time was spend spinning on the little Jenkins Delight Turkish spindle, spinning a colorful fiber sample. It is a dark wool base with silk, silk noils, bamboo. I’m not a fan of noils, but spun it to lacy weight noils and all. I will ply it tomorrow and measure it out.
We have no appointments this week. I will be leaving on Thursday for a fiber retreat, leaving hubby to deal with the critters.
Our weekend started with a luxury dinner out for our Valentine Anniversary. There are few nice restaurants in our nearest big town. There are more in the nearest city, about an hour away, but this was the first February 14 that we have spent at home that it hasn’t snowed, so we don’t make reservations that far from home. Last year, we went to the same restaurant and having been there several times before we expected a good dinner and left very disappointed. They post their menu a few weeks prior and we gave them another chance. The starter, salad, and dessert are set, but they had a choice of three entrees, beef, salmon, and pasta, each well presented. Hubby got the beef, I got the pasta and we were both pleased.
Yesterday was a quiet day, not much accomplished but some knitting and spinning, some laundry. The coop needed cleaning as did the house. There was no straw or woodchips to use in the coop, we needed dog food, chicken food, and bird seed but didn’t want to go out yesterday.
After a lunch out today, a trip to Tractor Supply took care of all those needs and the coop was cleaned, sprayed down inside and refilled with fresh pine chips. Tractor Supply had 6 pounds of Black Oil Sunflower seed for $7, but 40 pounds for $10. Not sure how I would deal with 40 pounds, the bargain was too great. Every extra bucket is filled, along with the bird seed container and the bag still is about 1/3 full. The house was vacuumed, dusted, and the kitchen cleaned. Between jobs and preparing dinner, the fiber that was being spun on the spindle was finished and a few rows knit on the scarf.
Left is the fat little cop of singles, Merino, bamboo, and silk from Inglenook Fibers; Close to You being knit from Lollipop Yarn, and the fat little cop of the plied yarn. Looks like I’m stuck in a color warp.
The warm winter and lengthening days have upped egg production from 1 to 3 a day, now getting 4 to 6 a day and the yolks are taking on a nice healthy golden orange. This is the first winter wince I’ve been raising hens that there have been any winter eggs.
It started raining night before last, rained hard most of yesterday, all night to the point of interfering with hubby’s Direct TV signal, and all day today. It would have been a good day to not go out, but there was a necessary errand and PT to deal with. I was also told by the man who loves me that I was spending too much time alone with him and neglecting my friends, so off to town we went.
It was raining too hard when we left to hear our creek, but the big creek at the bottom of Mt. Lake Rd. was very high. We drove through periods of heavy rain, areas of fog, but no incidents on the way in. About the time we got in town, they announced the schools that had opened today, several systems in areas prone to flooding didn’t even open, were all closing hours early. When I worked for the school system, we had a rain like this that flooded a couple of areas and they couldn’t get the kids that lived beyond the flooded areas home on the buses. They were returned to school and parents had to find an alternate route around the flood or get someone else to pick up those children.
Errand was done, we went and bought me a rain jacket as my old one had been discarded a year or so back when all the seam taping came off. The seams were resealed, but the ones around my arms and the back of my neck were irritating and it leaked. The store had a variety of colors, mostly nature colors like blue, green, black, white, but they had red, bright cardinal red. I can wear it in the woods and be seen.
About an hour and a half was spent with a small contingent of the spinning group, none of us brave enough to bring our wheels out in the pouring rain, so today we were a knitting group, but some socialization was fit into the day before PT time. Because that was late today, he picked me up and I sat in the waiting room until a client/patient spent 15 minutes pacing back and forth just off my toes while reading on her phone. Not able to think of a polite way to ask her to stop or to redirect her pacing down the hallway leading to the PT room, I just left and returned to the car.
When we got back to our driveway, we passed it to see what the two creeks on our property were doing. The big one flows all the time to some extent, down the edge of our property to a rock cliff formed by a sink hole. The creeks disappear underground in that flat, but today the flat was flooded and the creeks were running down the old creek bed that it used before the hole opened. The upper one is a run off creek and only flows when we have significant rain for a day or so. It was roaring and had jumped it’s banks, creating a second flow that was washing out the edge of the road. In an effort to prevent that, we went over the nearly rusted away front fence to see what the issue was. It looked like all of the fall leaves from around that creek had gotten caught at a bend. To deal with it, I removed my shoes and socks, rolled up my jeans and climbed in the creek bed to about mid calf and scooped soggy leaves out of the channel. Then we gathered rocks, one so large I had to flip it end over end from up hill to try to dam off the new channel that was being formed and get the creek back in it’s bed away from the road. My feet and hands were frozen by the time we quit and got back in the car. After the rain stops, I will go back up there with a shovel and garden fork and clear the rest of the leaves and build that edge back up so the creek doesn’t wash out the gravel road. I did see the new shoots of the day lilies that I planted up there from my Dad’s garden when we first bought the property. I planted three clusters and the creek movement and their spread has moved them down both sides of that creek. After my Dad passed, I did go back up there and bring a clump of them back down to the day lily bed at the house.
