Cabin Crafted

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  • Morning Song

    Last evening as the night chores were being done, the sky had this gorgeous pink swathe in the sky.

    As I was planning last evening’s meal, the frozen green vegetables in the freezer did not appeal. I knew I had among the last of this spring’s harvest of asparagus, which I love, but are not favorites of hubby, I remembered that 4 of the plants in the row of spinach I had planted survived the chicken onslaught a few weeks ago. A quick pop over to the garden and the two smaller heads, a handful of pea shoots, and a couple of asparagus that had emerged were harvested and a salad plan was made. Fresh raw spinach with pea shoots and shavings of the most delicious vintage aged cheddar cheese and a mild vinegarette. A nice fresh from the garden addition to dinner.

    The morning chores were greeted by the song of the cicadas that have emerged up the hill in the woods. I stopped during my walk yesterday and recorded their sound. In our south woods or in the tall hay, a gobbler was sounding his call. No traffic sounds, no jets like I grew up with, just natures calls and bird songs.

    Soon there will be fresh peas, the two beds are full of white blossoms.

    The potatoes look like they need topping again. I am excited to have potatoes in the garden again this year, though they aren’t a long keeping variety, they will be enjoyed fresh, maybe a few small ones will be able to be dug from the edges when the bush beans are ready, that is a delightful combination.

    On summer mornings, when I go out to turn the hens out, I carry a hoe with me and in the cool of the morning, the weeding is done. More mint was dug and pulled this morning and I realized that I had not put down cardboard around the potato bed and covered it, so that task needs to be undertaken. Though I don’t like plastic in the garden, that feed sack is tucked under the edge of that bed and will have to remain there until the potatoes are dug unless I can tug it out before putting down cardboard and spoiled hay.

    More spring flowers were cut last night for the dining table. The Dutch Iris are blooming now that the Bearded Iris are fading, the Coreopsis is blooming and lots of Comfrey flowers.

    I am a failure at flower arranging, but love a bouquet of fresh cut flowers on the table during the season.

    After chores last night, I finished spinning the second bobbin of the gray Shetland and plied a very full 4 ounce bobbin. There is still about 6 more ounces of the wool, some on the two bobbins that didn’t fit on the plying bobbin, so I will weigh them, subtract the bobbin weight, divide the remaining Shetland so that each of those bobbins end up with 2 ounces and spin and ply another 4 ounces. I think there is plenty now to knit the sweater for me for next winter.

    It was spun with a pattern in mind, then I bought this Peacock gradient braid and I think a yoke style sweater with the Peacock at the yoke and the gray below would be stunning, so now I am in a quandry.

    This morning is cool enough for a light hoodie, too cool to enjoy my coffee on the deck, so maybe I should take advantage and though I have already spent some time in the garden this morning, I should put down the two paths of cardboard and hay and put a layer of mulch on the asparagus bed that will now be allowed to send up it’s pencil thin ferny shoots to feed the crowns for next year’s harvest. The cycle of life.

    “When the power of love, overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.” Jimi Hendricks

  • A Break from Isolation

    With a socially distanced, outdoor adventure with daughter and her two youngs, and hubby. She owns two tandem kayaks and wanted to take her kiddos out for a fun afternoon. She asked us earlier in the week if we wanted to join them for a socially distanced outing. My car has the kayak rack that can be easily attached and she had borrowed it to see if it could be adapted to her car, but to do so would have cost her as much as a new rack and she wants to be sure of what to get, so we drove over and wrestled the two monsters up on the racks, tied them down securely and took off for the river. We were in my car, she and her kids in her car, and all 5 with masks for the loading and unloading. The river is still very full and muddy from the heavy rains.

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    We had a grand time. It has been years since we were out on kayaks, we loaned ours to Son1 as they live near the Shenandoah River and enjoy going out. The local lakes here have too many power boats to feel safe in a kayak and if you do the river, you need two cars for put in and take out and that is too difficult for us as seniors so this was delightful.

    As we came out of the river while I waited with kayaks and kids and daughter and hubby went to get the car from the put in point, I found out I had been one of 14 people who won the chance to purchase a new design spindle from my favorite craftsman.

