Busy Hands

In the dead of winter, I always seek comfort with handwork and sometimes try a new craft. This winter, I’m doing both.

I have been working on a quilt top for friends and am getting quite excited to finish the top so that I can quilt it.

Also, I am getting some hands-on experience while making an oak splint flat basket that measures 12″ x 16″ x 7″. The basket base has been woven and now ready to be re-soaked as I begin to weave and form the basket’s sides.  When finished, this basket will be used to carry garden produce to the house. (The basket is sitting on a full-size Nine Patch scrap quilt I made last year.)

The t-shirt rag rug I began last year has grown a little, but it’s still not doormat size. The rag rug is such a back-burner project that I often forget that it’s buried in the bottom of my workbasket. Not smart of me because a rag rug could be used in front of the kitchen doors now. I laugh at this rag rug’s wonkiness already in-the-making. But it’s a rug to be used and abused, wonky or not, and I really do need to finish this up. This winter with all of our snow, rain, and ice, our kitchen floor has been sloppy wet much too often. A doormat would cut down on some of that wet.

Busy hands, happy heart.

Note To Self: Finish the rag rug…

Nature’s Ice Sculpture

There is something hauntingly exquisite about a naturally forming ice sculpture. Meet Overall Run Waterfalls, in ice form.

Isn’t it remarkable that cold weather has the ability to halt the forces of moving currents of water, but man-made dams and levees built with modern technology and engineering cannot? All it takes is an ambient temperature of 30-degrees and water solidifies, water stops running.

Amazing. Nature’s ice sculpture. A work of art, really, even if only here for a short while.

It is 20-degrees today. The forecast is showing an even colder spell is here. The plug was pulled on the greenhouse last week. Too expensive to continue heating it.

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Overall Run Waterfall can be reached by several trails, one is the Appalachian Trail. There are actually two waterfalls, one is a 30 foot drop and the other is a 93 foot drop. The trails are all difficult/strenuous due to rock scrambling and the steep slope. Before hiking, read up on the available trails leading here.  Well worth the effort in Winter to see this!

Dolly Sods Cranberry Cake

Few people know that wild cranberries (Vaccinium macrocarpus) grow in mountainous West Virginia. These cranberries have been foraged for centuries by man and beast, but it was the larger, cultivated cranberry that made Ocean Spray a household name.

The wild cranberries grow in wilderness bogs in Dolly Sods, West Virginia. For those who have discovered the Dolly Sods region in the Allegheny Mountains of the Monongahela National Forest,  the area is a naturalist’s and forager’s dream come true.

Beautiful, rugged, and also eerie, Dolly Sods Wilderness is very unique — a region more like the Arctic Tundra than a mountainous East Coast woodland. High in elevation, Dolly Sods is not only colder than the surrounding forests in the region, but the area is continually assaulted by the frontal attack of storms that tend to hit hard. Dolly Sods, part of the West Virginia Highlands on the Allegheny Plateau, is part of the Allegheny Front, a ridge area that catches and holds storms. The weather at Dolly Sods can be severe. The fog, rains, snow, eroded rockface, and sculpted, windswept trees are reminders of the harsh climate.

The flora and fauna of Dolly Sods includes an abundance of shrubberies and wildflowers: Laurel, wild azalea, orchids, rhododendrons, ferns, heaths, carnivorous plants, huckleberry, cranberry, blueberry, mosses, evergreens, rare plants, and more. An excellent guide to the flora and fauna of Dolly Sods is here.

My favorite time to hike around Dolly Sods is in late June to early July when the Mountain Azalea bushes are in bloom. At that time, the forest is ablaze in bright fire-orange blossoms.

Even through the fog and mist, you cannot miss the orange.

During other times, the heaths are blooming. Or the orchids. Or the Trillium….Then there is the berry season — huckleberry, blueberry,  cranberry — all for the picking. Casual hikers can walk into some of the cranberry bogs on a wooden boardwalk.  Most foragers take the paths less traveled.

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The name Dolly Sods originated through the Dolly/Dahle family who cleared land and settled there in the early 1800s. Part of  my own family line (Keister and Dyer) also settled there.

