Ahhhhh, The Beauty of Nature...

Ahhhh, The Beauty of Nature...

Summer is quickly winding down.  The gardens at the farm and at our current house are producing as well as can be expected, considering there's little time for either of them.  One of our cats had a problem with a blocked bladder, which made it necessary for me to stay at home with him for about a month while he adjusted to the new urinary tract health formula of cat food that the vet prescribed.  So the garden at home looked really nice...for a while.  Now the tomato vines are looking pretty dry even though I water them when we're there.  No matter, though, I really don't have time to “put them up” any way.  My sister is picking the ripe ones and using them, so they're not going to waste. 

The garden at the farm has been producing nicely although it, too, is a bit weedy...well, more than a bit, but it is what it is at this point.  We had planted some Kentucky Wonder green beans and they  produced nicely.  I've frozen about twenty quarts of these tasty beans, which should easily carry us into the next growing season.  We just started picking our farm tomatoes about a week ago.  Some of these tomatoes (mostly heirloom Mortgage Lifters) are very large and tasty.  I have found the time to can five quarts of salsa and five pints of pizza sauce.  I'm hoping to can more salsa, pasta sauce, and tomatoes in the coming weeks with the tomatoes from the farm.  We also are having a good harvest of what I like to call “Tom Squash”.  These are Candy Roaster squash grown from seeds provided by one of Charming's friends.  The vines like to roam and so far, have produced four large, yellow,  banana-shaped squash.  I had never grown them before this year, but according to my research, they store well and taste somewhat like sweet potatoes or pumpkin.  I'm really looking forward to having these during the winter months.  Our russet potatoes did pretty well.  We planted six short rows and so far I've dug up three rows which gave us about eighty pounds that are of decent size.  We're storing the smaller ones to use as seed for next year.  The corn was a flop, but that was because the deer ate most of the young tender plants.  We'll find a remedy for the deer problem after we move here permanently...I have a feeling that the remedy will probably have something to do with our freezer.

Charming has been busy on all fronts.  Poor thing, problems keep popping up and it seems as if he's playing “Whack A Mole” with all the different directions in which he's being pulled.  As you've read, he replaced the roof on the house because some shingles had blown off.  He  figured he might as well do the whole roof while the weather was good.  So that's done.  Then we had a problem with the water.  One day he noticed the sound of water flowing as he walked past the outside water hydrant.  After digging down about three feet to get to the actual pipe, he discovered that there was a small hole in the pipe.  This, in turn, was causing the pump to come on more than it should.  So, fearing that the pump might wear out from so much work, he decided to fix the pipe.  (When we purchased the property, the real estate agent mentioned that the previous owner had replaced the pump and we're guessing that the hole might have gone unnoticed to the previous owners and perhaps that's why the pump had to be replaced.)  Poor Charming had to dig out more dirt to allow enough space in which to work.  Thank goodness the land perks really well so there wasn't a ton of mud to deal with.  It took several attempts to get the correct parts.  He had hoped that the job could be accomplished with plastic parts, but he could not get those to cinch down enough on the plastic piping that was already in place.  To make a long story short, he ended up searching for and finally finding the proper metal part and replaced it.  He then filled the hole back in with dirt and the hydrant is working properly now.  He also plans to install something that will allow him to monitor how much the water pump turns on so that , in the future, this type of problem might be addressed sooner.  Luckily, the leak was not enough to drain our well or kill the pump.  God loves us!

