The Inky Spinnery

Ducklings

2011-05-07T18:28:00.000-04:00

Our duck Lily, hatched 9 eggs last week. These are her first babies and she's being a very good Mum. Ken set them up in the horse trailer with a tub to swim in .

Clutching to little bits of beauty

2011-04-27T22:46:00.000-04:00

Thank you so much to those who left comments and words of symathy. They really are appreciated so very much. Shirley, my heart goes out to you, love. I knew that when Mum passed away I would miss her terribly, but I wasn't expecting to decend into such a deep dark hole. I finally agreed to go to the doctor and get some help. Please pray that I'll be able to dig out of this mess soon.

Meanwhile, spring is all around us. The apple and dogwood trees are in full bloom. A huge rainstorm caused the creeks to overflow and wash out the road last week! A little bit of excitement. Yesterday we dug up a beautiful bunch of white narcisus we found growing by the roadside. I'm going to split them up and plant them in the borders, since the deer don't seem to have a taste for them.

I'll try to post more often.

To every thing there is a season...

2011-03-23T22:03:00.001-04:00

Oh what a sad season it is at this moment.
I'm sorry for not posting for so long. I've actually been in England for the past three weeks. My lovely, Mum passed away on Sunday February 13th. She'd been in and out of the hospital most of last year and the beginning of this one with chest infections and pneumonia . She only had one lung due to contracting TB when she was 16 years old, so any chest infection was always a major worry for her- and us. As she aged she succumed to other problems, involving her heart and thyroid. The medications for one tended to interfere with the meds for another. The doctors could usually get her back on an even keel within a few days, but this time she was in there for three weeks and they just couldn't get her stabilised.

Josh and I flew over there for the funeral and stayed another couple of weeks to help Dad go through Mum's clothes and things. A very difficult time. Ken came over for the final week to help me with the extra bags of items I wanted to bring back.

I managed to hold together quite well while we were over there. There was so much to do. I cleaned and sorted the kitchen from top to bottom so that it would be more organized for Dad. Family, friends and neighbors were constantly in and out for cups of tea and support, So there wasn't much time to sit and think. Now I'm back to the quietness of the farm, the loss of Mum is really hitting me. Even though there were so many miles between us, we were always best friends. Her phone company TalkTalk offered free 1 hour calls to the US so we made full use of that!

Well, that's about all I can write at this time, but I'll post more in the next few days along with some pictures of England.

Dying Yarn With Tumeric

2011-02-09T14:11:00.002-05:00

I tried my hand at dying some hand spun yarn with Turmeric last night.
It was very easy. Set a pan with about an inch and a half of water to simmer on the stove. Add a couple of teaspoons of turmeric powder. Stir and let simmer for about 20 or 30 minutes. I had to add a bit more water as time went on. Then I added the hank of yarn and gently pushed it under the water with a wooden spoon. Let simmer for another 30 minutes. I liked the color at that point, so I then took it out and dipped in a bowl of very hot water for a few seconds. Then transferred it to another bowl of cold water. Kept changing the cold water until dye no longer came out of the yarn. Squeezed it gently to remove the water and hung it over the bath tub to drip dry over night.

I'm really pleased with the results!

Winter Knit-Along

2011-02-07T21:30:00.006-05:00

I joined the girls on the fiber forum at Homesteading Today in a KAL. We're all knitting this pair of fingerless mittens. The pattern is free but you may have to sign up for ravelry.

We've each been assigned a partner to swap with. My partner is Shazza and she's in Australia. She's probably sitting outside in her shorts, drinking tall cool drinks, while knitting my mittens, since it's summer and pretty hot down there. I, on the other hand, am stoking up the wood stove and gobbling down comfort foods, like these cheesy, drop biscuits!

Recipe from Joy The Baker I just used regular cheddar for these.

Had to abandon the first mitten attempt when I saw a glaring error. I'd missed a whole row of the pattern! See all the tops are missing from the zig-zags at the bottom?

The yarn used is Blue Sky Alpaca sport, in streaky brown and light gray. It's extremely soft and will hopefully be keeping Shazza's hands all cozy and warm when I'm out in my shorts weeding the garden!

It's Alive!

2011-02-02T15:17:00.001-05:00

I'm sorry, I fell off the blogging waggon. Right after New Year, we all came down with lousy colds and I lost all my inspiration for a while. It's that time of year. Not much exciting going on. We've been getting snow just about every week, but it hasn't accumulated very much. This week has been rather warm and melted what bit was left, except for a thick layer of ice on the road from the house to the barn. So we still have to wear Yak-Trax on our boots to keep us from falling and breaking something.

Anyway, the title is also referring to that bottle of milk in the picture. It really is alive! I ordered some Kefir grains from a lady by the name of Romey, over in Washington State: http://kefirwellness.com/

You place the grains in the decanter and add regular milk. Let it sit out on the counter top over night, and the next morning you strain out the the grains and you have Kefir, which is a cultured milk, full of probiotics that are very good for you. The grains, which don't look like grains at all, more like little florets of cauliflower, feed on the lactose in the milk and grow and multiply. So once you have the grains, you never need to buy more. The milk has a slight yeast smell ( though it's not a yeast) and is a bit sour tasting. Some people, especially in eastern Europe, drink it straight, but it's really good when mixed with banana or other fruit and honey or maple syrup, kind of like a smoothie. You can also add it to pancakes or whatever recipe calls for milk. Not only that but if you leave it out for about 48 hours it gets thick. You remove the grains off the top ( they float to the top) put the thick kefir into a cheese strainer and leave to hang over night. The whey seeps out and you're left with a kind of cream cheese. I made some and added a few herbs and a bit of onion powder. It's delicious on crackers. Some, I just left plain except for a bit of salt, and that's good on toasted English muffins with jam for breakfast. Mmm, I'm so happy with my Kefir!

Come for a Boxing Day walk with us!

2010-12-31T19:32:00.005-05:00

We had quite a nice snowfall on Christmas day and throughout the night. As usually happens after snow, high winds were due to come in, so we decided to head out for a walk while the landscape still had that pristine, magical calm over it.

We went out of the gate...

and down the road...

around the mountain past the "house" next door.

Cheyenne, you said you always dreamed of living in this area, well, here's your starter kit honey! You would be welcomed by a colony of about 12 cats, a family of racoons, a stray dog and sometimes a bear!

2010-12-31T19:16:00.002-05:00

The illustrator's house.

2010-12-31T19:15:00.005-05:00

the old church. I mean to write to the current owners of this building and see if they would like to sell it. They live out of state and never come here as far as we can tell. I'd like to clean it up and rent it out as a knitter's retreat or place for local quilters to meet and sew! Just hate to see it standing forlorn and forgotten.

The creek and another abandoned home.

interesting rock formations...

The creek winds its way from one side of the road to the other. Not too long ago these little low-water bridges didn't exist and the road went right through the creek. Even now when the water is high it covers the bridges and sometimes washes them out altogether.

long stretches of nothingness.

all the way to the very end ...

where our dirt road meets the hard-topped road. Here, our creek meets a larger creek and continues its journey to the river and the ocean a few hundred miles away.

The main road up the mountain...

The long winding road down the mountain.

2010-12-31T19:09:00.002-05:00

Looking back to the rickety bridge at the entrance of our road. I always hold my breath when driving over it!

2010-12-31T19:08:00.002-05:00

Heading home.

Abandoned farmhouse.

2010-12-31T19:00:00.002-05:00

The creek and the church.

And we got back just as the wind started to pick up!

Time for hot soup and a cup of tea.

Merry Christmas!

2010-12-24T20:48:00.000-05:00

Sending you all warm Christmas greetings. Thank you so much for reading my ramblings and leaving comments. I really appreciate it.

Love, Polly

It's beginning to look...

2010-12-22T17:04:00.006-05:00

... a little bit like Christmas!

After working in a nursing home where my dept. was responsible for decorating all three floors for every holiday on the calendar, I swore I never wanted to decorate again!

Up until 2006, Ken was usually deployed to some foreign land at Christmas, so I managed to get away with not doing much at all. The last few years, he's been the one putting up the tree etc. This year, I'm feeling so good I actually want to decorate a little. But not the usual gaudy mess!