The Dolly Sods Cake recipe is an old one which has been updated. Originally, lard was used in the recipe. And saleratus, or bicarbonate soda, used as a leavening agent in baked goods, is now referred to as baking soda. Today’s cultivated cranberry can be substituted, perhaps coarsely chopped.

Dolly Sods Cake

• 2  cups coarsely chopped apples
• 2  cups fresh whole cranberries
• 2  cups sugar
• 2  eggs
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 2 tablespoons brandy or bourbon
• 2  cups sifted flour
• 2  teaspoons baking soda
• 4 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup chopped black walnuts

Combine apples, cranberries and sugar in large bowl and set aside.

Beat eggs slightly, then stir in oil and brandy.

Combine dry ingredients in bowl: mix sifted flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt.

Stir oil mixture into apple and cranberry mixture. Slowly add the flour mixture while stirring.

Add black walnuts to batter.

Pour batter into greased and floured tube pan (or Bundt pan).

Bake at 350 degrees for about one hour. Let stand until cool, then turn over and allow cake to completely cool on rack.

Bird Brains

There is no doubt that the size of a chicken’s brain is small. Without measuring the size of a chicken’s skull, you can watch a chicken’s behavior and figure it all out without doing the math.

Today I figured it all out. The size of a chicken’s brain IS small. Very small.

Without even trying, our laying hens have been conditioned like Pavlov’s dogs.  They run to me during the afternoon because they know I am bringing treats for them. Since they are literally cooped-up until midday now, their normal behavior of lining up at the edge of their chicken yard has been impossible.

Enter the new routine. Show off the new trick….

Fly into the window.

Smart. I’m impressed.

I’ve just received the lesson on bird brains. A phrase that has earned a place in our English language undoubtedly through observation.

The Best Garden Ever

We’ve been planning The Best Garden Ever and these plans include an expansion of our back vegetable garden. Hoping to increase our food production from about 70% to 80% (or better….hope,  hope!) with more variety and more veggies for our family, we have also decided to bring the second vegetable garden back into production.

The second garden is situated in a lower field area and will need perimeter fencing from the deer-thieves. The lower garden will be planted in corn, tomatoes, squash, and perhaps some cucumbers as well. There is enough distance between the veggie gardens to discourage crossing, too, making it all the more sensible to resurrect this garden.

I have many fond memories of the lower garden….Two large beds of strawberries (two 4′ x 50′ raised beds) produced more than we could eat, freeze, and jam up. And then there was The-Year-Of-The-Tomato….The first year that I grew Roma tomatoes, I thought 80 plants would be about right…..Do you know how weird it is when you have to bring in your first harvest in the back of a flat-bed truck???!

So, backwards in time we go, and hopefully the bounty of past garden adventures will continue on and our worst problems of 2010 will be overly abundant gardens.

And okay, since I’m laying it all out now and I’ve committed myself to The Best Garden Ever, I may as well confess that part of our front ‘yard’ will be turned into a growing area, too. In the front we’ll grow more winter squash.  Maybe sunflowers, too.

The seed stash has already been inventoried and some new seeds have been purchased. Now it’s time to organize my seed storage boxes so I don’t have to rummage as much.

Another Chapter

With the year’s end comes the end of another chapter in our lives.

How many of us reminisce, looking backwards at year’s end?

How many of us enjoy revisiting some of our life’s events before going forward into another chapter in our lives?

Diaries, journals, letters, scrapbook photographs, and even blogs give each of us the ability to look backwards with a bit of accuracy. We can see what we have accomplished, what we have learned, who we have helped.

Sometimes the end of another chapter brings about memories of times past or family members long gone. Perhaps the end of another chapter reminds us of the new friends we made along the way.

The end of another chapter serves as a stopping point — a signal to pause, to catch one’s breath, to re-energize. Sometimes the end of another chapter isn’t even noted as we go forward into a different year, in a different decade.

I take notice. As I reflect back before turning to another chapter, I think about gardening and the path that gardening carved for me. I can laugh at some of the twists and turns in my garden path.  I can also see how my garden path gave me a direction I found to be sensible and soul-filling. I anxiously await the new portion of my garden path and what will be discovered in tomorrow’s garden.

