Category: Homesteading

History Week

October brings lots of history activity at the museum or sponsored by the museum. Many opportunities to be a Colonial Pioneer woman in the New River Valley.

On Sunday, we had the annual Spirit Trails, but this year it was held at the restored historic Belle Hampton home and property, 280+ acres with several buildings that have been restored. The General Store is an Air B&B, the main house and additions cleaned up and available by appointment to visit, the cottage in which the owners live, plus the addition of a lovely huge pavillion that was the home base for the mule driven wagon rides through the history of the property and the various people that lived, worked, or fought on the land.

The owner Tom Hoge portraying the Governor.

Unfortunately, a strong line of thunderstorms came through during the third ride and the remaining tours had to be cancelled with one portrayal held in the pavillion for those folks who stayed. There were treats to be had, displays to see. Period dance lessons, cider pressing, and some kids activities as well.

Monday morning brought the first 70 4th graders from Pulaski County for Fall on the Frontier. We had 7 stations for them to visit, history of the town film, cider pressing and corn shelling, slavery talk, cooking, bobbin lace making, spinning and weaving, and militia with flintlocks fired.

We will host more classes tomorrow and Friday. The classes are always interesting as the students learn more about the history of the region in which they live and how it differed over 200 years ago.

October 22, 2025
Old Skills

Last Wednesday evening, I trekked over to the museum to teach an old skill. No costume required for this event. We set up 4 stations for 4 ladies + 1 second grader accompanying her Mom and they learned to make basic lard and lye soap. We used a mix of old school and modern skills and equipment so we weren’t there all night stirring the mix. Of course they were given some history of soap and soap making and why we now use a lye calculator and a superfatted recipe to be sure we end up with a body friendly product. I put together kits of a small heat safe plastic bucket, two rigid plastic stadium cups, a spatula, and a silicone loaf pan for each participant that they keep at the end of the session, along with the a three page history, instructions, and two recipes; one for the lard and lye and one for a vegan soap with Shea butter, Coconut Oil, and Olive Oil, and of course, their mold of soap. We “cheat” by stirring with an immersion blender to speed the process up to keep our session within a 90 minute window. As I dug out some of my equipment and essential oils to scent their individual batches of soap, it seemed a good time to go ahead and make soap for 3 friends and our household.

The batches at home were made Tuesday and Wednesday of this week. On Tuesday, a double batch of one scent was made and I won’t do that again as it took forever to get to the consistency to pour it in the molds and is still not as firm as I would like to slice it into bars. The
Wednesday batches will be unmolded and cut tomorrow to cure for a month before going to the folks for whom it was made.

Today as I sat waiting for hubby to have a consultation visit and then I waited for my annual mammogram, I spun. In public, I spin on either a top whorl drop spindle or a Turkish spindle. When doing it, there are surreptitious glances, to out and out staring and occasionally someone will ask what I am doing. Followed by the question of what I then do with the yarn I spin.

The other old skill that really hasn’t been done so far this year is canning and preserving. There have been pickles fermented and stored, but the tomatoes haven’t produced in sufficient quantity to bother canning them. I have frozen a couple of gallon bags, made one big pot of sauce to use one night for pasta and the rest frozen in wide mouth pint jars. There is a basket of Asian pears from the orchard sitting on the dining table with a couple of oranges to make pear/orange marmalade, but I haven’t gotten around to dragging down the canning pot to do it. As there are still many jars of applesauce from last year unopened, I doubt that any will be canned this year. The only other produce that has come in quantity are greenbeans and I freeze some of them, but don’t like canned one at all and barely tolerate them from frozen. I like to buy local, but come midwinter when green vegetables are at a premium if at all available, I do buy from the grocer.

All of these skills have been learned since retirement. You can teach an old dog new tricks. And I truly believe in the each one teach one. I am grateful to the friends who taught me to make soap, spin, and improve my knitting skills. The canning and fermentation, I have learned from books and the internet.

