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

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!

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!)

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.

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!

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.

jellogram:

jellogram:

The bimbo feminism girls who love Legally Blonde really missed like the whole point of the movie. The point is that she’s not a brainless bimbo. She saves the day with her knowledge of haircare, sure, but she got in the room by going to law school. You cannot reduce that movie down to “Girl knowledge saves the day!” because the perm wouldn’t have mattered if she hadn’t spent the entire rest of the movie working her ass off in an unrelated field. The feminist angle is that she can have girly interests and also be smart, not that having girly interests is feminist in itself

I think it’s also worth adding that the main reason Elle is so effective is because she’s sweet to everyone and finds ways to connect with people. She’s not sitting around judging other women for knowing less about beauty than she does. So if you’re making tiktoks about being That Girl or snarking at other girls, you did NOT learn your lesson from Elle Woods.

Oh, we really can’t be keeping THAT gem in the tags.

(via bendingsignpost)

ahedderick:

Art Show

So we’re one month out from the art show at the local museum/gallery - and they don’t have any info on their website about my show or any other shows for the 2025 season. In fact, they still have their 2024 info under “upcoming events.” No promotion, no - nothing. And even if I try to do my own promotion (which is, frankly, laughable) I can’t even point people to the website for more info!

Last year they had a very amateurish show for the arts students of a local college first in their lineup (the gallery is only open April to December). I get the feeling that … this is sort of a ‘throw-away’ show and they don’t bother to promote or do any advertisement until the summer/fall shows.

Boy. Hmm.

Anybody feel like contacting these fine folks to ask for info on 2025 shows? http://www.gilchristgallery.com/contact/

I emailed one of my contacts and was able to get a little info; at least I know when they want the paintings dropped off. Also, she told me that there is another artist, a ceramics artist, which is good news to me because the space is well set up to mix 3d and 2d pieces. I have a list with 60 paintings on it. and what I will call 'tentative’ pricing.

ahedderick:

ahedderick:

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.

Oh lord, take me now …

My husband was scheduled for outpatient surgery on a torn elbow tendon this afternoon. It was scheduled for 2:30, then we were told to come an hour earlier. We left the house at 1:00, and he was back in the pre-op room by 1:30. They wanted me to wait with him, however, after half an hour there I was absolutely drooping with fatigue. I went to the car to try to grab a bit of a nap. The snow blowing in the air and brisk, cold wind were a deterrent, but I had brought a blanket and dressed very warmly.

I got a text at 3:40 that they had just taken him back to surgery (yikes!). The surgery itself was slightly less than an hour, but then we had to wait around for him to get awake enough to get poured into the car to go home. We left there shortly after 5:00. Thank goodness for the blessing of that car-nap; I would have been unsafe to drive without it.

A swift swoop through the Burger King drive-through, then a quick trip to the pharmacy j-u-s-t before they closed for the evening. Then home. To feast on burger. and collapse.