Tag: farm chores

The Great Chill

Our Virginia born daughter who has lived the last dozen or so years in Florida and her Florida born children arrived as an Arctic blast hit our region. The first two days they were here, we saw highs of around freezing and lows 10 or so degree lower. They are cold, to the bone cold and the next two days are colder. We awoke to 20°f (-6.67°c) and that is today’s high.

We have a wind chill advisory for the next day or so. It is snowing, mountain snow showers. The kids want snow to play in, but not this event.

When I took food and water to the chooks, the wind cut through me. I filled the PVC feeder that hangs inside the coop and realized that even the water in the coop was frozen solid. The waterer was brought in to thaw and a pan of water put in the coop. I opened the pop door, they ran out into the yard, turned and back into the coop, where they will likely stay today.
Other than trips to the coop to check for eggs and thaw water, we are going to hunker down indoors with a fire going, games to play, knitting, planning and reading.

My knitting is an Ouroboros Moebius from Margaret Radcliffe, a local knitting designer and author, a friend knit out of Green Dragon Gradient sport weight in Teal which I will treasure as this other local friend is no longer dyeing yarns. Son#1 and family gave me the Organic Seed Grower for Christmas and my two favorite seed catalogs arrived during the busy holidays and I haven’t had time to even look at them.
The day will be fueled by a pot of stew or vegetable beef soup and maybe a pan of bread.

January 7, 2015
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
A Week on the Farm – May 23, 2014

Garden weeded and mulched with spoiled hay.

The big burn.

Tree sparrow feeding time.

Lazy barn kitties in the sun.

New delux grill on sale just in time for summer cook outs.

Life is grand on our mountain farm.

May 23, 2014
Farm Chores and Relativity

For several years, we have had a burn pile of scrap wood collecting near a huge nut tree and a rock pile. It makes mowing that area difficult and haying that area impossible. A couple of years ago, I placed a Craigslist ad for free lumber and siding and had a few takers that reduced the size of the pile some. Two years ago, the neighbor that hays our fields came over and removed cedar trees that had grown up in the hayfields that we had just been mowing around and while here, he stacked the scattered parts of the pile more compactly and cleared up some rocks that were also an impediment to the mowing and haying. Every time we think to burn the pile something gets in the way. You have to dedicate an entire day to the job as it has to be watched constantly and a hose needs to be nearby to squelch any errant flames. We will plan the burn after a heavy rain only to have several days of too much wind. Today was perfect. I had mowed two brush hog widths around the pile, a couple hundred feet of garden hose were connected to each other and the yard hydrant and we set the pile ablaze.

The burn was a little slow starting but once the two sides merged, we were a bit concerned as the flames leapt dangerously close to the lower branches of the nut tree.

We hosed and watched for hours as it burned down, never both of us leaving at once. Unfortunately, much of the wood contained nails, screws and large fasteners that hold our logs together, so now that the fire is out, there is much cleanup to do so we don’t pop a tractor tire on a spike. We also discovered a pile of large rocks under the burn. They are perfect to use for the retaining wall at the end of the garden, but it will take both of us and the tractor bucket to move them and they need to cool first.

I have oft mentioned the pups. Big dog, little dog. Ahh, no, Big Dog, Bigger Dog. The Shepherd weighs about 75 lbs., the Mastiff a slight 210 lbs. She is the dominate one. She can run under him, grabs him by the legs and pulls him down, but he is so gentle and tolerant of the behaviors.

May 19, 2014
And the Day After

The snow finally ended around 5:30 p.m. but the wind picked up and the dry snow is being blown into drifts deeper than knee high. Our total was around 17-18″ (44+ cm), deep enough that a walk uphill to take pictures of the road and the house from the barn was very tiring. One of the deepest areas is a shallow rounded cut between the garage and the chicken coop that is there to drain water from the driveway away from the house and on downhill. I get a bootful every time I go over to make sure the chickens have food and water and to collect eggs, even with my Squall pants Velcroed over the outside of the barn boots which are taller than my snow boots.

Today is clear and bright with a very brisk wind blowing, but the temperature is above freezing.

