First Frost

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Today is our first true frost. Besides the mulch and Brassicas being covered in frost, there are thin shards of ice in the duck pool, and all the water containers up at the coop are frozen shut. I tried to take a picture of it, but as always happens to me, there's no heat in the cabin so the batteries in the camera won't work.

Most everything out there is cold-hardy fall plants. Beds #8 and 9 will need mini hoop houses when we've got the money to put them together. We may beat the cold and we may not. We've already got the 4 mil plastic sheeting we bought at the hardware store - we just need electrical conduit for the hoops and rebar for stakes to hold them in place.

It's currently 32 degrees inside the cabin.

Yesterday was much warmer and sunny, a little over 50 degrees. With all the windows it probably hit 70 inside the cabin. Beside the usual chores I caulked about half of the upper story inside. I'll try to finish caulking the upper story today. Early next week we're getting fiberglass insulation for the roof - R 19 - then we can at least run a space heater up here with some efficiency till the chimney arrives. The girls run a space heater in the addition as it's already reasonably sealed up though not insulated yet. The addition also gets very warm with all its south-facing windows. Up in the loft most of the heat passes through the opening at the vent-cap on the roof. Insulation will block that.

Yesterday we got no eggs even though I took several trips up to the coop and saw hens laying and heard them cackling after they'd laid. We've now confirmed something is definitely stealing the eggs out of the nest boxes. Since the wooden eggs were not taken, up to 5 went missing in one day, and no eggs went missing when we were away in Atlanta, we're almost certain it's not a snake. It's something smart enough to avoid the wooden eggs, big enough to carry them away and stash them, and at the same time not big enough to attack the chickens themselves. After some research we believe it's either a squirrel or a rat. We've seen a squirrel up there before eating from the chicken trough, and the guineas gave it a wide berth without harassing it. On my last trip up to the coop yesterday to collect eggs the guineas followed me cackling which was a little unusual. They might follow me for a treat, but with all their alarm calls it seemed like they were communicating that something was wrong - so maybe they saw what was stealing the eggs.

We'll have to be super-vigilant and take many trips up to the coop each day to collect eggs, even if someone's laying and we wish not to disturb them. Hopefully we'll catch what's taking the eggs and then figure out how to trap it - or destroy it if we must. Our 2 problem animals this year were a raccoon and a bobcat - the raccoon had destroyed most of the corn - but both animals we successfully trapped and relocated a half hour away to Big South Fork National Rec Area.

It seems rather surprising to me that a squirrel could carry off our large chicken eggs, yet there are countless stories of such a thing happening on the internet.

Yesterday we also watched THE FLUORIDE DECEPTION and MONEY AS DEBT. We have to wait for movies to load with our slow DSL but they do load after a half hour or so.

Hand wringers are quite expensive but we're still looking. We came across a bucket within a bucket within a bucket method for pressing the water out of clothes which we'll try till we can either buy or construct an efficient hand wringer.

Crows will also steal eggs, but outside of a few times spotting them in the little valley I haven't seen them lately and they'd be hard to miss.

I went around and took photos of everything yesterday and will try to get them uploaded today.

Rachel thinned the seedlings yesterday and we had a big salad for lunch with bread and garden vegetables for dinner. It's been too cold for the sourdough to function so we've had to buy bread.
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