Cabin Crafted

Tag: Flowers

  • Olio- 8/6/2019

    Olio: a miscellaneous collection of things

    I arrived home yesterday morning, having left son’s house at 6:15 a.m. when he and grandson left to catch the vanpool for son to go to work and grandson to begin another basketball camp hosted by the University coach. We had the vet due at the farm about an hour and a half later. The big guy can no longer load and unload and he needed a couple of vaccines and a snap test. Since she was going to be here, we had her look at the German Shepherd who has a lump on her snout and also needed the snap test done. Both dogs are heartworm free and the cytology on the snout lump showed no infection so we are on watch mode there. The big guy loves most people, doesn’t mind the vet, seeming to enjoy the extra attention. The German Shepherd is skittish as they can be and has to be on a leash and wearing a soft muzzle for most of her exam, but she allowed the attempt to draw fluid from the lump without too much squirming.

    After that visit, I felt like I had already done a full day so we went to town to run errands and get lunch only to find that a huge area housing many of the non fast food places were experiencing a power outage that ended up lasting well into the evening. We decided to get a bit farther away from there and stopped at Zaxby’s. The clerk at the counter looked like either a recent retiree or soon to be retiree. After taking our order, he said, “I guess I could give you the senior discount.” We didn’t know they had one and I quipped, we certainly are eligible. He smirked and said, “I bet I have a year or two on you, I will be 61 in September.” Well, I couldn’t resist letting him know that I have more than a decade on him and hubby stating that he was older than I was. That made me feel good for the day.

    This morning, we set out to get a newspaper, chicken feed, and dog food, and they were just putting out fresh produce at the community store. I know it isn’t local nor organic, but my tomatoes aren’t doing well, so we purchased a 25 pound box of tomatoes to bring home. After several hours of standing coring, peeling, chopping, cooking, and canning, I no longer feel young. I got about 2/3 of them done, cored the rest and put them in the freezer to finish with some from the garden tomorrow. My water bath canner holds 6 pints or 8 half pints. The first batch was herbed tomato sauce and ended up with 8 pints, so two were packed in wide mouth jars and will go in the freeze, the other 6 were canned. Batch two was pizza sauce and there was enough to fill 9.5 half pint jars, 8 were canned, one will go in the freezer and the remaining quarter pint fit in an open jar of pizza sauce in the freezer to be used first.

    The remaining tomatoes will probably be made into spaghetti sauce and a few half pints of it cooked down to more pizza sauce. We do enjoy homemade pizza with my sauce, local mozarella and local Italian sausage.

    Daylily season if my favorite flower season. Of the dozen or so varieties, this one, call Sear’s Tower, given to me by a friend, is the last one blooming, the rest finished a couple of weeks ago.

    The old timers here, have a saying that every day of August that has fog will produce a snow during winter. I am not superstitious, if it were true we would never get out this winter. This is the 6th of August and we have had dense fog every morning so far.

    Once the fog cleared and I was standing at the kitchen sink dealing with tomatoes, I looked out to see a flock of 8 Tom turkeys grazing across the back yard.

    The broody Oliver egger won’t give up. I have tried cold water, isolating her from the nesting boxes and other hens for 48 hours and nothing has worked. This is the third time she has become broody this summer, stopping and laying for a week or so then going back to broodiness. I give up. I guess she will give up eventually, I take eggs many times a day so she is sitting on empty nests. I think this fall, I will purchase 4 Buff Orpington chicks if I can get them and raise them over the fall so they will lay next spring and not try to raise more than that, they will provide enough eggs for us. In the spring, a small flock of Freedom Ranger or similar meat birds that grow to full size in only a couple of months will be purchased and raised separately from the egg laying hens. The cost of pasture raised chicken at the farmers’ market, since we have the facilities to raise them, makes it worth our time and effort.

  • Olio – May 8, 2015

    Olio: a miscellaneous collection of things.

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    Hardened off veggie plants waiting for the garden that isn’t ready for them.

