Tag: Weather

Olio August 16, 2014

Olio: A miscellaneous collection of things.

On Thursday, I returned our eldest grandson to his home. He had been with us since July 3 and it was a wonderful 6 weeks. He enjoyed playing with our dogs, learned to ride his bike, traveled to Florida with us to visit his Aunt and Uncle and cousins for a week, swam, had outings with Granddad to the batting cage and several movies. He and Granddad played catch in the yard and had batting practice. A few times, he cooked with me, learning to make his favorite blueberry muffins and getting some math practice with measuring and calculating which measuring cups would give him the quantity he needed. It was a relief to his Mom and Dad to not have to try to find summer care for him and figure out how to get him to and from that care when they both left very early for their jobs.

Yesterday after playing with his neighborhood friends, showing off to his Mom and Dad his new bike riding skills, having Grandmom take him to his guitar lesson, they all left at 9:30 last night on the Metro to Union Station to catch an 11:30 p.m. Greyhound bus to Virginia Beach, where he and his Mom will spend the next week with her parents. Our son will return home to Northern Virginia on the train tomorrow so he can be at work on Monday. His Mom’s summer job has ended and her school begins just before Labor Day. I returned to their house to spend the night before traveling home this morning. As I was avoiding the interstate and taking a leisurely cruise down the Skyline Drive this morning, I received a text from son saying that they were stuck in Richmond, VA, only a couple hours from their home and a couple hours from their destination almost 12 hours after leaving on the bus. Their 4 hour trip lasted 14 hours. There is something truly wrong with Greyhound’s business model that passengers with tickets can not have a seat on a leg of their trip. If they hadn’t had to disembark at the transfer station in Richmond, they would have been at their destination in the early hours, not the next afternoon.

After enjoying about an hour and a half of scenic drive, I got back on the interstate, so my 4 hour trip wouldn’t take all day and like Thusday, was again stuck with the semis.

I followed these two for miles and miles doing less than 60 mph in a 70 mph zone. Behind me was a line of at least a dozen more.

It is amazing how quickly chicks grow. These little guys and gals are a week and a half old. They can almost get out of the brooder which is a huge stock watering tank. I guess I am going to have to put a screen over it soon. They are all darkening and growing wing and tail feathers. The one center front is the one I named Chipmunk because of the dark stripes on his back when I uncartoned them from the Hatchery.

Egg production is picking up. The pullets are getting the hang of the laying bit. In the past 6 days, we have gotten 7 pullet eggs, so I know that more than one of them is laying. We also got 5 hen eggs, though Broody Girl is still insisting on empty nest sitting. This has gone on now for over a month. Perhaps I should get her some fertile eggs and just let her give it a go.

The pullet eggs are so small compared to the hen eggs. At least we are getting some again.

The garden loved last week’s rain, the tomatoes are ripening in the sun, peppers are swelling and I am nearly overrun with Tomatillos. I haven’t looked under the row covers to see how the transplants are doing, but they will have to be watered today or tomorrow.

My purple thick skinned grapes are ripe. Perhaps I should attempt some grape jelly.

The weather feels like fall already. I shouldn’t get too excited, it will probably get hot again soon.

This week, we tackle power washing the decks to re-stain. I’m trying to figure out how we are going to keep the outdoor cats off while they dry and how we will get the dogs in and out. I guess they will have to go through the garage, but neither of them are used to doing that, so it may require leading them out on a leash til the decks dry.

Hubby took off early this morning on a ride on his BBH (Big Bad Harley) with the Hog Club from where his bike came. It is a ride to just get there, over an hour. They were going to have breakfast then ride into West Virginia. He texted me that he did go and that he was in West Virginia. I guess I will see him later this afternoon when he returns.

When I was in Northern Virginia to pick up grandson in early July, I bought some variegated yarn at a local shop. The yarn is one that isn’t available around here and I knit a Hitchhiker scarf from it. I decided that I wanted a cardigan sweater of the same yarn and returned yesterday to the shop to try to purchase it. Unfortunately, they didn’t have enough of it to make a sweater, but I did get a worsted weight solid that coordinates beautifully with it. As soon as the weather is cool enough to sit with the bulk of a sweater body in my lap while knitting, I will make myself a sweater to go with my scarf.

Though it is only mid afternoon, I am tired from my travels and contemplating a short nap. Life is an adventure!

