Cabin Crafted

Tag: gardening

  • Animal Behavior

    We have lived here for about 18 years now, and for 15 of them we had either barn cats or large dogs. All are gone now. Early on, because we have 30 acres of fields and woods, we allowed some hunting on the property, but after an incident when one of the young hunters, invited a friend we did not know and the friend then showed up alone with his 5 year old son, we cancelled hunting privileges for non family and no one in the family has hunted here for years. With no domestic animals in or near the house and no hunters on the land, the wild animal behaviors have changed.

    We used to park the cars in the driveway and every spring, we had to cover the side mirrors to keep the male cardinal, that calls the side yard his habitat, from constant attacks against the “intruder.” The cars now get parked in the garage.

    The male bird aggression is interesting. This morning a tiny sparrow repeatedly bashed his breast and head against the French doors of the dining room. I tried turning on the inside light, putting a dining room chair against the glass, and finally hung a paper owl from the back of the chair to keep it from a concussion or broken neck.

    We have always had deer foraging and crossing the property, but now they rest in the shade of the row of pine trees on the edge of the mowed lawn just to the west of the house and barely flinch when we go outside to water plants, fill hummingbird feeders, or go over to the chicken pen and coop. The hay is still high and unmowed and it is fawning season where the does drop their young. There is a new mom doe (probably a first time as she only has one fawn) that feels safe enough that she had her tiny little one near the house. As their behavior is to hide the fawn and move off from it, coming back to nurse a few times a day, and then moving the fawn to a new location, we have seen her bring the little one in to the mowed yard where it is easier to walk, then take it back into the tall grass to hide. We can tell approximately where the fawn is hidden by where she goes to graze.

    I won’t look for the fawn, there is no reason to disturb them, but we look out the south windows to see if we see where the doe is grazing. She is a brown hump in the tall grass when grazing and will look up if she hears a noise. The area she is using is about 2 football fields in size. After the fawn is about 3 weeks old and starting to eat more solid food, it will begin to follow the doe around and the two of them will like form a small herd with other does with fawns or other does that she is related to.

    The other wildlife whose behaviors have changed in the absence of cats and dogs are the rabbits and chipmunks that come right up to the house, the chipmunks even up on the deck. And we have a groundhog that seems to prefer the mowed lawn to graze but lives near or under a cedar tree right on the edge of the hayfield. I haven’t caught it out to take a photo lately, it has been rainy for the past 4 days.

    Last weekend, our eldest, his wife, and their son came to our local grandson’s high school graduation. His son is city born and city raised and he spent the entire weekend looking for o’possums and groundhogs to no avail. We did see rabbits and deer to show him and warned him about nighttime wandering to look for them due to skunks and coyotes. I haven’t heard the coyotes this spring yet.

    Life in a rural area is ever changing. The hen turkeys should be hatching poults soon and we will see them. The toms are in male groups now and if they are in the fields, we can’t see them due to the height and thickness of the hay. Within the next month, weather permitting, the hay will be mowed and baled, hauled off to other farms and the animals will be visible in the mowed fields again. I love the rural mountain life.

  • Busy Week/Changing Seasons

    There was a lot of living history this week. On Wednesday, we had about 80 fourth graders and 7 rotations with the museum history, slavery in Appalachia, a bit of William Tell fun with suction cup arrows and a plexiglass shield to protect the”victim,” women’s duties on the frontier, blacksmithing, fiber production at home on the frontier, and frontier Militia that includes the presenter firing a flintlock rifle for the students. After we were done, the curator showed them a covered wagon and how it would have been loaded to travel the Wilderness road to the western parts of Virginia (now Kentucky and Ohio).

    Thursday we had over 100 sixth graders with some changes in rotations to match the available volunteers. These groups are fun to do and also have some of the frustrations that teachers deal with daily. Some the the youth are very engaged and have great questions. Some would rather be anywhere else and poke and prod their neighbors, or engage in flirting with another student.

