Keeping a country girl warm

Rural living is not for the lazy. I know this because I live it. It would be much easier to watch television and play on the Internet all day than it is to go outside in fifty degree weather and split firewood for three or four hours. I'll take splitting firewood any day of the week over watching the vast wasteland.

There are a lot of trees here on the manor. Most of them are maple but there's a good smattering of oak, wild cherry, and poplar tossed in. I don't harvest healthy trees for firewood unless they've gotten tall enough to be a threat to the house or develop some other issue that will be a problem in the near future. In October of 2023, I had a professional come and take down a leaning maple. It was wood from that maple my cousin and I split and stacked yesterday. And we still have some to go, but he wants to haul that to his place and work at his leisure. 

The old adage is that firewood warms you three times. Once when you cut down the tree, twice when you split the wood, and thrice when you burn the firewood. My grandfather used to repeat that every year and it's true. Working firewood can make you sweat even in cold weather. 

I actually enjoy wood cutting season. I like working outside far more than cleaning house (I keep my house tidy enough, thank you). I like the aesthetics of a neatly stacked rank of firewood although I'll be tarping the ranks for the winter in the next few days. I already have enough firewood stacked just inside the basement door to last through January. Once what I have inside is burned, I'll only bring over enough for two or three weeks at a time so I don't have any wood inside over the warmer months. 

Yes, burning firewood is hard work, but it serves multiple purposes. It keeps dead trees from causing damage to my house, working firewood is good exercise, and burning firewood reduces my electric bill.  

I don't think there is any better heat than wood heat. Wood heat is a "hot" heat. No cool air swirls around the way it does with a furnace or heat pump. Wood heat is a constant heat without the continual cycles of cooling and warming you get with a heat pump. And if there is a storm and the power goes out?  Well, I won't freeze and neither will my water lines because the woodstove is impervious to power outages. 

I was born country, so using firewood to heat my house is not a foreign concept. It's all part of the self-reliance that is bred into "country folk." It's hard work, but people out here don't run from that. 

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor/The Hideaway

Holly Tree Manor, The Hideaway, firewood, country lifestyle, rural living, hard work, power outages, water lines, winter weather, maple, oak, a writer's life, heat pumps

An amazing job well done

The well drillers left a huge mess in my backyard. Even with the John Deere 1023, I wasn't sure I could get the area cleared of that nasty clay slop that went everywhere. Enter my cousin Dave, whom I can never repay for all he's done for me. 

My cousin brought his Kubota tractor up and we got to work taking bucket-full after bucket-full of the muck down the old tractor path and depositing it on a pile. Any dreams I had of restoring the old tractor path to the condition it was in when our grandfather used it are gone. But thank the good Lord I had a enough land to get that clay muck out of sight. 

We spent several hours a day for five days getting the backyard ready for grass seed. The first three days was all tractor work and not too strenuous. The last two days required raking, picking up stones, and shoveling. My shoulders and back still ache. 

It is regrettable we can't go back and make different decisions. I wish I'd never started this project. I'm not any better off than before I spent all that money. Live and learn. 

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor/The Hideaway

Holly Tree Manor, The Hideaway, well drilling, rural living, John Deere 1023, Kubota, family, grass seed, hard work, mistakes

A lot of prickly work

I've begun what is a massive undertaking. For years and years, I've wanted to clean out along the north stone fence row and stack the stones into a semi-proper wall. I say "semi" because I know it's impossible to get all the stones stacked. The fence row is, if I may use the word again, massive. It's at least ten feet tall and twenty feet across at the base. That's a lot of stones. If I can get a wall stacked to about four feet high in the front just for appearances, I'll call it a good job. 

This picture is of the northeast corner of my property. It's also the highest spot. This is where Ron said to scatter his ashes. This is where Jett is buried, and Jett was the dog that he held dear, much as I hold Deuce. He loved Deuce, but Jett was that one special dog for him, the dog that loved him above all else. They had a bond. 

 I don't know how far I'll get with this project. It may be that I'll do this section and stop. It'll be okay if I do. I also have a large bag of wildflower seeds to sow. And I'll probably place a lawn chair up there so I can sit and remember my times with Ron. 

