Maple Sugar Time Again

I don't  know what kind of winter preceding the sap flow is the best for making sweet maple syrup, but I have my own idea.  I like the winters when we have a period or two of very cold temperatures early on, because I can imagine the trees truly going dormant during those periods.  I then imagine the trees trying especially hard to burst back into life later in the winter by producing very sweet sap.

The weather this winter has been such, although I really don't know if it matters.  We had a couple periods in November, from November 13th through the 15th and again 18th through the 22nd, when the highs did not reach much above freezing and the lows got down near the single digits.  We also had a very cold time earlier this month from January 7th through the 11th when the lows were near zero during 4 of those 5 nights.

Anyway, we decided to tap a few of our maple trees again on Monday, Martin Luther King Jr. Day.  Matthew and Simon did the work drilling the holes and inserting the spiles into the trees, but the whole family hiked up to the "sugar bush" to watch.  We only put in 6 taps, but the sap flow was on!  Those 6 taps produced 4 gallons in just a few hours and we started the boiling yesterday.  I'm sure there will be more to come because we are currently in a weather cycle when the days are in the 40s and 50s and the lows are dropping into the 20s at night.

We don't do this every year.  Looking back at my old posts, I see that we've made maple sugar/syrup in just 4 of the previous 7 years: 2008, 2010, 2011, and 2013.  I enjoy doing this, but it is a bit time intensive and some years, things just don't work out for us to do the syrup.  Last year was so extremely cold and snowy and we were busy settling into our move to Pure Water Pastures.  In 2009 we were preoccupied with the home butching of our first hogs and in 2012 the winter was one of the warmest on record and never felt like sugaring weather.  We are just now running out of the syrup we made in 2013, so this seems to be a good year to get back in it!

Surviving the Cold

We got an inch or two of snow Sunday night and then the arctic polar blast hit us Monday and Tuesday. Everything weathered this winter event just fine around here, though. The coldest real temperature we saw on our thermometer was two degrees below zero, but they say that the wind chill temperature was below zero for most of those two days. We used some kerosene heaters, as well as the propane heater and some electric heat in the house at Pure Water Pastures. We also really enjoyed the fireplace! At times, we had parts of the drafty house warmer than need be! The $25 stock tank heater that I purchased last Friday worked incredibly well as the water in that tank never froze at all! The cows at Pure Water Hollow were in the closed up barn with plenty of hay. The cold made it a bit harder on us carrying water and food over there to them, but we managed. The hog just laid around in his pen covered up in hay. The chickens did OK confined to their coop, with the extra hay and the tarp I put up for a wind break. We just had to run water out to them from time to time. I'm a bit concerned about the comb and wattles on our roosters, though. The tips have turned black on both of the roosters and the buff rooster's waddles have darkened. I guess they got frost bit a little. We moved all the rabbits into the shop at Pure Water Pastures and kept their water bottles rotated with thawed out water, so they did fine. The dogs and cats just kept each other warm under the house at Pure Water Hollow. Wednesday the temperatures got up to the 32 degree mark and then Thursday and Friday had highs above freezing. Sort of normal January temperature for us. Today has been rainy, windy, and warm with temperatures in the 50s! I guess there could be plenty more winter ahead of us, but I'm glad to know that we can survive!

Sled Riding at Pure Water Pastures

We got a couple inches of snow last night, much to the delight of Timothy. His snow playing and sled riding time has been limited during his brief 5 years of life, so when he wakes up to a snow it is still a very magical time! He was glad that Simon joined him for a bit of sledding, even though Simon did not stay out as long as Timothy did. It was cold, but at least it was sunny. I took a few pictures of our arctic adventurers as they were braving the cold and having fun. The yard beside the house is a pretty good sled riding hill. Watch out below! Coming down the hill! Here are the two snow loving brothers. Timothy had fun sledding all by himself, too. Timothy was giving a two thumbs up rating for that sled ride down the hill! After playing in the snow it was time for lunch and an afternoon of work. The animals had to be taken care of at Johnson County and there was work to be done in the house there, too, so we all spent the afternoon at Pure Water Hollow. I did run to town to do some banking and get some kerosene. I love getting paid while on vacation! I decided to buy a stock tank heater while I was in town and had money in my pocket. They are predicting a few more inches of snow for Sunday and then below zero temperatures Monday night! Both Monday and Tuesday may only be in the single digits and since we can run an extension cord down to the field at Pure Water Pastures, I thought a tank heater might be a pretty neat feature. It's worth a try, anyway. I'll try to come back here and let you know how it goes.

