The "Fun" Stuff

Don't get me wrong, I am really enjoying working in the gardens.   But sometimes I need to take a break and work on something a bit more crafty or home decor related.   Something like this:

Here's a wide shot of one end of the pavilion....with the adirondack chairs and table that still need to be painted.  Yes, I'll get to those soon enough.  But in the background you may be able to make out the black sign hanging above the grill.  Here it is up close...

Isn't that cool?   The week before we left Florida to move here Joel's medical residents took us out to dinner and presented us with this awesome sign for us to hang here on the farm.   I've been looking around off and on for 4 months trying to figure out where to hang it and now the sign has a permanent home.  It'll be protected from most weather and looks really pretty hanging between the huge posts.   Ahhhhh, one more item hung up......dozens more to go.

And then there is this, a "leftover" side table that was part of a bedroom set.   There is simply not enough room for it in our guest bedroom but a couple of weeks ago I had an idea of how to put it to good use.   I pulled out some leftover paint and did a dry brush technique on most of the table in soft tealy blue....all except the little indented area on the top.   Then I removed the feet and thick round wooden drawer pulls and painted them red as an accent.

I dug around our book cabinet and pulled out our old traveling map atlas and cut out the central and eastern end of the state of Tennessee.   Can you believe how well it fit in the space that was left unpainted?   Good thing we don't live in Maine.   That wouldn't have worked at all.  A little bit of decoupage and the top was complete.

And now it is once again a useful piece of furniture....out on the rocking chair porch...ready to hold a glass of refreshing, cold iced coffee.   Gotta love it when a plan comes together.

Our love seat cushion arrived yesterday and now it's much more comfortable to sit on the loveseat at that end of the porch.  Notice the blue bird sitting on top of the bird house?   He was really hamming it up for the camera.

This watering can is what started it all.   I'm using the colors on the can to pull all my color direction from for decorating the rocking chair porch.  Some greens,  a bit of teal and a pop of deep red for impact.   It sure beats trying to just pull colors out of thin air......and I carried this can around to paint stores and fabric stores to make sure I didn't get off track.   Who me?   Get off track?   Nah!

A tiny aqua blue print pillow works with a large scale red and white cushion, at least it works in my world.   ha!

Notice the, ahem, purple table.   I know, I know.  Not sure what possessed me to paint it purple but it worked really well in my shop several years ago.   Today it's getting a new coat of paint.   Black paint to be precise.

And now it's a productive member of the farm.   Holding a cool antique porcelain tea pot with flowers and ivy growing out of it.    Gotta love that transformation!  Well, that's as far as I've gotten this last 2 weeks.   There will be more paint make-overs in the future, I'm sure.

Addicted to color,
Debbie

It's Chicken Coop Time

Boy, were we ever excited when the Mast builders called to say our chicken coop was ready to be delivered.  They are a Mennonite family that has been building small sheds, garages, and storage buildings for many years in our area.   One of the very talented brothers, Micah, lives in the beautiful old house next to where their shop is located.  When Joel and I went there to ask them about building a chicken coop for us, Micah took us out back and walked us thru his rather large chicken operation.

 It turns out that Micah loves chickens.   And he has a lot of them.   Seriously.   Soft, fluffy reddish Buff Orpingtons, spry black and white mottled Barred Rocks, and the self assured Leghorns, and many more that I couldn't name.  He breeds them and incubates up to 300 eggs at a time and then sells the chicks once they hatch.  We had our choice of chickens to choose from as he is going to incubate some eggs for us.

Micah had recently built himself a coop of his own design that he felt would take care of the needs of a brood of chickens.   As he showed us his coop and explained each space we knew we had hit the jackpot.   Instead of us buying a shed and having to renovate it to suit the needs of our soon-to-be-acquired chicks, we easily made the decision to have Micah build us a replica of his.

So last week, Micah himself drove up to the farm with this loaded on his truck.

 And he followed Joel in the Polaris up to the spot we choose for the chickens...

Around the big garden....

And up near the tree line.  Before I knew it Micah had already unloaded the coop onto the ground.  

We had the coop painted to match Joel's shed with the same black shutters(yes, I still need to finish painting all the shutters on the house and pavilion) and white trim.   It also has a green metal roof to match our other buildings.   The double doors will allow us easy access to get inside to clean the coop and perform other chores.