    After we arrived home, I treated hubby to his favorite meal of homemade tacos, enchiladas, and guacamole.

    Dinner is enjoyed and cleaned up, we have both showered and laundry started, and the spindle email has been sent. I am now awaiting my invoice to pay for it.

  • Rainy Day Activity

    Bertha has been providing us with rain all day long. Another front has stalled over our area and we are looking at 3 or 4 more days of rain on our saturated soil and full creeks. Another flash flood warning is in place. We are high above the creeks and sloped, but flat enough hopefully to not have mud slide activity, though there has been a lot of that including destroying a property and making a home uninhabitable in our tiny village.

    With my spindle spinning, I am participating in a spin along using only the Jenkins spindles. Since I had filled them all a couple of days ago, I elected to report my results for the month and wait until June 1 to work with them again. I have a new to me spindle due in the mail tomorrow or Friday and received a gorgeous braid of wool a few days ago that I am anxious to begin spinning. To occupy my time, I have been using my wheel to try to make a bigger dent in the pound of gray Shetland that I have been spinning on spindles for two months. And knitting on the shawl that has been on the needles about that long. The first Shetland bobbin is nearly full and I will fill another before plying. The shawl was finished tonight, soaked and is pinned out to dry. I played a bit of yarn chicken with it and finished with only about a yard left, not enough for another row.

    I have enough yarn spun to begin my sweater, but knitting a sweater when the weather is hot is not something I want to begin. With the current pandemic cancelling events daily, knitting more items for my shop seems futile, there won’t be craft shows and holiday markets this year. Most people don’t want to buy knitted or woven garments online without being able to handle them, try them on. I have a knitting request from a family member, but it will need to be superwash wool, which I haven’t purchased yet, and it is another sweater. Maybe I will just work on the Shetland, perhaps even one spindle that I can clear before the first of the month. We are going to be indoors for a couple more days, but I did get a bit of weeding done in the walled garden between rain showers today.

    When the rain ends, I plan to make a compost bin to put in one corner of the garden. If I can make it sufficiently large, I will gather the composting material from where I moved the chicken run and use it as a base to finish composting along with kitchen scraps to have it ready to supplement beds as they get harvested and replanted. I really hope to fill the freezer and the canning shelves with homegrown produce for the winter season.

  • It’s done . . .

    . . . now it is just maintenance, harvest, and putting by for another year. After taking down the inner fence and mulching that area, I realize how much space there is that could have more beds. I already planned on putting a 4 by 8 foot box where the three sisters bed it this year, a 4 by 4 foot box where the mint was and where the asparagus is now. Looking at this photo, I could easily put a 2 or 3 by 8 foot box along the near left beside where the peas are this year.

    Once upon a time, the raspberries were there but threatened to take over the garden. They are contained in 3 half barrels that are rotting away and no longer have bottoms so the raspberries are starting to escape. Maybe a couple of shallow feed troughs with drain holes buried half way would allow the raspberries to be moved back to that area safely and another 4 by 4 foot box added where the barrels are now. I would love to have 4 galvanized panel long raised beds that run the width of the garden with the southern edge the fruits. The blueberry bed is the southern most bed with the raspberry barrels off the end of it.

    The chicken coop was cleaned, some of their fouled bedding put around the comfrey plant. Soon the comfrey will be cut and the leaves put in water to produce excellent fertilizer for the garden. Once cut, they send up a second growth of leaves. The leaves can also be used as mulch around plantings. The large green patch that looks like it has a birdhouse in it is a large patch of comfrey and there is another patch in the breezeway garden. I used pelletized horse bedding in the coop this time, they probably won’t like it for a few days, but it takes a whole bale of pine chips which quickly begin to smell of ammonia. For some reason straw has been hard to come by, but a straw bale will usually last for a couple of cleanings and usually doesn’t smell until it is very dirty.

    Mulch did get put around the flowers planted a couple of days ago, but I only needed one bag. The second one will be spread around the Iris once they are thinned.