    The door to the loom house is low, about 5’5″ and most kiddos that age walk in without a thought, but there are a few as tall or taller than me at 5’7+” that have to duck to enter. The space inside is tight to put 15 sixth graders, but we make it work.

    Wednesday night threatened cold so the flowers planted in the deck pots were covered for the night, there are no more nights much below 50 f for the next 10 days.

    The first Hummingbird was spotted this morning. The single feeder that is currently out will empty quickly and soon additional feeders will be added.

    The vegetable, sunflower, and herb seed have sprouted under the grow lights. They will begin to get acclimated to the outdoors in a day or two.

    The Amaryllis bud opened with only 2 flowers but is 22″ tall.

    After the museum yesterday it was time to mow the lawn for the first time. The riding mower original battery was so dead there wasn’t even a hint of light from the headlights, much less turning over the engine. I edged around the house and pulled out the gas push mower and it wouldn’t start either. Our once a year pushing the heavy riding mower up on to the trailer and trip two towns over to drop it off wit the repair guy was done. Once it is repaired, the grass will be so tall it will be difficult to mow, but that is all I can do for now.

    We are looking forward to warm days and mild nights. Tomorrow, grandson will come help me get the rest of the garden ready to plant soon.

  • News from the Blog

    If you are a subscriber that gets the blog in your email, it will direct to here. If you have gotten it from Facebook or Ravelry, you now should use Fstafford165.wordpress.com and it is secure. Subscribing will sent it to your email each time I post.

    The blog looks a bit different as I have updated to a newer format, but it is still the same blog.

    It is that time of the year when I dress up and present to local elementary and middle schoolers what it was like to have to make everything you needed to live on the frontier and to trade and barter with neighbors, provide your extras to the community store for the wagons moving farther west into what is now Kentucky and Ohio. The cabin was originally built in 1769 on Peak Creek and moved to the Wilderness Road in Newbern in 1830. When it was moved, a loft was added, you can see the stairs in the background. The footprint of the cabins in the “planned” community were 10′ X 10′ some with a loft. A fireplace for heat and cooking. The barn loom behind me, similar to the one that was in this cabin for an enslaved woman who was the village weaver. The walking wheel also behind me is one I made functional at the museum and demonstrate it and the drop spindle for making yarn to be used for the fabric needs. Last Wednesday when this photo was taken, it was dreary and chilly, about 47f and the 100 kiddos moving between the 8 stations every 15 minutes had to hustle and pack in tight for some of the stations. They huddled in every porch and building that had space to eat their lunch. I thought I was going to freeze and it took several hours once home to thaw out.

    That sent me on a quest to make or find a historically accurate cape because this week’s groups begin on another chilly but dry day. My quest turned up a navy blue wool reenactment cape with hood used, on ebay, for a very good price and quick shipping. It arrived today and I won’t be cold again when the weather does not cooperate.

    The cold night last week was hard on the new flower starts I put out, I guess a day too early. Today we bought marigolds and petunias as well as some flower seed that mostly will go in a ground bed once I get it cleaned up from winter and the hardier starts were put in the spots in the pots on the deck that were hit the hardest by the 25f night. Also some zinnia and nasturtium seed were interspersed with the small plants, so hopefully the pots will fill in with color as the spring moves on. There are no near freezing nights for the next 10 days and I will cover the pots with row cover if we get threatened.

    The vegetable, herb, and flower seed under the grow lights haven’t sprouted yet, but they aren’t due to go in the ground for at least a month, maybe 6 weeks.

    I hope you enjoy the new format.

  • Sunday on the farm

    My birdwatching friend identified the nest as a Carolina Wren. I’m not sure if she returned to the nest last night. When I went over to let the hens out this morning, feed them, and clean their coop, I didn’t see her, but her nest is at the other end of the garden from the coop area.

    When I returned from that job, I grabbed my clippers and thick leather gloves to prune back an overgrown barberry bush before it leafs out. As I approached, I was scolded loudly by a bird I couldn’t see, and found this.