Moving In and Starting New

It's a new year with new living arrangements for our family, so why not a new blog to record it all in? My previous blog has been our life at our Pure Water Hollow homestead. Now I'm changing focus to our Pure Water Pastures homestead! It's hard to believe that it's been two and half years already since we purchased the property down the road from Pure Water Hollow! But now we are moving in and feel like we are having a new start, of sorts. It was way back on June 15th, 2011 when we handed the $77,000 over to Virgie and filed the deed at the courthouse in our name. I thought it was a good price for 30 acres, a barn and a house. Virgie kept living in the house for some time and we were not in any hurry to move her out, but we did make use of the land beginning that summer. The front part of the house was built around 1900, perhaps even the late 1890s. It has 4 bedrooms and a large shop/garage connected to the back. The most useful part of the land we now call Pure Water Pastures is a couple of acres of flat land that was in hay. We used the hay for our animals those first two summers. I don't have a tractor of my own yet, so we hired some neighbors from across the river to cut, rake, and bail the hay for us in square bales. During 2012 we kept busy at Pure Water Hollow and didn't do much work to the house here. Erica, our oldest daughter lived in it for part of the year, but other than that we just used the field and barn. 2013 was the year that we began to make some good changes at Pure Water Pastures with a large fencing project in the fields and moving in some animals. Matthew, our oldest son, also worked periodically on a major re-construction job on part of the house throughout the year. The end of 2013 saw the family moving in to the house and we celebrated the holidays in the charm of our old farmhouse under construction! We still have very much work that we want to do in the house, but we decided to move on in anyway. We are actually spread out between the two properties right now, which we plan on continuing as we gradually get more and more settled into the new house. We still have many of our animals at Pure Water Hollow Homestead, so we will continue going there regularly to tend to them. Since I'm beginning this blog with a fresh start I hope to be filling in details of our life and family as I go along. I mainly just wanted to get a start with this post today and see what a second blog might look like. I believe I will be having much to record about our transition to Pure Water Pastures and the re-modeling project that is in the works! Happy New Year!

In case anyone has been wondering, the blogger webpage has not been cooperating with my computer since July. I check back every few weeks, but the same problems persist. I can still post in the html mode, but it is harder and not very fun. I have passed up so many good posts now, that I don't know if it will be possible to catch up! But since I am missing my blog and have many pictures and events that I would like to record, I may try soon to return and put up with the mess that this computer and web-site is causing me.

That's Pretty Cool!

How about a summer weather post? It seems that this has been an unusual summer, so I decided to record a few of my thoughts. So far we have had a fairly mild summer with a lot of rain. We saw our thermometers reach 90 only a few times in all of June and the first half of July, although we have had some very humid days to go along with all the storms. The heavy rains have been the most notable weather events this summer. I wish I had kept track of all the days in which we have had a down-pour! According to the National Weather Service, our area had 6.45 inches of rain in June compared to a 4.26 inch June average for rain. They say we are already at the July average of 4.28 inches of rain and we are just half way through the month!

The good news about all the rain is the fact that we have not had to water our garden. The bad news is the fact that the garden has gotten pounded very hard during several hard rains, winds, and even hail one day when a small tornado touched down not too far away from us! It was 92 degrees today and the weather man thinks this will be a very hot and humid week with temps in the 90s everyday, and the "heat index" into the 100s. The chances for rain are low until the end of the week.

Every summer I hold off getting the air conditioners out for as long as possible. We figure if the house is too cool, no one will want to be outside working and playing and enjoying the summer. We are blessed with a lot of shade around our house, and the hills keep the sun from shining directly on us for very long, so we tend to stay fairly comfortable. Only one night have I been uncomfortable sleeping, and that was a few weeks ago at the end of June. The day time teperature had been 90 degrees beginning in the early morning, followed by a 20 minute hard rain shower in the afternoon which brought in some oppressive humidity when the sun blared the temperature back up to 90! That night we slept with no covers but I awoke sweating around 1:30 in the morning. When I looked at the thermometer outside it was showing 80 degrees! I don't even know what the temperature was in the house, but that night it wouldn't have even helped much to sleep outside. That was the first time I thought we should get out the old faithful window air conditioner. But the next day was not too hot and I actually didn't think about it again. Until today....

