Blog

The Wait

A few months ago, I mailed a padded envelope with a skein of yarn to someone who purchased it from me. It was just mailed first class, no tracking number. The recipient was very patient and finally after about 3 weeks reported to me that the package had never arrived. Bewildered, I refunded her money and told her I didn’t understand as I had mailed it from the Post Office window, but things do get lost. I felt badly though as she needed this specific yarn to finish a project and I had been in that situation before. Several more weeks went by and the package reappeared in my mailbox with postage due of under a dollar. I contacted the lady and told her the package had come back to me and was being mailed again to her. She offered to repay me, but I just sent it on to her. At the Post Office, the clerk was very rude to me, though the mistake had been theirs. I added more than necessary postage and sent it off again, marched out of the building a bit angry and frustrated, went to open the car door and something caught my eye and I slammed the corner of the door into my forehead raising a goose egg and creating a small cut, just adding to my frustration.

About 10 days ago, I mailed two packages, having learned my lesson, I got tracking numbers and emailed the recipients of the numbers. That night, I ordered something for me and got a tracking number. The next day, I mailed two more packages and got tracking numbers.

The first two items were to be delivered last Thursday, but the tracking showed they were stalled at a processing facility and ended up not being delivered until Saturday. The item I was expecting was due Saturday and again seemed stalled at a processing facility and arrived late this afternoon. The remaining two packages, the last shipped, were the first to be received.

With customer service that is rude and not meeting the date they project for delivery, it is no wonder that the Post Office is failing.

I still have two pending shipments due me. I wonder how long they will take.

February 25, 2014
The Dump

We live a rural life in our retirement, in a county that has only about 15000 residents. Since we bought our property, several suburban changes have been made along the main Route that bisects the county, installing town water instead of wells to most of the residents along that route. To dispose of your garbage, if you live on a main paved secondary road, there is garbage pick up once a week. If you live off of the main route or the paved secondary roads, you still have well water and you pay a mandatory monthly fee for the privilege of taking your garbage to one of 4 collection sites in the county. We fall in the later category.

This is a fairly recent development, within the last decade or two and before that, the rural method was to have a garbage pile on your property or find a place that no one would complain and dump it. Taking your garbage to the collection center is a hard pill for some of the folks up here to swallow and many have the mindset to never throw away anything and to take anything that is free, because maybe someday you will find a use for it. As a result there are properties that regardless of how close their neighbor is, have junked cars, dead tractors, collections of plastic yard toys and yard ornaments, piles of half rotted lumber, barrels and buckets of who knows what, old tubs or toilets, you name it and it is in their yard, creating an eyesore. Don’t get me wrong, that is not the norm. You see many neat well kept farms as well.

Another facet of cattle raising land is the use of old tires to hold down tarps over silage or to line the edge of a difficult to fence area as the cows won’t step inside or over them.

Our 30 acres was used to graze cattle, then miniature horses prior to our purchase. The land had been rented out to various farmers over the years. And our land has a natural sinkhole with a creek running down into it and then disappearing into the a cave. Two edges of the largest hayfield had well over a hundred tires placed in an alternating double row, just in the edge of the woodlot. The sink hole was a repository of many years of dumping, right off the edge of the cliff, so that the junk fell near and into the creek. This wasn’t just cans and bottles, but an old wringer washer, part of a car, an old stove, a water heater, rolls of rusted fencing and more tires. This bothered us, a lot, and every weekend that we could visit our land before construction, we came armed with boxes of huge garbage bags, work gloves and boots and we loaded and hauled sacks and sacks of glass and plastic out of the pile.

Once we brought our trailer up to store, we started collecting the tires and had to pay to drop them off, not at the nearest collection center, but the central one in the county. Each tire costing us $1.50 to leave it.

Two summer’s ago, a neighbor, Jim and I with our tractor and the neighbor’s long steel cable, spent a couple of day hauling the big junk out of the sinkhole and piling it up in the edge of the closest field where one of the local men came and loaded all of the metal onto his truck to take to the metal reclaiming site for whatever money he could get for it.

We thought when that was hauled away that we were done with the worst of it and had done a part to help clean up the environment and local groundwater.

