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Mother’s Wonders

As spring began and I set out to refill the deck pots with flowers and herbs, I discovered two Preying Mantis egg cases on a spent Geranium in one of the pots. I carefully cut the cases off and placed one in the new Rosemary plant and the other in a pot of parsley that overwintered in the house.

I have been watching them for the past couple of weeks, knowing that they would soon hatch. This morning, the one in the parsley rewarded me with this glimpse into the life cycle.

One of the cases with emerging nymphs.

A few of the tiny creatures, making their way to the sun.

There are hundreds of them on the plant and working their way to the outside of the deck.

Two that have made their way to the sunny side of a deck post.

I am glad that I saw this miracle occur today. The Preying Mantis are welcome on our farm, one of the more interesting and voracious predators of unwanted pests.

May 12, 2014
For Mother’s Day, We Went to War

War, West Virginia that is. As spring broke and Jim brought out his motorcycle, he set off one day to follow a route that had been given him at one of the dealerships while looking for a bigger bike. Somehow, he zigged when he should have zagged and missed the correct turn to do the ride and after thinking he had somehow gotten a bit out of his way, he found himself in War, West Virginia. After many hours, he finally returned home and we Goggled it to find out more about it and in doing so, I discovered a new to me, local author. Michael Abraham has written a number of fiction and non fiction books all set in the Appalachian region in which we live. His topics covering the heritage of this region.

The Appalachian region is rich in music culture and includes the Crooked Road, a music trail of venues that feature the local bluegrass and folk music of the area. This part of Southwest Virginia and Southern West Virginia are also areas from which a glut of coal is extracted. The industrial rise and increased use of electric power in homes caused an influx of population as miners worked in factory towns to extract the mineral at the expense of their health and often their lives. As mechanization was improved and fewer miners were needed, most of these towns began to fail. As you drive through the regions, abject poverty is evident. Homes that were built by the mine owners and rented to the miners are run down, many abandoned, stores boarded up and Main Streets vacant.

Each of these coal towns has a still functioning or abandoned tipple, the structure is used to clean the coal then load it into rail cars by the hundreds that rumble across Virginia to the coast to be loaded into ships and exported overseas, much of it to China.

This is the tipple at a deep mine, though mechanized, the mining crew still works underground. Coal developed in seams of varying thickness thousands of years ago. The seams are like icing in a layer cake and in deep mines, the miners dig down into a seam, reinforcing the tunnel as they go, extracting the coal and sending it to the surface. When the mine is spent and they are worked back out, the layers were often collapsed to prevent accidental cave ins. This is dangerous work, but causes less impact on the ground level environment.

Mountain top removal or strip mining is also prevalent in this region. It came about as a means to use fewer miners, more mechanization and caused a devastation to the area’s environment. The trees are stripped off the top of a mountain and the soil and rock are blasted out and dumped into the valleys to reach the coal which is then trucked in dumpers too large for traditional roads to the tipples. These mountain top removal mines have dams that hold huge ponds to clean the coal and there have been many accidents where the retaining dam has failed and in a few cases wiped out a town downstream (http://www.usmra.com/buffalo_creek.htm). The impact of this type of mining is the eradication of streams, deforestation, devastation of wildlife habitats.

Few of the young people in these towns stay. Those that do are in one of the most impoverished areas of the United States. After reading the novel War, WV by Abraham and doing more research about mining, I wanted to see the results. Today we took a road trip after our brunch and drove the loop that my husband rode so that I could see it for myself. There are many more pictures taken today, the mountain top removal photo used is from the internet as the only one of those mines we could see from the road was from a steep mountain road with a series of hairpin turns and no place to stop and take a picture. Today was quite a learning experience and makes me thankful all the good that I have been given.

May 11, 2014
Olio

Olio: a miscellaneous collection of things

Today the post is all over the place. First, chickens are mean. This is the result of the hens establishing pecking order.

One of the hens has pecked the upper wing of several of the others, plucking their feathers, but not drawing blood. The shake up has allowed the feathers to begin growing back in.

Her bare back is the result of the over zealous rooster. He is picking on the hens in the cull pen now and this gals feathers are coming back out as well.

Go away and give me some privacy! I’m trying to lay an egg.

The lace on the shawl on which I was working, did not win! I did. The shawl was completed this afternoon as Jim watched the last rounds of the football draft. I am pleased with the finished product. It is fairly generous in proportion, the color is rich, and the leaf lace border is interesting. It is currently being blocked with hopes that it will be dry to wear with a skirt to Mother’s Day Brunch at Mountain Lake Lodge tomorrow.

It is pinned to a double bed to give you an idea of it’s size.

