Monday Heat Wave

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Sunday Thankfulness - July 14, 2013

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Due to my increased frustration with Blogger, my blog will now be found at the above link.

A Week on the Farm - July 12, 2013

     This week has had family visiting, as eldest son was here until Sunday and eldest grandson stayed on until yesterday.  It has rained nearly every day, but we did get one good day to take grandson to the local public pool for a swim.  He is so much more adventuresome than last summer.  He must have gone down the tallest tube slide a couple dozen times and by the time we left, his eyes were so bloodshot, he complained all through dinner.

     The week has been an adjustment for the hens, as we harvested 3 of the young hens last week and added 3 that had previously been separated as culls and put in a different pen.  They seem to be working out their new pecking order and will actually all gather if I throw out scratch over a broad enough area.

     It has been too rainy for much gardening, a bit of weeding or harvesting when the opportunity presents and enjoying the cabbage, kale and peas that have matured.  So far that and an occasional pepper are all we are getting.  The winter squash and one of the pumpkins have all wilted, either root rot or squash borers.  I don't know if there is enough time to plant more before the season here in the mountains ends.
     Yesterday I drove grandson home to Northern Virginia in time for his weekly guitar lesson, spent the night with them.  There has been a lot of road time the past two weeks.  We are home now for a month before it starts again, but during that month, we will have our daughter and her family here for a bit more than a week visiting and getting more grandkid time.

Another busy day

     Today was the last full day that eldest son was here to help with work.  We started off early enough to get breakfast in town and make our weekly Farmer's Market run, and for a change, we were early enough to actually score some real goodies, fresh corn, raspberries (Yummy), new Yukon
Gold potatoes, cheese, eggs (the girls aren't producing with any regularity yet), some meat for the winter freezer.
     Our afternoon was spent making modifications to the Chicken ark/tractor.  After using it for 5 weeks, I realized that the walkboard was too wide and hung down beside the feeder and over the waterer.  I'll just say that chickens are nasty birds, so we moved the walkboard across the width at the end with the perches, added one additional perch and put hefty eye screws in the peak to hang the food and water so that the chickens will have room on both sides of the feeder and waterer and more ground space to move around in.  We also added a door on one end that will allow me to more easily return escapees to the run and to let them out for some free range time so that they aren't so crowded as they get large.

     After a dinner of Farmer's Market and garden goodies, the garden became the focus of the rest of the days labor.  It is now about half weeded again, plus harvested another quart plus of fresh peas, two grocery sacks of kale, two cabbages (the others were so shaded by the kale they need more growing time), and a couple dozen potato (or cluster) onions.  The onions are curing, the cabbages are stored, the peas are shelled and most frozen for winter meals, a meal's worth saved out for tomorrow's dinner and I started on freezing the kale, but ran out of vac/seal bags material, so the rest will have to wait until tomorrow.  It is great to be filling the freezer again with garden veggies, chicken that we raised and beef and pork from the Farmer's Market.  The wild blackberries will be ripening soon, the wild raspberries sooner and there are a couple of pints of blueberries on my young bushes.  Some of the berries will be made into jams and some frozen for muffins and smoothies.

A Week on the farm- July 5, 2013

     Half of this past week was spent on the road and helping with childcare in Northern Virginia and during the whole week, we have had rain and more rain and more rain.  Our creek and run off creek are flowing so hard they have filled the bottom of the sinkhole and are running down the old creek bed that only sees water about once a year, some years it remains dry.
     The rain has the garden growing vigorously, but it the paths and berry beds are quickly being overtaken by weeds.

The sunflowers are nearly as tall as I am.

The chicken ark in the background is now empty and will remain so until the fall order of meat chickens arrives for our eldest son and his family, though they will spend the first five weeks they are here in the brooder in the garage.

The week brought our first eggs.  We know they were layed by the Rock Red cross pullets because they were found in the chicken ark and the one Rock Red we harvested was full of developing eggs.  Because of that, she was the first we harvested, we moved the other three to the hen house and three of the other pullets were harvested instead.  None of them showed any signs of being ready to lay, so we will have to be content with two or three eggs every couple of day for a few more weeks.