September 3, 2025
Garden Day, Finally

Tomorrow is our last average frost date and it seems that we have gone from winter straight to summer, so we aren’t afraid of more cold nights. After our weekly jaunt in to the Farmers’ Market for salad, asparagus, a bit of meat and some more pepper seedlings, we started on the garden to do list. First up was removing the remaining 4 pods of the old compost bins. They were constructed 9 or 10 years ago when the property had been purchased, but the house was only under construction. My current compost bin is up from the chicken coop and serves me well. The very large multi-pod bin was necessary when the gardens were just started, filled with composting leaves and horse manure from down the road. They have served as temporary shelter for cull birds and last year for sweet potatoes, winter squash and pumpkins. Today we deconstructed it. SIL knocked it apart with a sledge, Daughter and I knocked nails through the boards and pulled them, dropping them in a bucket for later disposal. Many of the boards are Chestnut and still sound, so they were stacked with the idea of using them to construct a more permanent meat bird coop.

While we hammered and pulled, our helpers started on the weeding, to keep them away from the nails. Unfortunately, SIL missed and swears my middle name must be Vlad as he impaled one of the smaller finishing nails through the sole of this boot and into the instep of his foot.

Once the wood was stacked, we tackled the former grape bed that had not been weeded very well last year and had many large clumps of Bermuda grass growing in it. While Daughter and I weeded, SIL hauled rocks and put them in the tractor bucket. Daughter was given her first tractor driving lesson today and by the end of our workday, was driving the tractor alone to dump the buckets of rocks onto one of the dozens of rock piles on the farm.

The chickens loved having clumps of grass, chickweed, burdock, thistles and other greenery with roots tossed into their run. They are still penned up, because we still haven’t moved all of the fence to keep them out of the gardens.

Romeo standing guard.

Today was a great start on the garden. When it cools some tonight, I will set the peppers, tomatoes, and tomatillos in the beds prepared for them. The former raspberry bed still needs further clean up, many volunteers pulled and weeds removed and we will get the beans and other seeds planted. The barren end of the chicken run will be planted with winter squash, the area where the compost bins stood, we will plant the Seminole Pumpkins. Until they get large, I will continue weeding the area between where the bins stood and the chicken run. Sunflowers will be planted along the edge of the garden for their beauty and for the seed for the chickens.

Love this time of year, just wish it wasn’t quite so hot already.

May 9, 2015
Funny Birds

Toward the end of my first year of raising chickens, I decided I wanted a heritage breed with a rooster and culled out all but my two Buff Orpingtons and my Easter Egger and bought more Buffy pullets. The Easter Egger became the victim of a neighbor’s dog along with a cull and a Buffy pullet, but we carried on with the ones left. Ultimately, the rooster, Cogburn became too aggressive toward others and finally toward me, so he too was culled and Romeo was obtained from the farmer from whom I had gotten the pullets. He was a beat up fellow, but has matured and after a molt has turned into a nice looking rooster and so far, fairly docile.

Last fall I raised a separate flock of Rainbow Rangers for fryer/broiler use, but really didn’t want to deal with day old chicks, brooder, heat lamp and the mess, smell and fire hazard anymore. Son and I discussed whether we could raise just the Buffys and have enough older birds and cockrells raised by the ladies to keep the freezer stocked. The first Buffy went broody when there were still other breeds in the mix and since I couldn’t identify only the Buffy eggs, I took the eggs each day and finally broke her broodiness. The next one to go broody was in November and there was no way I was going to even let her try to raise a brood with winter coming on.

This spring, I bought four 8 week old Americaunas to provide some color in our eggs collection, knowing that I will be able to identify them and not let any hatch.