The nest boxes are easy to access without going inside the coop by simply lifting the lid on the left to expose the eggs inside the nests.   And we can control the air movement inside with the windows which have heavy duty wire over the screens to prevent predators from entering.

The nest boxes are on the left and the sliding door will have a rope pulley attached to it so we can stand outside the coop and just pull the rope to let the "girls" out.   We choose to have a dirt floor to enable us to clean out the coop every few months from the layer of bedding we put down.  Then that bedding will get turned into compost and used in the garden.   Ahhh, the circle of life on the farm....

Joel and I still have to attach wire mesh to the outside of the coop all around and bring it out 18" and cover with soil so no predators can dig their way into the coop.   Who would have thought you had to go to such efforts for chickens?   It's going to be an adventure.

The "back" side has another wire covered vent up near the roof line for more ventilation and you can see the little white door that will soon have the pulley attached.   We hope to free range our chickens unless too many predators make that impossible.    giggle.....I know, I know, we've been reading books about varying methods of keeping chickens and I'm sure we're going to lose a few.   But this is the learning part of our foray into small scale farming.

It's kinda hard to see but there are 3 roosts for the girls to hang out on, if they so choose.  Micah even made them removable so they could be hosed off when cleaning out the coop.  As far as I can tell, he thought of most everything our little coop will need to keep our flock safe and healthy.

I think the chickens have one of the prettiest places to "roost" on the whole farm.   They are under the shade of the huge oak trees and their coop overlooks the valley below.  Lucky girls!  Now we just have to fence in the garden.   Sigh.   One thing leads to another here.

We got one more delivery last week.....a ride-on mower for me!   As the saying goes around here, we're "bleeding orange".   (Referring to the U. of Tennessee football colors)   It just so happens to be the color of Kabota tractor, too.   We even got baseball caps that say "bleed orange" emblazoned across the front of them from the tractor dealer. 

 Now I can help Joel cut down on his mowing time.   We both mowed yesterday, Joel was on his big tractor and I was on my mower, and it still took us 4 hours together!   That's a lot of grass.  Between working in the gardens and mowing, I haven't been this tan since I first moved to Florida with the kids when I was in my mid-20's!

Well, that is what's new for this week.   Thanks for checking in on us. 
Till next time,
Debbie

Roses no More

Yes, the peonies have finally bloomed!  I'm so excited to see the huge, lightly fragrant, riot of color standing outside our back screen door.

 

 The white peonies were the first to bloom and now I know that there are 2 different white peonies next to one another.   The blooms are huge and have just a faint perfume to them.

But the one that really "wows" me is the hot pink bush.  The pink one kept teasing me because it took so much longer to bloom than the white ones, but when it did, what a show stopper.

After doing some reading about peony bushes I found out they only bloom in early summer here on the plateau.    Still, I think I may have to have a whole bed dedicated to these lovelies, even if they don't bloom all summer long.   For years, roses have been my favorite flower to grow.  But these enormous, showy blooms may well have replaced roses in my heart.

And then I still have these mystery plants growing on the left side of the screen door.   They keep getting larger and there are two different types of leaves, but I have absolutely no idea what they are.   I guess I'll just have to wait until they bloom to find out what type of flowers have popped up here.

I thought I'd show you the herbs in the potager garden.  They're getting bigger by the day and soon I'll be able to harvest them and dry them out in my dehydrator.   And I just love the little chair I found at the thrift shop.....the cane seat was all busted out and no one wanted to buy her.  But I brought her home and primed her and gave her two shiny coats of bright red paint and now she is serving a great purpose once again  She holds a large pot of different type of mints that will soon be dehydrated for tea.

And check out how much the lettuce has grown.  Tonight will be the first night I go down to the potager and cut lettuce for our salad.   And the fennel is growing by leaps and bounds......I can hardly wait to roast some in the oven for dinner.

 Who would have thought that the grape arbor would become completely covered in heavy vines so fast?    Each morning when I walk out onto the rocking chair porch, the gardens urge me to come and see how much they've grown.   I can hardly stand to be inside these days because there is just so much to see and do once you step outside our doors.