The rain has also provided a spot of color in the flower bed along with many weeds seen under the flowers.  If we don't mold, wet rot, or float away, there will be some days of weeding in my future.
Life is good on the farm.

Independence Day 2013

     Today would have been my Mother's 89th birthday had she lived beyond the age of 64.  I am older than she was when she died.  Today was not a typical celebration of the 4th of July for us.  There was no cookout, though we do have our eldest son and eldest grandson here and we rushed into town late this evening and found a parking spot about 6 blocks from the fireworks, found an uncrowded spot in the grass on the highest part of the park above where they were fired.  It was a good show, we arrived around 9:15 pm, very hungry because of how we spent the rest of the day.
     The morning started with grandson's guitar practice and his daily assignments of doing a writing exercise and a math exercise, followed by lunch in town and a few errands and purchases that were needed back at the farm.  The afternoon was a marathon of harvesting the meat birds and rooster culls that have been providing us with a morning serenade of crowing challenges between several birds.  Tomorrow will be silent.  The only chickens left are my egg layers and today, we got our first two pullet eggs.

 

The girls are 16 1/2 weeks old and we should start seeing all of them lay within the next 4 weeks.  There are 10 pullets remaining in the coop.

 

In total, we harvested about 40 pounds of chicken and right now that is the last food item in the world that I want to eat.  The process smells revolting and as I am not much of a meat eater anyway, the process is very unappealing.  Son on the other hand, repeatedly stated, "They look delicious."  We finished the process just in time to make the run into town.  Upon our return, the last of the vacuum seal bags were sealed, the birds put in freezer camp, the garage and kitchen cleaned.  Now it is time for showers, start a load of laundry and settle in for the night. 

Alone time on the road again

     On Sunday afternoon, the car pointed northeast for a few days of me helping out in Northern Virginia with the eldest son's family.  As both adults are working this summer, grandson needs coverage, he is only 8 and certainly not ready to be a latchkey kid in any sense of the meaning.  He is in a lot of summer activities, but they require his Dad to get him there without a car by 8:30 or 9 and pick him up by 3:30 or 4, depending on which week of activities are schedued.  They want to come back to the farm for a few days and to do so means longer hours at work for son, so Grandmom to the rescue.  There are a few times a year when school or work schedules just don't work out and the trips to help are scheduled.  Sometimes, grandson and I spend all day together, others like this trip, my time is unencumbered from the beginning of day camp until the camp day is over.  It is a good time to enjoy some alone time.  On my agenda was to trek over to Old Town Alexandria and spend some time visiting some of the shops, but the June rains have carried over to July and walking around wet streets in sandals with an umbrella didn't appeal.
     This has allowed time to knit and read, to venture a mile down the road to Whole Foods and avail myself of their diverse salad bar for lunch.
     While here, I try to help with household chores and designate myself as dinner cook.  They have a local nursery and produce stand right across the 4 lane street from their house and if you are brave enough to test Northern Virginia traffic on foot, local veggies are handy.
     Tomorrow after camp and work, we will make the drive back south west to the farm for awork session and visit.

Sunday Thankfulness- June 30, 2013

     While the west is sweltering, we are summer hot, but staying mostly in the mid 80's and cooling to wonderful sleeping weather at night.
      While many areas of the country are arid and into years of drought, we are getting rain.  The garden is thriving, including the weeds, but what are weeds, just wildflowers growing where you don't want them.
      Our children are pushing on with their lives as adults with families of their own.  Dealing with their own issues and sometimes coming to us for advice.  One is working on a PhD, one is just finishing a MBA, one has just bought a first house.  It pleases us that they are all strong and independent, loving and generous with their children for us to love.
      Grateful for the beautiful spot of Mother Nature that we found, bought, and built on.  Every day brings us glimpses of deer, turkeys, red tailed hawks, bunnies, chipmunks and more.  Wildflowers abound in the yard and ditches, changing with the months that pass.

One of my favorites is Moth Mullein, shooting spikes of white, pink or yellow blossoms toward the sky.
     Thankful for acres to grow gardens and chickens, for dogs to run and maybe someday horses and beef cattle.
      Life is good.

A Week on the Farm- June 27

This week we have seen a lot of this...

gray and steamy, thunder, lightening and today steady cooler rain.

