Cabin Crafted

Category: farm

  • And Then There Were 11

    The hen flock was a baker’s dozen. Not planned that way, but the way it was. This morning when I let the pups out for their morning chores, I saw a big pile of yellowish white feathers on the front porch, no blood and gore, just a pile of feathers. I swept them off the porch, watered the porch plants, and went over to let the hens out for the day. Curious, I stayed in the run and counted heads as they came out, 1, 2, 3,…9, then from outside the pen came two wet scraggly Buff Orpingtons. One with all of her tail feathers missing. But no more. So 11 in all, missing is a Marans and a Buff Orpington. After our walk yesterday, we were home all afternoon from about 2 p.m. on except for a brief sojourn down to the village store for a quick ice cream bar, only gone about 20-30 minutes at dusk. I never heard a commotion, but when we got home last evening, I went out to harvest some herbs to dry for a new batch of herb salve and the neighbor’s two hound dogs were by the back garden. This morning, our old Mastiff was very curious about various spots in the yard, going much farther afield than his weary old body usually takes him, so something happened, probably while we were out. It frightened the two Buffs enough that they hid and never cooped up last night.

    If I had realized all of this before letting them out today, I would have left them penned up for a few days to discourage a repeat performance by whatever got the two. I guess I need to walk the areas they frequent and see if I can find evidence the the melee or remains that need to be more properly disposed.

    Last week, before I left for my weekend fiber retreat, the bees were tended. Three of the hives had little to no brood, no eggs, no queen cells. Two had low population, one with good stores, the other without. The third with moderate population and decent stores, so Son 2, the official beekeeper suggested I combine the two weakest hives and try to get local queens. I did the combine and arranged to pick up two mated, marked queens yesterday morning. Their cages have been installed in the two hives with hopes that in the next 7 or 8 weeks until our first expected frost, they can rebuild the hives enough for them to survive the winter. I will make syrup and take it down to those two hives today. The last hive is thriving. So now instead of 4 hives, there are 3, all with marked mated queens, if the two new ones are accepted and freed from their cages by the workers. This has definitely been a learning curve for me, but one I am enjoying.

    The retreat was a wonderful respite, even with the couple hundred men and their sons also at the conference center. We have a large room with tables and chairs to convene into each day. Snacks provided by the group, meals in the conference center, and assorted vendors of fibery goodness to play with. I didn’t take my wheel, just spindles and knitting needles, and spun about 28 grams of wool, started a pair of fingerless mitts, and won a door prize of 4 ounces of roving. My Yankee Swap gift is three small skeins of hemp yarn for making spa cloths. Two great gifts. I limited my purchases to 4 ounces of wool from my friend, Debbie, at Hearts of the Meadow Farm, some yarn from another friend, Louise, at Only the Finest Yarns and Fiber to make two pair of fingerless mitts requested by family members for the winter, and a metal insulated mug for my tea and coffee there as I feared breaking my pottery one.

    The chaos that 30 women and 1 man can create in a room
    My spinning and the start of the mitts
    We sat around the fire pits out front at night

    It was tough to say goodbye to my friends, old and new, but it is nice to be home.

  • Always more tasks this time of year

    Two days of tomatoes were cooked down to pizza sauce and canned yesterday during the rainy afternoon. It made 6 half pints, but I didn’t waterbath one, instead used half of it on last night’s pizza and froze the rest for next time. The red and a handful of green Seranos and Jalapenos were chopped up in the blender and started as a hot sauce ferment while the sauce was processing.

    Though I don’t grow as many tomatoes as I used to and don’t can nearly as much as it is just the two of us, it does my heart good to see the shelves beginning to fill.

    It is nearly time to add applesauce, apple/pear sauce, and a few jars of pear marmalade to the shelves, and more hot peppers as they mature.

    Yesterday morning, the pots in the back garden were scattered around the bed I weeded, the sprinkler set up on a pedestal, but we ended up with a couple inches of rain between yesterday afternoon, over night, and into this morning, so no watering was needed. More of the smaller rocks were moved from the work area to the back edge or top of the wall to clear them. And every pot of boiling water left from cooking pasta or canning goodies is taken our and poured on the vetch. Slowly, it is dying off and the edge of the work area and remaining rocks will be visible.

