Without a lot of details, this family has had it’s share in the past month. A grandson diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, one of our children involved in a very serious auto accident. Our daughter is okay, sore and without her own wheels.
A much anticipated retreat with friends I hadn’t seen in 2 years to sit and spin, knit, weave, and share social time was cut very short because my first day there, I ended up with an emergency medical situation. Without letting my family know and only limited revelation to the event coordinator, I foolishly slipped away after packing my spinning, clothes, and vending set up and drove 4 hours home, only to be hospitalized that afternoon. Five days in the hospital, 2 surgical procedures, and I’m home, hopefully without a recurrence.
This has caused stress to the family, caused Son 1 to temporarily leave his job, his family, and drive from his home to ours to be the unpaid Uber driver for hubby and daughter, to be emotional support for all of us, and to be cook when allowed. He has harvested my garden and frozen my tomatoes, taken care of my chooks and been as he always is, a generally good man.
It has been a tough few weeks. Not much to report on spinning and knitting. No canning for a while, but tomatoes in the freezer for when it can again be done. It is likely the end of the garden for this year, but there is always another year and we will rely more heavily on the Farmer’s Market until their season also ends. The hydroponic units will be started with herbs and salad greens to supplement what we can purchase and as a last resort, imported organic produce purchased from our local Natural Foods store.
Sometimes life gives you lemons and you have to make lemonade. My lemonade is knowing how much my family is a loving unit and how caring and concerned my friends are. I want those of you who knew and offered healing messages to me and my family, thank you, I love you all.
The pile of tomatoes on the counter was more than I could mentally and physically deal with the other day, so I bagged them and tossed them in the freezer. There are at least that many out there again that I need to pick, but it was drizzly rain when I went to turn the chickens out this morning, so they are still there. I really like the paste variety I planted this year, the slicer is a nice meaty, low seed variety with decent flavor, but grows flat oval tomatoes with deep stem inset that weigh well over a pound each. I can’t eat one alone at a session and don’t like to refrigerate tomatoes, so I will have to do some research on a different variety for next year’s garden.
Sometime in the near future, I will haul the bags out of the freezer, slip the peels and make a big pot of pasta sauce for dinner and the remaining amount will be put in wide mouth pint jars and frozen instead of canning them. I reread the instructions on the reuseable lids to see that the band needs to not be too tight when they go in the waterbath and tightened 10 minutes after you remove the jars and still I am experiencing failure to seal, but not at the rate I was having. I now remember why I sold off the first couple dozen of them I tried a few years ago. I guess I will use them for freezing and try to get metal lids for next year. I also can’t/don’t want to put them on jars I am making for others in case I don’t get them back. We have a chest freezer, so filling it will jars and the bamboo fiber boxes I bought, of sauces, beans, soups, and stews isn’t a bad idea.
Last night, I taught soap making at a “It Takes a Village” session at Wilderness Road Regional Museum. Because I was on the teaching end and it was more instructional than hands on, I have no pictures except the finished product from cutting this morning. The participants took turns stirring the soap mixture until it looked like time would run out before it turned trace to be able to pour it into the mold, so we cheated and used the immersion blender I use at home to finish the stir process that can take up to an hour or more of hand stirring. I had made a batch a month ago, so they could each take home a cured bar of the same recipe.
Though the cutting box isn’t a necessary part of soap making, I love the ease of being able to uniformly cut 1″ bars with the bench scraper. The rack came in my microwave and never gets used there, so it makes a great curing rack. The wooden box mold is one of two that Son 1 made for me as a gift early on in my soap making. I line it with parchment or freezer paper, the other one I made a liner from a silicone baking mat, so the saponified soap comes out of the box easily. The silicone loaf molds are good too, but I have had the bottom of a batch break out like a cake or bread from a pan that wasn’t properly greased. It may be because it wasn’t as firm as it should have been when unmolded, but the wood boxes with a liner, hold the heat better and unmold nicer. I probably should have waited until this evening to unmold it, but it was firm enough to do. This is a simply Old Fashioned Lye soap with a lemon/mint scent. It can be used for body soap, a stain rub on clothing, or grated and used as laundry soap.
