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The Last. . .

…harvest of tomatoes that is. The vines are dry and brown, the handful of remaining tomatoes are being decimated by the stinkbugs and each day I pull and toss a vine to the chickens to pick over. There are a few remaining green slicer tomatoes and I will enjoy them as fried green tomatoes, a treat that I rarely indulge, partly because my diet contains very little fried food and partly because I let them ripen on the vine during warm weather to enjoy sliced or canned.

These will be canned probably into salsa to add to the root cellar shelves to enjoy and remember a successful tomato season when the snow is falling or the cold wet wind is blowing much sooner than ready.

…the last pullet figured out the egg laying business, sort of. There was a tiny egg this morning, apparently laid yesterday in the run and not seen until this morning when I went to let them out. It was dark when I locked them up last night when I came in from knit night. Surprisingly, nothing found it during the night. Now, if she will just lay them in the nesting boxes with the other hens. Romeo is a very frustrated young roo. None of his ladies in waiting will stand still for him to mount them, they run and peck. When he was first added to the run, several squatted in submission, but not now. It is going to be hard for us to raise a heritage flock if that behavior continues.

…of the 5 gallon bucket of stain will be mixed this morning once the fog clears, to stain the soffit and fascia board overhang from the front porch. At knit night last night, I ran into the manager of the Sherman Williams in the coffee shop and he suggested I wait until this weekend to buy more as the stain that we use will be on sale for 40% off and that is a significant savings in dollars for our budget. That also gives me two days for my sore and painful shoulder to calm down before I tackle the log wall of the front of the house. Saturday is to be mild and breezy with humidity in the right range for the project, so that will be the day to complete the task.

…the last few rows of the beautiful handspun sweater. The photo doesn’t do the color justice but it is lovely. It should be ready for the spinning retreat I will be attending soon.

September 18, 2014
I’m getting too old for this!

The weather has been beautiful. Mid 50’s at night, great sleeping weather with a window open, 70 for the day’s high. Occasional clouds, some of them quite lovely.

Last night it was so beautiful outside that after I finished staining the garage doors with Mountaingdad and then finished the half wall on the garage that Son #1 didn’t have time to finish, we grilled out and ate on the back deck. I was tired and sore and needed some zen time, so I spend about an hour near sundown mowing in one of the back fields. It really is quite zen to ride the tractor and watch the goings on around you on the farm.

Today being a copy of yesterday, I began earlier to get the front and back walls of the breezeway stained. This critter with her brood of babies on her back watched from the stone wall nearby for quite a time.

While I was doing the breezeway, our handyman neighbor was staining the ceiling of the front porch and we worked together to get the front porch posts to use up the remaining stain mix that was made today. Once the additives are mixed in, it must be used within 6 hours. As we were working on that, I spotted another spider’s work.

It is spun to the contour of the A frame bird house. This is the best I could do to get a photo.

The only parts of the house left for me to stain are the front log wall, seen in the background of the photo above and the 8 windows that are in the areas that I have or will stain.

About 38 years ago, I separated my left shoulder on the second day of skiing with my hubby. We weren’t married then, though he says that my skiing for several more days after that injury helped him decide that I was the woman he had been looking for. I am a southpaw, so I work that shoulder and arm a lot and when I do, whether gardening or staining like I am doing now, that old injury makes my shoulder quite sore. I may need a day or two break before I tackle that front wall. It will take me several hours to complete. For now, I’m going to get cleaned up and go socialize with my friends at knit night. As a bonus, I have 4 dozen eggs to sell to them.

September 17, 2014
Pooped Pair

Yesterday Son #1 started as soon as he felt exterior surfaces of the logs were dry. With only a break for lunch and minimal help from me staining, he managed to do almost all of the garage. I did the door frame and window and frame. We put up scaffolding, took down scaffolding, shifted it around and put feet under sections that didn’t have them, leaving a set up that will allow me to get the last few logs on one side of the garage and the front breezeway wall. The back breezeway wall can be reached from the deck with a short ladder, as can the front wall of the house and the garage door tops. That is my job for the rest of the week, but today I rest. I rest because we didn’t stop until 6 p.m. and he had to be at work at 9 a.m. today, 4 1/2 hours away, so we ended our day with the two of us sharing the drive, arriving near midnight, me sleeping there, getting him to work and driving back home this morning.

It is amazing how dark the house looks when first stained and how light it turns in just a year or so.

Left half still to be stained, right half done yesterday.
Today my back is sore and my body weary, so I am limiting myself to kitchen cleaning and laundry. Tomorrow I will stain.

September 15, 2014
Sunday Thankfulness – September 14, 2014

My thankfulness is rich this week. Son #1 came again to try to stain and though yesterday was dismal and he woke with a headache, once he was feeling better, he diagnosed my stove burner problem, moved the burner of the same size from the back right to the front left (being a southpaw, that is my preferred burner position), went online and ordered a new burner to replace the dead one and will install it the next time he is here.