This afternoon, our daughter sent an adorable picture of her daughter and she gave me permission to share. I particularly enjoyed the photo because when our daughter, our second child was born, I was excited to have a little girl to dress up. I took a smocking class and made dresses and bonnets. As soon as she was old enough to assert her opinion, which was quite early, she always wanted pants, sweaters or t shirts and mismatched socks. I would buy her skirts for school and she would pull out pants instead. She was an athlete, playing soccer for years and softball in middle school. When she found out she was pregnant for the second time, she told everyone that if she had a girl, she would not put her in pink. She decorated the nursery with a musical theme in greens, blues, teal and brown. Now that this little princess is old enough to assert her opinion, she chooses skirts and dresses. This is her afternoon outfit.

Life and good, I love being a Mom and a Grandmom.

May 10, 2014
A Spinning Lesson

Several days ago, I blogged about my crafty hobbies and got several responses about how great the photos were, but they didn’t have any idea what the terms were. This will be a short lesson with photos about how thread, yarn, string or even the huge rope that tie up a ship are made. Spinning is a very ancient art that involved twisting fiber by hand, spindle, spinning wheel or machine into strands or singles and then taking two or more of those singles and spin them together in the opposite direction, allowing the twist you created to hold the strands together, called plying.

Many fibers can be spun. Wools from dozens of varieties of sheep, llama, alpaca, cashmere goat, angora rabbit, yak, buffalo, whatever has hair of sufficient fiber length to twist together. Silk cocoons, cotton, hemp, flax, and synthetic fibers such as acrylics to name a few can also be spun.

I am currently working with wool processed two different ways. The red on the left is called a batt. The wool is combed out to line up the fibers and left in big clouds or sheets. The dark on the right is pencil roving. It is also combed out to line up the fibers but the fibers are then rolled into long loose ropes with no strength. These are two of the more convenient ways to process the fiber for spinning. A chunk of the batt or the roving is pulled off, fluffed apart to make it looser, called predrafting, then spun. The single that you make is much stronger that the product at the start, but even stronger if it is then plied to another single.

The red batt is Tunis wool and the dark pencil roving is a blend of Finn and Jacob wool, so three different sheep breeds represented. All of these are fairly soft and have a long fiber, making spinning very easy.

Once the spools, called bobbins are full or you run out of fiber, it can be plied.

My spinning wheel is equipped with a built in bar with two pegs that fit through the center of the bobbins to hold the full bobbins for plying. This is called a Lazy Kate. You can see in the photo, the two singles being fed back up to the top bobbin for plying.

This is a two ply yarn for knitting, crocheting, or weaving. You can see the twist because of the use of the two colors in my effort to make a tweed like yarn. The coin is an American dime to give you some reference to the thickness of the finished product.

Once it has all be plied onto the bobbin, it will be wound off and measured then washed and hung to dry before it will be ready for use. We will save knitting terms for another lesson.

For you curious or scientific minds, go grab a few inches of kitchen twine and you can reverse the process to see how it works. The plies will pull apart and you can see the twist, then if you take a ply and start unraveling it, you will see that it twists the opposite direction. It is really quite an interesting product.

Long ago, our ancestors would start with the raw fiber, wash it, comb it, spin it, then knit or weave it into a garment for warmth. My end goal is to reach the point where I can do a process called sheep to shawl where I will do everything except sheer the sheep. Last year I did help with an alpaca shearing http://wp.me/p3JVVn-mU but that is another story.

May 8, 2014
Growin’ Up

The chicks are fully integrated into the coop. The barrier has been removed, the food and water are outside, the chicks leave the coop during the day and return to perch at night. The first day they all went outdoors, 6 of them perched in the smaller part of the then divided coop with the big girls and only 4 isolated themselves. Now they mix it up on the perches, so fun to see with big and littles all scrunched together.

I was still having some concerns about the king and queen of the coop as the Olive Egger was picking on the chicks and Cogburn without most of his harem was beating up on the two Buff Orpingtons hens. Tonight after coop up time, Jim and I went out and shook up the pecking order a bit. We moved the 3 red sex link laying hens back into the coop and removed the king and queen to the cull pen and chicken tractor. Cogburn will have 4 hens and the coop has 5 hens and the 10 nine week old pullets. Once the pullets are laying and son comes to run freezer camp, Cogburn will likely be returned to the coop and the red sex links may be removed. The Olive Egger only gives us about 3 to 4 eggs a week and though it is fun to find the green eggs, she may go to camp. Maybe by removing her and the roo for a while to allow the Buff Orpington hens some rest and the chicks some time to grow some more, they may both be returned to the coop. That will have stirred up the pecking order and may drop her down a peg or two.