The poor chickens never got out today, with 3 to 4″ of rain expected, I knew their pen would be a muddy mess and they are too stupid to not get soaked. They were given a scoop of scratch and a bucket of water in the coop. After the rain stops, tomorrow, I think, and before the snow flurries of Saturday night, I will break up more of the big round bale of hay and get a good layer down in the bare areas where I slip and slide trying to deal with letting them in and locking them up. I figure if I keep doing that, eventually the pen will be level inside or I will have barrow and barrows of great compost for the vegetable garden.
Today is a glorious break in a gray and wet week. We have had snow flurries, freezing rain, and drizzle this past week and two weeks of similar weather in the forecast. It has been calm wind wise until today, with warmer temperatures and sunshine. With the calm we had a fire scare earlier in the week when the farmer not immediately behind us, an area that is still wooded, but just beyond him in an area that has been logged, graded, and planted for pasture lit off first one, then several more large burn piles creating billowing smoke that looked too close to us that we feared was our nearer neighbor’s woods. We contacted him and after sending him photos, he left work to come check and let us know where the fires were and that they were being monitored with a track hoe.
There has been smoke down there for 6 days now from various piles, but at least we know the woods below us aren’t on fire.
Through the gray, drizzle and three waiting rooms days, I have been stitching through several smaller skeins of hand spun yarn that I had, making a hat and three pair of fingerless mitts, and finishing the Tool Box cowl from the mini skeins.
Can you tell I’m a lefty, always wearing the mitt on my right hand to take the photo? The Merlot colored mitts still need to be washed and blocked, they were finished last night. After trying on the cowl that I had made for me, I decided I’m not a cowl person, so I put a price tag on it and put it in the shop with the other items.
While perusing patterns, I found a cute hat with an owl on the front. Since there isn’t much yarn left that isn’t designated for weaving, I returned to spinning some gray/brown Coopworth last night. It would be a perfect color for the hat, but the pattern will require me to do some math as it calls for Aran weight yarn, this is likely to be DK weight when plied.
Since I’m not a Super Bowl watcher, I only know one team that is playing and have no allegiance to them, I think I will warp the loom and start a cowl or scarf with a pattern instead of plain weave and continue spinning the Coopworth so I have a pocket project to work on during waiting room visits this week. Since we try to group our errands and lunch out around hubby’s PT visits, I have a 30-45 minute waiting room session a couple times a week, so I need a new pocket project.
Whew, we went from 12 degrees f a few mornings ago to 40 and torrential rain. It was low teens 3 nights in a row (no frozen pipes thank goodness) and the days weren’t even reaching freezing then it changed as Virginia will at any season. There was a winter storm warning last night causing schools to delay or close for no reason as it never was cold, and it rained. The wind blew and it rained some more. Still is raining hard. Without an attic to buffer sound, we hear it when it rains hard. Not the pinging on a metal roof like in the barn, but it is still a metal roof with insulation.
When we went to dinner and then to daughter’s house for grandson’s birthday dinner on Sunday, we discussed having another mother/daughter movie date, taking her kids this time, to see Call of the Wild when it comes out the end of February. We had both watched the trailers and wanted to see it. It has been many decades since I had read it, and in our home library is a leather bound copy of Jack London books, so as soon as I finished the ebook I had out from the library, I started reading it. I’m not sure how true to the book the movie will be, but I am looking forward to it.
Today’s rain allowed me to finish it.
The Toolbox Cowl is progressing. I sat in a waiting room again yesterday and knit. Work has been done on it at night. I’m on the last stockinette section, the second to last skein. There will be one more Diamond tweed section with this skein and the final skein and the last Garter Rib section. I’m not sure I should have used the more brightly colored variegated one, but I think I like it anyway.
With lots of Corriedale, Merino, silk, and bamboo in the skeins, it is soft. It shouldn’t take me too much more time to complete. I read the Yarn Harlot’s blog and she posts finishing mitten and cowls in a day. Wow, she must be a speed knitter.
Tomorrow is going to be chilly and party sunny, maybe I can finally get the coop cleaned out. Today a bale of pine chips was purchased because straw seems to be scarce. The old straw is going in the run, the rain has made the area just inside the gate a hazard to my health and safety. There really isn’t a level spot on our property, but I’m not sure I picked the right spot to put that coop when we got it. With the bare scratched earth and a couple inches of rain or a coat of ice, I can slide forever. Perhaps I should put some rough pavers from the gate to the pop door.
So far this is proving to be a mild winter, gray and drizzly. It suggests that stink bugs, ticks, and fleas will be prevalent this summer. It is so mild, that the weeds that are usually beat back in the vegetable garden in winter are not only growing, but thriving. Last summer, the garden was a lot of work and I tried to stay on top of the weeding, but was losing the battle with some of them. I never beat the mint bed and the Creeping Charlie is taking over and choking out everything. The garden is also too big for me to keep it all in rotation. I have looked at options for reducing the size, making some of the boxes 4 boards high instead of 2, but the perennials are at the two ends with a 4 X 8 bed of blueberry bushes that finally produced last summer, the 3 barrels that are old and fragile of red raspberries and I fear they would disintegrate if I try to move them and they finally have the raspberries contained at one end. The other end has the asparagus bed that is now 6 or 7 years old and produces more asparagus than daughter, a friend, and I can eat in a season. Those two perennial ends do control the garden size to some extent.
