Cabin Crafted

Blog

  • Olio – April 16, 2020

    After the rain and wind of several days ago, we returned to late winter/early spring like weather, freezing or near freezing at night, maybe up to 50f daytimes but the wind has howled constantly. Plants have been brought in or covered and taken out or uncovered. The wind has blown so hard the seedlings have been kept indoors. We are still about 3 weeks maybe a tad more from the average last frost.

    The chickens have gone back to penned during the day, free range in the late afternoons until they go to coop on their own. Last night when I went out to shut them in, they were all gathered around and on the coop because the gate had blown shut and they couldn’t get in. As soon as I opened it, they all hurriedly trotted right up the ramp to bed. They lost their run around the garden when I found several in the garden three times. That would be okay if they would just scratch the paths, but they scratch the beds too and tender shoots don’t tolerate that well. When the wind calms and the daytime warms some, I will again try to figure out how they are getting in and hopefully give them their run back. Mama Carolina Wren is still tucked down on the ground in the corner of the box on her nest. She has 4 eggs. She has been hailed on, and snowed on twice, gully washing rain for 10 hours. What a good little Mama. I hope she successfully raises those littles. She doesn’t like me in the garden and since it has been chilly, I have stayed out so she won’t leave the nest. The other Wren in the Barberry bush is more protected. The bush is tucked back in the set back where the utility room connects the house and garage, so not as windy, though still unshielded from the rain, hail, and snow. She had 3 eggs the day I checked and I haven’t disturbed her to look again.

    The riding mower was finally returned from the shop yesterday and in spite of the cold wind, everything that can be mowed with it was mowed. The grass was so tall and thick that it nearly choked it out even set on the tallest setting. It will have to be mowed again soon to bring it down to normal mowing height and to break up the drying clots of heavy grass that are about the yard.

    This morning we had 3 “visitors.” First was the turkey hunter and our contact with him only a text message that he said it was too cold and he quit today. The second, a friend came by and picked up a dozen eggs from the front porch with a shouted hello across the front yard. The third, our daughter, who kindly brought us some supplies from the grocer, including TP which we didn’t need yet, but since they had it, she bought a package for us. She also picked up our utility trailer for use this weekend putting some stuff in a storage unit for a bit until some house repairs are finished. We actually got to talk with her, wearing masks and keeping at least 6 feet social distancing. Groceries were wiped down and put away and we are set again for a while. We certainly appreciate her doing that for us. The social isolation is difficult when you don’t know when it will end. Since pleasure rides aren’t essential travel, we are pretty much stuck at home, though when we take our garbage and recycling down to the drop off center, we take the “long” way home, an additional mile or two of scenic road through rural farmland.

    The lilacs are blooming, but this is the least scented one I have ever been around. The bearded iris are beginning to bud, soon there will be bearded iris and then Dutch iris blooms for the table. The wild dogwoods are starting to bloom, but the one planted in the yard hasn’t. The wild plum is full of blooms, maybe this will be a year for fruit. It has produced only once in the 14 years we have been here.

    Many friends are posting morel mushroom pictures harvested so I went wandering the woods yesterday where the oak leaves fall and the May apples bloom looking, but I didn’t find a single one.

    The slowing of life with social isolation has me spinning more on the spindles. I ended up doing a trade of one with a gal in N. Dakota and ended up with a beautiful new one to play with. It is made of Marblewood.

    This tiny one has been fun to spin and it’s diminutive 2″ size still spun 38 yards of fine yarn.

    When I was in college, grad school and a new teacher, I wrote entirely with a fountain pen. The staying at home and cleaning up the house, I found both of my fountain pens and renewed my interest in using them instead of non refillable rollerballs.

    Life is slow and deliberate right now. It is nice, but at times emotional not being able to visit with our families.

  • The Rain Fell, The Wind Blew

    Ten hours of heavy rain. Wind, but not as bad as we have seen.

    Woods flowers and wild plums.

    This “lake” in our sink hole is usually dry except for the two creeks running down the edges.

    This run off creek is usually a trickle easy to cross if it is flowing at all. The bigger creek is on the other side of the hill and flows into the same sink hole. Today, it ran so hard, it went down the old dry creek bed. The big creek at the bottom of the mountain overflowed it’s banks. We were far luckier than many in the country. I hope you all stayed safe in the storm.

  • I Walk These Hills

    I Walk These Hills

    Two of my favorite books, Follow the River by James Alexander Thom and She Walks These Hills by Sharyn McCrumb are based at least loosely on the capture and escape of Mary Draper Ingles. Her capture was only a short few miles from here and after her escape and following the New River back, she was found even closer to here.