When the leaves fell this fall, we noticed another tire in the edge of the woods, then another, and another. Now that the snow has melted and before we get any more rain or snow, we hooked up the trailer, put on our work clothes and dragged 15 more tires out of the edge of the woods. We are afraid to say that we have finally gotten them all, because that might jinx us and we will find more. For now, the sinkhole, the barn, and the edge of the woods look better. We will never get all of the old rusted cans and broken glass from the edge of the sinkhole, but hopefully, each year, Mother Nature is dumping a new load of leaves to compost over them and they are settling into the earth.

Life is good on our mountain farm.

February 24, 2014
Potions or Kitchen Magic

When our eldest son, RT was about the age his son is now, 8 years old, he would make potions. Fortunately, even 30 years ago, I was conscious of what was in our house and had very few scary products. He would generally start with a good dash of Dr. Bonner’s Liquid soap and add various kitchen powders, toothpaste or whatever he could sneak out. Twice, he and his neighbor buddy made a potion that involved some hot peppers pilfered from my garden and for a few hours, we had two miserable boys. Note, I said, twice as they didn’t learn the first time.

I had nearly forgotten about those times, when one afternoon, late in our house construction, found me on the new back deck with a makeshift table, a hot plate and a huge pot, making gallons of petroleum free floor wax for the newly installed hardwood and pine floors. He saunters out and smugly looked at me and said, “Look who is making potions now!” We both had a good laugh over that.

Today was potion day again, making two batches of lotion bars, laundry soap, and dishwasher powder. I like to know what goes into my products that I use, be able to pronounce all of the ingredients and know that they are safe.

Making them myself, satisfies my requirements and is so much less expensive than the products in the store.

We are still good on handcrafted soap, so that doesn’t need to be done again soon, except I have a friend who wants to learn, so we may make a batch anyway.

Life is good on our mountain farm.

February 22, 2014
Make It Better

As I sold all of my interchangeable knitting needles and ordered fixed circular knitting needles, I needed storage. Interchangeables come in clever compact cases that hold the tips and the cables, but fixed circulars come in individual packages and when they arrive, I will have 2 lengths of 10 sizes, a potential snake’s nest if put in a basket. I have spent a couple of hours searching through Etsy looking for a solution. I know what I want, something that resembles a CD case and I was willing to pay someone else to design and make it, but I couldn’t find anything that wasn’t either a roll or much larger than I desired.

My other desire was a means to make my favorite go to bag more organized.

This bag is a leather tote from Duluth Trading Company, it is my travel tote, my knitting bag, carries my wallet, tablet, notepad, small case with lotion bar, lip balm, comb, pens, camera, and a shawl or scarf. The bag is 12 x 4 x 13.5 with a zipped top. Because of its size, it swallows my tiny wallet and keys. One of my friends used to have a business making bags and she put a liner in them that had pockets around the perimeter. I sew, but my machine isn’t heavy enough to sew through the liner and the leather. After approaching this friend, she agreed to help me sew the lining in if I made what I wanted.

Today turned into a craft day as I tackled these two problems after some planning last night and a trip to the fabric store today.

First, I tackled the liner. I bought a firm drapery fabric, measured twice, cut once and formed just what I wanted. It is temporarily basted into the bag until I can get with my friend to sew it in place.

The other project was accomplished with quilting quarters, scraps from the bag liner, and a few inches of synthetic leather. I still need to sew the button and leather loop on, but it is colorful and I think will fulfill my needs. The supplies for both projects ended up costing less than a needle case on Etsy that would have been less satisfactory to me.

February 21, 2014
Neglecting friends

As I have posted before, we don’t travel much, but somehow have found ourselves away from home as a couple for more than 40 days this past year, plus another couple of weeks where I alone went to help out one or the other of our kids for a few days to a week. This has cut into my friend time. My friend time is going to Knit Night on Wednesday night or Spunsters (my spinning group) on Thursday afternoon. This week we aren’t snowed in, we aren’t away from home and I committed to going to both groups and enjoying the company of those friends.

On Knit Night, we meet at a local coffee shop, they kindly let us take over a huge table from about 5 pm until we go home. Most of us buy dinner, we sit and socialize, share patterns, trade yarn, tell tales and knit. The core group is the same with assorted others that come when they can and we always have a good time. A couple of the husbands will come and sit off at another table and read or if our group isn’t too big or too naughty, may sit with us for a while.

