I couldn't decide if I should write a post with adorable child/kitten photos, or lovely garlic photos. There's no denying the cuteness apeal of young mammals, but what about the pungent beauty of garlic bulbs crusted with rich garden soil? I just can't decide.
The kittens, which now live with my nieces, have been named. The black one above is Butterfly. She looks just like a butterfly, doesn't she?
The garlic probably has a name too, but I can't remember what it was. These are the bulbs that grew in mom's garden, which we laid out on a small table to dry before they will be braided. We've had so much rain though, that mom eventually brought them in the house to dry. They hang from her ceiling like an earthy chandelier.
The little calico kitten is named Baby. Baby is supposed to enjoy being wrapped in a blanket, you know, like a baby, but she's kind of squirmy and hard for little arms to hold on to.
Garlic is one the most satisfying plants to grow. We planted the bulbs in the fall, and the green shoots came up right through the snow. It really gives me feeling like the garden is under way, even if I haven't done anything in the garden all winter.
The little boy kitten, that was born without a tail, has been named Philip. Philip is the prince who rescues sleeping beauty from the horrible witch who turns into a dragon. This is a lot for a young kitten to live up to.
I knew my garlic was ready to be picked because the leaves started to turn brown and fall over. The first time I grew garlic I waited longer, until the leaves were dead, but when I dug up the bulbs many of them had bug holes and were getting rotten. Now I know to get them out of the ground earlier.
Now I have a heap of garlic on my porch too, just waiting for me to clean up and braid.
Remember, back in January, when I was messing around with some homemade wine and making up my own recipes? Well, after five months of uninterupted yeast action, Jamie and I spent an evening tasting, mixing, and bottling the wine.
This wine was made in small batches in my big crock, and then put into gallon sized bottles for the secondary fermentation. I didn't have enough air-locks, so I used a balloon on one of the bottles, and it seemed to work pretty well. It inflated with gas right away, and then slowly lost it so the bottle ended up with a floppy pink balloon cap.
To reward ourselves for our hard work, we opened a bottle of our home brewed barely wine, which is one of the most flavorful beers we have ever made. So pretty and sparkly. And look at that foam!
The foam on the beer was so perfect I wished I had a mustache so I could take a big swig, and then do the forarm wipe like I've seen burly men do on TV when enjoying a beer stein. I had to settle for trying to capture Jamie's attempt at a beer-stache. I don't think he was doing it right because he had an embarrassingly small amount of foam stick to his stache. Maybe the beer stein is the key to a good facial hair foam coating?
We tried something different to sterelize our wine bottles this time. I've used bleach in the past, but it takes so long to rinse the bleachy smell away and seems sort of toxic. I've used sanitizer that I bought at the store, which works great but I didn't have any. Iodine also works well, and doesn't have to be rinsed so many times, but I was out of that too. So, this time we soaked the clean bottles in hot vinegar water, and then rinsed them with peroxide. It was nice not to worry about ruining our clothes and towels with bleach or iodine stains.
We used a little tray table under the kitchen counter as our bottling station. Jamie used a headlamp to shine through the gallon bottle while he siphoned the wine off the sediment so he could tell if we were disturbing any sediment. I manned the other end of the siphon hose as I filled each bottle. And, since there is always a little wine that won't fit in the bottle, or is left in the siphon, we tasted each batch as we went. It was all too young, but we found that some of the wine was better sweetened with stevia, and on ice. We made sure to have a glass of beer nearby to clense our palates between batches. No matter how much we tasted, the wine never graduated to tasting good. Jamie's sophisticated taste buds were picking up essence of cigarette butt, and the always unpleasant "battery lick" that comes with a really high alcohol content. I hope it gets better with time, or I figure out how to mix it with something to improve it, because I have twenty new bottles to enjoy!
The labels got quite elaborate as I tried to indicate the different ingredients and different secondary fermentation conditions. Here is a list of the wine labels:
Pear+plum+clove, w/ brown sugar (on sediment)
Pear+plum+clove, w/brown sugar (with ballon on secondary)
Pear+plum+clove, w/brown sugar
1/3 Pear+plum+clove, and 2/3 cranberry+grape+raisen
cranberry+grape+raisen
cranberry+grape+raisen (topped up with 2012 strawberry wine)
After I had already labeled the bottles I remarked to Jamie that technically, I didn't use plums, I used prunes in the pear wine. "Prunes! No wonder!" he says. What's wrong with prunes?