    Each time I go off into the fields and woods of these mountains, I think of those two books. Today we are awaiting the arrival of more threatening weather, so my walk was right after lunch.

    Some firsts, purple violets, buttercups (did you put them under a friend’s chin and tell them whether they liked butter), Virginia Bluebells at the mouth of the cave, Elderberry, wild daisies.

    The wind picked up while I was walking and the sky is darkening, though the worst of the weather isn’t due until overnight. Not wanting to deal with a storm warning in the middle of the night and since we can’t go anywhere during the stay at home order, I went ahead and put the cars back in the garage.

    It was actually much easier after the clean up of last week. I was able to get out without trouble and walk around them.

  • The Big Chill and Foiled again

    I know that the last frost date for our area is around Mother’s Day. I know this fact, but in the 15 years I have been here, it has never been that late. Last week’s warmth almost fooled me, but instead I just put out a couple of over wintered plants. The past two nights have played around freezing, those plants were tucked tight up against the house and covered with a beach towel at night.

    Instead of being tempted by the warmth to plant seeds, I nurtured the seedlings indoors or out in filtered sun for part of the day and worked on the fencing. I thought I had it so the chickens could keep the weeds around the garden scratched down and help reduce the bug load. A few nights ago when I went out to lock them up for the evening, most of them were in the garden, scratching around my pea shoots and spinach. I chased them out through the gate, in the chicken pen gate and worked the next morning at figuring out how they got in. There was a spot where the fencing was bent about 3 inches off the ground and they must have gone under. An electric fence step in post was used to force the bend down and a large rock added to block the hole. All was good, I thought. They continued to scratch down the weeds, clearing the path around the garden. Last night in the cold and very gusty wind, I went out and one was on the egg door, one in the middle of the peas again. The one on the egg door was an Olive Egger and they will let me pick them up, so it was put in the coop. The other was a Welsummer and they won’t let me close to them, so again, she was chased out the gate and right in to the run gate and into the coop. I went out this morning and I can not see where she got through the fence or the other one out. This morning, they are blocked from the new run. If the day warms up enough, I will go investigate more.

    Today and tomorrow are warmer with milder nights, but we have severe weather warnings for tomorrow night into Monday morning, then another chill down. For now, I will shift and cover plants, nurture the seedlings, and continue to prepare the last bit of the garden for seeding and transplanting when true spring comes.

    LATER:

    I did go back out and found another place the hens had dug under the fence so I filled it and blocked it with a board and big rock. After dinner when I took the garbage out, they had all gotten around the barricade and into the run and two of them were in the garden again. I guess my idea is just not a good one. They may be confined to their pen again until dinner time after the dogs have been out, then they get yard time til dark.

    I harvested my first asparagus spears this afternoon and enjoyed all 4 of them. There are many coming up and I know that soon I will have more than I can eat and will begin giving them away. I do enjoy fresh from the garden asparagus. Like peas, potatoes, and corn, even a few hours from harvest changes their taste from natural sweet to starchy.

    Our Easter tradition has been for daughter to prepare ham, potatoes, asparagus (if they are up by then) or peas, and deviled eggs and I prepare pineapple upside down cake and we eat together. Not this year, sadly. I will prepare a half of pork tenderloin, au gratin potatoes, peas, deviled eggs, and rolls for just the two of us. I won’t bother with dessert. Maybe next year, family traditions will have returned. Or will we be living a new normal?

  • Wild and Woolly Afternoon

    Yesterday morning it rained lightly alternating with periods of sunshine. By early afternoon, you could see the storm coming. The photo below was taken right after our phones alarmed simultaneously of severe thunderstorm warning with ping pong ball sized hail.

    Our house has a large 2 plus car garage, but like most garages, it has too much other stuff in it and normally only houses the motorcycle. There are two large built in work benches, a built in floor to ceiling shelving unit, many sets of scaffolding with it’s braces and walk boards, scrap wood, various 5 gallon buckets (well more than a dozen), my garden cart with tools, the gas mower and weed wacker. One wall has pegs with hanging tools another wall has two high shelves of camping and outdoor gear. Of course, all the wild bird food, chicken food, and a half bale of pine shavings for their coop. There are 3 ladders, and the two bicycles were also in there. When the alert came, we scrambled to try to get the two cars in there too. Items were shoved and shifted willy nilly, the bicycles moved to a large unused coop and my car was put in on the tighter size as it is the smaller of the two. Hubby with much back and forth moved the motorcycle to the middle and stayed on it while I drove his larger car in.

