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A Weekend of Play, Responsibility, and Loss

The loss was not too significant, given that we still have about 6 weeks until we can plant tender plants outdoors, but as we were leaving for two days, one night, I left the light on my starter flat of tomatoes, tomatillos, and peppers. Most of the tomatoes and the tomatillos had sprouted, only a few of the peppers had shown any sign of sprouting. The light was very close to the clear lid on the sprouts and given the south facing window as well, it must have gotten too hot especially for the ones that had gotten tall enough to reach the lid. I still have a few Jalapeno sprouts, one leggy tomatillo, but the rest are a burned loss. This morning, I clipped the dead sprouts and replanted seeds. This time, I am leaving the lid off and just spritzing the surface a few times each day.

Our away was a trip with the two grandchildren living with us to go to Northern Virginia to pick up our eldest grandson for his week of spring break. We arrived mid afternoon and checked into the hotel just two short blocks from our son’s apartment. The only things positive that I can say about the hotel were its convenience and its price. We were on the front of the building, right across from the office with a busy street out front. The beds had no foundation and were uncomfortably soft and unstable and the wall mounted heating unit, needed because the temperature dropped into the 20’s and the door had no weather stripping (we could see light around all 4 sides) sounded like a wind machine. The thermostat in the unit did not work, so it was either too hot or too cold depending on whether I turned it on or off during the night. The kids slept, fortunately, but Mountaingdad and I did not get 4 hours of sleep between us. The kids were well behaved on the drive up and once we arrived at son’s apartment. All of us went out to dinner together before separating for the night. Son’s research showed us that a bus to the Metro left from in front of our hotel at 8:35 a.m. and he and eldest grandson were going to join us for a walking tour of the monuments on Sunday morning. The car was packed and we were trying to make do with the free breakfast (bagels and grocery store donuts) when son texted that they found a bus a half hour earlier and could we be ready.

The Florida born grandkids thought the Fairfax connector bus and the Metro were great. We got off on the Metro stop that put us nearest the Lincoln Memorial, a city walk of about a dozen blocks. A lot of hand holding and herding were necessary to keep those two safe on Washington DC streets, especially since that grandson wanted to do everything that his almost two year older cousin was doing.

A bit of heavy reading on a man just studied in 2nd grade.

Cousins posing in front of Lincoln.

More monuments, the Korean War memorial, Martin Luther King memorial (also a recently studied topic), a history recitation by the eldest grandson on Jefferson as we looked across the water at that memorial, too far to walk with kids, and a little one who soon gave out, taking turns being carried by an adult, Uncle being the preferred carrier.

With a bit of coaxing and challenges to race, we got her on the ground again as we hit the homestretch, around the Washington monument with a jog up it’s hill to actually get to touch it and on to the Smithsonian Metro station for the train back to Vienna for the trip home last evening. Many miles walked and tired kids.

The second grader was excited to see Washington. Eldest grandson excited to be able to spend spring break on the farm, son and daughter-in-law relieved to be able to work and study this week without trying to find daycare for him and entertain him at night, and us pleased to be able to have 3/5 of our grandchildren in our home at one time with the responsibility to keep them safe and cared for in their parents’ absence.

Daughter and son-in-law are in route with a truck full of their household goods, hopefully taking it slowly and safely to arrive here tomorrow night.

While we were away, our haying farmer neighbor took out several cedar and locust trees that have interfered with mowing and haying and removed about a dozen boulder size rocks that have knocked more than one tooth off of his sickle bar and caused more than one nick in our brush hog blade. His haying and our mowing should be an easier job this year.

March 30, 2015
Olio – March 27, 2015

Olio: a miscellaneous collection of things

For a week and a day now, we have been grandparents and in loco parentis for two of our grandchildren. During the weekday school hours, only the three year old is with us. The routine is for me to get up by 6:45 to dress and wake the eight year old for school. As the kids are currently sharing a bedroom at our house, that means trying to get him up and out of the top bunk without waking the three year old in the bottom bunk. This is not an easy task, but we have managed most mornings. Once he is on his school bus, the animal chores have been taken care of, then the three year old has my help getting her clothes out and she dresses while I prepare her breakfast. She will always announce what she wants, “big yogurt with honey” (plain yogurt from the quart instead of an individual serving that big brother takes to school), “a stand up egg” (a hard boiled egg), or “scrambled eggs with bacon and cheese for my plate.” This morning, the bacon curled into a smile and I couldn’t resist. . .