Currently we're dealing with varmints.  They literally seem to be coming at us from all sides (a given when living in the country I know, but nevertheless annoying).  As you've read, we got two nice barn kitties from the local animal shelter.  A wonderful deal!  They were free (although we did give a donation to express our gratitude to the shelter).  For the price of supplemental cat food, these little ladies provide rodent control on demand.  The best part is that they work behind the scenes and we never see the actual “catch”.  Before we got “The Belles” (mother and daughter rodent-killing team, Maribelle and Baby Belle), Charming regularly found  nests in the sheds, in the 5-gallon buckets where he keeps a lot of his tools, and even under the tractor seat and in the grill of the tractor.  So the cats solved that problem for us.  However, we keep food for the cats in an automatic feeder and we noticed that the cats were going through lots of cat food in a short period of time.  With my years of growing up in a rural setting, I knew that it could be any number of small animals...'possum,, raccoon, chipmunk, squirrel.  However, given that The Belles could easily take down chipmunks or squirrels, we reasoned that it was more likely the 'possum or raccoon.  So we purchased a “game camera”.  I had no idea that there was such a thing, but I guess since Americans find it necessary to have baby monitors/cameras and doorbell monitors/cameras, this idea is not so far-fetched.  Anyhow, Charming set up the camera and it clearly showed numerous visits to the door of the shed by a guilty-looking raccoon.  Since there were several pictures of a raccoon at different intervals during the same night, there could possibly be more than one culprit.  Charming dutifully baited his Hav-A-Heart trap with some stinky smelly dog food and caught...A Possum!  He drove the possum to a local national park and released it into the wild.  That's about as far as we're willing to go in preserving local wildlife and it's much kinder to the possum than becoming a “Jax Snack”. 

Not only do we have ground varmints, we have flying varmints.  Last time we were at the farm, we noticed a big wasp nest under the eave of the tool shed.  Charming wanted to throw gas on it, but I didn't like that idea and I really didn't want him to get that close to the bees.  (He was stung by a bee several years ago and his foot was so swollen and painful that he couldn't walk for about a week.)  So he conceded and when I got home I could do some research on how to get rid of the nest.  On the Internet, I came across a video on YouTube that showed a man hosing a nest down with the garden hose and then swatting the remaining bees with a tennis racquet. (Not kidding!)  As I watched it, I was rolling with laughter and shaking my head at anyone who would do such a crazy thing.  Charming came in to see why I was laughing and we both had another good laugh about the zany things that people do.

Meanwhile, back at the farm...as Charming was dragging out the water hose and a long length of plastic conduit, I was pouring a glass of Crystal Light, dispensing two tablets of Benadryl onto the counter, and digging in my purse for my car keys in case an emergency trip to the hospital was necessary.  Charming made me promise not to leave the camper while he was blasting the wasp nest with the icy cold water.  All I could do was snap photos through the camper window, while staying close to the dose of Benadryl and Crystal Light.  About five minutes later, after giving the nest a quick poke or two with the long piece of conduit (yes, he actually POKED a bee's NEST!), he slowly backed away from the shed while continuing to spray the nest.  When he was far enough away that the spray of water no longer reached the nest, he threw down the water hose, did a little dance (not sure if it was a victory dance or if there were a few stray bees after him), and sprinted to the camper.  Amazingly, he did not get stung or even break out in a sweat.  I breathed a huge sigh of relief.  I can already tell that life on the farm is going to be very interesting for us...and stressful for me.  (I won't even go into the story about him killing a rather large snake with the grass trimmer a few weeks ago.)

On the calmer side of things, the electrical work has basically been finished in the kitchen and in the part of the living room where the wood stove is located.  The kitchen has been painted.  The wood stove has been installed and looks great.  The replacement windows have been ordered and should be available for pick up sometime within the next week or so.  Since we will be picking up the windows, Charming has decided to put the work in the kitchen on the back burner (so to speak) and work on re-siding the house.  I'm fine with this as it will make the outside of the house look so much better.  As it stands right now, it looks rather ratty and now that we have the wood stove installed we can actually work on painting and installing the kitchen cabinets when the weather cools down.  So we still have plenty to work on, but we're making progress. 

Oh, dear...Charming just came in and said he saw wasps flying into a hole in the siding on the house.  Excuse me while I go hide the water hose.  

The wasp nest that was on the shed.

Charming hosing down the bee nest.

Either a happy dance or running from bees...not sure which.