Thanks to Alicia, at Posie Gets Cozy , I got the idea to make these little Swedish style hanging wreaths for the windows. We have a row of Leyland Cyprus trees growing along the fence line by the road and their branches turned out to be ideal! I Love simple and natural!

That little tree on the coffee table was a three dollar Christmas Eve clearance item at Walmart. It was the year that Ken was in Saudi Arabia, and my MIL, on the phone, was appalled that I hadn't "put up a tree for Joshua". I felt really guilty, and hauled Josh off to the store to see what could be had. Wow, now I know why guys like to shop on Christmas eve! We got the tree and a beat up box of tiny broken wooden ornaments for five bucks. Joshua thought it was the greatest thing, finding all the little wooden parts and gluing them back together.

Poor kid. I was a baaad mama!

Cat TV

2010-12-19T23:49:00.001-05:00

Not much blogging getting done lately owing to frantic knitting. I'm trying to get a sweater finished for Ken in time for Christmas. He knows about it, but since we are having a very spartan Christmas this year, I thought it would be nice for him to have something to unwrap.

We really don't go all out for the holidays as we tend to buy things we want or need throuout the year. In fact we've accumulated so much "stuff" over the years, I need to be getting rid of things, not bringing in more! Ken already got what he wanted, one of those tripods with a pully for hanging deer or pigs etc. for butchering. I bought all that yarn a couple of weeks ago and paid the bill for the kidney stone surgery. A pain free Christmas and a pile of knitting is all I want. That leaves Joshua. He just wants a scope for his rifle. He's also been hankering to learn blacksmithing, so I'm going to enrol him in a course locally. Our nearest town, about 20 miles away has a population of only 450 people, but it's a very unique place, full of artist, artisans and musicians and an arts center offering courses in a wide variety of skills. I imagin next year he'll be wanting an anvil and all the blacksmithing tools!

Below are a few pictures taken over the weekend...

Dexter discovers "talking cat" videos on youtube!

It's Sunday, so here are this weeks 'through the kitchen window ' pics.

This is Ken cutting kindling for the stove. Kin'lin' as he calls it. Still a couple of inches of snow on the ground. The storm last week wasn't as bad as we'd expected. The power stayed on, though it doesn't affect us much when it goes out. We just light the oil lamps and transfer the milk and other perishables from the fridge to a cooler outside on the porch. If it's out for more than a couple of days Ken fires up the generator for an hour or two to keep the freezers cold. We kind of enjoy going back to 19th century living once in a while.

Winter Pictures

2010-12-16T00:07:00.001-05:00

Below are few pictures from around the farm this last weekend when it warmed up a bit outside. Before we degenerated back into arctic conditions.

I haven't been blogging much beacause we've been experiencing such fierce winter weather this week. The day's have been a blur of slogging back and forth with feed and water for animals and keeping the woodstove going, - with a bit of knitting in between. The winds were so high it sounded as if there were jets sitting on a runway outside the back door! The house was shuddering! I slept in the recliner by the stove so that I could keep it going all night. It will hold a fire all night with no problem, but when the winds are so high and variable, if there isn't a good blaze in the fire box it will suddenly belch smoke right out of the blue. I think it's when the wind swings from the North. The lights kept flickering and we eventually lost power on Monday afternoon from about 4 until midnight. Just a short outage by our standards. When it goes out, it's usually out for a good few days. Our neighbors across the road lost their water and called for help around midnight. So Ken had to go over and work on the pump in their spring house. Thankfully, he was able to get it going for them.

Right now we are hunkering down for a snow storm which may be mixed with freezing rain, so there's a good chance we will lose electricity again if ice accumulates on the power lines, or trees fall on them. Never a dull moment here in the winter.

Looking back toward the house while taking a walk along the creek

The pigeons at feeding time.

Crystal Palace eating her hay.

Through the livingroom window, the sun coming around the mountain at three in the afternoon. Lady bugs on the window frame! (They're now in the vacuum cleaner :)

One horse and another

2010-12-13T01:01:00.000-05:00

I took this shot today. Shady up on the hill eating her hay with her reflected image in the icy pond.

We've had a little break in the weather with two days above freezing but now it's 20F, breezy and snowing again. More high winds and very low temperatures for the week ahead. Yuk! I really don't like wind: it makes working outside very miserable. Nice to listen to while tucked up in bed or sitting by the woodstove though.

I spent the weekend working on the cardigan I started last week, and managed to get it finished a few minutes ago. It's the first (adult sized) cardi I've ever made, due a fear of collars and button bands. Once I got down to it, picking up the stitches for them both was really easy. All those years of avoiding cardigans, now I want to knit a whole closet full! Tomorrow I'm going to cast on stitches for Ken's cardi. It's kind of like a smoking jacket, with a shawl collar. I'll post pics tomorrow because it's really late now and I can't keep my eyes open any longer.

Presto Chango Knitted Baby Sweater

2010-12-09T20:15:00.002-05:00

Thought I'd post a picture of this little baby outfit I knitted a few months ago. I still have it because the baby it was intended for, grew faster than the knitting! Had to make another one two sizes larger for him to grow into. So now this is earmarked for another little one that's not yet born.

The hat is just something simple I made up as I went along, but the sweater pattern is called Presto Chango and you can download it for free here: http://www.jimmybeanswool.com/freeKnittingPatternPrestoChango.asp ( I think I added extra moss stitch on the front for some reason,- probably to make up for a mistake :) It's a nice easy knit with quite a lot of room for improvisation.

The yarn is Knit Picks Wool of the Andes but I can't remember the name of it. It's no longer in their catalog. I think it was Mocha Twist.

We have snow!

2010-12-05T20:18:00.001-05:00

The view from the kitchen window last Sunday

Here's the view from the kitchen window this afternoon.

The wood stove and my knitting. And a BIG pot of soup. Guys get hungry when they're hunting!

I lost my blogging inspiration for a week or so and now it's hard to get back to it.

Last week was Thanksgiving. One of Ken's brothers came up to stay with us from North Carolina. He always comes up here at this time of the year to go hunting. We had a nice weekend but there wasn't a deer in sight. T. sat up on the mountin for five hours and didn't see any. They are usually wandering around in the yard, at least in the early morning and evenings, but this year apparantly, there's a huge crop of acorns and other goodies that deer love to eat, so they are staying deep in the woods.

As you can see winter has finally arrived. It snowed lightly all day yesterday and now we have a lot of wind. Ken and Josh had to rig up a better house for the goats. Yes, it consists of the usual blue tarps that I'm so desperate to get rid of, but at least the goats are cozy and protected from the howling winds. The man was supposed to have been and fenced the mountain side by now, and I thought the goats would be out of the temporary pen and up on the mountain by the end of October. We remembered that fence man wasn't feeling well when we last talked to him so we are getting worried that he is still not doing so good. Will have to call and find out.

So, while the weather outside is awful, once the farm chores are done, we're staying inside, cozy and warm by the wood stove. I finished knitting a sweater for Joshua. Just a plain one for working outside in. There's nothing like pure wool for warmth. Now I'm working on a cardigan for me. Yarn was on sale at the store in town so I kind of got carried away and bought enough for sweaters for all of us. Since the doctors and dentist appointments are all done with, we probably wont go to the big town again for a few months.

I'll try to blog more this coming week.

Love,

Polly

A beautiful Morning!

2010-11-23T00:29:00.001-05:00

Woo hoo! The kidney stone is gone! Poof! hasta la vista, baby!

And 4 days after the surgery, I've finally woke up! Thank goodness for darling men folk who are capable of taking care of themselves, the house and the farm, as well as the zombie wife/mom. Flat out on the couch I was vaguely aware of dishes being washed, a hot water bottle under my feet, "sit up and take your pill", the smell of pine sol, Ken mopping the bathroom floor and singing, the washing machine running, the chimney being swept, wood being chopped, Joshua bringing the dog in and out and relaying a list of all the chores that were done, and what he was going to do next, cups of tea, hot soup, bacon sandwiches and chocolate truffles! "You're spoiled, girl! you're spoiled rotten!"

But, today, I woke up early and felt so good, I went outside for a wander around with the camera. Ken was at work and Josh was still asleep. The sun was just coming up over the ridge and casting long beams down into our hollow. It was beautiful. We're having amazingly warm weather for late November. Almost 70 F this afternoon! I didn't feel up to crawling around on the floor to finish up the painting so just messed around with a llama fleece that the farrier gave me. I went on line and learned how to wash it, pick it and card it ready for spinning. Hoping to have enough spun to knit up a scarf or something for her in time for Christmas.

