Oof

I hope I learned a lasting lesson last weekend. It wasn't entirely poor planning that had me working too much for three days straight; some of it was trying to schedule farm activities around holidays, family visits, and the kids' schedules. That said, the combo of the butchering on Friday, the apple processing on Saturday, elderly, hard-of-hearing visitors*, needy farm animals, and the large, turkey dinner on Sunday left me absolutely exhausted by Sunday evening. In the future, when Auntie and her husband visit, I'll either plan a big dinner OR a farm/garden project, not both. Doing a simpler, prepare-ahead dinner like lasagna would have made the weekend more comfortable for me. Also, three days of extra attention and extra treats left all the dogs wound up and very fractious by Sunday evening. Boy, was I ever not in the mood to deal with them pacing, licking, pestering people at the table, getting stuck behind furniture (jesus christ), and snapping at each other.

Man. Time to Deal With the remains of the turkey and start simmering the bones for soup. Hurrah (sob)

'* It is extremely difficult to try to converse with folks with significant hearing loss, only to be told by other family members that you're 'too loud' or sound cross. It is imperative to 'project' your voice when speaking to someone with hearing loss! It is literal cruelty to keep talking at a normal volume when you KNOW they can't hear it. Raising my voice does not mean I'm angry. But I'm F*ing angry NOW!

Between the Holidays

Friday was butchering (cleanup) and processing roosters (and welcoming holiday guests.) Saturday was getting a couple bushels of stored apples out of the attic and making pie filling, applesauce, and cider. And cleanup. Some much cleanup. The apple corer performed like a champ. K and Auntie peeled and chopped apples while I scurried around coring, cleaning up, getting pots and pans out, cooking, and various 'support' tasks.

Today I'm going to be cooking a Thanksgiving-style feast; turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, stuffing, green beans, corn, apple pie, and pumpkin pie. Tomorrow I have a breakdown scheduled. Sometimes the workload just . . clumps up.

There is something going DOWN in the poplar tree near my porch.

I don't know everyone involved, but one of them is a wren, I saw his distinctive tail.

He is shrieking a weird, rattling call at the other participant.

Who is yelling back equally loud, but a different language.

How can creatures that SMALL make THAT MUCH noise? It sounds like they have mikes.

The dispute has moved further out into the yard. Sound and fury.

Someone in the poplar is saying "twit!" very anxiously. and continually.

Come oooooon, rain . . .

So much water drains off the mountain in spring. There are springs, seeps, underground creeks (you can hear it bubbling under there!) and wetlands both temporary and permanent. I really want to get some shrub-type willows started here to support the edge of the creek. I put out a few last spring, and I'm curious if they survived the winter. Maybe today I can go cut a bunch of little branches from the Streamco and pussy willows and try to root them.

More-or-less all of this area:

is permanent wetland; it has its share of really interesting plant species but also a depressing amount of invasive thorn bushes. I would LIKE it to be full of elderberry, buttonbush, spicebush, hazelnut, swamp alder, and willow. The little white dot and the larger gray dot in the field are Nutmeg and Hero.

The weekend rains a-l-m-o-s-t flooded the creek, but not quite. It ran muddy for a day, then cleared up. By Monday it was all ready to sparkle joyously in the sun. I was standing in it to get this photo - bless my wellington boots.

It makes the loveliest noise at this stage. I checked on the silver maple I planted last spring; it has lively-looking terminal buds and seems to be all ready to go for growing season 2024.

Lady living deliciously, please appreciate that fluffy tummy.

Farm Journal 64-65

I was looking for something else on the library shelves and came across this little farm journal that my grandmother must have written.

She was only around 40 in the photo; she had the 'early gray' gene that most of my family have. I don't remember her using latin names of things when she talked to me, but she apparently knew quite a few of them. Pretty fascinating. Garden, holiday, and mushroom-foraging notes from 1964 up into the 80s. I used to watch her at her loom, utterly intent on the shuttle sliding back and forth.

As far as I know, everybody hunts mushrooms with re-used breadbags!

Slow Pace

I haven't made a LOT of progress cutting brush in the far field - but it's non-zero.

There's a lot of open space there that wasn't there before! Nutmeg continues to relish browsing on the bushes I cut down, nibbling twigs and rosehips. If I turn 180°, you can see that the mess continues - seemingly forever! {sob}

("More for ME," says Nutmeg) There is a really nice wild crabapple tree here, and it should be absolutely covered in blossoms in the spring. I will try to remember to get photos.

Snow Day

The snow started around 9 am, and it has been pelting down ever since, sometimes so fine it looked like falling sand. Here is the face of a girl who is NOT done playing and does NOT want to come back inside:

She did get to stay out as long as she wanted, which wasn't really all that much longer.

Marilla hopped up on the chair, making a beeline for the BEST nap spot behind the Christmas tree. (That is a 1940s-era radio cabinet of my grandfather's that was later repurposed into a cabinet for craft supplies.)

Only to find that Baxter had already nabbed it.

She would like to speak to the manager.

