December 22, 2022 - Day 25

Today I had my Good Friend Christmas gift exchange and coffee date. 

Every year for many years I have been meeting up with a couple of friends, really good friends, like 20+ years friends to exchange gifts. It took a while before we decided to go out for coffee - and it's been a lot of years before we could do this during the day. This year friend #3 retired, so it was a morning coffee date! This works for me, since I end up waking up so early most days and go to bed early most of the time. So, we met up at Latte Da in Vancouver and spent an hour or so catching up and drinking coffee and enjoying good fellowship. We met up early instead of at lunch which is what sounded like fun to me. Newly retired friend wanted to get a head start on her travel to Southern Oregon for Christmas with her folks and there was a severe weather storm in the forecast. We drank our coffee, opened our gifts and then went our separate ways. 

On my way home I dropped by WinCo to get some treats for the pigs. I scored by finding a 25 pound bag of juicing carrots and some cheap apples. Normally I would look for organic produce, but it's Christmas and I wanted to just grab whatever was available and get the heck out of there. The church food pantry had bags of baby carrots so I grabbed a bag and did a little extra "shopping" and then went home. 

This was the extent of my exciting day - nothing terribly exciting - except my Good Friend Christmas.

This will be the last post until next Monday. I'm going to give myself a break this weekend and enjoy the holiday weekend. 

Merry Christmas! See you next week...

Crafty

Sewing has been something that I have dabbled in for over 25 years. Ever since my first project in high school when I had to sew from a pattern a piece of clothing. Which, by the way, was a skirt. It was just a project for a class and I didn't wear that skirt, because back then I didn't wear dresses or skirts.  I chose a skirt because it would be easy-ish and also included the requirements for the piece. A zipper and a buttonhole, neither of which I have done since then. 

It's been many years since that first real sewing project. Also, it's been a few years between then and my first Singer sewing machine. It was the most basic machine ever, but an upgrade from the sewing machine that my mom had. I sometimes wish that I had grabbed that machine when I left home, but who knew that I would be knee deep in fabric and creating projects here and there. 

It has been a few years since my last quilt project - so many that I don't remember what I made and who it was for. Working full time did not allow the kind of time I wanted to devote to sitting at my sewing machine. There were plenty of other things that seemed more important at the time, so sewing did not happen a whole lot. Every now and then I would get inspiration and found a quick project that involved fabric and minimal sewing so I didn't totally abandon my sewing machine or fabric. 

Last fall I was over at Craft Warehouse during my lunch break from work and I came across some cute 5x5 charm packs. After checking them all out and finding an Atkinson Designs pattern called Mini Brick Road (the full size Yellow Brick Road pattern is a fave). At that time I decided I would make special gifts for my two closest and dearest friends for Christmas. I love to create gifts for friends and I didn't realize how fast time would go and that there would be NO time to even set aside for these two projects. 

Now that I'm retired - have I mentioned that before now? It's pretty awesome... Anyway now that I have all sorts of time for all of the things, I can work on sewing projects now. This pretty table runner went together quickly and when I was ready to sandwich it for quilting I figured out that in my plethora of fabric there wasn't anything that would actually make sense as a backing. Another trip to Craft Warehouse? Dang! A half yard of a fabric from the same fabric line as the charm pack was all I needed, but I got a full yard to have extra for my stash, obviously.

Blah, blah, blah...ta-daaa - the quilt is done. 

Honestly, this quilt is not perfect and I forgot how to do the binding, but I'm not perfect. Perfection is over-rated anyway. Even so, I know that it will be appreciated and cherished because it was handmade and the colors and theme fit my friend perfectly. Happy dance! 

When I make gifts for friends and family it allows me time to focus on that person and to pray for them and be thankful for our relationship. This particular project didn't take a ton of time, but I did think about my friend a lot and that was a good thing. Part of that time she was on vacation and away, so I kept her close to my heart while working on this. I'm looking forward to giving this to her!

I look forward to my next project for another dear friend. The time that I can pray for that person will be time well spent. In farm life there is time for crafting and to spend thinking about and praying for friends. 

Farm life is a blessed life. 

End of the Week...YAY

A few weeks ago a friend of ours who had just stopped by our house reported to me that there was a bunny in the garden.

oh fine.

I had specifically gotten a short fence to go around the garden. For a while it was working just fine. No bunnies that I could tell. There were deer, but there wasn't much for them to feast on.

Now that we were aware of the bunny I started to realize that I really would like to have a green bean harvest. The beans were really the only thing that was being eaten. I'm not sure if the bunnies were doing the damage or the deer.

Hmmm...what should I do?

