HomesteaderWife - Tales from Wolf Branch [05/10/2023 - The New Fella!]

[HomesteaderWife]

@Latestarter - Indeed, but the woman was very kind and changed it this morning for me.

@Baymule - I loved my grandparents dearly, even though they were separated. My grandfather lived one state over, but my grandmother was close by and I loved visiting with her! She set such an important example and was, and always will be, my inspiration. Now that you are a grandparent yourself, do you ever find yourself doing anything the same way your own grandparents did?

@Poka_Doodle - Thank you so much! I appreciate it alot. I was very nervous in applying for the blogging position, and sat there for hours debating about what to write as my example/first post.

 

[Latestarter]

Excellent articles! And they make sense grammatically

 

[Poka_Doodle]

I hope you don't mind but I used it as a source for a current writing project I am working on

 

[HomesteaderWife]

@Poka_Doodle - What are you writing about hun? I am more than happy for you to use any of it with source credit! Thank you again for reading it over

 

[Baymule]

My Grandmother canned, made jams and jellies, and was a good cook. None of that transferred to her daughter. I can, put up in the freezer, dehydrate, make jams and jellies and I am a good cook. My daughter takes more after her Grandma than she does me, but she is a good cook. My Great Grandmother and my Grandmother made home made eggnog. I make it too. My Great Grandmother was crafty, made pillows, she smocked, and made hook rugs. I was about 6 years old when she showed me how to hook a rug. Many, many years later, my Grandmother gave me 2 badly damaged hook rugs my Great Grandmother made. Because she had taken the time to show a little child what she was doing, I was able to restore the rugs and they are now in my guest room. My Grandfather taught me how to hunt, skin and clean game, and how to track. He taught me how to swing an axe, put tin on a roof, peel pine poles for fence posts and what the different trees were.

 

[HomesteaderWife]

@Baymule - I really love that you shared all of this with me, because it is interesting to hear that other people learned such valuable things from their grandparents and great-grandparents. I must ask about your grandfather teaching you to make fence posts, because this is something I tried recently. We took a few nice pines that were cleared and cut them 7 foot in length, and I then debarked them by hand with a draw knife. It was a lot of work, but we used them to enclose our chicken pen. Do you treat them with something, or do you put them in the ground as they are?

 

[Baymule]

My grandfather had a vat made of metal barrels cut in half and welded together, I think it was 4 halves. He mixed Penta (I don't think you can buy it anymore) and diesel. He soaked the peeled poles for a couple of weeks. He had an expanded metal rack that hung over the vat. He took the soaked poles out and put them on the rack to drain and dry, and loaded the vat up again with more poles. He put cinder blocks on top of the poles to hold them under the solution. If you put them in the ground as they are, they will rot in a year or two.

My Grandfather also taught me about pitch pine. That is pine cut when the sap is leaving the pine needles and going into the roots for the winter. The sap is in the trunk of the pine. Here, the time to cut them is October. The sap crystalizes and acts as a preservative. It also makes it flammable and when split in small pieces, is great for starting fires. I have seen my Grandfather split pitch pine logs into fence posts and put them in the ground. And yes, he taught me to use a drawing knife too! My Daddy took truck loads of pine poles home with us and after I got home from school, I peeled pine poles. Then we took them back to my Grandfather to go in his vat. Oh, the vat needs to be under a shed, to keep rain from getting in it.

 

[goatgurl]

excellent articles homesteaderwife! good luck with it.

 

[Poka_Doodle]

@Poka_Doodle - What are you writing about hun? I am more than happy for you to use any of it with source credit! Thank you again for reading it over

Its about an explosion, I am using the part about doing it well

 

[HomesteaderWife]

Its about an explosion, I am using the part about doing it well

Explosion?..