    This afternoon was to be used to make soap and instead, I got involved in closing down the shop business. Much of my equipment that I only used for vending has been sold. Today, a small loom that was beautiful, but didn’t get much use was also sold. By the end of the year, hopefully, there will not be much stock left and what is left can be donated to the museum or given as gifts and my fiber arts and soap making will be for family and close friends. Though I enjoyed the years of being Cabin Crafted, the tax ramification were just too stressful for a cottage business that broke even each year at best.

    Somehow, we manage to get our walks in each day, around the rain showers, or sometimes in them. Since my wellness check, and the report of slightly elevated cholesterol, we have both picked up the pace and extended the distance by about 3/4 of a mile. My already healthy, low meat diet has been tweaked more to totally eliminate dairy products except for cheese in Mexican food and on pizza. My morning smoothie is made with plant milk, whey protein, flax, peanut butter powder, and frozen berries. Most mornings, it is like eating a cup of ice cream it is so thick. Ice cream has been reduced to a single scoop once a week. Starches limited to whole grains and fresh vegetables that contain starch like corn and potatoes, and then prepared steamed or boiled. It isn’t terribly different than I was eating, except I was using homemade whole milk yogurt and real peanut butter in the smoothies, a slice of sourdough bread with it, often buttered with avocado, more cheese, and butter on many vegetables. I was put on a low dose statin, though I didn’t react well to one about 14 years ago and hope that maybe the diet changes and exercise will allow me to not take it after a while.

    All of the garden work aggravated the arthritis and trigger finger in my hands, so crafting has been minimal for the past few days, but I did finish two more Sashiko panels and used one to decorate a small canvas zip bag to hold the Sashiko supplies and unfinished small panels in.

    There are 8 more of these panels, 1 finished, 7 to stitch. Maybe they will become a tote bag, or a table runner. Time will tell. Spinning happens mostly in the car, a bit at night as I continue to work my way through the 5 ounce braid. It has lovely colors in the sunlight, greens, purples, golds, on a gray background, but in the house, those colors seem to hide so it feels like spinning gray. After a whole year of spinning only natural colors for the breed blanket, more color has been needed in my craft this year. I think it will weave on my rigid heddle loom into a lovely, drapey shawl once it is done. It is a smooth spin so it shouldn’t grab while weaving as long as it is strong enough to not break the warp threads. Maybe a commercially spun silk will be the warp as the braid is 25% silk.

    The mornings, feel that summer is edging away, the daytime temperatures in the 70’s. This morning, herb and salad greens were sown in the hydroponics as the frost will take out the herbs and I never plant lettuce outdoors. We will enjoy salads all winter with the hydroponic garden and the salad greens will be refreshed as needed. For now, there are some greens and radishes being harvested from the garden, lettuce from the Farmer’s Market as needed, the cucumbers just starting to produce and new green beans about ready to harvest. Pumpkins this year will have to be purchased, they never did come up or at least didn’t produce vines and fruit. The peas are gaining size, strings need to be added to the posts for them and they should produce before we have our first frost. The greenhouse cover needs a minor repair before it is needed outdoors. Summer is moving on to a close, and it is raining hard again outside.

  • Garden recovery

    After my last post about the wayward hens, and finding two more eggs in the back garden hidey hole, with a cooler evening, I tackled the back garden mess. One of my garden tools is a handle 15″ or so long with a T shaped end. One side is a 3″ wide hoe blade and a 3 tine digging fork on the other end of the T. It took me several hours of sitting in on the soil or the rock wall to eradicate a ton of bermuda grass and comfrey at the lower edge of the garden and vetch, oxalis, clover, and other invasions at the upper edge. Where the rocks are still piled awaiting removal by placement in the patio or along the wall, vetch was left as it doesn’t pull through the rocks very well. The half barrels on the wall and the potted perennials are going to be scattered through out the weeded bed for now.