Picture from the game camera showing a raccoon sniffing around the shed.

The possum that we caught (we released it into the wild).

Charming removing the small, rickety stoop from the side of the house.

He is also removing the door that was there when we bought the place.

Poor Charming digging up the water pipe on a very hot day.

This was the old hydrant piping, which was leaking.

Charming repaired the leak and added a new hydrant.

Installation of the stove surround...we don't recommend "Air Stone" brand.

3 PVC pipes make moving the stove onto the mat a fairly easy task.

The stove is now safely installed.

A huge tomato that we got from our garden on the farm.

Same tomato after it had ripened a bit...we're saving it for seed.

Beans from the farm.  (My niece got the basket from her local dump...and I just love it!)

Onions & potatoes...we use no chemical bug control on our garden.

Maribelle loving up to Jax...it's strange she follows him everywhere!

We put things to take to the farm in a certain area; I caught Jax adding two of his toys.

Walled Off...

Because we’ve had a sick cat for the past couple of weeks, I haven’t spent much time at the farm.  However, Charming has continued to work on the renovation and (oddly enough) has gotten quite a bit of work done without me.  I think he’s made such good progress because I’m not there to make him take regular breaks for meals and snacks.  At this point, our cat can’t be left any longer than overnight so I only go over to be with Charming one night during each of his stints at the farm.

Charming’s progress includes removing the sliding glass doors at the back of the house and replacing them with a nice new 36-inch wide steel door.  This will be much better in several ways.  It will provide more security as the old glass door didn’t closer properly and could easily be broken into.  Taking out the sliding glass door allows for more wall space at the end of the kitchen where I plan to put my antique sideboard.  Last, but not least, the removal of the sliding glass doors virtually eliminates the possibility of me walking through the glass panel and getting hurt…If you know me, and how un-graceful I am, you know that would be a real possibility.  (I once banged my head on a closed pass-through cashier’s window while paying a tuition bill at a college…very embarrassing, not to mention painful.  Owwwwww!)

The drywall in the kitchen and woodstove area has also been hung.  Charming has gotten the first “mudding” done.  When he goes back this week, he will be able to sand the dried mud and put on the second coat.  He usually does three coats of mud to make the nail holes and seams completely disappear.  My Charming…I think I’ll keep him.

In making the kitchen area as functional as possible, we decided that we needed to enlarge the laundry closet in order to accommodate today’s larger washer/dryer combinations.  The previous owners had simply removed the closet doors, presumably due to having the larger appliances.  We also had to extend the wall by about a foot to allow room for the refrigerator, cabinets, and pantry.  This actually worked out nicely as Charming used the extra wall length to create a nook on the living room side that will house a small table that I had no other place for and allows for a shelf higher up on the wall that will house network and telephone equipment.  We’ve come to realize that when downsizing to a smaller house, it’s important for everything to have a dedicated space.

While Charming has been focusing on the renovation, I’ve been struggling to keep up with the garden.  (Forgot to take pictures of my "awesome homemade hoe" that Charming made for me, but will include that next time.)  Since I’m only at the farm about one night per week, it’s hard to keep the weeds at bay.  Add to that the dry weather we’ve had, along with the resulting hard ground, the weeds may get ahead of me.  However, I’m not ready to throw in the towel (or hoe) yet.  Our tomato plants have small tomatoes on them, the bean vines are starting to bloom, the onions look great, and the potatoes are still green.  My effort to control the potato bugs by hand-picking them from the vines is paying off.  The first week I started my bug control program, I killed (uhhhhh, removed) over three hundred of those little buggy bugs.  The second week, I removed almost two hundred.  This past week, I removed eighty-four.  In gardening, consistency is the key!  Not shown in my photos here are my pumpkin and squash vines.  They are growing near the edge of the garden to allow them plenty of room to grow.  We also planted corn, but oddly enough that is the only thing the local varmints have eaten.  I guess we should count ourselves lucky at losing only part of our planting.  Of course, I think we can count on having to share at least some of our vegetables (when they start coming in) with the critters.  Oh well, I guess that’s part of the deal when you aspire to be Old MacDonald!

