Cabin Crafted

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  • True Spring is Here

    We are 3 days from our last average frost date. Now I know what average means and to get that date, there has had to be frosts later than May 5, but looking ahead 10 days in the forecast, it looks as though the arrival of the Ruby Throated Hummingbirds at the feeder and our last frost occurred on April 20. I will wait another week from tomorrow to plant the tomato and pepper starts in the garden, but I did put a few of the puny ones that I tried to start in pots on the south deck. Their primary leaves were red rather than green and they came from a packet of mixed hot peppers, so I am curious about what they might be. Because it is a truly gorgeous day, I took advantage of the alone time this morning to remove the barrier fence from in front of the Daylily bed as they are large enough now to discourage chicken scratching, and moved it around the back of the garage to protect the Calendula and Echinacea seedings there as well as taking a hoe and knocking down all of the Lambs quarters that have sprouted in those beds.

    I need a part for the line trimmer, line and fuel so I can edge those beds. The Bearded Iris look like they need to be thinned this fall, so I will have to get busy on my garden inside the stone wall to have a place to put some of them. I need to trim the grass down in there again with the line trimmer, then put down a weed barrier and fill it with soil.

    First thing after chores, I realized I hadn’t seen Mama Wren flitting in and out of her nest in a day or two, so I took a peek and the 5 tiny birds have fledged.

    Bird’s nests fascinate me that such a tiny creature can locate, move, and construct a birthing house. After having had several chicken hatches here and seeing that within half a day they are up, moving around and looking for food, and comparing them to other birds whose eggs hatch into large mouthed, nearly naked creatures demanding food, caused me to look up incubation and fledging times. A song bird sits on her eggs about half as long as a chicken, then the newly hatched birds spend the next two weeks demanding food and growing into their head size and growing feathers before they fledge. Poultry type birds sit on their eggs longer and their young peck out of the eggs more fully developed. And I already have a broody mama-wanna-be Oliver Egger hen. Though I love their green eggs, they are such a broody variety that I will not get Auracana, Americana, or Oliver egger chicks in the future. I spend my spring and summer trying to discourage the natural behavior. Maybe I should just get some fertile eggs and let her sit. I think I want to return to a tried and true breed and only have one breed when these hens are replaced, perhaps in the fall. If I could get fertile pure Buff Orpington eggs, I would put them under Broody Mama. I need to mark her so I can see if she is the only one or if all of the Olive Eggers take turns.

    Now that the Wren is gone, the day stellar, more gardening will be done and the overgrown Barberry bush pruned back.

  • The Circle of Life

    Last summer, two does stayed on or near our farm and each had twins. One doe had a thicket behind our barn and we would often see her leading her spotted fawns across the driveway and into the thicket. Sometimes, they would cross the road and go up on the hill behind our mailbox. The other doe was hiding out lower on the property with her two, but occasionally as the fawns got bigger, we would see the two does together with all 4 fawns tagging along.

    The other evening, I was socially distance visiting with our neighbor who grew up here in the mountains, hunted, and loves to watch the wildlife. He has taught me so much about behaviors both of the animals and those that hunt them. I asked him when the does would run last year’s fawns off and he said they usually birth their young in May and if they have last year’s fawns still with them, they will separate from them just prior to having the new fawns.

    As we were sitting down to dinner, I spotted 4 young deer coming up the field from the hay field, across the upper field and around one of the many huge rock piles. One by one they came through the tall grass right up into the area I just mowed yesterday and walked along the edge toward the creek. It appears that the 2 pair of twins have joined up for now as they finish learning the ropes into adulthood.

    I waited to get up and take the photo until I was sure they wouldn’t spot my movement in the house.

    In early spring, the flocks of turkey are large. We have seen up to 22 or 23 at a time. The toms strutting around posturing, other toms either challenging or moving away as the dominant one tried to get a hen.