    Yesterday, in the heat of the day, under full sun, I sprayed the vetch with salted vinegar, donned leather gloves to remove a truly thorny invader, but walked away from it to let the spray do it’s magic. It doesn’t do magic on vetch that is still thriving today. I love the vetch when it isn’t in my gardens, the bees all love it too, but it can’t reside where it currently is.

    The mostly finished patio and the transition area between the finished part and the garden part where the vetch is thriving.

    As the sun lowered in the sky, the heat rose for some unexplained reason as the night was to be very seasonably cool, but my trusty tool and gloves were taken over to finish weeding the north edge of the vegetable garden behind and in the tall asparagus tops, the fall potato bed that never came up, and some in the tomato and pepper bed. As I work the beds, I am increasingly unhappy that I made two very long 4 foot wide boxes too close together. With tomatoes on one edge and corn behind it in the second bed, it is difficult to get to the weeds and harvest tomatoes without stepping in the beds. That design may be revisited this fall at the end of the season, breaking the longer of the boxes up and replacing it slightly uphill with 3 boxes that are 4 feet square. To do that, the blackberry half barrels will have to be moved down below the blueberries where the raspberry half barrels are, and if I put thick weed mat down first and line them up along that edge of the garden and mulch heavily around them, maybe the blueberries will stay less weedy.

    The efforts in the vegetable garden produced a large compost pile that now needs some dry material on it, perhaps the soiled wood chips from the coop.

    While weeding back there, I disturbed a bumblebee. They have never bothered me before, just flitting around where I worked, but this one became quite agitated at my efforts to remove the deadnettle and clover and she stung me three times, once on my midsections and twice under one arm. Bumblebees don’t have a barb on their stinger and can sting multiple times. The more she stung me, the more aggressive she became. I swatted her down with my glove and removed from the area. Today the stings are angry red and itchy. That makes 8 stings from bees and hornets this summer, more than I have gotten in my prior 74 years. So far, the red swelling, a headache, and three days of itching have been the only reaction. I truly hope it doesn’t develop into a more serious reaction, though a talk with a volunteer rescue squad member told me they do carry epinephrine on their trucks.

    Today we have rain, so I’m off the move the pots and barrels around and pick tomatoes. This afternoon while it rains, I will can another batch of pizza sauce and use some of it on tonight’s dinner.

  • Oh those Wily Chickens

    I started raising chickens a decade or so ago to provide us with eggs. With new chicken syndrome, too many ended up here and too many young randy roos, so Son 1 and I learned to dispatch them and put them in freezer camp. I find them too tough to eat but for a few years, he would take frozen ones home occasionally. His situation doesn’t provide the facilities for that to happen at this point and there are several still in the freezer. Over the years, fewer chicks were purchased at replacement time, but last time, they were purchased in February and half died, they were replaced and several died, they were replaced again, thinking I would end up with only the few I started out to get, but ended up with 15, two were roos and dispatched that summer.

    With more hens than are necessary, I found a friend that would gladly take a couple dozen a week off my hands. Daughter also welcomes some, but I have found that my priority for the eggs has shifted from producing them for our use to hoarding them all week so friend and daughter get what they want. The current 13 hens are going on 2.5 years old, molt is starting for the first time as last winter they hadn’t yet had a winter as adults and didn’t molt. Their age has also slowed laying. One has taken to becoming an egg eater, though I haven’t caught her in the act to isolate her, just finding evidence later. And I hear egg song, go look in the coop to remove the egg to stop her and there isn’t one there, so they are hiding them.

    This morning, I heard egg song from this thicket.

    There were three hens in there and rooting around from two sides, I couldn’t find where they might have laid their eggs. Only 4 have been in the coop today. A few minutes ago, I heard egg song again, right behind the house. The walled garden built last summer is pretty overgrown due to patio construction and rocks being tossed aside out of the way until it is finished, so weeding has been sporadic and the vetch and comfrey have taken over. The herb part I have tried to keep clearer, but the deer were eating down a tall flowering plant against the tall wall, so I leaned a piece of old fence there to protect them and the weeds had grown up under the leaning fence. I found this:

    Six eggs hidden. There must be another cache somewhere else also. So it seems that they are laying them in the flowers and thickets instead of the coop. I guess they will have to lose their free range time except for a few hours each late afternoon. As they think nothing of going over a 4 foot fence, using electric mesh that can be moved through the orchard to give them fresh grass ever day or so won’t work.

