The grass is knee deep. It is still hot. Thunderstorms are the norm. Our riding mower has a flat tire again and needs fuel, but also for the grass to dry enough to safely mow it.
The garden has loved the rain, but the tomatoes are slow to ripen this year. My logs and pictures of past years show jams and sauces canned by now, but this year no berries were picked, I have just finally gotten enough tomatillos to make a two half pint recipe of simmer sauce. To do that, I will have to use one of the smaller stock pots for the waterbath as I’m not going to heat up the giant one for two half pints. I may just keep freezing them until there are enough to make the task worth while. Even with the cucumber pruning, I harvested 3 more yesterday and saw many more gherkin sized ones that will be large enough to pick in a couple of days. It is time to get out and work a couple of beds for some fall veggies. The potato bed is clear but needs compost, the bed where the first beans were is clear on half of it, the tomatillos are in the other half, but it too needs compost.
My spinning has slowed some, I have been reading Appalachian historical fiction, starting with “The Bookwoman of Troublesome Creek,” then on to “The Giver of Stars.” Both books based on the Pack Horse Libraries in Kentucky. Those two books were holds from the local library. I am on to “A Parchment of Leaves” on loan from a friend.
Yesterday’s mail has both a new fiber I had ordered, Merino/Baby Camel/Silk and a new to me tiny spindle. The tiny Jenkins Kuchulu spindles are very travel friendly and because of their petite size, I can use them in the car when sitting somewhere for an appointment, caught behind traffic or an accident, or to just have when there is a period of time that I am idle.
None of my spindles are large, the left and middle ones are only 4″ diameter, the smaller one on the far right is only 2 1/2.” The blue ply ball is 28 grams. It will continue to grow, but the red will remain in individual turtles until I decide how it will be plied.
We managed a walk on the rail grade today, the sole mask wearers (except one young woman with a bandana). Today, tomorrow, Sunday, and Monday are the only window I see for the next 10 days to finish getting our first mowing of hay down and baled. No one is here working, so I don’t think it is going to happen.
Pretty Sunflowers, a couple of them are 10′ tall. Soon it will be time to cut and dry heads for the seed.
I wear a mask to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. Please wear yours too.
The forecast is for 85% chance of rain today and was low yesterday until late afternoon, so the Big Bad HD was ridden to the city yesterday for it’s annual servicing and inspection. My efforts to repair the driveway were successful enough that he got the bike up the gravel driveway, on to the gravel road, and safely on the hardtop. I followed along in my car to bring him home as the bike was being left until service and a couple replacement parts that had to be ordered come in for installation. The bike had a broken rearview mirror on the left side and the left tail light was out, so I tried to stay close enough to prevent someone from getting between us, but far enough back to not crowd him in case of a problem. Only twice did another vehicle get between us.
The number of COVID cases are much higher in the city and we saw a much better compliance with mask wearing, except at the Harley dealership. I did not see a single mask on a front end employee through the windows and not a customer going in or coming out wearing one. Hubby kept his helmet on with the face shield down until he was back to the car where he donned a mask. You know you have been confined too long when a trip to the city staying in the car followed by carry out from “The Weiner Stand” is an exciting day.
Early in the week, after yet another big basket of cucumbers were harvested, instead of pulling the vines, I pruned them sharply to slow down the volume of fruits being harvested. I still want some fresh cucumbers for salad, but I am pickled out. Day before yesterday, another batch of spicy Bread and Butter pickles were salted and left to sit and weep for the day, another quart of fermented dill spears started. That evening, the Bread and Butters were finished and canned, having wisely started the water bath to heat up while I was preparing dinner. DIL is excited that if we can pass in the night somewhere, sometime, she will get a new flat of pickles for her shelves. The refrigerator is full here with quick brines and ferments of pickles, beans, and kraut. I am seriously considering looking for a dorm size refrigerator to put in the basement, just for those items. I am just starting on pickling the jalapenos and if history is followed, there will be 8 to 10 quarts of them before the first frost. I may can some so they are shelf stable. I have had to purchase 3 quart cans of pickled jalapenos for hubby as we ran out of last year’s before more were ready.
