Cabin Crafted

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  • Trying to Get it Together

    A month ago, we were walking a very brisk 3 miles per day for health and fitness, then his health failed us. A surgery, a heart attack, 10 days in the hospital and home with medical equipment that made walking difficult, along with lack of energy and lack of appetite. Beginning last week, we began walking laps in the house. This week we headed back out to the Huckleberry Trail, paved and flat on the section we are doing and marked with mileage on the dedication plaques on the benches along the way. We have done a mile and a half for three days in a row, not brisk, but at least out and moving. He is still weak and wobbly, the meds cause dizziness and lower blood pressure, though his blood pressure is already low. Friday we see the cardiology team member and hopefully some adjustment will be made to make him less dizzy. Our walks totally wear him out. While he rests, I tackle household and garden chores.

    Today was a garden day plus laundry. When I built the boxes winter before last, I put two long ones too close together. The shorter of them was supposed to have corn and pumpkins in it, both of which were mostly to total failures. Today, that box was cleared and with a pry bar to lift the end, flipping it on it’s side, and moving one end then the other, it was placed around the 8 blueberry bushes. The area around the bushes was weeded, yet again, and the cardboard from the water heater we had to purchase during the summer was cut to fit around the bushes and 4 bags of Cypress mulch dumped on top. Another 4 bags are needed to get the depth I need, but it is a start. The area between the two boxes will be mulched down and the 6 half barrels of raspberries and blackberries will be place there freeing up space for another 4 X 4′ bed if I decide it is needed.

    The Creeping charlie and the insidious bane of a weed outside the box need to be attacked more vigorously than I managed today. They are taking over the garden.

    When we went out for the walk, 3 bags of raised bed soil was purchased and one of the 4 X 4 boxes was amended and filled in preparation to plant the garlic that arrived earlier this week.

    We have our first frost predicted for Saturday night, right at the time it usually comes, so all of the mature peas were picked, the sweet potatoes dug. The experiment planting the sweet potatoes in a half barrel didn’t produce many with any size of them. There are plenty to slice and roast though. The peas were shelled and enjoyed with dinner.

    Tomorrow or Saturday, all of the peppers with any size on them will be harvested as the peas and pepper plants won’t survive a frost. Peppers will be dried, chopped and frozen, pickled, or made into infused Olive Oil or fermented hot sauce. That will be the end of the garden unless the little green house protects the greens within, and the garlic will be planted out in a couple more weeks and covered with straw. As soon as the rest of the asparagus die back, they will be burned off to kill any Asparagus beetle eggs and the weeds I couldn’t reach. Then that bed will also be mulched down with straw or the wood chips in the coop that need to be cleaned out before the hens have to spend more time inside. The hens have been getting more free range time and I think they are hiding eggs again. It is molt season, so they will reduce laying while their energy goes into making clean new feathers.

    There are more cardboard boxes in the garage that contain vents and parts for the roof repair on Son 2’s RV. Those boxes will be used in the garden and mulched heavily when they are emptied.

    The garden season is ending. This year it is time. My plan will have to be redrawn with the moving of the box and the half barrels, decisions made on what will and will not be planted next year. The end of the season is always bittersweet.

  • Goodbye September and Don’t come back

    This month has been an emotional roller coaster with hubby’s early month medical double whammy followed by 10 days in the hospital, home for a weekend then an overnight in the ER with an infection. He is weak as a newborn but slowly making his way back.

    Between the days in the hospital with him, then caring for him at home, the garden was totally neglected. When Son 1 was here one week during the hospital stay, we at least picked some greens and peppers, turning a blind eye to the weeds and dead plants. Last night enough peas were harvested for dinner for two and a half gallon of Jalapenos picked. Today while the patient snoozed in his recliner, a mammoth effort was begun to get rid of the weeds and prepare the garden to overwinter. Some of the sunflowers were hacked down and the seed heads hung on the fence for the birds, the upper half of the garden was weeded and the compost pile is waist high. The Komastuma that survived the Harlequin bugs was thinned and the row of carrots sown in late summer was harvested. The asparagus are brown and need to be cut and burned, but it is too windy today to burn anything outdoors.

    Yesterday, a basket of apple seconds from our orchard was made into another 6 pints of applesauce.

    The fig finally produced fruit this year, two small bowls of figs have been harvested and enjoyed and if the weather holds for another couple of weeks, there are more on the tree.

    The larder isn’t as well stocked as some years, but we have fruit sauces, tomato sauces, peppers, and some jam are stored for winter use.