    The last free range time until we get the fencing up around the garden.  The fluffy critters ate half of the sweet potato plants I put in earlier this week.

    The annual spring Turkey dance.  Flocks of 14 or more with the Tom fluffed up with chest puffed out and tail spread like the children’s drawing of a Thanksgiving bird.

    Nearly 400 yards of undyed Dorset lamb plied and 200 yards of Coopsworth spun and plied.  I can’t decide whether to dye the Dorset or what to do with it, but the Coopsworth is for me.  A sweater once the huge bag full is all spun, plied and measured.

    The first flowers from our garden.

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    A nice weekend ahead with plans to deconstruct the compost bins, weed the remaining garden beds and get the seeds and plants in the vegetable beds.

    We are half a week from chicks, we hope.  Broody Hen is being a great Mom, I hope she is rewarded for her efforts.

    Loving our mountain farm.

  • The Good and the Bad of Spring

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    Forsythia blooming, Lilac leaves unfurling.  Frightful and her sisters have found the perches in the chicken tractor and instead of being Frightful, she should be Frightened as they won’t come out and play in the yard.  Apples, Asian Pears and Peaches are blooming.  The Buffys are being generous.  The Maples are all lime green with flowers and oh the pollen.

    The dogs are shedding fiercely requiring daily vacuuming.  The garden is going to require some sort of major rework to keep the Buffys and Romeo from scratching up every seedling that is emerging.

    I am in a fog.  Though I was never allergic to things growing up, I seem to be developing more and more allergies as I age.  It started about a dozen years ago with my first and major case of poison ivy, followed by more and more serious reactions to paper wasp stings and this year my eyes are gritty and my head stuffed full from the indoor and outdoor spring allergens.

    Because of the reactions to stings, our youngest son with funds we fronted has established a bee hive in his yard in Virginia Beach and applied for a grant that will refund part of what was invested and with that he hopes to get a second hive.  He will maintain the hives and we will enjoy our share of the honey they produce.  That is a win/win as far that they and we are concerned.  I wish the hives could be here to benefit our garden and flowers, but it is not a risk I am willing to take with the nearest medical facility at least 20 minutes away.  The same son is a Paramedic and he said that most Doctors won’t prescribe an Epi Pen to seniors due to other risks.  I guess I should visit our Doc and inquire.

  • Signs of Spring

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    Leaves on the Lilacs
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    Blooms on the Forsythia, my favorite spring shrub.
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    New chicks

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    Frightful on the left behind the waterer. Three are Redtail Hawk colored, one is more black and gray with just a bit of reddish brown in her wings.

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    The four new Americauna pullets were picked up today.  Not wanting to order chicks, set up the brooder and raise them until they could go outside, I spotted a post on one of my Facebook Groups from a lady who offered to include your order in hers and you could pick up your day old chicks from her for cost or she would raise them to 8 weeks for a fee.  Wanting to keep a heritage flock of the Buffys, but missing the green eggs from the Olive Egger, I ordered 4 Americaunas from her and agreed to pay the fee to let her raise them til feathered and able to be outside.  By fall we should have green, blue or pink eggs.

    Daughter and I used a roll of heavy mil plastic and stapled it to the sides of the chicken tractor, put the food and water inside and introduced them to their new temporary home.  In a few days, they will be released into the pen to run around and graze and get acquainted with the Buffys through the fence.  In 8 more weeks, once they can have the whole grain feed mixed with layer pellets, they will move to the coop.  I hope by then that one or more of the Buffys decide to get broody and sit a nest.  They will be moved to the brooder pen once they hatch which might expedite moving the Americaunas.  Daughter has decided that the largest one with the Retail Hawk like coloring and the dark head should be named Frightful after the Falcon in My Side of the Mountain.  The other three are still unnamed.  I don’t name birds that I know will eventually end up in the stew pot, so I don’t know if they will be named.

    The Buffys got free range time while all of this was going on and every time I moved toward the house or back out toward the pens, I felt like the Pied Piper with the flock so close to my feet that I had to walk with a shuffle to keep from stepping on a hen.  They will eat out of my hand, but they don’t want to be petted.