Today was actually not very uncomfortable, but I was in town and heard folks talking about the terrible heat and how bad it was going to get this week. If I had not run several errands today, I would not have realized the dire danger we were facing! It began this morning. We watched Matthew, Christina, and Simon do a martial arts demonstration at a local day care and the workers there mentioned how hot it was going to get. At Walmart I overheard a couple men talking about the heat. After Walmart I stopped to pick up some cattle feed and the fellow at the feed store told me that things were going to get unbearable because of the heat. Next stop was for the Impala panel that was damaged last month when we hit a deer and the guy at the junk yard asked us if it was hot enough for us. We also needed some things from Auto Zone and one of the workers there had a good attitude about the heat. He said it was going to be hot, but that he would rather have the sunny days instead of the rain no matter how hot it got!

Well, all this talk about heat led me to look up the weather forecast and I found out there was a heat advisory on for our area. It also said this: "PRECAUTIONS ARE URGED FOR THOSE ENGAGED IN OUTDOOR ACTIVITIES THIS WEEK... PARTICULARLY DURING THE HOTTEST PARTS OF THE DAY. DRINK PLENTY OF FLUIDS... STAY OUT OF THE SUN AND... IF POSSIBLE... STAY IN AN AIR- CONDITIONED ROOM." Well, I guess they talked me into it, because after carrying a couple of 100 pound bags of feed to the barn and feeding the bulls and Gracie, I got the window air conditioners out of storage, and brought them home. I brought two for upstairs, one for the boys room and one for the girls room. These were newer ones I bought last year to use in the Lawrence county house. I also brought home the old faithful Fedders unit for our living room.  That air conditioner is beginning to take on the aura of a legend!

Now for my air conditioner commercial. I bought this Fedders window air conditioner back in 1989 in Richmond Kentucky at a Rose's store that has since gone out of business. That summer we purchased and moved into a very hot 12x67 mobile home. I guess we used this Fedders air conditioner pretty heavily for 3 summers in that trailer, and it did a great job. We took it with us when we moved to Eastern Kentucky, even though we had central air in the mobile home we rented during '92.  But I'm pretty sure we have used it sometime during every summer since 1993 when we moved here to Pure Water Hollow! It is still doing a great job cooling right now as well, even though it is 24 years old! Maybe I'm strange, but well made products from previous decades still make me smile and reminisce about the "good old days" when American manufacturers and workers still took pride in things they produced!

It will be nice being able to have a cooler house on the very hot days, but we will be sure to not let the air-conditioners spoil us.  There is still too much work to do and fun to have outside!

Let's Go to the Movies!

I decided that the Pure Water Hollow crew needed a little break from all the mowing, gardening, fencing and farm chores, so last night we enjoyed a rare "night on the town"!  We ventured over to a town we seldom visit in a neighboring county.  We ate at a quaint diner/dairy bar and then found the movie theater located in the community center.

This is the Roy F. Collier Community Center in Inez which houses, among many other things, a movie theater!  It is a nicer and cleaner movie theater than the one in Paintsville.  The place we ate was across the street, so even though it took too long for them to bring our food out we were just minutes away from the movie.

I had originally planned on taking the family all the way over to the Mountain View Drive-In movie theater in Stanton to watch the new movie, "Monsters University", but there was a threat of thunder storms.  I doubt a drive-in movie would be very much fun in the rain!  Two years ago we went to that drive-in and watched the Pixar movie "Cars2".  We took our one-ton with the large 12 foot flat bed so there was room for the whole family.  We set up our chairs and cushions on the truck, ate pizza, and enjoyed the movie.  That was a lot of fun, and I was hoping to do it again this summer.  But, the possibility of rain took my thoughts in a different direction.

Thinking about "Monsters University", I realized that it was being shown in both the 2D or 3D formats.  This may sound odd to those of you who go to the movies all the time, but my family had never seen a movie in the now popular 3D format.  Instead of going to the drive-in, this would be our first movie experience in 3D!