After dinner, a homemade Mexican feast, he serviced both Mountaingdad’s and my bicycles so that we can enjoy the fall weather riding on the Huckleberry Trail to prep ourselves for a longer ride a bit farther afield.

Romeo met his harem and it went very well. He is so calm and gentle, he wants to be petted and loved by humans. I was putting the meatie chicks to bed last night and turned around to find him behind me on the other side of the fence wanting some of my attention too.

This morning though still mostly overcast, is dry enough for Son #1 to get stain on the high areas and with a cool mostly clear dry week, I will work downward from what he gets done and get the garage doors done as well. It is so nice to have him here, even for such a short time.

As we were waiting for the surface to dry enough to get started, I canned another 7 quarts of tomatoes for his household. The vines are almost totally dead and the green tomatoes are starting to drop to the ground, so I will either bring them in to ripen on the counter or make a green tomato salsa with the remaining ones. The peppers are producing large quantities. I thought my cabbages were safe from cabbage worms this late, but one of them has gotten quite lacy. I guess the chickens will enjoy that one, the others and the broccoli and kale don’t show the damage.

Lovin’ life on our mountain farm.

September 14, 2014
Mrs. Houdini and Romeo

Yesterday while working in the meaties pen, I watched Mrs. Houdini try to make her escape. She failed as Mountaingdad was coming over to see what I was doing and startled her back into the pen, but she was caught in the act. The gate is a common garden gate that has a wire fence inset in the galvanized pipe frame. The mesh is tighter at the bottom and larger openings toward the top and the mesh ends about a foot from the top.

She flew her heavy body up high enough to land on the bar below the top bar and then hopped through to freedom. The solution was easy to deal with, requiring a piece of the plastic chicken wire and some cable ties.

She now has to be able to fly about a foot higher and is too heavy bodied to be able to do that.

Earlier in the week, I contacted the farmer from whom I had purchased my dozen hens over the past two years and asked her if she had a young rooster or cockrell or would save me one in the spring so that next time one of the hens gets broody, I can let her sit and raise a brood for next year’s meaties. The Buff’s grow slower than the hybrid meat birds, but they are dual purpose birds with flavorful meat, so we are going to try to just use them in the future.

Tonight we picked him up.

Meet Romeo. He has arrived home just a few minutes a go and will spend the night in the dog crate with food and water and be introduced in a pen tomorrow. Ms. Farmer says he has a docile personality, he was very calm when we picked him up. She did say his tail feathers were a bit shabby as he has been picked on a bit in her barnyard. He was intended as a cull, but had too good a personality for her to do it and she is glad he has a new home where he can reign as king of the coop with a dozen ladies in waiting.

We continue to get 8 to 11 eggs daily from the dozen hens.

Lovin’ life on our rainy mountain farm.

September 12, 2014
Olio – September 10, 2014

Olio: a miscellaneous collection of things.

At times I consider whether I should just rename my blog Olio as most posts fly all over the place. It is only mid morning on a day that the weather prognosticators said would be mostly sunny and dry, but instead it is thickly overcast and too humid again to paint or stain. The grass too wet with dew to mow. This isn’t to say that the morning has been idle, no instead a load of laundry has been folded, Grand #1’s bed remade from his weekend visit; another load of laundry washed and currently drying; the chicken coop refreshed with a turn of the old hay and an addition of new hay; the meaties chicken tractor given a good layer of hay in the bottom as it is currently more or less permanently set at the end of the 6 foot wide run to contain the 5 week old chickies and it was beginning to not smell so pleasant. Another huge bucket of tomatoes have been harvested, though I haven’t begun to process them yet, as I can’t decide what this batch will become, probably just plain diced tomatoes. Just in the last couple of days, the tomato vines have begun to fade.

There are still plenty of tomatoes to harvest, but this is a signal of the end of the summer growing season. This morning, the spent cucumber vines were pulled and tossed to the chickens to peck at the last few cukes and the bugs on the vines. Each year I begin the season faithfully pinching suckers from the tomato plants and trying to contain the branches within the cages and by this time each year, the branches have fallen over and through the cages and the plants look pitiful. Perhaps next year I will use strong stakes instead of cages and tie the plants up as they grow taller, being more faithful about leaving only one main stem. Next year, they will have the rich soil of the compost bins as we remove the wood from them this winter to expand the garden and create a more reasonably sized compost bin in a new location. So much of the stuff that used to go into the compost, now goes to the chickens and their bedding becomes the compost, so having the bin near the coop door on the edge of the garden would make more sense. That area is where I planted the Buttercup squash, pumpkins, and sweet potatoes this year and between them and my weeding efforts, the bin have remained fairly weed free this summer.

