Super Snowstorm Stella

Here we are only 6 days from the official start of Spring 2017 and we are dealing with a Blizzard named Stella.  Why do we name snowstorms now?  I can't remember giving names to storms (except for Hurricanes) when I was young.  Anyway, Stella is wreaking havoc on the East Coast.  The snow is blowing horizontally at 30 to 40 mph and there is no visibility ~ our barn is down an incline about 200 feet from our log cabin and, when the wind is blowing the snow around, it is barely visible.  Hubby has been out to plow our driveway only once since there is a lot more snow to come and he would rather wait until the wind settles down a bit.  We are the last house on a private road/driveway and we are set back about 600 feet from a town-maintained road so, after our plow guy retired last April, we were forced to buy an old plow truck.  It's a good thing that we did since, with all of the storms that we've had this year, our plowing bill would have been horrible.  I hope that those of you experiencing Stella this week are home where you're safe & warm.  This weather is not fit nor man nor beast.

Well, I am more than ready to get started on my garden but Mother Nature is not cooperating.  I was hoping to get an early start (maybe mid-May this year) but it might be more like the first week in June at this rate.  I haven't ordered my seed potatoes or baby chicks yet since it would be disastrous if they were delayed at an airport or somewhere because of bad weather.  I have all of the other seeds that I needed and the asparagus roots will be shipped the second week in April.  We have one small asparagus patch but we love that veggie so much that I ordered 25 more roots so we could start another patch.  Vegetables never go to waste in this family ~ we have 2 daughters with their families (including 5 grandsons), my mother and several brothers and their families. 

It's expected that because of the storm, we will probably lose power so I won't be staying on my blog too long.  I'd hate to have a nice long story erased by a power outage ~ so frustrating!!!!!!  Anyway, stay safe & warm those of you who are suffering along with us here in New Hampshire.  Stella will be gone in a day or so & things will get back to normal with cold & wind and winter (at least for 6 more days).  Then, the snow will melt, the grass will be green and the daffodils will rise up and smile at the prospect of Spring.  I'm just dreaming.........

Another busy year.........

I haven't been on my blog for over a year ~ it has been a very busy year here.  Our daughter & her boys are still living with us and each day is a test of patience & stamina for all of us.  It's hard having two families living under one tiny roof but somehow we're making it work.  It's not without its trying times, though.  The boys are growing like weeds and are busy with school, sports, special school events and their friends.  They're great kids but they wish that they had their own place and I feel badly that they don't.  We try to give them their space but this is a small house (meant for hubby & I to downsize and live simply and uncluttered with things).  Now, the house is full of toys, electronics, sports equipment and animals ~ we have 2 dogs and the boys brought 3 cats and 2 hamsters with them.  We have chickens and bunnies living outside, too.  I am sure that when the good weather arrives and the boys are outside more, we'll all feel like we have room to breathe.

The year has been a difficult one ~ we lost my Dad in August (15 days before his 90th birthday).  I miss him so much ~ he was an anchor for our family.  My mother lives on her own in an apartment off my brother's home and that has its own problems.  Another example of family strife when there are two families under one roof.  With age, my mother has become extremely forgetful and confused and it's sometimes very frustrating trying to deal with her daily.  She lives about 10 minutes from us so, whenever she has a problem with her tv remote, her phone, her coffeemaker, etc., she calls me.  I don't mind but it seems that it is a daily or every other day occurrence.  I am constantly changing my plans to accommodate these problems that are "life altering" to my mother.  To top things off, my mother's little dog passed away 2 weeks ago & it almost sent her over the edge.  She had the little guy for almost 14 years and he was her constant companion.  I was able to find her a puppy similar to her dog and she can pick her up in 3 weeks.  Whew!!!!!!!

Now on to happier things.  Spring is only 30 days away (even though we have had several heavy Nor'easters here in recent weeks.  We have about 18" of snow on the ground, very cold temperatures and gusty winds here today and it looks like Spring will never melt what we have.  I am so looking forward to planting my vegetable gardens and putting in some new fruit trees.  I have been working on a garden plan and I have a list of seeds that I will be ordering soon.  We also plan to order more chickens since predators have taken several over the winter and our rooster died mysteriously this fall.  I loved that big guy so I am ordering one just like him and I will pretend that he never left.

