Homesteading

Retirement has given me the time to try many new to me, but ancient arts/crafts.  Upon notification that I was to become a grandmother, I dug out some knitting needles and refreshed on a long abandoned art, making baby sweaters, soakers, and shirts, all from organic undyed baby soft wool and cotton.  The next 8 years have allowed me to produce dozens of sweaters from tiny to men's,  half a dozen or so baby blankets, scores of hats and scarves, four Christmas stockings and several pair of socks.  This love of fiber urged me to dig out the sewing machine and make a couple of machine quilted baby blankets and a Christmas stocking.  Though I dearly love quilts and all of our beds are spread with them, making quilts really hasn't grabbed my interest, yet.

  Handling yarn, did interest me in the fibers I was knitting and drove me to investigate spinning, first with a drop spindle and this summer with a newly acquired, but nearly 50 year old spinning wheel and falling in love with another ancient art.
From the time I was a teen, I have loved digging in the dirt, gardening with my Dad, later having anything from a few potted tomatoes to a small city garden at most of our homes.  Here in the mountains, on our 30 acre farm, the garden is substantial and organic and there are a few young fruit trees added to the products we grow.

  This garden, the fruit trees, wild and cultivated berries have gotten me canning, making jelly, pickles and sauces to preserve this garden goodness for the cold non productive winter months.

  Recently, I have toyed with the idea of making soap as well.  Not wanting to get too involved, nor spend too much money until I tried it and saw if I enjoyed it, I purchased only a single mold and a few pounds of a high quality soap base that I could heat, scent with essential oils, dye with natural dyes from tumeric, cinnamon, lavender and a few other spices.  I think I am hooked.  I am about to embark on making my own soap from fats and lye.  Of course, I can  buy good quality homemade soap from the local craft fairs and weekly from the farmer's market, but it is expensive, I don't always care for the available scents and I didn't have a hand in its making.

Back when our children were small, I taught myself to make baskets.  Several of the ones that I made are still used to haul produce in from the garden, to store yarn and to decorate the kitchen area of our log home.  These baskets were all made from reed purchased for caning and basket making or from kits, but with the easy availability of grape and other vines, I have considered refreshing those skills and making a few storage baskets for the root cellar from the vines on our property with the ribs from flexible twigs.
These ancient arts have long appealed to me, along with a few I haven't tried, it is a great feeling and sense of accomplishment to use products from our land and my hands.

Reflections on a beautiful day

It is a beautful fall day.
Nearly cloudless, the blue sky is vivid.
After a near frost two nights ago, the temperature have again moderated to what we expect this time of year and the morning is warm and dry.
Mockingbirds unseen are warbling through their repetoire of song.
"Ferdinand" the neighbor's bull has again been breaking through to our yard though we still have no cows to attract him, I guess it is just the adage that the grass is always greener.  He is stubborn this fall and resists being chased back to his own side and we fear some for the pups' safety as they both charge barking at him if we let them out without checking first for his presence.
The forsythia, a bush I love at two seasons, as it blooms in trails of yellow in the spring and in the fall as it wears its stunning plum coat is at it's best.

Life is good at our mountain home, indeed, life is good.

First Day of Autumn

Azure skies;
Brisk breeze with a hint of chill;
Hawks soaring on the currents;
Pileated woodpecker tapping out a rhythm on a dead Locust tree and another in the distance responding;
Leaves daily changing to gold, orange and red;
After a sunny day near summer temps, a cold night in the mid 30's expected.
Such are the beauties of the changing season.

Wednesday Sunshine

     The difference an overnight makes is amazing.  Our guests left Monday morning to complete their drive to Philly with heavy low skies.  By noon, it was raining, and rain it did, all the rest of the day, all night, and all day yesterday.  But the days were moderately warm and the nights not as chilly as they have been of late.  Around 10 o'clock last night, the wind whipped up and blew through as it often does in this hollow, whistling around the house and it got very chilly.
    The wind must have been a front, this morning is bright and clear, chilly and all the recently mowed fields greened up again.
     Fall is in the air.  Some of the trees hinting at the color they will wear in a few short weeks for the few short weeks until they are bare for the winter months.  The pumpkin festivals begin soon, the garden will be ended, except for two 4 by 4 foot beds of fall greens, covered with row covers during the day and frost covers when needed at night to try to extend the season of fresh goodies into late fall or early winter when anything fresh is welcome.  I didn't grow any winter squash this year, maybe a few from the farmer's market will be stashed in the root cellar for stuffing with rice and sausage filling for a cold night's meal.
     Today, we await the return of our cousins as they motor their way back to Georgia and to enjoy another evening spent with them savoring some of the last of the summer fare.

