Vintage Home and Farm

There are numerous old fruit trees on our property, including apple, pear, cherry and plum. The trees' enormous sizes and moss-covered, gnarled branches suggest they are likely at least 40 and maybe up to 70 years old.  Each year since moving here, we have been blessed with fruit from all of these old, beautiful trees.   Yesterday, it was time to harvest the apples and pears. A few of each had fallen to the ground to be consumed eagerly by the deer.  So I took our ladder out there with several buckets and began working my way around each tree, avoiding spider webs (there were several with enormous spiders on them), and using a fruit picker (one of those wire baskets on a broom  handle).  There were only 22 apples on the apple tree, but all were giant-sized.  The pear tree was loaded, however, and generously gave us about 75 pears this year.  I brought the fruit inside and put the two ginormous containers in our mudroom next to the buffet cabinet t...

Our little white bird named Angel is not so angelic after all.  This rogue hen escapes the chicken pen every day and sneaks off, going somewhere else to lay her eggs.  Since she doesn't show up until late in the afternoon, we assume she also forages for a good part of the day.  By the time we discover her, she is leisurely walking along the fence line, pecking at bugs and looking for a way to get back into the chicken run.   I still can't figure out how she is escaping.  There are no gaps along the bottom of the run, the top where she had once jumped over is now covered with netting, and the hole she dug at the gate has been filled.  She is one sly little bugger.  Her petite size makes it easier for her to slip out. Why does she find it necessary to escape?  There is plenty of food every day, including a big bucket of garden scraps most days. It's not like she has crowded conditions to live in or anything neglectful like that.  Our ...

A few weeks ago, it seemed like the tomatoes would never ripen, and now suddenly here we are with tomatoes everywhere in the kitchen!  I love this time of year when we can eat flavorful, juicy tomatoes from the garden. The gigantic Mortgage Lifter tomato reseeded itself in our garden from a couple years ago.  This tomato plant produces enormous tomatoes!  The variety was developed in the 1920's, and during the Great Depression it was said that growing these tomatoes could help you reduce your debt because they produced so much.  Each fruit can weigh as much as 2 pounds.  Today I had to empty the giant white ceramic bowl on the kitchen island (by processing all the tomatoes in it) so that I could make room for more tomatoes. Up until now, I had just been filling this vintage blue dish every day with our meager tomato harvests. The cherry tomatoes started ripening first.  Matt's Wild Cherry has returned as donor tomatoes in the garden, as have the yellow plum...

  You may recall Reggie the Miniature Horse from our holiday posts, such as the Fourth of July parade or his Merry Ho Ho visit  at Christmas time.  Reggie is a joy to hang out with.  We recently had the pleasure of taking care of him and the barn cat, Barney, for a couple weeks while their owners were camping. In addition to giving Reggie his food every day (he eats part of a flake of hay morning and evening, along with a couple treats, like half a carrot or an apple), our daughter also made sure he had adequate water, cleaned out his stall, and we brushed him.  We also had social play time with Reggie each day. Miniature horses are amazingly bright and spirited. We loved hearing his excited neigh when we entered the barn.  It was also fun to play ball with him and encourage him to interact with us when giving him his treats. Did you know that there are many animals that enjoy music?  We decided to experiment with this when we were taking care of Regg...

My husband has been reading a local history and true crime book, Starvation Heights: A True Story of Murder and Malice in the Woods of the Pacific Northwest , by Gregg Olsen.  He had a hard time putting the book down as the story was so compelling. Starvation Heights is the nickname given to the sanitarium created by Linda Hazzard, a self-appointed doctor and "fasting specialist" who didn't actually have a medical degree or any formal training.  In the early 1900s, as part of her treatments, she intentionally starved a number of her patients to death. She also swindled her wealthy victims, convincing them to turn over all of their money and property to her before they died. Well, coincidentally it had been a while since we'd gone out on an afternoon drive, and so I managed to convince my husband that we should take a drive and see if we could find the remains of the building that had served as Linda Hazzard's sanitarium.  It was located out near Puget Sound in the...

Guess who we babysat this past week?  Patch the donkey!! It is always a joy to be able to take care of Patch.  Patch is a friendly, gentle donkey who loves his treats and enjoys play time.  Did you know that donkeys like to play?  Among our donkey friend's play toys are pool noodles, tug-of-war ring toys, and a ball with a handle.  Patch also has one of those toys that you put peanuts inside (the kind of peanuts with the shell still on) - he pushes the toy around so that the peanuts fall out. We made a short video so that you could see what Patch can do.  Here it is: In case you missed it from a previous blog article, here's the video we made the prior time we babysat Patch.  In it, you can hear the noise that Patch makes multiple times a day.  He makes this noise whenever he sees his family drive by (he recognizes their car!), and when they go into the barn (he's excited to be fed and played with) and at various other times during the day.  ...

The other day, a swarm of angry, hungry honeybees from a neighbor's hives came over and began fighting with our bees, trying to get into our hives.  We realized this was happening after they had already been there awhile, as we could see a pile of dead bees in front of our hives as well as the unusual activity of the angry swarm.  The bees were coming directly to our hives from the neighbor's property behind our house, where they also have two beehives. I followed the robbing bees to see for sure where they were going, and sure enough, they headed straight back to his hives. His bees are darker in color and more aggressive than ours.  He has told me that he has Italian honeybees, but that is what we have, and his bees look more like Carniolans. I watched his bees go back and forth from our hives to his for several days. To try to save our bees, we adjusted the entrance reducer to the smallest opening. We also duct taped along the lids and middle of the hives to make sure ...