Anyway, here are the pictures from this morning.

Looking down the valley and our dirt road. The neighbor's house is visible now that the leaves are gone.

The horses waiting for the sun to move around the mountain a bit. The pond was like glass. Frost still on the back pasture.

The old woods road. This was actually a state road a hundred years ago! It comes right under our front window, through the barn yard, across the creek and follows the creek up around the mountain past a 30 ft waterfall, and on up through another farm to the road on the other side of the ridge. This was a very busy place back then. People used to come down here to trade for goods at the old general store and to bring their corn to be ground at the water powered grist mill that used to be in our front pasture.

Goats enjoying the sun.

Pride comes before a -wall- fall

2010-11-15T23:24:00.002-05:00

Thank you Cheyenne and Judy for the kind comments on my wall. I was feeling pretty smug about it. Alas, a major malfunction this morning. When I tentatively kicked a stone that looked a bit "off", it promptly fell out! Leaving a big hole. Of course it had to be one of the lower level ones too. I hadn't set it with it's length into the wall, and it was kind of wedge shaped, so the weight of the other rocks above it squeezed it out. I'll have to do some dismantling and build it back up again if possible. Oh well, back to the drawing board.

One of those days today. It was raining, so, since Ken had chopped a bunch of wood and kindling for me I decided to fire up the wood cook stove and put a roast in the oven. It wasn't a very cold day, but I thought I'd just keep a small fire in there and cook it slow all afternoon. Boy, locust wood puts out a lot of heat! I managed to keep the oven at about 300 F but Josh and I were sweltering. We had all the windows open. The kitten thought he was on the Costa del Sol. Instead of tearing up the couch cushions and curtains he spent the whole day spread out on the rug, stretching and rolling around on his back with his little paws in the air, blinking and yawning. The beef came out tough as old boots. Ken thought it was great and had two helpings but I couldn't eat it. Joshua cooked himself a store bought pizza.

We're going to have a slew of doctor bills this month.

Ken had to go to the doctor this evening after being bitten by a tick. It left a really nasty bite mark and he felt tired and weak along with a sore throat. No bull's eye rash, but the doctor put him on 15 days of antibiotics just in case of Lyme Desease. Sure hope he doesn't have that. Considering we live in the woods, we really don't see very many ticks.

Joshua's also on antibiotics for an ear abscess, that suddenly came up, and I will be going in the hospital on Thursday to get a kidney stone zapped!

Maybe we'll all be in fine fettle for Christmas.

We treated the cats for fleas tonight. The drops are supposed to go between the shoulder blades, but Dexter was squirming so much that some of the medicine got on his fur where he could lick it. Yikes! That's not good. We had to come up with a way to prevent his licking at it. Here he is in his little catsuit. The leg off a pair of old stirrup leggings ( you can see the stirrup at the back of his neck.) I cut little arm holes in the under side. I'll cut that stirrup off before we go to bed so there's no chance of him getting hung up on something during the night.

He's coping with this undignified contraption amazingly well, for a cat.

My first drystone wall

2010-11-13T19:55:00.001-05:00

Well, I finally started my first, free-standing, drystone wall. It's just about 8 feet long and will be about 4 or 4 1/2 feet high. The horses tend to stand over by the side of the barn when the weather is bad so I thought a wall here would make a good windbreak , and it would be an ideal practice wall. Nothing too challenging to begin with. It wouldn't win any prizes but I'm quite happy with the way it's coming together. It's very time consuming as I have to go hunting for the rocks and bring them 4 or 5 at a time in the wheelbarrow, plus all the rubble for the center "heartings".

When not working on the wall, I've been finishing up the floor painting and getting the doors back on the cabinets. Will take pictures when the kitchen is cleaned up a bit. I also started knitting a sweater for Joshua, and that's what I'm going to get back to right now!

A give away!

2010-11-13T19:33:00.001-05:00

No not here yet. But I do plan to have one soon.

If you would like to win some really cute baby stuff , head on over to Cheyenne's blog, Little Prairie Baby and leave a comment. The deadline is 19 November.

And while you're there check out her shop. She has lots of other lovely baby things for sale. Makes me broody!

Pigeons on the roof

2010-11-06T23:31:00.000-04:00

Thought I'd post this picture of some of our pigeons. I like the way the branches of the Sumac tree form that little circle just above them.

My original intention for the pigeons, was to train them to home, then start a little wedding bird release business. The first few years they were plagued by blacksnakes that would get into the loft and kill the young fledglings, so I never had more than a handful of birds. But this year we didn't lose one baby to snakes. Right now I think we have about 16 birds, and what a beautiful sight it is when they are all flying in unison! They make huge circuits around the valley, swoop low over the pond and then all land on top of the hay barn.

I no longer plan to do wedding releases, but I can't imagine our farm without the pigeons.

Painted Floor Inspiration

2010-11-02T20:18:00.000-04:00

This is just for you Cheyenne!

Painted floor pictures I 've found around the web. I keep them in my inspiration file. I always forget to make a note of where I found them though.

I heard that with a few coats of polyurethane, painted floors hold up very well as long as they're swept and kept clean of sand or grit. Love that bright blue kitchen one!

Liver and Onions

2010-11-02T19:47:00.002-04:00

On Sunday afternoon Ken went over to a friend's farm to help them with their fall butchering. He came home with two nice lamb's livers! So, Monday we had liver and onions for supper.

First I soaked the liver in milk over night. Here it is after draining the milk off it.

Next, I sauteed an onion in butter.

While the onions were cooking, I put the liver in a bowl of seasoned flour ( just salt and pepper) and covered both sides. Then, remove the onions from the skillet and set them aside. Put the liver in the skillet and fry slowly in butter for about 4 minutes on each side. Try to only turn the liver once, or twice at the most. Once no blood comes out of it when poked with a knife, return the onions to the pan with the liver. Add a little water and cook it all for about 10 minutes longer.

We had ours with mashed potatoes ( seasoned with with a bit of rosemary) along with carrots and tomatoes from the garden. The liver was cooked well but very tender and tasty. Another mostly home-grown dinner!

The Unthanks Here's The Tender Coming Live Later Jools Holland Oct 2009

2010-11-01T16:03:00.001-04:00

Just discovered the Unthank sisters, from North East England. They sing in their wonderful Geoordie accent. This song is about the press gangs coming to recruit men for the English navy. It's living in my head right now.
Lyrics:
Here's the tender coming, pressing all the men;
Oh dear hinny, what shall we do then?
Here's the tender coming, off at Shield's Bar,Here's the tender coming, full of men of war.
Hide thee, canny Geordie, hide thyself away;Hide thee till the tender makes for Druridge Bay.
If they take thee, Geordie, who's to win our bread?
Me and little Jackie better off be dead.

Here's the tender coming, stealing off my dear;
Oh dear hinny, they'll ship you out of here.
They will ship you foreign, that is what it means;
Here's the tender coming, full of red marines.
Hey, bonny lassie. let's go to the Lawe,See the tender lying, off at Shield's Bar,
With her colours flying, anchor at her bow.
They took my bonny laddie, best of all the crew.

More Kitchen Progress

2010-10-31T16:01:00.001-04:00

Ken got the cupboards back up on the wall above the stove last evening. Here he was around midnight! He'd been asleep on the couch for most of the afternoon and was full of energy by this time.

We even sat and watched a short movie on the computer afterwards. It was a BBC production called End Day, sort of 5 "doomer" movies in one. The last one being about a particle accelerator that blows up. I found reference to this movie after researching strangelets. It was about 2.30 this morning when we crawled into bed. Here's a link if anyone else likes end of the world type stuff: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5949786189867707783#

Anyway, nice to see the kitchen coming together again. But there's still a long way to go.

The Dry Stone Walls of Home

2010-10-28T14:59:00.000-04:00

After my last post,I went on a web search for drystone walls of Lancashire, England., and found this site filled with the most wonderful photographs of the stone walls I'm used to seeing. This is the landscape I grew up in, in north west England. These are WALLS! Miles and miles of them.

Here's a link to more:

http://www.one-foot.com/Fountains%20Fell%20from%20Stainforth%202009.html

I hope the owner of the site doesn't mind my including one of his pictures here.