    There is still more cardboard from daughter’s donation and she says there are a few more boxes soon. That will all go in the walled garden that will become the herb and dye garden eventually.

    For now we await the next round of rain. It is thick and gloomy outside now, but warm and close. Rain is expected off and on for the next three days. At least I’m not having to water.

  • The Garden Thrives

    Between morning showers and afternoon thunderstorms, some garden work has been done. Daughter provided a windfall of cardboard boxes. The upper edge of the west side and the north side were done one day. Then she appeared with more boxes and today I got about 2/3 of the east side done and dug the Creeping Charlie from the last third. The potatoes have sprouted nicely so I shoveled a new layer of soil over them. Planted and tied up 4 Tomatillos, and weeded the planted beds.

    As soon as I came in to shower and start dinner prep, daughter showed up to return our trailer she had used to move her furniture back into her house now that all the repairs are completed, and she brought me more cardboard. There is enough to finish the job and have a good path around the perimeter of the garden covered and mulched to help keep down weeds. While I was out there today, I also strung the electric wire to make the top of the fence hot. The new battery has been in place charging for about a week. The bush beans have sprouted with some damage where the hens scratched when they last got in the garden. Some of the cucumbers have sprouted and so have some sunflowers, but I still don’t see corn. The peas have blooms, so soon there will be pods and fresh peas.

    Yesterday we got some flowers from the nursery and I planted half barrels and also Zinneas, which my Dad loved, in the bed along the back of the garage. I need to get a couple bags of mulch to spread around them. We have a curbside pickup scheduled at Tractor Supply for dog food and coop bedding so I will add a couple bags of mulch to the order.

    I started digging out the area to be terraced where the mint bed was. Every time I go out with a digging fork or shovel, I dig up so much mint root still in that area. I hope that if I keep at it, I will win that battle.

  • It was short lived

    The sun came out, it only dried off a little before it rained again, most of the afternoon, though not as torrential, mostly light drizzle. This morning was thick fog again and it is beginning to rain now and tomorrow. During the brief respite yesterday, I did get most of the catmint dug from under the garden fence line as well as the thick clump of that dreaded grass with the long stolens underground that send it everywhere. A little more weeding inside the fence was begun and then the rain started so I quit again.

    Before lunch yesterday we made our weekly trip to get our curbside pickup from the local natural foods store and we always use my car when we go because the lift hatch on the Xterra doesn’t stay up unless someone stands there and holds it. A week or so ago when we went out in my car after a rain, there was a very wet floor mat on the front passenger side and some water in a dash cubbyhole. Early on in the 3 day torrent, I put my car in the garage because of that prior leak, not knowing where it is coming in. Yesterday when I backed the car out to load the garbage on our way to the store, I noticed that the passenger seat, armrest, and floor mat were damp, so obviously I didn’t get it inside in time. I think the seal around the sunroof and/or windshield is leaking. The car is 15 years old and has well over 233,000 miles on it. Not worth having the seal replaced, but maybe the entire sunroof can be sealed shut. I will ask our mechanic the next time it goes in for an oil change.

    Daughter had a plumbing flood at her house a couple of months ago and because of the damage, had to pack up lots of books, clothes, and other goods to store until it was repaired. Her house is finally back together and stuff is being unpacked and returned to the home giving me a windfall of empty cardboard to use in the former chicken run around the garden. The entire perimeter is going to finally be covered with cardboard or weed mat and thick spoiled hay to keep the weeds down. With the fence line cleared from the outside, I should be able to get a clean line with the line trimmer around the garden. I really hope that I have created a lower maintenance garden this year. Any extra boxes are going in the walled garden and will be weighted down with more spoiled hay and ultimately compost and soil. I know it is going to get too hot to want to spend a lot of time in the garden soon, so having it lower maintenance will mean I can weed and harvest in the early mornings when it is cooler or at dusk.

