New Years Eve and Snow!

Wow, it is December 31st! Not sure where the year went, but it sure did go fast. There are 5 inches of snow on the ground and more to come today and for the next several days. Yesterday the day was spent plowing and moving snow, with the Kubota tractor. What a wonderful piece of equipment it is. It was one of the first things I bought, when I moved to the river and it has earned its keep. I did have some struggles with learning to drive it and move snow, the first year, as I ended up putting it into the ditch. I will have to take a photo of the snow covered road, later today and post it, and then you will understand how I ended up in the ditch, instead of over the hillside to a bad landing below!

This has been the busiest year of my life, in the past 12 years and frankly, I am ready to see it end, as probably alot of you are. The economy is bound to change this next year and so will lives in the country. At the moment, I have an over abundance of mohair to sell and need to find some buyers for it. What I can't sell right now, perhaps will be spun into some interesting yarn.

Speaking of yarn, I am trying to learn to knit, after avoiding it for 25 years. So far, I have torn out this scarf 12 times and restarted. I have put out feelers for a knitting group to get started, here on the river. If I can get at least four ladies or men together to knit, on a weekly basis, maybe I too will be successful. So, learning to knit then naturally brings you to wanting some mohair in the yarn you are working with and then that means learning to spin. Gads, and the list goes on and on, of things to learn and do.

It's a New Kitchen in the Yurt!!

Funny how things seem to evolve into something else, other than originally planned! I was given some kitchen cabinets, a couple of years ago, to put into a garage/studio that I was planning to build. Then reality hit and the economy went upside down and the garage didn't get built. So, in the meantime, I am storing the cabinets in the Mt.Shasta house. When I decided to get busy and do some cleaning, I moved the cabinets to the river, and stored them in the yurt. It didn't take long to realize how very nice they might look, installed in the yurt!! So, two weeks ago, the cabinets were installed, along with the used sink and faucet, from the Habitat for Humanity Store, in Medford. At the time I once lived in the yurt, for 16 months, I didn't even have running water. Now, here I am, still not living in the yurt, but living in a travel trailer, but looking forward to the day when the yurt will be a lodging destination for those who love or want to love, "a yurt". The plumbing and the drain lines aren't installed yet, but the hole is drilled through the bottom of the cabinet and the thick yurt floor, to put in the drain and the water lines. Won't be long now til I can get this put to bed and get back to wiring the electrical into this yurt and the extension cords won't get tangled around anyone's ankle, upon entering this hovel!!!

Button Down the Hatches for Winter!

Finally finished pouring this slab, after a long summer! I am not sure what took so long, but I guess it is the continual interruptions, as farm life often goes. The shower house walls will be framed, come late spring or early summer. It was abit tedious placing and holding, the radiant floor tubing. The radiant tubing is to be connected to a solar batch water heater, which can be used for heating the shower and floor water, in the warmer months. No plan yet on what to do in winter months, but consider this a start! Like most lives in the country, things change and what you start out with is often not what you end up with, in the end. The next thing on the list, to get done while the weather is cold (it is currently 27 degrees at 5AM), is to work inside on the addition of the new kitchen sink's water supply line and finishing the wiring project.

All of the goats are now bred, as well as the two Scottish Highland heifers, so the babies will begin to arrive, early March! There are 3 bred angora does, so should bring at least 3 new kids and maybe as many as 6, if we get lucky! They say the nutrition makes a difference, as well as early breeding, in the number of twins born. They all eat a total of one ton of alfalfa per month, so the nutrition is the best they can get. The cows are totally fed on alfalfa, year round, so their beef should be of excellent quality.

"Scarlett" the wild one!

Ms. Scarlett has a mind of her own!! I had penned her up, last week, in an effort to get her dosed a couple of times, with an anti-lice medication. Well, yesterday was her day to seek out some freedom and she found it, while I was loading alfalfa into a cart, for the rest of the animals! She is so wild, I could have spent all day trying to catch her, as well as her daughter "Daisy" who also got out, or just let things take their course. Deciding there were more pressing things to do with my time, I let her roam about the hillside, never going much farther than the fence line with the billies inside. Now, Miss Daisy, on the other hand, decided to jump in and out of the electric fencing, at will, to nibble on what there was to eat for everyone else! As the day wore on, MsScarlett laid down a couple of times and then as she began to get hungry, five hours later, I found a way to trick her into the garden area. I put a flake of alfalfa in the garden area, while leaving the gate open and in she went an "shut" went the gate behind her. Once back in her pen, and Miss Daisy jumped through the electric fencing, to be with her, I put young buck"Edward" in with them. Well, within minutes, Ms.Scarlett had put Edward in his place, standing on her hind legs and coming down with a crunch, onto Edwards forehead. I think they will have to work things out before any "new kids" are conceived. So for now, all are in their new pens and the breeding season is in partial swing. There should be a new population of at least 8 new kids, come next March or April. That is the best part of this whole gig, are the new cuddly kids!