    The hens have all gone to nest now and we don’t see large flocks. One hen comes out of the edge of the woods, closer than these 4 were early spring when I took this shot, she feeds in the now tall grass then disappears back in the same direction. She must have a nest nearby. A pair of toms wander around in that back field feeding and if you are outside, you can hear them gobbling down there or over in the woods. The neighbor says a hunter will listen for them and move quietly toward them. This is “Gobbler” season, when they can hunt for the males, easily distinguished by the beard you can see on the one far right. Soon, we will see the hens herding a brood of poults along, cute as chicks when they are small and gangly and scruffy as they become adolescents.

    As soon as it is warm enough to sleep with the windows open, we will hear the coyotes as they hunt for food at night. There will be lots of noise some evenings and we have been told they will often run male pups from last year off in the spring, though most coyote packs are matriarchal.

    With spring, flower shoots sprout, the perennials filling out and greening, then buds form and flowers bloom. This morning, our first Bearded Iris bloomed, the old fashioned blue ones.

    We no longer have a rooster, so we won’t have any chicks this year, but we are seeing nests of songbirds and some fledglings being fed on the porch rails, fence posts, or down in the yard.

    It won’t be long before we see fawns and turkey chicks.

  • Personal Reboot

    When I was younger, I never had sleep issues. I have always been an early to bed, early to rise person, but as I am aging, the sleep schedule seems to be off kilter. I still want to be in bed by around 10 p.m., but often awaken around 1 a.m. and can’t get back to sleep for a few hours. Then when the sun comes up, I don’t feel rested and often stay in bed dozing and waking for another hour or so.

    Determined to examine my habits and see if I can get back into a healthier routine, I have signed off of Facebook. I realized that too many of the posts were virus or politics related and that caused me stress, because of the total saturation on TV and social media. I found that where I used to just skip through it, I was making snarky comments or wanting too and refraining from doing so which then caused me more stress. I have avoided reading news feeds. I can’t totally avoid the news because I am not alone in the house and my husband is a television watcher and news feed reader and so I hear it on the tube or we have conversations about an article he saw or read.

    Through out my adult life, I have quit caffeine and started caffeine again in the form of coffee or tea. That is an area I can control and have returned to a policy of not drinking a caffeinated beverage after lunch. With the stay at home orders, my diet has cleaned up considerably as all meals are at home and I am controlling the ingredients, the seasoning, the fat. I have never had a problem with alcohol or tobacco, so that hasn’t changed.

    We were already in a habit of walking nearly every day, but generally on a mostly flat paved trail. Being at home, the walks are on our rural road or the fields and as we live in the mountains, I can challenge myself by going off road and climbing steep terrain or stay on the road, which still has some significant elevation change over it’s mile. I can now leave home and regardless of the route, keep walking without having to stop to catch my breath and let the blood pressure pounding in my ears settle. Though I enjoy walking on the flats with hubby, I can challenge myself more alone.

    With spring here, there is garden work, a lawn to be mowed and edged, and those are added to the daily cooking, cleaning, laundry chores, so I stay busy which keeps me from nodding off in my chair. I do take breaks and spend the evenings in my chair with my spindles and knitting to keep my hands busy and allow my mind to focus on creativity instead of news and other stressors.

    Maybe it will help. Maybe not. Time will tell.

  • Oh! The frustration.

    My favorite spindles are handcrafted in Oregon. Over the years, Ed has created several different sizes of spindles from tiny to large, all Turkish style. I own three of his spindles, a very small one that is just about 2.5″ (63 mm) in diameter with a 3.5″ shaft. It is my favorite of the three. It fits in a 3 ounce loose tea tin assembled with fiber, and I can only spin about 10 grams of fiber on it, making 38-42 yards of laceweight 2 ply.

    Kuchula

    The other two are a discontinued one with a 4″ diameter arm span and a 6+” shaft. It is a workhorse of a spindle and I can spin slightly heavier weight yarn on it, but usually keep it fingering or light fingering weight 2 ply. The third a current style similar in size but slightly more delicate in style.

    Middle is discontinued Lark. Back is current Wren.