The Spunsters, meet in a conference room at the local library. Some bring their wheels, some knit or crochet, do finish work on weaving projects or just sit and visit. This group is at the mercy of the conference room use and sometimes we convene at someone’s home for a potluck.

Both groups challenge me to keep learning the fiber crafts and to improve my skills and socialize. The spinning group has many fiber raisers and we help out during shearing times which is a season that is starting.

My current spinning project is a full pound of undyed Sheltland Wool. I don’t know what it will become. We will have to see how many yards of yarn it becomes then I will decide and dye it for a handknit, homespun project.

My current knitting project is a cardigan sweater for me, the pattern is Estelle from Quince and Co. with their Lark yarn in Delft blue. This is a cute pattern with a ribbed empire waist and feather and fan bands down the front and as a bottom band. Their yarn is a delight to knit.

Then queued up is a cowl, either the Honey Cowl or the Basic Lace Cowl from this Unplanned Peacock dk weight in Botanical colorway which I bought after one of my knitting friends and I saw a very colorful weather map of the potential winter storm aimed at us. We enjoyed a playful banter with Natasha, the owner/dyer of the yarn about the beautiful colors.

It is great to reconnect after a fall and winter of absence and sporadic opportunities to see these friends.

February 20, 2014
Spring time? We wish!

A week ago it started to snow and snow it did for 30 hours, a record breaking snow, more than a foot and a half. Last night it rained and this morning, the remaining snow was spotty.

We loaded the dogs in the Xterra and drove an hour southwest of here to the Harley Davidson shop to get more body armor for Jim’s jacket. He wants desperately to ride, but the roads are still too wet and muddy. Ranger was allowed to go into the shop with us and as usual, his 200 pound bulk attracts attention and everyone wants to have their picture taken with him, to give him love which he reciprocates with kisses and smiles. Shadow was leashed and made it as far as the foyer before her shyness kicked in and she began to tremble. One clerk came out and gave her some loving too and she finally came in too, but hid behind me. The dogs love the rides and the plain hamburgers that they get as a treat.

Today is 60ºf outside, very springlike. While we were gone, it melted most of the remaining snow.

We have one more day of this then it rains and cools down again with another snow storm due early to mid week next week. We will take what we can get.

Yesterday afternoon, I went over to the coop and pen to spread scratch grain for the chickens and there was one head too many. A small 5ish pound opossum was in with the chickens scratching for food. He showed no fear of me, hissing and growling at me as I tried to encourage him out of the pen with a garden stake. He just hunkered down in the farthest corner under the pen. With a pitchfork, I dragged him out and penned him down, then grabbed his tail and hurled him as far from the pen as possible. He landed in the snow, got up and shook off and waddled away. This afternoon when we got home, I went over to see if he had returned and to collect eggs. In taking the above photo, I managed to drop the basket with the 3 eggs and broke them all. Three more hens were in the coop, so there may yet be a few more today.

Life is an adventure on our mountain farm.

February 19, 2014
Fiber Arts and Needles

Knitters and spinners are picky about their equipment. They find what they like and are ardent supporters of their favorites. Sometimes it takes a while to settle into what “works” best for them.

I am no exception. When I was just picking up knitting again, I would buy inexpensive needles in the size I needed for the project at hand. As I got to be a better knitter, I learned that better needles lasted longer and were smoother to use, but I have never been a fan of metal needles, they make my hands hurt and have an off odor. I also have learned that I prefer the shorter 3-4 inch length tips to the longer 5-6 inch one again as they don’t seem to aggravate my arthritis in my hands as much. One of the products that has come out in more recent years are needles with interchangeable tips so that you need fewer needles and can change the cord to suit the project. I loved interchangeable tips until my hand strength lessened due to age and the aforementioned arthritis and I could no longer tighten the connectors enough to even knit through a single row on a sweater without them coming partially or fully unscrewed. Reluctantly, I advertised and sold my interchangeable sets on the social network for lovers of needle crafts, Ravelry. I have thought about this problem more and more in the past year and have wondered why the designers of this style needle don’t use reverse threaded connectors, so that as you knit, you automatically tighten rather than loosen the connection.