Well I hope you enjoyed a little glimpse of what we have growing here on the farm.    There will be plenty more to come in the days ahead.

Flexing my green thumb,
Debbie

First Guests

Yes, we've had our first overnight guests here at Whispering Oaks.   When we all split up in Chattanooga, Barb and Chuck drove back home to Alabama.   Joyce and Dick stayed overnight in Chattanooga as Joel and I drove up the plateau to our farm.  But early the next morning, I put the coffee pot on and had some banana bread muffins baking in the oven as Joyce and Dick came driving in our lane.  Yippee!
I had just walked outside with my camera as I spotted them coming up the country road below our farm.

This was going to be a short visit but at least it gave us some time to show them a little flavor of the area surrounding Crossville.

While the rain held off we had a chance to walk the farm and show them a little bit of our land.   After lunch we all hopped in the car and went into "town", stopping along the way at the Historic Cumberland Homesteads Museum.   Just 15 minutes from our house is one of only 100 homestead villages across our nation that President Roosevelt enacted in the mid-1930's to assist folks suffering from the Great Depression.    It's really interesting to see how the program worked.   We even drove a couple of miles away to go inside one of the original homes that was built in 1936 for these hardy homesteaders.

Our brief day together passed rapidly and we ended up on the rocking chair porch, christening the table with the first meal eaten on it here at the farm.   Good company, good fellowship, good food...what a wonderful way to spend the day.

There was so much we all wanted to do in such a short period of time and somehow we squeezed it all in.   The guys went shooting down into our woods, Joyce and I talked about our knitting projects and I showed her my crazy bins of quilt projects that are waiting to be finished.   Then Joel pulled out the Polaris.....let the fun begin!   Joyce and I walked outside to watch as they ventured into the woods.

Nothing like boys and their toys....in the woods.....on a lazy Sunday morning....

We're so honored that Joyce and Dick would take the extra time to drive out of their way to come visit us the day before they begin their vacation in North Georgia.   Thanks for being our first overnight company!  I hope we get to do it again sometime real soon.

Good memories,
Debbie

Chattanooga Choo Choo

We've been kinda busy since I last posted so I thought I'd try and get you all caught up this morning.  Early last Friday morning Joel and I hopped in my trusty old car and headed down off the plateau for a foggy drive to Chattanooga.   We met Joyce and Dick (our friends from Florida) and Barb and Chuck (our other friends from Florida who now live in Alabama) at Point Park on top of Lookout Mountain.   Because of the rain and cold front that had just gone thru the area the day before, the day was somewhat overcast and a bit chilly, too. 

Both Joyce and Barb had been to the park before but it was my first view of Chattanooga from way up high on the mountain.   What was really amazing to me was trying to figure out how the troops made their way up the very steep mountainside with cannons and ammunition to fight the enemy.

Just driving a car up the long, windy switchbacks was something.....but to do this by horseback and on foot dragging cannons....really???

I think Joel and I need to go back to the park to spend an entire day reading all the plagues and looking thru the museum to get a better understanding of the role Chattanooga played in the Civil War.

Of course we girls had to pose for a pic with the cannons...

And then the guys did the same.   Chuck even hopped up on top of cannon!

I'll bet this park is really pretty in the fall when all the leaves are changing their colors.   Maybe that's when we'll take the RV down there and park it for a few days so we can enjoy the area at our leisure.  There really is a lot to see and do and some great places to eat as well.

After leaving Point Park we decided to drive thru the beautiful mountain village that surrounds the park and we went over to Rock City.  I didn't realize it was on the same mountain.  From a vantage point out on a bluff you can see several states all at once.   Well, they are now charging almost $20 a piece for the pleasure of that view and we all decided we would skip it this time as everyone else except Joel and I had already been there before.   But did you notice what else was way up there on the mountaintop?   Yes!  I know!   A Starbuck's. 

After being on the plateau for 3-1/2 months where there isn't a Starbuck's within an hour of us, I had been going into withdrawal for the scent, the taste, the flavor of a Starbuck's soy latte.   Wouldn't it be lovely to sit by this giant fireplace in the crisp fall air, sipping a cappuccino and people watching?  Yup, we'll be back this Fall.  And I am already looking forward to sitting by this very fireplace with my hot beverage of choice, drinking in the scent of the season.