I mentioned that we have bunnies now ~ we bought 4 for the youngest grandkids in May and there was one litter born in the summer.  We have lost several bunnies and we're at 8 now.  It seems that one of the original bunnies is extremely aggressive.  I caught her chasing and biting two other bunnies on two separate occasions so we've had to keep her separate from the others.  When the good weather arrives, I will build a fenced area for them so that they can kick up their heels and have some fun (keeping the bad bunny separate from the others, of course).  They have a large pen that is all fenced in from predators (it's almost fully enclosed in clear plastic to keep out wind & cold).  This is where they've spent the winter ~ it's connected to a bunny hutch so that they can sleep inside at night.

They've been doing well throughout the extremely cold weather that we've had in January and February & we keep a good eye on them.  We did bring the smaller ones in for a few days during a cold snap in January.

Well, that's about it for now, friends ~ I have laundry to catch up on and Rice Krispies treats to make for the grandkids for after school.  Enjoy your day ~ I hope I can get back to post on my blog again soon.  :)

The End of One Year ~ The Beginning of Another

Here we are at the tail end of 2015 & we have finally gotten our first snowfall of the season.  The trees have a trace of white on them & the ground is snow-covered (we got about 5 inches of snow yesterday).  The birds are enjoying the full suet and seed feeders outside & they are flying back & forth to take advantage of both. 
The woodstove is crackling in the kitchen & our little log cabin is warm & toasty.  One of our dogs is lying on her dog bed in front of the fire warming her bones ~ I think that's where I'll sleep on those cold nights ahead.  We have been lucky so far ~ moderate temperatures & rain until a few days ago.  The weather took a cold turn & has given us winter.
We are approaching the new year and I'm hoping that 2016 sees us all healthy & happy (a little prosperity wouldn't hurt either).  The past year has been a sad one in many ways ~ there is a pending divorce and I lost 2 cousins (one in her late 70s and another in his late 40s) in the last few months.  Our daughters & her 3 sons have moved in with us (the pending divorce) and it is more than a little crowded in our little home.  We are all making do, though. 
I know that most people have New Years resolutions and I am no different.  Each year, I make commitments that I hope will stick and they usually slip away several months into the new year.  This year, I will not be making unreasonable demands of myself ~ I just want to pay my bills & get more organized so that things become clearer & I know what I need to do a week ahead.  I think that those are reasonable commitments.  One thing that I want to do for myself in the coming year is to learn a craft.  I like to knit but I am limited as to what I know about this craft so I would like to take a class to learn how to make things like slippers & intricate hats for gifts.  I can make simple hats & scarves but that is about the limit of my skills. 
I have taught myself several crafts (sewing, candle making, long stitch, cross stitch, simple knitting & crocheting).  I would love to be able to master a few so that I feel that the gifts that I make are good enough to give as gifts. 
We have a large garden & a small garden & this coming Spring I plan to let one of my grandsons have the small garden for growing potatoes & carrots.  I'm hoping that he will enjoy gardening as much as I do.  His two brothers don't show much interest in the garden so I will be thrilled to have one of them join me in the dirt.  The big garden contains about 60 strawberry plants at one end and the rest will be rototilled and we will add pole beans, tomatoes, broccoli, peppers, cucumbers, acorn squash and zucchini.  Somewhere in the mix, I will put sunflowers & zinnias for bouquets for our family's tables.  I can't wait to start planting but it will be about 4 to 5 months before we can get started.
Well, it's time to crawl back to reality (after another cup of coffee) and take care of the real "stuff" (laundry, cleaning, shoveling snow & feeding our chickens).  I hope that you all have a wonderful New Year's Eve & that you don't set unrealistic goals for the new year.  Take care of yourselves & your families & find time to rest & regenerate.  Happy 2016!!!!!!!!!!!

