No more chickens

The last of the chickie girls got picked up two days ago. Seven went to one new home and 14 to another. Now we don't have to get up at the butt crack of dawn to let them out and don't have to worry about something getting in the coop and getting them after dark when we're not there at dusk to close them in. (Who knows what time DD closed them up when we went away for a few days.) NEW PARAGRAPH (Since the return key isn't recognized by blogspot, I'm going to announce new paragraphs.) NEW PARAGRAPH The chickens went just in time. We'll be heading north to visit family and Howell Farm this coming weekend. This is Fall Festival weekend, when they pull the thresher and steam tractor out to thresh wheat or spelt. They'll also be either planting some kind of grain or at least harrowing the field in preparation for it.

Great shot of the tractor, but the thresher looks tiny. I have a better one somewhere, just have to find it. NEW PARAGRAPH I don't see how someone can do these blog posts every day. I know someone who posts almost every day, with lots of pictures and not just a few paragraphs of text, but novels. Oy! NEW PARAGRAPH DS and BIL's house is coming along. Some things were done wrong because the subcontractors didn't get told about some of the changes, but they're gradually getting fixed. The siding should be done today.

Clarification of last post

Just a couple of things. FIRST, when I said the return key doesn't work, I meant the blog doesn't recognize it as doing anything. I can hit it all I want and spaces will appear on the page where I'm composing the blog. But then when I preview it and post it, no spaces. For you youngsters out there, the return key is, like, the Enter key. SECOND, this "new and improved" blogspot sucks.

We Don't Have Garden, But We Have House

First, a disclaimer. It seems the return key, to put a blank line or two between paragraphs, doesn't work anymore. So it's hard to tell where one paragraph ends and the next one begins because they're all run together. I tried adding a bunch of extra spaces at the end of each paragraph, so at least there's some kind of break in between. But that didn't work either. So I'll make the first word of each paragraph in all caps. WE did go back to Fox Park on Fridays for several weeks from the end of June into early August. But the weeds have gotten ahead of us (again) and it's such a pain in the butt to pick while trying to plow through the weeds without tripping on them. Even the paths haven't gotten mowed. Right now, approaching mid-September, the morning glories, or bindweed or whatever they are, have covered most of the tall growing things and their fences in lots of pink and purple flowers. Between the weeds and wacky weather, which has a lot of the plants dying back early, we haven't had much to take that's decent enough to sell. So, needless to say, we haven't been to Fox Park in a few weeks. HOWELL Farm just had their annual Plowing Match on the Saturday before Labor Day. The winner in the Fine Plowing division was Luke Vastine, who has won before with a team of Clydesdales. But this year he had Belgians, for some reason. And Tommy Flowers, from South Carolina, was there with a team of Brabants (European-type Belgians). Neat looking horses. Tommy came in 5th in Fine Plowing. DON'T know whether I posted about this before or not. Back in June or early July, DS and BIL finally ordered their modular house for their property here in TN. Preliminary work on the site began in July - digging basement, setting basement walls, pouring the basement floor, etc. The house was delivered and set on Aug. 28 and 29. Now the carpenters and subs are working on finishing up various parts, like roof, siding, plumbing, electrical hookup, flooring, stone on front of the fireplace, and some support walls and divider walls in the basement. They'll get the keys when they come back in November. BACK to the garden. DH and I have decided not to continue with the market garden next year. Too much work with not enough to show for it. The chickens will go too, probably in the spring. We'll be looking around for someone who wants some laying hens. The girls are starting to molt now and production is way down (5 or 6 eggs a day from 21 hens). So I think we'll go ahead and feed them through the winter, then move them when laying has picked up more.

Fox Park in June? Plus Shawl

Well, here it is, a whole month and two days later. We were at Fox Park the first three Fridays, plus the first Tuesday, with some scallions, garlic scapes, tomato plants, pepper plants, eggplant plants (is that redundant?), tomatillo plants, ornamental pepper plants, and eggs. But once the plants got too overgrown and the scapes were gone, it's not worth the time and effort to set up just for a few scallions and eggs. So we've been skipping it for now. We've been quite late in getting the garden all planted, but I think everything is in now and we're in the process of finishing up the laying of soaker hoses and mulching. There are a few tiny zucchinis, tomatoes, and tomatillos starting, so it won't be long before we can get back to selling on Fridays. The garlic will be dug this weekend, so that will be at the Fair in probably two weeks. That Bluefaced Leicester/silk blend that I was spinning is now becoming a Shetland-style shawl (center square, with border and lace edge). Nowhere near the delicate, wedding ring shawls that are traditionally done with lace-weight Shetland yarn, but will probably be a lot warmer.

