Cabin Crafted

Tag: family

  • It is too quiet

    Our family has left to return home in my car, full of pork, chicken and vegetables, canned and frozen to supplement their budget as they finish the last couple of weeks of first semester.  DIL#1 has only one more to her BFA.  Son#1 returns to work and spends any time he can budget to work on his PhD.  Grandson#1 plods along as a reluctant 4th grader.  He is so bright, but such a footdragger.  It was so great having them here for more than a night or two and look forward to a few more nights with them here at Christmas.  Not having Grandson#1 rough housing with the pups or begging for someone to come to the basement to play ping pong with him is already missed.

    They always appreciate the good food that we grow and I prepare for them.  Son#1 always gets a few tasks done that we either can’t do or find difficult.  This trip we got the weatherstripping back up on the garage doors, he does most of the work, I am the gofer and holder.  He reconnected a downspout to a gutter that gets damaged every time we have accumulating snow.  Come spring, the end of the snow and the restaining of that section of the house, we will have to hire a real gutter person to come and fix that whole section, putting snow spikes on the upper roof at the same time.  That is yet another error on the contractor’s part, not making the upper overhang longer than the lower one or at least putting the snow spikes on that upper section of roof.  Son#1 and I got the load of firewood stacked and this morning, he, Mountaingdad and I switched the futon from the loft to the basement and brought a double recliner up to the loft. Having the futon in the loft gave us an extra bed before we finished the basement and added the 4th bedroom down there and the loft is where I sit and knit or spin and Mountaingdad watches TV and writes.  Having the seating here and the extra bed in the basement greatroom made more sense, we can put 4 people down there and 4 on the main floor of the house, so two of our kids with their families.  If we have all three kids and families, we will put the adults in the bedrooms and have a great sleepover for the 5 kids in the rec room with pads and sleeping bags.

    When our daughter lived at home, she made a rule that I couldn’t begin to decorate for Christmas until the day after her birthday which is November 29th.  Sometimes that is only two days, sometimes a week.  I would comply except to maybe put up the outdoor wreaths.  After the kids left, I pulled out the first couple of boxes of decorations and put out the holiday linens, the wreaths, and my miniature village.  There are two large plastic boxes of Santas that each must be unwrapped, the shelves thoroughly dusted, statues places and though I love them, I dread that and later putting them away after Christmas.  We will wait to get a tree for a few more weeks and then decide whether to to go to a cut your own location or try to find a live tree that can be planted after Christmas.  We have a small grove of them between the house and the barn from Christmas past.  Until we decide, I always put up a 2 foot artificial tree with Hallmark mini ornaments and lights on my jelly cupboard between the dining room and living room.  The decorating will continue for a few more days, saving the tree and enjoying the rest.

    Love my family and our mountain home.

  • Joyful Holiday

    The snow lingers, three inches of wet snow on Wednesday took out the power to thousands in this region, including us. Son #1 and I stacked the cord of wood that had been randomly tossed out of the truck, placing the old wood on top. We got fires going in both the wood stove and the Rumford fireplace, so the house remained comfortable. As it was above freezing that morning, the roads were OK so we all went into town for a few forgotten supplies and lunch. Once back from town with the realization that it might be a couple of days without power, we debated how we would do Thanksgiving. The gas grill with it’s side burner was dragged around in front of the garage to a more level and convenient spot, a pound and a half of the Moroccan pork was dumped into the small cast iron dutch oven and set on the now hot wood stove to heat for dinner while the debate wore on. Should we split and grill the pasture raised turkey or wait til Friday or even today to have Thanksgiving? The temperature fell, Son#1 took Mountaingdad’s hunting rifle and went to sit in the hayfield rock pile and wait for a deer. We stayed in the house and kept the fires going. As it darkened, we cut winter squash and root veggies dusted with seasoning and olive oil, wrapped in a foil packet and tossed it on the grill. A jar of the home canned applesauce, one of the kraut I had made and some kimchee were put out, the oil lamps lit, table set and we awaited the hunter’s return. As we were about to sit down to a great meal cooked without the benefit of electricity in a cozy house, lit by oil lamps, the power came back on and the Thanksgiving cooking debate ended.
    The hunter has sat the rockpile every morning and evening and nothing of sufficient size with a safe clear shot has appeared.

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    If you enlarge the photo, you may see his orange clad head hiding in the photo.
    Thanksgiving meal was well worth thanks. Vegetables from our garden, turkey from a local farm, homemade rolls, relishes and pies were enjoyed as we sat in the warm cozy house with fires burning to supplement the heat pump as the temperature for that day and the next hovered in the twenties,  with flurries and light snow fall.
    The snow will likely disappear today with rising temperatures for a few day before the next round of wet cold.
    We are thoroughly enjoying having one of our kids and family here for these days and wish the others could be here also. Today we celebrate from a distance, the birthday of Daughter.
    Loving life on our mountain farm.

