August – ABSOLUTELY No Rhyme or Reason

August 1, 2016August 1, 2016 Jeanne at No Rhyme or Reason Farm Chester County, Farm, Homestead

We have just a little farm – and along with that has come a variety of “accessories” needed to help maintain the farm – a small John Deere tractor, a chain saw, a chipper/shredder, a snow blower – the normal, everyday variety of “guy toys” that require gas and someone strong enough to yank the cord to get things going. Power tools. I get it.

But now we’ve moved into a new realm. A pick-up truck — a big 4-door, silver, Silverado, with a back seat. The truck is nearly as big as the farm itself and just barely squeaks into the garage. Apparently this became a necessity to haul hay for the two horses that reside in our pasture. Mind you, our hay provider is barely five miles away and is more than happy to deliver a truck load for barely more than $19. It takes a LOT of $19.00 hay deliveries to equate to the price of a new pick-up truck. In fact, I think it would be about 2,315 hay delivery charges!

So, now we have a farm truck. To me, a farm truck should look beat up and muddy. It’s a badge of honor; it shows how hard the truck has worked. This truck looks like it just stepped out of the beauty salon – everything is picture perfect, not a blemish, not a scratch. I can only imagine how long that will last, and how upset Chris will be with the first ding, the first scratch in the bed liner or a spill in the extended cab.

But it fits right in – there is ABSOLUTELY No Rhyme or Reason for this truck – other than it’s a guy thing. So why not, it’s No Rhyme or Reason Farm.

DSCN7145 — Here he comes home in the “lumbering giant” that barely fits between our tree-lined driveway.

DSCN7132 — It does fit into the garage (thanks Forest Ridge Builders for building such a BIG garage!).

DSCN7127 — But here’s some sticker shock.

July — What lurks on the farm?

July 27, 2016July 27, 2016 Jeanne at No Rhyme or Reason Farm Chester County, Farm, Homestead

We’ve been clearing land. We could clear land until the day we die and we’ll never clear it all. It’s hard work, but it feels productive at the end of the day when you step back and see the progress.

The problem is, there is a lot to contend with as we bushwhack our way through the brambles, briars, vines and spindly trees. The first problem is the thorns. They rip up our arms and legs. I look like I was in a fight with a cat – and the cat won. The second problem is poison ivy. As careful as I am, if I even look at the stuff, it sends out feelers and attacks me. The third problem is ticks. They crawl on the grass, they fall out of the trees, and they carry Lyme Disease. The fourth problem is “things.” “Things” like a box turtle, a weird frog – and a SNAKE.

Chris was running the trimmer into the tall brambles, oblivious to my screaming, running, and flailing of arms. I climbed up the back of him like I was climbing a tree. I wrapped myself around his shoulders and my legs around his waist – because I wasn’t leaving my feet within striking distance of that SNAKE. He looked at me like I’d lost my mind.

I explained there was a SNAKE, a huge, long snake with BIG yellow stripes and it was looking right at me. And it looked hungry! I pointed out the direction it was headed.

“Where?” he asked, looking for a huge, long snake with big yellow stripes.

“Right there,” I insisted.

“It’s just a little garter snake,” he said, unimpressed, but I noticed he started pushing around in the brambles with a long handled rake after that.

I went to Home Depot and bought one of those Tyvek outfits. They’re cute. They’re a white, one-piece jump suit intended to be worn when you are painting. The problem is, they only come in extra large, so I lopped off the bottom of the legs and the extra long arms (that didn’t fix the problem that the crotch came to about my knees). I donned my new attire, tucked the pant legs inside of tall white socks, and figured this would solve problems one through four (above).

For the second time that day, Chris looked at me like I’d lost my mind, tried to hide his laughter and said I looked like I escaped from a mental institution.

I guess that’s what working on the farm will do to you.

The frog -- hopping away — A weird frog, hopping away…

DSCN6920 — And a snake skin! I didn’t get a picture of the real snake, I was too busy running away!

And MORE Bats!

July 19, 2016July 19, 2016 Jeanne at No Rhyme or Reason Farm Chester County, Garden, Homestead, Uncategorized

What is it with zucchini? If you miss one day in the garden, those sweet little miniature zucchinis that are smaller than the blossom still hanging on to the end of them suddenly turn into monster-sized zucchini baseball bats.

I prefer the zucchini somewhere in between the two – a little bigger than just two bites, but not so big that they are six inches in diameter, full of seeds and the length of my arm. When they get that big, there is nothing else to do with them except…bake zucchini bread!