They do make a pretty presentation.
I am jealous of Son1 and DIL’s garden. This spring, their first in their new house, they build several long raised beds and heavily mulched the paths and their garden is gorgeous from the photos I have seen. Their back yard is flat. Since many of my cedar boxes, including ones I restructured this past winter and spring are rotting away, I am thinking about reusing some of the old deck materials to make 4 by 16′ beds which will be fairly easy as most rows are either a series of 4 X 4′ boxes or a 4 X 8′ box and a 4 x 4′ box. This will eliminate the down hill paths and perhaps slow the downhill run off. If I do this, I will invest in a load of mulch to put down in the paths after first putting down another layer of cardboard. The old hay I currently use always has some grasses that sprout in the paths, even with cardboard. With the new walled garden bed, I will not be using the plastic half barrels in the back, so I think I will replant the raspberries in them as the bottoms of the wooden ones have rotted out. If I move them while transplanting, I can extend the blueberry bed another 4 to 8 feet and add more blueberry bushes.
Each day, some time is spent on the spindles, spinning the two fibers currently being spun into yarn. The two make a vibrant bowl of color by my chair.
I recently purchased another smaller spindle from someone and the tracking says it is out for delivery. The one I bought is a better size to carry with me in a small tea tin with a bit of fiber to have when we are sitting behind roadwork or an accident as happened last weekend, or when I am passenger in the car headed in to town to pick up curbside groceries from the Eats, our natural food store.
and putting by continues. The garlic is ready to braid. I can braid hair, surely I can figure out how to braid garlic. The onions are nearly ready to relocate to the cooler, drier basement out of the hot humid garage. The potato tops are nearly all brown. I dug one plant to have new potatoes with fresh green beans, cucumbers and vinaigrette, and sauteed Chinese cabbage and onion with last night pork loin roast. I will give the potatoes about a week more to toughen the skins, then dig them and put on the wire shelves in the basement as well. The cucumbers are producing prolifically. We have been enjoying the first of them in salads and with onions in vinaigrette, but there were finally enough to make the first batch of pickles today. Son 1’s family, especially DIL and grandson 1 really like a recipe that I modified several years ago. Food in Jars by Melissa McClellan has a Bread and Butter pickle recipe in it. I substituted about 1/2 c of sliced Jalapenos for some of the sweet red pepper that it called for and it make a sweet and spicy pickle. I had red, yellow, and orange peppers sliced in the freezer and a pint bag of sliced jalapenos, a huge yellow sweet onion and all the spices I needed. The veggies were cut, tossed with the pickling salt, covered and put in the refrigerator this morning early.
My giant pottery bread bowl was called into service. After dinner tonight, the water bath canner was hauled down off the high shelf, filled with pint jars and water and set on the stove to heat up. The veggies were rinsed, the brine made, the veggies cooked in the brine until hot and packed in the jars. I had put an extra 12 ounce jar in the canner because the recipe says it makes 5 pints. I have had it make more and less, so I want to be prepared. It made 5 3/4 pints this time.
I need to put a note in the recipe that it take almost twice the amount of brine that she calls for and every year I end up in the middle of loading the jars, making more brine. The jars are cooling on the counter. At lunch today, I opened one of the last jars from last year’s batch. They are put out at family meals, I use them in tuna salad, but otherwise I am stingy with the ones I keep for me. Most of them will go to Son 1’s family. The next big batch of cucumbers will be made into dill spears, or whole dills if I can catch enough small ones at the same time.
While the pickles were processing, I shredded a cabbage and salted it. The salt is massaged in until the liquid begins to weep out. It will sit for an hour and then be packed tightly into a sterile quart jar and set up to ferment for sauerkraut. The dilly beans from a few days ago are perfect and I have already enjoyed a few of them.
The versatile big bowl in service for the second time today. The refrigerator style pickles and ferments were made in greater quantity when there was a second old refrigerator in the basement, but it gave up two years ago, so the ferments are more limited now. If the second or third planting of bush beans are as prolific as the first planting was, I will made some canned dilly beans that will keep on the shelves.