Today is hubby’s birthday, so he gets to guide the day culminating with a dinner of his choice, either prepared by me or out if the weather permits patio dining somewhere. He recently lost his summer version of the Greek fisherman’s hat he wears, so in addition to a new leather belt from the local Street Fair in Blacksburg a couple weeks ago, his hat was replaced. We joked about options to prevent losing it. He had “lost” the other one earlier this summer, but we remembered where it was likely left and it’s return happened. This loss is a mystery, unless he wore it in the restaurant where we had lunch after our long bike ride down the Virginia Creeper Trail and it is too far away to go back and retrieve it. Maybe this one needs his name and phone number put in it.
Tomorrow, I will dress in my Revolutionary War garb and set up as a spinner and vendor at the Montgomery Museum Heritage Day event in Christiansburg. Ever since I began vending at events and craft fairs, I have struggled with a method to haul the most stuff in the least trips. I have crated and carried, bought a RubberMaid flat cart that promptly had a wheel failure the second time I used it inspite of the advertised weight load. I don’t think it was the weight, but rather the terrain, plus my load wouldn’t stay on the flat unsided surface. Daughter owns a folding wagon that she loaned me to try. With is larger wheels, deep sides, I have managed to test load everything needed but part of my ladder rack that I think could be strapped on top and my spinning wheel.
Next week when I go to my fiber retreat, I don’t need the table or the chair, so it should hold everything for vending and spinning. I probably will only take spindles, as that is what I have used mostly for spinning the past year and a half, and knitting to it.
A friend from that group is getting into pattern designs as Mountain Legacy Designs. I am test knitting one of her patterns at the moment and since I can no longer force myself to spin worsted weight yarn needed for the pattern, I purchased a skein from another friend, Sunrise Valley Farm . They can be found on Etsy in the link or at the Blacksburg Farmer’s Market. The test knit is progressing nicely, though I am taking my time on it.
I hope that Gail from the farm who is also a member of the retreat group can attend with me next year as a participant and maybe a vendor. It would be nice to travel together and room together at the retreat.
The test knitting has slowed my spinning this week, but earlier in the week, I posted 84.34 g of spun singles, and 41.70 g of plied yarn for the prior 7 days.
None of the predicted rain has found our farm in weeks and weeks. The grass is brown and crispy to walk on. Last weekend the temperature was mild for summer, but the heat is back. Today was HOT. We packed up the grand and headed for a location less than an hour from here that has a natural swimming hole at the base of a falls area. Depending on which sign you passed, it was either Dismal Falls, or the Falls of Dismal. The falls were so dry they was very little water going over. This is the image we were expecting.
This is what we saw.
I waded to upper thigh deep, Grandson 1 went all in. There were two pools deep enough for him to dunk all the way under by squatting down, but it was a nice walk in and back out, though the GPS took us well past where we should have been.
This morning before it got hot, I did a garden harvest, bringing in Cape Gooseberry (Ground Cherries), Tomatillos, Tomatoes, and a few cucumbers. After our trip, I decided to make a batch of Ground Cherry Jam. The recipe called for 3 cups of fruit, I had only harvested 2, so back out into the heat, I harvested another cup. I expected 3 cups of fruit, a cup of sugar, and the lemon juice to make at least two cups of jam. It only made 1 1/2 cups.
After dinner tonight, since the pot was still on the stove and still hot, I pulled out the tomatillos from the freezer, added enough to today’s harvest to make a pound and made 3 cups of Tomatillo/Jalapeno/Lime jam.