I lost another hen to dogs just a couple of weeks ago and son and I had just about concluded that the Buffy raised meat birds was a failed project. A few days ago, I realized that there were too many feathers in the coop for this time of year and found a hen sitting a nesting box and “growling” at me when I wanted to collect eggs. The next day she was there again and so I did a bit of research to see how many eggs to leave under her. Like other info on the internet, I saw everything from 10 to 16. Wanting her to actually sit and not abandon the nest, I marked 5 eggs.

I figured I could sacrifice 5 eggs if she abandoned them but she was still there yesterday, even while I cleaned the coop. Yesterday, I heard a commotion in the coop and went to check on it to find another hen trying to lay an egg in her box while she was still in it and another 2 trying to occupy another box simultaneously. There are 6 nesting boxes, but they all seem to want the same two. Last night, I slipped 5 more marked eggs under her, hoping she can raise 10 chicks. She is still sitting them and this afternoon, I found two more eggs under her that were removed. If one more will get broody and I can get her to sit 10 as well, we will replace some of the older hens with pullets, cull the cockrells and succeed in putting about 25 or more birds in the freezer this fall. These chicks should hatch about the time the Americaunas are old enough to eat layer feed and can be moved in with the hens and the chicken tractor will become the nursery until they are old enough to socialize and I can select who get culled and who stays for the winter.

April 30, 2015
More Wet Stuff

Our region is under water. The forecasts have flood warnings, many roads closed, schools today had a 2 hour late start due to the flooding. The morning dawned beautiful, but the afternoon brought more heavy rain. You would think that in the mountains that flooding wouldn’t really be a problem, but the rivers and creeks are over their banks, fishing camps and river front yards are under water.

I turned the chooks out this morning to free range and graze on the new grass and emerging bugs. When daughter and granddaughter came back from taking grandson to the bus stop, the dogs all slipped out. Lately they have seemed to leave them alone when dogs and chickens were sharing the yard. For some reason, I looked out to check on them and found our two chasing the chickens and daughter’s Golden Retriever eating one. I don’t know who actually caught the bird, but I do know that we now have a problem. The dogs and the chickens aren’t going to be able to be out at the same time again. One of the dogs realized that opening through the electric fence that had a rope across it wouldn’t hurt them and barged right through. This required me to move the fence around to create a new opening, narrower and on a different side of the fence.

I had planned on culling a few of the hens later in the summer, but didn’t plan on sharing them with the dogs. After today’s stress, we only got 4 eggs. Maybe the one they killed was the one laying weird eggs. I guess we will see in a day or two.

Since the weather wasn’t good to be out and about much, I made Mozzarella and lasagna noodles and made a homemade vegetarian lasagna for dinner. I love being able to make the cheese and noodles at home. I noticed at the Farmers’ Market on Saturday, that I could get raw cow and goat milk for a donation, perhaps I will try raw milk Mozzarella or yogurt.

April 20, 2015
Soaking Wet

We had a couple of stellar spring days and took full advantage of it. One full bed of the garden was cleaned up, peas, Daikon radishes and a few pepper plants (which we may yet have to cover) and Swiss Chard plants we purchased were planted. We have garlic, onions, kale and turnips up. There are a few more beds to be cleaned up to plant the tomatoes, beans, cukes and summer squash and once the remaining peppers are large enough, they will also be planted. The strawberry plants don’t like the rain that we have had. Sunflowers and winter squash will be planted near the chicken runs. As the chickens are spending more time free ranging, I am considering reducing their run size and using their well fertilized, run, bare of weeds for more planting.

The spring’s first mowing was done and some of the house plants relocated to the front deck.

One of the Buffys is having reproductive issues and she is laying very strange eggs.

The egg on the right is a normal egg. The two on the left are two of her treasures for the past few days. All of the girls are at least 14 months old and less than 25 months old, so it shouldn’t be age. None of her odd eggs are double yolked, but the albumen is very watery and the shells all have cracks that have been calcified over. Her shells are very thin as well. If I could figure out which Buffy it is laying them, I would double band her as a potential cull.