    Since my priority has gotten skewed, when these hens are replaced, there will only be 5 or 6. I will stop providing eggs for my friend (she can buy free range eggs from the Farmer’s Market) and will give daughter extras, but our household will come first.

    On the plus side, while rooting around in the thicket, I spotted peaches. We didn’t plant a peach tree on that side of the yard, but there must be a volunteer, I have seen it bloom in the spring, but never followed up later in the summer. Maybe the thicket needs to be cleared back so the peaches on that tree can be accessed, giving us two peach trees and more fruit than we can possibly use.

    This is the plant the deer eat back, the butterflies love it.

  • Sunday Olio – July 31, 2022

    Olio: a miscellaneous collection of things.

    What a busy week. At least the later half. On Thursday, hubby and I drove to mid South Carolina to pick up the two local grands from their other grandparents who drove them up from Florida that far. Daughter was unable to go get them and they needed a place to stay for a few days so they came home with us. They are now 10 and 15. On Friday, we took the 15 year old to take his learner’s permit test, which he passed and came out with a brand new learner’s permit. He mowed for us that afternoon after he and I determined that the mower had not broken the belt, just jumped it from the pulleys. I don’t know if it is stretched or if the repair shop made an adjustment while replacing the drive cable, but as long as you turn off the motor prior to disengaging the drive belt, it stays in place.

    Saturday, he was given a lesson on driving the real tractor and did great, but after several starts and stops as we were using the height of the tractor to trim back some branches overhanging the driveway, it suddenly would not engage in any gear. It is parked in front of the barn until I can troubleshoot the issue, hoping it is something his size 13 feet kicked getting on or off. We did get the branches trimmed by using the seat of the riding mower, me pulling down on the branch to lower it enough for him to cut it. This was done after we all walked at the pond. It is great having a teenage boy around that is willing to work with grandmom to get things done I can’t do by myself and to have someone who enjoys riding the riding mower get the grass done.

    Up a tree?
    Tractor lessons

    They were taken home early this afternoon and daughter presented me with a gallon bag of jalapenos. Her’s are larger and more prolific than mine at this point. Once home after hubby and I walked in the rain for the 4th time this week, a basket of softball sized peaches was picked from our tree and canning commenced.

    First up were the peppers. I process them two ways. First is to pierce them, pack them in a jar with a little oregano, a tablespoon of salt, and pour hot vinegar over them. They then sit out until cooled and are put in the refrigerator to pickle over the next couple of weeks. The other way is to make them shelf stable, by doing basically the same thing, but while still hot, water bath canning them so they seal.

    There were about 2 1/2 pounds of Amish paste tomatoes that had been picked yesterday and they were next. Blanched and peeled, seasoned, cooked down, packed in jars for pizza sauce and they were water bath canned.

    Nine of the huge peaches were blanched, peeled, chopped in the food processor, and made into Peach jam with Sriracha, which makes a great cream cheese topping with crackers or meat glaze. The peaches cooked while dinner was prepared and eaten and then the jam was packed in jars and canned.

    Total for the day: 1 quart refrigerator pickled jalapenos, 5 pints canned pickled jalapenos, 4.5 half pints pizza sauce, 8.5 half pints Peach jam with Sriracha.

    Several days ago, one of the Easter egger hens decided to be broody. She was put in “Purgatory” aka isolation on Thursday and released late this afternoon. She went straight back to a nesting box and parked. She is back in purgatory for another 2 or 3 days to cool her off. All of the hens are beginning to molt already and their pen is beginning to look like a pillow fight occurred in there and out in the yard where they wander during the day.

    The monthly spinning challenge ended today with me finding all 31 scavenger hunt items and posting the daily picture with my spindle and the item. Though I didn’t spin as much this month as usual, I needed 62 grams spun and did about double that. The blue on the scale was used partially for the visible mending on my wool hoodie, and the white is more than half used on the tribute hat for my friend, so more spun than the scale shows.

