Tying Up Loose Ends on the Homestead

 

Tiny bouquet of fall mums

We had several foggy damp days last week, but Friday and Saturday were beautiful.  It was sunny and breezy and a little cool, but that made working outside very pleasant.

I was able to do the final grass cutting of the season on Friday.  And then my daughter and son-in-law surprised me by coming up on Saturday to help me with all the rest of my projects.  They removed the air conditioners from the windows, replaced a door in the dining room, moved a heavy piece of furniture down the stairs for me, loaded a pile of scrap metal in my pick-up, and my son-in-law brought more bales to insulate the south side of the house.  He remembered that most of the water pipes are on that wall, and although it's the south side, when there is a freaky weird south wind in the winter, they will all freeze. The bales he brought were actually made of corn stalks, something his brother is experimenting with.

A thought about scrap metal around your homestead. Scrap metal can be hazardous if you have livestock, they can eat it or step on it or get tangled in it, or it can cause damage to your mowing equipment.  Pick an area of brick or concrete where you can collect scrap until you have enough to make a trip to the salvage yard.  If you use a grassy area, the grass will grow up in it and it'll be a mess to keep clean and to pick up when you're ready to load it.  Below is a photo of my truck with a modest load of scrap that I took to our salvage yard.  Usually I'll wait until I have a bigger load, but wanted to take advantage of my son-in-law's muscles on Saturday.  The salvage yard will weigh your truck with and without the scrap and then pay you for the difference in weight.

My truck loaded with scrap metal.  I got $4.35 for this.

I recently learned that copper is much more valuable than regular metals and should be saved and weighed separately.  If you mix it with your regular scrap, you'll get the regular price, which is much less than copper alone will bring.  The salvage yard said prices for scrap metal have really dropped.  It seems like the price for my load was pretty low, but I don't argue with them, I just take what they give me and thank them.  These guys are kind of my neighbors, and sometimes good will is worth more than making an extra buck, especially if you're a lady.

I started burning off my brush piles, which mostly went well.  I cleaned the gutter on my front porch, which was packed with leaves.   And I took my truck into the shop for an oil change and winterizing tune up.

Before the kids went back down south, I treated them (and myself) to an all-you-can-eat buffet at Hibachi, a chinese restaurant.  I can never eat my money's worth, but I still enjoy the food.

As I've been working around the place the past week, I thought of a few miscellaneous things to mention.

When you're dismantling your straw bales to use for mulch, be careful to properly dispose of the string or wire the bales are wrapped with, especially if the string is plastic.  Old-fashioned twine will eventually rot away, but is still a danger to mowing equipment, livestock, or your own feet when it's new.  Wire and plastic string can be very damaging to large livestock as it can wrap around their legs or feet and even smaller animals can become entangled in it.  I once had a chicken swallow nearly the whole length of string used to fasten a bag of laying mash, and I had to pull it back up out of her crop.

When I burn the brush piles I don't use just gasoline to get them started.  Gasoline will flash up fast but burns away quickly.  I mix diesel fuel or kerosene with a small amount of gasoline and use this.  The kerosene/diesel fuel burns more slowly, so the gasoline gets it started but the diesel fuel will keep it burning.  Sometimes I'll use motor oil to drizzle over the pile before I pour on the gasoline, too.  I never add gasoline to a fire already burning.

Be aware of the area around your brush pile.  Rake away all the dead grass and leaves surrounding the brush before you light it, as a brush fire can spread quickly, especially in the fall with all the dead vegetation accumulating.  I had two piles going at the same time Saturday, quite some distance apart, and one of them almost got away from me. ... Also remember to scare away any furry or feathery things hiding in your brush pile before you light it.

Put your snow shovel by the door before you actually need it, so you won't have to go to the shed for it.  Sometimes just a skiff of snow can be swept off with a broom.  And I don't care how bad you think salt is for your concrete steps/sidewalk, any damage you might do to your concrete is better than slipping and falling outside... especially if you're a country widow living on your own.  I keep a container of salt near each exterior door.