  • It keeps on giving

    that wonderous garden of ours.  I asked my favorite farmer friends at the Market this morning when our average first frost date was, because my memory told me it was around October 10 and they confirmed that we were past it, so far without a frost on their farm in our county or ours.  They still have tomatoes and flowers growing!  Of course I had to buy a tomato and a bunch of flowers.  Don’t they look great on the fall table cover?

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    We are getting mid 30’s nights, but no frost and the garden keeps giving of bush beans, broccoli, peppers, tomatillos, turnips and greens.  The big crop of harvest now are the winter squash.

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    Seminole pumpkins and Burgess Buttercup squash.  There are so many out there that I still cannot get to and though the plants are beginning to die back, there are still flowers on some of the plants.  There will be many softball size squash and pumpkins to feed the chickens over the next couple of months and many more larger ones that we will never be able to eat them all.

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    Though it was getting dark when I went out last night to lock up the laying hens, the sun setting behind the west hill and casting it’s last glow on the gold of these trees stopped me for a few moments of time to enjoy the chilling night and the beautiful color.  By the time I walked back, the sun had set and the side yard was dark.  It is indeed a beautiful time of the year, though it is short and soon the trees will be skeletons in the woods and we will be able to see lights from our nearest neighbor’s houses through the woods.

    Lovin’ life on our mountain farm.

  • Rainy Sunday Musings

    Again it rains! Everyday for the past 7 days. The grass is literally knee deep and too wet to mow. The decks haven’t dried to be able to paint. When I brought these in last weekend I had no idea they would still be on the kitchen counter.
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    These are my kitchen herbs for a quick snip when cooking and I don’t want a trek to the garden. They live on the south deck, just outside the Dining area French doors. Some winter over in the house, but not this early.
    And then there were 4. . .
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    Last night when I went to lock up the girls for the night, there were 4 eggs. There are two 17 month old hens (1 not currently laying); three 26 week old pullets; eight 24 week old pullets, one whose comb and waddles are still small and pale. It has been 6 weeks since we were getting more than an occasional egg. I have missed them but have enjoyed a few this week with our fresh tomatoes and a few shreds of raw cow milk cheese.
    Since it is rainy and wet, instead of mowing, I will process more tomatoes and tomatillos.
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    The garden is giving. The rain causing the tops of the tomatoes to split. There are more Habañeros than we will ever need for hot sauce and salsa, I am going to experiment with drying some. A pinch of them dried and crushed will surely add a kick to curry or chili and Son#1 will use them.
    But the flowers love the rain and it does make the weeds easier to pull between storms.
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    If it doesn’t stop soon, I will need a machete to get to the garden and the coop.
    The chicklets are getting huge. They are 2 1/2 weeks now and going through 2 jars of feed and a gallon of water a day. I moved them temporarily this morning to a smaller brooder box long enough to clean the huge water trough that serves as their brooder. It is 15 square feet of floor space and looks too small for the 15 chicklets that seem to double in size weekly.
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    The most severe storm we had on Thursday evening damaged some component of our internet service. Our provider iuis a local coop with no weekend hours, so being on the internet or posting right now is an effort in frustration.
    We love life on our mountain farm!

  • Olio – August 23, 2014

    A few days ago in the pouring rain, we pressure washed the deck and porch in preparation for resurfacing them with one of the new deck resurface products.  As the outdoor cats often settle on the front porch and have their supplemental food on that porch, it was all moved.  One of the garage doors was open and the dog crate that is used to move the cats to the vet for rabies shots, used to transport chicks when they are purchased locally, but otherwise stored in the garage was sitting on the floor.  We prepared to leave to buy the deck resurface paint and went to close the garage door.  This is what we found. . .