These guys are being fattened up for next week's trip to freezer camp...

which also means bringing out the brooder and getting set up for the next round of meat chicks due later in the summer...

The rain and warmth are responsible for the lush growth in the flower beds and the garden...

including the rapid growth of weeds that will require another couple of intense days removing them and another too soon mowing.

Hoping that we will soon be able to refill the near barren pantry shelves and empty freezer...

The produce so far has been garlic scapes, a couple of jalapenos and some greens.  The pullets are now nearly 16 weeks old and we are hoping for eggs soon.

The wet weather has given time for some spinning and knitting, socializing with the Clicks and Sticks Knitting night group last night and the Spunsters spinning group today.

Spin and knit day

     Today we are enjoying summer afternoon thunderstorms.  Since the farm work is caught up, the house is dusted and vacuumed, I am enjoying some crafting time.

On the spinning wheel I'm spinning the wine part of a wine and roses yarn.  The dark wine color will be plied with the rose colored merino to make what I hope is worsted weight yarn.

On the needles is homespun by Kirsten of Echo Valley Finnsheep.  It is called Licorice with Vanilla.  These two yarns along with the Jamica that I spun recently are being knit into little stuffed bunnies from a pattern Henry's Rabbits on Ravelry.  They will be given to our granddaughters and our daughter and son-in-laws new nephew.
     It seemed time to finally start knitting some of my homespun yarn and since most of my homespun are too little yardage to knit much but hats and scarves, toys are a good use for the fiber goodness.

To mow or not to mow

     Summer arrived with a vengeance.  It is hot and humid, reminds me of when we lived in Virginia Beach.  It is cooling at night, fortunately and our log home heats slowly during the day and cools well at night, so we haven't had to turn on the A/C, but it is near 90 today and the air is so thick you drink it instead of breathing it.
     Two days ago, the tractor and brush hog were brought out for the first time since they were haying and a little mow was done.  We have the area that we consider the lawn that covers maybe a couple of acres and it gets mowed fairly regularly.  A medium mow includes the area from the "lawn" to the barn and west beyond a row of pines we planted to the edge of the woods, maybe another couple of acres.  That gets mowed 4 or 5 times a summer.  The big mow are the hayfields that get hayed by neighbors in the spring and mowed by us in the fall.  Our farm is 30 acres and only about 5 are woods or too rocky to mow.
     When we moved from Virginia Beach, we brought with us a riding mower that was going to be used around the house.  It was stored in the barn until the house was complete and the grass and clover planted around the house had come up.  Unfortunately, by then, the mice had found it a good place to nest and it wouldn't run.  At that time, I was still working at the high school and the school had a small engines repair class, so I took it to them to try to get it functional again.  It had some funky kind of carburetor that the instructor had never seen before, but he didn't realize it until he had allowed some students to start working on it and they managed to get rodent nest and other unmentionables into the carburetor and fuel lines.  The mower ended up at the local fix it shop, twice, many dollars later, it still would not run.  We also had a push mower, but it was a flatland version with little tires and a chore to push up and down the irregular yard and then it too quit working.
     About this time, eldest son and I made a trip to the local small equipment store and bought this monster...

a commercial grade Stihl edger with harness and he used it to keep enough yard mowed for us to get in an out and around the house.  That led to the purchase of the John Deere and brush hog, but it just doesn't get close enough safely to the house to really do the job.  When eldest was here in May, he weedwacked a 5 to 6' path around the house out to where I could mow with the tractor and after I weedwacked around the outside of the orchard, he took over and did around the garden, the coop and the trees.  Since then, I have done the path around the house, the entire orchard, garden area and it nearly wore me out.  That was about 2 weeks ago and with the rain, the orchard was again nearly a foot tall.  We started discussing what to do, hubby still can't do that type of work, his knee hasn't healed enough and then he broke a toe on the same side, so he is still hobbling.  I didn't think I could manage the Stihl again for that much, and though the chickens in the chicken tractor do this to a patch in about 2 days

the area is too big for the 4 X 8' chicken tractor to be moved enough to keep it mowed for us.
     The solution we decided was not another riding mower, but a push mower with larger tires.

Though the task is still not easy, set on the tallest mow setting and working back and forth across the slope, the job is done.  The area the tractor won't mow and the orchard are now about 4" instead of a foot tall.  Perhaps I have a couple of weeks before it must be done again. 

