Clear beautiful sunsets with mild days.
Rainbow before an Arctic storm.
Snow showers.
Frosty morning, sunny morning.
Fog and smoke from wildfires and the start of firearm hunting season for deer.
The gamut of weather this week, trying to keep the house and farm critters safe and warm.
Life is good on our mountain farm.
This time of the year, the woods surrounding our farm allow for voyeuristic peeks. This is especially true if there is a light layer of snow on the ground. The floor of the forest loses the scrub brush that obscures it during the growing seasons. The deer and turkeys can be seen slipping in and out of its edges into the fields. If our local neighbors followed the state guidelines to wear blaze orange, visible 360 degrees, we would be able to see them as they move through the woods beyond our property on their hunt for the deer.
Today is the first day of firearms hunting season for deer. Today is gray, hazy from fog and from smoke from two wildfires a couple hours away. Today is the kind of day when we normally see the deer and the turkey in our lower field, but it almost as if they sense their imminent danger and they stay hidden from our view. Perhaps it is just their superior vision and sense of smell that make them scarce.
Personally, I will be glad when they again make their appearance, as I love to watch them graze and move about the woods and fields.
This idea is from SouleMama’s blog. A single photo from the past week, no words, one that that I wish to linger on and savor. If you are inspired to do so, leave a link to yours in the comments for others to see.
In late September, an independent yarn dyer friend, specially dyed some yarn to match a hat made of yarn I had purchased from her several years ago (https://fstafford165.wordpress.com/2013/09/21/girls-day-out/) . I love the color, it is my favorite winter hat, my own design. Ever since I knit the hat, I have wanted a scarf to match the hat. She had tried several times to duplicate the color, which had been an unintentional, wonderful accident, but had not been able to make the match. When I asked again this year, not for a match, but a yarn that would coordinate, maybe blend with the hat color, she tried again and hit it true on.
Other items had been on my needles, the reknit of daughter’s black lace sweater, a sweater and hat for a baby due in December, the two hats for the grandkids for their Halloween costumes, and the finger puppets for the grand daughters, so I had not begun the design for the scarf. The very cold couple of days this week were incentive to get on this scarf design, to get it knit before the winter weather is consistent. The past couple of days knitting have been dedicated to the scarf design. I have completed three repeats of the hat pattern and am now trying to decide how to proceed. The hat has a simple stockinette upper part, decreasing to the top. My dilemma is whether to continue to repeat the pattern to the center, reverse it for the other half, to work in stockinette like the hat until the length is near what I want then reverse the pattern for the other end, or doing a lighter simple lace that is part of the pattern for the center section. What do you think?
Once it is complete, the pattern will be published to go with the published hat and finished photos of the hat and scarf together will be posted.
Like a cat, I sit in the pool of warm sunlight, enjoying my hot cereal and coffee. Outside the day is bright, The morning is 21f, the cat and chicken waterers frozen solid, diamond dust is sparkling in the sun and the wind from yesterday’s Arctic front that blew through leaving only a dusting of light snow has still not totally dissipated. Our first blast of winter will be short lived, returning to more autumn like weather by the weekend, but it is the beginning and if the old timers are correct, there will be much more of this to come.
Life is good on our mountain farm.
A faint rainbow just before the storm. A huge Tom turkey strutting his stuff in the hay field; 2 young orphaned raccoon that that have been in our area this fall, looking for food or shelter before the weather; and snow flurries. All beautiful and welcome sights.
Life is good on our mountain farm.
This morning is glorious.
The sky is a beautiful shade of blue, nearly cloudless. The fields and fir trees still wearing the greens of summer, the deciduous trees bare of their foliage, a light haze on the distant mountains, the haze that named a nearby mountain chain The Blue Ridge. It is mild this morning, only the lightest skim of ice on the chickens water tub and expected to reach near 60f today, the fierce winds of yesterday have calmed.
In the mountains, weather systems don’t last long, this beautiful fall weather will end today. Tomorrow, the weather prognosticators say we could see up to 2″ of snow. It is early for snow, the earliest recorded measurable snow for nearby Roanoke was October 10, 1979. The average first snow is December 15th. Meteorologic winter begins on November 21st, my birthday and the winter solstice, the official first day of winter and the shortest day, a month later.
Regardless of the season and the weather it brings, this is still the most beautiful place in the world. We love it year round. Life is good on our mountain farm.
After a half week in Northern Virginia babysitting, this afternoon is the best of this season. Azure skies, wispy white clouds. Mild mid 50f temperatures. Knowing that the season is moving on toward winter, threats of snow showers to accumulated snow in our forecast for mid week, I decided it was my opportunity to plant the garlic for next year and put the rest of the garden and orchard to bed for winter.
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The last of the broccoli was harvested, the cabbages still hiding under a row cover. The garlic was planted in two square beds, about 85 cloves, a combination of three different red hardneck varieties. They were heavily mulched with straw then covered with row covers, not to protect it from the weather, but rather to protect it from the chickens.
While mulching, the grape, berry and other vegetable beds were given heavy layers of straw as well, mulch placed around the now dormant fruit trees. While I was working on this, the chickens were free ranging and trying to undo my work as fast as I was working to put the mulch down. The tomato cages and garden stakes were put to use to hold down the straw in the beds. The fruit trees may get rings of fencing if tomorrow as mild as predicted.
The chickens were given a bed of mulch in their pen to give them something to scratch in for entertainment to try to keep them out of my work. In spite of the nights that are consistently freezing the top surface of their water tub, they are still providing me with 5 to 8 eggs each day, except for the one who lays green eggs, she seems to be on strike, not having produced an egg all week.
This idea is from SouleMama’s blog and will be a new feature on my blog page. A single photo from the past week, no words, that I wish to remember. If you are inspired to do so, leave a link to yours in the comments for others to see.
Living in a mountainous rural area, we often hear gunfire. The frequency of this noise increases as the various hunting seasons roll around. Most of our neighbors hunt, wild turkey and deer primarily, but also bear, raccoons, squirrels and rabbits. Bow season for deer began in early October, this is followed by muzzle loaded gun hunting in early November then on to other firearms for the last couple of weeks in November, then the seasons reverse, ending in December. When this begins, we see fewer deer on our property, it almost like they go into hiding. One doe has been hanging around for a couple of years. We know she is the same one because she has a gimpy left hind leg. In spite of this, she has raised twin fawns last year and a single fawn this year. She sticks close to the upper part of our property and we often see her with her current young near our barn. As we drove out late this morning to deliver eggs and to resupply the various animal foods and get a few items for our larder, she and her fawn were grazing near the barn. It surprises me that she has survived the seasons. I hope that she makes it through this cycle as well. This evening, there is one in the lower hayfield. During this season, we don’t venture far from the house without wearing a blaze orange hat or vest even to go to the chicken coop or garden. We consider putting a blaze vest on our mastiff as he is of similar size and coloration to the local deer.
Cabin Crafted 