It is still exciting to check the nesting boxes in the evening and bring in 7 to 9 varied eggs. The sale of the extras to my knitting group generally funds my dinner at coffee shop where we gather.

Life is an adventure on our mountain farm.

May 7, 2014
New Friend

Upon my move to the mountains, I quickly met a group of knitters who became my new local friends. After I had been here for a few years, I took a drop spindle class and thus began a love of spinning. One day, leaving the public library with my husband, I saw a group of folks in one of the community rooms spinning and socializing, as I looked in they invited me to watch and join them as they meet there every Thursday that the room is available and I began attending not regularly, but met some new people.

Last Friday, one of those ladies that I did not know every well, fell down a slope behind her house and crushed her shoulder. Fortunately she had her cell phone on her and had the foresight to call a friend who is also in the group and was gotten to the hospital where she had 3 hours of surgery to repair the damage. This accident showed just what a tragedy can do within a group. Quickly a group email was sent out letting everyone know and the two friends that got her to the hospital and stayed with her while there, coordinated efforts to assist her as it was her dominate hand and she will be severely restricted for the next 8 weeks. None of her adult children live in the area, but have made arrangements to be here next week. I volunteered to help as I could with transportation, making a meal or two, or sitting with her. Today I was given the opportunity to take her lunch and stay with her for 5 hours this afternoon and she is delightful. It turns out that we were both raised in Virginia Beach, attended the same high school, though she was several years behind me. Both have 3 adult children and grandchildren. One of each of our children live in Florida and one in Northern Virginia. We both moved from the beach to the mountains as we aren’t fans of the beach and love the mountains and small towns. We are both knitters, crocheters, and spinners.

While I was there, another spinner brought two prepared evening meals for her and her nighttime helper.

She was so grateful to have someone to visit and talk to as she heals and I am grateful to have gotten to know her. Having watched my husband heal from a humerus break two years ago, I know that she was not comfortable, but she never complained. I think that I benefited from the afternoon just as much as she and know I have joined a caring group of friends.

May 6, 2014
Fiddle-dee knit

My crafting has been slow of late. The knit project that gets the most of my time is Lola Shawl by Carrie Bostick Hoge published in the most recent issue of Taproot magazine, issue 9::Breathe. The shawl as published is a triangular shawl knit from either fingering or worsted. I wanted a heavier, larger shawl than I generally make and selected Quince Lark a worsted weight yarn to make it. After about 1 skein of knitting and looking again at the photos in the magazine, I decided that I didn’t like the way the edge on the shawl lay and feeling adventurous, frogged what I had knit and started over, making the shawl a mitered square shawl instead, using the border that was on the Lola pattern. Yesterday while we were on our road trip, I decided that the stockinette part was sufficiently large and I wanted to save two skeins for the leaf pattern border. The lace pattern is an 18 stitch by 18 row pattern and to keep it a mitered square, I needed to keep my increase pattern going, breaking up the border into 3 sections instead of one continuous border. Row 1 was a piece of cake. Row 2, the wrong side row is purled and has a P2tbl stitch. No matter what I did, it didn’t work out right. Instead of looking it up, I plodded along and realized at the end of the row that it couldn’t be. This morning, I tinked the entire row of about 300 purled lace stitches and after a well doggie vet visit for our 210 pound baby, I watched a You Tube on how to do the stitch and started again. This is the most fiddlely lace pattern, but I am determined to make it work.

At night I have been spinning. I finished a little more than 2 ounces of Tunis singles in a color called Sebastian.

This is going to be plyed with a Finn/Jacob that is being spun.

I’m hoping it is going to make a tweedy yarn. There is enough of the Tunis that I hope to make enough yarn to knit a rib warmer.

The other task of the day was transplanting the tomato seedlings deeper into larger pots. They are getting a few hours of filtered sunlight each day and spending the rest of the time under the grow light. Another couple of weeks and the peppers and tomatoes will go in the garden.

May 5, 2014
Sunday Wonderful

Wow, a gorgeous day and not to be wasted indoors. Jim wanted a roadtrip to buy a riding jacket that is more appropriate for the warm days. His vintage look leather jacket is fine with the vents open up to about 70ºf but he came home last Sunday and I thought he was going to pass out. He had struggled with the bike on our gravel road and driveway and basically walked it downhill the .4 miles and was so overheated it was dangerous. To make our trip, we checked out various rides he could do or had done that keep him off of the Interstate which is so heavy with semi trucks that it is dangerous. Between the driving and the shopping we were gone for nearly 5 hours and I saw some beautiful countryside that I had never seen before.