Fox Park Fair

Yesterday was the season opening of our little Friday afternoon market that was started last year. We didn't have a whole lot to take (scallions, garlic scapes, Napa cabbage, eggs, and plants), but we did OK for the first day. We used to belong to the Greeneville Farmers Market, which is held on Saturday morning and which used to be a nice homey, small-town, open-air market. A few years ago, a few things happened in quick succession. First, somebody had the bright idea to incorporate and become a 501(c)3 non-profit so we could get better grants. I was on the interim board for that. Then we were getting too big for the parking lot we were using in town, so the search was on. Once a "permanent" board was chosen, I wasn't in the loop anymore. But DH and I did attend some of the board meetings. They had a consultant come in and (supposedly) help them do all the paperwork for incorporation and then the request for non-profit status. At the same time, a "deal" was made with the fairgrounds for the market to use a new shelter that was built there for cattle shows - about 100' x 150' pole barn with no walls. The first year there (2009?) was OK. It was nice to be under a roof when it rained. But a few people on the board were trying to make the rules more stringent and were getting a little too Hitler-esque. The turnover of board members was unbelievable. Then in 2010, it really got bad when the egg and baked goods sellers were no longer allowed to sell without inspection of their kitchens, etc. Then, to top it off, the board voted that the vendors no longer could vote on anything. The board's vote was the final say on anything they came up with. (This had been a vendor-run market up to this point.) And somewhere during that time, it was discovered that the consultant had steered the board in the wrong direction as far as the non-profit paperwork, which had to be resubmitted and was finally approved over this past winter. So a bunch of us defected. Over the winter of 10'-11', one of the vendors talked to the folks at the Nathaniel Greene Museum, which now owned a vacant lot across the street from them. As long as we didn't call it a farmers market and as long as a percentage of the take was donated to the museum, a bunch of us could set up there to sell. And so the Fox Park Friday Fair was born. The lot had been an old warehouse that was burned down by some kids playing with fire. The museum bought it and cleared it out (LOTS of bricks) with the intention of making a park. There's also an old log house that's been moved there from somewhere in the county that's now in the process of being chinked. The vendor donations kept the grass portion of the lot mowed last year. We set up on a paved portion at one end. This year there will also be a Tuesday afternoon market, which helps a lot during the height of the season when things need to be picked more often. And it doesn't hurt that the egg rules have been loosened up a bit. OK, that's my soliloquy for the week.

Roots

I've been trying to watch the genealogy shows "Who Do You Think You Are" on NBC (?) on Thursday nights and "Finding Your Roots" on PBS on Sunday nights. I'm usually re-encouraged to get online to Ancestry or Family Search (the LDS search site) after watching them. Of course, I'm sure very few of these people (whether celebrity or ordinary Joe) do their own research and, on "Who . . .", I'm sure their trips overseas are subsidized by Ancestry, the main sponsor. I really don't expect to go to Flasch, Switzerland, real soon, myself.

Books!

Scored big today at the Washington Co. Friends of the Library sale. Got about 30 books for $17.75. Some of the haul includes bios about Red Skelton, Ingrid Bergman, Dorothy Kilgallen, Ed McMahon, Louis Jolliet (the guy who explored the midwestern rivers), Mariette Hartley, Paul Harvey, the "A Beautiful Mind" guy (don't have the book in front of me to get his name), a book of short stories by Laura Ingles Wilder (some unpublished previously), and "Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman," not really a bio, I guess, but close enough. There's a photo book of Ireland, plus coffee-table type history books on Ireland and Gr. Britain. Novel "Beau Geste". A few kid's books for DGD, including "Black Beauty." An annotated book on some famous paintings. A Star Trek paperback, a Victoria Holt paperback that I don't THINK I've read before, a "tween" book about a student nurse, which I'll read and then pass on to DGD in a few years. Also "The Delaware Colony" about the settling of Delaware, "Unlocking Secrets of the Unknown", a Nat'l Geo. book about exploring some areas of the earth that little is known about, "Sherlock Holmes and the Thistle of Scotland," which is not by A. C. Doyle, but one of the present day (well, 1989) Holmes authors. Also "House Broken" by Richard Karn (Al on Hometime) about his house remodeling, "Rashi's Daughter" about Jews in Medieval France, and a three-in-one by M.M. Kaye, "Death in Kenya," "Death in Zanzibar," and "Death in Cyprus." I think I may have read "D in Cyprus" before, but it's been awhile. There's one called "An Anthropologist on Mars" written by a neurologist about some of his patients' cases. And DH got one about an expose' of the NRA. I'm not sure he realizes it's an expose', since he's pro-guns.

