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Muddy Valley Farm

~ Life on a tiny west coast hobby farm

Muddy Valley Farm

Monthly Archives: May 2020

Bits and Bobs

26 Tuesday May 2020

Posted by Jodi in Farm Life, Feminist farmer, Reduce, reuse, recycle

≈ Leave a comment

I have a weakness for vintage sewing thread. Well, ok, I have a weakness for vintage. I scoop my flour and sugar from 1950s Kromex copper canisters, I cook on a 1953 Moffat Coronation stove, we eat from vintage-style Fiestaware dishes at a 1930s oak kitchen table in a humble 1970s farmhouse and when I started making butter, well of course I had to try a vintage butter press.

My romantic brain is drawn to the ‘good old days’ when life was simpler, even as my logical brain reminds me that no, of course it wasn’t. Humankind has always struggled, and today, for all its troubles, the world where I am blessed to be living my quiet little life is truly a wonderful place. I, along with billions of my fellow humans, face much less struggle, toil and suffering than our forebears faced throughout most of history. Yes, even in a pandemic.

I spent much of yesterday sewing masks. I am onto my third pattern now, waylaying various-sized family members and test fitting as I go, weighing the alternatives of elastic ear loops (good for short stints), shoelace or bias tape ties (best fit but complicated to get on), satin linings (sumptuous) and which cotton print for the outsides? Funnily enough, it is the men in my life who are the most worried about fabric colour and pattern. They prefer the somber, serious look.

Much to my delight, I am finally using the many small bits of fabric that I have held onto over thirty-plus years of sewing projects. I knew they would be good for something some day! Even better, I am finishing up some of the bits and bobs of thread of all colours that I have collected.

I have a particular weakness for vintage thread, and am incapable of leaving behind any small plastic bag of wooden thread spools discovered at the local thrift store. Laboriously sorted, packaged and labelled by intellectually challenged workers sifting though long tables of donations in vast charity warehouses (I imagine), these little dollar-or-two bags often include some real treasures.


Pure silk thread from the late 19th century in a rainbow of colours, my best-ever find. Boil fast depression-era thread from back when boiling laundry was what women did, every toilsome laundry day. Heavy duty cotton, for mending thick coveralls and denim. J. & P. Coats, like Mom had. All on solid wood spools and many with their original, delightful labels.

I can’t help thinking these threads are a cut above what I can buy today. Some are a hundred years old, and still sturdy and brightly coloured. Incredible, beautiful, useful talismans of the past that link me, in a chain reaching back through the mists of time, to who knows how many incredible, beautiful, strong women. Women who like me lived their quiet lives, but with probably much less freedom, much less comfort, much less idle time and much less healthcare than I enjoy today. Woman like me who sat sewing for loved ones, listening to the radio, or the rain pattering on the roof, with hot cup of tea at their elbow, mending basket at their feet. Snug, and for the moment, content.

Fortress Blueberry

16 Saturday May 2020

Posted by Jodi in Equines, Farm Improvements, Farm Life, Farm Produce, Gardening, Reduce, reuse, recycle, Wildlife

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We all love blueberries around here, so two or three years ago I brought home a couple blueberry plants from the feed store, and planted them out near the pond in the Tarzan Tree field. We wrapped plastic netting around them, and left them to their own devices. They never did much, returning our almost-complete lack of attention with their almost-complete lack of fruit, the ultimate tit-for-tat.

Growing no less fond of blueberries as time went by, this year I doubled down tenfold. When the blueberry man posted his Facebook ad I answered it, and a couple weeks later ten nice blueberry bushes appeared in our driveway. I was going big.

Resident Gardener rolled her eyes a little bit at my folly, but she took half of them out to the Tarzan Tree field and planted them anyway. She had been giving my poor neglected blueberries some love, and a bit of pruning, and this year they actually had some flowers! When the five new ones went in, it seemed we had achieved an actual blueberry patch!

Fast forward a few weeks, and I’m looking for a new project since I now had the raspberry patch sorted. So when RG mentioned the bunnies had been getting at my new blueberry bushes, I went to check it out. Little buggers! Our jury-rigged plastic fence enclosure obviously wasn’t up to the job. The five plants she had set out were now half the size of the five she had transplanted into bigger pots and arranged beside the house until the fall rains came, when we would add them to the patch.

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Well, here was my new project. I couldn’t have asked for a more clear wake-up call. I had a blueberry patch now, dammit. I wasn’t going to let those dang bunnies take out my blueberry patch!

Over the next few weeks, in spare minutes here and there, usually at the ends of long days, I would wander out to the blueberry patch and do a bit of work. I scavenged materials from all over the farm, a part-roll of chicken wire left over from coop construction, some rusty but solid t-posts donated by a generous neighbour, some slender eight-foot bamboo poles harvested last fall from our prized clump of black bamboo, and of course the yards and yards of six-foot plastic deer fencing that had enclosed the blueberries, useless against the bunnies but perfectly suited to stringing from bamboo poles to keep the deer out. I even had all the zip ties I needed. My only purchase was the white plastic t-post fence caps, to prevent clumsy horses impaling themselves.

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Having researched effective bunny fences online, I started my install. Pounding in the posts to form a nice big enclosure was the easiest bit. Rolling out 70 feet of 4-foot chicken wire so I could fold up a border a foot wide all along, then rolling it up again and man-handling it over to where I had installed the t-posts, so I could unroll and fasten it along the fence line, was the trickiest bit.

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Uninstalling and untangling, then reinstalling the plastic deer fencing RG had jury-rigged was the most time-consuming bit. Building the gate was the hardest bit, luckily Dear Husband came along just as I had finished the basic frame, pointed out it’s shortcomings, and pitched in to help correct it. A good teacher as always, DH more facilitated my build than took it over.

One of our big city pandemic refugees, a young man currently furloughed from Vancouver’s film industry, went after the weeds with a vengeance. He had almost the whole patch beautifully weeded in one afternoon. RG mulched along behind him, as I continued work on my fence.

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On Mother’s Day we finished our magnificent blueberry fortress. Almost. We will sheet mulch the grassy areas so they will be broken down and ready for the other five bushes in October. We may need to add some featherlight netting to cover the top before the berries ripen, to save them from the birds. RG thinks not. Her theory is that there are so many wild berries in our valley that ripen in August at the same time as blueberries, we may be ok. Time will tell. One thing for sure, those darned bunnies are going to have to go elsewhere for their blueberry fix now. Unless the little buggers can chew through chicken wire.

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