A couple of country weather tips that were passed onto me by people much older and wiser than myself that I thought I'd share:

If you're wanting to cut the grass, when you get up in the morning check to see if there's dew on the grass.  If there's dew, that means no rain later and you can plan on cutting.  If the grass is dry, it's going to rain later in the day.

Most wind will come from south and west in the summer and from north and west in the winter.  An easterly wind usually brings moisture, and lots of it.  In summertime, there will be lots of rain; in winter it means a heavy snowfall.

I gave wind direction some thought this fall and decided to park my truck facing northeast.  In this way I can pull out of the drive when snow is deep rather than having to back out like I have in the past.  I think driving forward will make the most of my 4 x 4 options.  Even though it is facing a kind of northerly direction, at least it's not straight north or northwest.

I wish I had paid more attention to my parents, because they were full of wisdom about country weather.  There were a lot of tornadoes where I grew up and I used to hear Daddy up pacing the floor at night during storms, watching for funnel clouds.  I knew he would let us know if we had to head to the basement.  One time, on a visit back home, we were outside watching some storm clouds move away from the farm.  Then Daddy said, "The wind is going to change and they'll start coming back toward us."  I sort of smirked, because that would be totally unlikely given the typical direction of storm clouds and wind.  However, we soon felt a puff of wind in our faces and the storm turned around and came back toward us.  I still can't explain this.  I did learn, though, no matter how smart you think you are... never smirk at your daddy!

I think that about covers all I wanted to share.  I hope these things are helpful to those of you needing ideas about successful country living.  Enjoy these beautiful autumn evenings with someone you love or doing something that's especially comforting for you.  For me tonight, I'm looking forward to a hot bath while sipping wine and watching Bones on my Kindle!

Blessings,

Katrinka

Hope

I've mentioned that I see many similarities between nature and the things we experience in our own lives.  In the photo above, a beautiful display of pink and white impatiens has been overflowing all summer.  When frost threatened, I dug up two of the plants and brought them inside.  I cut the rest of the plants off at ground level and threw them on the brush pile.

I've been a little extra heavy-hearted lately.  Although I love the fall, it does bring the closing of summer and the days get shorter and there's less time for working outside.  Being outside in the sun and working hard is the way I was raised.  I don't think I'm fanatical about it, I enjoy being inside and cooking and doing homey things, too.  And watching Netflix and drinking beer.  But I'm comfortable spending part of the day doing some strenuous work outside.

Another reason for me being heavy-hearted are the changes this year has brought me.  People I love have moved out of my life, for one reason or another, and I do hate to let go of people I love.  I guess I'm learning, though, that just because I love someone or something, it doesn't mean I have to keep them. It's possible to love without ownership... the ultimate in unconditional, no-strings-attached love.  Maybe that's how God feels?  He loves us all, even those who reject Him.  It makes me feel  better to think that way, anyway. ... To think that maybe I'm learning, a little bit, to love like God does.

I'm old enough, and have been through enough, to know that I will feel better some day.  There's even a scripture that says "... weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning."  That's Psalm 30:5.  Mostly the 'night' is much more than one night, but that's where the waiting comes in.  I talked in an earlier post of learning to wait, and this is part of that waiting for me.  Waiting patiently, or sometimes waiting impatiently, is changing me.  I'm growing up a little bit.  Maybe some day I'll be a big girl after all.

So, knowing that some day I will feel better means I'm hoping for a better day... a better time.  I know that sometimes I have been in a place in my life that I thought I'd be there forever, that I would just stay that way and live that way until I died.  Then, either gradually or suddenly, my life takes a turn.  Sometimes I wake up one morning and look back over several months or years and realize that things have changed and they've been changing all along and I didn't even know it; sometimes I turn a corner and "boom" it happens in an instant.  But it has always happened.  So it is now for me in this new season of life.

I was thinking these thoughts a couple days ago as I worked outside, and when I headed to the house something bright pink caught my eye among the dead leaves in the empty planter.  I bent down and discovered that, although I had dug up or chopped off all of the plants in the planter, one bright pink blossom was winking up at me from the drab background.  It was stunning to see.  It immediately brought to mind my recent thoughts on waiting and hoping for better things in my own life.  How out of seemingly impossible conditions, life comes to us again.  Bright and sparkling and fresh.  And how, because of the drab background, life seems even brighter and more glorious.