    Next month’s challenge has been posted and will begin tomorrow with the spinning for it.

    During the week, while looking for a library book online, I saw the monthly selection for July was “The Girl in His Shadow” which was a great book sending me to the sequel “The Surgeon’s Daughter.” Both excellent historical fiction books set in the early 1800’s in England. If you are looking for a good book, I recommend both, but the second, the sequel should be saved til the first is read.

  • Olio 7/22/2022

    Olio: a miscellaneous collection of things

    There hasn’t been an olio post in a while, but events and photos have been gathering so let’s throw them together here.

    I don’t use family names in my blog, but those of you who actually know me will identify this one. Son 1 has been working very hard to complete his PhD, and yesterday he successfully defended his dissertation. His defense was able to be watched via Zoom and hubby did watch it and shouted out when the congratulatory announcement was made. We are so very proud of his achievement that he has worked so hard to earn while also teaching and being the Director of Communications of the Honors’ College at the University where he works.

    The very hot weather and intermittent evening thunderstorms have produced some delightful sunsets lately. Because the hens need to be secured each night, many of these sunsets have been appreciated and a few photographed by me. Here are two of the better ones.

    The peach tree and berry canes have been providing delicious fresh fruit this week. Most of the berries go into the freezer for breakfast smoothies, but always some enjoyed as they are being picked. The peaches are just coming into their period of ripeness and several have been enjoyed fresh. A batch of some sort of peach jam will soon be made, though most jam making is going to be skipped this year. Last year’s jams were not a consistency that I liked and most of them ended up in the compost this spring so the jars could be washed for reuse as they sat unopened all winter. Very little jam gets eaten here and with not doing many craft shows, it isn’t getting sold either. I do make a couple of jams that are used as meat sauces, so they will be made in smaller quantities. Perhaps, canned peach halves or slices will join the shelves this year. They aren’t freestone peaches, so getting clean halves or slices is more difficult, but doable. Next up will be the apples and Asian pears. The deer have eaten all the lower apples and leaves and there seem to be fewer Asian pears this year, but enough for some fresh eating and some Pear Marmalade. And the deer have denuded the grape vine leaves that aren’t netted, the chickens having eaten all the grapes except one cluster they can’t reach. Before next year, a means to keep them out from under the vines needs to be formed. If it was downhill from the garden, the fencing could be expanded to protect it, but it is uphill and the chicken coop is in the way. Perhaps training the vines up a taller trellis so the hens can’t reach the hanging fruit. The deer are so bold they come right up to the house, into the walled garden and graze the flowering plants in pots and half barrels down. Just as I thought there would be flowers on some seed sown late spring, the plants are nipped off. Netted tomato cages can prevent that but it is so unsightly.

    The bees need tending. They have been neglected for the past couple of weeks while I healed from the Bald Faced Hornet attack that hubby and I suffered on the back deck. That giant nest is now dead and removed and the deck is again useable, the swelling in my hand and arm and the itching have subsided from the 5 stings I received, so the bees need tending. It is just too hot to go out midday when they are foraging, wearing the bee protective clothing and they are all in the hives late in the day and early in the morning, but with two weeks of extreme temperatures ahead, it will have to be done anyway, one hive at a time so outside exposure is limited.

    Some of the fall planted seed is up in the garden, though I still don’t see pumpkin seedling. More careful tending of the weeds is in order so it doesn’t require so much effort later.

    The mower still sits without diagnosing whether the belt broke or jumped the pulley’s. With it so hot, the grass won’t sprout up as fast, so there may be a couple weeks before it becomes an issue, but it should be addressed and remedied before it is needed.

    The spindle group scavenger hunt this month has been a fun diversion and has kept my spindles busy and the knitted tribute hat is coming along nicely too, a few rows at a time, which is all the arthritis in my hands allows. Spinning doesn’t bother them, but knitting does. Maybe I should return to crochet and see if that is painful. My fiber arts began with crochet, about 60 years ago. Crochet was lost to smocking, to counted cross stitch and crewel, to knitting, then spinning and a little weaving. Weaving doesn’t bother the arthritis, but warping the loom is stressful, so not as much weaving is done as it should be.