So we played with our food a little.

A couple of weeks ago, one of my friends, a fan of my lotion bars from my Etsy shop, found a deal on blocks of Shea butter and sent me a link. Once I got on the site, I realized that I could get organic Sweet Almond Oil, organic Cocoa Butter, and organic Coconut Oil as well at a very good price. An order was placed and I was pleased with the quick shipping and the arrival of my goodies a couple of days ago.

Tomorrow, we are off to pick up eldest Grandson for his week of Spring Break. He will be joining the other two here until next weekend. We will be leaving the critters and house in the care of our local house sitter and spending one night in Northern Virginia. This will give eldest Grandson an opportunity to show off Washington DC to his Florida born cousins before we head home. A driving trip up there always involves a good resupply of food for them and so a cooler of chicken, pork, and frozen Tomatillos will be packed along with jars of salsa and chutney, a box of pumpkins, and a few dozen eggs. There are still more pumpkins than we will eat and they are beginning to go bad.

There were only two half pints of the XXXX Salsa left on the shelf, but the Tomatillos and Habeneros were in the freezer from when I gave up on canning in the fall, so 3 1/2 pints were made this morning. They aren’t sealed in the canner, but I’m sure they will be eaten long before they go bad.

Most of the laundry is done and bags getting packed. This will be a short trip, but it will let the Grands from here see Washington DC for the first time and will give the three cousins some time together, though the 8 year old living here does have school next week until half day on Thursday. The futon in the rec room is made and the house will be vacuumed to reduce the dog hair once the three year old gets up from her nap.

The Cherry Blossom Yarn that I was spinning was completed and added to my Etsy shop. It is 121 yards, 4 ounces of Worsted/Aran weight yarn and quite soft.

My current spinning project is the most difficult fiber I have ever tried to spin. It is a 50/50 blend of Yak and Silk and is so slippery, I find it very troublesome. It is going to be lovely if my patience holds out and it too will likely find it’s way into my shop.

Still loving life on our mountain farm and we are excited that the spring like week and the recent rain are turning the fields emerald green and we are seeing squirrel ear leaves on some of the trees.

March 27, 2015
Baby Calves and Spinning Wheels

Granddaughter is fascinated with all of the spring calves and lambs and is often asking us to drive by one of the many fields with babies. The foals at the Virginia Tech Horse Center haven’t arrived in the fields yet, but we did see a whole field of tiny black lambs a couple of weeks ago. It looked like most of the ewes had twins as there were many more lambs than ewes. Most of the calves are too far away from the car to see except as small lumps lying in the grass, but our neighbor’s herd is next door and our gravel road runs right through her property, so we can often drive up and see them right by the road. This morning, we drove up the road and the herd was right there with all of the babies nearby. There are six calves less than 2 weeks old and a couple more that were born right at the beginning of the year.

We parked along the side of the road and watched as they ate hay, nursed and were bathed by the cows. She doesn’t quite understand why she can’t pet them as they are all smaller than our Mastiff that she adores.

In the past week, I have gotten back on my spinning wheel. I had some roving that I had purchased at the Fiber retreat in February that is for my daughter. As I had ordered a jumbo flyer for my spinning wheel and wanted to wait for it to ply the two very full bobbins of Dorset lamb that I was spinning at the retreat, I began on her roving. The roving that I purchased was called Mystery Sheep. A flock of sheep had been abandoned in a nearby town and had been rescued by a kindly citizen. Two of the ladies at the retreat have a shop selling roving from their own sheep and also selling from the rescued flock. Twenty percent of the sale of that roving goes back to helping provide feed and vet care for the rescued flock. It felt good to buy some fiber that was going to help out. It was only 2 ounces of fiber and spun up into only about 116 yards of yarn, but enough for my daughter to make herself a slouchy hat, which is a project she wants to start as soon as her house is packed up and moved.

The fiber was soft Easter egg blue and green and made a nice yarn.

Now on my wheel is a very soft Merino just in time for the Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington D.C. It is a nice cherry red and is spinning to about worsted weight. It is 4 ounces of fiber and should made a nice skein that will soon appear on my Etsy shop.