Solution: Use a few of the bamboo hoop things and use some netting to keep the bunnies out. Ran into a problem though, I ran out of netting after covering up 4 of the plants.

Well , dadgum.

Off to Parkrose! A bag of popcorn and $10 later I was back in business....got home and finished up my project.

This should do it! The netting doesn't show up, but it's there. In the week that since I got this done the beans have been looking really good. There might even be some beans to pick for dinner this weekend.

Tonight was a no outside project time for me. Had a couple of friends come over for games, but we ended up walking outside and doing a farm critter update. Then into the house the three of us went - Tom stayed outside and did some work.

We shared a big bottle of Two Towns Hard Cider - so good! And spent about an hour visiting. Didn't get to that game after all. It has been a while since we last were together to just connect. It's just what we all needed.

In other farm news...

The remaining 17 Rangers are doing well, there are a couple of little ones, but they will perk up soon enough. They may just be late bloomers. I am hopeful that we'll make it to 11 weeks with 17!

Oh, during my lunch break with Tom our neighbor from across the street happened to come into Starbucks. We visited for a couple of minutes before I mentioned that we wanted to talk to them about putting his older boys to work and having them take care of the pigs and poultry so we could get away for a night or two sometime. He said the boys would love it and that when they come back we could chat some more.

SCORE! It's time to plan a coast getaway!

What would life be like if I didn't have to go to work 40-hours a week.

Farm Life is the Best Life!!!

We've Been Busy & Friday Foto(s)

And just like that it's July!

It has been a while since I did an actual post about what we have been doing. There has been so much happening that I haven't really had the time or the energy to sit down and record what's been going on around here.

In June we went to the Mother Earth News Fair in Albany, OR - man it was a HOT day! We sat in on a bee keeping seminar that was given by Bee Thinking out of Portland, OR as well as a talk all about keeping chickens. The hoop house was officially completed and the tomatoes & pepper plants were planted within the indoor garden. Then the task of starting to extend the existing fence that was created to be a  privacy fence which we plan to enclose where our Garden Boxes are located. We are currently thinking up some other ways to deter the deer since the fence will not be that tall and the deer would still be able to jump over. We'll see...

Tom and Team Renfro working on the gate post.

Tom and Doug getting post #2 dug & set

The discount strawberries that I picked up at Freddy's now have a home and are looking good. They will spend this summer with some bush beans...looking forward to having a crop of tasty berries next June!

Strawberry patch 

June seemed to just fly by! I celebrated my birthday by playing in the garden and being with Team Renfro and also had my hair colored the day before my birthday - professionally - for the first time! Let's throw in the Half Marathon that we did on Father's day and how much that hurt!

Today we managed to start AND finish an inexpensive tomato cage project. I have been wanting to make these tomato cages for a while. We had planned to go to Home Depot to get the fence stock, but on a whim Tom wanted me to go to Pioneer fence which is much closer to home. He was able to get a roll of about 50' for $20 cash - BOOM! We are good to go!!

It's hard to see what we did - but got 7 put together pretty quickly!

There will always be a project to work on, but there is satisfaction in the end result whether it's something we grew ourselves or a project that we wanted to do to make this a farm biz in progress.

Community

In the summer of 2014 my friend Mary had a space at the community gardens that are located approximately 5 miles from our home. I believe at the end of that gardening season I suggested to her that she use a space at our place which is only about a half mile from our house. With over two acres to play in, I think we could accommodate her garden boxes.

So, last year this is what her space looked like - 

While her plants were doing well...it soon became apparent that the deer were enjoying the fruits of her labor more than she was. 

Earlier this year Tom suggested that we invite Mary to move her garden boxes over to where our boxes are. It was a suggestion that was well received. 

Now we are at the end of April and the move has been completed with the help of Mary's men (hubby & son).  Here is the private community garden space that I share with my awesomely sweet friend - 

Last week the big move was started by weeding and moving dirt. By the end of the morning Mary and Doug were able to move two of the boxes over. This week the task of moving the three larger boxes after emptying the soil was done. There was a break for lunch and then we all went back to work on different projects. 

Tom started up the rototiller and Evan was interested in trying to work that hurkin' hunk of machinery. After outfitting him in something other than his "good" shoes he got to work with Tom...

He did a pretty good job, and was able to do what I couldn't do. Which is keep control of the tiller and not let it get away.

Overall the day was good. We had some good conversation with good friends and very much enjoyed seeing what our property will be sometime in the future. I look forward to growing some good food and helping our neighbors in the process. With all that I currently have started we will have plenty to put on our table and share with those around us.

A small step toward community gardens!