You may need to click on the photo and make it larger to see my bright pink blossom.  And if you are like me, I encourage you to claim this little flower for your own, too, to give you hope and promise of a better day.

Blessings,

Katrinka

Straw

My wonderful truck, loaded with straw bales

I mentioned in an earlier post how I had used rotted straw to mulch the veg garden, and that I'd be going out to pick up some new straw to use for placing around the foundation of the house to help keep the wind from coming inside.  I went out today and got 11 bales at $2.50 each and placed them around the north and west sides of the house.  I think I'm going to need a few more.  I'm feeling compulsive about snuggling in this winter

Here's a photo of the north and west sides of the house with the straw in place.  I'd like to get a couple more bales to place down where the trash can is.  Also, around the corner of the house to the left is a porch area that also faces north that I've never insulated before.  This is where my living room is, and I'd like to try a couple straw bales along that wall.  It's a bargain, especially when I can use the straw next summer and fall for mulch.

One year I laid the bales on edge, and they got very saturated with water.  Then another year I encased the whole mess with plastic and duct taped it in place.  This year I'm feeling very simplistic about the whole process... just happy to get them out there.  I'll say that my daddy used to do this, also employing tar paper that he tacked to the side of the house using furring strips.  The tar paper extended from several inches above the level of the bales down to ground level and then laid upon the ground so the straw bales could be placed on top of the extended tar paper.  This prevented water from leaching down behind the bales and making the siding of the house (wood) soggy.  One year our geese crawled up and ate all the tar paper off of the side of the house....  Hmmm.

He also made his own storm windows using rolls of plastic sheeting and furring strips.  The plastic was only semi-transparent.  My mother always insisted on one west facing and one north facing window to be uncovered so she could see outside.  I so love my mommy.  I totally get it now.

These straw bales are not very heavy right now because they're dry.  I had no trouble unloading the truck and placing them around.  Next spring, when I'm ready to move them, I may not be able to pick them up at all.  If they get water logged with snow and spring rain, I'll have to take them apart where they lay and haul them to the garden in pieces in my little trailer or the back of the truck.

I'm  also going to get an extra bale to insulate the discharge line for my basement sump pump.  I already placed one out there, but an extra bale won't hurt.  And I'll be a miserable country widow if my sump pump discharge line freezes, as it did a couple winters ago, and the water being pumped from my leaky basement cannot get out.  Then my basement starts to fill with water and threatens my furnace and freezer.  So...  yeah...  worth an extra straw bale at $2.50.

I'm very pleased I got this done today.  I was planning on cutting grass one more time this fall, but it's been too wet and foggy and today was no better.  My goal is to do one more cutting either this week or next, so I still have time.  I like to do a cutting in late fall to help chop up the leaves that have fallen and also to make for an easier first cutting the next spring.  Some people like to leave the grass a little longer in the fall because they believe it will help protect against the roots dying off during the winter and forming dead spots.  I don't really care about dead spots, but I do care about trying to get that first cutting in the spring done without choking out the lawn mower.

The straw man just called me back, and I'm meeting him at 4:30 to pick up 7 more bales.  Which means I can get over there and pick up the straw and finish my project this evening.  This is another advantage to having my own truck, rather than having to make delivery arrangements.  It will only take him about 10 minutes to load 7 bales of straw, but if he had to haul it to me, it would take greater time and greater planning and I'd have to pay a delivery charge.

It'll be a little on the dark-ish side when I finish, but I won't mind.So I'm a happy country widow today!

Blessings,

Katrinka

Love Scars

1976 Pontiac Trans Am

The car above is not my car, but I had a car that looked like this, only with a blue interior.  I could tell you a lot about my '76 Trans Am, because, next to my Chevy truck, this was my favorite ride... ever.  But if I start talking about the engine, the 4-speed, the wheels, ... I won't even get to the point of my story.  Sigh.  What a machine.