I have been getting some of my vegetable juice ingredients straight from the garden. I'm getting kale, Swiss chard, and beets. I haven't used much beet since I started drinking so much home made vegetable juice, but now that I'm picking a beet every morning, I'm getting plenty.
This green juice is apple, celery, kale, chard, and parsley. This one was particularly good because it has such nice green foam on the top. I only get to enjoy the sweet apple-ly foam when it comes right out of the juicer, so I appreciate my breakfast juice because the ones I take to work for later will be foam-less.
The amount of pigment in my beets is astonishing. Since I've been juicing a beet in the morning for a few days now, I'm getting better at making it to work without pink splotches, but a little beet juice goes a long way!
The plastic container that catches the juice makes nice combinations of colors, but once I stir it the beet juice overpowers all the other colors and I get a pink juice. This one, from the bottom up, is carrots, a beet, the leaves from one beet, oranges, a few celery, and residual green foam from the green juice I made first. All the colors of skittles! I mean, rainbows.
It may not taste like candy, but tastes good. Really! Pay no attention to Jamie's expression, just admire the lovely ruby color of the juice... and hold your breath. Joking!
Can you have a staring competition with a bullfrog? Yes. Can you win a staring competition with a bullfrog? I have no idea. We really didn't try that hard, but this picture makes it seem like Brandon is giving it his best. The frog doesn't look the least bit worried that he's not going to win.
We always take advantage of the entertainment value of wildlife we come across while out at night catching bats. Frequently, there are long stretches of inactivity with the mist nets, so we must turn to nature, to the streams and the forests, for animals to keep us occupied. Er...well, and watch movies on the Ipad and play games with our phones. Sometimes, we even have to have conversations (oh no!), so it's nice when a bull frog comes by and gives us a few minutes of his time.
Visitors are a definite distraction from boredom. I think the little guy in the photo above is a three lined salamander, found near the stream where we had our nets at a recent bat job. The gentleman who owned the property we were set up on, his three grown sons who lived there too, plus one of his daughter-in-laws, four of his teenaged grandsons, and a two year old toddler, all came to watch the bat catching activity. It was pretty obvious that they were amazed that people, from as far away as Kentucky, were in their territory and had such an unheard of job as catching bats. We were referred to as Bat Woman and Bat Man, which may have been the highlight of Brandon's bat technician career. We practically became adopted family in just the two nights we were there.
Fortunately, we were catching bats at a fast enough pace to please the crowd. We were also getting lots of hits on our acoustic detector, which makes noises and has flashing lights - the most important part of any a crowd pleasing science show. I made the video above by filming the display lights as the detector records the echolocation of bats that fly within range of it's microphone. Bat calls can't be heard by our ears, but the machine makes an audible blip-ping noise with each pulse of the bats echolocation call, so turn your sound up. The recorded bat calls are analyzed and matched to a specific kind of bat. Bat surveys have come along way since researchers used to shoot them out of the sky with shotguns to find out what kind they are. It's fun to watch people realize that while they have been chatting with us, there are bats in the air above their heads almost constantly. Near the forest, the sky is alive after dark. Listening to the detector at night, when insects and frogs are creating their familiar chorus, always makes me aware of a whole layer of life that I can't see or hear, but what must sound to bats like a bustling sky filled not just with prey, but with predators at work.
I'm not much of a showman, but when we have visitors, I try to make sure everybody goes away feeling like they got their moneys worth, and hopefully a bit more informed about a mostly un-admired animal that lives right in their back yards. So, I tell them what we are doing as we work up the bats, and I make sure everybody gets a good, uncomfortably close, look at them (you know, for thrills), and I answer questions the best I can. I'm always surprised at how many people are surprised that bats have
eyes. "Blind as a bat," has wide ranging impacts on the
understanding of bat optics by the general public.
The most common questions I get are usually about how to get bats out of peoples houses, which I've never done. I try to give helpful tips, like: "I don't how to keep all those bats from putting droppings in your attic and making you afraid to get your holiday decorations, but did you know that gray bats hibernate in caves during the winter, but then move to different caves with different internal temperatures for the summer when they raise their pups?" or "You have bats in your dormer? Well, small footed bats can live in cracks on man made bridges, and red bats can spend the winter on the ground under leaf litter." Probably not much help, really.
Sometimes, I can catch a snake while guests are there, and then watch the grown men
try to overcome their fear while I, a female, demonstrates to their kids
that it is possible live life without an irrational fear of snakes.