The littles are getting braver and are coming out of the tractor more each day, however, today it has rained until I will need a rowboat to get to the coop. The littles somehow got locked out of their tractor this afternoon and were soaking wet when I went to lock them up. The Buffys who could get in their coop were also soaked, but they gave us 10 eggs today.

Instead of being outside, today was a day to make chicken feed and granola. I also did a bit of garage cleanup, still trying to merge extra bicycles and yard toys into the garage and still have room for Mountaingdad to turn the BBH around in there.

We are enjoying the change to spring, the trees and spring flowers blooming, the leafing out of the shrubs and trees; the warming days and nights and the lower electricity bills they will bring; the return of the spring Farmers’ Market and the fresh salads that it brings.

Loving life on our mountain farm.

April 19, 2015
The Good and the Bad of Spring

Forsythia blooming, Lilac leaves unfurling. Frightful and her sisters have found the perches in the chicken tractor and instead of being Frightful, she should be Frightened as they won’t come out and play in the yard. Apples, Asian Pears and Peaches are blooming. The Buffys are being generous. The Maples are all lime green with flowers and oh the pollen.

The dogs are shedding fiercely requiring daily vacuuming. The garden is going to require some sort of major rework to keep the Buffys and Romeo from scratching up every seedling that is emerging.

I am in a fog. Though I was never allergic to things growing up, I seem to be developing more and more allergies as I age. It started about a dozen years ago with my first and major case of poison ivy, followed by more and more serious reactions to paper wasp stings and this year my eyes are gritty and my head stuffed full from the indoor and outdoor spring allergens.

Because of the reactions to stings, our youngest son with funds we fronted has established a bee hive in his yard in Virginia Beach and applied for a grant that will refund part of what was invested and with that he hopes to get a second hive. He will maintain the hives and we will enjoy our share of the honey they produce. That is a win/win as far that they and we are concerned. I wish the hives could be here to benefit our garden and flowers, but it is not a risk I am willing to take with the nearest medical facility at least 20 minutes away. The same son is a Paramedic and he said that most Doctors won’t prescribe an Epi Pen to seniors due to other risks. I guess I should visit our Doc and inquire.

April 13, 2015
Putting By Commences

Our strawberry plants are first year and we probably won’t see any berries this year and strawberry jam is grandson and son-in-law’s favorite. When I was in the grocery yesterday, I saw that 16 oz clam shells of organic strawberries were 2 for $5.00. Not inexpensive, but a really good price for them. I haven’t found any you pick strawberry fields within an hour drive of us and even if I did, they probably aren’t organic. I purchased 6 clam shells of strawberries. It was interesting that they varied in weight from barely 16 ounces to almost 22 ounces.

I pulled down my copy of preserving by the pint and set about to make jam.

I love the recipe as it has only strawberries and honey with a couple tablespoons of lemon juice. Since it is pectin free, it requires longer cooking and a broad shallow pan to cook it, so it only makes a couple of half pints per batch. The rhythm was quickly found, cutting the first batch, adding the honey to sit for 10 minutes and starting cutting the next batch. While the first batch cooked, the second batch was prepped. The first batch was cooked and put in clean jars to can. While it was processing, the second batch was cooking and the third batch was being prepped. When done, all 12 half pints popped as they sealed, a good sign and now they are sitting to cool on the kitchen counter.

There will be a blackberry jam making session this summer. Blueberries and raspberries canned or frozen for muffins and pancakes or cobblers.

All of the canning supplies will be put away now as it will be a couple of months before we need them again, but it is nice to put something on the shelves now instead of using up the last of the supplies from summer past. Perhaps we will stumble on another deal on strawberries and will put away a few more jars.

April 7, 2015
Signs of Spring

Leaves on the Lilacs
Blooms on the Forsythia, my favorite spring shrub.
New chicks

Frightful on the left behind the waterer. Three are Redtail Hawk colored, one is more black and gray with just a bit of reddish brown in her wings.