I beg to disagree. The summer chore list was long this year. Many major projects needed to be done to preserve the integrity of our house, to have a garden that required less maintenance, and to get a coat of stain on the coop to try to extend it’s life. Spring was spent getting the garden ready with new boxes from reclaimed wood, filling them with soil dug from old beds, compost, and some bagged soil. Paths were lined with weed mat or cardboard and about an inch of mulch placed over it. The beds are fine and fairly easy to maintain as most are sturdy enough for me to sit on the side to weed. The paths needed several inches more mulch, but buying it by the bag is neither economical nor environmentally friendly, I need to find a load or two of woodchips from a tree service and have it dumped to move by wheelbarrow.
The house needed all 4 sides of the garage, the east wall, the north dormers, and all surfaces of the roofed front porch powerwashed and stained, as well as staining all the raw wood from the deck rebuild two years ago. Son 1 and grandson 1 got it all powerwashed and Son 1 stained the east wall, the walls of the garage, and the dormers. Hubby and I got the garage doors done, but the porch was still in need. Thursday, we decided to try tobegin to finish everything but the railing and floor which take a latex stain, probably a mistake years and years ago. While hubby stained the posts, I did the ceiling. Friday, we set up again, and got the front porch log wall, the windows and door frame done. Today we started on the deck. Hubby did the upper work while I did the frame underneath and outside parts from an 8 foot ladder. Most of it has been done, but there are still the joists under the floorboards that were not on outside edges that probably should still be done, but it is going to have to wait for a few days. Our arms, necks, shoulders, and backs are screaming.
We still need to get the floor done, the railing also. I guess in a few days, the remaining joists under the deck floor will get a coat of stain too. The chicken coop has had wood repaired, but it still needs to be stained too. The list is getting shorter, but isn’t done yet.
First Sunflower, a bird planted volunteer. None of the ones I planted have sprouted, I will try again.
First blueberries and peas. There will be many more to come.
First fawn spotted, this doe had a single and they were in the yard behind the house. By the time I got my camera phone ready, the very wary Mom had urged her little spotted one into taller forage.
Still waiting for the first egg from the pullets. A couple look like they are close with red combs instead of pale undeveloped ones. They will be 18 weeks old on Tuesday, so most any time now for some of the breeds, the Marans take longer to lay their first, so another 3 to 6 weeks for them.
And we are seeing the tail end of the asparagus. I have dug as many crowns from the old bed as I could for Son 1’s garden. I will thoroughly weed what is left and heavily mulch it. I can’t get the rest of them up, so there may be more in that bed next year.
One of my favorite places to walk or hike is on the Mountain Lake Conservancy property. There is a 1 mile trail/dirt road that leads from the lodge to the upper recreation area and from there, another trail that traverses the ridge line and can loop back to the first trail or continue on behind the lodge to a fire road just below the lodge. We usually walk up the first trail to a crossover trail that is 1/4 mile straight up to the ridge trail then walk it back to the recreation area and then down the 1 mile trail. We get in about 2 miles or slightly more and it is rare to see anyone and never on the upper trail. Saturday’s walk after Farmer’s Market and some planting was taken up there. Spring isn’t as far along there, about 2,000 feet higher elevation on the mountain. There weren’t many wildflowers yet, but we did see this little white daisy like flower that my app won’t identify. The wood ferns are still fiddleheads, the trees with squirrel ear sized leaves, but many with lichens growing on their bark.
I had donned a long sleeve shirt to work in the yard and was glad for the sleeve length up there.
Once home, the rest of the garden was seeded and transplanted then watered in thoroughly. Bush beans, cucumbers, popcorn, Hubbard squash, Tomatillo, Ground cherry, and Cilantro transplants all in. The rest of the old garden boxes were removed for destruction and burning which clears an area for me to improve or restart the asparagus bed and I think to add 3 more half barrels with thornless blackberries. I have a Comfrey that is not in a good place, but it is going to be dug out and given to a friend tomorrow. And I need to use a flat hoe or spade to dig out some grass right under the edge of the fence. In working out there today, I realized that though I thought the asparagus was a poor crop this year, that actually they have expanded out from where they were planted and there was a large cluster under the spoiled hay. Since this garden is my first experience with asparagus I didn’t realize their habits over the half dozen years plus they have been there. I guess more research needs to be done on that front. And perhaps a new start in a raised bed to help control the weeds better. They really don’t like any weed growth.