    Ok, so not a stellar photo as I stuck one hand into the Barberry thorns to see if there were any eggs. It appears to be another Carolina Wren. Glad she chose a bush and not the ground or a shelf in the garage.

    One of my first tasks each morning is feeding the sourdough starter. Today is day 5 of getting this one going and I could use it today, but there is still some bread in the freezer to use up first. Maybe I will start loaves tomorrow as it takes about 24 hours to go through the entire process. I quit making sourdough a while back because I was disturbed by the waste of discarding starter before feeding it and because I could buy sourdough bread locally at the Farmers’ Market and Natural food stores. Recently, I found an article that said the starter can be fed to chickens, which is a plus. When you make and feed the starter, you use equal amounts of flour and water. Every recipe I had ever found said to use 4 ounces or 125 grams of flour depending on whether they were measuring with cups or a scale. To do that you are tossing out about 1/2 cup of starter every time you feed it and it makes about 4 cups of starter which seemed too wasteful. You only use about 1 tablespoon of starter to get the leaven going. I found an article the other day that said to use only 25 grams of flour and water and feeding the chickens about 2 tablespoons of starter seems much less wasteful and it fits in a pint widemouth jar with lots of room to spare. Since two loaves of sourdough bread is plenty for a week for two of us, and since flour is hard to come by right now, this seemed ideal. I got the starter going with this plan.

    This was before I fed it this morning and you can see there will be very little waste and the starter is strong and healthy. Tomorrow I will bake for the week. I still want to play with other uses for the sourdough such as pizza dough and focaccia bread. I need to get back in the routine of making the bread since going out to the Farmers’ Market to buy from the two bakers there is not in the cards right now.

    Found this little butterfly stretching it’s wings in the sun on the deck. I couldn’t decide if it was damaged or still unfurling, but after a while, it flew away, so must have been unfurling.

    The butterfly was followed by a Tufted titmouse sitting on my breakfast chair trying to crack open a sunflower seed.

    So bear in the field yesterday, deer this morning, 2 Carolina Wren nests with eggs, and lots of colorful little songbirds enjoying the feeders. Love watching the wildlife on the farm.

    These frothy white trees are blooming everywhere on our walk today. I thought they were wild cherries, but the bark doesn’t look right.

    Her relative was mowing our grass again this morning. She stayed on her own farm. After the walk, some digging in the dirt was in order to weed the bed of iris, day lilies, and where the calendula was last year. Though I started calendula seed indoors, there are lots of volunteers in that spot already. And purple echinacea was started indoors too, there is room for them in the same bed.

  • A few days ago, I posted about the feeding station for the birds. This morning when I entered the kitchen and looked out, it wasn’t there. Upon closer examination, the pole was pulled over, the feeders emptied and some minor damage. It doesn’t look like the doings of a bear, but probably a raccoon climbed the pole and was too heavy toppling it. All the sunflower seed and the new suet cake were gone, the suet cage bent and the lid ripped off. The pole was stood back up and anchored with rocks as the fork like prongs that stabilize it in the soil are bent, the feeders cleaned up, repaired, and refilled. I guess one of my new evening duties is going to be to go out and gather the feeders and bring them in to the garage for the night from now on.

    Yesterday afternoon, I did go out to work on the fencing and realized that it is too much for me to do by myself, so instead, I finished rebuilding the garden boxes. Several years ago, I purchased cedar raised bed boxes from Home Depot. The box assembly as a grooved post and the boards fit in the grooves. That assembly did not hold up well. I have been taking them apart, and using outdoor deck screws, fastening the boards to the outside of the post, making the boxes slightly smaller but sturdier. One box needs leveling before I can finish filling them with compost to planting. If I ever succeed in getting rid of the mint that I foolishly planted in one several years ago, there will be a blank spot in the garden as I removed that box to make mint removal easier. The box failed to contain the mints and mint is in the aisles and beginning to appear in adjacent boxes. Lesson learned.

    The area to the right of the lowest box and barrels will be a corn patch. I rarely plant corn unless it is popcorn in a three sisters garden, but decided to try some sweet corn this year.

