Chronicles of the Long Shot Farm

When the boys returned from their hunting trip to Bedford yesterday, they not only brought a Christmas tree for the house, but also two scraggly white pine trees to use for decorations.  Well – there are a lot of branches on two trees, and it started to rain before I could use all of the greenery.  I did get the garland for the back porch done, by just using green wire to string branches together, and then wrapping a string of clear lights around the garland before hanging it.

Also made a small garland with all the left over short branches and used it for the archway into the back garden.  The arch itself has white wired clear lights on it, so it will look nice in the dark as well.

Other branches that were too short or too scraggly I just stuffed into tin buckets or into other containers which I then placed into outdoor flower pots.  (I do water these branches so they last longer – even outside)

Now that it is really raining, we are concentrating on the indoor decorations. This year, we used one of our “fabric” garlands around the mantel by the woodstove.  (fabric garlands are made by cutting homespun fabric into narrow strips, and then cutting each strip into 4 – 6 inch pieces.  These then get tied onto a string of Christmas lights) I used our cast-iron stocking holders to hold the garland in place.

With another lucky auction find from earlier this month, I was able to create a very low cost, usable kitchen island.  I bought 6 folding tables at a local school auction and they must have been cafeteria tables, with perfect laminated tops, just like kitchen counters!  I bpurchased 3 six foot tables and 3 eight foot tables (for less than $40) and they are the sturdiest folding tables I ever encountered.  I tried both sizes in my kitchen, but the six foot table definitely looked better.  I scrubbed it completely and then bought a set of “bed-risers”.  By putting 4″ bed-risers under table legs, the table becomes standard kitchen-counter height – a tick I learned  when I volunteered at the PA farm show food court.  To make the table look pretty – and hide all the food grade buckets with my flours and sugar storage –  I sewed 4 simple curtain panels.  Using 10 yards of 36″ wide muslin, I was able to take the fabric lenght-wise, so there are no seams in the long panels.  The 36″ width was just enough to make a 2 inch seam on the top, to thread a curtain rod through, with a small ruffle above.  To keep the curtain looking clean on the bottom, I also bought 2 yards of “homespun” fabric.  I chose a checkered pattern – that way cutting the fabric into 6″ wide strips went rather quickly…just had to follow the lines of the squares.  The folding table had a wood base under the top, and we were able to attach brackets for the simple cafe rods on the short sides, keeping the curtain a good 2 inches back from the table edge.  To make the curtain rods line up at the corner, we used wire and dry-wall screws, wrapping the wire tightly around the ends of the curtain rods and then twisting the wire around the screw.  We also made wire supports in the middle of the long sides, to keep the rod from sagging.  It took a few hours to sew the panels, but it was worth it!


Dressed-up for the holidays!

Estimated Cost:

Used folding table: $7.00
Bed risers:  $10.00
Curtain rods:  $10.00
Fabric (using coupons and sales): $30.00

One of our cedar trees lost a large branch during hurricane “Sandy”, a sad sight, but at least this happened at just the right time of year for winter decorating with evergreens.

With the help of my trusted reciprocating saw, I cut 2 and 3 foot sections that had lots of greens on them and arranged those in my two largest outdoor flower pots.  Once I liked the look of the “arrangements” and they looked somewhat balanced, I secured the branches to each other – and to the container –  with zip ties.  All I need to do now is add fairy lights.

Though it is a bit early to start bringing branches inside, I could not see wasting any of the fragrant greenery,  so the smaller cuttings ended up in the dining room windows.  I used large glass urns, into which I placed a glass with water.  The branches will fit into the water glass, but I have space outside the glass to fill the urn with small Christmas balls (once I retrieve those from the attic).  This effectively hides the water, which will inevitably turn brownish. 

We had one of those late fall surprise warm days:  64 degree weather, with sunshine!  So we finished some outdoor projects:

1. We finally finished the roof on the shed – which was only missing the trim pieces along the edges and the final cap to cover it all up.   Lars and Caleb did the roof work, while Jeff did all the cutting.
2. Tina painted the windows on the barn with another coat of white paint.
3.  Lars – with help from Caleb – managed to get a new chimney cap on the fireplace chimney.  He worked entirely off the ladder, which was extended close to capacity!
4. Tina scraped and wire-brushed the garage doors and painted them with some of the left-over barn paint. 

One more warm day in the forecast, then back to colder temperatures again.