Getting to this stage was a lot of work. The area was overrun with honeysuckle vines and a fair amount of greenbriers. My arms are scratched and scraped, and my back muscles are protesting. But it feels good to be able to do a job and have the immediate gratification of seeing results. 

I hope that carries through to dry stacking a stone wall.

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor/The Hideaway

Holly Tree Manor, The Hideaway, dry stack stone wall, country lifestyle, rural living, honeysuckle, greenbriers, love of a dog, hard work, wildflowers

Don't blink - autumn is over

Just three days ago I was outside taking photos of our lovely, lovely autumn to make a collage to remember 2023. 

And it has been a lovely fall! The colors, the sunlight, the glow in the afternoon - beautiful! I've loved every moment I was able to be outside. 

We all knew it wouldn't last forever, but I lit the first fire in the wood stove in what seemed like the blink of an eye. 

It wasn't a "blink," it was just three days. That's pretty fast for around here. We usually take a long, slow slide out of autumn. Overnight the trees dropped half their remaining leaves. 

I'm reminded of how my grandmother would take me outside as a child and we'd gather up different colored leaves. She'd then iron them between two sheets of wax paper and stick the sealed sheet on the refrigerator to remind us of autumn. I was tempted to do that this year, but I have no one to share it with. 

I'm not particularly sad about getting the wood stove going. I've worked hard over the last eighteen months to "lay in" a supply of firewood. It would have been a complete waste to let those downed trees simply rot away. Yes, if I knew someone with a mill, I could have sold them, but there isn't a sawmill anywhere near here, so they went for firewood. 

I'm not alone in lighting a fire in the stove. The scent of wood smoke is heavy on the breeze this evening. I noted, when Deuce and I were out walking, the cousins have smoke coming from their chimneys, too. 

It may seem like cutting and splitting firewood, and keeping the stove hot is a lot of work, and it is. But it is also one of the simple country pleasures that bless my life. 

The Lady of the Hideaway

Holly Tree Manor, The Hideaway, woodstove, firewood, simple country pleasures, autumn ending, hard work, sawmill, rural living, country lifestyle, a writer's life

A very busy month, lots to do

I can't believe it's been weeks since I blogged here at The Hideaway. To say we've been busy would be a bit of an understatement. Spring is a time of preparation in the country.

My little garden is planted and thriving. The tomatoes are ready to bloom! The inner leaves of the cabbages are starting to curl. The sugar snap peas are vining and climbing their guide ropes. After a tentative start, the cucumbers are gaining traction. The butternut squash seeds have sprouted as have the cantaloupe and watermelon. The Contender green beans are looking good and I wish I'd planted more of them. Five of the six green pepper plants are thriving. 

If there is anything I can call a disappointment, it's the Greenstalk. Hopefully, it will improve as the summer progresses.  

Other activities include mowing, weeding, mulching, some tractor work, helping a neighbor with the removal of a downed tree, and the usual household chores. I even uploaded a short video. I wanted to have the pool set up by now, but that hasn't happened. 

It feels good to have the work done. For the next little stretch of time, I'll need to water the garden (possibly daily) and mow once a week or so. During this "break in the action," my one cousin and I may drop a large cherry tree that is leaning out over the yard. Cherry makes great firewood and we'll each take half the wood for the winter of 2024-25. 

One thing is for sure - there is never a day with nothing to do.

The Lady of the Hideaway

Holly Tree Manor, The Hideaway, country lifestyle, rural living, gardening, Greenstalk, cutting wood, mowing grass, John Deere 1023, helping neighbors, hard work, loving life

Gaining on it? Aye. Right.

We are still splitting wood, but maybe, just maybe, we're gaining on it. 

For some reason, we just can't get finished. We were doing pretty good, almost finished, and then one of the neighbors took down a large, dead cherry tree. She contacted my cousin and said if he'd do the cleanup, he could have the wood. He called us to lend him a hand for half the wood.

Then another neighbor at the other end of our adjoining properties had a large oak tree fall over the stone fence onto my cousin's property. My cousin and his son-in-law brought me some of the oak. 

Whew.

We need a few more tarps and bungee cords to get everything under cover for the winter. I need to finish splitting a small amount of older wood that can be burned this season. 