One side of the garden is a pathway away from the chicken pen for about half of the garden length, beyond the chicken pen is one of the worst patches of Creeping Charlie. I have considered pulling down all of the fencing and starting over. If the fencing was hard up against the boxes on the side that the chickens can reach, the length of the garden and if I keep the plantings far enough away from the fence to prevent long necks from reaching through to eat my veggies, perhaps their scratching would keep the weeds down on that side of the garden. The chickens won’t touch the Creeping Charlie to eat, but maybe their scratching for seeds and goodies tossed down there would reduce it. The sides of the garden nearer the house and south of the berries could be reduced and the boards from those boxes used to make the rear boxes taller so they are easier for me to work. The issue there is the post that has the solar charger on it is on that edge, though the charger is dead. Maybe it could be moved with the fence or just be removed entirely. If moved, I could hang a gate on it.
In April, the university has a service day that you can sign up for help. Maybe some help getting the fencing in order for the garden and chicken pen would be incentive to keep at it.
Today’s forecast looks like maybe the thunderstorms from a few days ago are going to be followed as the adage says with some snow to start the weekend. More likely it will be a sloppy mix of snow, freezing rain, and rain with little or no accumulation.
The hens must think it is spring. This week I have had a day with 3 eggs, one with 4, and yesterday I got 5. There probably won’t be any today, but that is okay. This is the first winter I have gotten any from my hens.
The warm weather has had me reluctant to use one of my Christmas gifts, a cast iron bread pan, but this bread is an easy loaf that can be made in just a couple of hours with no kneading, so we had a hot loaf of Herb and Onion bread for dinner one evening.
The drizzle outside, the doctor’s appointments, and now a pair of head colds between us have keep me indoors and instead of warping the loom, I finished spinning 4 ounces of Romeldale CVM that I got from my friend Gail (Sunrise Valley Farm) and got a generous 289.5 yards of light fingering yarn from it. It is now washed and awaiting the arrival of a purchase of mill spun alpaca, silk, wool blend yarn from another friend. The mill spun will be the warp for a scarf or wrap and the CVM the weft. I also spun 3 ounces of Coopworth from another friend, Debbie (Hearts of the Meadow Farm) and got 112.5 yards of worsted weight from it. I have ordered another 8 ounces of Coopworth that may be from the same lot, or will at least coordinate with it and it will become another scarf or wrap. I am going to try to spin some of it tight enough and fine enough to be the warp.
Today after a frustrating attempt to order a rigid heddle book online using a gift card, we went to Barnes and Noble and ordered it there. I hope to learn some new techniques and patterns to work into my weaving. With the 8 ounces of Coopworth to match the maroon above, I ordered another 8 ounces of this
It doesn’t really have a plan, but I have a 4.8 oz braid of BFL and Tussah Silk that might go well with it. I’ll have to wait to see how they spin before I decide.
This is not a scene from Dr. Zhivago, but what we awoke to this morning. It is more than a little crunchy.
Tomorrow’s Holiday Market is low 40s and 80% chance of rain. I don’t think it will be as successful as last week. If I can safely get out later, I will go buy 4 inexpensive shower curtain liners for the back and back parts of the sides of my pop up tent. Right now, I need to try to finish a pair of mitts and band some salves, try to pack up the car without slip sliding.
Sometimes plans change. My audiology appointment was at 8 a.m. and the new hearing aid is definitely a learning curve. My voice is an echo in my head. When I arrived at the office, the reflection of my car in the windows showed I had a headlight out, again. After my appointment in a very quiet office, standing by my car in front of AutoZone was a major assault on my hearing, almost causing me to remove the new aid until I was in a quieter place. I have made it all day without removing it, but have avoided noisy environments.
After lunch, we took advantage of the nice day to take an exercise walk. I could hear people behind me on the trail talking, hear the squirrels rustling in the leaves off the trail, and only bothered where the trail crosses a roadway via a footbridge with the cars below was I assaulted by too much background to continue conversation with hubby.
When we got home and I was going to go work in the garden to finish what I started yesterday, the farmer that hays our fields showed up with his big tractor and 10.5 foot brush hog to finish mowing our fields. I didn’t want to have to deal with the noise or the dust that would be the environment, so I postponed the garden until after the approaching Arctic Blast. We should awaken to light snow in the morning and temperatures falling into the low teens by tomorrow night. It may be next week before I can get out there with a hoe, a stack of old newspaper, more cardboard, and the bale of hay, but it isn’t going to grow now, so it can wait.
Sometimes the best of plans must change. Instead of garden, it has been a knitting, cooking, and reading day after a nice walk.
Another pair of fingerless mitts and a few more inches on the scarf, both for the Holiday Markets.
Cabin Crafted 