    To get out of my car, I had to climb over to the passenger side to get out and very carefully slid out the driver’s side of his car. There was no room to move around in there at all. We had just accomplished this, closed the doors and come back in when the phones alarmed a tornado warning in our area. We have a basement, but our dogs know it is off limits, so they had to be lead around the house and in the back door one at a time. There is a TV down there so we turned it on to monitor the storm and waited out the all clear.

    Because I had spent a good portion of the day making two batches of sandwich rolls, I had decided to make spicy sloppy joe for dinner and started it and some hash browns. The sloppy joe was barely done and I was right at the end of the frying for the potatoes when the power went out. It was early for dinner, but eat we did and as the wind howled, the rain started, then the hail. Fortunately it was pea sized, not ping pong ball sized and doesn’t seem to have done any damage.

    This is not typical weather for us, tornado warnings are very rare and I don’t remember large hail ever since we have lived here.

    The power stayed out for about 3 hours and the clouds thinned, the wind continued. In the early morning hours this morning, it again rained, thundered, and flashed and the wind was scary sounding. I kept waiting for the phone to alarm again, but it didn’t, I just couldn’t sleep well with the storms. Today is mostly clear, still very windy and cooler, but comfortable with a near freezing night tonight and tomorrow night.

    After lunch, I moved the cars carefully back out into the driveway and committed to clean up and reorganize the garage in case we are faced again with having to quickly put the cars in. The scaffolding braces were tightened up, my craft show shelter finally put back in its bag, scrap wood organized and tightened up, cans better organized and out of the way but so that chicken feed can still be accessed even with cars in there. A large rolling plastic crate that was purchased several years ago to move new chicks to the warm basement during a late fall cold snap was moved back to the utility area of the basement where it can be stored until it is needed for that use again. The mower and garden cart arranged tightly against the scaffolding. The only vehicle in the garage now is the motorcycle and it is still in the middle as there are no plans for it to go out. Usually, the riding mower is parked on the side where my car was yesterday, but the repair folks had picked it up. It will go back in the garage when it is returned, but if another warning comes, I will drive it up to the bay of the barn that has the tractor parked in it, it will be okay there for short periods, but I don’t want mice in the engine compartment. I would like to organize shelves and workbenches better, but I needed a break. If we had to quickly put the cars in now, it would be much easier and still be able to get through the garage.

    Now I need to go get the house plants protected, it is going down to 35 tonight.

  • Our daily bread

    The self isolation has prompted a return to bread baking and consumption of homemade bread. When we knew that we would be staying at home and began our supply stocking, some sandwich type rolls and a loaf of sourdough bread were purchased and frozen. A month into the isolation, those supplies are long gone which prompted a resurrection of the sourdough. While the sourdough was being fed and restored, a couple of loaves of no knead artisan bread were made, then the starter was ready and several loaves have been baked, giving one to the neighbor that helped with the mower. This morning, I realized that there were no sandwich rolls left, so the starter discard was put to use to mix up a batch of dough for them. There are two recipes that I use for rolls, one with sourdough and one without. The sourdough ones take longer to make but use up the daily discard. The ones below are the yeast raised ones.

    The yeast raised ones are done, the sourdough have 4 more hours plus baking time. Think I will stick to yeast raised for sandwich buns.

    The bread making helps pass the time and since we aren’t going anywhere, there is plenty of that. Because flour is a rare commodity, I can’t go out to get it, I’m using so much of it, I ordered fresh stone milled organic flour. It comes from a mill where a blogger friend works and it arrived today. I just sprayed the outer box with 1% bleach spray and will open it with gloves on once it is dry and bring my 4 three pound bags in. Can’t wait to try it, but with one each of the roll recipes rising on the counter that will make 12 buns, and about a half a loaf of sourdough remaining from yesterday’s baking, it will have to wait a day or two and will probably be a loaf of sandwich bread.

    This morning, the mower repair people came and picked up the riding mower to take in to fix and when I stepped out to yell up to the guy to see if we paid for the pick up now or when it was returned, I saw our neighborly mower had again jumped her fence and come to visit.

    If she is going to come mow, I wish she would at least come down to an area that I have to mow, not an area that is saved for hay. Of course it had just started raining when I called her owner to let her know where “Bad” Penny was. She is due to calf in May so maybe she will stay home and not leave her little one then.