    He makes a tiny little spindle that is only 2″ diameter with a 2.5″ shaft but only makes a few and they are extremely difficult to get. Last week, they posted that some would be for sale this week. Yesterday, they announced it would be at 1:30 pm PDT today. I anxiously awaited the time, prepped dinner ahead so I would be on my computer when they posted. Alas, because there were 180+ other people also waiting, their website couldn’t post them all at once. I sat here trying over and over to get one, not caring what kind of wood. Finally one popped up just as I refreshed and I clicked on it, the website took me to the check out page, but the spindle wasn’t there. Back on the main site, I could see that I had clicked in time as there is a 10 or 12 minute hold to allow you to complete your transaction before it is reopened for sale. I sat and watched the time click down, knowing that I had reserved it, but I couldn’t get to it because it wouldn’t show up in my cart and no one waited for the time to expire before completing their purchase. Just as the time ran out, someone else grabbed it before I could. I was disappointed. I shouldn’t allow myself to get worked up over something such as that, but I lost out. I didn’t get the tiny little spindle that I have coveted. With the virus lock downs, the vendor can’t do shows, and the vendor rarely does ones on this coast anyway, so purchasing one in person won’t happen either. I’m sure that the vendor was frustrated with the process too, but in the end, they sold all 14 spindles.

    I will have to be happy that I have what I have and let it go, but I am disappointed.

  • Walks

    Each day I try to get in a walk. We used to go to town nearly every day for lunch and take a walk on one of several paved trails, but with the Stay at Home order, the walks are limited to home areas as even the marked trails in the National Forest are closed. When the weather is too wet, because our road is not paved, I will concede to walk on the treadmill, though my tolerance of it is much lower than being outdoors. Yesterday was miserable, cool, windy, and rainy so to the treadmill I went. I am trying to keep up my stamina which doesn’t work on flat walks very well, so I spent 35 minutes walking at 3 or more miles per hour at an incline of 6 to 8%, then a few slow minutes flat to cool down. It was a good workout, but boring. We have a TV down there and I put it on a music station, but I can’t hear it over the machine without turning it up so loud it drowns out the upstairs TV that hubby is watching.

    Today is a cool but sunny day so I took off up the road, then off road for some exercise. Our road has a cattle grate set in it not far beyond our house then I am in the middle of fields with cows. There was a calling back and forth between the various groups today. When I headed out, they were all off in the distance. When I go off road, I challenge myself.

    This steep moss covered hills crests to a high spot where I can look down on the hollow and our house. Back down this hill across the pasture I see groups of cattle munching on hay.

    This young one was more interested in me than the hay. Back on the road home, there were two cows with their calves that I had to walk quietly by. One calf was nursing and not at all concerned about me, the other’s mom was unconcerned, but the little one was less sure.

    Before I left to wander the hills, I turned the hens loose for free range time. Only 7 came out, so I peaked into the coop and found the other two sharing one nesting box (there are 6 boxes), and instead of side by side facing out, they were 69’d.

    One head, one fuzzy butt.

    It is nice to be able to get outside and enjoy the beauty of this area.

  • Cool, rainy days

    Looking ahead at the next 10 days of weather, it looks like frost may be behind us. Today is much cooler than yesterday, but tonight the temperature doesn’t fall but a couple of degrees. Cool, rainy days are bread days. There is a loaf and a half of homemade bread in the freezer, but no more rolls for sandwiches that call for a roll rather than a slice. I pulled out the mixer and the dough bowl and made a batch of the sandwich roll recipe, dividing it into 8 rolls instead of 6 at the recommendation of a friend that made them after I did a couple weeks ago. They are a much better size. I also used half whole wheat flour with the all purpose to make them heartier an healthier.

    And pizza dough rising for dinner.

    My walk in the drizzle up to check for mail revealed the beautiful Dogwood at the top of the drive in full bloom, though they aren’t really, as it is just the colored modified leaves showing now, the real bloom in the center hasn’t opened yet.