Between rain storms this afternoon, I planted a third planting of bush green beans. I had used all of my seed, but Southern Exposure Seed company where I get most of my seed still have the one I plant in stock, so I ordered a packet when I ordered my fall vegetable seed and they came yesterday. The first planting of beans are spent, the plants will be pulled soon and the cucumbers can run in that direction too. Their leaf cover will help hold down weed growth in that end of the bed. I thought the cucumbers were semi bush variety, but they have vines 6 or 8 feet long already. Last year the only thing planted in the same bed were sunflowers so I guess they just climbed them. The fence I placed for them is way too short.
Soon there will be tomatoes and pepper to process and in about a month, the fall veggies planted. I thought the Chinese Cabbage second planting was a failure, but they must just be very slow to germinate as it appears that there may be a dozen or so plants coming up. They will be thinned out to give them space. The one I cooked is more like Napa cabbage than head cabbage, the leaves are bright green.
That is the one I picked yesterday on the left of the picture. I don’t know how well they will keep. I don’t think they will freeze well, but maybe there will be some Kimchee in the future, or Napa style sauerkraut.
It is nice to be adding to the larder instead of just using from it. It was exciting to do an entire meal except for the protein from the garden last night. When I planted the beans today, I also planted a short season ground cherry. I have never planted them before and want to try to make some jam from them if they are successful. I hope we get a decent thunderstorm, the earlier one rained only about 15 minutes and it didn’t even wet the soil in the garden. I may have to set up the sprinkler.
In my post day before yesterday, I showed the results of the Tour de Fleece spinning. Today I took the ply balls and plied them on the wheel. The lighter teal ended up 334.5 yards, less than 2.5 ounces, 16 WPI (light fingering weight) yarn. The darker shiny blue is still on the bobbin as it didn’t fill the bobbin and I have more to spin which I will add before measuring it off.
There is still about an ounce and a half of that fiber, but no more would fit on the bobbin. I don’t know if I will put it in the shop or knit something for the shop. The fiber is from Three Waters Farm and is Merino, Superwash Merino, and Silk, so very soft and drapey.
Time to return to making sauerkraut.
Stay safe. Wear your mask, it isn’t a political statement, it is a health and safety issue.
Many fiber groups participate in Tour de Fleece. It is a fun activity that coincides with the Tour de France, in normal years. Generally you do something to challenge yourself on challenge day, “rest” on rest days, etc. I have never participated in this before, but I belong to a group on a social media site that is for Jenkins Turkish Spindles which have been my sanity during the stay at home order and following self isolation as things are opening back up and virus cases increasing. Spindle spinning is relaxing to me and I have plenty of fiber to play with, but spindle spinning slows down the process and makes the fiber last longer.
The group for the past 23 days has had a “Scavenger Hunt” and the found item is photographed with your spindle(s) with 1 or more gram of newly spun fiber on it. The items have to be from your “home” and that includes your property. Some of the items have been quite easy such as a fresh fruit or vegetable, more difficult such as your favorite piece or pottery or basket, your favorite piece of wall art, etc. Those items aren’t as difficult to fiber artists as you might think because of mugs, yarn bowls, baskets to store knitting or spinning. A few days required two items, such as something to climb and a helmet.
Surrounded by hills and mountains, I chose my grandfather’s old wooden ladder and helmets from activities neither of us can do any longer, but still have the helmets.
Yesterday was the final day and if you have ever followed Tour de France, you know that the daily leader and final winner wear a yellow shirt. I had no trouble with the first 22 days other than deciding on some days which basket or piece of pottery, which live plant, book, item that began with a certain letter to use. The final one was tough. We both look ill or like we are about to be if we wear yellow. The object has to be in your home, so borrowing or buying one is not an option. There were no yellow shirts to be found, anywhere in the house, including the clothing stash that Son 1 and DIL keep in the basement bedroom dresser. It wouldn’t have been the end of the world to not have it, but prize entries were based on the number of items found and when. You had to find one each day but two with two grace days to get three entries and if you got all 23, you got an extra entry. I was not to be out done by this. I have an extensive spice collection as I love to cook, so there was a bottle of ground turmeric. A pot of boiling turmeric and water and one of hubby’s undershirts simmered for 15 minutes then treated with a good dose of salted vinegar and I had a yellow shirt.
