Restoring the ol' spinning wheel

A few months ago, I got really interested in spinning. I made a drop spindle, bought some wool, and started cranking out yarn. It was slow, but satisfying. Then, my Oma made mention of an old spinning wheel she had in her attic. I'd grown up around the thing (used as a decoration, not a functional wheel), and had assumed it was either a non-functional piece, or she'd gotten rid of it. We pulled it down from the attic, and I spent a few days trying to make it work. Because it was so old, I didn't have any sort of instructions, and it was unlike any other wheels I'd seen.

I've been using it, but the thing squeeks so darn dreadfully. Taylor is currently in the process of fixing it up for me, so it'll work without forcing everyone to shout over the noise.

An abundance of eggs

Our egg production is just about in full swing. After months of no eggs, then a few months of nothing but blue eggs, we're now getting eggs from (we assume) all of our chickens. One day we actually got eight eggs, which was amazing! Taylor is still charting our egg production, and the past few days, we've gotten a big spike. It seems like all of our hens started laying at once.

We've got more eggs than we can handle, and the extras are being sold to New College students.

Pit-fired Bowls

We've used a lot of the cut-down palmettos for fires lately. Not only have we been using the fires to cook, we've used the opportunity to make some pit-fired pottery.

The colors come out very unpredictably. This set was coated with a honey-colored glaze, but instead came out with red, green, and blue shades.

It's hard to get the fires as hot as we need, since there's not a lot of good wood to burn. Some of the pieces have the characteristic shine from melted silica in the glaze, but most of it is just matte.

While the glaze is considered food-safe, I'm not sure we're going to use these to eat out of. Bits of ash are embedded in the surface, and they didn't heat up as much as they should have. Either way, we're going to continue using our fire pit to make pottery.

Starting seeds

It's that time of year again! We're slowly starting seeds for this year's spring garden. What do we have so far? Okra, peppers, squash, zucchini, and cucumbers. We're going to start more soon, and some crops will be directly sewn into the garden. As for tomatoes, we're not sure what we want to plant. We haven't had much luck with heirlooms, but I'm not too sure I want to use commercial seeds. We'll have to see.

A new pea trellis

Mr. Phils recently replaced his old plant-shelves with a brand new shiny one. Instead of throwing away the old one, we decided to recycle.

It should be perfect for our sugar-snap peas to climb up on. Up to now, we've been using bamboo with yarn tied to it to give the peas something to grab on to. This should work rather well for this climbing variety.

Our other peas are loving the cold weather, and we hope it doesn't warm up too soon.

Lots of compost

So we decided to give the city compost a try. It's completely free at five pickup locations around the county, with the closest one just two miles down the road. There's a big concrete bunker full of recycled, composted yard waste available to anyone that wants to haul it away.

We picked up a trailer-load full, and composted two of our beds with a six-inch-thick layer. It's not perfectly organic, and still contains trace fertilizers and pesticides, but New College has done a test on it, and deemed it safe for use in their organic garden on campus. It had a good amount of worms and beetles in it, so we decided it's probable okay to use in our garden.

We're pretty happy with it. You can definitely see the difference between the un-composted beds and the ones with a happy dose of humus. We'll have to see how it works out this growing season.

Clearing Out

Without fires to control the landscape, Florida undergrowth can get a little wild. The palmettos were sky-high and way too dry, posing a huge threat. If they were to catch fire, they'd blaze up in an instant. Since a controlled burn really isn't an option in a neighborhood, we've been working on slowly pushing back the growth.

Now we've got some pretty big piles of palmettos laying around. They're great for fires, and even burn well when completely wet and green. It's been a lot of work (Taylor goes out almost every day after work), but without letting things take their natural course (wildfires caused by lightning), it's actually better for the ecosystem to clear it out every once in a while.