{"id":8649,"date":"2010-08-16T22:32:15","date_gmt":"2010-08-17T02:32:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.janicefergusonsews.com\/blog\/?p=8649"},"modified":"2012-04-21T13:43:31","modified_gmt":"2012-04-21T17:43:31","slug":"more-cabin-decorating","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.janicefergusonsews.com\/blog\/2010\/08\/16\/more-cabin-decorating\/","title":{"rendered":"More Cabin Decorating"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Yesterday, we drove through 8 hours of pouring rain and 3 hours of gloom to\u00c2\u00a0 get home. It’s always hard to leave the cabin but we’re happy to be home.<\/p>\n

Now, I’m enjoying the cabin pictures even more than when we were there.\u00c2\u00a0 This post is about carrying out the rooster\/chicken theme in the second bathroom.\u00c2\u00a0 Like every other room, it has vaulted ceilings and somehow, it seems like a much larger space, needing more “stuff” to make it look homey.<\/p>\n

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Because this bathroom serves the patriotic bedroom, and because so much chicken and Americana themed fabric was available, I went with it. Towels, of course, provide a blank canvas for themes.\u00c2\u00a0 The hand towels have a plump hen, roasting in the sun in her flag inspired bathing suit and the standard old lady bathing cap.\u00c2\u00a0This design makes me grin every time I look at it.<\/p>\n

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The wall opposite the mirror goes to the peak of the roof.\u00c2\u00a0 That huge expanse needed something to break it up.\u00c2\u00a0 This cheater quilt panel fit the bill perfectly.\u00c2\u00a0 Panels like this are great when you don’t want to put a lot of time into something and yet you need a little quilt.\u00c2\u00a0 With free motion quilting and a high loft batt, there is enough dimension that it almost looks like trapunto.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, I forgot my camera and had to take all these photos with Bob’s new I-phone which has a pretty good camera.\u00c2\u00a0 But you can’t see the detail as well as with my Sony.<\/p>\n

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The last sewing project for this room was a hooped embroidered rooster.\u00c2\u00a0 For a country look, this seemed just about right.\u00c2\u00a0 The rooster is simply embroidered on muslin then hooped in an inexpensive wooden hoop edged with red rick rack.\u00c2\u00a0 It hangs above the commode.<\/p>\n

Almost every time we look at all the chicken\/rooster decorating in the cabin, Bob and I smile at one another, recalling a favorite memory from when we were young parents.<\/p>\n

At that time, I was in my Mother Earth phase and Bob fantasized about being a gentleman farmer on our 3 acre country home site.\u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 Our 1926 home is\u00c2\u00a0nestled in ancient oaks and pines and came with an aged but rather upscale 2 room chicken house.\u00c2\u00a0 It was back to basics\u00c2\u00a0as we dreamed of self sufficiency.<\/p>\n

We planted a vegetable garden, rejuvenated our 80 citrus trees, bought dairy goats and, of course, loaded up\u00c2\u00a0 the “brooder” with two dozen day old chicks.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Soon, we were giving fresh eggs to anyone who would\u00c2\u00a0take them.<\/p>\n

But to be self-sufficient, we needed to be\u00c2\u00a0 able to hatch our own chicks.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0However, \u00c2\u00a0Rhode Island Reds and White Leghorns have had the “broodiness” bred out of them.\u00c2\u00a0 They never sit on their eggs.\u00c2\u00a0 But tiny bantam chickens will sit on a pile of rocks for all eternity waiting for them to hatch.\u00c2\u00a0 So we got a bantie hen and gave her some Rhode Island eggs, on which she sat with rugged poultry maternal devotion.\u00c2\u00a0 Voila, we had a chicken farm!\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Our hens laid eggs\u00c2\u00a0and the young roosters were butchered for Sunday dinner.<\/p>\n

But then we let a friend talk us into taking one of her surplus bantie roosters.\u00c2\u00a0 Big mistake. Before we could say Jack Rabbit, that little hen had hidden her own fertile eggs and hatched out a dozen teeny chicks.\u00c2\u00a0 Before they were half grown, she was back on her\u00c2\u00a0hideaway nest and strutted out with another brood.<\/p>\n