DD has already grabbed "A Beautiful Mind" to read. She's seen the movie; I haven't. And since we're from the area about 10 miles (if that) southwest of Princeton, a lot of things should be familiar.

Didn't find any spinning or weaving books at this sale, but I'm not surprised. When spinners and weavers get rid of books, they tend to give/sell them to fellow spinners/weavers.

And I have to find a place for most of these books pronto. The Greene Co. Library sale is in three weeks and I usually find at least a dozen books at it. I have a LOT of reading to do.

Spring Chores et al

Just came in from helping DH lop some bushes and trees back and had to empty the carcasses of last year's flowers out of my sneakers and brush them out of my hair. Did the butterfly bushes, which are in front of the heat pump to shade it during the really hot weather, but which had started growing horizontally into the fins, not to mention there were a couple of branches sticking out over the grass, making it hard to mow around it. So it's a shadow of its former self. It'll be back in plenty of time for the height of a/c season. Then there's the Bradford (Cleveland?) pear out front, which had suckers almost the size of my wrist and a few low hanging branches that made more mowing hazards. The redbud, still just a baby, needed a little clean up to nip off little branches growing too low, and a couple apple trees had big suckers because until a few weeks ago, they had been growing at a 45 degree angle and felt the need to grow new trunks. We'll give the apple branches to a friend for her rabbit to gnaw on. ALL of this cutting should have been done back in January. Oh well.

I also finally got the Napa, Pak Choi, and broccolis sprayed with the BT. The Napa has the most holey leaves and the broccoli's barely been touched (by bugs, that is). The Pak Chois in the raised bed are going gangbusters and will be ready to pick soon. I'd like their centers to fill in a little more first.

DGD is off from school this week and is visiting her dad, so we can sleep late in the a.m. and not worry about picking her up from school in the p.m.

NASCAR News: Yay, Tony Stewart got another win yesterday, though he was just lucky to be in the lead when the race was called on account of rain. It was past the halfway point, so whoever is leading when it's called is the winner.

Just a Little Astronomy

The Vernal Equinox is tomorrow morning at 1:14 AM. That's when the sun is over the equator in the earth's annual trip around the sun. The almanac says it's "the earliest start of spring in 116 years." I didn't go out to tuck the chickie girls in until 8:00 tonight and I could still easily see where I was walking.

Venus and Jupiter are quite close to each other in the western sky at sunset, but they were out of sight when I went out tonight (or at least I didn't pay attention to them). Their conjunction was a few days ago. I could see Mars almost 45 degrees up in the east on my way back to the house.

Got Eggs?

We set a season record for eggs yesterday - 18. Which means only 4 of the chickie girls didn't lay yesterday. And since there were only 3 blue/green eggs and I know all 4 Ameraucanas are laying already this spring, that means there are probably only 3 girls not laying at all. But not all the girls lay every day. For instance, today I only got 12 eggs. So that means those other 3 might very well be laying, just not yesterday. Clear as mud?

I have 5 boxes of 18 full, plus a dozen carton started, so I guess tomorrow is an egg washing day.

Gardening and Other Stuff

We now have all the broccolis, Pak Chois and Napa cabbages in the ground, as well as all the onion plants that will be big onions and about 2/3 of the onion plants that will be pulled young as scallions. Some of the Napas were bolting already, so they weren't planted; they'll get canned. The Napa seeds we ordered online, a small variety called Minuet, are all growing very nicely with rosettes of basal leaves. However, we also bought some seeds for a normal sized Chinese cabbage at a local store and they're the ones that are rushing the season. Most of them are growing properly, but about a third want to grow a stem and start blooming already. Naughty!