    The randomness of the Olio posts is fun at times. I hope you enjoy them as well.

  • Oh Blessed Lawn Equipment

    A few weeks ago, I wrote that the riding mower cable to drive the blades broke and the gas “you push it” mower wouldn’t start. They were both hauled to the repair shop two towns over and “rested” there for 2 weeks before both were returned in good working order. Grandson mowed once for me just before leaving to visit his other grandparents for the month. I mowed again a couple weeks later, but it takes me at least two days to do what he can do in a few hours because the mower beats my back to spasms. Yesterday, the riding mower was backed out of the barn and about half the yard was mowed, at least the important parts near the house and between the house and the garden, and then it just quit. Thinking it needed fuel, the tank was filled and still it would turn over, but not start. The remaining part over to the coop was mowed with the push mower.

    Fortunately, it was uphill from the house when it quit. This morning, I hooked up the utility trailer and backed it up to the embankment and hubby and I rolled the mower down the embankment and onto the trailer and hauled it back to the repair guy. As soon as he turned it on, he knew the problem, clamped off the gas line and replaced the gas solenoid (didn’t know it had one or what it was). All this was done without even taking it off the trailer. Paid him $20 and left with the mower. After our walk and return home, the mower unloaded and most of the rest of the area was mowed. As I was going around the barn, I spotted blackberry canes full of berries and since I was wearing a straw hat, I picked them using the hat as a basket.

    There is another patch at the top of the hill which still needed to be mowed, but the dratted mower either broke the blade belt or threw it just as I started up the hill. In frustration, the mower was parked back in the garage until I can check to see if the belt is broken or just off the pulleys. If it jumped the pulleys, it is probably stretched enough that it will break soon. It has been an issue getting the correct size belt for it. If the model number is entered, the belt suggested by Lowes is too small. The repair shop that used to deal with the mower knew which belt it took, but they are out of business/retired, and the guy that has repaired it twice this summer doesn’t have the belt size recorded.

    Much of what gets mowed with the riding mower can be done with a brush hog, but ours gave up several years ago and hasn’t been replaced. Equipment is so stressful. Maybe I need sheep and goats.

  • Hot summer

    The world seems hot, wild fires, drought. Our garden hasn’t been watered except rainfall and two other well water sessions, but the weeds don’t seem to care. It was looking terrible yesterday, so the line trimmer was taken over to attack the paths. The deadnettle has been regularly weeded from the tomatoes and peppers and when I see it in the beans, the copy cat weed. As the trimming was being done, there were many blueberries to be picked, a total distraction, but also realization that if weedwacking was done there, it would damage many low branches of those shrubs. That put me on hands and knees to pull all of the grass and the insidious creeping weed that is trying to overtake the garden, but the blueberries are clear for now and the corn bed was done too. Doing that showed that the only pumpkin that came up was gone. Seminole pumpkins take 60-90 days and we have that much time before first frost, so this morning, more were planted.

    In the cooler part of the morning, today, the last of the spring peas were picked, providing about 8 ounces of shelled peas. A basket full of green snap beans also picked, a handful of blackberries. The blueberries and blackberries were added to my bag of frozen smoothie fruits, a favorite summer breakfast.

    After lunch and our hot walk, more time was going to be spent in the garden, planting the fall peas, fall potatoes, and preparing the bed that will be beneath the little greenhouse for carrots, radishes, spinach, and komatsuma, but just as I reached the back door, we were given a severe thunderstorm warning that produced lots of noise and light close by, but almost no rain. It seems to have passed, so a bit more work will be tackled out there to get the fall garden started. The green beans from the first planting provided 3 more pounds today but are no longer flowering, there are a few more to harvest, and the second planting is coming along nicely and just beginning to flower. The later ones are never as good, but if picked young enough, can be frozen or made into dilly beans for later in the year.

    The garden really needs a real compost bin system or compost tumbler. I’m in a bad habit of weeding and leaving the weeds to compost in the paths instead of turning them into usable soil. This morning’s weeding was at least added to the pile, but yesterday’s weeds need to be cleared and put in the pile, and the pile needs to be turned.

