Cabin Crafted

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  • Spoiled Pups

    For several years, I have subscribed to a blog, The Kitchen’s Garden written by a New Zealander living on a farm in the midwest. She is definitely a soulmate in philosophy, avoiding waste, reusing, recycling, growing organically, re-establishing trees and converting fields to organic practice growing. Though her farm has many more and varied animals than ours, she does raise chickens and has two older dogs.

    For a while, I have been bothered by both the cost and quality of commercial dog food, but had not taken the time to research a homemade healthier alternative. I have often made feed for the hens in lieu of the commercial layer pellets, though a good organic layer pellet and a multi grain scratch are usually less expensive than making it as the grains that are needed to get organic come from the local natural foods store. Recently, Cecilia posted her recipe for homemade dog food and the quantity she feeds her dogs. I purchased the ingredients that I didn’t have on hand and compared the cost to the commercial feed and it is about $1+/day cheaper to make it. Everything in the mix is human grade food, the “stew” though unsalted could easily be eaten by us. The mix contains meat, whole grain, pulses, fruit or sweet potatoes, pumpkin, vegetables. For her recipe, you can go to her blog. The recipe makes enough to feed both of our dogs for 6 or 7 days, 2 meals per day.

    The first time I made it in a large pot and had some scorching at the bottom of the pot. Today, the rice, lentils, oats, sweet potato, and pumpkin with the water were cooked first in the Instant Pot, the meat in the large pot on the stove, and then mixed together with the frozen peas and carrots before ladling it into reusable containers and wide mouth pint jars, some to freeze, some to go into the refrigerator for the next couple of days meals.

    This was prepared this morning before hubby got up.

    The dogs love it. It is healthier, less expensive, and hopefully both pups will shed a few pounds on it. A side benefit is that Shadow, the German Shepherd who seems to be constantly on some med or another will take the pills in the food without having to resort to trickery and it should help reduce the UTI’s that she experiences.

    As the meat can be of various sources and since there are too many frozen chickens in the basement freezer, a couple of them may be the protein source for a few batches before the next round are replaced with younger birds and more tough old hens added to the supply.

  • Crafting and Winter Blues

    Shortly after the Christmas Amaryllis gifted bulb quit blooming, it was cut back and put in a pot of soil. Much to my delight, it has begun to grow new leaves, so with any luck, it will survive to bloom again.

    Shortly after it ceased, Kroger started displaying various forced bulbs. Walking past their display many times, I finally succumbed to the temptation and purchased the tall clear glass container with about 7 tulip bulbs growing in it. Unfortunately, the water in the container quickly took on the odor of a dirty fish tank and even if changing it every couple of days, it would again become cloudy and stinky. Yesterday when I grabbed the rim of the container, I realized it had a significant chip on the inside edge and cut my left thumb (I am a southpaw, so ouch) and left a tiny glass splinter that had to be removed. Once that was taken care of, and since flower buds are beginning to show on several of the bulbs, a decision to remove them from water and place them in one of my hand thrown pottery bowl planters with soil in hopes that they will thrive and bloom to later be planted outdoors in the back garden, so they too can bloom again another year. Having the blooms on the table is cheerful in the gray gloom of the short winter days.

    As some of the leaves are yellowing, perhaps having them in soil where they can be given some houseplant food will help their health.

    I accepted the February DARE TO DO IT spindle challenge, but may have dared myself beyond my capability by trying to spin enough yarn to knit the center square of a traditional Shetland Hap, the traditional shawl of the Shetland Islands. The shawl needs about 6-7 ounces of fingering weight yarn for that part and at my current rate, I’m already behind my goal having spun only 9 grams in 2+ days, I will need to spin about 12 more grams today to be on schedule.

    This has put my knitting on my other unfinished shawl on hold for now as I am also trying to knit a ski band/ear warmer that hubby can wear under a billed hat when we walk. It is being knit out of some Coopworth that I spun about 3 years ago and has been sitting ever since as it wasn’t a lot of yardage.