The four new Americauna pullets were picked up today. Not wanting to order chicks, set up the brooder and raise them until they could go outside, I spotted a post on one of my Facebook Groups from a lady who offered to include your order in hers and you could pick up your day old chicks from her for cost or she would raise them to 8 weeks for a fee. Wanting to keep a heritage flock of the Buffys, but missing the green eggs from the Olive Egger, I ordered 4 Americaunas from her and agreed to pay the fee to let her raise them til feathered and able to be outside. By fall we should have green, blue or pink eggs.

Daughter and I used a roll of heavy mil plastic and stapled it to the sides of the chicken tractor, put the food and water inside and introduced them to their new temporary home. In a few days, they will be released into the pen to run around and graze and get acquainted with the Buffys through the fence. In 8 more weeks, once they can have the whole grain feed mixed with layer pellets, they will move to the coop. I hope by then that one or more of the Buffys decide to get broody and sit a nest. They will be moved to the brooder pen once they hatch which might expedite moving the Americaunas. Daughter has decided that the largest one with the Retail Hawk like coloring and the dark head should be named Frightful after the Falcon in My Side of the Mountain. The other three are still unnamed. I don’t name birds that I know will eventually end up in the stew pot, so I don’t know if they will be named.

The Buffys got free range time while all of this was going on and every time I moved toward the house or back out toward the pens, I felt like the Pied Piper with the flock so close to my feet that I had to walk with a shuffle to keep from stepping on a hen. They will eat out of my hand, but they don’t want to be petted.

April 6, 2015
Another Sunny Growing Day

before the next rain and drop back to normal temperatures. After Grandson was dispatched via school bus and breakfast was prepared, eaten and cleaned up for Granddaughter, we set out on errands.

One errand was to locate some inexpensive pots to plant the salvaged raspberry canes in for Son #2. It was sticker shock to see how much clay pots cost these days, even the cheap plastic ones were much more than I had hoped, but 5 were purchased as they are after all for Son #2.

Raspberries, neatly pruned and potted and awaiting transport to him in April.

The next errand was to get a new chess set. Decades ago, I gave Mountaingdad a carved Olivewood chess set. The pieces have always been close in stain, but the years have faded them to an almost imperceptible shade difference making playing with the set difficult even in good light. About a decade ago, while in El Paso for a family funeral, we travelled by bus over to the markets in Juarez when it was still safe to do so and came home with a huge set of the Aztecs vs the Conquistadors which safely made it back to Virginia on the plane, but it too is difficult to distinguish the pieces. We have a leather suitcase set that had backgammon, checkers and chess, but the grands have lost two pieces from that set, making it also unusable. Mountaingdad enjoys playing with the grandsons, working with them on strategy and confidence, so off to Target we went and came home with a folding wooden box that has the board on the outside and pieces for chess and checkers that are white and dark brown. The grandson living here will be delighted tonight.

While there, we found a tiny clay flower pot with a grow pellet and a packet of sunflower seeds in it. Grandson is growing a seed at school, so granddaughter gets to grow one at home. Little miss with her newly planted dwarf sunflower. Now to keep her out of it as it grows. She insisted for a few minutes that she was going to stand there and wait for it to sprout, a reminder that 3 year olds don’t have the concept of time yet. Each time we leave the house, she comments that her Mom will be home when we get back, though her Mom won’t be back for 8 more days and we have repeated that over and over, even showing her on the calendar.

The planting efforts outside resulted in some weeding and the chooks got a green treat of their favorite snack, fresh chickweed.

If I could control where they grazed, I would direct them to the front shrub bed that is quickly being engulfed by chickweed. In between other tasks, another 2 five gallon buckets of whole grain chicken feed were mixed, so they have a good diet to hold them until we can let them free range again and just supplement their feed.

I need to make a batch of hand scrubbing soap for the household. With gardening chores and weeding beginning, the dirt stained fingers and nails will soon be in need of good scrubbing each day.

March 23, 2015