    This is the time of year when the garden had gotten ahead of me and a few days of work put it back into a friendlier place that doesn’t frustrate me when I see it.

    The storm was short lived so another couple of hours were invested, the fall potatoes and fall peas were planted. The spring potato bed was smoothed and the greenhouse frame set in place to show position of the rows for the other fall seed that will be sown this week. As soon as it was done, rain started to provide a heavy shower to settle the seed in. Another shower is expected before dark.

    I opened this house while smoothing the bed, to remove old nests and found these feathered little ones staring back at me. That task can wait for another day. I didn’t see Mom so I’m not sure what they are as I didn’t want to disturb them too much. There has been an Eastern Bluebird gathering food lately, so maybe hers.

    Though I’m not much of a selfie person, I had to take this photo in front of the tallest sunflower, I can’t even reach the top.

    The cleaned up garden. Some weeding along the fence is needed, but that too will have to wait for another day.

    The first tomatoes are coming in, the pepper plants all have some peppers on them, the cucumbers are growing, but not producing yet. We will take what we get. The Pinto beans are beginning to dry. It doesn’t look like there will be a great number, but fun to have grown my own bed of them for the first time. Maybe next year there will be a large bed of them and forego the corn that really hasn’t done much.

    During all of this, spinning and knitting is still in the works. The monthly challenge is a scavenger hunt with spindle photographed with the item. And some of the spinning from last month and early this month is being knit into a chemo cap as a tribute to my friend that passed from cancer earlier this summer.

  • The Farm Provides

    I am not an off the grid homesteader by any stretch, but in the 16 years in the house, 6 apple trees, 2 Asian Pear trees, 3 peach trees (though only 1 survived), a plum, 8 blueberry bushes, thornless raspberries and thornless blackberries have been added. With this is the vegetable garden, growing potatoes, sweet potatoes, sugar snap peas, shelling peas, bush green beans, Pinto beans, cucumbers, 4 types of hot peppers, 4 types of tomatoes, Seminole pumpkins, and hopefully some corn. There is a grape vine, but for the second year in a row, something has gotten all of the grapes before they ripened for harvest. Last year I blamed the deer, but netted it this year and have found the chickens under the net, so I think they may be the culprits. The fields are surrounded with wineberries and wild blackberries. There is a coop with 13 mature hens. Though the berries don’t produce a lot, there are some to freeze for yogurt smoothies and enough wild berries to make a few jars of jam. The peach tree is full of ripening fruit, the apples and Asian pears also, though the deer keep them pruned fairly high.

    Yesterday, the spring planted potatoes were dug and even after several meals worth having been dug around the edges, there were 46+ pounds of Kennebeck and Russet potatoes in varying size from slightly smaller than a golf ball to decent sized ones. The ones that are very small and the ones that were close enough to the surface to be greened with Solanine, will be replanted toward the end of the month for fall potatoes. The rest will be cured then packed in wood chips for storage. Most of the peas are already harvested and some frozen, but yesterday the harvest also provided more than 4 pounds of green beans to be processed into dilly beans or blanched and frozen for winter use. The second planting that was put in late last week are emerging, and there are still many beans developing on the first planting.

    The chickens that went through two heat domes and three broodies, are back to providing a decent amount of eggs. Last night there were 11 from the 13 hens, so they will stay and produce until next year’s batch are raised and laying next spring. The molt in the late fall will halt production while they grow new feathers, and by then it will be cold enough that few eggs will be laid.

    A fall seed order is being planned and ordered. With the little greenhouse purchased in early spring and the 12 foot fiberglass hoops that are currently holding up net over the blueberries, there will be two areas of protection for fall veggies to supplement the hydroponics that provide winter lettuce. Hopefully, the garden will continue to give until a hard freeze takes it out.