A week on the farm - June 20

     Summer has arrived, though a much rainier summer so far than we are accustomed to having.  Between showers, the porch umbrella and chair cushions were brought out in hope of dinners on the deck, the deck planters are filling in with geraniums and lantana, the herb pots filled and growing.  In the garden, two half barrels were started with potatoes, to be filled a bit more every few days as the sprouts reach for the sun in hopes that the season will end with two full barrels of fresh potatoes for the winter.  The beds of the garden were weeded and mulched, the winter squash has it's first blossom, the cucumbers and pumpkins getting secondary leaves.  There are pea pods and a good stand of young bush beans.
     The young roosters are getting vocal, three of them challenging each other to see who can be the loudest and most annoying, beginning at 5 a.m. and continuing through the daylight hours if they see me out in the orchard or garden.  Moving their ark/tractor every couple of days is reducing the area that has to be mowed in the orchard.  The pullets (young hens) are reaching the time where we may start seeing eggs, so their coop was thoroughly cleaned and bedded with fresh hay and the nesting boxes seeded with fake eggs (golf balls) to encourage them to use the nesting boxes instead of the run or main coop when they finally figure it out.  It is about time to rearrange their run again to give them more fresh grass, but the rest of the compost beside their run still needs to be moved and a 100' roll of 6 ' fencing purchased along with a few more posts so that their run can be set up along two sides of the garden in a 4 to 5' wide expanded run for them.

*This idea borrowed from SouleMama, a delightful blog of a young homesteading family in Maine.

Morning views from the farm

     There are mountains beyond those trees in both directions, so unless we are in Oz, I think we are socked in.  At least it is not raining.

No drought this year

     Like so many parts of the country, we have had a series of years that have had some level of drought.  Not so this year, it is again raining.  Normally by the time the hay is mowed, the rains stop and the yard and fields get a parched look to them.  Mowing is reduced to every two or three weeks and the fields are slow to grow to a height that requires a late summer/fall mowing, if it weren't for the invasive stickweed.  Our mowing of as much of the land as possible and then allowing haying in the spring for the past 2 years has reduced this pest, but as we can't mow all of the acreage, there are patches of it that persist and it comes up in the hayfields by fall.  This spring and summer have produced many inches of rain above normal.  Hardly a week goes by that the region doesn't get a flood watch for the creeks and rivers.  The grass continues to grow, thick and tall and it seems we have to pick a semi dry day each week to mow at least around the house and garden.
     I know farm work isn't always pleasant, but dealing with morning chores in the rain is an unpleasant start to the day.  Today we are looking at 100% chance of rain.  The chickens barreled out of their coop this morning and looked at me like I was responsible for it again being wet.  Some returned immediately to the inside of the coop, others huddled underneath.
     In the past couple of days between storms, I did get the upper hand on the nut and wire grass in the garden beds, put down weed mat and a heavy mulch of hay on the grape bed, mulched the beds of squash, cukes, okra, peppers and tomatoes.  On the positive side, I'm not having to water.

     On the next semi dry day, I still have a section of path that never got a layer of newspaper, weed mat or plastic that needs some work and I have a free source of year old wood chips that I am going to haul to the garden to put in the paths and hope to win the battle of wire grass there too. 

A Great Week

 

 

 

 

     The mountain laurel is blooming in Pandapas Pond park, hubby's knee has healed enough for the pups to get a walk and they were happy about it.  The hayfields are mowed, the hay baled, making the property look neat for a month or so, the garden is thriving, and I added two tomato plants from the farmer's market to replace two that didn't survive.  The pullets and cockrells are growing, getting close to time to start seeing eggs and time to harvest the rest of the culls.  We have had a great week, survived the summer storm with only a few hours without power, the start of produce from the garden and  good weather for the most part.

Farm Day

     Today was a beautiful day following yesterday's devasting storms.  Again, we were lucky, suffering no damage and this time only losing power for about 6 1/2 or 7 hours.  That meant dinner out, but that wasn't a big deal either.

