Catching Up: January 1-5, 2009

01/05/2009 Monday: Cool and cloudy, but not frozen. No rain today.

Pat stopped by at noon today to visit. I told him I wanted to hang Chas's homemade redwood coffee table top on the rock chimney face. Before we can hang it we need to remove two badly placed rocks that jut out about 4-5 inches from the chimney face. The chimney is made out of river rock.

Pat also looked at the fireplace opening and said we had at least 8 inches of clearance, 4 on each side of the existing fireplace, that we can use to put in a larger insert. That's good news since the existing insert has a very small box that can only take small branches and doesn't throw out much heat. In short, it's worthless and needs to be replaced.

I want a wood stove with a flat top that I can use to cook on when the power goes out and one which will keep the first floor rooms cosy. I can go downstairs and use the stove down there but that's pretty inconvenient.

I'm also going to have him install some shelves for me in my study. I need more shelf space. We have the boards and the hangers but I have to check to see if we have the standards.

I dumped the three hanging baskets on the deck, one on each of the rhododendron bushes under the Vine maple trees and stacked them ready to go to the potting shed.

Dinner was leftover salmon, a sweet potato and canned peas.

01/04/2009 Sunday: Cold and gloomy, gloomy enough that we have to have the lights on in the house in order to be able to see anything. Chas says there's another storm coming in. This morning was cold - about 26 degrees F outside.

Getting up late/sleeping in makes a person feel better but doesn't get the farm work done. I didn't get back into the house from doing morning chores till 10:30am.

I aggregated some of my knitting yarns into a clear plastic tub so that they're together. They'd been sitting around all over the basement in gallon-sized plastic sacks.

I cooked chicken breasts with the bone in, squash and barley for dinner. Dinner was delicious.

01/03/2009 Saturday: It got down to about 26 degrees last night but is expected to rise to over freezing. It even snowed a little, just enough to make it slippery walking.

Slept all morning and most of the afternoon. Dunno why I fall asleep at the drop of a hat. I'm getting lazy in my old age, I guess. Either that or I'm not sleeping well at night.

This morning after chores I brought up the chicken waterer and a white bucket from the cow barn to wash and disinfect. It took me forever to scrub them. After scrubbing and rinsing I poured some bleach into the chicken waterer and left it sit for awhile. Once it was disinfected I poured the bleach water into the white bucket to disinfect that.

After drying it I took it to the cow barn where I've got the chicken feed temporarily and filled the bucket so that I could fill the chicken feeder. The leftover pellets I put into the feed can. With their newly cleaned waterer and the soon to be distributed white shavings the chickens will be in heaven.

I filled the chicken waterer when I got it to the coop and also cleaned and filled the duck and goat tubs. I broke the ice in the Dexter tub with the automatic waterer and scooped out all the ice and some of the water to get fresh water into the tub. I need to scrub both tubs out, the one in the Dexter pen and the main tub in the Hereford's pasture.

I need to plan for chicks and ducks in a few weeks. I think I'll keep them in the loom room for a few weeks until they're feathered out. Not much in that room so if it gets covered with chick feather dust it really won't matter too much.

I paid the Master Card bill today. It wasn't much since I paid most of it last time.

I took the leftover salmon from dinner two nights ago and made a delicious salmon loaf and served it with baked sweet potatoes and succotash. The salmon was fabulous and there's enough left for another meal.

01/02/2009 Friday: It snowed last night, melted and refroze so that this morning it was treacherous to walk and to drive. Later around noon it snowed lightly but the additional snow didn't stick around as the temperature was above freezing.

Chas and I put another bale of hay in the Dexter's pen this morning before we took off for town.

Chas was reluctant to drive because of the snow and ice on the roads but I told him it was ok. I'd seen many cars driving with no problem. We did see a spin out and a van on its side. I expect the driver was going too fast for the road conditions. We made it into town safely. I picked up two bags of ranch cubes and one of chicken layer pellets a the Farm Store. Then we hit the library where I got many farming books to review. Dunno when I'll have the time to read all of them but I will find it.

Dinner was rice, beets and a packaged/frozen chicken chipolte dish. Very convenient, especially when I didn't really want to cook. I also baked the no-knead bread Chas assembled last night. I turned it this morning and then basically forgot about it till nearly dinner time. We had a couple of slices with dinner. It was good! Chas added rye flour to the mix. He replace 1 cup of rye with 1 cup of regular flour. We agreed that it would be better with one half cup instead of one cup of rye flour the next time he makes it.

01/01/2009 Thursday: Rain most of the day. And very dark with thick clouds.

I set my alarm clock for 6:30am last night. With my sleeping in till all hours, my day is half gone before I have breakfast. That doesn't get the things I need to get done, completed.

I wasn't expecting Sherry to come by to clean today, but she came bearing a gift. In this case she brought over some salmon that her nephew had caught recently. It was two large fillets of silver salmon. This is the best gift. There's enough salmon for dinner and maybe sandwiches for lunch tomorrow and maybe even salmon cakes for dinner tomorrow night.

The hanging baskets are pretty much gone. The plants in them got frozen several times. I need to dump the dirt out and take the baskets to the potting shed for use later this spring.

I've been trying to figure out where my dog food, bird block and shavings went to. Chas reminded me that they were likely in the back of his jeep. I've been wracking my head trying to figure out where they went.