We're trying straw mulch this year, chopping it with a lawn mower before putting it around the plants. And we got some of the scrap rolls of newsprint from the Sun to use under the straw in a couple of the raised beds. We'll use it under the big plants later in the season, too.

Those bikes we bought last month? Our butts haven't touched 'em yet. It's been either too rainy, too cold, or, if the day is sunny and warm, we have too much to do outside with the garden.

Our Bradford (Cleveland?) pear trees and the flowering plum are blooming, and the bees are loving them. The redbuds should be opening next week sometime. I still have to cut the butterfly bushes back and prune the rambling rose, Gertrude Jekyll. The Gertrude flowers smell WONderful. I like fragrant flowers - roses, lilacs, lilies, hyacinths, etc.

Gardening

The first spring plants are in the ground. We got 18 Napa cabbages, 8 red Pak Chois, 7 green Pak Chois, and 17 broccolis planted today. The full moon's not until Thursday, but today the sun is in Leo, a death knell for the plants. I expect to see a bunch of plant carcasses out there soon. I also got some carrot seed in the ground. There are 75 cruciferous (that's whatcha call the cabbage family) plants left to plant, but I don't know if all the Napa will make it to the garden. Some of the seedlings are already starting to bolt and they're only 3 in. high. Don't know what's going on with them.

The onion bed needs another tilling before we can plant them, so they (the onion plants) are hanging out in the shop. I hope to plant them this coming Sunday or Monday (Scorpio), then beets and more carrots on the 20th/21st (Pisces). But since things rarely go the way I plan. . .

There's no way I can follow the moon and zodiac for planting tomatoes, etc., this year, so I'll do what I usually do and ignore them both. I've never had really BAD luck with growing, unless you count that year that I got a bunch of seeds from Fedco. Don't know what it was about them, but most varieties had low germination rates. We ended up having to buy plants locally to replace them. It kinda put a sour taste in my mouth about Fedco.

Catching Up on Howell Farm Stuff, etc.

I've been derelict in my duties. I said I'd talk about Howell Farm activities and it's been a while.

Tomorrow is the second of the Maple Sugaring days, last Saturday being the first. Back at the beginning of February was the "official" tree tapping day for the maple sugaring season, though I'm sure with as mild a winter as it's been, some of those trees got holes poked in 'em before that. So now begins the official cooking-down of the sap into syrup.

Of course, up in New England maple sugaring is an art form and some farms have elaborate set ups of tubing that feeds the sap right from the trees downhill into the storage tanks and self-stirring vats in the sugar house. But Howell Farm just has a metal pan about 2 feet wide, 4 feet long and maybe 4 or 5 inches high that sets over an outdoor wood fire. The sap is stored in milk cans, which are emptied into a special can with a little plastic tube fit into the side at the bottom that feeds the sap into the pan as needed, and someone tends the fire and stirs and skims the sap. It takes 40 gallons of sugar maple sap to make 1 gallon of syrup, even more for other maples and non-maples, like birches and some other trees. So this is not a quick process. When the sap reaches a certain temperature - 200-something; can't remember exactly - then it's taken out of the outdoor pan and brought into the house to finish on the stove. It's not practical to do the whole cooking-down process in the house because it causes too much steam. Most of the syrup is bottled, though some is also made into maple candy and other maple-y goodies. The children's activity last week was maple brittle and this week it will be maple cookies.

Coming up next week on March 10th is the program now named "Meet the Horse Doctor, Dentist, and Shoer." This used to be two separate programs, one for the vet and dentist and the other for the farrier (the guy who trims and shoes the horses). The horse doctor, or veterinarian, will listen to the horses' hearts and bellies. What? Their bellies!? Yup, it's good for a horse to have some gurgling in its gut. If it's too quiet, that could mean a problem. He may also give vaccinations or give worming medicine to the horses at that time.

The dentist is fun, if a little creepy, to watch. He feels the horse's teeth to see if there are any sharp points that might cut the inside of the horse's cheek and make it hard or painful for him to eat. Yes, he puts his hand into the horse's mouth to do this. And he says he doesn't get bit very often. But don't try this at home, folks. If he finds any sharp points, he gets a big, flat file like one a carpenter might use and files down the points.

The horse shoer will pull off any shoes the horses might already be wearing, then he trims their hooves (like fingernails), and also trims the sole and frog (the frog is the center of the sole that acts like a shock absorber), kinda like trimming the dead skin off of calluses. Then if the horse needs to wear shoes for his work, the shoer will get the right size shoe, hammer the shoe into the correct shape if necessary, then nail the shoe onto the hooves.