    The time at home has my garden in a better place than it has ever been this early in the spring, but we have two days of rain followed by a chilly day and near freezing night ahead, so it will sit idle. The asparagus look like they will provide enough for a meal soon, then they will overwhelm and I only like them fresh, so freezing or otherwise preserving is not going to happen. I know daughter and granddaughter love them and I’m sure she will be glad to come out to pick up a bag full and a dozen eggs. I need to get out between rain showers and string some trellis for the peas.

  • New life

    Spring is a time of new life on the farm. Birds’ nests, spring flowers, tree buds.

    The grapevine I pruned sharply and got on a proper arbor has tiny buds; the peonies have flower buds, one has only 2, the other many; lilacs blooming; asparagus tips. The peas almost need trellising, there are a few tiny spinach plants. New fresh food, YAY.

    The sour dough is strong and thriving. Made a loaf for the neighbor that helped with the mower and another for us. Baking every couple of days, a pleasure I had forgotten. We are excited to see spring coming, even though there is a low mid 30s night coming up. The seedlings are getting some day time hardening off to stimulate better growth. The radishes, lettuce, and cabbages are growing. I love this time of year.

    We had our semi weekly date, taking the garbage down to the “convenience center” since I have caught a couple of mice in the past couple of days. That is the only place we go, no contact, no pickup at the house.

  • I AM NOT A QUITTER

    A few days ago, I said I had given up on the fencing. Today is another beautiful day and I am less sore, and have more energy, so I attacked it again. There were two long pieces of garden fencing partially loose on the ends attached to several T-posts and it served no useful purpose. I started taking it down last summer to make mowing easier but it was really overgrown in the grass and I couldn’t get it free. It is now down, the T-posts all pulled, a dozen of them. Old rotting wooden fence posts that were laid along the bottom to keep the chickens in when there was a run that it enclosed were pulled up and stacked along the edge of the large A frame coop.

    The row of tall weeds is where it was, the garden fence to the right, the orchard to the left, and I am standing with my back to the chicken run where they kick out the compost. That large coop was built so I could raise some meat chickens. Maybe this fall if the virus subsides, I will get a dozen or so Freedom Rangers and some electric net fencing and put that coop back to use. It becomes the holding coop when old hens are replaced with new pullets.

    Feeling smug that the task was accomplished and going back to last year’s idea of a garden fence closer to the garden inside the original sturdier fence, making a run around the perimeter of the garden for the chickens was revisited. I had done that last year, but had used 3 foot fencing in places and the chickens would get a running start and go over it and get out or in to the garden. The fence I took down is 4 feet and the exterior fence is 4 feet and if I put a cover over the end near the coop, they can’t get a running start and fly onto the egg door. The first section of that fence was put in place, but then I got down near Mrs. Wren and she got agitated, so I left her alone to sit. I went back to it after lunch and got by her so she won’t be bothered again. I got the fence put back, and the chickens can have the run of that alley and scratch the henbit, chickweed, and other goodies looking for bugs. It helps keep the weeds down, gives them some running room and more area to scratch.

    It didn’t take them long to find the feast, it won’t take them long to beat down the weeds in that perimeter. There is very little left to do inside the garden fence now. A few small areas of henbit, a deteriorated tarp at the farthest end to be removed.

    When the leaves fall in autumn, we look forward to the new greening in the spring. Usually we see no green hints except on scrub until early to mid May. We aren’t even to the middle of April and the trees are beginning to leaf out. This is such an atypical spring. My seedlings are thriving and get a bit of sheltered time on the back deck during the day. Some heartier house plants have been returned to the porches. I watch the weather and if a frost sneaks up on us, some will be brought back in.

    The hens are being generous. The nine of them produce about 5 eggs a day, but yesterday they were in overdrive.

    The oblong layer is still producing odd oblong eggs and her shells are very thin and brittle.

  • Sunday on the farm

    My birdwatching friend identified the nest as a Carolina Wren. I’m not sure if she returned to the nest last night. When I went over to let the hens out this morning, feed them, and clean their coop, I didn’t see her, but her nest is at the other end of the garden from the coop area.

    When I returned from that job, I grabbed my clippers and thick leather gloves to prune back an overgrown barberry bush before it leafs out. As I approached, I was scolded loudly by a bird I couldn’t see, and found this.

    Ok, so not a stellar photo as I stuck one hand into the Barberry thorns to see if there were any eggs. It appears to be another Carolina Wren. Glad she chose a bush and not the ground or a shelf in the garage.