    The peas are coming up nicely, I am happy to see. Still no sign of spinach and the flat started in the house several days ago is also not germinating, it might be a poor batch of seed.

    With the warmth comes the Carpenter bees. I had left the traps up overwinter and dumped the contents early this week. They are already filling up. We don’t usually see them until mid May. This is indeed a weird year for the climate.

    As the day cooled and the sun was low, I took my walk down our rural road. Nothing new to see, the calves were not where I could see them from the road, but I did find a branch with many shelf fungi on it.

    Once dark has fallen, I retire to my easy chair and knit or spin. My current project is a lacy skinny scarf out of hand spun wool and silk for my daughter. It was in my lap along with my needle case and I realized that they nicely coordinated.

    I am determined to get at least one run of fence between the chicken pen and the garden stable today so that I can let the hens clean up that side of the garden area. The forecast is for it to get into the 80’s today in March.

  • A Day of Retirement – 9/7/2019

    I wonder how I managed when I worked outside of the home. I have been retired for almost a decade now and time to sit and not do anything but rest just doesn’t seem to be in my day. That may be because I generally can’t sit calmly and do nothing, I have to be reading, knitting, spinning, or up gardening, cooking, or cleaning the house or the laundry.

    Hubby is a night owl that prefers to sleep later, I live by the sun, ready for bed by 9:30 p.m. and awake with first light. That morning time is used to do animal chores, garden, or sit and spin.

    Once we are both about the house, the other household chores are tackled. With two large dogs, there is always vacuuming or mopping to be done. Most of the rugs in the house have been discarded over the years, except for the Oriental in the living room. The wood floors are easier to keep clean than rugs. The living room rug needs professional cleaning, but gets vacuumed several times a week until there are no dogs in the house.

    Each day, we try to get in a brisk walk of more than 2 miles. Most of those walks are taken on an old paved rail grade that begins at the Blackburg library and ends in Christiansburg with a side leg that goes off of it at about the 3 mile mark in the opposite direction to an old farm that is now a park. Other days, we go to the local pond that has a graded soil and gravel path around it and is almost a mile, so we do it twice, with the path down to it and back, it gives us our two miles. On these walks, I often take seasonal photos. When I am solo, I wander the hills around our house or if visiting eldest son, try to walk their road or hike with the grandson.

    Today the photos were mostly wild flowers, it seems that most of them are shades of purple, though I didn’t take the time to try to identify them.

    And a barely flowing creek, another victim of our current drought.

    Being retired does provide more freedom to attend events during the week, to grocery shop when needed, not just on weekends, and to help out with grandchildren.

  • Garden Day, Finally

    Tomorrow is our last average frost date and it seems that we have gone from winter straight to summer, so we aren’t afraid of more cold nights.  After our weekly jaunt in to the Farmers’ Market for salad, asparagus, a bit of meat and some more pepper seedlings, we started on the garden to do list.  First up was removing the remaining 4 pods of the old compost bins.  They were constructed 9 or 10 years ago when the property had been purchased, but the house was only under construction.  My current compost bin is up from the chicken coop and serves me well.  The very large multi-pod bin was necessary when the gardens were just started, filled with composting leaves and horse manure from down the road.  They have served as temporary shelter for cull birds and last year for sweet potatoes, winter squash and pumpkins.  Today we deconstructed it.  SIL knocked it apart with a sledge, Daughter and I knocked nails through the boards and pulled them, dropping them in a bucket for later disposal.  Many of the boards are Chestnut and still sound, so they were stacked with the idea of using them to construct a more permanent meat bird coop.

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    While we hammered and pulled, our helpers started on the weeding, to keep them away from the nails.  Unfortunately, SIL missed and swears my middle name must be Vlad as he impaled one of the smaller finishing nails through the sole of this boot and into the instep of his foot.