My daylilies now bloom among the weeds, but should fill in the gaps in years to come.

Charming replaces the sliding glass doors with a new 36-inch wide door.

The new door will be safer & provide more wall space inside the house.

Knock, knock!  Hardware & everything!

Drywall is up with 1st coat of "mud".  This is the area for the woodstove.

Removal of two kitchen windows make space for my corner cabinet.

A new "nook" lengthens the wall & makes space for network/phone equipment.

Baby Belle now ventures away from the shed to join me in the garden.

I'm managing to maintain the garden with sporadic weeding.

From left:  tomatoes, asparagus beans (trellis) & bush beans, onions, & potatoes.

I rearranged the rocks on the fire pit near the cottage. (Still needs a bit of work.)

We do have a lovely bed of lettuce beside the house...among the left-over raspberry plants.

So Much To Do, So Little Time To Blog…

June 5, 2017

Things have really been moving at the farm lately.  I’ve finally completed my latest pair of socks (poor me…thirty-five pairs of hand-knit socks just weren’t enough).  However, as soon as I finish one knitting projects I almost immediately start on another one.  Occasionally, I even have more than one project going at a time (although I do try to limit myself to working on no more than two knitting projects at a time, otherwise I know I’d wind up with unfinished and forgotten projects on my hands…my compulsive nature won’t allow that).  In addition, I try to lend Charming a hand with the various renovation projects.

A quick note about our new barn kitties…after a few days of having adopted Momma Marabelle she disappeared from the shed that she and her baby Misfit shared.  Misfit (whom I renamed “Baby Belle”) stayed close to the shed and the safety it provided.  We have since discovered that Marabelle didn’t go anywhere, she just prefers to stay in the thicket near the Frog Pond.  I was so worried that a wild animal had gotten Marabelle, but we’ve learned that she’s quite adept at fighting off predators as our Jax Dog has the marks on his face to prove it.  I think Baby Belle loves me.  Each time we go to the farm, I always go to the shed, meowing all the way.  She immediately appears and rubs up against me.  She even lets me pick her up for a few seconds at a time.  Both cats are great mousers as we have seen a noticeable reduction in the mice that inhabit the sheds, tractor, and Charming’s tool buckets.  (Thank goodness, as I’m not overly fond of those scurrying little critters!)

A week or two ago, our nice neighbor brought us a picture-perfect loaf of freshly baked bread that she had made.  It looked and smelled so wonderful and Charming enjoyed it tremendously.  Although I make do with eating gluten-free, I really miss not being able to eat real bread.  Guess no one can really “have it all”.

Charming has finished putting the new roof on the house and it looks great.  We chose to go with light colored shingles (the official color is “Silver Lining”) because it reflects the summer heat which will keep the house cooler in the summertime.  He is currently working on the area where our woodstove will go.  So far he has laid tile on the platform, installed fire-resistant “Durock” and drywall on the walls.  He is also in the process of filling in the hole in the ceiling where the previous stove pipe was located.  Our stove will be vented to the chimney that Charming and my brother built last fall.  In addition, Charming is in the process of enlarging the laundry closet located at the far end of the kitchen.  We believe that previous owners took the doors off the closet because the size of their washer and dryer wouldn’t allow the doors to close.  We would have the same problem because almost all of the washers and dryers that are currently on the market are large.  So we’re making the closet deeper.  Luckily, the previous owners stored the folding closet doors in the rafters of the tractor shed.  Although they were dirty, we will be able to re-install them which will save us quite a bit of money.  Yay! 