     A beautiful day on the farm means work, for us and for the neighbor haying our fields.   I started off early, moving the compost from the area where we removed the bin structure into one of the existing bins, after raking the area where the temporary chicken pen had been to get the wood shavings and chicken provided fertilizer into a bin.  When my back could take no more of the shoveling for the day (only a small amount of the compost actually moved), I took a break.  After lunch, we took a walk to help strengthen hubby's knee, then moved hay around the fruit trees in a thick layer for mulch.

Hopefully, this will keep the weeds down, hold the moisture and help the 10 young trees to thrive.  Using some of the hay that was dragged out beyond the baling area, the tomatoes and peppers were also mulched and while working in the garden, the nut and wire grass that has been taking over the grape bed was removed.  Tomorrow, I will put down weed mat and cover it thickly with more hay.

While I was working in the garden, the neighbor was busy with his help, raking and baling the hay he had been mowing for the past few days.  Two of the bales were put within our orchard area to be used for chicken coop maintenance during the winter, 22 more were lined up in the upper field for loading and removal.

Two trailers of 22 bales being hauled away.  The low field and the western most field have been mowed, but not yet raked and baled.  The low field is the largest and where most of the hay will be baled. 
 
The day ended with Jalapeno slaw with the first jalapeno from the garden, garlic beef with mushroom gravy, the garlic provided by a few of the dozens of garlic scapes that have emerged in the past couple of days, and a pot of Farro, my new favorite grain product, washed down with a bottle of Porter, brewed and bottled in Hampton, VA, near my hometown.

A good day, life is good!

Funky Fun

     When I bought my new spinning wheel, to get used to it without "wasting" good fiber, I took all the ends and samples that I had around and started spinning, adding the next bit when the bit I was working on was gone.  This had me spinning Merino and Merino/silk blend that I had used before, but also got me to try an assortment of other fibers such as Llama, Llama/Mohair, Corriedale wool, Blue Faced Leicester/silk blend, Alpaca, Shetland/Llama, Pendleton/Angora, Llama/wool, Cottswold Tunis cross wool, and Shetland/Mohair blend.  Some of the samples were neutral colors, some bright and vivid.  When they were all spun into a lightweight single ply, I spun an equal amount of Blue Faced Leicester that was undyed into another lightweight single ply.  I worked on this at the weekly spinning group to which I belong, The Spunsters, and when we arrived home after the wicked summer storm that hit and discovered that the power was out, I finished that bobbin and plied the two singles together to produce this

a delightful funky 320 yards of fingering weight yarn.
     For years, I have wanted to knit a blanket or throw for cold mountain nights and this this might be the start of it, a bit of color, a bit of natural, all handspun.  Since I have other handspun left from other projects or never designated to a project, perhaps I will use it too and make my blanket, not only one I knit, but one I spun first.
     As for the power outage, it got our neighbor out here to finish mowing the hay, since they had no power either, and just as he finished and darkness was falling, the lights came back on, only 6 1/2 hours this time.  Not bad considering every household in our entire county was without.

Ahhh, farming

     These are some of the accoutrements of farming currently parked on our acreage.  There are two huge tractors, one with a baler, one pulling a monstrous gooseneck trailer.  Three smaller tractors, one with a trailer, one with a hay tether and one with a rake.  Another with a rake went home and yesterday there were two sickle bar mowers attached to two tractors, maybe two of these, maybe different ones and none of them are ours.  I guess it is too much trouble to trade out the attachments on these beasts, I know our brush hog is a bear to put on and take off, so they just keep adding tractors to put all of the attachments on.  Not all of these tractors belong to the neighbor who is doing our haying, the one pulling the baler belongs to his neighbor, but he maintains it and gets to use it.  One or two belong to his uncle who raised him and lives on the same farm.
     Our little tractor and brush hog mowed the 5 or 6 acres we keep groomed as a lawn today, hauled a load of scrapwood to the burn pile, moved a load of compost to a different area of the garden to start 2 half barrels of potato starts and made this work much easier on me than if I had to do it all with a push mower and wheelbarrow.
    