On the knitting front, I am slowly completing the yoke on my newest sweater, but it has taken me weeks to do the 7 inches that I have accomplished, just too many other things going on in our lives right now.

March 24, 2015
Another Sunny Growing Day

before the next rain and drop back to normal temperatures. After Grandson was dispatched via school bus and breakfast was prepared, eaten and cleaned up for Granddaughter, we set out on errands.

One errand was to locate some inexpensive pots to plant the salvaged raspberry canes in for Son #2. It was sticker shock to see how much clay pots cost these days, even the cheap plastic ones were much more than I had hoped, but 5 were purchased as they are after all for Son #2.

Raspberries, neatly pruned and potted and awaiting transport to him in April.

The next errand was to get a new chess set. Decades ago, I gave Mountaingdad a carved Olivewood chess set. The pieces have always been close in stain, but the years have faded them to an almost imperceptible shade difference making playing with the set difficult even in good light. About a decade ago, while in El Paso for a family funeral, we travelled by bus over to the markets in Juarez when it was still safe to do so and came home with a huge set of the Aztecs vs the Conquistadors which safely made it back to Virginia on the plane, but it too is difficult to distinguish the pieces. We have a leather suitcase set that had backgammon, checkers and chess, but the grands have lost two pieces from that set, making it also unusable. Mountaingdad enjoys playing with the grandsons, working with them on strategy and confidence, so off to Target we went and came home with a folding wooden box that has the board on the outside and pieces for chess and checkers that are white and dark brown. The grandson living here will be delighted tonight.

While there, we found a tiny clay flower pot with a grow pellet and a packet of sunflower seeds in it. Grandson is growing a seed at school, so granddaughter gets to grow one at home. Little miss with her newly planted dwarf sunflower. Now to keep her out of it as it grows. She insisted for a few minutes that she was going to stand there and wait for it to sprout, a reminder that 3 year olds don’t have the concept of time yet. Each time we leave the house, she comments that her Mom will be home when we get back, though her Mom won’t be back for 8 more days and we have repeated that over and over, even showing her on the calendar.

The planting efforts outside resulted in some weeding and the chooks got a green treat of their favorite snack, fresh chickweed.

If I could control where they grazed, I would direct them to the front shrub bed that is quickly being engulfed by chickweed. In between other tasks, another 2 five gallon buckets of whole grain chicken feed were mixed, so they have a good diet to hold them until we can let them free range again and just supplement their feed.

I need to make a batch of hand scrubbing soap for the household. With gardening chores and weeding beginning, the dirt stained fingers and nails will soon be in need of good scrubbing each day.

March 23, 2015
Whew, We Survived!

The kids are in bed and we survived the entire weekend. We were not young parents, which makes us not young grandparents, but we are healthy and stay active.

The weather cooperated, and the kids had a lot of free outside play time. They have moved from a neighborhood with a street in front of the house and a canal that was home to the occasional alligator in the back, so playing outside without an adult nearby just didn’t happen. Here on our farm, they have boundaries about where they can go alone and rules about not climbing on the rock piles, but are allowed to dig, run, romp and roll, and play make believe games to their heart’s content.

We are still introducing them to the region, so after lunch and quiet time, we took them to the Huckleberry Trail, a paved former rail grade that is still a work in progress, connecting more and more areas of the region, but the original portion, runs from the town library to the mall area in the next town, about 7 miles. The trail is an asphalt path used by bicycles, joggers, dog walkers and people just out for a stroll. We started at the library and walked only 3/4 mile to the gazebo. By then, the three year old was done. She had walked and run on the outward leg. She was coaxed, challenged to races and monkey backed on the way back to the car.

Home for some more outdoor play, dinner prep and clean up, a couple of chess games with Mountaingdad, baths and bed. We are now recuperating before I have to get up early to get grandson to his bus for school.

March 22, 2015
Weekend with the Grands

This is our first solo weekend with the grandkids that are living with us now. During the week, one of them is in school so we still outnumber the other one. Our Saturday morning tradition, even most winter Saturday’s is to go into the town and have breakfast at one of the local restaurants then walk over to the Farmers’ Market to support the farmer’s that brave the cold with their meats, breads, and cold storage vegetables. As we are only two weeks from the full season return of the market, there are still only a few stalls, but more today than in the past weeks, including a new addition to the market with heritage pork. Turns out we know that farmer, so we supported her with a purchase of the thickest pork chops I have ever seen. I hope I don’t overcook them. They are thawing for a meal in a couple of days.