    The refrigerator has fermented pickles, a gallon of pickled jalapenos, and hot sauces. Pepper vinegar is sitting on a dark shelf until it is ready, and hot red peppers are being strung to dry for infused Olive Oil.

    Late last week, the night time temperatures started dropping into the mid 40’s so the houseplants were returned to the shelve where they overwinter.

    I am hopeful to get a few more greens in the ground, maybe more radishes and the mini greenhouse repaired and installed before our first frost. It went down to 39f last night, but I don’t see a freeze predicted for the next 10 days. Hurricane Ian will bring us 1 to 4″ of rain over the weekend.

    The trees are losing leaves and gaining color. The summer is over, fall and winter on their way. I hope we never have a repeat of this past September. I need to make sugar cakes for the bees now that nights are so cold and move the orifice opening to the smallest one.

  • Life Changes

    While our younger son and his family were visiting two weeks ago, hubby began to have some concerning symptom. They left on Sunday after lunch and by Tuesday lunchtime, he was in the hospital. We went to the closest hospital which was our first mistake. Wednesday night he had surgery and the surgeon didn’t even come let me know what was going on but sent a P.A. Thursday he had another procedure and again, the second surgeon didn’t come. Thursday afternoon, the process to move him somewhere else in the state to a hospital with a room and the necessary speciality team was initiated. Friday night we were notified that he would be moved Saturday morning to the teaching hospital in the nearest city, so within driving distance for me, then late Friday night he began to have a complication from the first surgery that the hospital did not handle. He was moved, very uncomfortably to hospital #2 where they dealt with that problem to start and made him more comfortable. After 6 more days in hospital #2 with continuous care but no further procedures, he was finally released on Friday with a bucket of meds and multiple doctor’s appointments over the next couple of weeks. He was extremely weak once home from 10 days in bed, but is able to get a night’s sleep, eating meals I prepare, and beginning walking around the house to regain his strength while we await the various specialists and PC doctor visits to plan the future. It has been a difficult couple of weeks, but I am glad to have him home where I can follow his progress more carefully without a 55 minute drive twice a day. Son 1 arrived a week ago and helped me get the house and lawn back to a liveable state, shared the driving and meal prep for he and I after long days at the hospital. I put him back on the train home early Friday morning before bringing hubby home. Daughter is going to help out here today so I can go to the grocery store to make sure I have the proper meal prep for our new meal plans.

    The week was not too conducive to crafting, though some Sashiko was stitched during quiet, resting times. A little spinning finally done during the last couple of days of hospital visiting, a pair of fingerless mitts finished once home and a couple of hemp washcloths being knit now when he naps.

    The garden is a neglected mess with Harlequin bugs taking over, weeds growing fast. The hay guys may be here tomorrow to get the fall hay down.

    Our lives will require some more adjustments, but we can do it. I’m glad he is home with me again.

  • Weekend surprise

    Early in the week, Son 2 sent a photo of him grinning ear to ear and holding a 10 week old, gorgeous, female German Shepherd pup. Then on Friday afternoon, he asked if he and his family, could come in for the weekend. He, wife, 5 kids, the puppy, and their older mixed breed dog showed up around midnight and settled in for the night in their RV that lives on our farm when it isn’t on the road with them. They eat in our house, use one of the bathrooms so the black tank doesn’t have to be emptied each time they come, and the two pups came in with them. The kids are 10 months to 11 years, so lots of activity and noise.

    Son 2 is the official bee owner and he and I went down Saturday morning to see if the queens had been released from their cages. One had and was seen on the frames. The second cage had all dead bees in it except one, the queen that had not been released yet. We opened the cage as it had been 6 days and she flew. We don’t know if she flew into the hive or away, if maybe they had raised a queen and didn’t want her, but there were two queen cells about to open, so we closed up that hive. The thriving hive was very thriving and didn’t like us messing inside, though we saw bees of all ages including some just emerging, so they were closed up too. I will go back toward the end of the week and recheck the second hive.

    Back in the house, our very brave (Ha, Ha) German Shepherd old lady came down to visit with the kids and their pups and the young puppy immediately wanted to play. Shadow didn’t have any idea what that little active ball of fluff was that chased her around the coffee table, the dining room table, and finally back up the stairs where she could hide out. I wish I had a video of it, we were all laughing til our sides split at the 75 lb German Shepherd running from the 19 lb puppy and going to hide.

    I guess it was all just too exhausting.