My mother grew up in this part of the country and I often heard stories about the counties and towns, but had never seen them. I had my camera, but didn’t think to take a single photo. Near the last part of the drive, we rode for 45 miles along a beautiful creek lined with cabins and homes.

When we got home, I went over to check on the chickens, collect eggs, and give them a treat of wild mustard greens and discovered an empty coop.

For the past several evenings, there have been 3 or 4 of the chicks out at dusk, but the rest remained steadfastly indoors. Today they are all outside, merrily pecking at the grass or dust bathing in the shade.

The littles totally being ignored by the adults, much to my delight. They still segregate at night and so I am leaving the partition in place for a few more days. We are due for a couple of days of rain, so there may be more in coop time, especially for them. On Friday, they will be 9 weeks old and I think the partition will come down. I’m still at a quandry about Cogburn. I really want a self sustaining flock, but since he only has 3 hens in with him now, he is wearing them out and their backs have almost no feathers on them. They make “saddles” to protect them, but I don’t want to go that route. If I remove him, there won’t be any coop chicks unless I am able to quickly get some Buff Orpington fertilized eggs quickly when a hen goes broody. I really don’t want to do the heat lamp brooder bit again, though I know that I will have to for the meat chickens. Maybe I should just accept that is the way it will be every few years as we replace the older hens. If we had electricity out there that would run the heat lamp, I would just build a brooder coop with separate run, but we don’t.

At least, this time, I have successfully raised and introduced 10 chicks to the mix with no fatalities.

Life is an adventure on our mountain farm.

May 4, 2014
Mow day

Last night after dinner out and before it got dark, I pushed the mower two swipes around the house and in the corner that I can’t reach with the tractor in preparation for mowing this morning. The first mowing of the season, I got as close as I could and just did a patch around the house large enough to get to the cars, the chicken coop and garden without walking through knee high grass and I didn’t premow the close strips, so that grass was thick and tall last night, stalling out the mower constantly.

This morning after a trip to the Farmers’ Market for meat and spring greens and turnips, I cranked up the tractor and mowed the area we consider yard in the middle of our 30 acres. That includes around the garden, the orchard, an area that is too small to hay above the orchard, around the well head and the front, side, and back areas that are regularly mowed. With last week’s rain, it didn’t look like it had already been mowed once. The areas around the chicken fence and close around the orchard trees has to be done with the lawn mower or weed whacker and I started on them with the mower and ran out of gas. Not wanting to go out again, I quit for the day, just before Jim arrived back home from his motorcycle ride.

As soon as I came in to get the watering can to water the newly planted porch and deck pots, I spotted a hummingbird who had already found the red geraniums that I planted yesterday. Have you ever tried to take a picture of a hummingbird? You will just have to take my word for it.

It is looking more like spring everyday. The trees all have a haze of small green leaves, the dogwoods are blooming and beautiful.

Only another week or two and we should be clear of late frost and more of the garden will be planted.

Life is an adventure on our mountain farm.

May 3, 2014
May Day – ooops, almost

The past two days have been beautiful after the heavy rains of the prior days. Jim has gone off on his Harley for short rides that turned into long rides, but he is enjoying it and getting more comfortable on the big bike.

Me, I just enjoy the farm and the beautiful weather. It was still wet outside yesterday to do any playing in the dirt, but today, since the garden is still pretty soggy, I worked on the porch and deck pots. This winter was hard on the shrubs in front of the house and we lost everything except for the Barberry. It looks lonely amongst the dead Nandinas and the other shrub, I can never remember, that we should never have been sold for our climate. I have to decide whether to move the Barberry or replace the other shrubs. The front bed is under an overhang and has to be watered, it is also on the north side of the house so it receives no direct sunlight. The shade plants that I am most familiar with all are deer magnets, so I don’t want to replace the shrubs with them. Before the shrubs were put in, I had a perennial bed of English Daisies, grape Iris, and a few daylilies. After the regrading was finished a couple of years ago, I moved them to the east side of the garage and put in the shrub bed. I should have left well enough alone. I think I will just put several half barrels along the front rail and plant annual flowers in them for spring and summer color.

Today was just flower pots.

A quick trip to Lowes to fill up the back of the CRV with plants.

Petunias and trailing petunias in the front.

Geraniums with Verbena on the south deck, they match the cushions and umbrella and the hummingbirds love them. I still have a large pot that goes between the garage doors that needs something tall and spiky and a hanging pot for the shepherds crook. Last summer I never had to water, but also could never eat outside. I would rather have to water and be able to enjoy dinners on the deck this summer.

Now to go run the chicks out of the coop for some sunshine.

Life is an adventure on our mountain farm.

May 2, 2014