  • Thankful

    Today is my thankfulness post as tomorrow I will be silent, cooking and enjoying family time and NO, none of us will be patronizing stores opening on Thursday for Black Friday sales, nor will we join the throngs shopping on Friday.
    I am thankful for safe journeys yesterday though long and traffic filled. Our return trip took about 7 hours to make the 4+ hour trip including an hour to travel 7 miles due to nighttime construction on the interstate. We beat the weather home.

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    This morning’s beauty.

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    For a silly grandson and the beast who love each other.
    For having part of our family here to enjoy this week.
    For delicious food, mostly grown locally.
    For frequent contact with our other children, my 91 year old Dad and my siblings.
    For wood in the garage to keep fires burning today for warmth and coziness.
    For health.
    Wishing you a Happy Thanksgiving from the snowy Virginia mountains.

  • Treasures

    The beds were all made with fresh sheets, blankets, and quilts in anticipation of our family. The house vacuumed and dusted, bathrooms scrubbed, and even organized and cleaned up my “space” for crafts. That space is one of the dormers on the front of the house, the other two are in the soaring ceiling of the great room. A couple of years ago, we contracted with a local wood artist to make me a walnut table to fit the space for my use as a desk and a sewing table. The lamp on it, a Christmas gift from Mountaingdad years ago, is hand thrown pottery.

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    We like Trev’s woodworking so much that once the basement was finished, we bought another of his tables for there.

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    Much of our furniture is loved family pieces, handed down, or local craft work. The basement also has 3 walnut burl stools made by Phoenix Hardwoods, also a local craftsman.

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    The little narrow wall hiding the side of the refrigerator from the front door begged for this little cedar bench, handcrafted in Appomattox, Virginia.

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    It sits beside an antique treadle sewing machine with a leather drive band and it works, even when the electricity is out. We have Mountaingdad’s mothers cedar chest as a coffee table, a little pine chest from my grandmother’s family as a side table and other similar pieces with stories of our family attached.  The great room also has a handcrafted rocking chair of reclaimed woods and an oak jelly cupboard from a Tennessee craftsman that we bought to store my pottery at least 30 years ago.
    I love the warmth of wood, it’s a good thing since we live in a log home with log and wood siding interior walls.
    The morning was spent cooking pumpkins for holiday pies. The small Seminole pumpkins we grew are perfect for pie, sweet and a good texture. Unsure how much one would yield, I baked 3 and ended up with 8 cups of fresh cooked pumpkin.

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    Way more than I need for a couple of pies so the extra was frozen in 2 cup bags. Four cups seasoned with freshly ground spices await the eggs, sugar, and milk to be poured into pie crusts and baked on Wednesday afternoon. The aroma of cinnamon, ginger, and cloves mingling with the vanilla scent in the simmer pot and the Morrocan spice on the slow cooking pork has made the house smell so of the upcoming holidays.
    We look forward to having one of our children and family with us for Thanksgiving.
    Lovin’ our mountain farm life.

  • Doing What I Love the Most

    An early start to a busy day, fueled by my super oatmeal with chia seed, walnuts and honey, I’m saving the eggs for the family visit and to send some home with our student family. Prep work for their visit requires a good house scrubbing as Son#1 shows signs of allergy to the pups. Beds which are left unmade to discourage stink bug hiding, must be given clean sheets, blankets and quilts. They are threatening us with accumulating snow on Wednesday or Thanksgiving, so wood must be stacked on the back stoop for the wood stove and the garage or front porch for the fireplace.
    While Mountaingdad still slumbered, bread was started. I had nearly forgotten what a pleasure it is to make bread. I used to make all of our bread but we have been buying artisan loaves at the Farmers’ Market for a while now, but it is up to $9/loaf and with five of us eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner for 4 1/2 days, it seemed much more economical to make it. Two loaves and a pan of rolls are in the works.

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    The kneading bowl was a Christmas gift from Mountaingdad, handmade in November 2006 of cherry wood by Glendon Royal. It was often used in the past and brought out of display for bread making today. There is too much dough in it to allow a good initial mix and rise, so another treasure was put back into use.

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    This enormous hand thrown pottery bowl was thrown by Rob Podd of the Poddery. It is one of my early pieces from them. We met them at a craft show as they were just getting started and with our purchase of a small dish were given an invitation to their first annual kiln opening to be held the weekend before Thanksgiving which falls on or near my birthday. It became a tradition to go for my birthday and let me pick out a piece of pottery as my gift. There are mugs, a honey pot, plates, bowls, pitchers, and casseroles added a piece at a time over the years, all treasured, used and loved. This piece isn’t dated. Later at the request of the opening guests they began dating each piece. The scramble to get a piece warm from the kiln was fun as folks leaned and shouted to be able to have first refusal on the next piece touched. I don’t know if they still hold the openings or not, we live too far away now for the annual visit and I have all the pottery I need. We only missed two openings, the year I was over due with our daughter and hubby dared not take me 2 hours from home and the hospital and the year they didn’t have it because Karen was due momentarily with one of their children.
    Such memories. The bread is rising for most of the day to make it light enough for the grandson’s tastes. Sandwiches, French toast, dinner rolls for Thanksgiving, I await drooling over the thought.
    It is time to get back to mopping, scrubbing, sweeping, bed making all while enjoying the bergamot and vanilla infused water in the tiny sauce size crock pot simmering and filling the house with delightful scents until the bread can fill the house with it’s enticing aroma.