    On my way back down to the house, I saw the Momma Wren fly from her Barberry Bush nest so I took a peek.

    Though the one in the garden failed, this wren has 5 hungry babies hidden away. I will leave them alone as I can see the nest from the utility room and will see as they get ready to fledge.

    Yesterday, we went to the local nursery and though I tried to start my own pepper and tomatoes, they look puny and leggy, so I purchased my pepper and tomato starts for the garden. They are under the grow light with hardening off time when the wind and rain permit. I have tried numerous times to start my own starts and never had good results. The 14 starts are healthy and strong and cost less than the 4 packages of seed. I guess I should just plan on buying them each year. I wore a mask and was pleased that all the employees and other customers had on masks. They didn’t even handle my debit card and I had taken my own container to bring them home. Another couple of weeks and they will go in the garden. In the meantime, I need to finish the weeding and prep.

  • Time to uncoop

    It has been 6 weeks since our self isolation began, since we have been able to sit with and hug our kids and grands. This week, I was supposed to demonstrate at the museum for classes from one of the local schools. In a week, we were supposed to go to 2 plays at the American Shakespeare Center with Son 1 and family and bring eldest grand back for a weekend basketball camp. In two weeks we were supposed to take 3 of the grands to Great Wolf Lodge for two nights, their Christmas gift from us. None of that will happen. Nor did the trip to see Son 2 and his family, including our youngest grandson who we haven’t been able to meet, but we did get an adorable photo of him with two of his sisters.

    Very little additional work has been done on the garden since digging up the mint. I hoped that the Carolina Wren would return to her two remaining eggs, but she has not, so when we have a day that isn’t raining or under wind advisories, I will finish weeding the box she was in, work more on the mint that is popping up everywhere there was a piece of root left, and dig out the area for the corn and climbing beans. We are still about 3 weeks from last frost date and we had a frost Sunday morning that nearly did the begonias in because I didn’t cover them. It also damaged all the asparagus tips that were up and made them inedible. There are more sprouting, so a few days from now, they can be harvested if it doesn’t freeze again. It is supposed to be cold tonight, but not cold enough for frost and we have a wind advisory again. I tucked the begonias up against the house and covered them with a beach towel.

    The dogwoods on the mountain are blooming and seeing them and the elderberry flowers on my walks is a pleasure.

    The hummingbirds are here and frequenting the feeder in the front. A red bellied woodpecker has started feeding on the suet cake hung with the feeders in the back. Compared to the tiny songbirds, it looks huge, though I know they are only a medium sized woodpecker. I’m still not hearing the owls at night which is a spring and summer pleasure.

    When I’m not cooking or baking, I am spinning on the spindles. Working to get enough spindle spun yarn to knit a sweater for me. It slows my production by not using the wheel. The tiny Kuchulu turkish spindle by Ed Jenkins is my favorite to play with, but I can only get about 42 yards of yarn per cop on it.

    Kuchulu in front is about 2″ diameter, the middle one is a Lark, the back one a Wren and they are both about 4″ diameter.
    My isolation mini skein collection.
    The shawl is coming along when I knit. I am on the second skein and not until I uploaded this did I realize how neutral the colors were.

    I worry about the small local businesses that have had to be closed and whether they will ever be able to reopen, but also worry that reopening while the virus is still spreading will just cause a surge of cases and more deaths. It is a frightening time.

  • Is it Sunday, the day of rest?

    Each morning, I have to look at my phone to see what day of the week it is. They all run together now. It was somewhat of a problem after I retired, but there were a few regular things we did that helped keep them straight.

    We woke to a spring frost. It was pretty, but I forgot to cover the begonias last night and they don’t look happy today.

    It started warming up quickly and I took string out to make trellis for the peas before they start sprawling on the ground.