Several weeks ago, we watched a news item about a snow phenomenon that I had never seen before, or at least not notices. It occurs when the wind blows across the surface of the snow, rolling it like you would a snowman, sometimes creating solid balls, sometimes a donut or pipe shape. Much to my amazement when I went over to do morning chicken chores, much more difficult in deep snow, I spotted them in the yard.

The dogs continue to romp and leap through the snow, rolling and playfully attacking each other until they are exhausted. I haven’t figured out how to get them to “plow” me a path over to the coop yet. After nearly an hour of moving snow, packing snow down and digging out one of the hay bales, I got enough hay on the snow to coax 6 of the fuzzy butts out to eat and drink. While busy adding more hay in the run to give them a bit more space to be outdoors, I heard a racket inside the coop and found two hens trying to occupy one of the six nesting boxes together to lay their morning egg. That was rather amusing but after checking under the one who had claimed it first there was only 1 cold egg, so I guess I interrupted them. The hay is re-covered as we may get up to 3 more inches tonight. That chore will have to be repeated again tomorrow. I don’t want to keep food and water in the coop. All of the cold weather and snow we have had has taken a toll on the coop’s cleanliness and even the deep litter method struggling to keep up.

February 14, 2014
Success

Yesterday it snowed off and on all day. The forecast had been for light snow showers to begin in the late afternoon and end shortly after dark. It started just as I was coming in from the chicken chores, having finally lured them out of their coop with warm mash and fresh straw over the snow. This allowed for some much needed coop “cleaning.” It snowed hard for a couple of hours, depositing a new inch or so on the snow remaining from a few days before and then we had snow showers through out the day. Nothing was accumulating on the roads so we didn’t worry about leaving the mountain. Just at sunset, the sun peeked out of the broken clouds while it was showering and I stood on the back deck in the 28°f temperature to see if we would have a snowbow.

As it appeared to be clearing, we decided to travel about 20 miles to the Mall to see American Hustle, feeling safe that the roads would be okay on the way home. The movie was pretty good, hubby liked it a lot and when it was over we exited the multiplex theater to find a mini blizzard going on. The roads were covered with about 2-3 inches of new snow and it was coming down so fast it was hard to see the road. This is the mountains and most folks up here have either all wheel drive or 4 wheel drive if they are permanent residents, but it is also the area of the state’s largest university and it seems that most of the students have cars and many of them are not appropriate for snow driving in the mountains. Even town is not level with rises and dips and as we drove through on our way back to the main highway out to our home, we watched as people, mostly college students slid around corners, fishtailed trying to climb the rises and slid as they foolishly applied brakes going down hill then applied them more firmly to thwart their slide, which caused more sliding.

Once on the main road for the last 12 miles, the road goes up two mountains and through two passes and this is where it got really dicey. There were cars that couldn’t make it up and had slid into the guardrail, some sideways, some spun around in the wrong direction, some perpendicular to the road. There were people with 4 wheel or all wheel drive that thought they were invulnerable and were passing each other and driving by the spinouts too quickly and following each other too closely. It was a terrifying ride, even as the passenger in hubby’s Xterra with the 4 wheel drive on. When we got to the last 2 miles, going up the mountain on which we live, there were only 2 sets of tracks. We made it home safely, but very tense.

To unwind, I chose to work on the lace cowl that I posted about a few days ago. I never thought that I would say that knitting lace would help me unwind, but I had added stitch markers after each lace repeat after “tinking” two half rows and it was going along smoothly. I finished all but the last three rows, staying up way past my bedtime.

Today is supposed to be warmer, the sun is out and the wind is calming. After chicken chores which involved more new straw to coax them out to the snow and preparing breakfast for me, feeding the dogs and starting some laundry, I have knit the last 3 rows and bound off. I am stoked, this is the first time ever that I have successfully finished an entire lace project of any complexity and it is beautiful. It still needs to be blocked but I can’t wait to show it off.

From this

To this

and finally to this. Now I feel confident and am thinking about trying to create a hat to go with it using the same lace pattern.

January 26, 2014