I love zucchini bread, but I’m not sure why it’s called bread because it probably has more sugar and fat than most cakes! It’s an unhealthy mess, with a scant two cups of grated zucchini to add beautiful flecks of green – just so I can pretend it is healthy. A bowl of mint chocolate chip ice cream is green too – and probably more healthy than zucchini bread.

But given the over abundance from the garden, what’s a person to do?

DSCN6885 — One day’s haul from the farm — 5 eggs, cucumbers, peppers, shallots, potatoes, yellow squash, a few small zucchini — and a couple of baseball bat-sized zucchini because I turned my back on them for ONE day.

BATS! And I’m not talkin’ baseball…

July 16, 2016July 19, 2016 Jeanne at No Rhyme or Reason Farm Bats, Chester County, Homestead

I do love the fact that the farm has a variety of wildlife. We love watching the deer wander through and stop for drink by the stream. The rabbits are a bit frisky right now, chasing each other and playing some version of leap frog in the back yard. The birds start chirping early in the morning and have alleviated any need for an alarm clock. It’s a lively place.

A little too lively.

About two weeks ago, I noticed some “clutter” on our front porch. For a moment, I thought maybe it looked like droppings, but it seemed an unlikely place for a rodent, adjacent to our front door. I looked up into the rafters, and there was nothing there – so I swept it away. The next day there was more, and then more.

When my daughter arrived for dinner one night, I showed her our new curiosity. “Bats,” she proclaimed.

BATS! Nesting between the roof of the porch and the exterior (thank goodness) wall of the house. Mind you, they’d have to get through 18 inches of stone to get INTO the house, but still, between the porch roof and the exterior of the house is just too close for comfort.

I used to like sitting on the front porch.

I’ve asked Chris to seal that space with “Great Stuff” or barbed wire or whatever it takes to keep them out of there. He thinks it’s cool that we have bats and is happy to sit on a mosquito free porch. I’d rather have mosquitoes.

We’ve compromised. I’ll get a bat house that we can mount on a tree on some part of the farm that I NEVER visit, and this winter, when the bats are gone – he’ll seal up that space so that they can’t return there.

In the meantime, I’m only sitting on the porch in a hoodie sweatshirt and long pants.

DSCN6902 — An inviting front door…not where I want to find bats!

DSCN6903 — Nesting up between the porch roof and the side of the house.

DSCN6837 — And leaving this mess every morning to welcome anyone who dares to venture onto our porch.

July — The Bone Collector

July 10, 2016 Jeanne at No Rhyme or Reason Farm Chester County, Homestead, Uncategorized

We found the skull of some sort of animal – probably a fox, a while ago. And we’ve dug up an assortment of soup bones, cow bones and “who knows what” bones as we’ve been clearing the property. I know there are bones around, yet it’s always a bit startling to be raking leaves and uncover bones. In the front meadow alone I’ve found two such “burial grounds” for whatever they may have been.

It has happened often enough that Chris’ friend Len provided the proper attire for clearing our property of bones — a “Bone Collector” shirt. Now I hand him his shirt and a shovel and tell him I’ve found more…

Here is the most recent find.

DSCN6461 — Couldn’t have been that big of an animal, maybe 30 inches long — ribs, back bone, etc. — scattered across the ground. I guess finding the bones is better than finding a dead animal!

DSCN6848 — A box of bones — what’s a bone collector to do with all these bones?

June – It’s Electrifying

June 30, 2016 Jeanne at No Rhyme or Reason Farm Chester County, chickens, Goat, Homestead, Horses, Uncategorized

It would be an understatement to say that the “Three Musketeers” – Disa (the Norwegian Fjord Horse), Pono (a miniature horse) and Fiona (our goat) – REALLY enjoy their pasture. In fact, they’ve chomped it down to the roots.

We realized that we probably needed to divide the pasture in half, so they can graze on one side, and let the other side recuperate!

Being novices at all of this, we made a trip to Tractor Supply to look into electric fence tape. In this modern digital age, the aisle of electric fence supplies also offered a free “Instructional DVD” on installing electric fences. We figured it would be really complicated if you had to take home a DVD to figure out how to do this.

As it turns out, it wasn’t that hard (well, it wasn’t hard for me, because Chris did the work). He put in the plastic fence posts, a couple of ground posts, strung the electrified tape, flipped on the power – and voila – we had a divided pasture.

That was the easy part.

The hard part has been keeping (mis)chievious – “Miss” Fiona (the “Miss” is for Mischievous) from jumping through the fence. I guess the grass is always greener on the other side. At first Chris would corral her back to the permitted side of the pasture. Eventually we gave up. After all, one little goat can’t eat all that much newly growing grass – can she?