Photographed with the 126 g of fiber spun in the 23 days. That shirt will have to be washed separately or everything we own will be yellow and it will become a painting shirt, but I ended up with my yellow shirt.
What a fun way to take your mind off of being at home. It was fun reading through as many of the more than 8000 posts as I could and seeing objects from other folks homes in the US and other countries, reading about events in others lives, meeting new friends. The group moderator must have been super woman to keep up with what started as 106 participants and ended up with 99 chatty folks, tracking our finds and ending and starting each day. The last find has to be posted by 11 a.m. EDT today, then she has to finish the tally and do the prize drawings. I donated 3 of the prizes so items will be mailed off to the winners when announced.
To “extend” our fun, she as introduced a spin 15 minutes a day for a week. Many of the same folks have signed up for this too, so we can continue being in each other’s lives for a while longer.
The mowers did most of the farm down the mountain, but the rest of the back field was partially mowed and has sat idle for several days. Our hay still stands. Maybe this week, maybe not, the weather will control that. This is as late as it has ever stood, I don’t know about hay nutrition, but I would think that when the seed heads mature and drop their seed that the hay loses nutrition, but it means it is self seeding the fields.
I found the concentrated citric acid weed killer a couple of days ago and mixed up a gallon at the lowest concentration to spray the inside of the walled garden. It did a fairly good job on miner’s lettuce and a few other tender weeds, barely touched the grass and the pigweed thumbed it’s leaves at it. I guess I will up the concentration and try again. I don’t want any of that coming up once the cardboard and mulch are put down. Yesterday and today are fairly comfortable temperatures and I was hoping to get that job done but it will have to wait another day or two if the second spraying does work.
The daylilies continue to bloom and brighten the east side of the garage. I love spring and early summer as first the iris bloom, then the Dutch iris, and finally the daylilies. The Calendula bed really self seeded last year and it is full of blooms, far more than I will use in a year of making herbal salve. I will gather some seed and add a patch of it to the walled garden for bright yellow and orange color. The marigolds in the vegetable garden that I planted from seed are about to bloom, but the plants that I bought and put in half barrels look puny.
I am continuing to spin on the Jenkins Turkish spindles for the Tour de Fleece/Jenkins Team. It is fun seeing what item you have to seek to photograph with your spindle(s). However, Ravelry recently changed their website and though it is cleaner in appearance, it is an ocular migraine inducer for me. They have a link to a variation of their old look, but it really isn’t and it too causes the migraine, so I have been going on as the item is listed, posting my photo and staying off the rest of the day. Yesterday was spent mostly making masks for family. Some of yesterday’s that were made.
Well off to find a “Christmas or Holiday ornament that can hang” for today’s hunt. I have plenty, but the boxes are all stored away, nothing got left out by accident. The spindles are ready.
Because of the dreaded virus ravaging our country, we had been unable to meet our newest grandson, born in January. Initially we didn’t want to add any stress to their lives with their household of 5 children, 3 under the age of 4, so we decided to give them a month or so to settle in, then COVID came to visit and as we are in the at risk age and health group, we determined it was not in anyone’s best interest for us to drive across the state and stay in a hotel in an area of the state that was a hot spot. Yesterday, they headed west to a family wedding and had to pass by a nearby town on the interstate. Last night after dark, we drove to a fast food restaurant just off that interstate and met them, masked and socially distanced and finally got to meet our newest grandson, see the two little girls that were an infant and a 2 year old when we last saw them, and the two older grands as well. The only two that really know us are the older two. All of the children are beautiful, healthy children and it was so good to see them even if we couldn’t hold the littles and hug the bigs. We did take pictures, but I don’t post pictures of my grandchildren without permission and didn’t think to ask last night.
It continues to be hot and humid with occasional thunder storms, so haying still hasn’t begun on our farm and garden work is limited to early morning or late evening. Today I will harvest and freeze more green beans, I’m sure that the last two days storms have caused the small ones to thrive and swell.