Bantie eggs are about the size of big jelly beans and you can never find them because the hen won’t use the nesting box.\u00c2\u00a0 She is so secretive that if you do find the eggs, you are afraid to use them for fear of finding fetal chicks.\u00c2\u00a0 And the roosters, even full grown, are not worth the trouble to butcher because they are so small.\u00c2\u00a0 So we had a poultry population problem.<\/p>\n

The bantams\u00c2\u00a0–“Puny Poultry” is what we called them–set up\u00c2\u00a0 their own little community and roosted in the orange\u00c2\u00a0grove at night, away from the protection of the hen house and the company of their larger cousins. \u00c2\u00a0The multitudinous roosters started crowing about 3 a.m. and didn’t give up their call until every hen was scratching in\u00c2\u00a0 the dirt, about 7 a.m.\u00c2\u00a0 We couldn’t sleep past the rooster wake up call.<\/p>\n

Bob was beside himself.\u00c2\u00a0 He likes things contained and chickens are supposed to be contained in the chicken house. And they are supposed to sleep until dawn.\u00c2\u00a0 So he began a bantie annihilation program.<\/p>\n

Every night after dinner, he would dig a deep hole under an orange tree.\u00c2\u00a0 Then at dusk, when\u00c2\u00a0 the Puny Poultry\u00c2\u00a0were all settled in on their favorite branches for the night, he would put up a ladder, snatch up one or two roosters, chop off their heads and bury them in the hole he had dug.<\/p>\n

Ryan was 3 at the time and attended pre-school three mornings a week.\u00c2\u00a0 One morning, as I picked him up, the teacher called me aside.\u00c2\u00a0 She was inquiring about what was going on at our home.\u00c2\u00a0 Ryan, it seems, had taken the Show and Tell opportunity to share with his friends that every night, his Daddy cut the head off a chicken and buried it.\u00c2\u00a0 She politely asked for an explanation.\u00c2\u00a0 It took a while to explain that.<\/p>\n

Bob managed to get rid of all but one rooster, who seemed to have more lives than a cat.\u00c2\u00a0 Even when he was caught, he managed to get away.\u00c2\u00a0 And he crowed all night in protest.\u00c2\u00a0 Bob was very frustrated and gave thought to hiring a professional hit man.<\/p>\n

Then one cold January morning, my neighbor called, asking how our pet rooster was today.\u00c2\u00a0 What?\u00c2\u00a0 It seems\u00c2\u00a0 that since all the other roosters were gone, she thought this one was\u00c2\u00a0dear to us.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0She had heard a racket in the middle of the night when\u00c2\u00a0apparently a raccoon had almost\u00c2\u00a0bagged the rooster.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0The sly escape artist\u00c2\u00a0flew away from the raccoon and crash landed in her swimming pool.\u00c2\u00a0 Because she assumed this was a special foul, she shooed away the raccoon and fished\u00c2\u00a0the little rooster\u00c2\u00a0out of the pool with the net.\u00c2\u00a0 He was wrapped in a towel and taken into the house where she used her blow dryer to warm and dry him.\u00c2\u00a0 Early in the morning, she released him over the fence into our yard.\u00c2\u00a0 She probably fixed him pancakes for breakfast before she freed him!<\/p>\n

I just thanked her for her kindness and\u00c2\u00a0didn’t mentioned this incident to Bob for several years.\u00c2\u00a0 That rooster hung around in the orange trees for almost two years and probably died of old age.\u00c2\u00a0 Bob gave up hunting him, probably out of respect for his resourcefulness.\u00c2\u00a0 Now, we just laugh about it and smile when we look at the roosters in this bathroom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, we drove through 8 hours of pouring rain and 3 hours of gloom to\u00c2\u00a0 get home. It’s always hard to leave the cabin but we’re happy to be home. Now, I’m enjoying the cabin pictures even more than when … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18,3,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.janicefergusonsews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8649"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.janicefergusonsews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.janicefergusonsews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.janicefergusonsews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.janicefergusonsews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8649"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"http:\/\/www.janicefergusonsews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8649\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22401,"href":"http:\/\/www.janicefergusonsews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8649\/revisions\/22401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.janicefergusonsews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.janicefergusonsews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.janicefergusonsews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}