Speaking of saving money, my brother Jeff gave us a really nice used refrigerator.  It’s a high-end stainless steel model that had a few dents/scratches on it, but otherwise worked perfectly.  I really don’t like stainless steel appliances because they really don’t fit in well with my love of the “antique” look, so as I cleaned the inside of the refrigerator, my mind was busily trying to come up with an idea to make the thing look more farm-like.  I came up with the idea of painting chickens on some type of canvas and then affixing them to the refrigerator doors.  There were also some scratches on the sides of the refrigerator, which were already painted black.  He bought some black appliance paint from Lowes and it worked great!  The scratches are not even noticeable now.  I’ve finished one chicken picture and, although I’m not much of an artist, it does resemble a chicken and Charming gave his blessing for me to continue with the rest of the “art work”.  So I’ll be reporting all the boring details in upcoming posts. 

This is a rather long post, so I’ve left out pictures of my gardens.  I decided to plant gardens at both houses and, thanks to Charming, I now own what I call “THE MOST AWESOME GARDEN HOE IN THE WORLD!!!!”  It speeds up the weeding process in a way that I could hardly believe.  I am super-charged about this tool and can hardly wait to share it with you in my next post, so stay tuned!

My latest socks have been finished!

A perfect fit!

Baby Belle uses the mower's grass bag as her own personal hammock.

Freshly baked bread from our new neighbor smelled heavenly!

Charming did a wonderful job on the new roof.

And an awesome job on the tile for the stove platform.

 

Hard to believe this was his first tile job!

Adding drywall and also a patch to cover the hole in the ceiling.

Enlarging the laundry closet.

Re-installing the wall for the laundry closet.

The doors to the laundry closet were found  in the shed.

Ready for painting & new knobs, then we'll reinstall them.

The refrigerator that my brother gave us.

My chicken ready to be framed with chicken wire & strips of vinyl plank flooring.

Though not quite assembled, this will go above the refrigerator's ice maker.

April Showers…Bring Headaches

April 20, 2017

The blowing winds of March seem even stronger when you live in the mountains.  In the hollow where our farm lies, there seems to be a constant breeze blowing which is a good thing on most days.  However, during the winter months (and, in particular, the month of March) the wind can seem to whip right through you.  Wind can also wreak havoc with your otherwise well-laid-out renovation plans.  We had just started to work on the house renovation in late February, starting with the kitchen, when Charming noticed a few pieces of shingles had blown off the roof.  After closer inspection, he decided that the inside renovation should be put on hold so he could replace the shingles on the roof.  No problem, he switches gears fairly easily and I just go along (on renovations, at least).

So as soon as he had gathered all of the roofing materials and the weather started to warm a bit, he began tearing off the shingles…fighting those stiff March winds all the way.  He has had to do this in sections, a quarter of the roof at a time.  He tears the shingles off and tosses them to the ground into a big pile where…you guessed it…wifey/construction grunt worker picks them up and loads them onto the trailer to be taken to the local landfill.  (It’s not loading the shingles that is so bad, it’s the nasty construction paper, intended as a moisture barrier, that the house manufacturer put on under the shingles that makes me cuss…really long sheets of crinkly, stiff, oily paper with nylon strings running through it that I fight to stuff into big trash bags…all the while fighting the March winds…rackemsmackemfrackem!)  After tearing off the shingles, Charming found several places where the roof needed to be replaced.  Although this has slowed down the renovation progress, we figure it was a blessing that the March winds blew off those first few shingles.  Otherwise, the roof might have ended up leaking, which would not have been good for our in-progress renovations. 

I do have to tell you the story about our trip to the landfill to dispose of the first load of shingles.  I went with Charming, thinking that he might have to unload the shingles and possibly want my help.  However, there were two strapping young men and another older supervisor working there who helped to unload, so I took advantage of the time to just sit in the truck and knit while the men did the heavy lifting.  Always curious about other peoples’ lives, Charming asked the young men if they had been working hard.  One of them answered jokingly, “Not until you showed up.”  So my Charming responds (with a big smile on his face), “Well, you know who loaded this trailer?  My wife.  She’s sitting there in the truck.”  I’m sure they took note of me…a middle-aged woman sitting patiently and daintily knitting in the cab of the truck.  Strangely, they were quiet as they unloaded the remaining shingles.  I just love being a “Mountain Gal”.

