kitchen garden spruce up (making the beds)

I woke up this morning to a light dusting of snow on the ground and cold, gray skies... Such a change from the beautiful sunny weather we've had so far this week.



I took advantage of all that beautiful weather to work out in my little kitchen garden... getting it spruced up and ready for another gardening season.



My kitchen garden is so tiny (just 10' x 12') that it's easy to "rearrange" and "remodel" and each spring I do a little of that... changing things around, making it fresh and new again.

I'd been thinking about adding a couple of small raised beds out there this year, and the raised beds that E is putting in at her house inspired me to buy some lumber and get going on that idea...

I bought BIG lumber for a change... usually I buy the smaller stuff... and came home with some 2x12's and 2x8's) for my beds. I decided to put the taller bed next to the house and the smaller one closer to the yard for a step-down look.



The beds were easy to build... just a couple of cuts, a few holes pre-drilled, and a few screws. Easy.








I bought some bags of garden soil and hauled some dirt from the pumpkin patch to mix with, to fill the beds.

Then I did a little more rearranging... moving the big pot to the other side of the garden (it's currently holding chives that had to be relocated to put in the raised beds... the ones that survive will be given away, as I don't need them), transplanting some sweet william around the pot, and adding a stone border. Once the weather warms more the pot will hold a cherry tomato plant...







I'd already moved the compost bin that used to be next to the rhubarb plants, which opens up that space (to the left of the rhubarb) for planting...



I think I'm going to put in something flowering there, possibly a dwarf lilac or something similar, that will give me blooms without spreading beyond the small space available, or shading the rhubarb too much.

The last step is to finish adding more cedar mulch to the walkway between the beds and maybe build a cucumber frame for the smaller bed... something like this:

 

This morning's snow is melting quickly from the yard and pastures and it's supposed to start warming up again tomorrow. I can't wait to get back out in the garden and finish up... and then it's only a few more weeks (ok... maybe 5 more weeks) to planting!

scenes of a morning

I took the camera with me when I went out this morning to do the barn work...

Tucker... always Mr. Nosy... checking out the camera.




A doe I startled (and who startled me!) as I walked back to the house... she was getting ready to jump into the front yard, but changed her mind once she saw me...



Our chickens.... mostly looking fat and happy... except poor Sadie... the incredible molting chicken... isn't she a mess?





I hope she starts growing her feathers back soon, she looks sad and miserable now.

I've been enjoying the warmish weather lately... it's been in the mid 30's each morning this week, and I've taken extra time before the kids get up to work on cleaning the pasture, straightening the barn, etc. We have a cord of wood scheduled to be delivered tomorrow that will need to be stacked, and then the outside work will be caught up... just in time for the snow that's in the forecast for the weekend. I've enjoyed the outside time this week, but I do miss the snow, I can't wait for the flakes to start falling...

because I can...

Miss me last week?

I meant to blog every day, but never made it past the good intentions stage of things... R was sick (cough) with a cold (cough, cough) the early part of the week and M had a gastroparesis flare up the end of the week. Between those two things I didn't get much sleep and spent the early morning hours, when I usually blog, either staring vacantly at computer screen or trying to steal a few more minutes of sleep.

I was going to blog early this morning, but ended up outside shoveling manure, cleaning the paddock, instead.

I didn't have to do it... it's supposed to be R's job (I do all the chicken work, she keeps the pasture clean) but the paddock was a mess, and the rake and pitchfork were right there, and so I did it.

Mostly I cleaned the paddock because I could.

And I was appreciating being able to do something as simple as shoveling manure...

A close neighbor, a woman who is just my age, is battling cancer.

Again.

After surgery and radiation two years ago to battle breast cancer, and a looooong difficult recovery, her cancer has returned. I won't share the details... they aren't mine to share... but her treatment involves weekly chemo, daily radiation, and a vastly different life than even the one she had after her first battle with cancer.

So I cleaned the paddock because I could... because I was appreciating and so very aware of the sweetness of hard work... thankful for the satisfying heft of the full pitchfork, the earthy barn smell, the freedom to stay outside and work in the morning, the strength in my muscles as I eventually pushed the full wheelbarrow around to the back of the barn to dump on the manure pile. I relished each bit of the time I spent outside working...

But now it's late... I have firewood to bring inside and stack, a kitchen to clean (yes, last night's dinner still isn't clean up!) and later Christmas shopping to do...

Tomorrow I'm bringing dinner to my neighbor and her family, and have become the fill-in driver for her daily radiation treatments... (when her FIL isn't able to drive her). She'll by in my prayers through these so very tough days and weeks of her treatment.

And I'm pretty sure I'm going to appreciate every minute of this ordinary day.

beautiful fall day

Today was a beautiful, absolutely perfect, fall day.

I should have been inside working on redoing the rush seats on my daughter's ladder back chairs...



...but it was just too pretty outside to stay in the house so I gave my little garden shed a much needed coat of wood preservative instead.

I hadn't realized how much the cedar had already dried out and faded until I started brushing the preservative on and saw how the wood woke up again...





An hour later and the whole shed just glowed...



(I don't know why I can't hold a camera level!)

Anyway... once the shed was done... and I laid a few paving stones I'd been thinking we needed up the hill in the backyard..

I was finally ready to head back inside... to get back to work on the chairs again.

It really needs to snow so I can stop playing working outside!

chicken coop... all buttoned up for winter

I finally finished winterizing the chicken coop. It feels good to have it done...