Haying commences

     It has been a few days since there was a post on this blog.  We have been waterlogged and I just couldn't bring up enough creative energy to blog, but today the skies finally cleared.  We went into town to stock up on chicken and dog foods and to get lunch.  It was still somewhat overcast, but no real rain expected.  When we got home, the neighbor who hays for us for the bulk of our hay was here and they got the upper parts of the yard mowed and turned in preparation for baling it tomorrow.  The big hayfield, the lowest part of our land is still too wet, but hopefully will be dry enough for haying this weekend.  We hope this will reduce the tick load, they have been terrible this spring.

 

 

 

 

 

Since I planted the orchard and put electric fence around it, the area that houses the chicken coop, chicken tractor, garden, compost and orchard has gotten very difficult to maintain.  The tractor doesn't turn well enough with the brush hog attached to mow in there without taking out chicken pens or electric fence wire posts, so it tends to get very, very tall.  Today I ended up with several ticks just going over to feed and water the chickens, so I tackled the area that is more than 100 feet by 100 feet square with the huge weed whacker and while I had it out, I cleared a 7 foot band around the house so I can mow tomorrow with the tractor.  A busy, tiring day, but productive.

A terrible, horrible, no good, very bad start to a day

     For past readers, you know we have two pups.  One, a German Shepherd, about 14 months old and still puppy hyper and unfortunately shedding horribly and doesn't like to be brushed.  The other, an English Mastiff about a year and a half old and nearly 200 pounds, a true gentle giant, but like others of his breed, selectively deaf.  Last evening, just before dark, I took them out one at a time, hubby is still healing from his surgery on his knee and I am trying to limit his climbing the stairs more than necessary.  Ranger, the beast spotted some critter in the tall hay on the edge of the property and took off barking.  Not to be disuaded from this pursuit, he ignored my calls and I couldn't see him in the tall hay from the ground.  Eventually, he came back, but seemed to be having some digestive issues, finally came in the house.
     Also, for new readers, eldest son (ES) and I built a chicken ark/tractor, a moveable pen for the cull birds and it is lined on the lower half and ends with hardware cloth. The structure is A frame and it is a struggle for me to reach in to get the waterer in and out and in doing so, I scratched my inner forearm the first day and cut the side of my pinky finger, probably enough to need stitches (didn't happen) two days ago on the edge of the hardware cloth.
     This morning in the wee hours, around 4:45, I was awakened by the sound of heavy rain falling on the metal roof and by a smell.  Mastiff's can clear a room when they fart and I assumed that was the case, but it didn't go away, it got worse.  Finally we turned on lights and it wasn't farts.  Cleaning up after a 200 pound dog, sick at both ends, at 5 in the morning is not my idea of a good start to the day.  Doing it while trying not to involve the badly injured finger, to keep it clean and dry made it less fun.  Once that was done, sleep seemed elusive at best, but I got back in bed.  Less than 30 minutes later he was whining and nosing me to get up and let him out (I'm the morning caregiver) and he went out into the pouring rain, spotted something to bark at and chase and wouldn't come back in.  That meant dressing, finding shoes and going after him in the rain.  Finally back in, we all settled for an hour until both dogs wanted out.  I gave up on sleep at this point, dressed again and turned them out in the pouring rain.  Shadow returned after doing her business, wet but came in for breakfast.  Ranger would not come in and I refused to chase him down again.  Generally, once she is in, he returns on his own and he did, looking like a 200 pound drowned rat.  Towel dried and fed, breakfast fixed for me, I awaiting a lull in the driving rain to go deal with the chickens.  The culls go through their food container and their water container daily.  To access the inside of the chicken tractor, one 100 inch long side lifts and can be propped up, but any birds up on the perches when you do this can escape.  I managed to chase all but one down into the bottom, but she escaped.  After they were fed and watered, the top closed, she had to be caught, single handedly.  There are places if she would go that would make it easier to do, but she wanted back in with her buds and just circled the tractor trying to find a way in.  Meanwhile, in spite of my GoreTex jacket, I am getting soaked.  She is finally back in the pen, the girls came out of the coop, discovered it was not to their liking and scooted under it.  I am back inside, jeans and socks wet, rain jacket hanging in the shower and dreaming of moving to Australia.
     Ranger is getting the sleep he denied me.