    It seems that everything I am currently working on is natural colors in camel, moorit, and dark brown or black. The darker knitting is difficult in the poor light of winter, but I am really dedicated to finishing the two knitting projects.

    I took two hours this afternoon to Zoom with the spindle group and that gave me time to knit and spin. Still behind and not finished with the ski band, but much closer than I was when I began this post.

    Stay warm, it hasn’t been here today, but should warm back up some by the end of the weekend.

  • A Warm Winter?

    During Christmas week, we had a -9 f (-23 c) night and many, many nights in the teens and twenties with daytime temperatures in the upper 30’s and low 40’s since then. Many, many days with light sleet and snow flurries, but until last night, no accumulated snow. The local weather prognosticators say it has been a warm winter.

    This morning, we awoke to our first measurable snow. Not a lot, maybe two inches with it hanging heavy in the evergreens.

    And frozen fog.

    It was pretty while it lasted. Never covering the driveway or the roads. By the time we headed out to town for supplies and our walk, it was already melting and the grass beginning to show through. By the time we returned, about 6 hours after the above photos, this was the scene.

    The past two day’s walks have been quite chilly, glad to have a down coat, warm hat, and the heated ski gloves that hubby got me for Christmas. Whenever it gets cold, my right hand gets frigid. The circulation has never been good since I broke that wrist in my early 50’s and even worse after having a trapeziectomy on the same wrist due to arthritis in my mid 60’s. The heated gloves help. Tonight it going to get frigid and not even reach freezing for the high tomorrow.

    Once home, a thick layer of hay was put down in the muddy chicken pen and they were let out to scratch through it. They won’t leave the coop if there is snow on the ground. With the days beginning to lengthen and molt finally over, egg production is picking up a little. For a while there were none, then one or two every couple days, now 3 or 4 most days and with different colors and sizes, I can tell more are joining in each day.

    The Groundhog saw his shadow in Punxsutawney, he wouldn’t have seen it here, but regardless, there will be 6 more weeks of winter, at least according to the calendar.

  • Startled Awake

    At 3 a.m., we were startled awake by the smoke alarm blaring and screaming “FIRE, FIRE.” It stopped very quickly, like someone had pushed the test button, but no one was here but hubby and me and we were both soundly asleep. Needless to say, I bolted from bed, I didn’t see flames, didn’t smell smoke, but still went into every room, touched every outlet, checked the utility area of the finished basement, and the circuit breaker boxes, peered into the garage, even stepped out on the rear deck to look at the heat pump and to determine if I smelled smoke as many of the folks up here heat with wood, some indoors, some in the outdoor wood furnaces. There was no indication of fire, no smoke visible or by smell, so back into bed with the adrenalin pumping. The detector in our bedroom was flashing a red light every 10 seconds.

    After a few hours of restless tossing and turning, I finally dozed back off, the alarms silent, the red light flashing.

    A google search of the manual indicated the flashing light was a low battery indicator, but there was no accompanying chirp, so I guess it triggered the alarm. The alarms themselves are only about a year old. Son 1 when he was here one weekend replaced all the 16 year old alarms with new ones, but the batteries hadn’t been changed since then. Most of the alarms are easy for me to reach with or without a low stool, but the two in the loft and our bedroom are very high. The 8 foot ladder is a challenge for my senior body with achy shoulders, but changing those batteries was a necessity so hauling it upstairs had to be done. It requires negotiating it around the stair railing and not knocking the wall, avoiding ceiling fans and hanging light fixtures once it is upstairs to climb up.