    The big guy because of his age and infirmities has to be locked in the utility room when they are here, out of fear that a toddler that wants to love him will accidently cause him pain and pain reaction, plus he doesn’t like dogs he doesn’t know and we didn’t want to cause him more stress. Being confined all day is also exhausting, so he is in his usual pose.

    Blocks were made into towers, knocked down, and thrown; paper colored and ripped up by others; bickering refereed between young siblings; lots of food prepared and eaten; lots of dishes washed. They headed home right after lunch today just before the thunderstorms began. It was an active bit of time and refreshing to have all of that young life around. We picked apples on our farm, I made and canned my first batch of apple/pear sauce while they were off canoeing, and sent them home with a bag of eating apples, and another of cooking apples for their own applesauce. I will pick more apples when the rain stops and make us another batch of sauce for the shelves for winter.

    And the week will involved making a couple more batches of soap to cure. A new label, not a shop label has been made for the bars that go to friends and to Son 1 that he uses as gifts.

    Tomorrow is a holiday, we will rest, take our walk if the weather allows.

    I’m spinning some, knitting mitts, working on the Sashiko sampler, but not participating much in the monthly challenge.

    It was a whirlwind weekend. More cooler weather due this week. I went out to pick beans for our dinner last night and the bean beetles have made golden lace of the leaves. I will pick the beans there and consider batch two a basic loss. The peas are blooming so we may get some of them in a few weeks.

  • And Then There Were 11

    The hen flock was a baker’s dozen. Not planned that way, but the way it was. This morning when I let the pups out for their morning chores, I saw a big pile of yellowish white feathers on the front porch, no blood and gore, just a pile of feathers. I swept them off the porch, watered the porch plants, and went over to let the hens out for the day. Curious, I stayed in the run and counted heads as they came out, 1, 2, 3,…9, then from outside the pen came two wet scraggly Buff Orpingtons. One with all of her tail feathers missing. But no more. So 11 in all, missing is a Marans and a Buff Orpington. After our walk yesterday, we were home all afternoon from about 2 p.m. on except for a brief sojourn down to the village store for a quick ice cream bar, only gone about 20-30 minutes at dusk. I never heard a commotion, but when we got home last evening, I went out to harvest some herbs to dry for a new batch of herb salve and the neighbor’s two hound dogs were by the back garden. This morning, our old Mastiff was very curious about various spots in the yard, going much farther afield than his weary old body usually takes him, so something happened, probably while we were out. It frightened the two Buffs enough that they hid and never cooped up last night.

    If I had realized all of this before letting them out today, I would have left them penned up for a few days to discourage a repeat performance by whatever got the two. I guess I need to walk the areas they frequent and see if I can find evidence the the melee or remains that need to be more properly disposed.

    Last week, before I left for my weekend fiber retreat, the bees were tended. Three of the hives had little to no brood, no eggs, no queen cells. Two had low population, one with good stores, the other without. The third with moderate population and decent stores, so Son 2, the official beekeeper suggested I combine the two weakest hives and try to get local queens. I did the combine and arranged to pick up two mated, marked queens yesterday morning. Their cages have been installed in the two hives with hopes that in the next 7 or 8 weeks until our first expected frost, they can rebuild the hives enough for them to survive the winter. I will make syrup and take it down to those two hives today. The last hive is thriving. So now instead of 4 hives, there are 3, all with marked mated queens, if the two new ones are accepted and freed from their cages by the workers. This has definitely been a learning curve for me, but one I am enjoying.

    The retreat was a wonderful respite, even with the couple hundred men and their sons also at the conference center. We have a large room with tables and chairs to convene into each day. Snacks provided by the group, meals in the conference center, and assorted vendors of fibery goodness to play with. I didn’t take my wheel, just spindles and knitting needles, and spun about 28 grams of wool, started a pair of fingerless mitts, and won a door prize of 4 ounces of roving. My Yankee Swap gift is three small skeins of hemp yarn for making spa cloths. Two great gifts. I limited my purchases to 4 ounces of wool from my friend, Debbie, at Hearts of the Meadow Farm, some yarn from another friend, Louise, at Only the Finest Yarns and Fiber to make two pair of fingerless mitts requested by family members for the winter, and a metal insulated mug for my tea and coffee there as I feared breaking my pottery one.

    The chaos that 30 women and 1 man can create in a room
    My spinning and the start of the mitts
    We sat around the fire pits out front at night

    It was tough to say goodbye to my friends, old and new, but it is nice to be home.