After prepping, eating, and cleaning up dinner, I tackled the succulent pots, giving one it’s own pot, making a nursery pot, and one that is just pretty to look at. The triple ponytail palm that was in our bathroom was so rootbound, I was surprised it hadn’t broken the pot, so they were divided, unfortunately ruining one of them, but replanting one for us, putting one aside with some trailing succulents to do daugter’s Mother’s Day gift she received from DIL last weekend. There are two more houseplant that need attention and moving out on the porch. I realized the Jade plant is pot bound and the tall Dracena needs some TLC and feeding. I guess larger pots will have to be obtained and both of them transplanted and fed.
Another potbound plant was a small pothos, so it was transplanted into my Mother’s Day gift from DIL. I love the trailing stems over the sides of the white egg shaped pot.
Yesterday was a busy, pleasant mix of social and market time at the Farmer’s Market, yard and garden time, a beautiful walk.
Today I will try to connect with daughter to plant her pot and take her some Cilantro starts that I have going for her. My two hydroponic gardens are currently idle. They will likely stay that way for a bit until time to plant fall and winter house herbs and some salad greens for hot summer, fall, and winter salads.
This week has been unseasonably cool and windy and this afternoon an added cold rain. We even had frost warning two nights with temperatures dropping below freezing, but the garden survived just fine.
This week is supposed to flip to summer like temperatures by midweek. The fickleness of spring in Virginia.
After holding the older hens in the Palace for two weeks, I started giving them all day free range and with 30 acres to explore, they chose to scratch and dig right around the pullets pen, digging holes that the pullets can manage to squeeze through to the outside world. Yesterday the hens discovered the walled garden I worked on all last summer. After building up the wall, cardboard or weed blocking fabric was put down and bagged soil added on top. Culinary herbs were planted in part and various medicinal herbs and perennials beginning to fill the other areas. When I looked out at dinner prep time, they had dug up two of the newly planted daffodil clusters and a comfrey plant, scratched soil over the oregano and parsley. Now I have to try to figure out how to keep them out of that area without destroying the appearance of the bed. I had to put bird net over the bed along the south wall of the garage to deter them from digging up flower seedlings and to stop the deer from eating the daylilies. I am hesitant to use the bird netting on that garden because the bird feeders are on the wall that juts out into it and I don’t want the song birds to get tangled in it. Since that netting is black and fairly fine, maybe I can erect a 2 foot band around just inside the stone wall to deter the hens. This morning, I found a bunny about to make it’s way in as well.
This one was run off before it could navigate the rocks and find a feast. Because of the damage yesterday and the rain today, they are penned in. I will figure out a solution tomorrow. I have considered controlled free ranging with a roll of electric netting that can be moved to various areas to provide fresh forage without causing the damage. As far as the pullet’s pen, I think I will fill the holes with soil and put a row of rocks around the outside that can protect the fence line from digging and can still be cut with the line trimmer.
The chilly week has given me time to relearn how to do Tunisian Crochet. The leftover yarns from making my blanket squares are being used as I make a 6″ wide strip. As more is spun, more strips will be crocheted and stitched on to this strip to make a table cover for my craft display table.
This strip will be blocked to uniform width as soon as it reaches the length that I am seeking.
We missed our walk today, hope tomorrow will be warmer and dryer.
The past few days have been beautiful spring days, today the high of 52 occurred at 7 a.m. and is headed down to freezing tonight with snow flurries expected shortly for an hour or so. The wind has kicked up and is rocking the trees in their new coats of tiny leaves.
The littles all returned to the coop on their own last night. The escape hatch was sealed with rocks and an additional fence post before they were let out yesterday morning, but one managed to find a way into the garden compost pile. I will have to try to figure out how that happened as that side of the pen has double fence to make the holes smaller and is tight to the ground. She was removed and returned to her flock without incident. I’m unsure about letting them out this morning. The hens would return to their coop if it started cold rain or snow, I’m not sure the littles are that savvy yet.
