We knew last night was going to be colder than the past couple of weeks, but didn’t expect to wake this morning to this:
Since the road was clear, we went on to the Farmer’s Market for weekly supplies and it was so cold and windy. A quick trip to Michaels to get embroidery floss to do a visible repair on my favorite WoolX zip up hoodie, and then to brave the cold wind, blowing snow sideways to take our walk. The snow on the ground is already gone, but it is still snowing parallel to the ground due to the strong wind.
Since there was already wood in the rack in the garage, a fire to burn some papers we didn’t want to throw out and to provide warmth and ambience on this cold and windy day, seemed to be in order.
The old guy loves to be near the fire when it is burning.
Except to try to figure out how to further protect the greens in the low ground greenhouse, we will stay hunkered down in the house for the remainder of the day.
A 24 foot box truck backed down our 2/10 mile curvy gravel driveway and unloaded a 394 lb pallet into our garage.
The pallet contains the 2 bee hives, assembled and hive bodies and supers, frames, and accessory boards all in assorted cardboard boxes. The bases are coming separately according to Son 2. The bees will follow in a few weeks. There will be a lot of cardboard that can be used to create a ground layer under the hives that can be heavily mulched so mowing won’t have to happen under them. The position of the hives will be behind or below a cistern system we have for rainwater runoff that runs to a yard hydrant and that area is heavy with vetch all spring and summer long that the bees will love. There is an area near the proposed placement that isn’t mowed because of large rocks, but excess bearded Iris have been dumped there a few times, so in addition to wildflowers, wild berries, there are Iris flowers very close by. In front of the cistern system not too far away is the walled garden full of perennials, annuals, and herbs. The back and side of the garage have beds that are full of flowers, the vegetable garden with it’s blooms nearby, and 30 acres of wild flowers between hay mowings. Lots of pollen producers for the bees.
For now, it is still wrapped on the wooden pallet it arrived on.
This morning was sunny and mild, so the potted herbs went outside for a few hours. Then it clouded and chilled off, so back in for the next 5 nights that vary from 21 f to 33 f. The little ground greenhouse stayed closed today, but will be opened during the sunny days and closed at night. Tomorrow is cold with rain and possible snow showers off and on all day, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday are slightly milder during the daylight hours, but bitter at night. The last frost date is still a few weeks off, but temperatures in the 20’s should be about to end. This comes just as the peach, plum, and one of the pears have bloomed, so there may be little or no fruit from them. The apples and other pear haven’t bloomed yet. The lilacs are heavily budded, but not open and the Forsythia will probably tolerate it, if not, we have had several days of pretty yellow to enjoy.
Spring takes 3 steps forward and 1 or 2 backward this time of year, but it is moving toward garden season.
The hummingbird report puts first sightings at the Virginia/North Carolina line, less than 80 miles from here, so the feeder was filled and placed outdoors to invite the tiny hummers to visit. A second feeder was purchased and filled when we went to buy chicken feed earlier today. Todays spinning challenge word was action, thus the spindle sitting with the feeder. The feeders are at opposite ends of the front porch.
The tomato seedlings were ready for pots, so they were pulled from the hydroponic starter and put in paper pots with seed starter soil mix, but not yet put outdoors, though it is very mild today, we will have several days of very chilly weather and 3 freezing nights. Once they have passed, the seedlings will move out to filtered light during the day and back inside at night until either it is time to put them in the ground or they outgrow the starter pots and have to be moved up to larger clay pots until they can go in the ground. The lettuce starts are getting leggy, but they can’t go in the ground until after the freezing nights. The spinach and Komatsuma were transplanted into the ground greenhouse then rained on yesterday. Some more spinach starts were purchased at the local nursery today and added to the green house and overwintered spinach picked for tonight’s stir fry. The greenhouse will be closed up tonight and left that way each night until it warms back up next week. The pepper seedlings are beginning to get secondary leaves, but aren’t ready to move up to pots yet.
The tomatoes in the pots perked back up by this afternoon, not suffering too much transplant shock.
As soon as the peppers are transplanted, that unit will be scrubbed out, refilled with filtered water and restarted with salad greens. The herb hydroponic was totally out of control, so Genovese sweet basil, Thai basil, chives, and rosemary were pulled and potted, set just inside the dining room doors or kitchen window sill until warm enough to move them to the back deck.
That hydroponic was scrubbed out, refilled with filtered water, given a starter dose of fertilizer and reseeded with 3 sweet basil and 3 Thai basil pods to be transplanted into the vegetable garden when the tomatoes are planted out around Mother’s Day. After that, it will sit idle until autumn when the pods will be replanted with herbs for winter cooking.