Sunday thankfulness

     This is the end of a full week of work.  We await the arrival this afternoon of cousins driving from Georgia to Pennsylvania and look forward to an evening of visiting and reuniting with them.
     The property looks great, it is all mowed, weeded, weed whacked and trimmed.  The house is clean, truly clean for the first time in over a year now that all construction is done.  The year has brought the erection of the stone masonry fireplace continued into the basement, the installation of tile for a hearth in the basement and tile in the breezeway/laundry room, new cabinets and sink in the laundry room, log and flat wood siding in the basement with an additional bedroom added, bamboo flooring in the basement and shelving in the root cellar for the bounty of the garden, cedar siding down the stairs to the newly finished rec room in the basement.
     This year also brought electric fence around the garden to deter the deer, rearrangment of the garden to give us protected, permanent beds for berries and grapes, for the bounty that garden has provided, for the time and knowledge to can and freeze its bounty for the winter.  New ballusters on the back deck and a thorough cleaning and restaining of it.  It has also allowed the cleanout of much litter from the sinkhole and creek on our property, many decades of appliances, glass, tires, and cans left by others before we bought the land almost 7 years ago.
     We enter the fall with sore muscles, happy to be able to still do this kind of work.  Thankful that we have neighbors who will help, for a son who has the skills to do the masonery and carpentry during the summers between his high education.
     We end this season thankful that we have three beautiful children with spouses/partners that have 5 delightful children between them and that they share those children with us, sometimes for a day here or there, sometimes for an entire month of grandgoodness.
     Life is good.

It's been a hard day's work

     Hubby left this morning for a couple of days with our youngest son and his family at Great Wolf Lodge.  I stayed home to puppy sit as Shadow is too soon out of her spaying for boarding.  Shortly after he departed, I set to work weeding the garden.  I have maintained the areas that are actively in use with tomatoes, peppers, beans and herbs, but have neglected the beds that were harvested earlier, the ones that had the peas, potatoes, garlic, onions and shallots and the early beans and cucumbers.  Only about 30% of the garden was in productions this morning, leaving me with 70% plus paths that were grossly overgrown.  The garden space is about 30 to 35 feet square, divided into 5  four foot wide beds, some boxed into 4 foot squares, some just long bordered beds.
     It took me four hours to weed the beds and paths, leaving me with lots of space to reorganize and plant for the fall.  The garlic and walking onions, along with a winter cover crop seed was ordered during the summer and shipped yesterday.  The alliums will take two squares and will be heavily mulched for summer harvest next year.  The local garden center had salad mix, cabbage and broccoli seedlings and blueberry bushes on sale, so when I went into town to get tractor fuel, I bought some seedlings and bushes for the garden.  The fall plants are in with the chard and kale and will be covered on cold nights to get the maximum harvest from them.
     The southern most bed was two raspberry bushes and two blueberry bushes.  The raspberries send out shoots in all directions and since I planned to utilize a bit less of the garden for annual veggies next year, I moved and divided the raspberries, giving them an entire bed and now having 6 bushes for next year.  This gave me space to plant 3 new blueberry bushes, giving them an entire bed.  These two beds were heavily mulched with straw.

     Right now, the new bushes and fall veggies are getting an artifical rain from the sprinkler.  Tomorrow I will tackle pruning, staking and tying up the two grape vines and harvesting tomatoes and jalapenos again, finish mowing the back yard and around the garden area and making yet another pot of pasta sauce for winter enjoyment.

     As for me, I've polished off a huge greek salad and am thinking about a nice long hot bath in our huge tub with a glass of something nice and red.

Fall Clean Up

     This week has been fall clean up week.  We have mowed the 30 acres, it is hayed by a neighbor in the late spring and then except for the "lawn" around the house and garden, the rest is left to grow until early fall and it is mowed by us.  This process takes us about 20 hours of tractor sitting.