  • The Garden is winning

    Usually in July and August, it is fairly dry, the grass doesn’t need mowing often, the weeds in the garden slow down and most of the bugs are gone. Not this year. We have had lots of light rain, not enough to fill the creeks, but enough to stimulate weed and grass growth and with it, the bugs. Yesterday evening and overnight, it rained enough to fill the 5″ deep round tub in the chicken pen and our driveway looks like it has canyons.

    To add to this, the line trimmer has been acting up and either catching the line or “eating it” so with the wet grass and the malfunctioning equipment, the grass in the paths of the garden was higher than my garden boots. In some places it is easy to pull, not in others. I finally took the gas push mower over and mowed as much as I could, crawled around on the wet ground and hand pulled as much more as I could until my hands were cramped and it was time to come in and prepare dinner. Four of the tomato plants were done producing, so they were pulled. The others trimmed back of branches with no fruit and no leaves, the deadnettle, clover, and other invaders pulled from around the peppers and basil to give them a chance to continue producing, and about 2/3 of the blueberry bed was again hand weeded. I need to finish that job. I don’t know what the insidious creeping weed in that bed is, but I really need to find a solution to rid the garden of it. I don’t like plastic, but I’m really toying with using a roll of black plastic weighted down with rocks to kill it off around the edges and in the paths and then pull it back up and put down new cardboard and several inches of wood chips. I’m also considering transplanting them in late fall to the bed I was going to reconstruct, putting the berry barrels at the other end and filling it with wood chips, then shortening the garden by 6 or 7 feet on the south edge as it has just gotten to be more than I am willing to deal with. There will still be 3 squares about 4 feet each, three 4 X 6 or 7′ beds, and one that is 4 X 14′. Plenty of space for a garden for two. Plus the garden behind the house with flowers, the fig, and herbs.

    Finished at dark.

  • It is going away

    Slowly, piece by piece, the cottage business is departing. Still there are 5 spindles that get used regularly, the spinning wheel from my friend’s estate sale, the rigid heddle loom and stand, my knitting needles, and of course the great wheel that was never part of the business. I’ve kept the re-enactment folding table and period folding chair as I will still participate at events for fiber arts in history, and though they were sometimes used as part of displays, they aren’t part of the business. The remaining baskets and crates can be repurposed here at home. The two small tobacco style baskets can be made into door or wall decorations and may be made up in that style for the last event just before Christmas.

    Next week, I will attend a fiber retreat and vend wares that were already in stock. One grandson asked for a pair of soft, dark fingerless mitts, so a skein will be set aside for that. There are 3 more events before the end of the year and no more stock will be made for them.

    As the spinning is a stress relief for me, it will continue to be a hobby, but what I spin will be done with purpose as something that can be woven or knit as a gift. And as I reverted to spindles during the beginnings of the pandemic, most spinning will continue to be on spindles as it gives me pleasure and slows the production to a useable pace.

    Batches of soap were made this week to be used at home, to be given as gifts, and to share with family members and friends that desire them.

    It took me a long time to come to the decision to end this venture, but there is actually a sense of relief that it is coming to an end. I will move on to other adventures in my retirement. As long as family wants mitts, scarves, hats, and the occasional sweater, and friends want soap, it will keep me happy.

    The online shop has already been shut down, so it is just moving out stock at events, trying to get to a manageable amount that can be used here or as gifts.

    The blog will continue as it deals more with life on the farm. Keep watching for more posts as the seasons change.

  • Always more tasks this time of year

    Two days of tomatoes were cooked down to pizza sauce and canned yesterday during the rainy afternoon. It made 6 half pints, but I didn’t waterbath one, instead used half of it on last night’s pizza and froze the rest for next time. The red and a handful of green Seranos and Jalapenos were chopped up in the blender and started as a hot sauce ferment while the sauce was processing.

    Though I don’t grow as many tomatoes as I used to and don’t can nearly as much as it is just the two of us, it does my heart good to see the shelves beginning to fill.

    It is nearly time to add applesauce, apple/pear sauce, and a few jars of pear marmalade to the shelves, and more hot peppers as they mature.

    Yesterday morning, the pots in the back garden were scattered around the bed I weeded, the sprinkler set up on a pedestal, but we ended up with a couple inches of rain between yesterday afternoon, over night, and into this morning, so no watering was needed. More of the smaller rocks were moved from the work area to the back edge or top of the wall to clear them. And every pot of boiling water left from cooking pasta or canning goodies is taken our and poured on the vetch. Slowly, it is dying off and the edge of the work area and remaining rocks will be visible.