Last evening, we went west to the next town to get carry out Tex/Mex dinner and as we sat in their parking lot eating, a quick storm came through producing the first rainbow of the season for me.
We watched as it went from a sliver on the south end to a full ground to ground arc that was wide enough to see all the prismatic color bands.
As a test for my bag idea for my shop, I took the scraps I was knitting into the log cabin mini blanket apart and started Tunisian Crocheting them into a 6″ wide strip. I think if I crochet strips, using different yarn scraps and sew them together, line them with quilting cotton, and add a braided leather thong handle, they will make nice bags. This strip will continue until it is as long as my craft display table is wide then I will start another strip of other breeds and make my scrappy blanket that way to show off the breed differences.
While we were returning from dinner and watching the rainbow develop, another square for the larger Breed Blanket was finished. Earlier in the year, I spun and knit a square of Gotland wool, but had only enough for one square. I purchased another couple of ounces of it and finished the second square last night. The rest will be spun and used in the scrappy blanket and in bags.
That makes three breeds again this month and 5 more squares knit for the blanket. So far there are 20 blocks each 8 inches square with 8 more months to go. I have no idea how that blanket will ever be able to be washed with all the different wools and the size it will be. I would just wash it and let it felt except that the wools wouldn’t all felt to the same size and some are more resistant to felting at all.
It has been over a year and though you can find toilet paper in the grocery again, it took forever to get the garden seeds that I ordered and didn’t buy locally because of the desired varieties.
A year ago today, my post on social media was about having been totally sequestered for a month and making our first foray into town for supplies from the Natural Food Store before they began doing curbside pick up, and getting drive thru lunch. I read fear in that post as it also contained information about folks knowingly going to work or about their routines after testing positive. We are now fully vaccinated and though I will go in the Natural Food Store, Grocer, or feed store, I make my visits quick and masked and still note those that refuse to wear a mask or wear it incorrectly.
I have gardened most of my adult life to some degree or another, having the largest most productive one here on the farm that provides most of our green vegetables, tomatoes, peppers, fruit for jams, garlic, onions, and cucumbers for pickles. What I don’t grow, I purchase from the local organic farmer’s at the Farmer’s Market, but so many people who never gardened before, or raised chickens before, are doing so now. This has been a boon and a headache for those businesses that sell related product, thus the seed delays and unavailability. Yesterday, I went to the organic feed and garden supply store to get floating row cover as they are the only one in the area that carries it, and got their last 9 feet. Barely enough to cover the part of the bed that holds my brassicas. They also carry long, thin, flexible fiberglass poles for making the supporting hoops and as the ones I bought many years ago had deteriorated to the point that gloves were necessary to prevent fiberglass splinters, I purchased 6 new ones. If we have another frost, I will use them to create the hoop house or igloo shaped house over the 4 x 4 beds to cover with plastic or an old sheet.
I still have gallon jars of staple dry foods that we filled prior to lock down last year and have kept them filled in case it happens again. Though I let them get empty or nearly so before refilling now, I was buying those items whenever they were available for the first half of last year.
So far, chicken and chick feed have been available, and necessary until the hens and chicks can all be free ranging again and feed used as a supplement. Chicks at Rural King and Tractor Supply were selling out within 24 hours of arrival, where three years ago, I bought some that were already beginning to feather, they had been in the store for more than a week.
The social isolation has made so many people wary of any interaction. It is pleasant when you can have a passing acknowledgement or a wave as smiles are hidden.
As a hearing impaired adult, the masks have made conversations with clerks difficult and I often have to ask them to repeat or speak up. I never realized how much conversation context I obtained from reading lips and facial expression. I am due for a hearing aid check up, a hearing test, and I suspect a second hearing aid.
