Hello

   Hello, folks! This is an update of a prior pinned introduction post. As you can probably tell at first glance, the primary focus of my blog is farm and nature related. I live in the western end of Maryland, USA in the Appalachian mountains. My USDA growing zone is 7a, there’s a LOT of variability in the mountains, and so our weather can be a little inconsistent.

  I am in the 55-ish age category, I have a husband, a teen daughter, and a twenty-something son plus a slew of kids’ friends, girl or boyfriends, cousins, and random passersby. I never know who I’ll be feeding dinner to on any given day!

  Our ‘farm’ is not commercial; in fact, the large majority of the acreage is in a natural state (on a rather steep mountain) and only a few acres are devoted to our garden, orchard, and pasture. I have kept cows, both milk and beef, but at the moment our field is home to our horse, Hero and an obnoxious goat named Nutmeg. The chickens do not have names. Pet-wise we have four [spoiled] cats and two excellent farm dogs. And effective fall of 2024, Rosalie. Not sure what kind of farm dog she’ll turn out to be.

  Other things I post about sometimes include my paintings and drawings, the massive cleanup effort at my late father’s farm, the kids’ colleges, solarpunk, and sometimes health stuff or adhd. Bad puns happen; no apologies will be given!

Good farm dogs above, and something, possibly a large bug, below

Fiber arts

She: gets into crochet

Me: Cool, I've never done that!

She: wants to try quilting

Me: Cool! We can do it together!

She: I think I want to learn embroidery

Me: Ok, I'm staging an intervention.

(Just kidding) I've been resisting the siren song of the brightly colored embroidery threads for years, now, due to not having enough energy/spoons to do anything extra. However, there's this one very plain button-down shirt I have, blue-grey, that is just calling out for a little tasteful embellishment. If I do volunteer time at the museum this year, that's usually three hours of sitting around doing very little . . . hmm.

K has an idea for a gift-project, so she started fooling with a piece of scrap fabric yesterday, getting the hang of the various stitches.

(I did do this little thing a few years back, when she was too young to drive herself and I was stuck waiting for ages at track practice. So, I haven't forgotten how.)

Bright, cold, windy. Happy March, and enjoy the lighter evening tonight!

Cold Storage

My root 'cellar' for cold-storage is actually my unheated attic. I brought a box of potatoes downstairs, yesterday. I was so impressed with this one:

It must have gotten sliced by the shovel when it was dug up in October. Normally, one like this would be used first, but we must have missed it somehow. Even with a slice in it, it kept for 5 months and, once I trimmed the cut area, the rest of it was perfectly fine. There are two five-gallon buckets of potatoes left, at this point. I'm going to try to use them as quickly as possible, maybe find space to get some of them in the fridge and give a bag away to the boys. Once the temps outside get warm for spring, my attic storage will no longer be cold!

(Here's what they look like in fall, right out of the garden and before they get hosed off!)

Heavy clay soil

I'm still feeling pretty rocky, but K's spring break is winding down, so we're trying to get All the Things done. This morning we packed up a pick and shovel to go to a field and dig a couple holes for tree planting. There is a small house, currently empty, at the east edge of the farm that will be hers when she gets out of college. Looking forward to that time, she's starting to plan what trees she wants.

In this area, tree planting is recommended to be done between March 15th and April 15th, so the time approacheth. We want to transplant three white pines, and a pair each of maple and beech. Hopefully this summer will not be as droughty as last.

Stream Reclamation

OKAY - in addition to many other defects in my son's uni, they stopped a few years back helping the students find internships or any kind of fieldwork relating to wildlife or fisheries majors. My son has been looking for projects/internships completely on his own, which is damned difficult to do. HOWEVER

THIS looks very promising vis-a-vis mine reclamation/stream quality projects. So - send out a little positive energy for my Boy, because he's just dying for a chance to clean up our Appalachian waterways.

Yesterday, in one of his classes, a guest lecturer attended, and was asking the students probing questions about the fisheries program. The more they told her, the more concerned she got. It sounded like an excellent chance for the students to 'make some noise' about deficiencies in the school to someone who actually would be able to help. As he told me about it

Him: So, the other students were beating around the bush about things . .

Me: So, um, you cut down the bush and walked over the top of it?

Him: And then set it on fire. Yes.

Me: {snif} ThAT's my BoY!

Hmm, no

When we were cleaning up the debris of the hoop house, I stuck my head in a shed near the house to see if we could store a ladder there. Unfortunately,

Hmm. No. This is one of very few places on the farm that I didn't dejunk either while my father was still alive or in the year after his death. Looks like I really ought to make time to get in there before spring gardening really starts. Lackofmotivation.doc

On a slightly more cheerful note, we found some wide planks and round wooden - objects? - that Roommate claimed to make structures for the goat to play on. He recently acquired two baby goats, on top of the two he already had (and Nutmeg, who has been living with his goats since Hero doesn't need her). Why? Did he get new goats? I do not know. However.

He did manage to make a charming playground for goats out of scrap wood and junk. Which is completely on-brand for this Appalachian valley. Goat tax:

One appears to be a toggenburg, and the other an earless breed (why?) called LaMancha.

With better lighting, I feel like some of the junk in the shed could make a pretty compelling art-photograph.

There's something emotional about this, to me.

Things I had to clean up today: cat puke (first thing in the morning (why oh why)), blood, chicken grease (spilled broth (coulda shoulda poured more carefully)) and sour cream (off the floor (oops)). Hurrah.

It is NOT ok for me to still be awake at 1:30 in the bloody morning. This does not bode well for how my day is going to go.

Still Invested

It is POURING rain out there. Definitely a day for reading and sewing.

I've gotten from this:

to this:

But the next step is the welt pocket, and I'm scared I'll screw up. I already managed to cut the bottom front slightly wrong, and had to piece it because there wasn't enough fabric to recut. That's pretty darned aggravating for such a simple pattern and the amount of sewing experience I have.

I have a hard deadline for the project, though, because he has a nice event he needs to wear it to the last weekend of the month. I will press onward (haha - ironing joke).

Mane Event

Roommate is determined to get Leo's mane to lie all on one side of his neck. Leo's mane, however, has other plans. It is an extremely heavy, thick, and opinionated mane, and it wants to lie to the right for the top half, and to the left nearer his shoulders. Like so:

Part of yesterday's Bath Event was focused on detangling (paging Dr. Sissyphus) and braiding it to get it all over to the right side.

Today it is raining. Leos is no doubt soaking up mud like a sponge, while his mane plots how to escape the braids. I'm just going to be an observer in this. Sipping tea, as it were, while the drama unfolds.

Ah, to be young and energetic. I should write a parody song to the tune of 'All about that Bass.'