August 16, 2014
Spin cycle

The Vernal Equinox found us yesterday with clear sky, warmer temperatures and wind. It was too windy for Jim to ride, too windy to want to tackle adding ventilation holes higher in my coop, too windy, but so welcome. Today is warmer and calmer. We have three beautiful days as the calm before the next predicted snow event. I get anxious each year to start being outside more, to dig in warm soil, to plant, but truly, it isn’t safe to put much in the ground here other than cold weather crops until Mother’s Day, so I have to wait. I did start my peppers and some of my tomatoes in flats yesterday. I ran out of medium before I ran out of pots and seed.

My new spinning wheel arrived at the shop yesterday, but alas, it isn’t open on Wednesday, so I am meeting the owner in town today to pick it up. I’m excited to put it together and give it a spin.

Today the chicklets are 2 weeks old. I keep waiting to go into the basement and find them everywhere as they are developing feathers and starting to hop and flap higher up the sides of the brooder.

Socialization continues with them, with “The Hand” that appears over the side of the brooder and then teases with wiggling fingers, rings, or a small pile of their food to teach them not to fear me. I don’t handle my birds except when necessary like Wednesday night when 3 got out of the pen while I was out and couldn’t get back in to coop up for the night. When I arrived home around 9 pm and went over to close up the coop, I found Cogburn and two of the hens in a pile huddled together where the fence joins the coop nearest their ramp back inside. Each was picked up, slightly ruffled and put inside on a perch none the worse for wear.

Because of the lack of a spinning wheel and to try to have my sweater finished before the storm next week, I have been knitting only on Estelle. Last night I finished the second sleeve and picked up and knit the first 2 rows of the feather and fan band.

I am pleased that it will probably be finished tonight. Then I have to figure out where the marker goes in my honey cowl and how much of a row I have to tink to get it back on track. My sock needles that I ordered are in route, so I can finish the never ending pair of socks. My yarn came from Quince and Co. to make the Lola Shawl in the issue 9 of taproot magazine and I still have the Unplanned Peacock Botanical dk skein to make into something beautiful that will show off it’s wonderful colors.

We are off to enjoy the spring day, Jim on his motorcycle, me to pick up my wheel then work on the coop and run, maybe get a real gate in so that they can’t escape again unless I let them out. I also need to relocate some of the extra hay that seems to have all worked its way downhill to the end of their run, putting too much mulch around the peach tree and shrub in the run and none up where I enter their pen.

Life is an adventure on our mountain farm.

March 21, 2014
Back on the Farm

The return to the farm has brought with it the return to Virginia winter weather. Today’s high occurred early this morning with a chilly day and frozen night in the forecast. With dusk last night came rain all night long, creek flooding rain and snow possible as the day wears on. The ridge behind us shrouded in low thick clouds.

Last week when I was babysitting in Northern Virginia and available regardless of the weather, it was sunny and warmed to the 40s and 50s, today they are on the rain/snow line of this storm and likely having to deal with another weather closure or delay. That problem, I remember well, having three children and both of us having professional level jobs that were difficult to miss.

It is good being home, watching the antics of the dogs. Ranger the English Mastiff romping with the German Shepherd indoors and out, but having much less stamina and collapsing on his back outdoors, or into this position next to Jim when he is spent.

The only place he is allowed to do that in beside hubby in his oversize worn out recliner.

When I got home yesterday afternoon, I went out to check on the chickens and do a bit of coop maintenance, I don’t ask that of Jim when he is chicken sitting for me and finally caught a Buff Orpington sitting on an empty nest, so now I know which eggs to set aside for brooding when one of the hens gets broody this spring.

I don’t know which breed is laying the pinkish tan eggs far left, the Olive egger is obvious, the nearly white tan eggs are the Buff Orpington (at least one of them though I think the pinkish ones might be the other one. The darker brown even colored ones are the Red Stars, nice sized consistent eggs with good yolk structure and flavor, and then there is the girl with the faulty sprayer that lays a brown egg, sometimes speckled always with a color distortion on the wide end and the girl that lays extra elongated pointy eggs. I may never know though, because as soon as there are 14 Buff Orpingtons including Cogburn or his descendant, the rest will go to freezer camp and my eggs will be boring, but my flock self sustaining.

February 3, 2014
Home Again

This past week was one of my visits to Northern Virginia to aid with childcare for L (eldest grandson.) As RT (eldest son) had driven my car up there on Christmas to get their gifts home and to have some transportation for a month. Living in that area and on near a Metro line, they don’t own a car. Where they can’t get on the Metro, they go on their bicycles. If it is too far for that, they just don’t go. On Friday evenings, L has his guitar lesson for 30 minutes and RT manages to get their grocery shopping done and they load it all on their tandem bike or take the bus home. Having my car makes the whole process more convenient.