So now we're into April and we've had very few nice days in a row, so progress on the roof has been slow.  I keep telling Charming that "April showers bring May flowers," but he doesn't seem to be as excited by the possibility of flowers as I am.  While he has been spending his time on the roof, which is not nearly as tall or as dangerously sloped as the shed roof, I’ve been puttering around and planting things.  So far, as shown in my last post, I have partially pruned some unsightly bushes/shrubs that grow wild around the Frog Pond.  I have plans to plant some kind of ground cover around the edges of the pond along with another shrub or two that has either pink or purple flowers.  Haven’t fully decided what I want there…maybe lilac or butterfly bushes, but something that will attract more pollinating insects.  In addition, later on I want to add some kind of seating area there as well.  I’m also in the process of moving the raspberry bushes away from the side of the house and re-planting them in a long row about ten feet away from the garden.  So far, I’ve moved forty-five of the plants with plans to add another twenty-two.  This will make picking the raspberries much easier as I’ll be able to get to them from all sides.  I missed out on being able to pick about half of the crop last year because they were planted in a large round group beside the house and they were so thick and tall that I couldn’t reach the berries that were up against the house.  I probably won’t have a crop this year, as I also pruned them heavily, but production should improve dramatically in the coming years. 

Charming and I planted six rows of potatoes and one row of white onions at the farm.  Since we’re not living there full-time, we decided to only plant things that grow underground (like potatoes, sweet potatoes, and onions) or things that the wildlife might not be interested in (like pumpkins).  I’ve brought out my handy-dandy $12 Tractor Supply boots so I can roll out of bed in the mornings, grab my garden hoe, stroll the short distance to the garden and attack the weeds before Charming gets up in the morning and before the sun gets too high in the sky.  (Being a fair-skinned morning person, I positively wilt when the sun gets hot and I love, love, love to hear the birds singing in the early morning hours.

Last fall, I planted daylilies on our bank next to the road and little tiny pieces of creeping phlox under the pine trees that line our driveway.  I didn’t have much confidence that the phlox would actually live under the pines because, well, most things won’t live under pines, but happily they are just starting to bloom and appear to be thriving.  Although the patches are really small, phlox will spread about two feet, so I’ll simply transplant more patches over the next couple of years until I can get the ground covered.  More phlox under the pine trees means less mowing for me…YAY!  The daylilies are up about eight inches and I planted more a couple of weeks ago, so YAY!, less weed-eating on the bank!  Also, I planted some “hens & chicks” at one corner of the house.  They are succulent-type, low-growing plants that grow in a thick carpet as each “mother hen” produces about five or six “chicks” via its root system.  Since I don’t like bushes growing next to the house (because they harbor those icky spiders that make my skin crawl and my mouth scream), these will be perfect to add to other low-growing ground cover plants that I’ll add around the periphery of the house which will make for…you guessed it…less mowing for me.  YAY!

Re-roofing in progress with synthetic underlayment in place (left side).

Daylilies are above-ground and will hopefully bloom sometime in June.

Last week I test-planted a few Hens & Chicks (circled) on one side of the house.

I also planted small patches of creeping phlox under these pines last fall.

And they're actually blooming...note my cheap Tractor Supply boots.  I love 'em!

A close-up of the creeping phlox...though not yet fully in bloom.

Charming plowing separate areas for raspberries and blackberries.

My raspberry patch beside the house, before pruning.

And after pruning.

Got about half of them moved to their new home & will plant ground cover here later.

Raspberries are planted on the left & blackberries will be planted later on the right.

The Frog Pond...circles show groups of frog eggs...plenty of future bug-eating do-gooders!

This is Misfit, one of our two new barn cats.  So cute, but untouchable...at least for now.

Jax continues to help on the farm by keeping varmints away & by helping in the garden.