A spin about

     Yesterday, the missing parts ordered for my new wheel arrived and the wheel assembly was finished.  Over the year that I have been spinning, I have accumulated a few small bunches of roving of various fiber, some from just not finishing roving I was spinning, some the wee giftees from the friend from whom I purchased my first wheel, and a few left from when I was drop spindle spinning.  I pulled out some Merino, an easy to spin fiber and tried out the new wheel.
     It is a learning curve to change wheels, I don't know how people with multiple wheels manage it.  The first few tries resulted in the roving getting too thin and disappearing onto the bobbin while I still had the rest in my hands.  After a number of false starts, I got the hang of it, I thought, and spun the remaining few yards of Merino, switching to a Merino/Silk blend and feeling pretty good about the wheel when the roving broke and I lost the end on the bobbin.  After trying to find it for a while, I gave up.  Today I resumed looking for the lost end to no avail and cut the single near where the end should be and worked backward until I had a solid single to begin on again.
     This afternoon has been a fun experiment, using Corriedale in vivid colors, Blue Faced Leicester/Silk blend and pure Alpaca to create a funky bobbin of single that I am going to ply with a neutral and use to knit blanket squares.  Maybe someday, there will be a blanket or throw to warm us on a cold evening and it will be made entirely of homespun yarn.

     I am in love with my new wheel and still adore the spinning process.

Reduce, reuse, recycle . . . and introductions

     I am a consumate hippy.  Recycling and using cloth reuseable shopping bags have been my habits long before it was popular.  But nut butter jars, especially the square one and oil bottles with a neck too small for a bottle brush are almost enough to want me to just toss them in the trash.


Seriously, how do they expect you to clean those corners?

It is going in the dishwasher and then it gets recycled, hopefully cleaner than this.

     Yesterday I posted that we added two more chicks to the laying flock, Buff Orpingtons, a heritage breed that lays through the winters here.  They are pretty, fluffy, golden chickens, easy going and non aggressive, plus they make good Mommies if you have a rooster and let them, or sneak them fertilized eggs when they are broody and you want to raise more chicks.  Last night, they spent last night in a big dog cage in the garage with food and water.  This morning, the cage went into the girl's run, so they can meet in safety.  Soon they will be placed on the perch in the coop after dark so they will all wake up together.  Hopefully there will be no bullying, and no blood letting.  Some chickens are MEAN to each other.

Another whirlwind work session

     When our eldest son was here week before last, we didn't finish everything that was planned, so he and our nearly 8 year old grandson rode the MegaBus from Northern Virginia to here on Friday night and we hit the list hard yesterday morning.
     First on our list was to level the chicken coop.  Our farm slopes from the road at the top to the property line at the bottom with an elevation change of about 200 feet, so there is not a naturally level place on the entire property.  Hubby and I did the best we could when we put it in place, but it wasn't level and it was sitting directly on the ground.  Two car jacks and a 6 foot prybar, a stack of cinder blocks of various thickness and the coop is now level and sitting off the ground with all 4 legs sitting on one or more cinder blocks.
     Next up was to finish the chicken ark/tractor.  Son calls it a chicken palace.  What it is, is a portable coop that can be moved every few days to provide fresh grass and bugs to the birds until their harvest date.

Fastening flashing over the roof peak

Applying Linseed Oil in the dark

Riviting a piece of split garden hose along the sharp edge of the side that lifts for access.  He doesn't want me to cut my face or scalp.
 

     The chicks in their new, more secure and moveable pen.  The girls are still in the coop and they have two new playmates.  I found a local supply of Buff Orpingtons, a heritage breed and the chicks are 10 weeks old, only a couple of weeks younger than the other pullets.

     The Chicken Palace completion took the rest of yesterday and part of this morning.  Before working on it this morning, we racked the beer from the Brew Day for it's second ferment.  It is a beautiful clear dark brown beer.  Son says it will finish into a very dark Porter and during lunch today we played with naming it.  The name is not to be revealed until it is ready to serve up at our big double summer celebration of my Dad's 90th birthday and the baptism of our daughter's two children.

     Removing two bins of the 6 making up the compost bins, barn roof repair in the rain and an approaching thunder storm and putting a switch box extender on a light switch completed our allotted time.  The rest of the jobs will have to be finished when they return in July.  Son and grandson were put on a 3:30 Megabus home and we drove to an adjoining county to pick up the two chicks.  Now it is time to rest and read or knit.