Did you know: Horses' front feet are round; their back feet are oval.

"Work Horse Rides and Blacksmithing" will be on March 17th. Some of the horses, the gentlest ones, will get a break from field work that day and will get to carry kids on their backs. They still have to wear their harnesses, but carrying a 50 lb. child around is a lot easier than hauling a plow through the ground. And the kids get to feel what it was like for a farm kid way back when, when a kid might have to ride one of the horses to fetch lunch or a drink of water or a certain tool for Dad while he worked in a field that was far from the house. But, no, they don't get to steer or anything like that. Someone, hopefully an adult (yes, of COURSE it will be an adult. Silly!) will lead each horse up and down one of the farm lanes so each kid gets a 5-minute-or-so ride. The blacksmith will be making various little doo-dads from iron, maybe some S-hooks to hang things on, or spoons or forks, or he might be punching kids' names into little pony shoes for souvenirs.

The corn maze this year will be a barn owl. Don't try this if you're claustrophobic.

Check out howellfarm.org for more info and photos. Unfortunately, I'm on the computer withOUT the pictures in it, or else I'd include some.

Also, while I'm talking farm, I need to mention Greenwoodhill Farm, up in Andover, NY. It's a privately owned park that also takes overnight guests. Like me and DH, Jim and Dana, the owners, are also former Howell Farm volunteers. They have chickens, ducks, goats, sheep, and horses (in fact, they have Barney, a retired Howell Farm horse). And during the summer, they have boarded a neighbor's alpacas, so I expect they'll have them this year too. You can find them at greenwoodhillfarm.com.

Flowers, Birds and Fog

Just a few things:

We've had at least one dandelion blooming in the yard each month ALL winter.

Our crocuses are croaking and the mini-irises are up and blooming. The daffodils are not far behind. I've noticed quite a few already blooming around the area.

There's been a pair of goldfinches at our feeders for the last week or so. I usually only catch a flash of yellow when they're in flight. The only other place I've seen one is on the chicory flowers at Howell Farm. Goldfinches are the New Jersey state bird and I've seen more here in Tenn. than I ever did in NJ.

There have also been a couple of nuthatches in the pear tree and on the pole that holds feeders, another rare sighting.

The killdeers are back after about a two week hiatus. Noisy buggers. And the robins were gone for about the same length of time. Now the place is crawling with male robins getting ready to stake out territory.

It rained off and on today and was in the high 50s. Then this evening when it started cooling off, fog started developing at the bottom of the yard near the chicken coop because it's cooler there than up near the house. I've noticed that cool-air-flowing-downhill phenomenon other times when I go down to close the chicken coop for the night. It's only about a 6 foot difference in elevation, over about 100 feet, but there is a definite change of temperature. It could be because the slope going up to the neighbor's property is about the same grade, but longer, at least 200-250 feet, so ending up with a 12-15 foot difference. In the other direction, the yard is flat for about 200 feet, then drops much more steeply, 15-20 feet in only 100-150 feet distance, which sucks the cold air down. So that cold I feel by the chicken coop is probably just passing through.

If it doesn't stop raining so much, there won't be any worms left in our soil. They keep crawling out onto the concrete carport and dying there.

I saw barn cat, Camille, take a leap at a cardinal today. She missed. But I know she gets them every so often because I've found red feathers on the ground near the feeders.

Cole crops, Warping

Well, DD is all moved back in. At least this time she's gotten a rent-to-own storage building to keep a lot of her s**t in.

DH and I spent some of the day yesterday transplanting the seedlings that are threatening to take over the little hothouse. The bigger ones and a lot of the multiples that were split up went into 4" pots. The smaller ones that were singles I just left in their cells, and some of the smaller of the multiples were put back into cells after they were separated. So even though we planted 25 of each (Chinese cabbage, green Pak Choi, red Pak Choi, and broccoli), and only about 16-17 cells of each came up, we still ended up with 24-25 of each kind. We're not doing lettuce this year, so as many as possible will go into the raised beds at the bottom of the yard in a week or two, where they'll be protected from wind somewhat and will get afternoon shade once the trees leaf out. If I knew they would grow so fast, I would have waited another week or two to plant. Oh wait, that's right. I WANTED to wait a week or two and DH insisted on planting when we did. Rush Rush Rush So then the plants have to wait for the soil to be dry enough to work, not easy when we get rain twice a week, and they get overgrown.