    After lunch, I tackled a project that has been sitting around for months. When I first started Rev War reenactment, I purchased a skirt/petticoat and some of the other components of the outfit online, mostly from Etsy. The petticoat was a navy and oatmeal checkered patterns and after aligning myself with the local militia group, learned that the pattern was not period appropriate and cotton wasn’t widely used, so I made myself a navy linen one. The checkered one hung over the back of my sewing chair with the plan of using the yards and yards of fabric to make some valences for some of the windows where we had removed the stained and nasty Roman shades. I finally took the time to cut the fabric and sew the seams. I had two pressure rods that fit the windows in question and a job done. I should have lined them, but had no appropriate lining fabric. When it is safe to be out and about again, I will buy some unbleached muslin and add a lining layer.

    There is enough left to make a valence for the double living room window as well, but I want to put drapes up first, so the old Roman Shades will hang until they can be purchased and a double rod bought.

    Since I had the sewing machine out and still have plenty of the quilting cotton I made masks from, I tackled the fitted kind with a filter pocket. The pleated kind I made first, with elastic loops, pulls my hearing aid out and fogs my glasses. I tried making one of the ribbon with buttons on both ends to hold it on, but it still caused the same issue. The one I made today is tied on with a strip that runs though casings on both edges. I used one long piece of grosgrain ribbon stitched lengthwise in half for the ties.

    Using a folded pipe cleaner in the nose bridge pocket, it can be molded enough to not cause much fogging and if I put my long hair up in a high twist, the tie is held high enough to not pull out my hearing aid. Win win. There is still a lot of that fabric, so I think a second one will be made so there is one to wear when one is in the wash. I learned from my mistakes on this one, so a second one should be a breeze.

  • Return to Simpler Times

    I have blogged in the past about being a bit hippy in the sense that I have always had a garden, been a recycler before it was popular or required, used up/reused before throwing away. Long before I met my husband, I cooked from scratch, baked my own bread, and was vegetarian by choice, though that aspect is more limited as he is a definite omnivore and cooking two different meals is too onerous. We do have meatless meals occasionally, I do make sides such as macaroni and cheese or au gratin potatoes that I can eat as my meal and he as a side. During my earlier days of omitting meat from my diet, I read several books, bought a couple. Only one of them has stayed in my library, a nutrition guideline and recipe book full of vital information and anecdotes of the lifestyle changes of the authors. The book is “Laurel’s Kitchen.”

    My copy is 2 years older than our marriage, 4 years older than my eldest child, well worn, well loved, and cherished. Though I rarely refer to a recipe anymore in my cooking, it is still pulled off the shelf to check my intuition when returning to cooking something I have let lapse over time.

    One of those processes that lapsed after the kids were grown and less bread consumed, was bread baking. By that time, artisan loaves and whole grain breads could be purchased in the grocer or at the Farmers’ Markets. With us at home and away from others, bread baking has returned to my routine. The internet has a wealth of recipes and instructions on “how to” but I love my old book. Yesterday, I blogged that with our Natural Foods Store doing email orders and no touch curbside delivery, I bought the fixings for a meatless Mediterranean dinner, but needed to make Pita. When I first moved into this home with hubby still working across the state, Son 1 and his family were living here with me and still doing interior work on the house. They were very amenable to meatless meals and both very good cooks, so we would buy Dolmas and olives, they would make hummus and tabbouleh, and I would make Pita bread and we would feast. I haven’t made Pita in at least a dozen years, but knew that when I made them then, the recipe did not come from the internet, but from my beloved book. This morning, I pulled it back off the shelf to refresh my memory. The recipe in the book makes 24 Pitas, or if half of the dough is formed into a loaf, a dozen Pitas and a loaf of bread. I may go for half a dozen Pitas, a loaf of bread and half a dozen sandwich rolls.

    When I was making bread for our growing family, hubby bought me a giant pottery bowl.

    I would mix up 3 or 4 loaves of bread, beating the dough with a large wooden spoon and breaking a few of them over the years as the dough got stiff. Kneading in more flour in the bowl by hand until the dough was not sticky and turning it on a floured board or counter to finish kneading it. At a craft fair at some point, hubby bought me a wooden dough bowl.