Christmas Past & Present

As Bob Hope once said "When we recall Christmas past, we usually find that the simplest things .. not the great occasions .. give off the greatest glow of happiness".  At this time of year, we recall those simple times fondly and wish that Christmas could be the way it was in our childhood.  When we think back, that happy glow reappears as we remember time spent with loved ones who are no longer with us and traditions that have been abandoned in favor of new traditions begun by each generation of family.
Each year, I promise that I will begin a history of Christmas traditions & memories to pass on to my grandchildren since, at some time in the future, they will sit down and read it and laugh at some of the silly things that their ancestors did at Christmas time.  Of course, I have never taken the time to follow through with this project but, as I get older, I see that there is truly a need to record our family history.  My parents are in their 80s and not in good health & we have lost almost all of my aunts & uncles.  My grandparents have been gone for 30+ years and, with them, went so much information regarding family members that are a foggy memory as well as those that I never met.  This will be the year of a Christmas journal that I will complete before next Christmas so that I can present them to my daughters as a gift of love & remembrance. 
I have 4 months before my oldest daughter's birthday so there is time to create a book of recipes that I have used often over the last 40 years of marriage.  Maybe now would be a good time to start a recipe history book that I can share with my daughters.  There are meals that my mother & my mother-in-law (she passed away 28 years ago) made often that I still use and that my daughters always loved ~ maybe this book will be a way for both grandmothers to be remembered for generations to come.
Well, only 12 days until Christmas ~ all of the shopping is done but the wrapping remains.  I hope to get started on that this weekend since, it appears that we will be trapped indoors for most of the day on Sunday (we are expecting 5 to 10 inches of snow).  It will be a good day to put on a Christmas movie favorite or play a Christmas cd, grab a cup of coffee & wrap all of the gifts that are littering our little upstairs extra bedroom.
In case I don't have time to come back to my blog before the big day, may you all have a wonderful Christmas making memories with family & friends.  Remember to write down the memorable things that happen & take a lot of pictures. 

Happy Thanksgiving To All.........

Here we are already at the end of November & only a few days from my favorite holiday ~ Thanksgiving.   We had planned to butcher our 4 Bourbon Red turkeys for Thanksgiving & for the freezer, however, we became so attached to them that they have gotten a reprieve from being our holiday centerpiece.  Neither my husband nor I could "do them in" ~ they are big & beautiful & too majestic to eat.  We hope that they will breed in early Spring and that by April we will have little poults that we can sell to other homesteaders.  Of course we will, most likely, keep a few of the little ones.  We plan to renovate our old barn to accommodate a stall for the turkeys ~ right now they are in a coop that is big enough for the four of them but certainly not big enough for any more.  

Our chickens are going through the last stages of molt and, therefore, not producing like they had been.  That and the colder temperatures & shorter days has made for a very small amount of eggs on a weekly basis.  I really need those eggs for baking so "Girls, smarten up!!!!!".

I have quite a bit of my Christmas shopping completed but, with five grandsons, are you ever really done?  I don't think so ~ I could keep buying them trinkets until Christmas morning, I think.  Our boys range in age from 23 months to 18 years so there is a wide range of interests involved.  We have bought stuffed animals for the little guy up to a battery charger/tire inflator contraption for our oldest to keep in his truck.  In between, we have Nerf guns, legos and the dreaded.....clothes.

I am working on crafts for the adult relatives & I hope that I have enough time to get them completed.  I hope to make some scented candles in containers & dress them up with gingham bows & homemade labels, some wooden signs & table runners.  We'll see what time allows.........

Well, I have to get started on my crafts ~ I just got back from doing the last of the Thanksgiving grocery shopping & in a few hours, I will be babysitting for 3 of our grandsons until their Mum gets home from work.  Wishing you & yours a wonderful Thanksgiving Day ~ enjoy the feast and the family.  I know that my turkeys will be happy on that day!!!!!!!!!!