And now I have to go grab a tissue, because just looking at all that rugged, wildness makes me SO homesick!

Dry Stacked Stone Wall

2010-10-28T14:33:00.000-04:00

It's been raining quite a bit, so I've been putting a bit of time into my dry stacked retaining wall, down near the barn. It's easier to dig the rocks out of the ground after a rain storm. All of these rocks came out of the bank right there where I'm working. I find it really amazing that the right rock just happens to come up at the right time. Very little debating, or hunting around for one that fits. And what's even more amazing, I've manage to build most of this without bending down and lifting the rocks! You can maneuver even large boulders quite easily and precisely with a long-handled pointed hoe. -Sorry, forgot to take a picture of the hoe.

A wall like this is pretty easy, because the rocks are always higher than the top of the wall. Gravity is always on my side, but the next challenge is to build a real, free-standing wall. After my back let go a couple of years ago, I thought I'd never be able to do anything like this again. But now, well, I think I can, I think I can...

Seventeen Years of Married Bliss

2010-10-27T02:01:00.001-04:00

We were both in the US Army, and met at Ft. Lewis, in Washington State. He was just an E5 SGT back then. He'd just transferred there from Germany. I was an E4 medical specialist, and had recently transferred from the 43rd MASH at Camp Humphries, Korea. ( yes, the original 4077th of the TV show fame!) Now decommissioned, sadly.

This was our first home! An amazing little cabin on 5 acres, in the woods, about 20 miles from post. We saw it in the paper for rent. It had brick floors and was fully furnished with wonderful antiques. The only heat, however, was the tiniest wood stove you can imagine. We may as well have been living in a tent for what use it was. But we were both well accustomed to living in tents so it didn't much matter. We loved that little house.

Just this for today. We had a nice fried chicken supper and a cake!

The John Deere M

2010-10-25T13:08:00.003-04:00

A few more pictures of "Betsy", the 1948 John Deere M, a friend had for sale. She's been sitting in his barn for ten years! Before that she belonged to a Christmas tree farmer, who used her for mowing between the trees. A belly mower was included.

Ken and Josh set to work on her almost right away. They're going to strip her down completely and clean all the lines out. The engine runs, but with lots of popping and banging due to all the gunk in the valves and lines and carburetor. The noise echoed and reverberated off the mountains! Ken's going to take the gas tank to work and steam it out.

It's going to be an enjoyable project for the two of them. I can't wait to see the end result.

English Potato Cakes

2010-10-25T00:21:00.000-04:00

While the guys were gone to get the tractor, I made some potato cakes. They're very easy. Just add flour to left over mashed potatoes, season with salt, and make patties. Fry in butter

They're good served with sliced ham and Branston pickles! There's a supermarket about 40 miles from here that sells some English food items. Ken happened to be over there last week and bought me the pickles.

The Painted Floor

2010-10-25T00:06:00.005-04:00

Here's a picture of the floor design I started painting. As you can see, we did end up painting the rest of the floor too. The brown stuff is that thick contractors paper. Ken wants to put a sealer over it all when it's done, so, for now we are walking on the paper.

I am going to change things. When I started this we still had the long set of kitchen drawers in the dining room. I stupidly centered the design as if they would always be there. Now they are out, and back in the kitchen ( temporarily, we're going to put a door in that other wall) the design is way too far over to the left. Today I began extending it with another row of diamonds on the right side. It will be rectangular, rather than square. I'm also thinking of making that wide border black, and filling in the narrow, inner border with the reddish/brown color.

What a difference the paint has made! It's much lighter in the dining room now. That was the paint we originally bought to paint the cabinets with. I thought it might be too much green, but it really doesn't feel overpowering at all, and I'm glad we could find a use for it.

Not sure how long this will hold up. Hopefully, after it's sealed it will at least see us through to next year. The plank floor will be just painted pine boards. This has given us a good idea of how a painted floor will look in there.

Oh, and Ken's brother and his wife had to cancel their visit after all, so I'm no longer feeling so pressured to rush things.

Need to put all that food that's stacked on the wood stove, back in the pantry tomorrow.

And here's Betsy the tractor!

Kitchen re-do progress

2010-10-24T13:35:00.001-04:00

The only progress noticable here is that we painted the wall. But a lot has gone on in the background. I have all the cupboard doors painted now. Ken decided it would be easier to take down the wall cabinets, in order to paint their frames. They're almost done. I'm hoping we can start putting them back up later today, but, Ken and Josh have gone to pick up an old, antique tractor that a friend was selling, and I have a feeling they'll be working on it for a while when they get it home.

It's a beautiful day out there, except for the clouds of Japanese Ladybugs! They're late this year.

When guys decide to hem their own pants...

2010-10-23T22:14:00.003-04:00

This is what you get!

The sewing machine is put up, due to the kitchen/diningroom dismantlization and all.

Me:: "What on earth are you doing?!"

Him: "Girl, it's called 'Redneck Hemming!"

Our Old House

2010-10-17T21:06:00.000-04:00

While there's a lot going on here on the old farmstead, the camera batteries are dead and horror of horrors, we don't have one good battery in the whole house! The last picture I managed to squeeze out, was this one, two days ago. All the fall colors were at their brightest. Since the sun was temporarily covered by a cloud, the picture isn't as colorful as I'd hoped, but still nice. Some day I'll have to upload a video taken from this spot, down on the dirt road we live on. Three creeks converge there, and the sound of all the water is just wonderful! Especially after a good storm. I'm ready for a good storm!

What was I thinking!

2010-10-15T13:04:00.003-04:00

Brother and sister-in-law are coming up to visit next week and I was bemoaning the fact that the house is in such a state of upheaval, and, not only that, the dining room floor is just awfull! The other day I was looking at a website featuring beautiful hand painted floor cloths. I love floor cloths, and thought one would look nice under the dining room table, but can't afford to buy one. I bought some cotton canvas a while ago, with the intention of making my own, but never got around to it. "Well!" I thought, "why not just paint the design right onto the floor!" I also thought: " I can have it done before Ken gets home from work."

The linoleum in the dining room is so beat up, and horrible, it couldn't possibly look any worse, and, we are going to put down a plank floor in there anyway, as soon as we're done with the kitchen cabinets... This would be a quick fix for just while the in-laws are here. So I dragged out all the cans of paint from out of the workshop and under the stairs, and set to work. ( I can't walk past the discounted paint shelf at the hardware store, which means we have more paint than you can shake a stick at!)

It most definately wasn't finished when Ken got home! I had to collar him as he got out of the truck and break it to him gently, that there was "a little project going on" and "don't worry, it'll look nice when it's finished" He groaned his usual "Giiirl!" But much to my surprise, after looking at the mess, his only comment was "how come you didn't just paint the whole floor?"

It's going to have black diamonds on a cream background, with a design in the center of each cream diamond. At the moment, it's still looking lake a big cream splodge in the middle of the grungy kitchen floor! In fact, it makes the rest of the floor look even more ugly, I may do as Ken suggested and roll a solid color over the rest of the floor to tie it all together. All I know, is that it's evolving into something way more complicated than originally planned. Well, it wasn't exactly planned, but I have a week to make it look like it was!

Venison Pie with Roasted Garden Vegetables

2010-10-11T00:29:00.004-04:00

Mmmm... Our dinner today was venison pie. Almost everything was home grown, except for the onions and pastry ingredients. I thought I'd post pictures of it in the making. It's loosely based on the meat pies my ex French Canadian inlaws used to make for Thanksgiving and Christmas. It can be made with regular ground beef; We just happen to have a lot of venison that needs to be eaten. It's already hunting season again!

Today's Garden Finds

Wandering around the garden this afternoon I found that we still had lots of things still growing and ready to pick. Tomatoes, green and orange peppers and carrots. These are the first carrots I've ever been able to grow! However, they are all freakish looking, because I dropped the packet of seeds as I was planting them. Thousands of minuscule carrot seeds landed in one big pile! I spread them out as best I could but the result was that the carrots all grew and melded together. Weird looking but still edible.

I put a mixture of the veggies in a bowl, drizzled them with olive oil, seasoned them with salt and pepper, and popped them in a 450 degree oven to roast until they were good and browned.

Then I washed some of our little baby potatoes and put them on the stove to boil.

