Category: Uncategorized

     This week has had family visiting, as eldest son was here until Sunday and eldest grandson stayed on until yesterday.  It has rained nearly every day, but we did get one good day to take grandson to the local public pool for a swim.  He is so much more adventuresome than last summer.  He must have gone down the tallest tube slide a couple dozen times and by the time we left, his eyes were so bloodshot, he complained all through dinner.

     The week has been an adjustment for the hens, as we harvested 3 of the young hens last week and added 3 that had previously been separated as culls and put in a different pen.  They seem to be working out their new pecking order and will actually all gather if I throw out scratch over a broad enough area.

     It has been too rainy for much gardening, a bit of weeding or harvesting when the opportunity presents and enjoying the cabbage, kale and peas that have matured.  So far that and an occasional pepper are all we are getting.  The winter squash and one of the pumpkins have all wilted, either root rot or squash borers.  I don’t know if there is enough time to plant more before the season here in the mountains ends.
     Yesterday I drove grandson home to Northern Virginia in time for his weekly guitar lesson, spent the night with them.  There has been a lot of road time the past two weeks.  We are home now for a month before it starts again, but during that month, we will have our daughter and her family here for a bit more than a week visiting and getting more grandkid time.

     Today was the last full day that eldest son was here to help with work.  We started off early enough to get breakfast in town and make our weekly Farmer’s Market run, and for a change, we were early enough to actually score some real goodies, fresh corn, raspberries (Yummy), new Yukon
Gold potatoes, cheese, eggs (the girls aren’t producing with any regularity yet), some meat for the winter freezer.
     Our afternoon was spent making modifications to the Chicken ark/tractor.  After using it for 5 weeks, I realized that the walkboard was too wide and hung down beside the feeder and over the waterer.  I’ll just say that chickens are nasty birds, so we moved the walkboard across the width at the end with the perches, added one additional perch and put hefty eye screws in the peak to hang the food and water so that the chickens will have room on both sides of the feeder and waterer and more ground space to move around in.  We also added a door on one end that will allow me to more easily return escapees to the run and to let them out for some free range time so that they aren’t so crowded as they get large.

     After a dinner of Farmer’s Market and garden goodies, the garden became the focus of the rest of the days labor.  It is now about half weeded again, plus harvested another quart plus of fresh peas, two grocery sacks of kale, two cabbages (the others were so shaded by the kale they need more growing time), and a couple dozen potato (or cluster) onions.  The onions are curing, the cabbages are stored, the peas are shelled and most frozen for winter meals, a meal’s worth saved out for tomorrow’s dinner and I started on freezing the kale, but ran out of vac/seal bags material, so the rest will have to wait until tomorrow.  It is great to be filling the freezer again with garden veggies, chicken that we raised and beef and pork from the Farmer’s Market.  The wild blackberries will be ripening soon, the wild raspberries sooner and there are a couple of pints of blueberries on my young bushes.  Some of the berries will be made into jams and some frozen for muffins and smoothies.

     Half of this past week was spent on the road and helping with childcare in Northern Virginia and during the whole week, we have had rain and more rain and more rain.  Our creek and run off creek are flowing so hard they have filled the bottom of the sinkhole and are running down the old creek bed that only sees water about once a year, some years it remains dry.
     The rain has the garden growing vigorously, but it the paths and berry beds are quickly being overtaken by weeds.

The sunflowers are nearly as tall as I am.

The chicken ark in the background is now empty and will remain so until the fall order of meat chickens arrives for our eldest son and his family, though they will spend the first five weeks they are here in the brooder in the garage.

The week brought our first eggs.  We know they were layed by the Rock Red cross pullets because they were found in the chicken ark and the one Rock Red we harvested was full of developing eggs.  Because of that, she was the first we harvested, we moved the other three to the hen house and three of the other pullets were harvested instead.  None of them showed any signs of being ready to lay, so we will have to be content with two or three eggs every couple of day for a few more weeks.

The rain has also provided a spot of color in the flower bed along with many weeds seen under the flowers.  If we don’t mold, wet rot, or float away, there will be some days of weeding in my future.
Life is good on the farm.