    During the restless early morning hours of tossing and turning, wondering what we would do if there really was a fire and could my anxious brain remember everything for the insurance company. I know there are some very, very old photos from prior houses with some of the furniture in them stashed in the safe as an inventory, but this morning as soon as I was up and dressed, I created an album in my Google photos of pictures taken at various times of the rooms in this house and filling in with photos this morning of areas not found and uploaded them to the cloud. To accompany the photos, a Goggle Doc written inventory by room is in the works. These could be accessed by us on any computer at any time should we ever have to prove what was in the house.

    With the batteries changed, the light quit flashing. With the morning efforts underway, my mind is more settled. We do have fire extinguishers throughout the house, in easy reach, but hope never to have to use them.

    This is third time I have been startled awake by smoke alarms. The first was in my single days when my Dad and I bought a duplex that I lived in the upper half and we rented out the lower half. My tenants were less than stellar, playing loud music all night, and it turned out doing hard drugs down there, setting a chair on fire with a lit cigarette (before laws that prohibited smoking in rentals) after falling into a drug induced stupor and setting off the alarm. I had never heard one before, they were a new invention then. The second time woke us and our three children and it turned out to be a carbon monoxide alarm had failed. We ended up going to the all night pharmacy and buying a new one to make sure we didn’t actually have a carbon monoxide issue.

    Hopefully, this will not happen again, but I was one battery short of replacing all six so tomorrow one more will be acquired and that one is a bit more challenging to change, but not as bad as the upstairs two.

  • False Spring

    After typical winter for weeks with cold, damp, gray days and lots of wind, today is glorious. It is 50f (10c), clear, sunny, and calm. A couple of springs ago, a new metal raised bed was added to the garden with the idea of restarting the asparagus bed in a controlled area. Nothing came up from the crowns that were planted there and the bed was not in a good location. I moved it out of the way last year, moving the soil with it and put the third planting of beans in it that the bean beetles destroyed before they could produce. Where I moved it was also not a good location because it was hard up against the fence, an area with every noxious weed under the fence, and in a position that prevented getting the wheelbarrow to the compost pile. Last fall, Son 1 turned the compost pile for me and as I had moved a non productive bed box over my blueberries and heavily mulched them, he moved my raspberry and blackberry half barrels to where the old bed had been and it created the perfect spot for the raised bed.

    Today because it was too nice to stay indoors, I moved the metal box frame to it’s new and permanent location and since I wanted it full, not just a couple inches of soil, it became a Hugelkultur bed. The sunflower stalks and corn stalks from last year’s garden were cut and layered in the bottom on a cardboard base and a layer of wood chips fouled with chicken manure shoveled on top.

    On top of that, a layer of straw:

    On top of the straw was a wheelbarrow full of the compost from the turned pile.

    Then the soil that had been in the box was weeded and shoveled into the barrow and added on top and top dressed with another layer of compost to fill the box nicely and have it ready for early peas in another month or so.

    While out there, the bed that had the flying greenhouse in it was weeded, hoping that with this week’s potential snow that it will stay clear, and another 4 X 8 bed that had a layer of old chicken bedding piled in it was turned to help it break down. Finally, the compost pile was shoveled back into a pile, trying to turn it a bit more to add to the bed nearest it when the weather warms a bit and the kitchen scrap pile beside it was fenced off with temporary fencing and top and an opening from the chicken run created to allow them to eat the weeds and kitchen scraps and make more compost in that location.

    It didn’t take the hens long to discover the new territory.

    As I was coming back in the house, I saw a text from a west coast friend, asking if we could chat as there is no Zoom session today and ended up with a delightful half hour or so on the phone, sitting in the warm sun on the front porch and sharing stories. Such a delightful way to end an afternoon outdoors.

    Tomorrow the weather takes a turn back to cooler and rainy with wintery mix, possibly snow mid week. We will see, there hasn’t been any so far this winter.