DSCN6725 — The Three Musketeers — Disa, Pono and “Miss” Fiona

DSCN6716 — A nice run of an electric fence — they’ll never cross that!

DSCN6714 — Chris’ ingenious “MacGyver” invention to keep the electric charger from getting wet — it’s inside a plastic shoe box.

DSCN6763 — The grass really is greener on the other side — as it recuperates and has a chance to re-grow.

DSCN6760 — Disa better watch her tail, it’s getting a little close to the fence.

June – Mutiny FROM the Bounty

June 26, 2016June 26, 2016 Jeanne at No Rhyme or Reason Farm Chester County, chickens, Homestead, Uncategorized

If you’ve been following the blog, you know we have five girls – hens, that is. They are coddled and taken care of like they are part of the family. In return, they give us five eggs a day.

They have a beautiful coop, fresh water and plenty of chicken food. We visit them at least twice a day and give them a BOUNTY of chicken scratch and kitchen scraps (like strawberry tops, lettuce leaves, asparagus stalks, etc.). In the winter they get a night light and a heat lamp when it’s cold.

It was with a lot of anxiety the first time we let them out of the coop to “free range” for an hour or so. They strut and scratch at the dirt, gobble up bugs and peck at the leaves. They enjoy their time out of the coop, and Chris had pretty much trained them to a yellow, children’s size hoe. I read that in a blog somewhere. They used a yellow child’s hoe to gently corral the hens back into their coop, and over time, all they had to do was lift the yellow hoe and the hens would run back to the coop.

Our hens aren’t quite that cooperative. One scout hen usually returns to the coop, checks to see if their “treat” is there yet (a can of cracked corn), and then alerts the rest of the girls that it is time to come back in. Those other hens usually needed a little nudging with the yellow hoe to get them back in the coop, but we had a good routine going.

Until last Sunday.

We worked hard all day clearing brush on the hillside, took a shower and decided to settle in with a cold drink down by the chicken coop and let the girls have a run. And run they did. For the first time ever they headed for the hills into the thick, impenetrable (for humans) brush — overgrown bushes full of thorns, poison ivy and ticks. Off they went for an adventure.

No amount of calling, shaking the can of corn, begging or pleading would bring them back. Chris and I both made attempts to climb through the brush, got cut by thorns, whacked in the face with branches, and probably brushed up against poison ivy. Finally we called the search and rescue off and decided they would either come home, or they wouldn’t.

It was a quiet dinner that night while we mourned the loss of our chickens. Chris felt guilty for turning his back on them for a few seconds. I was busy trying to rethink what’s for dinner this week since we probably wouldn’t be having quiche on Tuesday night. And we kept taking turns getting up to check and see if they were back in the coop yet.

Finally, about 7:30, they came marching back, on their own, and went right into the coop. I figured they would, even though I worried that they wouldn’t. I mean where else would they get such tender loving care. There’s no place like home.

We’ve grounded them, at least for a while, or until Chris recovers from almost losing his girls.

DSCN6786 — The thicket into which our girls disappeared.

DSCN6787 — You can just catch sight of a brown hen, but she wasn’t coming out.

DSCN6789 — Chris with his yellow hoe, trying to talk chicken & convince the girls to come back to the coop.

June – Sacrificing the First Born

June 21, 2016June 21, 2016 Jeanne at No Rhyme or Reason Farm Chester County, Homestead, Strawberries

There is a theory about strawberry plants that if you don’t let them bear fruit the first year, they will put down better roots, become better established plants and produce better/larger fruit the following year. I get the principal of it, but pinching off blossoms and berries in the first year is hard to do. It’s like sacrificing the first born, hoping the 2^nd born will be better for it. I’m a first born, so I’ll leave it at that…

I lopped off those blossoms and berries and got zero yield this year. No strawberries for jam or to freeze for my morning yogurt or to go with my evening ice cream? Clearly unacceptable! So we went to Highland Orchards (again) and picked twelve pounds of berries that are so sweet they taste like cotton candy.

Trimmed, washed and frozen on cookie sheets – I dumped them into Ziploc bags and now – thank goodness I can have fruit with my ice cream at night (so I can at least pretend that it’s healthy!).

And I’ll wait until next year to see if the 2^nd born turns out better for sacrificing the first year’s growth. The jury is still out on that.

DSCN6768 — The strawberry plants have grown since I planted them.