    This afternoon was to be used to make soap and instead, I got involved in closing down the shop business. Much of my equipment that I only used for vending has been sold. Today, a small loom that was beautiful, but didn’t get much use was also sold. By the end of the year, hopefully, there will not be much stock left and what is left can be donated to the museum or given as gifts and my fiber arts and soap making will be for family and close friends. Though I enjoyed the years of being Cabin Crafted, the tax ramification were just too stressful for a cottage business that broke even each year at best.

    Somehow, we manage to get our walks in each day, around the rain showers, or sometimes in them. Since my wellness check, and the report of slightly elevated cholesterol, we have both picked up the pace and extended the distance by about 3/4 of a mile. My already healthy, low meat diet has been tweaked more to totally eliminate dairy products except for cheese in Mexican food and on pizza. My morning smoothie is made with plant milk, whey protein, flax, peanut butter powder, and frozen berries. Most mornings, it is like eating a cup of ice cream it is so thick. Ice cream has been reduced to a single scoop once a week. Starches limited to whole grains and fresh vegetables that contain starch like corn and potatoes, and then prepared steamed or boiled. It isn’t terribly different than I was eating, except I was using homemade whole milk yogurt and real peanut butter in the smoothies, a slice of sourdough bread with it, often buttered with avocado, more cheese, and butter on many vegetables. I was put on a low dose statin, though I didn’t react well to one about 14 years ago and hope that maybe the diet changes and exercise will allow me to not take it after a while.

    All of the garden work aggravated the arthritis and trigger finger in my hands, so crafting has been minimal for the past few days, but I did finish two more Sashiko panels and used one to decorate a small canvas zip bag to hold the Sashiko supplies and unfinished small panels in.

    There are 8 more of these panels, 1 finished, 7 to stitch. Maybe they will become a tote bag, or a table runner. Time will tell. Spinning happens mostly in the car, a bit at night as I continue to work my way through the 5 ounce braid. It has lovely colors in the sunlight, greens, purples, golds, on a gray background, but in the house, those colors seem to hide so it feels like spinning gray. After a whole year of spinning only natural colors for the breed blanket, more color has been needed in my craft this year. I think it will weave on my rigid heddle loom into a lovely, drapey shawl once it is done. It is a smooth spin so it shouldn’t grab while weaving as long as it is strong enough to not break the warp threads. Maybe a commercially spun silk will be the warp as the braid is 25% silk.

    The mornings, feel that summer is edging away, the daytime temperatures in the 70’s. This morning, herb and salad greens were sown in the hydroponics as the frost will take out the herbs and I never plant lettuce outdoors. We will enjoy salads all winter with the hydroponic garden and the salad greens will be refreshed as needed. For now, there are some greens and radishes being harvested from the garden, lettuce from the Farmer’s Market as needed, the cucumbers just starting to produce and new green beans about ready to harvest. Pumpkins this year will have to be purchased, they never did come up or at least didn’t produce vines and fruit. The peas are gaining size, strings need to be added to the posts for them and they should produce before we have our first frost. The greenhouse cover needs a minor repair before it is needed outdoors. Summer is moving on to a close, and it is raining hard again outside.

  • Garden recovery

    After my last post about the wayward hens, and finding two more eggs in the back garden hidey hole, with a cooler evening, I tackled the back garden mess. One of my garden tools is a handle 15″ or so long with a T shaped end. One side is a 3″ wide hoe blade and a 3 tine digging fork on the other end of the T. It took me several hours of sitting in on the soil or the rock wall to eradicate a ton of bermuda grass and comfrey at the lower edge of the garden and vetch, oxalis, clover, and other invasions at the upper edge. Where the rocks are still piled awaiting removal by placement in the patio or along the wall, vetch was left as it doesn’t pull through the rocks very well. The half barrels on the wall and the potted perennials are going to be scattered through out the weeded bed for now.

    Yesterday, in the heat of the day, under full sun, I sprayed the vetch with salted vinegar, donned leather gloves to remove a truly thorny invader, but walked away from it to let the spray do it’s magic. It doesn’t do magic on vetch that is still thriving today. I love the vetch when it isn’t in my gardens, the bees all love it too, but it can’t reside where it currently is.

    The mostly finished patio and the transition area between the finished part and the garden part where the vetch is thriving.