I continue to spin on my spindles, adding a few grams of fiber each day, most of the spinning done on the front porch under the ceiling fan, in the car on the way to two dentist appointments for hubby in a week, neither of which have resolved the problem, or sitting in my stressless chair in the evenings. I have spun about 100 grams of fiber in the first 12 days of the Tour de Fleece/Jenkins Team, some has been plied. The darker fiber on the smaller spindles is the weft on the sample scrap scarf I am weaving on my rigid heddle loom. Hubby bought me the stand for it recently which makes weaving on it so much easier that I actually pull it over to my chair and weave a few rows several times a day. The hand spun warp is sticky and one of them must not have been tightly enough spun as it keeps breaking requiring me to tie in a piece. I’m hoping I am past the fragile area and it will hold together for the remainder of the project. It is going to be entirely spun on Jenkins Turkish spindles.
Stay safe everyone. Be cautious, wear a mask, wash your hands.
The one social media that I am enjoying regularly these days is one for fiber artists. A group to which I belong on this site is for the Jenkins spindles that I love. Each year during Tour de France, they participate in Tour de Fleece and as there is no Tour de France this year, we are doing a daily scavenger hunt of objects in your home and showing them in a photograph with one or more of your spindles holding at least 1 gram of fiber spun within the 24 hours prior. It has been so much fun looking for the object, posting it with or without a story that goes with it and then reading the other 100+ folks posts. Items like a handheld kitchen gadget, a jigsaw puzzle, an unfinished fiber project.
A favorite piece of art on your wall.
A non fiber equipment wood item
A spherical object
Every day is a new item and more fun. I spin much more than a gram of fiber a day on my spindles. Today a new acquisition arrived in the mail. It is the tiny Olive wood spindle with the rusty colored fiber in the lower edge of the bowl.
This has been a fun activity, the first week just ending. At the end of the 17 days, we will have earned entries into drawings for prizes from 6 Jenkins spindles, fiber, project bags, patterns. The number of successful days determines the number of entries.
Some of my time is being used to make masks. Eldest son’s family were needing some and he is bearded with a long face, so patterns are being altered.
Other time is being spent in the early mornings in the garden, though there is little to harvest right now. The second plantings are beginning to sprout. The hay still stands tall, though the mowers are getting this direction, the fields near us are being done now. Grass mowing has to be done in the early mornings or near dusk.
This is an archaic term that I use each year as the garden, orchard, and in years past, the Farmers Market begin to provide fresh food in quantity that is greater than daily use demands. It is a time when foods are prepared by blanching and freezing, or canning to put away for the times of the year where the only fresh foods are imported. The peas were the first produce in enough quantity to put some away as I shelled, blanched, and froze a gallon of fresh peas. That isn’t enough to get us through the winter, but it will be about 16 meals for the two of us.
About a week ago, I used the last pint of last summer’s herbed tomato sauce that was a base for pasta sauce. The freezer had two 2 gallon bags of whole frozen tomatoes, so today, they were peeled, chopped, and cooked down with about a quart or so of chopped and sauteed peppers, onions, carrots, mushrooms, garlic, and large handfuls of herbs. I am not ready to pull down the pressure canner that lives in the kitchen from late summer through fall, and the sauce had too many additives to be safe to water bath can, so 13 pints were packed in wide mouth glass jars and will be frozen once they cool down to refrigerator temperature. Another pint was served with angel hair pasta and a salad for our dinner. We have a chest freezer and the refrigerator freezer, so most of the vegetables are frozen, but sauces and salsas are usually canned. With that many jars of pasta sauce prepared, the tomatoes that come from the garden this summer will be canned as plain tomato sauce, crushed tomatoes, pizza sauce, and salsa. Tomato sauce and crushed tomatoes can be amended to make pasta sauce as needed and with some of the diced frozen jalapenos can be used to make chili tomatoes.
Soon the green beans will begin and as I don’t like mushy canned green beans, they will be blanched and frozen. As the pea plants are pulled, a second planting of bush beans will be planted.