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    This guy is our sickly male who is about 5 years old, much older than we were led to believe that he would live as he was born with Feline Aids before we rescued him.  The healthy female bolted for the barn as soon as the powerwasher was started.  I would give him access to stay there, but the 2 week old Rainbow Ranger chicks are in the brooder in the garage.  There is an old window screen over the top, but that wouldn’t stop a dedicated cat.

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    In spite of the rain, or maybe because of it, we have had some spectacular sunsets.  We would love to get the decks painted, but the forecast calls for one more day of rain before we finally get a period of dry days, hopefully enough to get the job done.

    Tonight as I surveyed the refrigerator for dinner, I remembered about a quart of beef stew made earlier in the week and not wanting another meal of just stew, I added some vegetables and a crust and made one of my favorite comfort foods, pot pie.  Usually I make chicken or turkey pot pie, but the beef stew was just too tempting.

    Broody Girl finally gave up her empty nest sit, but she still hasn’t begun to lay.  We are getting 3 eggs most days from the 13 hens and pullets.  Hopefully, we will start seeing more eggs soon.  The pullet eggs are getting larger, but as the only laying hen’s eggs are speckled, I can still distinguish who is laying.  I need at least 3 extra dozen a week to break even on their feed, since we are also feeding 15 Rainbow Ranger chicks.  The chicks are rapidly outgrowing the water tank we use as a brooder.  I am at a loss about what to do with them.  They are only 2 weeks old and still need a heat source.  The chicken tractor is hardware cloth on the lower half and I can’t get power out to it or I would consider putting plastic sheeting on the lower half and moving them there.  If any of my readers have good brooder pen idea for 15 rapidly growing meat chicks, I would love some ideas.

    Most Saturday mornings, though not for the past few weeks, we travel into town, enjoy breakfast at Joe’s Diner, a local landmark then wander the Farmers’ Market for goodies.  Today we were able to get potatoes, onions, carrots, and green beans (ours are still not producing).  Some beef and pork from our favorite meat farmers and flowers for the table were scored as well.  It is such a pleasure to visit on Saturday mornings and chat with friends, pet pups and supply with goodies we aren’t producing. Today was a bit crazy in town as this week has been move in week at the University and the town is bursting with new students and parents who are bringing or returning them to school.  The summer of being able to eat at the local restaurants without a wait is over until Winter Break, but the energy they bring to the town is worth that inconvenience.

    We love life on our mountain farm.

  • Olio – June 18, 2014

    Olio: a miscellaneous collection of things

    Pet peeves of the day;

    • the trend of semi fast food restaurants to shout out across the dining area “Welcome to …” each time a patron enters any door of the establishment.  Do they really think that is appealing and welcoming?
    • also in a semi fast food restaurant or even a real restaurant for an employee to walk up to your table and grab the tray/plate before asking if you are finished with it and say, “May I take your …”  One literally tried to take the tray with my husband’s fries on it today while he was still eating them.
    • along the same vein, to be in an establishment and have not only your own server ask how your meal is, but anyone else that works there.  We have been asked at one steak place we patronize as many as 4 or 5 times by that many different people about how our meal/visit was while we are still seated and eating.  Let us enjoy our food in peace.

    Today was resupply all the critters feed.  We managed to run out of dog food, cat food, chicken layer and chick starter grower all at the same time.  That was a car full.

    On our way home, we stopped at a local greenhouse and bought 4 new Day-lily plants, different from the two that I have and also bought 3 more pepper plants as some of my heirloom starts didn’t grow once put in the garden.  Of course that mean garden work when we got home and it is HOT, HOT, and humid out there today.  Two of the Day-lily plants went in the perennial bed in the front of the house.  The garage wall bed had gotten grossly overgrown with grape iris, the purple ones that smell like grape Kool-aid.

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    That is one of 4 huge clusters when they were blooming.  They haven’t been thinned in a few years, they were overrunning the English Daisies, and the bed had gotten weedy as well.  I dug them all out!  I hate to throw them away, but there are too many to replant.  I am going to load them in the tractor bucket and dump them where we don’t mow.  I bet some of them will come up next year and bloom there.  A few of them were moved to a bed by the deck.  The rest of the bed now has the other two Day-lily plants, two lavender plants, some English Daisies, a yellow poppy, three clusters of Dutch Iris plants that I divided from the deck area and on the opposite side of the walkway out of the garage side door, the Bronze fennel.  The bed is weeded, watered, and mulched with spoiled hay until I can get some more shredded mulch to apply to the bed.