    This is from the bridge we have to cross over what is usually a calm creek about 15 feet wide to get off of our mountain, taken yesterday morning. There is a road to the left just before the bridge that runs along the creek, sometimes just a few feet above the waterline when the creek is high. That road was closed to all traffic yesterday. There are a few houses in low areas along the creek, I hope they fared well, one of them the residents just got back in their home from where it had to have major repairs done from having a large tree fall across the kitchen end of the house early last spring. We have never seen this creek this flooded before. There are reports and photos from the 1980’s where this bridge would have had water flowing over it, but we weren’t here then. I often wonder the wisdom of building in low areas near a large creek or river.

    It looks like it may be Monday before I can get back in the garden.

  • The Storm Has Ceased

    After three days of relentless rain and wind from the northeast, it ended overnight. The temperature climbed all night instead of falling as it generally does at night and I awoke to thick as cream gravy fog. The weather and last few days of inactivity made me lazy enough to stay in bed much later than usual. I generally awaken when the sun lightens the sky outside the windows, but today I ignored it, turned over and dozed off and on for another hour.

    The morning routine, everyone has one, after getting myself together is to let the pups out, prepare their breakfast, turn the kettle on to make tea or coffee, and either put granola and yogurt in a bowl for me, or toast a couple slices of homemade bread that get topped in various ways. If there is left over cornbread, it gets pan toasted in butter. As I sit at the table with my coffee or tea and breakfast of the day, I watch the birds. The Hummingbird feeder stays out and they are busy at it early, it is on the front of the house. The back has the Shepherd’s crook hangers and the three feeders that go there get brought in to the garage at night after they were taken down and damaged by something one night, shortly after we spotted the small bear in the hay field. The mixed flock of finches, chickadees, and titmice flit around it all day. Other visitors attend their needs. We have a Red bellied Woodpecker, a Hairy Woodpecker that are frequent visitors, Cardinals, a bully Mockingbird that chases everything else off, and this spring we have had Rose Breasted Grosbeaks, new to our feeders. First I would just see an occasional male, yesterday there were 3 males and 3 females. Lovely birds, I hope they stay. There are a few Eastern Bluebirds that pop by too, I think one has a nest in one of the boxes in the garden.

    Hey hooman, it is your job to feed us, where are the feeders?

    When I went out with the feeders and chicken scratch, the creeks were raging. The news said the New River crested over 20 feet overnight, flooding the low side of the river in Radford and probably other areas along it’s route. A road we take from Blacksburg home when we aren’t in a hurry runs along a low edge of the river and though we have never seen the water up to the road, it has flooded yards, the campground, and other low areas.

    The topography of our farm is the highest elevation is at the entrance to our driveway. The house is about 80 feet lower. The west side of the farm has a creek that flows down to a sinkhole and drops through the ground at the base of a stone cliff. There is a second creek that is just a run off creek that will keep some water in it except in very dry weather, then it is totally dry. It flows the width of our property, across the road for about a quarter the width, then under the road in a culvert and angles along the top of the property until it is about 100 yards from the other creek and they converge in the sink hole. Down the west edge of our property and over on the adjacent farm is an old creek bed that dried when the sinkhole opened. When we have a lot of rain over several days, the drain hole in the bottom of the sink hole can’t cope and the flat bottom of the sink hole becomes a pond. If that pond gets high enough, the water runs down the old creek bed. Though the uncut hay was wet, after chores, I walked over to see the creeks from the top of the cliff.

    The left photo is the “pond” that forms in heavy rain and the right photo is the old creekbed raging this morning.

    Usually the creek runs clear even in heavy rain, but they recently logged up the mountain from us and I suspect that contributed to the mud.

    Walking through the tall wet hay soaked me to above the knees.

    Pants went straight in the dryer when I came back inside. The wood ferns are unfurled, the blackberries are full of blossoms, so there should be lots of berries to pick this summer. I can’t get to most of the berries until after the hay is cut.

    After the sun comes out and dries things off a bit, there is some weeding to do in the garden. The beans are beginning to sprout, more potato sprouts are up, but lots of little weeds between them. The tomatoes and peppers survived the torrents. I still don’t see corn, sunflowers, or cucumbers. The herbs and pumpkins started indoors are sprouted and they were put out on the deck this morning to get some sunshine. While the ground is soft, it will be a good time to dig the catmint under the fence edge and also a clump of thick tall grass that has entangled the bottom of the fence so I can’t weed whack it. Last week when I did the major mowing and weed whacking, I came right in after, tossed all of my clothing in the wash, showered, and I still got poison ivy on my jaw line and the back of one of my fingers. I wasn’t allergic to it when I was younger, but wow, now I am.