It's A "Chicken Coop"

This little car is the greatest hauler!! I just acquired these 4 Rhode Island Red hens, from a neighbor, who had too many chickens. Now, they are coming to live with my other 12 hens. The first day here, the egg count jumped to 10 in one day!! Now, to find a marketing gimmick, to sell these eggs. Maybe a gingham envelope to tuck the egg carton into, might work. There is also a website for custom designed cartons, so will check that out. The "girls" had been cruising in the garden, til they moved all the mulch out from around the fruit trees, then I had to cage them back up again. Soon the angora goats and guard dogs will be back in the garden area, so if the chickens are let out during the day, they have a forest to hunt, dig and peck in, for worms. They really are happier "girls" when they can be out and about and the egg count goes up dramatically. We don't have any roosters anymore, as I got tired of carrying the pitch fork around with me, for protection from him. These girls have a cute, lavender with white trim, house to live in. I can't insulate it with the foam I was contemplating on using, as it is stacked up outside the coop and they keep pecking at it and eating it. So, if put inside, it would quickly look like Swiss cheese!

Amaranth tasting

I almost missed a taste treat this summer! I planted this beautiful plant, for the first time, a couple of years ago after reading an article about a couple back East, who added it to their salad mix. Well, I didn't end up putting it into the salad that year, nor this year. I ordered two different kinds this year and then was given some unidentified seeds, which turned out to be Amaranth. So, it has grown and grown and now it is time to harvest it. I have now spent a couple of hours online, researching its use. This plant has more nutrition than most grains and can be eaten like tender spinach (boiled), popped like corn, chopped into salads and also cooked like a hot cereal. The seeds are so very small, that it would be labor intensive to try and harvest the seeds at a small farm, but you can buy it in bags at the store. After reading of all its uses, I still was able to find small tender plants (as I kept throwing more seeds into the ground throughout the summer) and tried cooking the leaves like I would for spinach and what a wonderful discovery!! It is a plant that won't bolt from heat and is in fact drought resistant, so a good alternative to spinach in hot weather. The stalks and large leaves can be fed to livestock, as I tested it with the Scottish Highland cows and they loved it, as do the angora goats. I will have to work on identifying the three different varieties that I am growing, once I find the empty seed packets for the first two, somewhere under other plants, in the windblown garden spot!! This isn't a tidy place, so the garden has some hidden secrets, including a rattlesnake this summer! For anyone interested in pursuing the planting of Amaranth, I will post the wonderful sources of information that I found on the internet.

http://www.herbsarespecial.com.au/free-sprout-information/amaranth.html

http://www.tropicalpermaculture.com/amaranth-plant.html

http://home.earthlink.net/~loveguru/amaranth.htm

http://www.ripeorganics.com.au/wholefoods-glossary/grains-legumes/amaranth

http://eap.mcgill.ca/CPAT_1.htm

http://amazingamaranth.com/Home.html

http://www.jeffersoninstitute.org/pubs/amaranth.shtml

http://www.ag.iastate.edu/centers/cad/amaranth.html

Showerhouse slab

It's been 3 long weeks of preparing a site to pour the slab, eventually to be the new showerhouse . When I lived in the yurt, I had to use a shower tent and only in the spring and summer, otherwise had to go to Mt.Shasta to my real house to shower. What a learning process this slab prep has been. I did pour a slab for the chicken coop, 3 years ago, but I didn't have enough knowledge to be dangerous, back then! This time around, I have more books on the subject of plumbing and radiant heat. I have laid the pex tubing, for a radiant floor, in this slab, so eventually the demand will be to get the solar batch water heater built and attached. The goal has been to get the slab poured before winter sets in and then I will frame it next spring and finished next summer.

Once I have a showerhouse in place, I can invite guests to come and stay in the yurt, as a destination for summer lodging!