In the summer of 1980 I had finally paid off this magnificent vehicle.  In the fall of 1980 I totaled it.  Yeah.  It was really sad.  On my way to work.  When I lived in San Antonio.  I turned left on a green light in front of 4 lanes of oncoming traffic.  What can I say... my brain was otherwise extremely preoccupied and didn't notice the lack of the green arrow.  I think I was probably rockin' out to something on the radio...  Did I mention what a great sound system this car had?

As I said, I totaled my beautiful car.  And although there were no outward injuries, I was hurt, too.  A collapsed lung.  Probably from the blunt force of the seatbelt shoulder strap against my chest on impact during the accident.  I had two surgeries, several weeks in the hospital, a few months recovering, a couple months light duty at work, and I was back to normal again.  I was only 25 and very healthy, and yet I was sure at some point each day, sometimes several times a day, that they had released me from the hospital too soon, and that I was going to die.  It was pretty traumatic.  I have a scar that runs from the center of my chest to about 1/4 the way around my back, under my left breast, and several smaller scars lower down on my rib cage.

As fascinating as I'm sure this little story is to all of you, it's not what my title is about.  These scars are not love scars.... I guess if I had to give them a name, they would have to be called 'stupid' scars... or 'careless' scars.  I'm just thankful that no one else was injured during my lapse in judgement.

Love scars are scars we sustain when the cost of our loving is a sacrifice that leaves a mark... maybe a physical mark, such as a limp, a missing limb, dimpled skin left from a burn.  Or sometimes the scar is invisible because it's on the heart.  When we sacrifice for love, we don't always count the cost.  We don't always know what the cost will be.  Or if we think of it at all, we don't count it worthy to be in the equation, because to count the cost means we could choose not to love... and we aren't able to do that.  Love scars always hurt.  Sometimes, if the scar is from a great love, it hurts forever.   And if love isn't great, what's the point?

I know people that are so well ordered, so cool and logical, that affections can be made to submit to higher thinking.  X + Y = Z and if that's an undesirable outcome then X and Y will have to stay alone or maybe pair up with other members of the alphabet.  Only God knows how I envy these people.  It could be so convenient to be wired this way.  My affections can never be called cool...  But, as I think about it, I am quite happy with the way I'm put together.  And hopefully the people that I love feel the same way.  When I love, I always want the people I love to know they've been thoroughly loved.  When I'm gone and people think of me, I want them to think, "she loved me" and to never doubt it.

If you are like me and you love like this, don't be distressed.  To do a thorough job of loving, something will have to go out of you and into someone else.  We're big boys and girls, aren't we?  We understand that there's always a price for something great, and for something great, the price is worth it.  We know loving hurts, but we just can't help ourselves.  There's literally nothing that can be done about it.  ...  At least, that's the way I prefer to love.  Or, I should say, do love, because that's just the way I do it.  

... now about that T/A, one night I was flying through the Texas night and passed a trucker who said something on the CB about a girl in a white Trans Am that made me look at my speedometer.  I was doing 95!  And I felt like I was sitting in a rocking chair.  What a car... 

Blessings,

Katrinka

Putting the Garden to Bed

The first picture above is of my garden after weeding out nearly all of the clover that seems to want to take over.  I left a patch of the clover when I took this photo so you can see how it grows like a carpet. This garden is located inside the foundation of our old barn, which had a dirt floor covered with straw bedding.  So the soil is beautiful, almost like potting soil.

I didn't plant a veg garden this past spring due to my husband's health, but we kept the weeds chopped down and sprayed... except this clover didn't want to give up.  It grows almost like a mat, with little hair like roots interspersed with a sort of tap root.  I'm not sure why it's so prolific, but it also grows in the field road where I walk each afternoon.

Don't take me too seriously when I speak of veg gardening, because I just do what I do.  You'll probably do just as well inventing your own procedures.  It seems that nearly anything will grow nearly anywhere and produce at least a little something edible.

After pulling out all of the weeds, I covered the garden with rotted straw for mulch, second photo.  It took about 5 bales of straw for this and only about an hour of time.  Fresh straw spreads more easily and is fluffier and looks nicer.  But fresh straw still has viable seeds in it from the harvest and next spring I would find a fine little crop of wheat growing under my mulch.