The squash have spread over the woodpile, over to the vegetable garden, into the chicken run and up the hill past the hay bales and out of the electric fence. Many of the huge leaves have burn marks across them and cause the electric fence to pop as they touch it. Yesterday as I mowed, with the fence off, I snapped off the leaves touching the fence. I know that one day soon, I will begin to see those vines fading like the tomato vines. The peppers are loving the cooler weather and are blooming and producing new peppers daily. The summer squash are mostly done. It is now a time for greens and a few radishes and turnips.

As I sit here waiting for the inspiration to can or the grass to dry for mowing, I am enjoying one of the only two magazines to which I subscribe. The magazine is Taproot, no advertising, full of wonderful art, recipes, articles about back to a simpler time of producing your own food, making your own clothes, growing your own animals and knowing from where your goods come. If you haven’t ever seen an issue, you should seek one out.

Each issue has a theme and each is wonderful to savor each word and save for future reference.

Lovin’ life on our mountain farm.

September 10, 2014
Eleven and an Escape Artist

For the past several days one of the young Buff Orpington hens has been giving herself a free range walk-about. One day we let the rest out too. Somehow, she is getting herself back in by bedtime or if I put a special treat in the run. She won’t show me how so I can try to stop her and she is laying in the coop so she is at her own peril, though she is pecking every red tomato within her reach.

Today there were 11! There are only 12 layers and one still has pale small comb and waddles so I’m excited that maybe Broody/molty girl is over it. More than 9 eggs a day provide enough for our use, a dozen for the 2 neighbors that help us out and enough to sell to buy feed for them and the meat chicks.
Yesterday I opened the ark and freed the 5 week old meaties into their run. A few came out for a few minutes but they mostly hunkered down in the ark. Today I put half of their food out in the run in a dog feeding pan and as I went to put them up for the night, I had to lure them in with food. They were so active, it was a joy to watch them play and run and chase the grasshoppers that were fleeing the mower.
Today though mostly cloudy was delightful and I took advantage of the dry, cool weather to start the major fall mowing of all 30 acres. Because of the recent rains, I started around the house and worked out doing 3 small fields that only get hayed in spring and mowed in fall. The 2 huge fields, making up about 2/3 of the farm remain and we know we are facing hours and hours mowing unless our haying neighbor comes and brush hogs with his bigger more powerful tractor as he has offered to do. Though I don’t particularly like pushing the lawn mower or using the huge weed wacker, I do like mowing on the tractor.

September 9, 2014
A Touch of Fall

This past weekend was to be a staining weekend. Son #1 and Grand #1 came in on an early morning bus Saturday, but the day dawned as many have lately, overcast, foggy and high humidity. As the fog cleared, it was still overcast, so the staining was put on hold yet again and since he was here to work, we tackled the garage door that hasn’t worked properly in a couple of years. We have had to hold the button constantly to raise or lower the door and the electric sensor was not working at all. This rendered the remote in the car useless. We made a trip to the nearest hardware store, in the next town since our local one went out of business and purchased a circuit tester and a few odds and ends. He was able to isolate where power was no longer reaching the sensor and with a bit of rewiring and door adjustment, it now goes up, comes down gently and reverses when it hits an obstacle or the light beam is broken. The morning harvest sat on the counter throughout the day.

Yesterday was similar weather, but he managed to get the garage doors caulked with me following as clean up before he and Grand caught a bus for home. Once back to our farm, I tackled the Saturday harvest and made and canned 10 pints of Tom Tom Salsa, though I left out most of the lemon juice as hubby felt it was too tart for his taste. Yesterday’s afternoon’s storms brought a significant temperature drop. This morning dawned quite cool and still cloudy.

Each time I can, I get my exercise hauling empty jars up to the kitchen and full jars back down to the root cellar. The shelves in there are quite rewarding now as they fill with jars of tomatoes, chili tomatoes, salsa, pasta sauce and XXX hot sauce. The drying shelves are filling with garlic and Burgess Buttercup Squash. There are many more of them ripening in the garden and I can’t get to the sweet potatoes anymore until the squash and pumpkin vines start dying off.

As I was taking Son #1 to the bus, I asked him if there was a good way to reinforce the bottom of one of the pseudo orange crates that I purchased years ago at Michael’s Arts and Crafts so that I could load the full jars to the basement and for bringing canned goods and produce to them when I make my trips to their house. We started purchasing the crates when he was in college and his library that he hauled from dorm room to dorm room to apartment were shelved in them. Each semester, adding a few for new texts and other acquired books. When I moved across the state to our new farm, my handthrown pottery, china, and books were packed in similar crates for the move. Some of those crates have the bottom slats stapled on at an angle, others straight in. I have feared having the bottom drop out of one. He suggested taking a 1/2″ thick board cut to the width of the crate, drilling pilot holes and screwing the boards on the bottom across the slats.