Right now we have to keep the plants in the hothouse - really only warm right now from the lights - especially at night. During nice weather, I put them outside, since the sunshine is better for them than fluorescent lights. I have heat mats but only use them for starting seeds, not for growing plants once they've sprouted and have a true leaf or two. I'll break them out again in a few weeks when I start the tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants.

I spent a few hours at friend PG's house today, helping her get her new rigid heddle loom warped. When I left she was itching to play more and promised to have a 6 foot shawl (scarf?) all done by Saturday. She'll be coming to the Limestone Creek meeting on Saturday, so I'll show her something else she can do besides plain weave. I just measured out a warp for my rigid heddle last Friday. I think I'll get started warping, just to get it wound on. I'll wait till Saturday to thread the holes.

One Day At A Time

Oh joy. (Do you sense the sarcasm there?) DD (the boomerang child) is returning next weekend. She's in the process of packing up all her stuff in the house where she lives with her now-ex-boyfriend (let's call him Ambrose). Ambrose announced the other day that he wants to break up. He's not kicking her out, but they are no longer a couple. What? So anyway, we have to rearrange the house (again!) to accomodate her. But now she has a new job, one that I hope she'll keep for at least three years, so she's getting a rent-to-own storage building, which will be paid off in (you guessed it) three years. It's only 9 x 12, but it should hold the majority of the big stuff, with boxes and such tucked in here and there between things. And I lose my "craft" room (again!), so the spinning wheels come back out into the living room, the small looms get relocated to wherever they fit in my bedroom, the various bags of wool and the cones of weaving yarns get put into storage tubs and put in the attic, the bureau with the tablecloths and junk towels (for cleaning up after dogs, etc.) moves back to my bedroom, the little table with my drum carder on it goes back to the office, and the plastic shelving unit goes back to my bedroom. Got some of this done yesterday and will do more tomorrow and on through the week.

BIL #3 was here this past weekend for the beginning of the drama. DD's ex and ex-MIL will be here this coming weekend for DGD's birthday, so they get to see the middle of the drama. Then sister and BIL #1 will be here the weekend after THAT. I hope to be through with all the moving of stuff by then, but there is no end to the drama. Once she's here, it just takes a different form.

I don't know why I bothered retiring.

Pictures, Bikes, Visitors

First, the big computer is finally hooked up to the internet again, so I can post pictures of my looms I was talking about last week. Here ya go:

This is the LeClerc "Dorothy" set up for a weaving demo at the 2007 Farm Arts Festival at Rural Resources in Greene Co.




And here is the Kromski "Harp" rigid heddle, naked (unwarped). That's a stick shuttle laying inside of it.








Second on the agenda - DH and I bought bikes yesterday at WalMart. They're both 26" mountain bikes, though not hard-core. Mine is a 7-speed; DH's is 18-speed only because he couldn't find a 7-speed that he liked. There was a 29", 24-speed bike there. That sounds like it's for a serious, long-haul, road biker. We'll stick to the local parks and maybe school tracks, thank you.

We'll have a busy February. First one BIL is coming to visit and check on his property here, about 5 miles from us. He'll stay with us while he's here. Then DD's ex and his mother are coming for DGD's birthday. Then sister and BIL (a different one, of course) will be here to check on THEIR property, about 10 miles from us in a different direction. They'll also stay with us. And now that DD is working second shift, DGD is staying with us during the week so we can get her to and from school. Should be interesting. At least ex-SIL and mom will be staying at a motel.

Bikes

Wow, two days in a row. I can't stand it. But this was running through my mind last night and keeping me awake, so I want to get shed of it, as they say around here. Actually, I've never heard anyone say that; I've just read it.

DH has been talking about getting a couple of mountain bikes (that we really don't have the money for). Notice I said "a couple." He can't just get one for himself; I have to get one too. Anyway, it got me thinking about my bikes that I've had. There have been four.

The first was a pickup truck tricycle. Behind the seat, instead of the frame curving down to the back axle, it went back and connected to a little two-wheeled wagon. It was a stiff frame, not a trailer, so the wheels of the wagon part became the back wheels of the trike. Really cool.