The problem has sent me off in search of non metal, 3-4″ fixed circular needles in a size small enough to make a hat and long enough to knit a sweater or do the magic loop technique to close up the top of a hat. The funds from selling my beloved interchangeables will just cover the needles in the most common sizes I use in two lengths, so now instead of having one compact case of tips and cables, I will have a basket full of needles.

The hand issues have also forced me to seek crochet hooks with larger shafts or the Clover brand that has the butterscotch colored flattened plastic handle with a thumb pad.

I have never gotten adept at using double pointed needles and have told my daughter that I would teach her to use them, but I feel like I’m playing pick up sticks with them.

It is all our different opinions that keep the companies in business. Now I’m off to find an Etsy shop that sells a circular needle case that isn’t notebook sized to store my fixed circulars in once they come. And to work on my sweater with the craft store metal needle with long tips until my new ones come..

The pattern is Estelle, the yarn Quince and Co. Lark in Delft. At least I can still knit.

February 18, 2014
Beauty and Hazards

The snow pack is thinning. Our neighbor that hays our fields for the bulk of the hay came down after dark Saturday night with his behemoth tractor with climate control cab and plowed out our driveway. As he was the one who constructed it for us a couple of summers ago, he knows generally where it is under the snow. This allowed us to bring both vehicles back down to the house. To change things up a bit, this morning we drove into the university town to a little local diner for breakfast. The nearest parking is across Main Street and slightly uphill and though the access was cleared, the parking spaces have been trod by many feet in the past half week and between each parking space is an ice slick. Both of us had slides, fortunately with no fall just trying to get out of the car and to the cleared walkway.

Yesterday as the roads seem to be mostly cleared, we took a jaunt 2000 more feet up our mountain to see more snow.

If you ever watched “Dirty Dancing,” this is the “lodge” in the movie, also know as Mountain Lake Lodge, a hotel with adjacent cabins. Though it is closed this time of year, except for special weekend events, it is still beautiful.

The elevation there is about 4400 feet and the ridge has trees frosted generally from frozen fog that forms.

The property on the near edge of this valley belonged to my grandfather’s family, though when we bought our farm, I had no idea that it was literally walking distance away. My hubby teases that I did know, but I had never even been to this county or seen that area at the time.

As we were going up to see the lake and the hotel in the snow, we saw this. It is not our car, there was no one in it, but this is a lesson on why you don’t drive a 2 wheel drive vehicle on snowy, icy mountain roads. The only thing keeping this car from tumbling on down the mountain side is the tree behind it that it hit as it slid over the embankment. Hopefully, no one was hurt. It will take a thaw and a creative, daredevil tow truck driver to get that one out.

That is the mountain on which the red car, the hotel, and our home are located.

Fortunately, this snow did not take out our power, so all of the prep we did for it does not have to be done again for the ice storm due tonight that more than likely will steal all of the conveniences from us for at least a day or two.

Life is good on our mountain farm.

February 17, 2014
We Wish We had Known

For our homestead, we wanted and built a log home. After much internet research, visiting a log home show and attending as many of the workshops as we could squeeze into one afternoon, we sketched a rough floor plan and started looking for the log home company from which we would buy our home kit. It turned out one of the companies was only three towns south east of us and it would save us a ton of shipping costs. This company would take our floor plan and work up the plans and then put together the kit. Once the plans had been adjusted to fit furniture, add a coat closet and a few other minor changes, the kit was ordered, 4 tractor trailer loads. We probably would have saved more money if we had hired a company that put the kit together and built the house.

We had hired a local contractor that our son who general contracted for us had located and interviewed. He wasn’t our first choice, but the first choice required that the crew would have had to be picked up each morning and returned home each evening, almost an hour each way as they are Amish and then they didn’t have a truck. It turns out that the one we hired had never built a log home and he was a master at spending our money, trying to get us to add more and more to the house. He also had no experience with a water catchment system that we wanted for animal watering.

He made so many mistakes that have cost us. The house design has a dog-run dormer on the back side.

This design gives us much more living area upstairs in our loft, master bedroom and master bath, but it results in a steep metal roof that is set back from a narrow metal roof. The water catchment system involves gutters with downspouts that feed into pvc pipe around the foundation of the house and leading over to three 1500 gallon concrete tanks joined together off the southwest corner of the house and downhill.