    One of my first tasks each morning is feeding the sourdough starter. Today is day 5 of getting this one going and I could use it today, but there is still some bread in the freezer to use up first. Maybe I will start loaves tomorrow as it takes about 24 hours to go through the entire process. I quit making sourdough a while back because I was disturbed by the waste of discarding starter before feeding it and because I could buy sourdough bread locally at the Farmers’ Market and Natural food stores. Recently, I found an article that said the starter can be fed to chickens, which is a plus. When you make and feed the starter, you use equal amounts of flour and water. Every recipe I had ever found said to use 4 ounces or 125 grams of flour depending on whether they were measuring with cups or a scale. To do that you are tossing out about 1/2 cup of starter every time you feed it and it makes about 4 cups of starter which seemed too wasteful. You only use about 1 tablespoon of starter to get the leaven going. I found an article the other day that said to use only 25 grams of flour and water and feeding the chickens about 2 tablespoons of starter seems much less wasteful and it fits in a pint widemouth jar with lots of room to spare. Since two loaves of sourdough bread is plenty for a week for two of us, and since flour is hard to come by right now, this seemed ideal. I got the starter going with this plan.

    This was before I fed it this morning and you can see there will be very little waste and the starter is strong and healthy. Tomorrow I will bake for the week. I still want to play with other uses for the sourdough such as pizza dough and focaccia bread. I need to get back in the routine of making the bread since going out to the Farmers’ Market to buy from the two bakers there is not in the cards right now.

    Found this little butterfly stretching it’s wings in the sun on the deck. I couldn’t decide if it was damaged or still unfurling, but after a while, it flew away, so must have been unfurling.

    The butterfly was followed by a Tufted titmouse sitting on my breakfast chair trying to crack open a sunflower seed.

    So bear in the field yesterday, deer this morning, 2 Carolina Wren nests with eggs, and lots of colorful little songbirds enjoying the feeders. Love watching the wildlife on the farm.

    These frothy white trees are blooming everywhere on our walk today. I thought they were wild cherries, but the bark doesn’t look right.

    Her relative was mowing our grass again this morning. She stayed on her own farm. After the walk, some digging in the dirt was in order to weed the bed of iris, day lilies, and where the calendula was last year. Though I started calendula seed indoors, there are lots of volunteers in that spot already. And purple echinacea was started indoors too, there is room for them in the same bed.

  • I can’t leave the day on a sour note.

    I was tired and pretty discouraged when I posted earlier. After I rested, I restarted the weed wacker and attacked inside the stone wall. Every time I stepped on a rock, I either tossed it way up in the upper pile or found a place for it on the wall. I am not as good a rock stacker as Son 1 or DIL, but there were low places and places where they were making the wall thicker and I concentrated on those areas. The lower part is now rock free or they are buried so deep I can’t feel them walking the area. The area was weed wacked shorter until I was sure there were no more.

    Totally bushed after moving rocks and dealing with the monster machine, I came in and prepared dinner for us. The day was too nice to sit inside. Bright sunny, clear skies, and warm, but not hot. Cool enough for a long sleeved cotton shirt for sun protection but too warm for the sweat shirt I started out in earlier. I have a roll of weed mat. I don’t know how much of that area it will cover or where I can get a load of leaf mulch or soil to fill behind the wall, but I would love to get some flowers and herbs growing in there this summer. To the left of the old deck pier will be patio eventually, so it isn’t getting planted.

    After resting and nourishing my body, I took the hand hoe out and tackled the last garden box, a 4 X 8 foot one that is reasonable sound and will have the tomato plants in it in about 6 weeks. I pulled the few weeds that were in the blueberry bed beside it. When it was planted, the bushes were surrounded by many layers of newspaper and a 3 inch thick layer of shredded mulch applied over it, so it is easy to deal with. You can see the edge of the blueberry box under my shadow on the right.

    The back left corner of that bed was left unweeded because just as I was about to hack down into the soil, I pulled the weeds back from the edge of the box and found this.

    There had been a tiny brown bird flitting around the garden even before I got over there, but I paid her little heed. Finding her tiny nest of eggs let me know why and I gently laid the still growing weeds back over her nest and left her alone. I hope she returns to the nest. The fledglings should be long gone before I am ready to plant that box.

    Today ended up rather productive, though I am worn out now. A shower and a Tylenol are in order. Then I will settle with my spindles, knitting, or a book.

    Today’s work has the garden ready for seeds and seedlings except for the corn patch and it is on the opposite side of the garden from the nest, so I don’t think I will disturb her too much. And I still need to cover the mint to at least try to slow it down. Another day, another day.