One of my projects this morning was to reinforce one of those crates, then to prepare and can 11 pints of pasta sauce and a pint of Pickled Jalapeno peppers. My past two days have produced 21 pints of tomato products. The garden is still full of tomatoes and peppers, but the jars are getting scarce. I haven’t been able to locate any on Craigs list this time of year and I don’t really want to buy more in Big Lots or the Grocery. I will can using the last 5 pints and last 11 quarts then start freezing bags of tomatoes. The freezer us under utilized this year, other than chickens. Unless we end up buying apples to pare and freeze, there will be plenty of space for quart or gallon bags of frozen tomatoes.

Today as I was boiling a pot of water for peeling the pounds and pounds of tomatoes, one of the burners on our flat top stove failed. I had mixed feelings about a flat top stove when we bought our appliances 7 years ago, but for it to match the refrigerator and dishwasher, that was my only choice. I guess we are going to have to get a repair estimate, but this isn’t good timing with canning going on and with estimated taxes due.

September 8, 2014
Olio – September 5, 2014

Olio: a miscellaneous collection of things.

The Rainbow Ranger chicks have exceeded 2 pounds each at 4 1/2 weeks, far outgrowing anything we have to use as a brooder. They are getting feisty with each other, chest bumping and pecking. They are mostly feathered and it is still warm to hot during the days and mild at night. They were requiring twice daily brooder clean out, had gone for a week without supplemental heat in the garage, so a decision was made today to relocate them to the auxiliary pen, confined to the chicken ark. We did concede to put a tarp over the sides and will keep our fingers crossed that we don’t lose them now. Again I vow to let my hens do the work of raising chicks from now on or we are going to have to build a bigger outdoor brooder with electricity so we can put the heat lamp in it.
The March hatched Buff Orpington pullets are almost all laying finally. We are getting 8 or 9 eggs a day and thoroughly enjoying having them again.
Between canning tomatoes and cleaning chicks, I have found time to finish my Hitchhiker scarf.

And spin and ply 383 yards of Merino wool into an interesting DK weight yarn.

Now I need to decide whether to sell it, or create something with it.
When we had a cool evening two weeks ago, I pulled out my Elise sweater I knit last year and determined that it pulled at my shoulders because it is just a bit too small for me.

I don’t have anymore of the yarn, nor do I want to reknit it as I have two other sweaters currently on needles and they are both shades of blue or teal, so I am trying to decide it’s fate. My options are to try to sell this hand knit sweater for little more than the cost of the yarn, to try to trade it for spinning fiber, or determine if there is a relative smaller than I that would like to have a hand knit sweater that has to be hand washed.

Last weekend, I broke my second tooth of the summer. The first required a crown and that tooth still hasn’t been finished, a temporary crown in place until mid week. When I called the dentist, they were able to get me in yesterday and fortunately this one only needed a filling repair for now. Being a molar, it likely will eventually need a crown as well. I have 6 already and lost one crowned tooth because of repeated gum infections between it and the adjacent tooth. I hope that with dental repairs and care, I will retain most of my teeth as my 91 year old father has.

It has been a good week and we continue to love our life on our mountain farm.

September 5, 2014
Tom Tom

The garden provided 5 pounds of tomatoes, 2 pounds of tomatillos, a dozen or so various hot peppers this morning. I quick decision that salsa at $5 a pint and large cans of pickled jalapeños at under $2 a can, that the peppers are better used in salsa than just being pickled. Another round of canning commenced.
The tomatoes peeled and diced, the tomatillos diced, onions, hot peppers and garlic chopped. Eight pints of salsa in the making.
Today’s creation is Tom TomSalsa.
Tom Tom Hot Salsa
5 lbs tomatoes peeled and diced
2 lbs tomatillos husks removed, washed and diced
1 large onion chopped (2 cups)
10 cloves garlic minced
12 jalapeño pepper minced
1 habanero pepper minced
1 Tbs oregano
2 Tbs cilantro
1 Tbs pickling salt
1 cup lemon juice
Place all in a heavy nonreactive pot, bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes. Ladle hot salsa into clean, hot pint jars, seal with new lids, tighten bands and water bath process for 20 minutes.
Yield 8 pints

The shelves are being filled with garden goodness.
The pullets are laying more each day. We are getting 7 eggs most days from the 10 pullets and 1 hen. Broody Girl went into molt as soon as she quit being broody and hasn’t laid an egg in more than 2 months. I’m not too happy with her right now.
The Rainbow Ranger chicks at not quite 4 weeks old already weigh about 2 pounds each and have seriously outgrown the brooder. They are in a large dog cage with an attached run in the garage and get as much daytime outdoors as weather permits. They foul their cage daily. Can’t wait until they can go out to the chicken ark and run to live out their lives until mid October.

Lovin’ life on our mountain farm.

September 2, 2014