I am thankful for the abundance of firewood and for my cousin's steadfast help. I'm thankful to have cleaned up some older downed trees before the wood rotted. I'm thankful for the ability to be out in the woodyard working on laying in firewood. Honest work never hurt anyone. 

It's been a lot of work, and the Lord of the Manor is pretty tired. It's not good for him to overdo it, but he's hung in there with us as best he can. He's now researching log splitter options. Our splitter has a pull rope start, and it's hard to pull. There are splitters that work off the hydraulic system of a tractor and that sounds like the way to go for us. We'll see what the finances are at the first of the year.  

Rural America is, as proved by this past election, ignored. But we are alive and thriving and we will continue to do so as long as we don't embrace the ways of the townies and turn our backs on honest work. I'm proud to be living RURAL.

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor (The Hideaway)

Holly Tree Manor, rural America, country living, a writer's life, firewood, thankfulness, hard work, log splitter, woodyard

 

Leftover soup? Freeze dried it!

Have you noticed how people love to spout statistics at you like you're to blame for whatever it is they're talking about? Me, too. And this is NOT that. It's about not wasting the grocery budget, not feeding the world on the 20% of food gone bad the average household tosses out each year. 

The food that goes bad in my fridge will not feed the world. It won't feed anyone, especially me because that fuzzy stuff growing on it is a deal-breaker, in my opinion. 

But, I digress...

Several years ago the spousal unit and I pledged to make a concerted and serious effort to plan our meals in such a way that we didn't throw as much food on the compost pile. We eased into it by deliberating cooking more to make enough for two meals and then freezing one. That will always work for us, but there are some things that do not freeze well, such as bean soup. Bean soup turns to mush when thawed. 

Now the question is will it be mush when reconstituted after being freeze-dried? It may be a while before we find out. As this was leftover bean soup, it was perfect for the experiment to find out. 

Along with the bean soup, I did several trays of eggs. My complaint about the eggs is that the Mylar bags that came with the Harvest Right freeze dryer are large enough to hold two dozen freeze-dried eggs. I need to get smaller bags as there are only two of us in the household. It will be a while until we dip into that pouch, and I think the solution will be to transfer the eggs to a Mason jar once the bag is opened. I can then vacuum seal the jar. 

We have a new "normal" when it comes to the foods available to us. The grocery stores, even Walmart's grocery, now lack the variety we've become accustomed to. We'll be fine because we have a new way of thinking, and more importantly acting on the steps necessary to have food security. 

I never thought there would come a day when I worried not about being able to purchase food items, but actually finding food items to purchase. It's been a sobering two years. 

We remain thankful for the position we're in. We've worked hard all our lives, worked hard to live debt-free, and we can do things like purchase a freeze dryer and work to secure our future. 

Nothing is ever easy, nor is it free. 

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor (The Hideaway)

No way to judge

Turkey......        check
Potatoes......     check
Stuffing.....    check
Gravy.....        check
Cranberry sauce....    check
Sweet potatoes.....    check
Corn.......       check
Green beans.....    check
Wine.....            check
Bourbon......        check
Pumpkin pie....    check
Butter.....        check
Rolls......    check
Jelly.....    check
Whipped cream....     check
Coffee.....    check

It looks like I have all the ingredients I need in the pantry to fix Thanksgiving dinner for two. It'll be just him and me again this year, and it doesn't bother me much. The world turns. People come and go. Family makeup changes. We take it as it comes.

We are very blessed to be able to look forward to a traditional turkey dinner. Having worked hard all our lives, we were able to get in this position. I got my first job at sixteen, and Himself was working on a farm by the time he was twelve for a dollar a day. In our families, we were expected to work hard just like our parents and grandparents. So we did, and we did it without complaint. Complaining, or acting victimized, were not options. We were not given or taught those options. 

We will give thanks when we sit down at our table because we are thankful.  We'll remember those who came before us who taught us to work hard and manage our resources. My grandparents struggled through the Great Depression and survived. His grandparents had even less. And yet they laid the foundations for us to have a better life, and we do.

He and I do not forget how easily it could have been different. 

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor (The Hideaway)