One of my best life gifts was found through gardening. Gardening reinforces many virtues, among them patience and humility. A gardener cannot control the garden. A gardener cannot control the weather. And a gardener cannot control the pests.

A garden becomes a reflection of the gardener. To succeed, a gardener must learn the rhythm of the garden. A gardener must nurture the garden, not control it. A wise gardener will learn to tend the garden’s needs. A gracious gardener will be thankful for the garden’s harvest and all of the  beauty a garden offers.

As the year’s end marks the close of another chapter, I look forward to begin another: to meet new friends, share new ideas, revisit old ways, and to continue caring for the gardens grown.

This last day of the year has begun with snowfall. At daybreak, we will enjoy the snow’s pure white blanket laid along the countryside as another chapter begins.

That Red Glow

Our pre-dawn temperature outside was 18-degrees. The woodstove has been running non-stop since early November. Each time I add logs onto that red glow of burning embers, I get comfort from the warmth.  We have easily burned through a cord of oak already. More below-freezing weather is predicted and with the exception of a few outdoor chores, this weather demands that we stay indoors to stay warm.

Our daytime temperatures have not been warm either. Even our plans for Christmas Day were interrupted by the cold weather, as freezing rain was predicted. Here in the Shenandoah Valley, part of our family must drive over the Blue Ridge Mountains and cross both the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers to get to our home. With freezing rain and icy roads, the cold weather forced us to change our holiday plans to Sunday, the 27th.

Yesterday, I noticed the daytime temperature was 25-degrees. We had high winds that were bone chilling. I spent some time in my greenhouse, planting some pre-sprouted Zinnia seeds into 3-inch pots.  While in the greenhouse, the wind whipped around the walls, rattling them — a reminder of the harsh Winter we are experiencing.

The hens are only going out for afternoon recess these days. Snow, ice, rain, and high winds does little for a flock of layers trying to find bugs, grass, and other goodies long gone. Last week, one of the Black Astralorps — the one aptly named Rocket — decided that she wanted to try her wings again and she flew over the chicken yard fence. Again. She landed in a soft puff of 2 feet of snow and she obviously had no back-up-plan. My husband saw her antics and rescued her.

For now, the hens remain cooped up in the morning so they don’t suffer from the excessive cold.  Since there is nothing much for the hens to peck at, they have been turned into our winter compost machines. They now receive all veggie and fruit scraps, and any remaining bits of breads, cereals, or grains. They’ve also been given servings of slightly warm oatmeal (chickens love warm mushy stuff like that). And because they’re spoiled, I’ve sprouted seeds for them to gobble up since they have no grass. Giving them some nutritious treats each day is our way of thanking them for the continued supply of fresh eggs they lay.

We have 5 hens and since they’ve been laying, we get 4-5 eggs per day. Many layer breeds will lay eggs all winter long if they are given adequate feed, water, light, and warmth. Some supplemental white light is necessary to lengthen the short winter daylight.  We have their light on a timer, set for dusk. The light remains on for several hours, then shuts down until the next 24-hour cycle.

Layers will be more productive if the temperature in the chicken coop can be held above freezing.  Keeping the coop above freezing will prevent fresh water from icing up, too. A warmed coop will also prevent nighttime frostbite on their combs.

With so much cold weather, we decided to add some heat to the chicken coop. Now the coop has a red heat lamp which emits just enough warmth to bring the coop’s temperature above freezing. We are using the brooder light and reflective lamp with a thermostat attached so that the light will automatically shut off if the temperature goes above freezing.

During the evening hours when I glance down at the chicken coop, I see that red glow shining out of their side window. Not as warm as that red glow from our woodstove’s hot embers, but at least the hens are getting a bit of warmth for themselves too.

We Knew The Snow Was Coming

We knew the snow was coming. Some of us were prepared.

Our weekend blizzard dropped about 24-inches of snow on us. Time was spent yesterday playing digging pathways all around the house, to the animals, and to the woodlot.

The hooped tunnels now look like the white spine of some creature back there!

The big part of a snowstorm is always plowing the driveway. That means carving a path to the Bobcat which has the front-end scoop to clear our driveway. Too much driveway to clear with a shovel!

