So much to do

By Christine Tailer
HCP columnist

After our morning walk with the dogs, we set to work. Greg worked down in his shop, building wooden trucks for our grandchildren. I could hear the sounds of his saws and air compressor, powered by the bright sun beaming down on the four solar panels by the pole barn, as I worked up by the cabin.

My first chore was to clean up the worm bin and take my precious compost producers outside to their summertime location by the sugar shed.

I pulled the bin out from under the old wooden bench in the cabin's back room and carried them outside to the front spigot. As I lifted the lid, I could see that they were wriggling and squiggling as red wigglers do.

I dusted off the bin, washed down the lid, lay a fresh layer of damp newspaper across the top of their castings, and carried them out to the sheltered side of the sugar shed. I pulled a rotten apple off of the compost pile and placed pieces of it in the corners of their bin.

I rinsed off my hands at the spigot and headed to my next chore.

I had moved the 6-week-old chicks out to the chicken tractor the night before. A farmer friend told us several years ago that if we simply put the new birds into the coop in the evening, after the older birds are on the roost, they will all wake up in the morning believing that they belong together.

For the past several years, this simple introduction of old to new has worked like magic.

But I still had to clean up the large cattle trough that we use as a brooder. There is nothing quite like sharing our 388-square-foot cabin with a cattle trough filled with chicks in the middle of the floor. The wood chip dust and incessant chirping have kept us curious company these past six weeks.

It took Greg and I working together to get the trough up from the tobacco barn and into the cabin, but Greg was busy building wooden trucks. I had a plan.

I pulled the trough through the front door and out to the porch. I then slid it over to the side deck. I drove the truck over into the side yard and carefully backed it up to the deck.

With the tailgate down, it was easy to pull the trough into the bed of the truck. I then drove down the hill to the big compost pile by the road, where I tilted the trough up and dumped out the chips.

I then drove over to the frost-free spigot by the tobacco barn, to give the trough a thorough hosing. It was then a simple matter to pull the trough out of the truck bed and drag it over to the side of the barn, where it stays when not in use.

As long as I had the truck down by the creek, I figured that I would gather up a fresh batch of large stones to place around the fire pit. The children and grandchildren would be stopping by in a few days for a visit, and fires have become a tradition.

Gathering rocks is easier said than done, but I drove down to the old fishing hole, where it is a short distance to the creek's edge and large flat rocks are plentiful. I knew not to get wet rocks, as they would crack with the fire heat, so I gathered rocks that were far from the water and had been dry since the last big flood.

I wore gloves and lifted with my legs, but felt as though my arms had lengthened several inches when I got back in the truck to drive back up to the fire pit. I placed the rocks aesthetically around the pit. As I worked, the chickens wobbled over to see what I was up to.

My next task was to rebuild the broken window float bed that had been flattened by a falling tree last fall.

I unscrewed the window top and carried the frame down to the barn to look for a match among our collection of old windows. Then, perfect window in hand, I walked back up the hill to the porch, where I had set the float bed frame.

I screwed the "new" window in place, and pulled over the hose to fill the new black plastic lining with water. Once the lining was full, I trimmed the excess and stapled the edges to the frame.

The afternoon sun shone down brightly on the deck. I filled a tall glass of water with ice cubes and sat down at the picnic table to seed two trays already filled with potting soil. I seeded one whole tray with nothing but different kinds of lettuce. In the other, I set several rows of giant dill, fennel, and cotton seed.

I am curious to see what we can do with the cotton.

I set the trays floating, closed the window lid, and before I even put the seed packets away, I sat back in one of our deck chairs. I could hear Greg still building wooden trucks down in his shop.

I pulled the bill of my cap down over my eyes. The chickens gathered around my feet.

"Shhh,” I told them, "Don't tell Greg," and before I knew it, I was fast asleep.

Christine Tailer is an attorney and former city dweller who moved several years ago, with her husband, Greg, to an off-grid farm in south-central Ohio. Visit them on the web at straightcreekvalleyfarm.com.