2010-10-11T00:28:00.001-04:00

Next, I opened a jar of venison. This is from last year. We don't usually can the meat, but a friend was pressure canning hers and she offered to can some of ours for us.

It doesn't look very appetizing in the jar but it's really good, and so easy to heat up in a sauce pan.

2010-10-11T00:27:00.004-04:00

While the potatoes and venison were cooking I started on the pastry.
People over here seem to make a big deal about pastry and most people I know, buy the ready made pie crusts from the store. I don't know why it's thought to be such a feat. My grandma and Mum could throw together a pie in no time so I just never got to thinking of it as anything especially difficult.

For this one I measured a cup and a half of all purpose flour into a bowl, ( prefer self raising, but this was all I had) cut up about 3/4 of a stick of unsalted butter, then chopped it all up with that little metal gadget you can see in the picture. I think it's a cabbage chopper, but I find it works great for pastry. You don't have to get your hands in it and do all the rubbing of the flour and butter. And because the butter isn't chopped really fine, it makes what I call a "rustic crust". Kind of rough and imperfect.

After chopping up the butter and mixing it all up a bit, I added about a 1/4 of a cup of cold water. I just add a little bit at a time and mix up the whole mess with a fork until it resembles shredded rags. That's the only way I can describe it. It looks too dry to stick together, but it will stick together. If I add any more water it always ends up too wet, meaning I have to add more flour, and then the crust comes out heavy and lifeless. So, I always stop while it still looks a bit too dry.

Here it is rolled out. Actually, I didn't roll it, I just formed a bun and then kept pushing it out with the heel of my hand, turning it over every so often and flouring each side, to make sure it didn't stick to the pastry board. But I usually use a rolling pin.

2010-10-11T00:26:00.002-04:00

By the time the pastry was finished, potatoes and meat were ready to be mixed together. I also added some of the onions and carrots that were almost done roasting. I seasoned the mixture with salt, and then, the most important ingrediant, alspice! This gives the pie it's unique flavor. I think I put in a little over a teaspoon, but I always keep tasting it until it's just right.

After that, I put the mixture in a pie pan and put on the pastry top, poked a hole in it and decorated it with a few leaves, made from the pastry that was cut of around the edges. Didn't spend much time on these because Ken was getting hungry, so they don't look real great.

You could make a bottom crust too, but with so much butter in it we prefer to have just a top.

I took out the roasted vegetables and put a lid on them to keep them warm, then put the pie in the 450 degree oven for about 20 minutes.

It came out great, and there's some left over for lunch tomorrow!

A detangled Mane

2010-10-07T13:57:00.001-04:00

Shady's mane was an absolute mess; a big ball of tangles and dread locks. She's half Percheron, and while she didn't inherit the size of a draft horse she did inherit the thick heavy mane. Yesterday morning was still breezy, but warm, so I went out there and worked on it for an hour. Thought I'd never get it straightened out, but little by little with the help of some spray detangler, it slowly loosened up and I was able to get the comb through it. Now she looks so nice!

Crystal had her mane detangled too, but her's is kind if thin and limp. Not such a dramatic improvement as Shady's.

Autumn Olive

2010-10-05T21:34:00.002-04:00

A neighbor asked if we had Autumn Olive on our land. I had no clue. He described it and went on to tell me how it's been found to contain very high levels of Lycopene. Very good for you.! I remembered this bush we have growing by the creek right outside the kitchen door, almost. When we arrived home I went to look more closely at it. Sure enough it's Autumn Olive! As you can see, it's loaded with berries. Think I'm going to harvest them and make them into jelly.

You can read more about Autumn Olive here

Boy, has it turned COLD here! Today was chilly, chilly with a blustery wind. Had to put on a sweatshirt and jacket to go out and do chores.
I took a look in the garden and found a whole slew of green peppers hiding under the foliage, and some nice big carrots. Still a lot of tomatoes ripening too. I took pictures of all this wonderful bounty and then accidentally wiped the card clean before they got loaded onto the computer. :(

It's been one of those days today. Nothing much was accomplished. My Dad called and let me know Mum is pretty sick and in the hospital. I hate not being able to be there (England) to help out. At least they have fantastic next door neighbors.

Ken's allergies are in full swing, ( maybe due to the kitten in the house, but he was ok over the weekend) Poor guy, his eyes are running and his nose is all stuffed up. I'm having to sleep on the couch because he makes so restless and noisy all night.

The good news is Joshua has started correspondence high school courses with Keystone National High school and is doing really well! He just got the results of his first test in Life Science and scored a 96! I'm so proud of him. There's an awful lot of writing involved. He's never had to write so much. I've been letting him off lightly because he's always had such a hard time putting his thoughts down on paper. When I saw how much writing was in store for him this year I really expected him to panic and feel overwhelmed, but he just took a deep breath and buckled right down to it. He loves the textbooks and the actual subject matter though. And now, with the high test score and the nice note the instructor wrote to him, he's over the moon. I think we're going to like Keystone.

2010-10-04T22:17:00.000-04:00

2010-10-04T22:14:00.000-04:00

After the walk up the hill I went to see Crystal. Tried to get some photos of her grazing but she stuck to me like velcro! She and Shady have had the run of the place for a week but had to be put up because they were tearing up the grass around the pond. Here she's pleading "Please, let me out; I'll be good, really I will."

An Eastern Box Turtle

2010-10-04T21:59:00.001-04:00

I took the dog for a walk up the steep hillside next to the pond this morning, and found this little guy in the grass. He's the first turtle I've seen this year.

The Ubiquitous Blue Tarp

2010-10-04T00:46:00.000-04:00

Cheyenne's nice comment about my photos got me wondering. Does anyone else have as many blue tarps as we do? What a time I had the other day, when I was out with the camera. It seemed every shot was going to have a blue tarp in it. There's one keeping rain out of the chimney. (Ken had to abandon that job for a while due to other commitments.) There's another one being used as a temporary goat shelter there behind the house. There's one acting as a windbreak on the buck goat's pen...I'm so sick of them, but they're so useful. However, when wer're out and about, on the road, - we've been back and forth to the dentist, about 40 miles away, a lot lately, I'm always looking at other farms and saying "oh, look at that nice place" then I realise, it's so nice because there are no blue tarps over anything! I wonder if we'll ever be tarpless.

Happily, the raggedy goat shelter will soon be no more. We have a man coming soon, to fence that hillside to the right of the house. All the goats with the exception of the buck will be going up there. And I have a shelter already half built for them. They should eat down all the scrubby little pine trees and brambles and open up that pasture again. It's amazing how fast the woods have encroached on us. After they get rid of the brush, we plan to get a few sheep to keep the grass down. Not many, four would be enough. A young neighbor guy is a sheep shearer. He shears, trims hooves and gives shots all in the same visit for a very reasonable price, It'll be nice not to have to worry with all that back-braking stuff. Keeping up with the goats feet is a chore in itself these days.

2010-10-04T00:11:00.000-04:00

Lily and Glenna, sitting on the dock.

A new addition

2010-10-02T13:58:00.003-04:00

Say hello to Dexter.

My darling hubby, Mr. "we aint gettin' no more cats!" arrived home with this little thing draped around his neck last night. Someone had dumped two little black kittens at Ken's work place yesterday, and they made their way into the warehouse where they began climbing and playing all over the forklifts and heavy truck parts. One of the other guys took home the second kitten and Ken pretended to let the girls in the office talk him in to taking this one. " I was going to bring him anyway though, he wouldn't have made out there."

Awww... he has a heart after all. And Dex just loves him.

Late September Pictures

2010-09-30T14:34:00.002-04:00

The rain stopped and all the colors were glowing. Things are starting to look like like fall now. The creeks are full; it sounds wonderful out there with all the water rushing by.

Fajita Soup Weather!

2010-09-30T00:29:00.002-04:00

We're having some misty, moisty fall weather at the moment. Cool and drizzly. In fact we're under a severe weather alert until tomorrow evening. About 4 inches of rain expected. We actually had to turn on the heat this afternoon. I was wishing I could light a fire in the wood stove, but my fireman hubby likes to give it a good overhaul and cleaning before using it for the first time each year.