    Once the wood was stacked, we tackled the former grape bed that had not been weeded very well last year and had many large clumps of Bermuda grass growing in it.  While Daughter and I weeded, SIL hauled rocks and put them in the tractor bucket.  Daughter was given her first tractor driving lesson today and by the end of our workday, was driving the tractor alone to dump the buckets of rocks onto one of the dozens of rock piles on the farm.

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    The chickens loved having clumps of grass, chickweed, burdock, thistles and other greenery with roots tossed into their run.  They are still penned up, because we still haven’t moved all of the fence to keep them out of the gardens.

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    Romeo standing guard.

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    Today was a great start on the garden.  When it cools some tonight, I will set the peppers, tomatoes, and tomatillos in the beds prepared for them.  The former raspberry bed still needs further clean up, many volunteers pulled and weeds removed and we will get the beans and other seeds planted.  The barren end of the chicken run will be planted with winter squash, the area where the compost bins stood, we will plant the Seminole Pumpkins.  Until they get large, I will continue weeding the area between where the bins stood and the chicken run.  Sunflowers will be planted along the edge of the garden for their beauty and for the seed for the chickens.

    Love this time of year, just wish it wasn’t quite so hot already.

  • Soaking Wet

    We had a couple of stellar spring days and took full advantage of it.  One full bed of the garden was cleaned up, peas, Daikon radishes and a few pepper plants (which we may yet have to cover) and Swiss Chard plants we purchased were planted.  We have garlic, onions, kale and turnips up.  There are a few more beds to be cleaned up to plant the tomatoes, beans, cukes and summer squash and once the remaining peppers are large enough, they will also be planted.  The strawberry plants don’t like the rain that we have had.   Sunflowers and winter squash will be planted near the chicken runs.  As the chickens are spending more time free ranging, I am considering reducing their run size and using their well fertilized, run, bare of weeds for more planting.

    The spring’s first mowing was done and some of the house plants relocated to the front deck.

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    One of the Buffys is having reproductive issues and she is laying very strange eggs.

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    The egg on the right is a normal egg.  The two on the left are two of her treasures for the past few days.  All of the girls are at least 14 months old and less than 25 months old, so it shouldn’t be age.  None of her odd eggs are double yolked, but the albumen is very watery and the shells all have cracks that have been calcified over.  Her shells are very thin as well.  If I could figure out which Buffy it is laying them, I would double band her as a potential cull.

    The littles are getting braver and are coming out of the tractor more each day, however, today it has rained until I will need a rowboat to get to the coop.  The littles somehow got locked out of their tractor this afternoon and were soaking wet when I went to lock them up.  The Buffys who could get in their coop were also soaked, but they gave us 10 eggs today.

    Instead of being outside, today was a day to make chicken feed and granola.  I also did a bit of garage cleanup, still trying to merge extra bicycles and yard toys into the garage and still have room for Mountaingdad to turn the BBH around in there.

    We are enjoying the change to spring, the trees and spring flowers blooming, the leafing out of the shrubs and trees; the warming days and nights and the lower electricity bills they will bring; the return of the spring Farmers’ Market and the fresh salads that it brings.

    Loving life on our mountain farm.

  • Garden Season

    Though we are still 6 to 8 weeks from our last frost, some garden tasks and a few vegetables can be planted now.  For the past two days, we have had dry warm spring like days.  As there are more mouths to feed in our household now, we decided to expand the garden, nearly double in size.  To facilitate doing this, we first decided to move the grapevines from the north edge of the garden to the north edge of the orchard.  The Raspberry canes that I had planted several years ago in the row near the south edge of the garden had become overwhelming, so we moved 6 plants along the chicken run and dug out the remainder of the canes to discard.

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    Raspberries along chicken run

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    Grapevines pruned and moved, needing new trellis.

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    Two of our helpers throwing weeds to the chooks from the now empty Raspberry bed.