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    It looks sparse now, but will fill in quickly and have more variety.

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    The haying is not going as quickly as we had hoped.  Jeff is trying to do too much at the same time.  They tettered the upper fields yesterday then came back and raked it into rows for baling, but the first bale was too green so they left it to mow the lower field and ran out of fuel. This afternoon the have turned the hay and

    hopefully will get it baled this evening as we are due for rain for a few days.

    The first batch of mustard is so good, there are 3 batches fermenting now to share. Two are Bavarian style and one is a repeat of the horseradish recipe.
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    I think I am going to have to buy some sausages to grill soon.

    Raspberries are ripening.  Tonight I harvested about a cup of them and resisted eating them as I picked.  They went into the freezer.  As soon as I have a quart, there will be a raspberry jam making session.

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    Life is good on our mountain farm.

  • The Good, The Bad and I’ll spare you the Ugly

    THE BAD

    Last night we went on a date night, that should be good, right?  The dinner was fine.  The movie we went to see had started 40 minutes earlier than the time we had noted, which must have been from the previous day and it had been playing for 20 minutes when we got there, so we picked a different movie that started at 8 p.m.  We have only walked out of two movies in our 36 years of marriage, one because it was longer than we thought and we had to pick eldest son up at a concert when he was too young to drive himself there and the second one was last night.  Think “Animal House” with more vulgarity and no humor.  We made it only half way through the movie and got up and walked out.

    It was late and I was a bad chicken keeper and I didn’t go over to close the pop door to the coop or the door to the chicken tractor and my gamble was an epic fail.  An O’possum got in the coop, killed one 12 week old pullet and seriously injured another.  I found a pile of feathers at the coop entrance, another at the run gate, and what was left of the pullets in the cull pen.  I feel like a heel.  I brought the injured pullet in, cleaned her wounds and put her in a large dog crate in the garage with food and water to watch her and see if she is going to heal or if we are going to have to euthanize her.  I know predators happen, but this was preventable.

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    She is eating a little and drinking water, and she moves around a bit in the crate, but she is so pitiful.

    THE GOOD

    This morning, after dealing with the mayhem, we drove into town for breakfast at our favorite local diner, then on to The Farmers’ Market.  Today was customer appreciation day, so some vendors had give away goodies for their regular customers.  For the past couple of years, Jim has given me a Flower CSA from our favorite local organic farmers, Stonecrop Farm.  We have had to miss a couple of bouquets each summer due to travel, so this year, we decided to just buy a weekly bouquet on the weeks we are home and flowers are available from them.  We purchased a bouquet, a few veggies that I’m not growing and got a bonus baggie of micro greens as a gift.

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    Yellow poppies, pink peonies (mine won’t bloom) and two different dianthus colors with mint and wheat stalks.  Quite a stunning bouquet to put on the dining table.

    After our return, we took turns wearing ourselves out trying to start the big commercial Stihl weedeater for the first time this season, always a challenge.  I finally gave up and went back to weeding and spreading the mulch we bought a few days ago,  when with sweat and swearing, Jim finally succeeded.  When we were both were hot and worn, we took a break and made a Lowe’s trip.  I was short 4 bags of mulch.

    A decade or so ago, my Dad made me a little wooden decorative wheelbarrow.  It has lived at a couple of houses now and is usually filled with flowers in the summer and pumpkins and gourds in the fall with a mum.  It had fallen into disrepair, so before we left for Lowes, I repaired it and decided that a couple of flower baskets needed to be purchased to fill it as well.  At the Farmers’ Market, I added a few more herbs to my collection and they needed pretty pots for the deck as that is where the bulk of my herbs live.