I absolutely love this kind of weather, and took a few pictures from the front porch, and one from the kitchen window. With the clouds hanging around the tops of the mountains and between the ridges, I always think our little valley resembles something out of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. It also reminds me of the illustrated works of Norwegian artist Theodore Kittelsen. Our woods are a mixture of soft and hardwood trees, lots of knotty branches and knobbly roots, boulders and rocky overhangs. You could imagine elves and dwarfs and, ooh, trolls inhabiting them.

Well anyway, Ken brought home Fajitas, from the Mexican restaurant last night. We never can eat it all, so what could be better on a day like this, than -leftover- Fajita Soup! Yes, it's my own invention. Ken thought I was joking when he asked what was for supper. Surprisingly, he actually liked it! Surprisingly, he agreed to try it in the first place! Let's just say, Polly, kitchen, making stuff up... we don't usually dare go there.

Fajita Soup:

Put left over fajitas into a sauce pan.

Add about a cup and a half of pink grapefruit juice and about half a cup of water. A dash of Worcestershire sauce and a sprinkle of crushed, hot red pepper.

Bring to a boil then simmer for a couple of minutes.

Serve with garlic bread.

Mmm.. it's kind of sweet and sour and spicy all at the same time. Really warms you up on a drizzly day like this.

Of course you can tweak things a bit too. This time I also added two teaspoons of mango salsa to the mix and sometimes I add a little ginger.

Try it and see what you think.

Wildflowers and Widgets

2010-09-28T21:22:00.004-04:00

There are lots of little blue flowers in the pasture right now. Not sure what they are. I brought some in but immediately started coughing. I'm not usually prone to allergies but Ken and Joshua are.They would have been suffering greatly if I'd kept the flowers in the house, so here they are relegated to the back porch with Ken's work boots.

Well, I'm quite happy with the fresh spiffy blog decor. This background came from Shabby Blogs. Megan has lots of lovely free backgrounds and other bloggy stuff to choose from. Thank you Megan! I would still like to add some pretty little post dividers but for the life of me I can't find the place to insert it in the template code. My code doesn't seem to match up with everyone elses ( I tried a few different tutorials ) After two hours of scrolling through lines and lines of code looking for the right combination of gobbldygook I was about to tear out my hair in frustration. Blogger needs to add a widget specifically for post dividers!

A New Look

2010-09-26T18:32:00.003-04:00

It's a lazy rainy day here in the Blue Ridge Mountains and since there wasn't much going on, and the old blog has looked the same for over five years, I decided to mess around with it and make some changes. It's hard to get used to such a drastic new look, so it may change again yet..

A simple cotton top

2010-09-17T13:50:00.000-04:00

I can't believe this sewing spurt has lasted this long. Usually everything goes wrong and I get frustrated and put it all away in disgust. But wonder of wonders, I just finished another project and it all came together perfectly. This is a little cotton top I decided to attempt. The pattern is Simplicity number 2596. The blouse was shown in various versions. I intended to make it with an elastic waist and shoulder tabs holding up the sleeves, but it's so comfortable and airy just as it is, I didn't bother going any further with it. It was very easy to sew. I plan to make one or two more for next summer.

The fabric is some thin cotton I bought back in 1987. I made curtains and a tablecloth out of it for the apartment I'd just moved into. Still have them somewhere packed away, but this was the bit of fabric that was left over from those things.

Stella Apron

2010-09-13T16:57:00.001-04:00

Woo hoo! I finished the Stella apron! I messed up a bit when sewing the binding on. I couldn't quite figure out the mitered corners. The first corner isn't so good but I caught on after that. The next apron will be better. I suppose thats the way it goes when trying something new. I didn't add the pocket because I find they tend to get caught on the drawer pulls on the kitchen table. I usually sit at the table and surf the net while waiting for things to bake. When I stand up, yikes! the tearing sound as my pocket catches on the drawer knob.

Oh, and I made the blouse too! Twenty years ago - when I was going through another sewing obsession.

2010-09-07T00:35:00.000-04:00

Just a quick peek at the kitchen re-do progress. We have all of the bead-board up on that wall now. The colors are a bit off because of the flash, and as you can see it's dark outside ( midnight). I can't believe how much brighter it looks already.

We still need to paint and put trim at the top of the bead-board, finish painting cabinets, add the knobs and drawer pulls, put in the new sink that we bought two years ago, re-paint the upper wall, paint the door - not sure what color to paint the door yet, paint all the trim around the window and door, and trim the entrance to the dining room. I love the bead-board so much, I also want to put it on the back wall of the dining room. We have other plans but I'll blog about those as we get to them.

Look at all those tomatoes I need to dehydrate!

Spray Painting Oak Kitchen Cabinets.

2010-09-05T14:46:00.007-04:00

I think I mentioned a while back that we started working on the kitchen. I mean, it's not like we have anything else to do, so why not renovate the kitchen? :)

Well, we started laying tile two years ago and it finally got finished a year later. The cabinets that we moved out of the way are still sitting in the dining room. All the junk we took out of them is up in the "junk room". It used to be the "art room" but no art was ever created in there because of all the junk that was deposited in there whenever we had nowhere else to put it. So in short, we've been living with a torn up kitchen and stuff all out of place all over the house. It's driving me batty all of a sudden. So, this week I went back to work on painting the kitchen cabinets. I started on them in the spring but had to stop because of all the other projects I needed to work on.

Inspiration

This is a farmhouse, so I wanted the kitchen to look like a farmhouse kitchen with nice bright painted cabinets. I didn't want fancy new painted cabinets, I wanted them to look old and hand painted; which is a good thing, because new, old-looking painted cabinets cost a fortune!.

After viewing hundreds of pictures of painted kitchen cabinets on the web, this is the one that I kept coming back to. ( image from thelavenderlily.blogspot.com -I think) This, and all the ones painted white, but I decided I liked these green ones the best. Our cabinets are very similar in design, so it was easy to envision them looking like the picture. Believe me, it was a nerve-wraking decision. It seems just plain WRONG to paint over good oak, but they were so dated and dull, and our kitchen is small and narrow and rather dark, it needed brightening up. Experts always warn that oak has a raised grain that will always show through the paint, no matter how many coats you put on. Well, I like to see the grain in the paint, it doesn't bother me at all. If someone's reading this, biting their nails and fretting over should they or shouldn't they paint over oak, I say, don't listen to the experts, just go ahead and do it!

Well, to cut a long story short, after buying the paint and making a start, I soon found out just what a pain in the rear this job is. It was taking forever! And the finish wasn't that great either. There was no way I could paint all these cabinets by hand with a brush and the texture the roller left -even one made for smooth surfaces, didn't look good. Ok for walls, not so great on cupboard doors. I was really in a quandry. Then I had the idea of maybe spray-painting them. The fate of the ozone layer immediately shot to mind, but there are far worse things being pumped into the atmosphere in far greater quantities. So, I looked online and found that Krylon have the exact color I wanted. It's named: "Celery" and it's perfect! ( the primer, by the way, is "Ruddy Brown", also by Krylon. I actually like the two colors together so I left the inside of the doors flat Ruddy Brown", and the outside is "Celery". Once any surface grime has been cleaned off, spray painting goes 20 times faster than painting with a brush or roller. It dries in minutes so you can put on a coat, go feed your chickens or pull a few weeds in the garden and then come back and put on another coat. See, you can do chores AND paint your kitchen at the same time! Stuff like that is important to some of us.

This is what we've been living with for 6 months or so.

This is where we were at yesterday morning.

Last evening we started installing white beadboard behind the cabinets. Only two pieces are on. I'll take pictures when the wall is done.

That cupboard at the end is painted a deep red named: "Sun Dried Tomato". It's regular paint, I think it's by Glidden. The side wasn't finished in this shot, but Ken finished painting it last night.

I'm already jumping for joy at the transformation. Can't wait to see it all finished.

More updates tomorrow.

Vintage feed sacks blowing in the wind

2010-08-29T20:13:00.000-04:00

2010-08-29T20:11:00.001-04:00

Today was nice and sunny so I hung all my feed sacks out to air. I didn't feel like washing them all as it looked like we might get a thunderstorm later in the day. I don't have a dryer and the rack in the bathroom was already full, so I just hung them all out in the sun to get that old house smell out of them.

Struck Gold Today!

2010-08-29T01:56:00.001-04:00

What a day! One of our elderly neighbors passed away a few months ago (age 95!) and this weekend the family had a sale of some of her things. Amazingly, we actually got out of the house before 2pm to go over and take a look. We were the only ones there.