     Today would have been my Mother’s 89th birthday had she lived beyond the age of 64.  I am older than she was when she died.  Today was not a typical celebration of the 4th of July for us.  There was no cookout, though we do have our eldest son and eldest grandson here and we rushed into town late this evening and found a parking spot about 6 blocks from the fireworks, found an uncrowded spot in the grass on the highest part of the park above where they were fired.  It was a good show, we arrived around 9:15 pm, very hungry because of how we spent the rest of the day.
     The morning started with grandson’s guitar practice and his daily assignments of doing a writing exercise and a math exercise, followed by lunch in town and a few errands and purchases that were needed back at the farm.  The afternoon was a marathon of harvesting the meat birds and rooster culls that have been providing us with a morning serenade of crowing challenges between several birds.  Tomorrow will be silent.  The only chickens left are my egg layers and today, we got our first two pullet eggs.

     On Sunday afternoon, the car pointed northeast for a few days of me helping out in Northern Virginia with the eldest son’s family.  As both adults are working this summer, grandson needs coverage, he is only 8 and certainly not ready to be a latchkey kid in any sense of the meaning.  He is in a lot of summer activities, but they require his Dad to get him there without a car by 8:30 or 9 and pick him up by 3:30 or 4, depending on which week of activities are schedued.  They want to come back to the farm for a few days and to do so means longer hours at work for son, so Grandmom to the rescue.  There are a few times a year when school or work schedules just don’t work out and the trips to help are scheduled.  Sometimes, grandson and I spend all day together, others like this trip, my time is unencumbered from the beginning of day camp until the camp day is over.  It is a good time to enjoy some alone time.  On my agenda was to trek over to Old Town Alexandria and spend some time visiting some of the shops, but the June rains have carried over to July and walking around wet streets in sandals with an umbrella didn’t appeal.
     This has allowed time to knit and read, to venture a mile down the road to Whole Foods and avail myself of their diverse salad bar for lunch.
     While here, I try to help with household chores and designate myself as dinner cook.  They have a local nursery and produce stand right across the 4 lane street from their house and if you are brave enough to test Northern Virginia traffic on foot, local veggies are handy.
     Tomorrow after camp and work, we will make the drive back south west to the farm for awork session and visit.

     While the west is sweltering, we are summer hot, but staying mostly in the mid 80’s and cooling to wonderful sleeping weather at night.
      While many areas of the country are arid and into years of drought, we are getting rain.  The garden is thriving, including the weeds, but what are weeds, just wildflowers growing where you don’t want them.
      Our children are pushing on with their lives as adults with families of their own.  Dealing with their own issues and sometimes coming to us for advice.  One is working on a PhD, one is just finishing a MBA, one has just bought a first house.  It pleases us that they are all strong and independent, loving and generous with their children for us to love.
      Grateful for the beautiful spot of Mother Nature that we found, bought, and built on.  Every day brings us glimpses of deer, turkeys, red tailed hawks, bunnies, chipmunks and more.  Wildflowers abound in the yard and ditches, changing with the months that pass.

One of my favorites is Moth Mullein, shooting spikes of white, pink or yellow blossoms toward the sky.
     Thankful for acres to grow gardens and chickens, for dogs to run and maybe someday horses and beef cattle.
      Life is good.

This week we have seen a lot of this…

gray and steamy, thunder, lightening and today steady cooler rain.

These guys are being fattened up for next week’s trip to freezer camp…

which also means bringing out the brooder and getting set up for the next round of meat chicks due later in the summer…

The rain and warmth are responsible for the lush growth in the flower beds and the garden…

including the rapid growth of weeds that will require another couple of intense days removing them and another too soon mowing.

Hoping that we will soon be able to refill the near barren pantry shelves and empty freezer…

The produce so far has been garlic scapes, a couple of jalapenos and some greens.  The pullets are now nearly 16 weeks old and we are hoping for eggs soon.

The wet weather has given time for some spinning and knitting, socializing with the Clicks and Sticks Knitting night group last night and the Spunsters spinning group today.

     Today we are enjoying summer afternoon thunderstorms.  Since the farm work is caught up, the house is dusted and vacuumed, I am enjoying some crafting time.

On the spinning wheel I’m spinning the wine part of a wine and roses yarn.  The dark wine color will be plied with the rose colored merino to make what I hope is worsted weight yarn.

On the needles is homespun by Kirsten of Echo Valley Finnsheep.  It is called Licorice with Vanilla.  These two yarns along with the Jamica that I spun recently are being knit into little stuffed bunnies from a pattern Henry’s Rabbits on Ravelry.  They will be given to our granddaughters and our daughter and son-in-laws new nephew.
     It seemed time to finally start knitting some of my homespun yarn and since most of my homespun are too little yardage to knit much but hats and scarves, toys are a good use for the fiber goodness.