Because of the car already being there, I went up on the Amtrak train out of Lynchburg. It will be more convenient when it comes into Roanoke. I generally take the MegaBus, but there were no seats available on the day I needed it. The train ride was an interesting experience, I haven’t really ridden a train since before Jim and I married and prior to that taking it to college. For some reason, the train car was so hot, I stripped down to my t-shirt and slacks, but I wasn’t sharing a double seat, so I just piled all my snow layers in the seat beside me. Having not slept well the night before due to worrying whether we would be able to make the 109 mile drive in the snow that fell that night and having to get up at 3:30 a.m. to make the trip, I spent a good part of the 4 hours dozing.

Normally, L and I try to find outings together, but he opted to go to the School Aged Afterschool Care program one day to go roller skating and didn’t feel well the next day. Yesterday, he, RT, and I planned an outing to Chinatown in Washington DC to watch the Chinese New Year’s parade, fighting the traffic to get there and realize it was today instead. We used the time we had put on the parking meter to get some lunch in a Chinese Restaurant (surprisingly one of the only ones in Chinatown) then did the art scavenger hunt in the Luce Foundation part of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

This morning, my car loaded, and breakfasted with bagel sandwiches made by RT for us, I pointed my car home and had an easy trip with little traffic and no bad weather. That is supposed to begin later with a bit of everything predicted this week, rain, ice, sleet and snow and one model showing us getting our first major storm this season with 18″ or more of snow. That will shut us in for a few days.

I enjoy my trips to help them, but am always glad to be home to my own schedule, our bed and routine.

February 2, 2014
Weird Weather Year and It’s problems

Yesterday it was snowing here. We didn’t get much accumulation, just a dusting as each of the other snows this year have been. This snow triggered a memory of one of my first blog posts, a voyeuristic peek into the bare woods that nearly surround our homestead. Our 30 acre farm is primarily hay fields. There is a rock bar at the top of the property above the barn, a sink hole that swallows our two creeks to the west of that rock bar. The upper part of the property is returning to woods, the west side and south edge of the property are wooded, the upper east side belongs to a neighbor and it is also wooded. These woods give us a sense of isolation, we can’t see our neighbor’s houses at all in the summer and can see their lights at night in the winter, but the winter with the falling of the leaves, clears the view the brush obscures during the summer and we can see the wildlife that a mountain side farm supports.

Last summer, we thought we were going to need to build a boat if the rain didn’t stop. It rained well into the time of the summer that is usually too dry here and it affected the garden, severely reducing the produce from some of the crops. The young pullets and cockrell that we had started in March spent most of their day under the coop and the design of the coop, allowed rain to enter the drop down window on the east side.

I struggled with an idea for sheltering that window so that the chickens didn’t get wet when perched below it inside. My solution was to tack an 8 foot tarp just under the roof on that side, stretch it over three flexible poles that were anchored to the fence with cable ties. That seemed to work for a few months, providing shade and rain shelter on that side of the coop. This winter, however, we have had wind. The farm is in a hollow on the south flank of John’s Creek/Salt Pond Mountain and it funnels the wind sharply across our land. The wind tore the tarp free at two points and the flapping raised 3 of the fence stakes from the ground on the coldest day this winter, when our high only reached single digits. The fence came down, the ground was too frozen to hammer the stakes back in, but the chickens were cooped to try to keep them from frostbite. Unfortunately, the rooster and one hen suffered some on their combs and wattles anyway. Our winter has alternated between mild, up into the 50’s days and frigid windy weather. Today is the later, the sky is clear and gorgeous and 22 f.

The coop problem however, still exists. Generally the rain comes from the west and the west side of the coop has two glass windows that can be raised opposite the perches and an overhang that helps shelter them from all but a horizontal driving rain. The fence posts have been reanchored, but the fence is really inadequate and has no real gate. I guess when the weather and budget allow, we will begin the fencing for our pastures and at that time, perhaps the orchard in which the coop sits and the garden on the edge of it, will be fenced as well and the chickens will be able to have a larger area to free range. Right now, their free range must be supervised because of our dogs, the neighbor dogs and the coyotes.

For now they have to enjoy the bugs that hide in the old hay in their run, the pumpkins and other treats that I offer and the supervised outdoor time they can be afforded when the weather permits supervision.

Life is good on our mountain farm.

January 16, 2014