Though the original plan only had four tomato plants this year because of the glut still in the freezer, a couple of commercially grown starts or a couple more from seed may be started to added variety, but I am committed to control this year by pruning and training even at the cost of some fruit.
This afternoon, with measuring tape, graph paper, and pencil in hand, the garden was measured and drawn out to scale instead of guesswork and the plan penciled in to a photocopy of it after the margins were inked. The original blank was stored in the binder so it will be available for future years.
While at the nursery, a purchase of more starter pots was made so the cucumbers, huckleberries, a couple more tomatoes, and maybe the first run of beans started soon so they can be planted out at the correct time for our zone. The peas and sugar snap peas can be planted in the ground next week. It is exciting to see it coming together for another year.
And the exciting news for the day is the bee hives are being delivered tomorrow afternoon and the bees will follow in a few weeks. Son 2 and I will have to erect the electric fence around them once they are unpacked and set in place. First a 4×4′ post needs to be purchased to mount the solar charger on.
Spring officially arrived in our little corner of the planet on the coldest windiest day we have had for weeks. The Forsythia is showing yellow, the Lilac buds are swelling, the little plum has a few blooms though we have yet to get fruit from it. I fear the apple and pear trees will bloom this week which has warm days and mild nights just in time for the weekend deep freeze. The wind finally died down overnight after howling and producing uncomfortable wind chills all day yesterday.
Some years we get lucky and get fruit, some years, the trees bloom and get hit by frost and there is little or no fruit to enjoy fresh and to can. Our elevation is almost exactly that of town, yet with all of the pavement, buildings, and parking lots a university town has, it is always a few degrees warmer there and the trees and flowers show spring sooner than in the hollow in which our little farm sits. However, this hollow is often a few degrees warmer than the farm at the bottom of the mountain. Maybe we will get lucky and it won’t freeze or the forecast will improve as the week progresses.
The plan had been to transplant the greens into the little ground greenhouse this week, but with below freezing temperatures expected for at least 3 consecutive nights, it might not be a wise plan. Perhaps the spinach and Komatsuma would be okay getting moved out, but not the lettuces. The herbs in the Aerogarden are overwhelming the counter in spite of frequent pruning and heavy herb use. They too need to be moved to the gardens. Last year the hydroponics sat idle during the summer and replanted in early fall before the frost came. This year, the larger one will grow salad greens that don’t do well in hot weather, rather than taking up space in the garden for frequent resowing to stay ahead of the heat and bitterness. The garden plan hasn’t been redone since the greenhouse was added, but some plans have changed and some produce will go in large pots or half barrels instead of in the ground to allow the planting of more 3 sister’s garden and potatoes which were fairly successful last year but not in this year’s plan. There does need to be a better storage system for them however. The basement stays cooler than the rest of the house as we don’t run the HVAC system down there most of the time, but the area where the shelves are build also houses the chest freezer, air handler, water heater, and pressure tank, so it stays a bit warmer than ideal for storing potatoes or apples and as it is less well ventilated, the potatoes and apples don’t do well in there together.
The Swallows are back so the hummingbirds aren’t far behind. The Swallows are checking out the nesting boxes in the gardens and always get them before the Eastern Bluebirds. There is one that hasn’t been mounted on a pole yet, so once the Swallows settle, it will be mounted for the Bluebirds. Soon it will be time to make the syrup for the hummingbird feeder and maybe add a second one this year.
And spring will bring two beehives to the farm. Son 2 has had them shipped, ordered the bees and will come up to set up the hives and be the basic maintainers of them. He will have to show me some basics and together we will erect electric fence around them to thwart curious bears. We don’t see them often, but we do see them occasionally and last year, one got my bird feeders at night and destroyed them. It is time to move back to bringing them in at night as the weather warms and the animals start to wander more.
We are still weeks away from the last frost date, but getting closer to getting back to gardening. The last of the paths were cleared over the weekend and some of the beds that had already been done, hoed to clear the recurrent weeds. There is still a Creeping Charlie issue around the edges of the garden and beginning to move into the path that surrounds the boxes. It is an annual fight that I guess will continue into this summer.
Every year around Thanksgiving, children draw, color, and make turkey’s, always puffed up with their tail feathers fanned. Every year I chuckle as that is a behavior only of Tom’s and only during spring mating season.
The season has begun, the hayfield fills several times a day with a dozen birds. Most of the year, they look like feathered armadillos with head and tail down, back humped up as they slowly march across the field looking for grub. Then the mating clock chimes and flocks of Toms gather posing for each other with their chest puffed out and their tail fanned, later doing their strutting little dance trying to attract one of the Hens. It is a fascinating process to observe.