Actually, Christina and Simon had seen Toy Story 3 in 3D when they stayed with Grandma up in Cincinnati during the summer of 2010, but Monsters University would be the first 3D movie that we would see together as a family.

I was pleased with the 3D and everyone had a great time!  I still have many of my old viewmaster reels that we get out and look at every now and then and this movie made me feel like I was watching a viewmaster reel with movement!  How fun! 

Actually I was surprised how quickly I got used to the 3D effects.  I realized this when I noticed that I was no longer being amazed, even though the picture was still in very life-like 3D.  If the 3D trend fizzles out, this would probably be the reason, coupled with the higher cost.  (I can't believe I actually paid $9 for each ticket.  $54 for my family just to see a movie, not counting any refreshments, is rather steep!  But my wonderful family deserves a treat every once in a while, and I thank God for blessing me with the means to make it possible!)

I wanted to get a picture of us in the movie theater with our glasses on. Christina really enjoyed the movie, even though she did not think it was "cool" to have her picture taken in the theater with the glasses on!  I'm glad she still puts up with me! 

The 3D glasses sure have come a long way since I was a teenager!  For the one or two movies in 3D that I saw in the 80s we had white cardboard glasses with one red lens and the other blue, if I remember correctly.  Talk about a "not cool" fashion statement!

In the same building as the movie theater, there was a McDonald's play place, which was pretty neat.  No restaurant, just the play area!  After the movie, Timothy had to try it out some.

  That's Timothy up there in the tube and also flying an airplane.

This is a picture of the seating area next to the play place.  Lisa and Simon are looking up at Timothy.

And here is Timothy at the bottom of one of the tube slides.  He had a great time playing here and I think he may have enjoyed this more than seeing the movie!  (Wouldn't you know he would have more fun with something free than something that cost money?)


But enough of play time!  Let's get back to some more work around the homestead!

Our Cows

I've not shown the cows in a while so I thought I would snap a few pics when they visited us down here at the house a couple days ago.  It was a beautiful sunny day!

 Rosebud is over 3 months old now, and doing great!  She has certainly grown!

There have not been any changes in Violet or Dandelion.  If Violet was really bred when we got her, she should be calving any time now.  I'm starting to have my doubts.

Here's all three of them together.  You can tell that Violet is a much bigger cow than Dandelion, but I don't think she looks pregnant.  Apparently it is pretty normal to be able to see the rib cages in Jersey cows, even when they are healthy. 

They decided to line up to show their different sizes: small, medium and large!

We've been working on  fencing a large portion of our hillside for them this summer.  It's been a long-going project but we get a little more complete everyday!  Other than that and waiting for Violet to calve, there is not much to report on the cows, so this is a rather brief post.

Chick Update

A mixture of fun and frustrating is how I could sum up the chick raising process for us this summer.  I decided I would give an update now that we are probably at the mid-point.

Yesterday I took some pictures of our latest chicks to hatch.  This White Rock hen hatched 14 chicks on June 21st, so they were 5 days old yesterday afternoon in these pictures, and doing great.  It was fun to see so many chicks hatch! 

13 chicks were dark and 1 was white.  I use the past tense terms because tragedy struck her brood last night.  Lisa saw a hawk attack at dusk while she was in the garden, but the mama and chicks went into their box so we couldn't see how many of the 14 made it.  I don't know how many chicks a hawk could take at one time.  Maybe something else besides that one attack had happened also?  But this morning there are only 7 chicks with this mama, 6 dark and that 1 white one.  There was another dark chick left in the nest dead with an apparent broken neck.  How did that happen?  It is very frustrating to go from 14 to 7 in one evening.

Meanwhile, Buffy still has kept all 12 of her brood, not loosing a single one (yet).  All 12 are dark, but are showing some pretty markings.  They hatched June 12th so they are 14 days old in these pictures.  They have been very fun to watch.

The first chicks to hatch this year are now 25 days old and so much bigger!  Of the 11 original chicks, this White Rock hen is down to just 5; 3 dark and 2 white.  You can see in the above pictures what a pretty pattern two of the dark ones now have.  I think they are both cockerals.  The other dark one is staying pretty much black.  I wrote about the 5 that got taken by the coon and then the very next day, Matthew saw a hawk flying off with another of the chicks!  It was frustrating that while we had the coon captured in the cage, we see a hawk swoop right down above the coon and take another chick!