  • Return

    Sunday eve found Son#1, Grandson#1, and me motoring back to Northern Virginia.  The original plan had been to work on the scaffolding and sharpen knives on Saturday, deal with the meat chickens on Sunday, and have some hiking or other recreation on Monday, Columbus Day, and then I was going to take them home.  Friday as Son#1 was preparing to leave work for home and then the bus trip here, he realized that he wasn’t off on Monday, but Grandson#1 didn’t have school.  Plans changed, we accomplished the Saturday and Sunday plan and took off on Sunday eve for their house.  I spent two nights there to provide care for Grandson#1.  Leaving for home early this morning and encountering much semi traffic and intermittent rain, I decided to take a non interstate route home, at least most of the way.

    The route was a beautiful drive, though it took about 90 minutes longer and I drove through a few very severe storms.  The route took me through a good portion of the poultry raising parts of Shenandoah.  This is why I humanely raise and kill my own chickens and buy our turkey from a local free range farmer.

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    This is one of hundreds of poultry “houses” along the route. The sign that I tried to capture said, “Absolute no trespassing, no visitors.”

    This is what the inside of a “free range” building looks like. Photo from the internet, source unknown.

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    A poultry processing factory, it covered about 2 blocks. The entire town smelled like death and stench.
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    One of half a dozen trucks I passed going to the factory, each with 120 of these cages so low the turkeys can’t stand in them and each cage holding about a dozen turkeys.
    The birds beaks were clipped so they couldn’t harm each other.  This is grocery store poultry.

    On a more pleasant note, though the rain was intense at times, part of the route paralleled the Maury River.

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    The leaves were beautiful, the river sometimes well below the road like the picture above and at other times it was only feet from the edge of the road.  It was a certainly a prettier trip than the interstate, but the trip expanded to 6 hours instead of the usual 4 1/2.  Was it worth avoiding the semis?  I guess it was, but I’m glad to be home again.

     

     

     

  • It Isn’t Over ‘Til The Fat Lady Sings. . .

    Or the garden quits producing.  The tomatoes are long gone, the Tomatillos and peppers are making up for it.  Much to my surprise, the late planting of bush beans is producing.

    I returned from my Retreat and the 12 hours of driving in 2 days, the babysitting and errands with more jars, lots of them.  I have been taking jars to NoVa for three years, full of canned goodness and have brought a few home, but today I have enough to keep me from a purchase for a while at least.

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    And bigger jars purchased for the winter storage of bulk goods.

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    I left NoVa early today and arrived home in time for lunch with Mountaingdad and wandered off to chicken chores and a garden check and was greeted with . . .

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    Peppers, 5 kinds, tomatillos and beans.  This was inducement to pull out the canner again and pickle 4 pints of Jalapenos, 5 cups of XXX Habanero/Tomatillo sauce, blanch and freeze 3 meals of beans and a quart of bell pepper slices.  The tiny hot little peppers that I bought as cayenne are being added to a bottle of vinegar as I harvest them for a couple of smaller bottles of pepper vinegar.

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    The more I put by, the more we will enjoy this winter and the more we can share.  The garden has been good to us this year.  I still plan to put up a few more pints of applesauce and a few quarts of apple slices in juice, make a gallon of cider vinegar, as much green salsa and XXX hot sauce as I have Tomatillos and peppers, pints of pickled Jalapenos until the frost hits.  The winter squash and pumpkins continue to spread and grow.  Hopefully, below all of those leaves we will find a good harvest of Buttercup squash, Seminole pumpkins and yellow and white sweet potatoes that were engulfed a couple of weeks ago.

    Lovin’ life on our mountain farm.  It is good to be home.

  • The Outing

    After traveling home from “The Retreat,” I helped Son#1 move scaffolding and clean up spilled and dripped stain until it was dark. Mountaingdad drove his car, Son#1, Grandson #1 and I drove in my car to town for an 8:30 p.m. burger before the 3 of us left for Northern Virginia. Once in town and too late on a Sunday night to do anything about it, we discovered I had a headlight out so we switched cars, moving bags of clothes, jars of canned goodies and eggs. We arrived at their house after 1 a.m. Today I am guardian/babysitter as Grand#1 has no school.
    We are all slow and sluggish today, but Son#1 was gotten to work, most of the weekend homework done except for some social studies as the book was left at school, and guitar practice done. Grand#1 and I went to lunch then to The Meadowlark Botanical Gardens.

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    We arrived as a light rain started and decided to enjoy the walk anyway. Hubby’s car had an umbrella and we each had light jackets and off we went.

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    Wet walks, huge Koi, turtles, pagodas, sculptures, old cabins, fall flowers and foliage made for a pleasant afternoon, well worth the combined $5 admission and better for us than caving in to the sluggishness at least I feel today.
    Tomorrow morning I head home to do some more staining and regular farm chores.

  • 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.

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

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    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.

  • 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.