The harmless worm eating snake, called a worm snake, of all things, in the photo was too cute to not record, so I hope you enjoy my made with one hand, worm snake movie with a soundtrack of a rushing stream.
I have day dreams about rotational grazing and pasture management. I'm not joking. I think about this stuff all the time, but until the time comes to turn my attention in a serious way towards using all of our new bounty of grass, we are just letting it do it's thing. Lately, Brandon has been obsessed with becoming independent when it comes to our grass. Not that either one of us is lawn crazy, as is very obvious from our normally shaggy carpet, but we also don't want to ruin our pastures from neglecting to mow them, even if mowing isn't part of my ideal long term management plan. Besides, figuring out how to mow all this grass is a fun challenge that comes with neat toys... I mean equipment.
This means we get a tractor! It's an old tractor, and a baby tractor, but it still has that tractor paint color and those big tractor tires. It's nearly as old as I am, and was only made to have eighteen horsepower, but it's been in the family a long while, and we feel lucky to get to use it.
It comes with some attachments. There are two blue attachments, an orange one, and several red ones. I have no idea what the blue ones are for, but I'm excited to have them.
The orange one is a tiller, which may be the best part of having a tractor on the farm. It looks like someone tilled up a chain at some point, so I hope it still works.
One of these red attachments is a plow, but I'm not sure what the spade shaped one on the left does.
So the tractor has this spinning knob, to which attachments with spinning parts, such as tillers, and mower blades, can be attached.
The warning on one of the attachments demonstrates how flexible you must be to connect a piece of equipment to your tractor, but it doesn't warn of smashed fingers, which was part of our first experience with tractor attachment attaching.
We borrowed a bush hog, but unfortunately it was to big for our tractor, so we had to buy a trail mower. Is it weird that I think it's cool that I can now say, "The bush hog is with the tractor in my barn."? Three things I've never been able to claim before!
This video is brought to you by the Society for the Promotion of Short Work Days on Fridays (me!). Finally, after what seems like weeks of non-stop life, I find myself off work early and with some of those rare hours that haven't been planned for. So, what do I do? Clean house, or catch up with weeds in the garden like I should? Nope. I watch the chickens eat, lay in the sun, and video bugs with my phone. I'm sure it was more fun to make the bug videos than it will be to watch them, but just in case I want to take a break some day, when I don't have access to my garden for lolly gagging, or it's the dead of winter, I'm posting my video, which is untitled at this time. I accidentally filmed my feet, and I included the "feet segment" in the video to add a dash of reality and artistic flair. Really, I just thought it was sort of funny and weird.
Summary: Listen to the buzz of insects, the chirp of birds, the hum of distant lawnmowers, and the soft melody of wind chimes, while watching flitting insects, the sway of flowers, and the sunlight filtering through the flower petals as Rain stalks her yard hunting insects on a sunny summer Friday afternoon in June. For the optimum viewing experience, choose a time to view the video when you have over four minutes of quiet time, dim the lights, and compliment the video by drinking ginger ale, or other natural remedy for motion sickness, which may be induced by swaying branches, creepy bugs, brief segments with loud wind in the microphone, and shaky amateur photography. Enjoy!
Only one worm was harmed in the making of this video.
It's a good thing no one can see me when I mow the grass at the farm. I had a big laugh when I got a good look at my reflection while wearing Brandon's Guatamalun straw hat, faded red bandanna (it's pink, really, but don't let him hear me say that), and school bus yellow earphones, which have an antenna sticking out the back so I can listen to the radio. These headphones are really wonderful since I can sing along with the radio and pretend no one can hear me, since I can't hear myself. I think Brandon looks kind of dashing in his mowing get-up, so I don't know how I look so goofy wearing the same thing.
"Bad Brandon! Look at the mess you made!" Cleaning up the debris that Brandon generated tearing out the warpy drywall and old plaster and lath ceiling from the living room was a big job, but it's good for my shoveling muscles. We debated leaving the ceiling in the living room since it was one of the least damaged in the house, but I'm very glad we decided to take it down since Brandon barely touched the first piece with his crow bar and a giant slab fell to the floor. I would rather clean this mess up now than do it after we've moved in and all our furniture is under the rubble. And believe it or not, I can see a light at the end of the demolition tunnel. We aren't there yet, but when I look around I don't see how we can rip much more out of this house without exposing ourselves to the outside. So surely we will get to start putting some things back very soon. Surely.