     The garden clean up is in process as well, gaining ground on the weed overgrowth that started taking over as the various beds of potatoes, garlic, onions and peas were harvested and not replanted with other crops.  The fall garlic and onions along with the winter cover crop have been shipped to me, so that clean up needs to be finished.  The plan for next year is going to involve a bit less space used and better utilization of the space with replanting and giving two beds to berries and grapes with heavy mulch covers.
     Also the basic house maintenance has been neglected this summer with puppy raising, traveling, gardening and the completion of the basement construction, so heavy duty cleaning has also been on the schedule as well.
     Part of the house clean up has been to reorganize my dormer where I have the loveliest walnut table made especially for the space by a local woodworking artisan.  This is my personal space, off of the front of our bedroom, bracketed by our closets and divided off by the extra large wire crate for the mastiff.  The walnut table sits under the windows with a pottery lamp that has been a treasure for years.  A dark wood bookcase sits beside it with fabric bins for my crafting supplies, yarns, and books.  There are baskets of fabrics and totes of desk supplies and sewing supplies.  This area tends to collect disorder until it becomes unusable and this afternoon, my space got dusted, mopped and reorganized, including untangling and rewinding the various skeins of yarn that the shepherd pup had attacked since we got her.

Sunday thankfulness

Beautiful day, beautiful place to live!

Poor puppy, poor family

So yesterday was surgery day for Shadow, the shepherd pup. She went in yesterday morning to be spayed and they found an umbilical hernia in need of repair, so we okayed that as well.  We picked her up around 3:30, still slightly wobbly from the anesthesia with  instructions to keep her fairly still for a week. No rough play, no stairs, no jumping off of objects.

As I've commented before, she is like a ferret on crack, a whirling dervish of motion, so we know this is going to be a challenge.  We already know, that if she is kennelled and Ranger approaches, she whines and yelps at him and he barks at her.  When we got her home, I moved her wire kennel to the greatroom area so she didn't have to climb to the second floor and she willing kennelled up for the remainder of the afternoon.  After our dinner, hubby took Ranger to the doggie park for some exercise and to allow her some out time.  She ate her dinner and laid on the living room rug with a bone for the time they were gone, reentered her kennel without fuss and basically was calm and fairly quiet throughout the night.

Bright and early this morning, she was rattling the cage, wanting out.  Obligingly, I got up, took her outdoors to do her business and brought her back in to feed her.  She was frantically charging around outdoors and once back in the house, zip, straight up the stairs to check on hubby and Ranger, then zip back down the stairs to make sure I was still here.  She sure doesn't act like she hurts.

She is currently back in the kennel, whining because Ranger is free, clawing at the wire to escape.  This indeed is going to be a long week!

Summer's End deux

The garden is a mess, chest high in weeds in some unused beds. Only a few tomatoes and beans being harvested and the chard and peppers are kicking into high gear as the evenings cool.  By this time of the season, I' m tiring of the daily harvest and putting by for winter and the internal debate is do I pull it all up and put it to bed for the season, or do I continue to harvest, freeze and can until I can't get another tomato or pepper.

The garden has been good this year. There are pounds of peas, beans,  beets and berries in the freezer. More than 50 pints of tomatoes in various forms (plus I took 15 pints to son's house last week), dozens of jars of jam and 16 pints of pickled jalapenos on the shelves.  There are some potatoes and onions and lots of garlic curing on the drying shelves.

We will run out of potatoes and onions and have to buy from the natural foods store, there will be tomatoes and jam left at the end of winter, but I just don't ever seem to be able to give it up until the frost kills it off.

By this time of the year, my knitting friends run and hide when they see me coming with a grocery sack, I expect even they are tired of my tomatoes.

Long Day

Today was my last day of my babysitting gig in NoVa and I had promised at least one outting with our grandson.  He was in a half day camp last week, which made trips on the Metro impossible.  Before heading home this afternoon, we rode the Metro in to the National zoo for a half day outting.  If you have never done this or been to this zoo, the Metro station is several blocks downhill from the zoo entrance and the zoo sits on a hill.  We got lucky as today was the opening of one of the renovated exhibits which was very well done.

 We saw the Giant Pandas and Asian elephants out today, walked many exhibits and I managed to wear a child out.

 This was on our way out and he was as worn out as the lizards behind him.
After riding the Metro back to their house, loading my stuff in the car I headed home for the 4 hour drive. Traffic was unusually light and the drive wasn't bad until I only had about 10 more miles of interstate and I drove into a horrific thunder storm.  After finally getting on the last leg of the journey and out of the heavy rain, I was treated to a rainbow.