  • Failure

    The local bee group is offering pollen cakes for sale this weekend. Before I made the effort to get there and possibly have a chance to get one or two, I decided to check on my last remaining hive. I hadn’t checked since before the Christmas week Arctic freeze, actually, when I installed the sugar board to feed them. It wasn’t very strong then, but I hoped that with 10 pounds of food, they would struggle through the winter and hopefully survive to thrive this spring. At first I just listened to try to detect a hum, no sound. I popped the outer lid and peeked under the inner lid to see if I saw or heard any activity or if they had eaten any of the sugar. No activity and no sound. Fearing the worst, I removed the sugar board and the bottom cover and only saw dead bees. So, my first year of bee keeping was a total failure.

    That hive will be dismantled and the frames put in the freezer for a few days then sealed in black plastic contractor bags. One or two nuks of bees will be ordered from one of the local beekeepers and I will try again this spring with only one or two hives, much more knowledge, and in medium boxes that I can handle. That is going to leave 8 deep boxes some with new frames, some built out frames that Son 2 purchased that he can take for his use, or sell as he wishes. I will keep the medium boxes and frames to try to get a couple of hives thriving.

    At least the two bears we saw on the farm this summer left them alone, so I guess our 12V charger is doing it’s job.

  • Karen or Ken

    Why have we become such an entitled society that such terms exist? I would hate to have the name or have named one of my children one of those names. I think it is unconscionable that names have been used to define those that feel entitled. Posts on social media are rife with stories of those that feel so entitled to cause physical or emotional pain or inconvenience to others.

    Recently a social media friend made an offer to make a purchase for me from a craftsman that lives thousands of miles from me and whose shop I could not possible visit. She reached out to several other friends to purchase for them as well. My new fiber tool arrived yesterday and it is gorgeous, but I kept it to myself, only letting the friend know it arrived. This particular craftsman does a few events on the West Coast near their home, does online updates of their products where dozens of folks vie to make a purchase when the update goes live, and often offers their products as prizes for challenges for an online group of their followers. Additionally, they provide some of their tools to a couple of their grandchildren for them to sell and learn economics and earn money for big events. The friend that made the purchases and another friend who benefited from her visit posted their new tools online, so I did also. The friend then received a not nice message from someone who felt that it was unfair that they didn’t have the opportunity as well. As a result, we took our shares down from the site. To me, this is just another example of feeling entitled and it was a very petty expression of the message sender as my friend had been invited to the craftsman’s house to make the purchases.

    Folks, life isn’t always about you. It isn’t always “fair.” Practice restraint and kindness, it goes a long way to making this a better world.

  • The Wind, Oh the Wind

    Lately, it has been plentiful. Today is very mild, almost spring like, dry, and calm, but that has been the exception not the rule.

    Yesterday when I went out to deal with the hens, something looked “off.” It took me a minute to realize that my little greenhouse was gone, the poly cord that had secured it over the ridgepole in several places was snapped. It used to reside in the NW bed of the garden and extended the growing season by a little on each end, but it was missing.

    Today after our walk and errands, the little Honda was driven around the perimeter of the upper fields and there it’s mangled body was wedged, on the south side of a brush covered rock pile. It appears that most of the plastic connectors are snapped, though the metal poles seem ok. The cover is ripped along a seam, but that can be restitched. Perhaps there is a solution for reassembling the poles with something other than the plastic sockets, or perhaps maybe just purchasing some flexible plex pipe, anchored in the ground on rebar pieces or even the vertical poles from the frame. The whole pile is in the garage until a solution is developed. Fortunately, nothing was growing in it right now and won’t be for at least another 8 or 10 weeks, so plenty of time to solve the problem. It wasn’t expensive and has provided two years of service, but a couple more would be great.

    We have one more mild day, though a high chance of rain, then the storm fronts return with wind and winter temperatures, maybe even a chance of snow. My photo memory from a year ago had me out playing/sledding in the snow. So far this year there have only been a couple of light dustings that didn’t even coat the grass.

  • What is wrong with Healthcare in the US?