We took the back way home and let the kids see all of the brand new calves in the fields around our farm. This brought us back to speculating about how many we could raise, how much it would cost us to have our field hayed when we kept the hay instead of giving it to the farmer for his work and whether we could make a small profit by raising a small herd for our own meat and to sell maybe 4 or 5 head each year.

Once back home, some chicken chores to add straw to the coop and hay to the extremely muddy run were done while the kids play outside in the sunshine. I want to let the chickens free range, but we just planted some seed in the garden and it is only fenced with two strands of electric which doesn’t even slow the chooks down. I don’t need them digging up my freshly dug, weeded, and seeded beds, or the newly transplanted raspberries, so they will have to remain penned until daughter returns. We will then expand the garden and string plastic poultry fence around the vegetables and let the girls wander again. Or perhaps we can just make poultry netting tunnels over the beds and let the chickens keep the weeds and bugs at bay between the beds. The egg production is up, having gotten 18 eggs in the past two days from the dozen hens. I am hoping that one of the girls gets to feeling broody soon, and I will let her sit a clutch of about 8 eggs to hatch. This will be our first year allowing this and hoping that we will be able to cull some of the older hens and the cockrells that hatch for the freezer instead of raising purchased meat chicks. If this doesn’t happen, I will buy meat chicks later in the summer and raise them until the fall for the freezer. Freedom Rangers or Rainbow Rangers only take about 11 weeks to freezer size and that is what we raised last year and found them to be an excellent table bird.

The seeds we started indoors are beginning to sprout. The flat is on a heat mat in a south facing doorway with a grow lamp. The Roma and Purple Cherokee tomatoes, and the Tomatillos are showing. So far the 6 kinds of hot peppers are still buried, but we hope to see them sprout soon too. Four of the varieties of peppers there are only a couple of plants and they are experimental for us heritage varieties. The others are of many pots of Jalapenos and several Habenos for salsa and chili tomatoes to be canned this summer.

Tomorrow is supposed to be another beautiful day, so perhaps we will take the kids for a walk on the Huckleberry Trail or a hike in the woods if it has dried enough.

Next Saturday we will all drive to Northern Virginia and pick up the eldest grandson for a week too. We will have a house full of younguns to keep us young or run us ragged.

March 21, 2015
Out Like A Lion

At least it isn’t sticking. After 4 beautiful spring like days, today is a return to winter. It was supposed to be rain and perhaps will turn to rain before it ends, but not more snow.
Mountaingdad is on the road with Daughter, so hopefully the roads aren’t getting messy.
The roads were fine a couple of hours ago when I went out to lunch with a friend. In fact, it hadn’t started then, we watched the snow showers start while we ate. We enjoyed some social time for a hour or so, then home as today begins nearly two weeks of full time grand parenting while daughter and her husband pack up their house that they sold in Florida. I’m glad we had a couple of months of them living here before they had to be left in our care. We will do fine.

March 19, 2015
Busy Days

Another beautiful day. It was supposed to rain according to yesterday’s forecast, but this morning, it had changed and was a mostly sunny day with only the lightest of sprinkles. I grabbed half a dozen raspberry canes and put them in water as Son #2 would like some of the ones we pulled up. As soon as I can find some cheap pots, I will put them in soil and prune them to give them a chance to establish roots before I can deliver them in April. That was done early when the chicken chores were being completed.

Before Daughter and Mountaingdad got up, I had made two new soap recipes, one with Oatmeal, Lavender buds, and Black Walnut powder. This will be a great body scrub soap once it cures. The other is a Jasmine Green Tea soap. Neither of these soaps have any essential oils or dyes, so they will be good for those with sensitive skin.

After lunch, we experimented with a recipe for Beard Oils for my Etsy shop. Daughter’s husband uses Beard Oil and we thought they might make a good addition to the shop. The lotion bar molds arrived yesterday, so a new batch of Hand Butter bars were also made to add to the shop. The lotion bars, Hand Butter bars and Beard Oils can all be personalized with a customer’s favorite scent or scents or made unscented.

Daughter and I planted the Lacinato Kale, Purple Top Turnips and a 4 X 4′ bed of Daikon Radishes for kimchi this afternoon. They are the last early spring seed.