    Last night, not wanting to spin or knit on the shawl, I decided the rainbow yarn was going to become a skinny rainbow scarf. It has a plan and a possible recipient. We will see.

  • I might be nuts . . .

    . . . or at least a bit stir crazy. For the stay at home order, I decided to do most of my spinning on spindles, rather than the wheel and to strive to spin enough yarn for a particular sweater pattern for me.

    The rainbow was partly spun on spindles, finished and plied on the wheel and it is not part of the sweater plan. It is 130.5 yards with no plan in sight.

    Whenever the weather is not conducive to walks, hikes, or garden. When I’m not cooking, baking, or cleaning, I am knitting on a shawl, slowly, or spindle spinning. The pile below is the result of a couple of months of being stuck at home. It is about 1200 yards of 2 ply light fingering to fingering weight yarn.

    There is still several ounces of the gray Shetland and the shiny blue BFL/Silk. A small amount of the maroon wools, and 4 ounces of White Shetland. The skeins to the right of the lower row are various small skeins, some will be used, some will be held out.

    We each have our means to keep busy, to settle anxiety, this has been mine. I spin on 3 Turkish spindles, I have a request for another Jenkins Turkish spindle, but so far I haven’t found one.

    As a sidenote, the sun just peeked out after three days of heavy rain, flooded creeks, threatened dams. Maybe it is going to quit before we float down to the valley.

  • Olio May 20, 2020

    Olio: a miscellaneous collection

    Ruminations of a housebound mind: Do you ever hear a voice on the radio or a podcast and “see” that person in your mind’s eye, even if you have never seen that person before? I do that all the time and am usually so far off base when I see that person’s picture. One of the podcasts that I enjoy is “The Way I Heard It” by Mike Rowe, a face everyone has seen and I see his face when I listen to the podcast. Another one I like is “99%invisible.” Now this is where my mind’s eye played serious tricks on me. After listening to the podcasts for a couple of years off and on, I googled Roman Mars, the host and let me tell you, he doesn’t look anything at all like I envisioned. Funny now when I listen, I see the picture I googled, but it just doesn’t fit. If you have never listened to this podcast, do, but start with some of the very early ones that were short with less advertising.

    Today is Day 2 of ugly weather, not drizzle, but downright miserable. It is cool, blowing from the northeast and cold, heavy rain.

    Critter chores left me soaked in minutes even in rain boots and rain jacket. They are getting lots of use, last night about the time I was going to get ready for bed, the time the pups get their last potty run for the day, I smelled skunk smell. I was inside the house, so went down with a flashlight to see if I saw the critter in the front yard. The smell was really overwhelming on the front porch. There was no way those dogs were going out there unrestrained to have a meet and greet, so again, the rain boots and jacket were donned and the pups taken out in the cold blowing rain one at a time on leash to do their nightly business. The odor was gone by this morning, fortunately, I had feared the skunk had taken refuge under our front porch.

    I had been reading a book that clearly is or will be a series. It was a free selection from Amazon Prime and the story was one of those that you were supposed to accept as believable, but no way could the actions in that book have gone unnoticed by law enforcement or be forgiven by law enforcement and the ending let you know that there is more to come. No thanks. A friend posted on Instagram that our public library is doing curbside delivery of books you put on hold. I will soon run out of re-reads here at home, so I may have to browse and hold a couple from the library.

    This is my May, social distance spinning. Everything below the rainbow fiesta is spun on those three spindles. The red, orange, and yellow of the rainbow were also spun on the larger one, but I quickly tired of it and spun the green, blue, and purple on the wheel, then plied it on the wheel. I don’t know what I was thinking when I bought those 4 punis (rolags), nor do I know what I will do with 2 ounces of chain plied fingering weight rainbow. It is only 132 yards, maybe enough for a cowl or skinny scarf. It is not sturdy enough wool for socks, enough for fingerless mitts if I want to cut each color apart, then divide in half so they are more or less matching stripes. It is drying now, will be skeined and set aside until it becomes a plan.