    Now with the bees, in a year, we will have all the sweetener that will be needed for us. We don’t hunt, don’t care for wild game, don’t raise cattle, pigs, or meat chickens, so we will never be totally self sufficient, but the fruits, vegetables, eggs, and honey cut the grocery bill, especially with prices rising. With the Farmer’s Market, I can get whatever meat is needed as well as cornmeal, oatmeal, and whole wheat flour, cheese, and any breads I don’t want to bake. This keeps most of our groceries local, keeping me busy, and helping support the local farms. In the fall, when the You Pick blueberry farm near us opens, more berries will be added to the freezer for muffins and smoothies. Even the milk for the yogurt comes from a local dairy, packed in returnable glass bottles.

    Today, the potatoes will be spread to cure, the beans processed for later use, and clean up of the dusty footprints from someone with very high arches that chose to dig in sandals last night.

  • Busy Holiday Weekend and More Bee Lessons

    Son 1 returned to spend the holiday weekend with us. The plan had been for both sons to come replace the roof on Son 2’s RV that lives on our farm between trips. On their most recent vacation, the roof had some failure and a “patch” repair, but the roof, vents, and hopefully skylight are to be replaced. The replacement had to be postponed as not all the components arrived here in time, so Son 2 rescheduled. Our garage currently has the new roof material spread out on the floor to relax it. This gave us a weekend with Son 1 without a laundry list of jobs to do, or that was the plan.

    He arrived Saturday night and I had purchased a second copper ground rod and clamps so we could run a series of 4 rods 4 feet long each on the apiary electric fence. The original one we could only get about 3 feet into the hard, rocky soil, and we currently have a large, maybe 350-400 pound black bear residing in our area. It was seen 7 times in 3 days last week, including in our lower hay field while the guys were baling the hay down there. Though the electric fence with the 12 volt charger on it was charging, we read that you should have 8 feet of ground rod buried or a series of shorter rods. The rods were cut in half to 4 feet and pounded in with just enough exposed to fasten the clamps and wires. That was the only task for the weekend, or so I thought. While working down there, I spotted this:

    Lots of bees and comb being formed below the screen bottom of one hive. A panic text to my beekeeper friend and a reply of “Yikes.” She and her husband came over to see what was going on and help me remove the wax, relocate the bees inside. Thinking it might be honey, or just wax, we discovered eggs and larvae in the cells, so the virgin queen must have missed the opening to the hive on her return and ended up under the hive instead. The brood comb was wired into a frame and placed into the top super without the queen excluder with hopes that she will move down into the brood box below and continue producing brood in a hive that was struggling. She must have come from one of the queen cups we placed in the have about 5 weeks ago. We did a quick inspection of the last hive I hadn’t gotten to during the week, another that we had given a queen cup to and found eggs and larva there also, so it looks like all 4 hives are currently queenright for now. That is a relief to me. I will reinspect the hive we hope we moved her into this weekend to see if more brood has been made, so we know we successfully transferred her. So another new beekeeping skill introduced, how to wire in comb to an empty frame.

    During the weekend, Son 2 said he caught a small swarm at one of his employee’s homes, so he now has free bees at his place to give him 3 hives, though the caught swarm is in a nuk as there are too few bees to place in a hive yet.

    We did get our walks in both days that son was here with him, cooked out at daughter’s house on the 4th and watched the fireworks from her front yard, and returned home to get a couple hours of sleep before I returned son to the 5 a.m. bus back to the train to get him back to his job. Both sons will be here in 2 weeks to tackle the RV roof.

    This is one of the does with twins that frequent our property. These fawns are very tiny, the others we see are much larger. There are too many deer this year, they look very thin and are eating things they normally avoid. This is a recipe for disease unless more hunting reduction is permitted for a couple years. The deer don’t have any natural predators in Virginia anymore as all the wolves and big cats have been eradicated. This is a lesson that has been hard taught to those that removed them because of occasional stock loss. Some red wolves have been reintroduced in an adjacent state, but aren’t seen here yet and the coyotes/coydogs/coywolves tend to go after smaller prey like groundhogs, squirrels, rabbits, and the occasional barn cat.

    Though I love seeing the fawns, the destruction and the potential for disease to them and us from the infected deer ticks is a problem.

    This week is very hot again, with frequent thunder storms. Before they began yesterday, I did get the couple of acres we call yard mowed on the riding mower. Grandson that will mow for me is away visiting his other grandparents. I do appreciate when he is here to do the job for me.