Our granddaughter was stranded at our place and she’s never seen 2 feet of snow before.

Snowfall can be gauged by the covered fence board planks. This snowfall is almost two-planks-high.

Just in front of one fence is a terraced bed:  my new Sunchoke bed (Thanks, Mike & Micki !) By the way, that hill in the background makes for some excellent kayak-sledding!

Our Retrievers love the snow.

They love to fetch anything, even snowballs, and snow depth means nothing to them.

Told ya we were busy carving pathways…

The dogs are trained to ‘attack’ each other in playfulness. Snow won’t stop them when I yell out, “Get ‘em!”

Docile dogs go mad….

A snowstorm at our place means there may be no evening frisbee throwing, but it doesn’t matter. Snow is a whole new world and that white stuff turns these dogs silly.

A Box of Sweets

Yesterday, we received a box of sweets in the mail. A friend sent some heirloom Hayman sweet potatoes from his farm in Parksley, Virginia. What a wonderful gift!

Hayman sweet potatoes are a regional heirloom grown in the lower eastern shore of Maryland and eastern shore of Virginia.  The Hayman sweet potatoes are white when pulled out of the ground, but when cut or cooked, the potato turns a yellowish-grey color. Here is a small sweet potato on a white plate, cooked and then fork-mashed:

Just as soon as I added some butter, my granddaughter walked off with the potato for a mid-morning snack. Even in that short period of time, the sweet potato color had darkened:

This evening, we will bake a pan of these sweet potatoes to eat with our pork roast and fresh-picked kale.

A few of these sweet potatoes will be scooped for a Sweet Potato Pie. I will be sure to follow one of the authentic Sweet Potato Pie recipes from the Parksley, VA area where these were grown. I don’t use canned milk so I will substitute heavy cream instead.

Sweet Potato Pie

Mix in order given:
1 1/2 c. cooked mashed sweet potatoes
1 c. sugar
2 egg yolks
pinch salt
1 tbsp. flour
1 lump melted butter
1 tsp. vanilla
1 tsp. lemon extract
2 c. milk
1 large can evaporated milk (undiluted)
2 egg whites beaten stiff

Strain and pour into unbaked pie shells.
Bake at 400 degrees until firm, about 35-40 minutes.
Makes two 9-inch pies.

Having read an informative article, “How to Grow Eastern Shore Hayman Potatoes”, the gardener/grower in me will take a couple of those Hayman sweet potatoes and grow them in containers inside my greenhouse. Hopefully I can perpetuate a few of these heirlooms myself for my Best Ever Garden Of 2010.

Growing In The Greenhouse

Despite the shorter days, the lack of sun, and the cool temps, the greenhouse is busting with blooms.

A couple of potted Pelargoniums (cultivar ‘Patriot’) catch my eye with their electric pink blossoms.

I’m already anxious to begin planting seeds for next year’s gardens, but until then, I try to limit my anxious enthusiasm and focus on what is growing in the greenhouse right now. The bright yellows and oranges from the Nasturtiums are a welcome sight. Each time I walk in the greenhouse, the intense colors brighten my day.

A cold spell has hit us and as we are hurled into colder, Winter weather outside, I seek refuge inside the greenhouse. As soon as I take one step in there, the sweet scent swirls around me.

A few pink Petunias started from cuttings:

Pineapple sage, also started from cuttings:

Parsley is always ready for snipping:

Coleus, pots of Dianthus, and newly-divided Aloe are growing in the greenhouse and there is ample room around the plants. In a few months there will be no extra bench space in the greenhouse. And when the tomato seedlings grow larger, the floor will be crowded too. I love a filled greenhouse!

The Basil seedlings are sloooowly growing. I was hoping for a fresh basil pesto during our holiday meal, but these little babies will never make the date.

The purple leafy plant is Alternanthera ‘Purple Knight’ which grows in a large pot. It was brought into the greenhouse to over-winter and is now blooming. The small white blossoms remind me of clover blossoms.

Growing plants in a cooler greenhouse this year is an experiment worth repeating. I’m already anxious to begin seedlings for next year. Shameful….