Cucumbers are pickled, potatoes, onions, and garlic will be stored in the part of the basement that is not climate controlled. The tomatillos are used to make sauces and tomatillo jalapeno jam and if they are prolific, they can be frozen. I am enjoying a handful of cultivated berries every few days, but there may not be any berry jams if I can’t get to the wild berry patches around the fields.
We will enjoy fresh corn until we can’t stand another ear then it will become frozen cut corn and corn relish. The apples become applesauce, the Asian pears become pear sauce and Pear Marmalade. Hot peppers are canned and made into vinegars and hot sauces and bell peppers chopped and frozen to use in cooking during the winter. I am hopeful that a fall garden will produce carrots, spinach, kale, lettuce, and maybe fall peas. A couple of pumpkins vines produce many more pumpkins than are needed for pies and stuffed pumpkin, but the smaller Seminoles make good winter treats for the hens.
The summer season is busy and often heats up the kitchen, but the results are enjoyed through out the winter.
I am wondering if I can build an A frame that can be covered with heavy plastic to give the fall garden a few extra weeks of growing season. I think there is some left over PVC pipe in the barn that I could use if I get the correct fittings.
When not in the garden or putting by, I am spinning and knitting. The shawl that I finished and showed blocked a couple of days ago is here.
And it perfectly matches my felt hat I got last winter.
My fiber and two of my spindles ready to the Jenkins Team Tour de Fleece that begins tomorrow. I should finish the last little bit of Shetland tonight on the wheel. Once it is washed, I will measure out the yarn for my sweater and hope that I have enough or can figure another yarn to add to make it enough.
After early heavy rain this morning, the day turned beautiful. It is muggy because of all the rain, but blue sky, so after making a homemade pizza, I took a walk. Without raincoat and boots. My usual route is a fair amount of elevation change, up our long driveway, down our gravel road, over our creek, then uphill to the top of the hill for which our road is named. From there, I leave the road for a farm road through the woods. Until the grass gets about knee deep, I cross the neighbor’s field to a lower farm road and then back to the gravel road and home. The field has gotten too tall and with the tick load this year, I have quit doing that part and when I get to the end of the woods road, I turn around and retrace my steps.
I love the lightplay on the hill as I walk the woods road.
My favorite part of the walk.
The rain didn’t knock down all of the Rhododendron blooms.
Lots of fungi from the rain, this one was pretty.
If you have ever seen the movie “Dirty Dancing,” the lodge where it was filmed is just over the crest of that mountain, about 4 miles and 2000 feet higher beyond us.
It was nice to get out in the air, in the woods, and get some exercise.
My nine hens aren’t producing eggs in the quantity that they did last year. One has been broody for at least 6 weeks. Usually after the 22 days needed to hatch eggs, they give up, but not this one. I have isolated her away from the nesting boxes, dipped her repeatedly in cool water, and nothing will break her. I guess this fall it will be time to start with new flock. I think I will go back to the big bodied, gentle Buff Orpingtons. Last night when I went out to gather the eggs and lock them up for the night, I found an apparent misfire.
When I cracked it this morning, it was just white, no yolk.
Yesterday I wound off the yarn I had plied from the Peacock colored gradient braid. The greens were an additional 212+ yards for a total of 506+ yards of light fingering weight yarn to become the yoke of a new sweater for me.
The next week will be more like a typical summer with hotter temperatures, more humidity and some thunderstorms.
Stay safe. Wear your mask for my safety, I wear mine for yours.
My memory pictures all show the hay either down and baled by now or at least in the processes. It is tall, wet, probably full of ticks, so I won’t venture into it. I can’t get to my berry patches to check on them. It should be about time for the Wineberries. The forecast doesn’t look good for them to come any time soon to mow and bale. We have 40 to 90% chance of thunderstorms every day as far as the weather app will take me. Yesterday the rain held off until late afternoon.