The next one was a 26", blue, J.C. Higgins. It had a coaster brake and fat tires.
What a clunker! But it got me around. I had already learned to ride on my girlfriend's 24" bike when I was around 6, so I guess my parents figured I'd grow into this monster. I'd ride it to school once in awhile in nice weather. That's when I was at Alfred Reed for 4th thru 6th grades. They didn't have the slotted bikes stands they do now. It was just a horizontal steel pipe. You'd pull the front of the bike under the pipe, then lift the handlebars up and over the pipe backwards so it would hang there. Of course, the kids with the "English racers", as we called 10-speeds then, were out of luck. With those dropped handlebars, the bikes wouldn't hang. They'd have to use the kickstands.

Next came the Christmas that me and my oldest brother (5 years younger than me) got bikes, mine blue and his red. I guess I was around 12 or 13. That bike was forgetable.

Then I got a used, green, 27", 10-speed that I could never shift into any gears except first, fifth and tenth. I would invariably get it between gears and the chain would slip. If I was on a hill, I'd have to practically stop, put it in first, then try to get started back up the hill. At least on the flat, I could coast along while figuring out where the daggone gear was. Longest ride I took on that was from home in Ewing to Titusville, about 6-8 miles. There was a long hill going and coming back, where I'd end up walking the bike up. Even first gear was too strenuous. The final stretch in Titusville was about 2 miles along a two-lane road with not much of a shoulder. Back then the speed limit was probably around 40 and there weren't NEARLY as many cars as are on that road today, which explains why we didn't get killed. Funny, I remember riding TO Titusville, but I don't remember riding HOME, except maybe walking up that hill in Mountain View. We (me, oldest brother, and DH before he was DH) certainly weren't given a lift. We also walked that route a couple of times, a full day's activity.

So bike number 5 will be a combination of the others, but a little different, too - fat, knobby tires; gears; 26" hybrid men's/women's frame. I'll try to stay away from hills.

Gung Hai Fat Choi - Year of the Dragon

I've started getting ready for the weaving "demo" at next month's meeting at Limestone Creek. On Sunday I measured out 80 ends of 5/2 perle cotton, 80 in. long, for the warp. I warped the Dorothy today. I warp front to back, meaning I sley the reed first, then thread the heddles, tie onto the back apron, wind the warp onto the back beam (with a layer of paper grocery bag going in to keep the threads from burrowing into previous rounds), then finally tying onto the front apron. I'll also add two floating selvedges (selveges?) later. It should be plenty wide enough so everybody can see different patterns emerging as the weft goes in. I'm taking a bunch of books too, so they can get an idea of the hundreds of patterns possible. I've just done a "straight draw", that is, threading the first thread in the first heddle on shaft 1, the second thread in the first heddle on shaft 2, the third in the first from shaft 3, and the fourth in the first from shaft 4. Five through eight go into the second heddles on the shafts in the same order, 1, 2, 3, 4, and so on, until there are 20 heddles on each shaft that have threads running through them. I used white, sort of an off white, for the warp. Then the weft will be one of four different colors, also 5/2 perle cotton which was left over from the overshot class, to show contrast.

I've also started collecting various things to take with me - sley hook, heddle hook, different shuttles, the aforementioned books, the few things I've already made, including the sample from the overshot class I took and the "Cats Track and Snail Trail" runner I made on the end of that same warp.

DGD pointed out the sliver of new moon in the sky tonight at sunset. It was new at 2:39 am yesterday (Chinese New Year), making it about 39 1/2 hours old when we saw it at around 6:10 pm, just about the youngest I've seen. I think the record for the youngest moon observed is around 19 hr. I don't usually see them until they're at least 45-46 hr. old.

Signs of Spring and How to Be An Enabler

Well, I told you the newness would wear off of this blog thing. lol Last post was on 1-3 and here it is 1-21. We're now a full month into winter and I can see it's staying light longer in the evening already. Instead of closing the chickie girls in at around 5:15 pm, I can wait until about 5:40 or so and still see to walk down there without falling on my face.