DSCN6739 — It’s such a shame to pinch these off, hoping for a better crop next year.

DSCN6728 — Our pick-your-own haul of 8 quarts

DSCN6730 — Highland Orchards has reusable pick-your-own buckets, so we’ll go back with these when it’s blueberry season.

DSCN6733 — Frozen and ready to stick in the freezer.

DSCN6738 — The strawberry tops, ready to give the “girls.” Our hens love kitchen scraps.

June – Mud Sales

June 11, 2016June 12, 2016 Jeanne at No Rhyme or Reason Farm Chester County, Renovations Mud Sales

A friend told me about Mud Sales. My first thought was – no thanks, we have plenty of our own. But these auctions, held rain or shine, are sometimes muddy and are prevalent throughout the Lancaster County area in the spring and fall.

We’ve been talking about going for months now, but with the rainy weather – the Mud Sales have been especially muddy – and we’ve been busy with our own muddy mess. But we finally made it to one. The Honeybrook Mud Sale was just a holler’ up the road.

Despite getting there early, we had to park a distance away and shuttle in on a school bus. The place was teeming with activity and it took a while to get our bearings. We wandered from buildings to tents to fields checking out the auctions – plants & shrubs, old tools & new; antiques, sheds & picnic benches, crafts and box lots of household items. But the best building had food! And lots of it – doughnuts and soft pretzels and soups and sandwiches and pizza and barbecue and ice cream and milkshakes and…more than I could eat in a day, though I gave it a good try.

We registered for our auction number “just in case” and settled in to watch. I had to get reacquainted with the process – it’s been years since I’ve been to a farm auction, and the lingo takes some getting used to. I’m partial to quilts – it’s where I wanted to spend my time. Chris was more into the tools, farm implements and sheds. The food building was conveniently located between the two. We’d watch his auction for a while, stop for a snack and then go to the quilt auction, then stop for a snack and go back to the farm implements for a while – and so went the day.

The sales provide an interesting blend of stuff to buy and an out-of-the ordinary blend of people. The Amish arrive by buggy and tether their horses on one side of the parking lot; pick-up trucks, motorcycles and minivans fill the other side. Two very different worlds; one big Mud Sale.

Somehow, we managed not to buy anything (except for everything in the food building), but now we’re full of buyers’ remorse – the kind where we sorry we didn’t buy anything. So, next week, we’ll be back at another Mud Sale!

The other side is full of mini-vans, trucks and motorcylces.

And even buggies for sale, if you’re in need of one.

November – The Master “Suite”

November 12, 2015 Jeanne at No Rhyme or Reason Farm After, Before, Chester County, Renovations Farmhouse, Homestead, Renovation

The upstairs of this house was a mess. The carpet was filthy. Walking across it left footprints in the dirt that had rained down from the attic. The bathroom was disgusting. The toilet had a rag stuffed in it. The tub was falling off the wall. The linoleum was peeling. It wasn’t very pleasant.

As with everything else, it just took a plan. We knocked down the wall between the two small rooms and turned it into one gracious space. It was definitely one of the better decisions we made. The Master Bedroom is spacious and full of light with two windows facing the front yard and two windows facing the back. Out the front window, we watch the activity at the bird-feeder (we have Nuthatches, Cardinals, Wrens, Blue Jays, Red-bellied Woodpeckers, Downy Woodpeckers, and squirrels who apparently think they are birds). Out the back window we watch the deer who graze their way through the backyard at dusk every evening. And I can use the tiny “back-stairs” to go directly from the Master Bedroom to the Kitchen, should I have a midnight snack attack — how convenient.

We reconfigured a closet that was in the bathroom and opened it up in the bedroom instead. It wasn’t an easy task for John and his crew. The wall was two feet thick and solid rock; it took some muscle to knock it down. In the bathroom we converted the nasty tub into a walk-in shower, added a floor to ceiling cabinet for a linen closet and a bathroom vanity with lots of drawer space!

And then here was the tiny room at the other end of the hall. It’s wasn’t really big enough for a bedroom. It was a little too big for a closet (though visions of a wonderful room-sized closet did cross my mind). It became the perfect spot for a quiet retreat and a home office. The ceiling is low in this room. It’s only 80″ tall (that’s 6’8″). We bought bookcases that are 78″ tall. I held my breath as we moved them in to place, I wasn’t sure they would fit. But they did, just barely. In fact, they look like “built-ins,” and they are the perfect place to display tchotchkes from our various trips. It looks like it was meant to be just like this. Not just the upstairs, but the whole house. It was meant to be our home.