The photos above are some shots of the staircase, in it's unfinished state. We got kind of fancy at the downstairs end, and made a turn. Brandon always wanted a spiral staircase, but this is as close as he's going to get. I'm anxious to see how they really work. The stairs wrap around what will some day be, if we follow our current half formed plans, a bigger column with some built in cabinets or shelves. Right now it's just a four by four post, and for some reason I have doubts that it will be much more than that for a long while.
Since I took this picture, the downstairs bedroom floor has been mostly finished. We were able to salvage almost all the original floor boards, but luckily some of them were bad, so Brandon got to play with his planer and router to create some groved floor boards to fill in the holes. I plan to paint the floors to finish them, so the different types of wood shouldn't be a problem. The room is so small that I'm pretty sure the floor won't be visible once we get a bed in it anyway, so it's not going to matter what it looks like.
I discovered some unexpected treasures outside too. A bird built a nest in some pink insulation that was stacked in the barn. If I didn't know this was itchy fiberglass, I would think this bird made the coziest looking nest I've ever seen, nestled in billows of pink fluff.
We have several yucca plants, which I was suprised to find get pretty blooms too. I've only ever noticed the spiky leaves, but never got a close look at the the tall flower spikes. These flowers are nearly three feet tall, and lovely against the sunset.
Suprise roses and elderberry shrubs!
Some rose bushes, which I assumed were wild rose, which has tiny white flowers, have turned out to be roses with large frilly pink blooms. These rose bushes are growing tangled with wild blackberries and some small pawpaw trees, but they are still very impressive. With a little attention, this wall of pink roses could really shine.
The elderberries are scattered in several locations around the property, and right now have giant heads of delicate white flowers. Not only are these pretty, but this means I can make my own elderberry wine! I love plants that are beautiful and alcoholic.
The bushy apple tree on the east side of the house is indeed and apple tree. It has hundreds of small green apples on it now. I'm sure it could use some pruninng, but until I get a chance to figure out how, I'm just going to enjoy any fruit I can get from it. I have visions of apple pies when I stand under it.
While Brandon was busy hauling garbage cans full of rubble from the house destruction renovation to the dumpster, I was busy running around outside taking photos of the rainbow that appeared in the sky after a light rain. The rainbow was one of those perfect ones that arch across the entire sky from one side to the other, and I could see the entire thing since our house sits on a small hill and there are no obstructions to our view of the sky. I like the picture above because I accidentally captured Brandon in the shot while he's still wearing his dust mask and safety glasses on his way back in after emptying his can of debris.
I walked all over our fields trying to get the perfect photos, and the one above is the closest I got to capturing the whole thing in one shot. I'm sure my phone camera does some fancy panorama photos that could have captured the very ends of the rainbow too. The trees in the photo are in our east field, and mark the boundary of our property.
In this picture from the back of our house you can see the faint second rainbow above the bright one on the bottom. And I'm pretty sure that we are going to spend at least two pots of gold making this old house livable, so it seems appropriate that the house be at the end of the rainbows.
A friend and coworker who lives in the same area was glancing through my phone pictures and recognized the rainbow. He said that he bet that every person who lived in the county had pictures on their phone of the same rainbow, because he and his neighbors were out looking at it too. It was beautiful, and lasted for long enough that I could really enjoy it.
I've never lived in a place where I could see such spectacular sunsets. I guess it's the lack of neighbors, or any sort of buildings, other than some silos and barn, in our view, and because the house is on a small hill instead of in a valley, like where I grew up. I've seen wonderful sunsets when visiting the ocean, or on other travels, but to think that we could see sunsets like these just out our door amazes me.
The sunsets are spectacular, and combined with the lightning bugs flashing over the fields, it's better than TV. I predict that when we finally make the move to the farm we will spend many evenings admiring the setting sun instead of watching old televisions shows on Netflix. No, I really shouldn't say instead of, I should say that I predict we will watch the setting sun before we watch TV! I want it all.
I'm so glad the realtors didn't put photos of the sunsets in their adds
or this place would have been snatched up before we found it, despite
the condition of the house.
On days work on the house, we find ourselves staying late, just so we can watch the sun go down. It always seems like the perfect way to end a day.
(Brandon just looked over my shoulder and jokingly asked me if I had any pictures of butterflies to add to this post! I so wish I did. I guess I'll just have to refer to the photos of the kittens for that last dose of girlie-ness. Ha! )
A journal of creating a home in an old blue school bus, as well as a do-it-yourself farm house renovation, living with backyard chickens, learning to farm, gardening, preserving food, and other projects.