As family members get vaccinated, we look forward to seeing them again. Having daughter and her children nearby has been a bonus as we visited on porches, masked until vaccines were in place, and can now have dinner together or hike together unmasked.
Hopefully, the lessons learned through this will help if and when another virus emerges or this one continues to mutate into variants with unknown effects. If the conspiracy theorist and vaccine deniers will just stop their nonsence and getting a higher percentage of the population vaccinated, life might resume a new normal.
We have had a string of May like weather this week. Time to really think spring. The peas are up a couple inches and there were blank spots where a seed didn’t germinate or a hungry critter ate it, so the blanks were filled in and the seedlings watered in. Wanting to hurry this process along to have veggies from the garden, I preordered more lettuce and brassica starts from one of the vendors at the Farmer’s Market to pick up on Saturday and they will be tucked in to the bed that has the greens started in it. Soon it will be time to trellis the pea shoots and figure out how to thwart the cabbage moths from laying their eggs on my brassicas. I don’t want kale and cabbage full of little green larvae that eat the leaves faster than I can pick them off for the chickens.
The first batch of tomato seedlings are spending every day on the back deck and some nights too. If it is going to get cooler than 45 f I bring them in. The second batch are about ready to pot into 4″ grow pots to join them. The Thai basil seed is growing in the hydroponic starter, but the cilantro still shows no sprouts. They either take forever to sprout or the seed was no good, but you would expect at least one to germinate. The Thyme in the hydroponic herb garden was getting out of hand, so it and the mint have been moved outdoors. The parsley, Thai basil, Genovese basil are thriving in the herb garden and more dill and basil have been started. I have an empty cell from moving the Thyme, so I need to decide what to start there. When I transplant the tomatoes from the second hydroponic unit, there will be more empty cells to fill. Maybe with spring and summer coming on to provide herbs and vegetables outdoors, the two hydroponic gardens will be shut down, cleaned, and replanted when it gets too hot outdoors for the greens. I have ordered new herb pods to start for next winter.
Several years ago, I traded some plants for some daffodils, but they were not planted in a good place and never did anything. I realized a few days ago that I had a small Nandina shrub that was being dwarfed by a Barberry tucked in the back corner of the breezeway set back, so yesterday I dug it out and moved it to the front of the house with the other Nandinas there and in doing so, dug up two clusters of tiny daffodil bulbs. This spring, I bought bulb starts from Kroger and planted daffodils in the east garage bed and the walled garden.
They are to provide spring color before the Iris and later the Day lilies bloom, so I moved the two clusters of small bulbs to better locations and hope that I will begin to have nice bunches of Daffodils to cut in a couple of years.
On the back deck steps are pots that contained flowers from last year. One pot had Pansies in it from two years ago that came back last year and self seeded in the pot. The small pot isn’t full, but it was exciting to find some flowers as I descended the stairs to fill bird feeders.
The Hummingbird feeders were filled and hung yesterday. I haven’t seen any birds yet, but the tracker indicates they are being seen nearby, so maybe soon they will dart in and out to delight observers as they hover and feed and chase each other off.
This morning, I saw the first Eastern Bluebirds of the season at the feeders. I hope they beat the tree swallows to at least one of the Bluebird houses in the garden. I have one more house, but no pole to attach it to.
As I transplanted the Thyme in the walled garden, I realized that the herb area and another area nearer the deck need more soil, it has settled or blown down to lower areas. A few more bags of mulch are needed to to the last small section of path in the veggie garden, so I think one more run to the big box hardware store is needed.
The chicks are thriving in the coop and seem less afraid of me when I’m not a giant looking down on them, but rather a benign being bringing treats to the thigh high coop. They have discovered the perches and realize they can see out the windows and see me coming when they are up on them. About half of them will eat seed from my hand. I’m hoping the others will get brave enough to do so as well. I don’t pick up and handle my birds any more than necessary, but it is nice to have them not fear me when I enter their midst or know that I am the giver of treats when they are out and I need them back in their pen.
Cabin Crafted 