I didn’t see my first wild turkey until 35 or 40 years ago, and they were difficult to spot in the woods of the mountains when we hiked. The most we have ever seen at one time here is about 18-20 and they aren’t very fearful of people or cars. They are such muted looking birds until you can get close and see the irridescence in their feather.
It is amusing, the misinformation our kids learn. Probably most of their teacher’s don’t know that the classic Thanksgiving turkey pose is actually a spring mating dance.
Spring really seems to be trying to win the battle with winter with a series of mild days and nights not reaching down to freezing. The mini ground greenhouse was checked in daylight and opened so as not to overheat in yesterday’s bright sun and mild temperatures and not everything had failed as feared. It was watered and given the afternoon sun as the open sides face west. The spinach that overwintered is okay, the Komatsuma looked a little weary but will probably perk back up, most of the lettuces took a hit. One looks okay, one may recover, the others are toast but the sprouts indoors are thriving and will be planted out in a couple of weeks.
The tiny daffodils in the garden were mostly picked prior to the freeze and are producing new buds, the full sized daffodils had yet to bloom prior to the freeze and are just now showing buds. The Daylily and Iris greens that had emerged seem to have fared okay and fortunately, the Forsythia, Lilacs, and fruit trees had not yet bloomed here on the mountain like they have in town. You can see cherry trees, forsythia, and spring flowers all over town and some of them took a hit.
With the stress of the world news, more spinning and knitting is being done to calm my mind. Two designs are being done for hats for the Museum gift store, one easy to design, the other should be, but the paper plan so far is not satisfying me. The spinning took a turn as the new spindle that hubby gave me for our anniversary had a shaft failure. The 2022 version of this spindle has a slimmer, longer shaft and the very thin neck that provides a place for the half hitch broke off. A new shaft has been ordered, but it required a spindle change until the new one comes.
Additionally, as the stress is causing sleep disruption, some social media has been logged out of for days and is not missed. Perhaps it will leave forever. One was kept only to keep up with kids and events from a couple of groups, but the kids send pictures via text or Instagram or Google share and the groups email as well as posting on social media. The walks have been more vigorous as stress relief and to calm the mind.
We have rainy days for the next several, but it looks like walks can be scheduled around the rain. The spinning group challenges are still being met as they do not incur stress, but rather alleviate it. This month there is a word of the day and it is to be represented in a picture, with or without discussion including the current spindle spin. The word a few days ago was Achievement and this is the representation.
Taken at the beginning of our daily walk in front of the map of the Huckleberry trail. We have missed fewer that a small handful of days all winter, regardless of the cold, walking avoiding icy trails, walking in snow flurries and a few rain sprinkles. Not all have been pleasant, not all at the pace we like to keep, but persistence, thus Achievement. Today’s word is Peace, much needed right now, and this is my peace.
Our beautiful retirement farm and the garden and animal chores it brings. We all need Peace right now.
Spring in the mountains is a fickle affair. Spring time one day, winter the next, then back to spring.
This was preceded by a 63f day, the snowy day, it fell to 14f, climbed to upper 40’s and windy yesterday and back into the 60’s today.
I checked the greenhouse tonight, I fear the greens didn’t survive 14f. It was too dark to see for sure, but it looked like most were burned off. The tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, spinach, and Komatsuma have sprouted indoors, but nothing has been sown under the greenhouse yet, just the transplants that were overwintered or planted out there a few weeks ago.
To confuse the schedule, as pasta was on the menu a couple nights ago, one of the bags of tomatoes was brought up and cooked down, run through the mill, and 4 pints of tomato sauce canned.
Not the usual time of year for canning, but the 8 gallons of tomatoes in the freezer need to be made stable. Tonight, a second 2 gallon bag was brought up and a few handfuls were thawed enough to skin, chop, and add to a pot of chili that was being prepared. The next rainy day, the remaining gallons will be cooked down and canned. Not as many tomatoes are being planted this year, but enough to add more to the shelves.
The spring flowers on our walk were recovering today, but the pussy willow that had begun to bloom are all burned and browned. Some of the catkins hadn’t opened yet, so hopefully they will open in the next couple of weeks.
The switch to daylight savings time means nothing to the chicken flock, but throws our senior bodies into disarray, bodies that disagree with the clock as they adjust.
In the midst of the storm on Saturday, our internet quit. Our router was 9 years old and after a cell phone chatline with tech support and a phone call from the local technician in our little rural coop phone service, we have DSL, we drove down and picked up a new router/modem programmed for us. It still didn’t work and no technicians are available on Sunday. They came out this morning and really couldn’t figure out why, but changed the filter on the line coming in the house and managed to get us back on. A couple hours later, it failed again and Son1 spent an hour on the phone with me troubleshooting. Thanks to him, we are back on again.