Back in October I had dropped a couple of fleeces off with Ozark Carding while I was at SAFF. I got a ship notice last Wednesday, the 11th. The post office finally delivered the box with the roving yesterday, the 20th. NINE DAYS! They must have been sent from MO to TN via Anchorage. One fleece is just carded roving, which I'll use for spinning students (if I ever have any more ) or other demo type stuff. The other, heavier, fleece I had pin drafted after it was carded, which aligns the fibers much more than plain carding does. It looks like it turned out really nice and should be easy to spin, although there is a bit of VM in it, as all the fleeces from "that" place do. I should mention that the box is about 12x14x14, and AFTER I took the fleeces out of the box and opened their bags, they took up 4 or 5 times that space. I've already rolled all the roving into balls so they'll be easier to use.

The first of this year's planting has been started. There are 25 each of small Chinese cabbage, broccoli, and red and green pak choi seeded in trays out in the little homemade greenhouse. They were all planted on Monday, the 16th - first day of the 4th quarter moon, in Virgo. Yuck! We also have seeds for full size Chinese cabbage; they'll be started in a week or so.

Now, about that enabler title - A new woman at the Limestone Creek Fiber Guild wants to learn to spin and weave, so I said I'd bring my small looms, the Dorothy table loom and the Harp rigid heddle. (She already tried her hand at spinning last Saturday) I have to warp the Dorothy with something small to play with and I'll just measure the Harp warp, maybe enough for a scarf, and will warp it when I get there, to show Betsy how to do it. I'll have to read up on it to remember. Plus I'll haul all the various accoutrements with me. I might even take that enormous fly shuttle. Now I just have to get my butt in gear and start measuring. And I have to get everything ready by Feb. 18th. I hate measuring warp. Gee, I can't even add a picture of the Dorothy because I'm on the wrong computer. Have to get that DSL line switched back.

The grocery store has hyacinths in bloom already. I ALWAYS stop and smell them. Spring is coming!

Snow, Guard Rails, Reading, Night Sky

We had the first (substantial) snowfall of the winter on Monday night, at least by East TN standards. The northern part of the county got enough to cover the roads, so of course NONE of the buses could run, so of course ALL the county schools were closed. It's probably based on population, not area, but I think that's one thing that northern states have gotten a little bit right - the counties are split up into townships. So just because Hopewell Twp. schools (northernmost township in Mercer Co. NJ) are closed because of the rural roads and hills doesn't mean Hamilton Twp. (southernmost township, same county), which is much flatter and doesn't have much rural area left, have to be. Last year the kids here had about two weeks of "snow" days because there are a few roads that are shaded and don't melt quickly.

These are usually the roads that are also hilly or narrow with no guard rails, so are treacherous. I've heard that roads are supposed to have a guard rail if the drop off the side is more than 4 ft. Yeah, right. I know a few places with a 10 ft. or WAYYY more drop off with no guard rail. Oh, there may be some trees to catch you or maybe a couple of strands of barbed wire on rusty T posts that have been in the ground so long they're leaning at a 45 degree angle. So why bother with guard rail?

I'm in the middle of The Royals by Kitty Kelley, another library sale acquisition. Which reminds me, the sale will be coming up in a few months, early May I think. I have to take some books over there. And I've decided to initial the books I've read so I don't forget and re-buy them. I forgot and rebought a Star Trek book last year.

The garlic has sprouted, but the rest of the garden is fallow. We have to start pulling last year's plants, getting tomato plants and bean vines off their support fences, and planning and buying seed for this year. DH talks out of both sides of his mouth - we're going to cut back this year, but then he gives me a list of what he wants to plant, which is not a cut back in my book. Different, maybe, but not less. Neither of us can kneel, neither of us can squat. I can bend over, but it kills by back. He can bend over, but it kills his knees. So I don't know how much gardening is going to get done.

MIL has been discharged by the wound care doctor, say hallelujah. That's one less place she has to be hauled to on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. Now if she'll just watch her salt intake so her legs don't start weeping again. Sure, that'll happen.

I've been star gazing when I take the dog out to do her business after dark. Cygnus the Swan is flying downhill in the west now, Pegasus is overhead, and Orion is rising at sunset. When the newish, crescent moon is low in the sky, it peeks through one of the leafless tree like a Cheshire Cat smile. Venus is fairly high in the western sky, probably about as high as it gets, right after sunset, and Jupiter is high overhead. The moon was about 3 or 4 fingers-width from Jupiter on Monday night. I was looking at the new Old Farmers' Almanac, which I finally bought today, and there's a transit of Venus across the sun coming up in March, I think it said. The observatory up in Kingsport will be crowded that day, no doubt.