Cold winds of October

Wow, I can't believe that it has been such a long time since I last posted anything.  It was a great summer & the garden & fruit trees were very productive, however, I do think that I took too much work on to be able to do it all.  Next year, I will downsize the garden & make it more compact which, I believe, will create more veggies & fruit & less work for me.  It seems like I spent most of the summer on my knees weeding and digging in the dirt. 
Our chickens are just coming out of their molting period and, therefore, eggs have not been very plentiful.  Today, my husband found 9 in the coop which is a lot better than the last few weeks.  I've been doing a lot of baking lately so I really could use the extra eggs and friends & relatives have been asking for them, too.  I feel bad for the hens that are going through the molt since they look terrible & I know that they're embarrassed of their appearance.
We have 4 beautiful Bourbon Red turkeys (2 toms & 2 hens) and they are getting huge.  We got them when they were about a week old (on Father's Day) and they are now gobbling up a storm every time that they hear a human voice or they see a car come up our driveway ~ they definitely are great watchdogs.  My husband thinks that we should butcher them in a few weeks but I'm balking at that since I would like to breed them and sell the poults next Spring.  Those beautiful birds have grown on me & on 3 of our grandsons who see them every day.
I have been very busy lately between visiting my mother who lives with my brother & his family, visiting my Dad in the nursing home, babysitting my 3 grandsons and trying to find time to visit my daughter who lives about 45 minutes away.  Sandwiched in between is spending time with my husband, taking care of the house, laundry, ironing, etc., etc., etc.   All in all, it has been crazy here lately.  I'm hoping that things slow down soon so that I can do some on-line Christmas shopping & crafts for gifts.  Being retired and living on social security, there isn't much left at the end of the month to spend a lot on gifts so, of course, the grandkids (5 boys) will come first and the other gifts will be from the heart and not the pocketbook ~ baked goods, homemade soups & sauces & some primitive signs & cross-stitch projects.  I'm sure that family members will understand.  Besides, they know that the love is there & the best kind of gifts are handmade.
The weather has been beautiful but the next few days are forecast to be much colder.  It wouldn't surprise me at all if we get our first snow before November rolls in.  The fire in the woodstove has been crackling every morning & evening to keep the house warm & hubby & I have been hauling wood from the back of our property as time allows.  The porch is piled high with future warmth (logs) & there is more in the barn.  I'm hoping that the weather isn't too cold too soon ~ there's still a lot to do to prepare for winter's icy winds & snow. 

Heat for the Garden ~ Water for the Flock

It is the end of June with temperatures and humidity like mid-July.  I have been outside several times today to run errands and to check on the chicken flock only to find that the heat is unbearable if you're in it for too long.  I don't know how our 2 Golden Retrievers can stand wearing their winter coats in this brutal heat.  We try to keep them well hydrated and we have a plastic pool that we replenish with fresh water daily ~ I may join them in the pool later today.  It is calming when the sun sets and the moon is coming up on the horizon, the fans are buzzing away & all is quiet in the barnyard.  I love that time of day no matter what the weather.  Tonight, there may be a hubbub in the yard since we have a broody hen with about a dozen eggs that needs to be relocated to a private coop.  The chicks are due to hatch this week (if they are truly fertile) and I want Mother Hen and babies to have a place of their own without interference from other potential Mother Hens.  We have already had another hen vying for position on the eggs and that didn't go over well ~ a lot of screaming in the henhouse which led to a trip down there to calm them.  Females!!!!!(as my husband would say).
Last weekend, we added to our menagerie when we bought four Bourbon Red turkey poults from a local farm.  They are cute but I don't want to get too attached since they might end up as meals.  We are mulling over the possibility of breeding them to sell future poults (if there are hens in the mix).  The lady that sold them to us told us that she did not know how to find out whether they were toms or hens so it's in the hands of fate right now.  We got a chance to see adult turkeys at the farm ~ they are a heritage breed and very pretty.
Our vegetable gardens are doing well since the rains stopped and the sun came out for more than a few hours.  We're hoping for a bountiful harvest so that we can share with family & friends as well as the local food pantry.  We have lettuce, tomatoes, broccoli, pickling cukes, blue hubbard squash, zucchini, potatoes, onions & strawberries.  We also have a 40' row of zinnias & a 40' row of sunflowers ~ my favorites.
I just looked out the window and it looks like we're in for a thunderstorm so I must go and close my car windows.  Have a wonderful week, friends.