     Summer arrived with a vengeance.  It is hot and humid, reminds me of when we lived in Virginia Beach.  It is cooling at night, fortunately and our log home heats slowly during the day and cools well at night, so we haven’t had to turn on the A/C, but it is near 90 today and the air is so thick you drink it instead of breathing it.
     Two days ago, the tractor and brush hog were brought out for the first time since they were haying and a little mow was done.  We have the area that we consider the lawn that covers maybe a couple of acres and it gets mowed fairly regularly.  A medium mow includes the area from the “lawn” to the barn and west beyond a row of pines we planted to the edge of the woods, maybe another couple of acres.  That gets mowed 4 or 5 times a summer.  The big mow are the hayfields that get hayed by neighbors in the spring and mowed by us in the fall.  Our farm is 30 acres and only about 5 are woods or too rocky to mow.
     When we moved from Virginia Beach, we brought with us a riding mower that was going to be used around the house.  It was stored in the barn until the house was complete and the grass and clover planted around the house had come up.  Unfortunately, by then, the mice had found it a good place to nest and it wouldn’t run.  At that time, I was still working at the high school and the school had a small engines repair class, so I took it to them to try to get it functional again.  It had some funky kind of carburetor that the instructor had never seen before, but he didn’t realize it until he had allowed some students to start working on it and they managed to get rodent nest and other unmentionables into the carburetor and fuel lines.  The mower ended up at the local fix it shop, twice, many dollars later, it still would not run.  We also had a push mower, but it was a flatland version with little tires and a chore to push up and down the irregular yard and then it too quit working.
     About this time, eldest son and I made a trip to the local small equipment store and bought this monster…

a commercial grade Stihl edger with harness and he used it to keep enough yard mowed for us to get in an out and around the house.  That led to the purchase of the John Deere and brush hog, but it just doesn’t get close enough safely to the house to really do the job.  When eldest was here in May, he weedwacked a 5 to 6′ path around the house out to where I could mow with the tractor and after I weedwacked around the outside of the orchard, he took over and did around the garden, the coop and the trees.  Since then, I have done the path around the house, the entire orchard, garden area and it nearly wore me out.  That was about 2 weeks ago and with the rain, the orchard was again nearly a foot tall.  We started discussing what to do, hubby still can’t do that type of work, his knee hasn’t healed enough and then he broke a toe on the same side, so he is still hobbling.  I didn’t think I could manage the Stihl again for that much, and though the chickens in the chicken tractor do this to a patch in about 2 days

the area is too big for the 4 X 8′ chicken tractor to be moved enough to keep it mowed for us.
     The solution we decided was not another riding mower, but a push mower with larger tires.

Though the task is still not easy, set on the tallest mow setting and working back and forth across the slope, the job is done.  The area the tractor won’t mow and the orchard are now about 4″ instead of a foot tall.  Perhaps I have a couple of weeks before it must be done again. 

     Summer has arrived, though a much rainier summer so far than we are accustomed to having.  Between showers, the porch umbrella and chair cushions were brought out in hope of dinners on the deck, the deck planters are filling in with geraniums and lantana, the herb pots filled and growing.  In the garden, two half barrels were started with potatoes, to be filled a bit more every few days as the sprouts reach for the sun in hopes that the season will end with two full barrels of fresh potatoes for the winter.  The beds of the garden were weeded and mulched, the winter squash has it’s first blossom, the cucumbers and pumpkins getting secondary leaves.  There are pea pods and a good stand of young bush beans.
     The young roosters are getting vocal, three of them challenging each other to see who can be the loudest and most annoying, beginning at 5 a.m. and continuing through the daylight hours if they see me out in the orchard or garden.  Moving their ark/tractor every couple of days is reducing the area that has to be mowed in the orchard.  The pullets (young hens) are reaching the time where we may start seeing eggs, so their coop was thoroughly cleaned and bedded with fresh hay and the nesting boxes seeded with fake eggs (golf balls) to encourage them to use the nesting boxes instead of the run or main coop when they finally figure it out.  It is about time to rearrange their run again to give them more fresh grass, but the rest of the compost beside their run still needs to be moved and a 100′ roll of 6 ‘ fencing purchased along with a few more posts so that their run can be set up along two sides of the garden in a 4 to 5’ wide expanded run for them.

*This idea borrowed from SouleMama, a delightful blog of a young homesteading family in Maine.