Ooh, there was this box of wonderful vintage sewing patterns, Free! I just love those dresses. I drool over them. Goodeness know where I would wear them, but I still love them and I'm actually going to try my hand at making one.

Then, there was this box labled "remnants 10 cents ea. or $4.00 for the whole box" When we got home I started pulling some of it out to look at and realized that it was sewn up on three sides. I thought she'd maybe started making pillowcases or cushion covers out of it all, but something didn't look right. Then all of a sudden it dawned on me! This isn't a box of remnants, it's a box of vintage feedsacks from the 1930s! All washed and pressed and inside-out. I've read about them, and how farm wives used to make dresses.quilts and aprons or tea towels out of them, but I've never seen them in real life. I was so excited. I looked online and can't believe how much they sell for. Most of these are in very good condition too.

And then, there was this lovely sewing machine! It's a Singer 6105. Not an antique, but vintage and much better quality than the modern machines. It works great and is so quiet. You can hardly hear it. I love it!
I got two more boxes of fabric too. Some really nice stuff in two or three yard lengths. Altogether it came to $38! and that included an old typewriter Joshua wanted. He also bought himself an old 35mm camera and light meter and a wind-up watch.

Yesterday, someone gave Ken one of those pop-up camping trailors! It's damaged and they didn't want to be bothered with fixing it. It's a bit raggedy but will be quite nice if Ken can fix it. If not, he's just going to tear off the camper and build a box trailor on the axel.

What a weekend! Nothing like "free" :)

Planting, sewing and laying rock

2010-08-23T00:13:00.000-04:00

Sorry no pictures today. Just wanted to let you all know that I haven't forgotten the blog. It's been raining the last few days so not much has been accomplished.

Today was nice though. I built three new boxes for raised beds. They are going to contain Russian Comfrey plants that I bought from a lady on the homesteading forum. Apparently, these plants will grow to be 5 feet in diameter! Hope it does ok. I couldn't plant it right away due to the weather, so I left it in the packaged in the hope that it doesn't dry out too much. She also included some Elephant Garlic corms to be planted next month. I'm looking forward to harvesting Elephant garlic next year.

Haven't done any more sewing, but I plan to. I ordered a couple of patterns online. One, a blouse, should come in tomorrow. The other, is this really cute Stella Apron pattern.

The rock work is coming along. I finished the part that goes ove the pipe where it goes under the road way. I made it into a little raised bed for flowers. Pictures tomorrow.

We're in for a nice dry, sunny week in the low 80s!!! Perfect for getting some of the outside chores finished. Maybe I'll even put the shingles on the roof of the dove cote. One side's done, so it won't take long. I have two pigeons in a cage waiting to move into it. Poor Ken, he wants to continue preparing the chimney for re-pointing but the weather is only nice when he's at work.

The Stone work's coming along

2010-08-16T23:40:00.000-04:00

Every day I lay a few more rocks. Ken's been seeding and spreading straw. Think I might plant some daffodils in that raised bed there.

Multi-colored apron

2010-08-16T23:25:00.002-04:00

Woo hoo! I'm getting into sewing a bit. It's been a long time since I did any so I decided to begin with something simple- because if it doesn't go right from the get go I quickly lose patience!

There are lot's of free patterns on the web. Over the weekend I made this bright and cheery apron. It was a free download available Here. Very easy. Wish I hadn't ironed the frill at the bottom though; it kind of took away the pizzaz. I'm going to make another one but a little bit larger, and in a large floral, similar to the one on the website.

Thank you Bari J, for the free pattern!

More Garden Pictures

2010-08-12T11:15:00.000-04:00

Dehydrated Produce

2010-08-11T14:13:00.000-04:00

I keep telling my Mum how much I love dehydrating veggies from the garden. This is just a tiny sampling of some of the things I've dried. Left to right is: pears ( from someone elses tree), onions, tomatoes from last years garden, apple slices ( on sale at the supermarket) and cucumber slices from this year's garden. Oh, and the two little bottles are the basil shown earlier and stevia, both from the garden. Soon, we are going to be inundated with tomatoes. I can't wait to see them all crispy dry and put up for winter!

I wish I'd thought to dry cucumber sooner. We've had so much of it we couldn't eat it all. I even had to throw some on the compost pile because it turned to mush in the fridge drawer. I just didn't think it would be good dehydrated. Now I'm kicking myself because it came out beautifully as you can see. It's paper thin and crispy. I'm going to put it in the food processor and powder it. It's delicious added to homemade soups. In fact any of the dehydrated vegitables make wonderful soup, just toss in a bit of this and a bit of that and simmer. The flavors seem to be much more concentrated. You can mix a few things together and make your own vegitable stock powder.

The fruits are good to just munch on as snacks or they can be reconstituted in water and baked in pies. Tomorrow I'll be dehydrating banana chips. A jar of banana chips don't last long though. Josh and I can't leave them alone.

Many people preserve their harvests by hot canning everything. It involves long hot hours standing in front of the stove. Just NOT my cup of tea at all. Then the jars take up a lot of room. I still have a lot of jars but more produce can fit into each one. That one jar on the right contains 4 fairly large cucumbers! Everythng goes a long way. I also add one or two oxygen absorber packets to each jar. They say an unopened jar will last about 30 years this way.

The dehydrator I have is the Excalibur 9 tray model. It was expensive but everyone says it's the best. I was apprehensive about getting it because I really don't like cooking and messing around in the kitchen. I thought it was going to be just one more chore. Well, it's turned out to be a real joy. It's easy to just slice the produce, lay it on the trays, turn the dial to the correct temperature setting and let it go all day, - while I do other more fun things, like building rock walls and dove cotes :)

2010-08-11T13:24:00.000-04:00

This is Basil out of the garden. I dehydrated it and when it was done, all this fit into one of those little glass spice bottles!

Seeding Grass

2010-08-11T02:00:00.000-04:00

2010-08-11T01:59:00.000-04:00

2010-08-11T01:55:00.001-04:00

While building the pond this hillside had to be pulled back a ways because it was dangerously steep, a sheer drop into the pond. Of course now it has to be dressed and re-seeded. Actually it was dressed, but because we didn't get seed sown before winter, it became badly eroded by the melting snow. We can't afford to have them bring the heavy machinery back so Ken's done it all by hand with the rake and the tiller on the flat areas.

Our Finished Pond

2010-08-10T00:08:00.003-04:00

Here it is, The George and Edna S***** Memorial Pond.

Every time I look at it, I think of them. They both worked in the same weaving mill in Lancashire, England for 45 years. They lived in a little terraced house right on the side of the road with a tiny back yard. They had no children so they always made a fuss of me and bought me special presents at Christmas, like my first set of oil paints. I wish they could have seen our place here, they would have liked it.

2010-08-10T00:07:00.000-04:00

2010-08-10T00:05:00.000-04:00

Water Race Feeding the Pond

2010-08-09T23:58:00.002-04:00

Ahh, looks like this is the solution to fixing our leaky pond!

Tim and Jimmy ( with a little help from hubby) put a small culvert upstream from the creek to a channel that they lined with road fabric. Road fabric is a really tough waterproof material. The channel was then filled with erosion stone. It's working great. the pond filled up in three days. At the moment we are controlling the flow rate by positioning a very large rock in front of the entrance to the culvert. We plan to make something a bit more sophisticated than that, like a little sluice gate that can be closed whenever a long period of rain is in the forcast. The creek is very low right now but it becomes a raging torrent at certain times in the year.

I couldn't resist making a rock "bridge" over the pipe. It's a work in progress. I'll post more pictures along the way. It's still very hot here so I'm only woking on this in the evenings.

2010-08-09T23:43:00.001-04:00

The water runs through another small culvert under the road.

2010-08-09T23:40:00.000-04:00

Building The Farm Pond

2010-08-09T22:56:00.003-04:00

This is how it looked over the winter. We had planned to get grass seed down but we didn't get it done in time. The weather turned really nasty and we had record snowfalls. Over 4 feet of snow in all! There was at least a foot on the ground from December 18 until the end of march. It was a mess.To make things worse the pipe that was bringing water in from the creek was washed out when the creek flooded in the spring rains and to make things even more worse, the pond was leaking under the dam. Nothing could be done about that. It was just that they hit bedrock at the bottom of the pond and the water was following the bedrock out so the water level dropped down until it was level with the creek about 5 feet below. ( remember learning in science class that water always finds it's own level?) The little spring that comes out of the mountain wasn't enough to make up for it. Another solution had to be found in order to bring in water from the creek enough to counteract the leak, and last week the guys came back to work on that.