I'll soon go buy 8-10 bales of fresh straw and use them to insulate the foundation of the house or other areas outside I want to protect from freezing.  I'll remove them in the spring and stack them near the corner of the garden, and this time next year will use them for my mulch.  Hopefully the little seeds will have all sprouted or rotted by that time and not cause me any trouble with sprouting in the garden the following spring.

I can still pull some straw from these bales throughout the summer next year for mulching my flowerbeds or tomato plants or whatever.  I love to mound straw all around to hold in moisture and make weeding easier.  I hate weeding.

I'm going to rest my body this weekend.  I've been pushing myself pretty hard, but I'm almost done with fall chores.  Just a couple smaller projects that I'd like to complete within the next couple weeks, and they won't take long.

Blessings,

Katrinka

As a Hen Gathers Her Chickens

banty cochin hen

This isn't a photo of one of my chickens, I left my photos at my daughter's house and I've yet to fetch them home.  But I have plenty of pictures and our little black banty hens looked just like the lady above.

One of the things about living in the country and observing nature is that I see so many parallels between the way things happen out here and the way things happen in our own lives. 

Today I was reading in Matthew 23, and as always verse 37 stood out to me.  Especially this portion "... how often I wanted to gather your children, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing..."  So God wants to gather us under His wings and protect us.  Exactly what kind of picture does that bring to your mind?  Thanks to my country living status and experience with chickens of all kinds, I think I know a little bit of what Jesus is trying to show us here.

These little banty hens, like the one above, are fierce mothers.  It takes a broody breed of chicken to sit on a nest and hatch out chicks and then raise them up.  Not all chickens are broody, and you don't always want your chickens to get broody.  If you're raising a flock of chickens for egg laying you want your chickens to lay eggs, not raise babies.  We had lots of little banty hens and they pretty much had the run of the barn and would lay their nest of eggs wherever they pleased, as determined by their internal chicken wisdom as being the safest spot.

 Inside the barn were separate stalls made of old pallets set on edge at right angles and nailed into boxes for our goats to stay in at night.  The floor of the barn was 100+ years of straw over dirt (this is where we now have our veggie garden).  One spring one of these little hens decided the best place to have her nest was under one of these cross pallet walls of a stall.  She scratched and dug out a hollow and laid her eggs in there... a bunch of them.  Maybe 12-15 eggs.  And then she crawled under the pallet and plumped herself down on the nest.

When a hen goes broody and decides to set, she will only get off the nest maybe once or twice a day to quickly eat and drink and then returns.  With every cell of her being she is committed to sitting on that nest until the chickens hatch, which is typically about 3 weeks.  Sometimes a hen won't get off the nest and if you know of it you need to help her.  I once heard of a hen down in Texas sitting on eggs and she allowed herself to be overrun with fire ants because she wouldn't leave the nest.  ...  Just trying to paint the picture of devotion and dedication of the mother hen as referred to in scripture.

Back to my mother hen...  We had at that time, unfortunately, a very chicken-unfriendly dog named Rex, a bird dog/Australian shepherd mix.  What he did to my chickens was a crime, and why we allowed it and how we attempted to handle it may never be a story for this blog.  Anyway, Rex happened to discover this mother hen and her nest.  I came out early one morning to hear frantic barking coming from the barn.  I scrambled out there, to find the hen placidly sitting on her nest under the side portion of the pallet stall, while Rex had dug a trench all the way around her trying to get at her and her nest.  He howled and foamed at the mouth and panted and scratched and barked.  But the hen didn't move, appeared to not even see him.  She quietly kept her soft fluffy feathers in exactly the right place to cover all her eggs and keep them warm and protected. 

After these little eggs hatched, mother hen proudly trotted them out of the barn and began to show them how to eat by scratching and calling to them and they all tumbled after her... little fluffy balls with twigs for legs.  Some of the chicks were black and some red and some yellow, and some were larger, because she hatched out a few egg laying chicks for us, too, not just her own little black banty babies.