The chickens made an error in judgement and decided to ride out the storm between the shrubs and the foundation of the house. I had to go out just a little bit ago and round them up. They were escorted/carried/shooed back to their coop, protesting LOUDLY, and I gave them corn. Hero has his blanket on, a rare occurrence, and he and Nutmeg will sleep inside the barn tonight.

A good day to be home and safe.

Thorns and roses

I'll try not to spam y'all with this field-clearing project. BUT I did make a lot of progress yesterday and today.

Starting from The Above Mess ^, I've gotten to here:

I can now walk a straight line across this at least 50 feet (15ish meters). Nutmeg has participated fully the whole way, sometimes looming over my shoulder and trying to shove me out of her way when I'm leaning over cutting the stems. Thanks. Nutmeg.

The very large bush that remains there is impractically big for me to cut with a hand saw, so it will have to wait until the next time I have the chainsaw out. Unfortunately, the trees there are dead or dying. My husband might choose to cut them before they get any worse, so they don't come down in a windstorm. Now I can either continue in a straight line, or turn uphill

into this wretched mess. Yay, me!

(Also, when I started the frost was still lingering in the shadows, and by the time I finished I was drenched in sweat and had to change clothes completely and shower. Yuk! November shouldn't feel like this.

The frost was picking up the blue of the sky, and my camera actually managed to capture that. Onward to the mending pile, which has gotten out of hand.

Fearful Friday

This morning was 'small chainsaw' morning. I am not a fan of using the chainsaw; I would do better if I used it more often but - que sera. There are quite a lot of trees down on our trails that Hero *can* step over, but it's a pain and makes the ride less fun. There are also a few smaller tree leaning into the trails that we have to duck, and leaning or dead trees that are just one windstorm away from coming down.

I tried to take care of as much of that as I could, although I ran into one leaning locust that kept shaking as I was cutting it, and I chickened out. A leaning tree can "jump" once the saw goes through it, if there are stresses on it that you can't see. Other than that, I got a lot done and tired myself out way too much.

Hero and Nutmeg didn't get their rose-hip-munching time this morning, and they let me know about it. Two times this week I do that and suddenly they think it's an entitlement! Nutmeg is nearly as wide across the tummy as she is tall. "I AM in shape," she says, "Round is a shape!!"

I need to wash off the smell of chainsaw exhaust and figure out the rest of the day. oof.

Working slowly

Today was the second day of brush cutting in the pasture fbo Hero and Nutmeg. Yesterday was firewood day, and an hour and a half of carrying dead elm piece by piece out of the woods and tossing it in the truck was ENOUGH for my shoulder.

I'm starting sort of in the middle, but I would like to open up the area around that pine tree in the background. The leaf&berry nibblers were on high alert.

Also two Verminators were in attendance; Baxter practiced pouncing by attacking the vines as I was dragging them out and Lady was doing fox-pounces in the high weeds.

I didn't work very long, but enough to make visible progress, get plenty of forage cut for Hero and Nutmeg, and give the dogs a morning outing.

Two for One

I'm sure everybody loves a two-for-one deal; getting your own exercise while taking care of a garden chore or similar. My 2for1 today was cutting the thorny scrub out in the pasture. At one point we had that pretty much under control; there were some brushy areas but that's good for wildlife and songbirds anyway; the open areas stayed open because my husband went through with the brush hog once or twice a year. Then there was a year, for whatever reason, that he missed . . and it sort of fell off his 'chore calendar' . . and how there is a wall of thorns (4 different invasive species) 8 feet high in places all held together by honeysuckle vines. It is. a FORMIDABLE challenge. Also, the slope of the ground plus the trees would make it difficult to cope with by heavy machinery. So it just. me and my pruning shears. against the world.

Correction. Me and Nutmeg and my pruning shears. At this time of year, the multiflora rose is covered in rose hips, tasty and nutritious. Nutmeg will also cheerfully eat the tops of the honeysuckle vines - if she can reach them. So if I cut brush now, I can get the nutritious stuff down low enough for her and Hero to actually get at it. That's the '2' in my 2for1. (They have already nibbled all the lower stuff that was edible) Like. . this:

Between picture one and two, you have to picture me scrunched non-ergonomically under the bush on the uphill side, clipping the stems with large pruning shears and swearing quietly. I did not feel up to drawing that.

Hero is perfectly capable of nibbling the clusters of berries off the bush on his own. He has learned however, that is he simply stares at the bush with sad eyes, I will clip a large handful of rosehips off and feed them to him with zero effort on his part. I am being scammed. I know I am being scammed. But I choose to go along with it.

[ID: A simple line drawing of a woman and a goat looking up at a very large bush with red berries at the top. "Hmmmm," she says. The second picture shows the woman pushing the bush over sideways, so the berries are within reach of the goat. The goat is excited. The third picture is a dopey-looking horse face with a gloved hand offering him red berries.]

Y'know what, it might even be three for one. Because the dogs were out there having a good time running around while I was working. Hey, AND I got my exercise. I am killing it!