    The final kneading and rising could be done in the bowl. It was all done by hand, but alas, a wrist break, wrist surgery, and arthritis make if nearly impossible to do the entire process by hand anymore. I can do the artisan type breads, but that dough doesn’t make good rolls or Pita so we bought me a Kitchen Aid stand mixer.

    It is not a commercial grade one and it struggles toward the end of kneading dough, so it gets the bread started and then I turn it into the wooden dough bowl to do the final kneading and proofing. The dough is proofing covered in that precious wooden dough bowl as I write. Later it will be divided and prepared for baking the bread for dinner and meals later in the week. A slow down in time, a return to a simpler life. There is some good come from this staying at home.

  • Today’s Walk

    Today was a glorious spring day. Tomorrow is wet and cooler again, then we warm up to spring for a while. Taking advantage of the beautiful weather, I transplanted the Calendula seedlings, some in the bed with the volunteers, some in a big pot on the deck. Also the Echinachea was given a partial bed and some in the same big pot. A few sprinkles of marigold seed were added to the pot and one of the flower beds. I want flowers, lots of flowers to brighten our days. It is still way too early to move the tomatoes, peppers, and tomatillos out to the garden, but the spinach starts were added to one of the half barrels that have lettuce, radishes, and Chinese cabbages in them. There are a few other spinach plants that were direct seeded in one of the beds with peas, but most of them became victims of the hens the first time they got in the garden.

    Since dinner out isn’t an option anymore and since Eat’s Natural Food Store, one of my favorite local businesses, is providing email ordering and curbside pick up, I resupplied on Yogurt, nuts, herbs, and a selection of Mediterranean goodies like olives, hummus, Dolmas, and Feta. Tomorrow I will make Pita bread and we will have Greek salads and hummus with Pita for dinner. Since I don’t have to cook any of it except the Pita, it is almost like dinner out.

    This evening, before the rain and wind resume, I wandered our hills again. Each adventure out has something new to see. I could hear one of the neighbor’s cows bawling well away from the road and spotted 3 of the spring calves trotting in her direction. I didn’t get a photo of them today. The recent wind had brought down a dead limb that the woodpeckers had really worked over.

    When we had our perk test done for our septic during pre-construction, the soil scientist told us that we had really good soil because we were on the leading edge of an alluvial field from the last ice age. When you walk our road, you can see evidence of it in the huge scattered, eroded rocks.

    On our way home from the grocery pick up, we drove across the top of our field to see how the grass for hay is coming along. It is so emerald green now. It will sprout seed heads which will brown off before it is mowed and it will either green up again if we have rain or remain brown for the rest of the summer. This is looking west back toward the orchard, coop, and house.

    One of the bluebirds was visiting the feeders this evening.

    I was hopeful that they got one of the nesting boxes by the garden, but it appears that both are occupied by tree swallows again. On the hillside in the distance, you can see the trees beginning to leaf out, and the very green shrub in the rock pile directly behind the bluebird is Autumn Olive. It is an invasive shrub that was deliberately introduced to the state as an ornamental shrub for landscaping. You can’t kill it my cutting it down, it has to be pulled up by the roots. On my way out to walk, I started the tractor for the first time this spring. If I can get a pin for the hitch, I will use a long piece of chain that we have to wrap around some of them and pull them up this spring. They can be burned after they dry and the hay has been mowed.

    Whenever we go out away from home, not often recently, but I always carry with me a small knitting project or a drop spindle. My favorite one to take is one of my newer ones, the diminutive 2″ spindle in my last post. Because it is so small and fragile, I worry about breaking it, and today, I emptied a small 3″ diameter by 3″ tall round tin that had tea in it. It is the perfect size to fit the spindle and a couple ounces of fiber and is protected in my bag in the car.

    My spring walks are improving my stamina. The road is not flat and the hills are not gentle. When I started earlier this spring, I would have to stop and catch my breath a couple times. I still slow down on the steepest part on the way back home, but I no longer stop.

    Until we visit again. Goodnight from the mountains.