One more pose of the girls....me, Joyce & Barb....so happy to spend a day together again.   We three are half of the group G.A.B.S. (Girls At the Beach Scrapbooking) that used to get together at each others' houses for a weekend of scrapbooking, food, drink and chatting.   We may not have had time to scrapbook this trip, but we still had wonderful food and a lot of chatting.

Who can go to Chattanooga and not see the Chattanooga Choo Choo?   Here it is, in all it's restored glory.  Since it was lunchtime we decided to eat lunch in the beautifully restored train station.

 ....and we strolled around the gardens behind the station, in between the railroad tracks where old, refurbished cars sit quietly.

Joyce explained that the rail cars had been turned into hotel rooms and you could rent one and stay there overnight.   That would be fun, don't you think?  I'd like to do that......it reminded me of the trip I took by train with my mom and dad when I was seven and we rode the train from Philadelphia all the way down to Miami, Florida.

I'm not sure why but we three girls tried on some silly hats and pumped our fists as we hammed it up for the camera.   Hey, what can I say?  "Stuff" happens when the G.A.B.S. get together.

Remember these?   An old fashioned phone booth.......minus the phone so I had to make do with my hand instead.   What a great visit we had, but it was time Joel and I headed up the plateau so we said our good-byes.    I hope we all get to visit again as a group sometime soon.

Chugga-Chugga-Chugga,
Debbie

Rainy Day

The weatherman was right when he predicted rain for the next 36 hours.   We had rain off and on most of the night and it's still damp and overcast this morning.   I was surprised to wake up to a temp of 57 degrees.   Hmmmmm, looks like the really cold temps won't arrive until tonight.   So I guess it's an "inside day" today.   That's ok since I would like to finish cleaning our house and go grocery shopping in preparation for our first company!   Yes, our friends Joyce and Dick will be here Saturday to spend a little time with us on the farm. 

In the meantime I had some more pics of the garden to share with you.

 It seems that the cabbage has grown another inch larger each morning as I walk down to check on the garden.   I'm so excited about our first crop of veggies!

We planted 2 different types of green cabbage.....

....and one variety of red cabbage.   One of Joel's favorite meals is red cabbage prepared "low and slow" with a bit of orange juice, a stick of cinnamon, and sliced apples baked in the oven.   We are also planning on trying our hand at making our own sauerkraut with the bulk of the green cabbage.  I'll let you know how that works out later this fall.

Can you believe how much the potatoes have grown since last week?   It's going to be so much fun to dig up potatoes later this summer.  I wonder how many pounds of taters we'll get from these plants?   Uh-oh!   Joel is going to have to get going figuring out where to put a cold cellar for storing all of our harvest.   There sure are a lot of infrastructure items that still need to be checked off our list.

I know my kitchen potager garden looks kinda sad right now, but trust me........there's a lot going on here.   In the foreground are the 10 sticks that will someday be our blueberry bushes.    Behind them is the salad portion of the potager.   Then comes the strawberry patch and waaaaay in the back is the herb/tea garden with blackberry bushes on the end.   Yeah, I know it doesn't look like much now except a patch of dirt.   But just wait until I put in paths and cute stuff.   It'll look a whole lot different than it does now....and it'll make more sense to you once the plan is complete.

I'm so glad I bought these hanging baskets.   They're so lush and beautiful and perk up the wide open spaces of the pavilion.  Can you see how much the second grape arbor has leafed out since I painted it a few weeks ago?

Yeah, I'm still waiting to see if these peonies are pink or if this plant is just teasing me.   On closer inspection I found that there are actually 3 peony plants intertwined and I believe 2 are white and one is pink.    Can't wait to see the blooms so I can start cutting them for bouquets in the house. 

Remember when I told you I had to buy a trellis for a mystery vine   Well, the vine is starting to climb its way up the trellis and I won't know what kind of vine it is until it blooms.   I feel so lucky that the farmer's wife had all these perennials planted in the bed along the rocking chair porch.   At least I have some colorful local plants to start off my collection.....you know I will be acquiring more plants.  Right?

Staying dry,
Debbie