    As the sun lowered in the sky, the heat rose for some unexplained reason as the night was to be very seasonably cool, but my trusty tool and gloves were taken over to finish weeding the north edge of the vegetable garden behind and in the tall asparagus tops, the fall potato bed that never came up, and some in the tomato and pepper bed. As I work the beds, I am increasingly unhappy that I made two very long 4 foot wide boxes too close together. With tomatoes on one edge and corn behind it in the second bed, it is difficult to get to the weeds and harvest tomatoes without stepping in the beds. That design may be revisited this fall at the end of the season, breaking the longer of the boxes up and replacing it slightly uphill with 3 boxes that are 4 feet square. To do that, the blackberry half barrels will have to be moved down below the blueberries where the raspberry half barrels are, and if I put thick weed mat down first and line them up along that edge of the garden and mulch heavily around them, maybe the blueberries will stay less weedy.

    The efforts in the vegetable garden produced a large compost pile that now needs some dry material on it, perhaps the soiled wood chips from the coop.

    While weeding back there, I disturbed a bumblebee. They have never bothered me before, just flitting around where I worked, but this one became quite agitated at my efforts to remove the deadnettle and clover and she stung me three times, once on my midsections and twice under one arm. Bumblebees don’t have a barb on their stinger and can sting multiple times. The more she stung me, the more aggressive she became. I swatted her down with my glove and removed from the area. Today the stings are angry red and itchy. That makes 8 stings from bees and hornets this summer, more than I have gotten in my prior 74 years. So far, the red swelling, a headache, and three days of itching have been the only reaction. I truly hope it doesn’t develop into a more serious reaction, though a talk with a volunteer rescue squad member told me they do carry epinephrine on their trucks.

    Today we have rain, so I’m off the move the pots and barrels around and pick tomatoes. This afternoon while it rains, I will can another batch of pizza sauce and use some of it on tonight’s dinner.

  • Oh those Wily Chickens

    I started raising chickens a decade or so ago to provide us with eggs. With new chicken syndrome, too many ended up here and too many young randy roos, so Son 1 and I learned to dispatch them and put them in freezer camp. I find them too tough to eat but for a few years, he would take frozen ones home occasionally. His situation doesn’t provide the facilities for that to happen at this point and there are several still in the freezer. Over the years, fewer chicks were purchased at replacement time, but last time, they were purchased in February and half died, they were replaced and several died, they were replaced again, thinking I would end up with only the few I started out to get, but ended up with 15, two were roos and dispatched that summer.

    With more hens than are necessary, I found a friend that would gladly take a couple dozen a week off my hands. Daughter also welcomes some, but I have found that my priority for the eggs has shifted from producing them for our use to hoarding them all week so friend and daughter get what they want. The current 13 hens are going on 2.5 years old, molt is starting for the first time as last winter they hadn’t yet had a winter as adults and didn’t molt. Their age has also slowed laying. One has taken to becoming an egg eater, though I haven’t caught her in the act to isolate her, just finding evidence later. And I hear egg song, go look in the coop to remove the egg to stop her and there isn’t one there, so they are hiding them.

    This morning, I heard egg song from this thicket.

    There were three hens in there and rooting around from two sides, I couldn’t find where they might have laid their eggs. Only 4 have been in the coop today. A few minutes ago, I heard egg song again, right behind the house. The walled garden built last summer is pretty overgrown due to patio construction and rocks being tossed aside out of the way until it is finished, so weeding has been sporadic and the vetch and comfrey have taken over. The herb part I have tried to keep clearer, but the deer were eating down a tall flowering plant against the tall wall, so I leaned a piece of old fence there to protect them and the weeds had grown up under the leaning fence. I found this:

    Six eggs hidden. There must be another cache somewhere else also. So it seems that they are laying them in the flowers and thickets instead of the coop. I guess they will have to lose their free range time except for a few hours each late afternoon. As they think nothing of going over a 4 foot fence, using electric mesh that can be moved through the orchard to give them fresh grass ever day or so won’t work.

    Since my priority has gotten skewed, when these hens are replaced, there will only be 5 or 6. I will stop providing eggs for my friend (she can buy free range eggs from the Farmer’s Market) and will give daughter extras, but our household will come first.

    On the plus side, while rooting around in the thicket, I spotted peaches. We didn’t plant a peach tree on that side of the yard, but there must be a volunteer, I have seen it bloom in the spring, but never followed up later in the summer. Maybe the thicket needs to be cleared back so the peaches on that tree can be accessed, giving us two peach trees and more fruit than we can possibly use.

    This is the plant the deer eat back, the butterflies love it.