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    The front of the house, the perennial bed in the breezeway alcove are weeded and mulched, the herb collection is potted up except for the fennel and one lavender that will go in the garden tomorrow when I have the energy to move again.  Jim has weed wacked the culverts, the well head, around the house and around the trees and shrubs on the driveway hill.  I pushed the gas powered mower and cut the front and back yards.  When I thought I was done, I decided that the last flower bed, a small one that started out as a nursery bed by the side of the deck also got weeded.  We are spent.

    Dinner is “Mustgo,”  ever had it?  It is the leftovers in the fridge that must go.  Tonight’s Mustgo is left over pot roast, pork tenderloin and a huge new salad with micro greens and green onions.

    The house and gardens look great.  Now we rest.

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  • Retired Means

    Tired again, and that is what I am.  Bright and early this morning, Jim left to ride to Charlottesville avoiding the Interstates to meet our youngest son and his family who drove there from Virginia Beach.  The ride took him more than 3 hours, but he got to have lunch and a visit with them prior to starting his ride back on a different route, still avoiding the Interstates.  I drove his monster SUV into town and had breakfast with him then we went our separate ways for the day.  My first stop of the day was to Lowes to stock up on a few plants and a lot of bags of mulch, though not nearly enough.  Three years ago, once the final grading was completed at our house, we set about to landscape.  One of our shrub purchases was one that we later found out, should not even be sold in this planting zone and it did not survive the first winter.  The others were Pygmy Barberry and Dwarf Nandina and they did fine the first winter.  To do this landscaping, I first had to move all of the grape iris that I had been given in a trade and the English Daisies that I bought from a local friend and had planted on the front of the house.  They had multiplied and were divided into beds on the east side of the garage and in the bed created by the east side of the house and west side of the garage, bounded on the south by the breezeway.  That bed has been planted with shade loving perennials  toward the breezeway and daylilies, iris, and daisies toward the front where they get more light.  When we did the landscaping, we put down weed mat and heavily mulched that area, but the ground cherries, plantain, dandelions, wild geranium and chickweed thrive in there.

    This past winter after a cool wet summer last year, nearly did the Nandinas in.  I was ready to dig them all up when I noticed that though they really look scraggly, they are putting out new growth.  The dead shrubs were well spaced to add 3 new Pygmy Barberry shrubs.  When I got home with the car full of goodies, the short handled digging tool was brought out and I sat down and inched my way across the full front of the house, weeding and digging out all of the misplaced wildflowers, planting the three new shrubs, and mulching the entire bed.

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    With potted flowers at each end of the two beds, a fresh hanging plant on the shepherds crook, the spider plants hanging from the porch, the front looks presentable again.  Though some weeding was done in the breezeway bed, it was sprayed with a vinegar/Epsom Salt/Dawn detergent mixture to hopefully kill back the tender weeds then more mulch will be added to that bed as well.

    The tomatoes and some of the peppers finally made it into the garden today.  While I was at Lowe’s, I picked up a few heirloom peppers that already had some size on them to get things going.  Some of the exotic heirlooms that are starts will be added as soon as they are more than an inch tall.  A row of heirloom Tomatillos was also planted and the entire veggie garden was soaked down with the sprinkler since we aren’t getting rain for a few more days.

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    After a late lunch, the same treatment was given to the east side of the garage bed, and a shrub was divided and planted on the front corner of the garage.  I hope it survives the move.  Tomorrow, more mulch will be purchased and that bed will be given a new layer as well.  It appears that the Iris need to be divided again.  I don’t like to throw them away, but everyone up here has beds and beds of them in their  yards.

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    My final task for the day was to put the American Flag on the banner pole between the garage doors.  It seems only fitting since it is Memorial Day.  After a dinner prep of a slow cooking pot roast with vegetables, a long hot shower and scrub, I’m sitting on the porch with a glass of iced tea, resting and waiting for the wayward traveler to get home and see my efforts from the past two days.  I love it when my labors show and everything is neat and tidy.

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