We walk for fitness and health daily, both too old to jog or run, and most days it is on one of two section of the Huckleberry Rails to Trails path that are fairly level. This path follows the old Huckleberry rail from the Library in Blacksburg to the Rec Center in Christiansburg, about 7 miles. A couple of years ago, it was extended from where it passes under the main highway bypass in the opposite direction from Christiansburg into and through the Heritage Community Park and Nature Area. We have wandered around in that park many times prior to the extension of the Huckleberry and have walked from a parking area in the park back toward Blacksburg a several times, but have never gone to the other parking area in the park, a mile farther away.
Today is cool and partly cloudy again, but calm wind and for variety, we drove down to the lower parking lot and started our walk at that terminus of the Huckleberry Trail, a very isolated area, but very pretty. The walk we did from the terminus to the road the trail crosses is a little over a mile, almost entirely uphill. Once we reached the road, we turned around and walked it back down to the car.
The first couple hundred yards are downhill to a creek and after crossing the bridge over the creek, there were at least a dozen small trees all gnawed down by beaver. We did not see any animals, just the remaining trunks mostly devoid of branches and couldn’t see where their dam was built, though there was evidence just beyond this of overwash of the trail from the rain night before last, so it must be just a bit upstream from the bridge.
It is a pretty section, probably will be prettier when the trees and shrubs leaf out. You can see the old silos from the Heritage Park section we used to walk. And this pretty glade of pines with a thick layer of needles below.
Though there are many benches to rest on and several picnic shelters near the two parking areas, this glade would be a great place to bring a picnic on a warm sunny day.
It took us several years to explore this end of the trail, but I’m glad we did as it gives us two other sections to walk.
When the weather warms up consistently, we will add back in the hike up in the Conservancy that we also love.
A shepherd friend of mine has posted periodically the making of suet cakes for the wild birds. Because everything in the pet area of Tractor Supply and the local pet supply store have either gone through the roof in price or are not available, I ask her for her recipe. Of course it requires suet as a base, so I asked the beef guy at the Farmer’s Market if he had beef fat and he did, a 2 pound package, vacuum sealed. Not having ever rendered fat before, I googled it. It can be done on the stove, in the oven, or in the microwave. I chose the microwave. It only takes 3 to 4 minutes to melt down 2 cups worth in the microwave and two pounds was 5 rounds of cut up chunks, but oh, does it ever smell bad. Once melted, you strain off the liquid fat, discard the solid chunks, which the chickens ate like it was candy.
Once it is all melted and slightly cooled, you add peanut butter, cornmeal, oatmeal, and birdseed thoroughly stirred together. I don’t have but one metal baking pan with sides, so I have been saving the plastic squares that the commercial suet cakes come in for this project. There weren’t enough, but there was one foil cake square in the pantry.
Tomorrow after they are cooled and solid, I will cut the cake pan into 4 pieces and they will be wrapped and stacked in the refrigerator or freezer until they are needed for the wild birds that live here year round or migrate through spring and autumn.
I’m still trying to get rid of the odor though, the beeswax warmer is on, a beeswax candle is burning, the floor washed with a floor cleaner that actually smells better than the fat, though I normally don’t like it either. It may be time to simmer a pot of cinnamon, clove, and star anise.
I wonder how many times I can reuse the plastic forms? And next time it will be melted on the stove, the camp stove, outdoors.
I didn’t get any garden or coop work done today because I forgot it was Founder’s Day at the museum until 90 minutes before I was to be there. We did get some more bee traps and tomato cages and hustled home for me to change. The Hance’s were Swiss and the theme is Swiss and I wasn’t sure how to dress for the event, so I wore my shift and petticoat, but left the gown at home and used the linen apron with the pinned up bib top. I was going to wear the shallow crowned flat straw hat, but I can’t keep it on in the wind.
It was a glorious 2 hours sitting outdoors, using the 18th century quill wheel I donated to the museum, a walnut top whorl spindle, and my box loom, though the loom was a challenge without a table. I had a basket of hats, mittens, and cowls, and another of yarn, not as an aggressive vending event, but to show what can be done with the wool and available for purchase if asked.
The half hap shawl went along as a demonstration of how 9 breeds of wool could be used and by the time the sun dropped below the buildings around 4 p.m., it ended up around my shoulders.
No rain, warm temperature, quite a breeze that billowed my skirt and apron as I spun, but a truly nice event. Music, swiss folk dance, story time, events for the kids, and refreshments of cheese, chocolate, and beverages available. Not a huge crowd, but visiting with folks I only see there, providing some history, and making plans with the director for the next event.
Tomorrow it rains, then cools off again for a week, but not so cold I won’t be able to finish the tasks that were planned for today before I remembered I was to be somewhere else.
Cabin Crafted 