Part of the problems are not his incompetence totally, but he didn’t have the foresight to envision some of the problems that his techniques would produce. Instead of subcontracting out the roof installation, he decided he could do it himself, more money in his pocket. He failed to put snow spikes on the upper roof which isn’t an issue except once or twice a year when the snow piles up on the roof then slides off the offset upper roof, hits the narrow lower roof, taking out the lower gutter which shouldn’t even be there as most of the rain hits the upper roof and the downspouts from the upper gutter should feed the tanks. The snow then slides off the lower roof and crashes on the heat pump unit. After having it repaired 4 times in one winter season, our son built the shed roof over it.

Though that solves the problem, it could have been avoided with the snow spikes or having moved the heat pump unit around the corner to the west side of the house.

His solution to the water catchment system had an overflow pipe that was a full 18 inches above the top of the water storage tanks and there was no way to get water out of the tanks. This resulted in us digging the tops of the tanks out a few summers ago and our son redesigned the system, we drained the tanks and he climbed inside the southern most one to drill a hole in the lower southeast side to install a water line that we ran in a trench more than 400 feet to a downhill yard hydrant that is gravity fed. He also drilled an overflow hole in the upper southeast side to install an overflow pipe that drains off to a rock pile on the edge of a low spot that is outside of our hay field area. That solved that problem at additional expense to us.

Other issues on the inside of the house, I have blogged about previously, such as putting the water to the utility room on the sheltered north wall instead of the sun basted south wall and hall wall that had to be shifted a foot by our son so that the stove and refrigerator did not touch in the kitchen.

When we bought the logs, they had a special that gave us a “free” garage. “Free” meant the logs, not the slab, roof and extra door. We thought this might be good to have, but we virtually never parked our cars in the garage, instead it stores tools, coolers, ladders, etc. most of which could have been stored in the basement that he also talked us into adding. The basement has finally been converted into a rec room and a 4th bedroom, but there is still a huge area that houses the heating/cooling and water heater and that area could have been fitted out with shelving and a workbench for the tools and coolers at a much lower cost than the “free” garage.

Hindsight is 20/20 but many things would have been done differently if we had known. If you ever plan a house, try to envision the problems that design can cause and check references on your contractor. We are fortunate to have a son that could see and repair some of the issues.

February 16, 2014
Almost Heaven SW Virginia

My apologies to John Denver, but this is a beautiful area. For reference, this county abuts West Virginia and we live only a short handful of miles from the border. The county is rural, agricultural; raising mostly beef cattle and Christmas trees with a few horse farms in the mix. I have often posted about our homestead farm, but today I am taking you on a photo tour of our “town.”

The county boasts 3 standing covered bridges all crossing the same creek that runs about 2 more miles beyond this bridge owned by the town and then it disappears into the earth to resurface in the New River that traverses 45 miles through the county. Two of the bridges are privately owned, this one and one private one are closed to driving across them.

The town once had a population of about 5000 people, complete with hotels, taverns, businesses and homes. In 1902 there was a tremendous fire that destroyed all but three buildings of the town, which was never reconstructed as it was before. The actual town now has a hardware store, a small restaurant, a general store/gas station, a post office, about 3 dozen houses, a heating contractor and several churches. On the fringes, there is the old school, now a community center, the rescue squad, volunteer fire house, a plumbing contractor and the Ruritan Park. The entire county only has about 15000 residents.

The farms are mostly old family homes, many built several generations ago and remodeled to add modern kitchens and indoor plumbing. The variety of barns is a source of beauty to the area.

This gravel road leads through a pass and at the top of the pass, the Appalachian trail crosses the road.

This is the remains of a Civil War era house that though abandoned and having no windows remaining, was still standing when we moved here 7 years ago. Time and weather have taken it’s toll and this last foot and a half of snow two days ago brought it almost to the ground.

The top of our mountain has one of only two natural lakes in the state. This one is surrounded by a conservancy that owns the grand stone hotel featured in the movie “Dirty Dancing” that was filmed mostly at that location. There are many hiking trails in this conservancy and the Appalachian trail crosses again only a couple of miles from the hotel.

The area is beautiful at all seasons, but especially now covered in snow.

February 15, 2014