    With recent health issues in our household, there have been a couple of hospitalizations and a whole new pharmacy on the dresser top. We are senior citizens and have Medicare plus a supplemental health plan and an Rx plan that is supposed to reduce the cost of prescription medications. The Medicare and supplemental plan have prevented any out of pocket expenses so far, though one of the doctor’s from the first hospitalization has billed Medicare for something for which they have already paid and Medicare declined to pay it a second time obviously. It still shows up on our summaries with a zero balance, but shows a declined expense. The pharmacy side is another story. We pay a significant monthly fee to have the medications at least partially paid for by the insurance plan, a three tier system that lets us know what our co-pay is for each med in the tier, but if we ask the pharmacy what the cash price is, it is often half what the co-pay would be. If we use the insurance, we are paying not only the monthly payment for the plan, but double the cost of paying cash on top of it. This just doesn’t make any sense to us. Fortunately, we know to ask what the difference would be and have paid cash for several of the scripts that have been called in.

    Also, scripts never have a refill number on them anymore and most, except antibiotics, come in 90 supplies so a large bill every three months instead of spreading it out. To get a refill, you must contact the pharmacy who then contacts the physician for authorization on a medication that you know you will be required to take long term (not pain meds, but maintenance meds to prevent the condition from worsening). If you call the physician’s office, the robot voice tells you to contact the pharmacy.

    The surgeon tells you to call and schedule a follow up in 4 weeks and the soonest they can see you is 5 weeks or more.

    Our system is broken and we are among the lucky ones to be able to have and afford insurance to cover our issues. I don’t know what the solution is, but certainly not the way it is being done now.

  • The Hawk returns yet again

    This morning as I was cleaning window sills on the west side of the house, the large Redtailed Hawk swooped down and got a rabbit or squirrel, I wasn’t quite sure which as it was just in the edge of the thicket and disappeared deeper into the thicket as the flock of crows gathered above raising quite a stir. I never saw the hawk reappear and the crows moved to another tree higher above the thicket and stayed there for a very long while. Squirrels and rabbits are fair game for the hawks, my chickens are not, though when penned in their run, they are certainly easier to catch.

    After lunch and bit of warm up in daily temperatures, to a point where working without gloves though uncomfortable, was doable, the run cover was finished alone. The need to work without gloves was to manipulate the 8″ cable ties though the web of the erosion fence to secure the sections together and to the upper edge of the 4′ high wire fence. The green plastic erosion fence has 1″ octagonal holes and each strip is 3 feet wide, stapled to the upper edge of the coop and angled down to the fence top. Once the strips were in place, the triangular spaces at the gate and the east side had to be filled with smaller pieces, the top of the metal gate closed in as well so chickens can’t get out and the hawk can’t get in. Though their run footprint is smaller now, it is still an L shape about 4 feet wide on the east, 5 feet wide on the south and open under the 4 X 8 foot coop that has had welded wire from the bottom of the coop to the ground since it was put there about a decade ago.

    The chickens are out for the first time in two days. Once the shrubs are leafed out again so there are places to hide, they will get free range time, but living in the midst of hayfields, there aren’t many hiding places for them in the winter.

    Some of the old fence from the larger footprint run was used to put a deer barrier around the young plum tree and with heavier T posts to fasten the fence to, the plum was pulled more erect. In it’s first year of so of being planted there, the deer chewed off the primary leader, so a secondary branch took over and shoots out too far to the side. I have hoped to redirect it more vertically and if it doesn’t work, the top will be pruned back to force more side branches out. There is a lot of new growth and I don’t want it chewed on anymore. When the spring gardening supplies come in, a weed ring is going to be purchased to put around the trunk to try to get the grass load around the plum down.

    Day before yesterday in the freezing rain, the first turkeys seen since hunting season were in the two lower fields. I could count 19, but with the growth along the fence line and the rock pile, there may have been more.

    One more day of semi mild weather, followed by rain and possible snow flurries on the weekend.