Mother and babies had been out and about for around a week when I witnessed an amazing event.  It was one of those moments when you know you were just meant to be at that place at that time, because there would never be a witness to such an event if you were to try to make something like this happen.

I was out wandering around in front of the house one afternoon and noticed the black banty hen with her babies outside near the corner of the barn.  Suddenly I saw the mother's little head cock toward the sky.  She lifted her wings and made the noise that only a mother hen can make, and all her fluffy babies shot toward her like little individual feathery rockets.  At that point, I saw nothing of any concern.  But as I stood there I caught a dark shadow out of the corner of my eye, and became aware of a hawk plummeting toward the earth.  Aiming right for mama and chicks.  

(This hawk wasn't only a threat to the babies, because hawks can kill and damage full grown chickens, especially of the smaller breeds as the banty.)

Instead of scrambling back to the barn with her babies, mother hen flew up and met the hawk in the sky.  There was a terrific squawking and a few feathers floated down, and the hawk changed direction and shot back up into the air and over the top of the barn.  Mama hen plunked to the ground and gathered her babies and continued scratching for food.  The whole scene maybe took about 10 seconds.  But I was there to see it.

I immediately thought of this scripture and tears filled my eyes.  Even now, I get goose bumps when I think of this example of God's offered love and protection that He allowed me to witness.  Sometimes when we read stories in the Bible or hear various verses over and over again, they lose their freshness.  Or in this case, the real life example from nature is lost on those who don't understand the significance of how protective a mother hen is with her chicks... what she will do to provide for them and defend them... how she will give her own life for them.  She was willing to die in their place to provide life for her chicks... just as Jesus knew He would do for us when he spoke these words in Matthew.

Maybe the next time I feel alone and unprotected, I can remember that I am not.   Maybe you can remember that, too.

Blessings,

Katrinka

Hope and a Future

I had the opportunity last week to host a visiting missionary for a meal, so I took him to a little Mexican restaurant for lunch.  He's from Ghana and he and his family have sacrificed much to become missionaries over here in the United States, pastoring a church of people from all nationalities and backgrounds.  He has tremendous drive and sense of purpose.

I envied him so much, because since my husband died this past summer, I've had a struggle with having a sense of purpose.  As his caregiver, for years I knew exactly what I was going to do when I got up each morning.  And even though my life was very hidden and my world was small, I never felt insignificant.

I'm plenty busy with work around the homestead.  I'm looking into volunteer work and possibly employment next year.  I love my kids and grandkids and the time I spend with them.  I have wonderful friends and church folks in my life.  I'm especially comforted when I think of the joy Randy is experiencing in heaven.  God has blessed me with all of this and is also resolving some health concerns I've had.  I hope I'm not ungrateful.

But life as a caregiver was a very intense, focused life.  I had something (someone) to pour myself into, and now much of what I do around here alone seems kind of self-serving and aimless.  I used to be so driven to keep this place up, it consumed me at times, and now I feel I could just walk out the door and leave it all behind.  Without the people I love here with me, it's only so much wood, stone, and glass.  I don't think that change in perspective is all bad, but it leaves me wondering "What comes next?"

Sometimes I wonder if I haven't already done the greatest thing I'll ever do in my whole life.

I don't have an answer to this dilemma yet.  I'm still in the process.  I would prefer to rush out ahead and shake things up and make things happen.    But I'm learning each day to rest and wait.  Sometimes it's real agony for me, and other times there's an inexpressible sweetness in the waiting... waiting for my next adventure to unfold...  So this blog post will have to end with 'To Be Continued'.  We'll all have to wait for the next installment together.

Blessings,

Katrinka

P.S.  For those of you who might be a caregiver to an Alzheimer's sufferer, I encourage you to visit www.alz.org and especially the message boards.  This was very helpful to me.  I also couldn't have managed caring for my husband without friends, family, and a high-quality caregiver agency.  If any of you would like to discuss anything  with me about caregiving, please email me at rcdkatrink@gmail.com.  I'd be glad to communicate with anyone needing encouragement in this area.