March 17, 2015
Garden Season

Though we are still 6 to 8 weeks from our last frost, some garden tasks and a few vegetables can be planted now. For the past two days, we have had dry warm spring like days. As there are more mouths to feed in our household now, we decided to expand the garden, nearly double in size. To facilitate doing this, we first decided to move the grapevines from the north edge of the garden to the north edge of the orchard. The Raspberry canes that I had planted several years ago in the row near the south edge of the garden had become overwhelming, so we moved 6 plants along the chicken run and dug out the remainder of the canes to discard.

Raspberries along chicken run

Grapevines pruned and moved, needing new trellis.

Two of our helpers throwing weeds to the chooks from the now empty Raspberry bed.

Our day was waning, dinner prep needed doing, so we planted 40-50 young onion starts and a half dozen kale plants, erected a row cover bubble over the kale to keep out the cabbage moths/worms,

Tomorrow if we can get it done before the rain starts, we will plant Daikon radishes, turnips, and Lacinato Kale seed. On our next dry stretch, we will deconstruct the 4 remaining compost bins, collect some rock, perhaps rent a tiller and finish the expansion. A good day of labor. After our dinner prep and clean up, we planted tomato and pepper seeds in the indoor flats, put them on the warming tray and set the grow light over them.

Once the last frost date passes, hopefully we will have beds ready for twice as many tomatoes and peppers as last year, the peas and beans, sunflowers, and herbs will be planted. The winter squash are going to be planted in the orchard this year and allowed to spread at will. I may have to extend the electric fence around the orchard again to keep the deer out.

March 16, 2015
The Chair

Years ago, we laughed at episodes of the TV show Frazier, with “the chair.” The chair belonged to his father, a ratty, striped recliner with duct tape holding it together. In one episode, Frazier, bothered by the look of the chair in his very modern svelte apartment, removed it to the building’s storage room and replaced it with a new leather version. Dad was not happy and the episode revolved around the search for the taped up old chair to return to the apartment. The story line going much deeper, but for my purposes, we will leave it here.

About 16 or 17 years ago, while still living in Virginia Beach, Mountaingdad found a ginormous rocking recliner in Sam’s Club. Every time we went to shop, he went to see if the chair was still there, sitting in it and wishing. Daughter and I decided that it would make a great Christmas present for him, drove my minivan to Sam’s Club and purchased the last one, a hulking leather monstrosity and wheeled it out to the car. It wouldn’t fit in the van in the box. We unpacked it and with much Tetris like activity, got it into the van, but didn’t want to abandon the box in the parking lot as that went so totally against my hippy, you must recycle it mindset. I ended up leaving the box and my 16 year old daughter in the parking lot, drove the chair home and unloaded it in the garage, drove the few miles back and picked up daughter and box and drove to the recycle center to leave the box. Back home, we approached a neighbor about storing it in their garage until Christmas Eve. On Christmas Eve early in the day, we removed it back to our garage and covered it back in an area in front of my mini van, hoping that Mountaingdad would not spot it. That night, it was hauled into the house, set in place and a big bow taped to the back.

That chair has been his favorite. It moved from that house to the rental we took after selling the house to build this one. Moved again to two different apartments that he occupied after I moved up here to work and supervise the construction of our new home. It moved again to our log home upon his retirement and continued to be his favorite spot to use his laptop, watch TV and recuperate from surgery then a broken humerus. After all of the years and all of the moves, the chair’s leather began to split. We tried Frazier’s Dad’s approach and bought some dark brown duct tape to try to repair it. It held for a little while, but not for long. It became a place where Mountaingdad and Ranger shared time at night.

But alas, it was just falling apart. About a year ago, I started suggesting it was time to replace it, but he wasn’t ready. A week ago, I received a coupon for 20% off a furniture item from Grand Furnishings as we have bought several mattresses and the grandkids bunk bed from them in the past couple of years. The end of last week, he admitted that it was time.

The seat and arms of the chair as it awaits disposal.

Sunday, we used the coupon to buy him a new leather recliner. Large and comfy, but not quite as massive as The Chair. Today it arrived at the local Grand and was picked up.

I don’t know if Mountaingdad and Ranger will both fit in this one. I hope it provides at least Mountaingdad comfort for as long as The Chair did.

March 11, 2015