2010-08-09T22:47:00.001-04:00

Here they have installed a pipe that is bringing water in from the creek. You can see the water pouring in.

2010-08-09T22:44:00.000-04:00

2010-08-06T22:56:00.001-04:00

Jimmy working on the dam.

2010-08-06T22:40:00.002-04:00

Here it is. The beginnings of the gigantic undertaking that began last fall.

A couple of years ago, my lovely great Auntie Edna died and left me some money. I knew she was leaving me some but wasn't really expecting a great lot. Well, due to the exchange rate at the time, it came to quite a sizable sum. We had no intentions of squandering it on frivolities. The economy went into the ditch, money in the bank wasn't earning a lick of interest and the stock market seems to be rigged. So, we decided to put it into something we could enjoy every day. Something that would add value to our farm and still be here for others ( hopefully our grand kids and great grand kids) to enjoy for maybe a hundred years or more.

We always thought that wet area in front of the barn would make a nice pond. A spring comes out of the mountain there so we knew there would be a constant feed of water. Work started on August 22 2009. It's been a huge headache. The guy that started the pond bit off a bit more than he could chew. He didn't have the right equipment for such a large job so we had to let him go and get the experts in, and here you can see them starting to dig.

Hubby and Me

2010-08-06T21:58:00.000-04:00

A thunderstorm was coming in so we took a break and sat on the porch swing listening to the booms echoing and bouncing of the mountains. Two minutes later we had to dash inside because all heck broke loose with lashing wind and torrential rain.

What's Going ON Here?

2010-08-03T13:33:00.001-04:00

Well, we've had another huge job going on here since last summer. Things didn't go according to plan, resulting in some big problems. Then it started to snow and work came to a standstill. But today there was some major progress! This should solve everything. I'll post about it when it's completed.

See that guy in the middle with the cute butt? He's MINE! -Though he's supposed to be fixing the chimney. He couldn't resist lending a hand to the workmen.

Shady

2010-08-02T16:39:00.000-04:00

This is a picture of Shady for Maria. (Maria is Shady's previous owner and she left a comment here asking about her. )

Yes, she's doing really well. Some breathing problems when the pollen is particularly bad, but I keep an eye on her and give her her medicine when she gets heevy. She's only needed it once this year so far. Her feet have been good too, so she's been able to stay on pasture 24/7 as long as she doesn't gain too much weight. A. M. the farrier was here Friday and all was ok. She still gets bossed around by the pony but she continues to follow her around like a lap dog :) I love her to bits!

Come and ride her any time!

Chimney Work Begins

2010-08-02T15:43:00.000-04:00

Old houses were scaffolding once and workmen whistling.
T.E.Hulme

Re-pointing The Old Brick Chimney

2010-08-02T00:35:00.002-04:00

Ken's taken a whole week off work this week. We have a big job ahead of us, re-pointing the old chimney. We noticed that it had deteriorated quite a lot since we moved in here 5 years ago. Part of the problem is because at some point in time it was patched up using modern Portland cement. It isn't good for old masonary like this soft brick. The original mortar is made from lime. We looked all over locally for the right type of lime but couldn't find any.

As luck would have it, Ken had to go up to Pennsylvania last week for a few days. I happened to be scouring the web for places that sold lime and came across http://www.palimeworks.com/lwus/ They sell ready mixed lime mortars for the restoration of old masonary. It was only a few miles from where Ken was working. He was able to go over and meet Andy,the owner, and get everything we needed to fix the chimney ( including instructions on how to go about it and do it right) Saved us hundreds of dollars just in shipping costs.Thank you Andy!

One of Ken's co-workers offered to lend us some scaffolding and Ken and Josh went over there today to pick it up. Hope the weather cooperates. We've had a wet weekend but it's supposed to clear up and be nice all week.

My sunflowers finally opened! I'll take some pictures tomorrow. - Oh, it IS tomorrow! Better get to bed.

Tarkovsky's Mirror Set to Arvo Pärt's Mirror in the Mirror

2010-08-01T22:21:00.004-04:00

Where have I been?! I just discovered the movies of Andrei Tarkovsky. If only he could have lived long enough to have perhaps made the movie The Road. We recently watched Hollywood's attempt at it. Insipid, after reading the book by Cormac Mccarthy, which was so exquisitly written. Imagine if Tarkovsky could have got his hands on it. What a masterpiece it would have been. I just love this clip, set to Arvo Part's music.

Muskovy Ducklings All Grown Up

2010-07-28T21:11:00.000-04:00

2010-07-28T21:09:00.001-04:00

Well, almost grown up. It's hard to believe this was one of those little fluffy things I posted a picture of just a few weeks ago. Her name's Lily. I think she has the most beautiful green eyes. The others don't have eyes like her's. They're living in the horse trailer for now. We just started letting them free range during the day. They paddle around in the creek for a while then they go under the workshop where it's cool. Our weather has been extremely hot. I hate to wish the summer away but I just can't muster up any energy when it's so hot.

Sprout Wings and Fly (1983)

2010-07-19T23:43:00.000-04:00

Building a Garden Dovecote From a Packing Crate

2010-07-19T22:41:00.001-04:00

I was given four of these old packing crates. Two of them became planters in the garden but then I had the bright idea of turning the other two into dovecotes.

2010-07-19T22:39:00.001-04:00

Just build the roof gabels, cut out some cubby holes with the jig saw, add perches and paint.

2010-07-19T22:38:00.001-04:00

Add a floor to make two levels.

2010-07-19T22:35:00.004-04:00

Nail on the roof.
Next will be the roof shingles.
The two gabels are tied together with a ridge pole and purlins but I forgot to take a picture of that step. I will when I build the next one. It just has a coat of primer right now but will go over that with white exterior barn and fence paint.

Raised Bed Garden with New Gravel Paths

2010-07-19T16:02:00.001-04:00

The gravel paths have made such a difference in the garden. We're really happy with them. The wind was blowing pretty hard here and the plants were all taking a beating, as you can see.

2010-07-19T15:59:00.000-04:00

Carolina Chocolate Drops "Cornbread and Butterbeans"

2010-07-19T15:28:00.002-04:00

Ken and I can't resist dancing around the kitchen to this while making supper!
The Carolina Chocolate Drops have performed down in Floyd a number of times and we still havent been to see them. We will next time though.

White Hydrangea

2010-07-19T15:03:00.001-04:00

2010-07-19T14:40:00.003-04:00

I always say I don't like Hydrangeas, but we saw these white ones at the store yesterday and I just loved them! Not sure where it's going to go yet. The deer have always demolished anything planted around the house. This year though, we haven't seen many deer at all. Even the Bleeding Heart out back managed to bloom this year. I think I'll put the Hydrangea by the back steps and just hope it makes it. We do intend to put a tall picket fence around the house at some point so that we can have a nice flower garden.

Just a bunch of photos

2010-07-02T16:52:00.001-04:00

Thought I would put up a bunch of photos. Summer is finally here and everything is blooming.

We're busy renovating the garden area. I made some quick raised bed boxes last year, just to see if I liked them. Well. let me tell you, raised beds are the way to go! So much easier to manage. Now we are putting gravel walk-ways between the boxes. It's looking really nice. We still have a regular row garden at the back, for poratoes and other things that we need to grow a lot of. I planted eggplant for the first time this year. It's doing great. Ken bought me an Excalibur dehydrator last year (it's wonderful!) so I'll be dehydrating a lot of stuff. We started late with the planting so nothings quite ready yet. Having trouble with my back. It's taking twice as long to get things done.

I took some pictures of Christal and Shady, the horses, today. They're down in the "Weight Watchers" pasture because they were getting a bit too chunky.

Well, Ken just got home from work. He stopped and bought us a lovely peach pie from the farm market and then picked up a truck load of hay. He also took my fiddle to be re-strung today. Everyone's in for a long 4th of July weekend of torture :)

Susan, if you're reading this. I got your e-mail. Will be writing back.