On another frustrating note yesterday.  One of the White Rock hens that had been setting on a nest since June 16th walked off the job yesterday.  I had been noticing that she seemed to be neglecting her nest more and more the past few days, but now she seems to be done with it altogether.  So those 15 eggs are now no good to eat or to hatch.  (At least they will still be a benefit for the pigs!)

We also found the black hen that I knew had a clutch of eggs somewhere in the wild.  For the past three weeks or so I would see her for a few minutes as she got food and water, but she would always disappear before I could see where she goes.  And then yesterday afternoon, Simon heard chicken sounds under our house right next to the back porch!  We were able to peak under the house and saw the hen, some eggs, and at least one, wet chick!  How fun!

But... it seems that our mama cat was also interested in the strange sounds coming from under the house.  After dark, we heard some wild chick peeping sounds like something was getting them!  We didn't exactly see Fritsie or the kittens with any chicks when we looked all around, but the kitten Puff was not very hungry for the can food when we decided to give it to them.  Not fun!  I hope we gave them enough food that they were full all night and left the mama hen and nest alone!  The nest is in a location that would be very difficult for us to get at and move, and since the eggs were just hatching we thought it would be a bad idea to move them anyway.  At first I thought she was a smart hen for picking that place because it is too tight an area for the dogs to get in, and I know that Luna eats eggs if she can find them!   I guess later today we will be able to see if any of those chicks survived their first day of life, or if our cats continued to feast!  If they can get hatched and established, I think the mama hen will be able to keep the cats away like the other mama hens do.

In addition to the hen under the house, we still have 3 other hens setting on nests as of this morning.  A black hen is setting on 10 eggs in a nest we made in an old hamper and they should hatch this Saturday, the 29th.  A White Rock hen has 7 eggs in the dog house that should hatch the following weekend, and another White Rock hen has a clutch of 14 eggs in a cage set to hatch on July 12th.  I'm sure they will each give us a mixture of fun and frustrating experiences during the upcoming weeks, but I hope they will be mostly fun!

If you are keeping up with our chick count, we now have 24 living chicks between the 3 mama hens as of this writing.  Maybe there are more with the hen under the house.  I'm sure we will have some additional frustrating losses as the summer moves on, but hopefully we will also get to enjoy some more fun hatches as well. 

You know, after thinking about it, those words "fun" and "frustrating" are two words that pretty much describe every aspect of our entire homesteading adventure!  Life sure is complicated, isn't it?

The Way of Holiness

Our church service this morning was opened by our assistant pastor with Isaiah 35:3-10.  After many songs , prayers, and testimonies I was asked to take the pulpit.  I was blessed to speak on how "the way of holiness" begins right here and now for the Christian, jumping off from the Isaiah verses and using Ephesians chapter 4 verses 23 through chapter 5 verse 7 as my text.  Instead of typing out a sermon or any lengthy comments, I feel like just recording the Holy Scripture for this post, and allowing the verses to speak for themselves.  These are both awesome passages!

Isaiah 35:3-10

3 Strengthen ye the weak hands, and confirm the feeble knees.

4 Say to them that are of a fearful heart, Be strong, fear not: behold, your God will come with vengeance, even God with a recompence; he will come and save you.

5 Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped.

6 Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing: for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert.

7 And the parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water: in the habitation of dragons, where each lay, shall be grass with reeds and rushes.

8 And an highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called The way of holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it; but it shall be for those: the wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein.

9 No lion shall be there, nor any ravenous beast shall go up thereon, it shall not be found there; but the redeemed shall walk there:

10 And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads: they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

Ephesians 4:23-5:7

23 And be renewed in the spirit of your mind;

24 And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.

25 Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour: for we are members one of another.

26 Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath:

27 Neither give place to the devil.

28 Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth.

29 Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers.

30 And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.

31 Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice:

32 And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.

5:1 Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children;

2 And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour.

3 But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not be once named among you, as becometh saints;

4 Neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor jesting, which are not convenient: but rather giving of thanks.

5 For this ye know, that no whoremonger, nor unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.

6 Let no man deceive you with vain words: for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience.

7 Be not ye therefore partakers with them.


Thank you, Lord, for your Word and for our Saviour Jesus Christ, who makes the way of true holiness possible!  He is, after all, The Way!