Last week I built a little wall for the north/west side of the coop to close it off. The wind and snow comes mostly from those directions during the winter, so I knew I wanted something substantial on that side. I just used scraps of wood from other projects to build this little wall...



(Yes, I should have staggered by little cedar "shingles" I'll fix it in the spring when I take it off again.)

Then I used long deck screws to attach it to the coop.



Here's a "before" picture showing the bottom of the coop enclosed with just chicken wire, which is perfect in summer but... brrrrr, in the winter!


Then I added thick plexiglass that we already had it to the south side.



And some thin plexiglass, that I picked up at Home Depot, to the east side.



I like the thick plexiglass much better (despite it's fogginess from being old) but I just couldn't justify spending the extra money to buy the thick kind for the fourth side... It was three times as expensive! So I bought the thinner sheet... I don't think the chickens care. ;)

I did want to definitely use plexiglass on the east and south sides (it would have been much cheaper to use wood), because I wanted to take advantage of the sun... hoping it would help warm the coop on those cold days.

Here's the finished coop, nestled behind the raspberries...



Which have been producing for weeks...



Joe wonders why I'm outside working on the chicken coop so much.

It's because I work a little, eat some raspberries, work a little more, eat more raspberries....



Mmmmm... it's a great way to get things done.

mom's playtime

I don't know what it is about building with wood that is so much fun to me, but it is...

I love the measuring, cutting the wood, fitting pieces together... watching something go from just a drawing, or plans, or even just an idea... to an actual, finished product.

I wasn't planning on building anything today... but I was down in the garage, and thought maybe I'd just measure the OSB roof sheathing (leftover from building the shed) I was planning on using to winterize the north side of the chicken coop... (I'm enclosing the bottom of the chicken coop for the winter for warmth, and will open it up again in the spring.)

As I looked at the OSB, I realized I was going to have to make a long cut and piece it to fit... and since I don't have a table saw (and don't want one with M around!) I wondered how much of a challenge it would be to cut a straight line that long.

And before I knew it, the OSB was cut (relatively straight) and the two pieces I needed to fill in the north side of the coop were securely screwed together and it was time for the fun part.



I'd put cedar "siding" (made from pickets) on one rough side of the coop a few months ago, and liked how it looked with the red of the coop, so my plan was to do something similar on the north side too.



Here's the north side of the coop: in another month or two the wind and snow will be blasting through the bottom unless I close it off.



 I had a bunch of small pieces of pickets left over from building the garden shed last month, and I thought they might be close to the right size to make little cedar shake shingles.





I didn't measure anything at first, just grabbed my cedar scraps and tried to fit them together, using the OSB as a base, in a way that looked nice.

I added some 3 1/2" cedar pickets (leftovers from the pumpkin patch fence), cut to size, on either edge so that the measurement came out right for filling between them with my cedar pieces, which I was hoping would end up looking like cedar shake shingles.




Then I started laying out the smaller shingle pieces...

First row, looking pretty good... (that longer one towards the end won't matter, the tops will all be covered by the bottom of the next row of "shingles")



I just used 1.5" staples and the staple gun to attach them, and it went super quick.



It wasn't until the last few shingle pieces on the second row that I needed to do any measuring and cutting...



The third (and final) row was a little more work, as each piece had to be cut a little shorter to allow room for the trim piece on top, and I ended up having to make a few shingles because I didn't have quite enough scraps.





It didn't take long to cut the last few to size, and dog-ear the edge to match the others...
And here's the finished product.



It's not perfect by any means, I didn't think staggering the rows (like real shingles) until I was almost done....but I think it looks good enough and I can't wait for the rain to stop so I can attach it to the coop and see how it looks.


(And next spring I might pull the "shingles" off again and stagger them... I think I would like it better.)

speaking of barns....

..notice anything different about mine?

My header picture was taken a couple of years ago, and here's my barn now:



(Please ignore the piles of manure... they have since been "relocated"  to the manure pile out behind the barn!)

Here's a little closer shot... now can you see what's different?



How about a little more barn art?



The vintage tin Coke sign came from my SIL...




... and the vintage Coors beer sign came from our neighbors.



It hung on the side of their barn for years... and I could see it from our house and always liked it. When those neighbors moved, knowing how much I liked that old tin sign, they pulled it off their barn and gave it to me. It's been hung up inside my barn for years... but there wasn't room for the Coke sign inside the barn too, so I hung them both up outside.





My old barn is stylin' now!




Happy first day of fall!!

up on the roof....

(in the words of an old Drifters song)

...everything is all right.

The shed is roofed.



And I survived.
(I hate heights!).

So yesterday was a very good day.

I spend the morning putting even more staples in the tar paper, then trimming it, and finally putting the shingles on. I'd never done any roofing, so I'm sure there were easier and more efficient ways of doing things... but the shingles are up, look fine, and should do the job... so all is good.



I finished up the roof with some roof and flashing sealer (think black caulk) and sealed the nails along the top edge that weren't covered by a row of shingles.

The whole job involved 5 trips up the 10' ladder to sit on the roof and work. (I did as much as I could from the ladder, but parts of the roof I just couldn't reach.) And for someone who doesn't care much for heights, that was 5 trips too many. :)




But the shed is completely done.

And I didn't fall off the roof even once. ;)

So let's kick back with the Drifters and celebrate how lovely roofs are... (while I admire mine from the ground!)