We had two packages to mail and a pick up from Tractor Supply of critter feeds and stopped by Southern States to check their seed stock. They rarely have more than a couple of people at a time in there during weekdays. I found two packages of hybrid sweet corn with a 78 day maturation window, which should give us a harvest well before the first frost. It seems odd to think of first frost when we haven’t even hit the summer highs and the garden isn’t producing anything but peas yet, but as a gardener, I have to think ahead. I am doing a germination test on the other corn before I send the seed company a letter. Two packets of seed won’t break the bank, but it is still about $8. Because it wasn’t raining when we got home, I pushed the wheel barrow with my spade , hoe, and rake over to the garden area. The spade and wheel barrow were wheeled around to the area where I changed the configuration of the chicken run and I dug two earthworm filled barrows of the richest black composted soil and dumped them on the freshly weeded and lightly disturbed patch where the corn should have sprouted weeks ago but didn’t. I was careful to avoid the sunflowers that did come up along the edge and left the two stalks of Silver Queen that did sprout and raked in the compost and replanted corn for the third time. The new seed. While I was at it, I replanted the two hills of Seminole pumpkins that also either didn’t come up or got eaten. Now to wait 7 to 14 days to see if the block of corn takes this time. The block is 11-12 feet by 4+ feet, 6 rows 27 inches apart, so if it will come up, it is the ideal arrangement to actually get some corn from the patch. It may be too late to plant the climbing beans because the corn has to be a foot or so tall before you plant the beans. I think as far as three sisters, it won’t be this year, but if we get corn and a few pumpkins, I will be happy. I had hardly gotten back in the house when the daily deluge began, so at least it got a good watering in.
The only area still unplanted is the old mint bed. It still lacks a box or border and as it is in an area of the garden where there is a significant slope, it needs something to hold the soil. The mint is continuing to pop up in and around that area and I continue to fight with it. I want to terrace that spot, but don’t want to purchase blocks. Huck’s coop, the failed A framed chicken tractor that we finally set on a cedar raft set on rocks for chick raising, has deteriorated beyond repair unless we removed each bottom board one at a time and replaced it, a job beyond my skills alone. And a wind storm a year or so ago ripped the hinged half of the top off. I am thinking about going out with the cordless drill/driver and taking the metal roof and plastic side panels off, carefully removing the hardware cloth to save for another project. I will salvage any of the good wood, burn the rotted wood, and use the larger rocks as my retaining wall for the terraced area. The smaller rocks that we put around the inside edge to hold in the layer of soil over the cedar post raft will have to be loaded in the tractor and hauled to a rock pile if the hay ever gets mowed so I can get to one.
After dinner prep as it continued to thunderstorm, I returned to my spindles to finish the Peacock braid of Falklands wool that I have spent the first half of June spinning. I had done the purples and blues with the teals and greens what I was currently working on. I did finish spinning it, took my final check in and scale picture for the Spin Along side.
Between the 4 ounce braid, the gray sample yarn, some Jacob for my rare breed credit, and the last of the wine colored wool for my shawl, I ended up with 166.17 grams (5.861 ounces). It was wound into a ply ball and plied on my wheel last night, but I haven’t measured it out to see how much yardage it is. The Peacock yarn is going to be the yoke of a sweater with the gray Shetland below and on the sleeves. A sweater entirely spun by me, almost entirely on Turkish spindles. The purples and blues are almost 300 yards. The July Spin Along side can be done the way the first half of the year, with 4 check ins and a final scale picture showing at least 25 grams spun, or we can participate in a Tour de Fleece that usually occurs when Tour de France happens. Since it isn’t happening this year, we are going to do the Tour de Fleece as a scavenger hunt beginning a week from tomorrow, the day the race should begin if it could. Each day an item will be posted, you try to find the item in and around your home and take a picture of it with your spindle on which you have spun at least 1 gram of fiber. One gram of fiber is not much, the neater green cop/turtle in the above picture is about 25 grams, so the amount that is normally needed for a whole month. It should be fun and at the end, the finishers, who found at least 20 of the items and spun daily will be entered for prizes that various spinners have contributed, including the generous donation of several spindles by the Jenkins. All of the wool spun during the competition has to be done on Jenkins spindles, this is the Jenkins group after all. My two spindles are empty and I purchased a 3 ounces of Bam Huey (a bamboo, merino blend) to use for the challenge.
These are my two favorite spindles.
Be safe out there. Please wear your mask for my protection, I wear mine for yours.
Cabin Crafted 