    Our day was waning, dinner prep needed doing, so we planted 40-50 young onion starts and a half dozen kale plants, erected a row cover bubble over the kale to keep out the cabbage moths/worms,

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    Tomorrow if we can get it done before the rain starts, we will plant Daikon radishes, turnips, and Lacinato Kale seed.  On our next dry stretch, we will deconstruct the 4 remaining compost bins, collect some rock, perhaps rent a tiller and finish the expansion.  A good day of labor.  After our dinner prep and clean up, we planted tomato and pepper seeds in the indoor flats, put them on the warming tray and set the grow light over them.

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    Once the last frost date passes, hopefully we will have beds ready for twice as many tomatoes and peppers as last year, the peas and beans, sunflowers, and herbs will be planted.  The winter squash are going to be planted in the orchard this year and allowed to spread at will.  I may have to extend the electric fence around the orchard again to keep the deer out.

  • Olio, October 6, 2014

    Olio: A miscellaneous collection of things.

    The garden survived a 31ºf night and a 37ºf night through the aid of some row cover over the peppers and tomatillos.  The beans that haven’t been eaten by the deer that have breeched the electric fence also survived.  The pumpkins/winter squash patch is finally beginning to die back and there are dozens of the Burgess Buttercup squash beginning to show through.  So far I don’t see a single Seminole Pumpkin which is disappointing.  Today I waded through the thigh high patch, pulled back the squash vines and tried to dig the sweet potatoes.

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    I’m sure there are more there, but the vines will have to die back more before I try again.  Now that they are harvested, they require a few days of curing at 80ºf.  I don’t know how that will happen with the daytime temperatures at least 15 degrees lower than that and we haven’t turned the heat on in the house so it is 20 degrees cooler.  I put them out on a rack in the sun this morning, but then the rains started, so they are in the utility room until we see sunshine again.

    In July when visited our daughter’s family in Florida, our granddaughter came out in the cutest sun dress.

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    She and her mom love it because she can dress herself in it and it has no fasteners.  Over confident Mountaingmom announced, “That would be so easy to make.”  The bodice was traced on printer paper, the tiers measured approximately and brought home to the farm.  Later two packets of fat quarters were purchased and I stalled.  Before the Spinning retreat, I decided to begin them.  First off, I failed to cut the front on a fold, I do know better.  Second error was attempting to use three strands of narrow elastic to gather the back, I ended up buying wide underwear elastic later.  Third error was in the measurements I had made of the ruffles which I realized before cutting.  Daughter remeasured everything for me and a few days ago, I got serious about finishing the first dress.

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    Yesterday after finishing it, I decided that dress #2 was going to be made with a pattern and I purchased a simple A-line toddler dress pattern from McCall.  As I still wanted to use the fat quarter that I bought for the second dress, The solution was to cut wide strips, sew them end to end, then side to side to create a large striped panel that was used to cut the pattern.  I had some unbleached muslin that I used as facing as the pattern called for binding the edges with bias tape and I didn’t want to do that. Dress #2 was much easier to assemble.

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    As granddaughter lives in Florida, she will be able to wear them all year with a long sleeve T-shirt under them, so 3 T’s were bought to add to the package.  Also in the package is a giraffe.  Yes, a giraffe.  Two Christmases ago, we bought her a little barn that has various activity parts to it and a collection of farm animals to put inside.  Their dog got a couple of the animals and chewed them up, some of which were replaced, she selected a moose for her farm.  Near their home is a farm that has a giraffe.  We don’t know why or how they obtained it, but it is a source of amusement as we drive by, so her barn will now also have a giraffe.

    The Hot Mess yarn that I spun at the retreat, was soaked and hung with a weight on it.  The treatment helped relax the over twist some, so now I have a 106 yard skein of smooth, but tight yarn.

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    I have no idea what to do with it.  It is too little for anything other than trim on something.  There isn’t even enough to make a market bag.

    The yarn on the bobbin is the random color Merino that I purchased at the retreat.  The color isn’t showing up very well with no sun out and only house lighting to photograph it in, but it is basically lilac color with gold and maroon highlight.  I haven’t finished plying it yet to measure, but it looks like it will be a couple hundred yards of fingering weight yarn.

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    Lovin’ life on our mountain farm.