    Yesterday was fresh bread day. Two loaves started first thing yesterday morning and baked by noon of half whole wheat yeast bread for sandwiches. I love my cast iron bread pan that hubby gave me for Christmas and since I always make bread two loaves at a time, I ordered a second one which should be here before next week’s bake.

    Before the pandemic, bread baking here had all but disappeared except for pizza dough and occasional biscuits. It was a staple in our house when the kids were growing. It is a pleasant activity to have returned to now that we are eating all meals in, and there is nothing better than the smell of fresh bread baking.

    Stay safe out there as the world begins to reopen. We will continue to stay at home with a few curbside delivery outings as required, wearing our masks for your protection (and ours if you are wearing yours.)

  • It didn’t rain after all

    Most of the day has been sunny, occasional cloud cover and a light mist once or twice, but no rain yet. The next 4 days look like there will really be rain, so after delivering the masks and some asparagus to daughter’s house, I tackled the chicken problem.

    First part of the job was to remove the inside fence that they were getting under when they were in the garden run. It was rolled and tossed over the fence on the east of the garden, the stakes pulled and sorted. I have two sizes of the garden stakes, one is right at 4 feet when pounded in the depth you are supposed to pound them, the rest are about a foot shorter. The longer ones and some sturdier T posts that are 4 feet when pounded in were set 3 feet to the east of the sturdy garden fence. The wire that had been removed was fastened to those posts. The chickens lost about 4 square feet of pen, I gained 4 square feet of compost, and that fence was attached to the other piece to change the configuration of their pen to a smaller square with a long 3 foot wide run off of it. The second piece of wire that I had removed was then used to provide a cover to the new run so the hawk can’t catch a chicken in that area. It was a fair amount of work and I didn’t finish cleaning up because I was worn out and it was time to prep dinner. There are about 15 T posts laying in the grass that need to be gathered and stored and several sizable rocks that were inside the pen blocking holes that need to be returned to one of the many rock piles.

    It won’t take them long to make it a barren wasteland, but I have been putting large sheets of the spoiled hay bale in there and using more of it in the garden so that when the hay men come, they can give me a fresh bale for the upcoming year. I usually get one that either didn’t get properly tied or one that wasn’t full sized for me to use in their run and in the garden as mulch.

    About a dozen years ago, I planted this Dogwood on the hill by the driveway. It had to be protected year after year from the deer nipping off the new growth. All of the native Dogwoods have bloomed out, but this one is just beginning.

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    Our kitchen window and French doors from the dining room face south to the depth of our property. When I went down to prep dinner, I spotted a bear in the lower hay field. This is zoomed as much as the camera would zoom, then the photo cropped so that you can actually see the bear. This one is much larger than the little one we saw a few weeks ago, probably 125 to 150 pounds. It was a couple football fields away and seemed totally unaware of me on the deck taking it’s picture. It finally moved closer to the house, but stayed on the other side of the lower hay field fence, the disappeared into the woods to the west. Some years we don’t see any, this year we have had three sightings, two on our property and one near the bottom of the road near the creek.

    Ah, the rain has begun, the veggie starts and seeds will get watered, I will take a few days off to read, spin, and knit. After the storms end around weeks end, there is weeding to be done between the garden proper and the outer fence. The chickens did a pretty good job when they were allowed in there, but they don’t like Creeping Charlie and a plant I haven’t identified that has a similar shaped leaf but is larger, spreading out 360 degrees from a substantial stem. They will eat the catmint leaves, but where it grows right under the fence, it needs to be dug out. I’m sure after 4 days of rain, there will be more found mint to dig out as well. It is less each time I work that area, but man that stuff is tenacious. After a few days of rain, the soil will be softer and easier to rid the fence line of grass and the outer path of weeds. I need more cardboard to put down so I can pile spoiled hay on it, that helps too.