Monday Morning Musings

Back to work after a great weekend immersion in all things fiber art.  The best part was hanging out with Kim, Candace, Carol, Lisa, Susanne, Jim, and my many fiber friends who totally understand what I do.  No explanation necessary with them.

Bouckville Festival

I'm sipping a very large cup of very strong Multatelli coffee before we go back to the Central New York Fiber Festival.  I am very happy with the way the festival is growing.  We definitely had more people come through the gate this year.  We are very lucky with the weather.  After two days of heavy rain the tents kept the water out and the grounds are firm.  No patrons got stuck in the mud yesterday.  I sold some raw fleeces, which is very gratifying to me considering the fleece sale had a hefty number of entries.  If mine were shorn and skirted in time I certainly would have availed myself of that service.  My coffee-for-vendors was well received and I filled the big pot three times.  Kim had a ball, as usual, and sold a few skeins of her gorgeous art yarn.  I love to give her fiber as I see it spun up in the basket at the next show.  She makes me look so good.  We would have loved to spend the night at the fairgrounds and babysit the sheep as we did last year, but spouse is still not good and we had to return to the farm for chores.  We did our pond walk in the pitch black dark to put Lindsay's gift to me, a bag of baby gold fish, into the pond.  Thank you Lindsay!  The grass is knee high after all this rain.  I think it's time to call Julia to cut it.  We were back up there last night to gaze at the water and play with the dogs.  The goat herd was keeping their distance.  Kim and I got a couple of goats clipped Friday night, including a feisty doe who kept trying to bite me the whole time I worked on her.  She feels much better now with her summer hair cut.  I'm sure she told the others to stay back.   I picked and skirted a couple of black fleeces last night while we watched Penny Dreadful on the tellie.  I'll bring them to the festival today.  I won't mind if they don't sell - they are sooo beautiful.  Better get this show on the road.  I have Pavarotti on and he's really stirred the blood.  Fingers crossed for big crowds and happy patrons.

Big Girls

Very wet couple of days.  I have a back log of dyed fiber to dry.  I fed Scarlett and Sue Ellen in the rain this morning.  I sometimes sit down and watch them eat, but not in the rain.  They didn't seem to mind as they are very focused on their meals.  I have fed them the same amount since they were babies - a bucket of slop each morning and night - and look how they have grown.  It's time for them to go to Miss Tammy but with Matt still so crippled and with the trailer hitch broke off my blazer I don't know what to do.  I'm waiting for the other Maggie to come up with a solution.  She always does, sooner or later so I'm not going to worry about it.  I hope in the case of the piggies it is sooner.  I was coming down the hay mow ladder last night and both girls were standing underneath me making loud, primal, pig squeals and screams.  I had fed them their dinner, as I always do, before everyone else so they leave me alone.  Apparently they thought I had gone up there to find something else for them to eat.  I could almost step on their backs, one leg on each pig, and ride around the barn like a circus performer.  They must weigh 4 or 500 pounds each.  They wait for me to come out of the house and try to beat me to the milk room where I mix their slop.  One of these days they are going to break down the milk room door when I'm not home and I'll find them lying on their sides, unable to move, from having consumed all the cracked corn I have.

.  Life on the farm is never dull.

New Fiber

I just got this fiber back from the carding mill.  John at Frankenmuth in Michigan does such a nice job for me.  This is mostly overdyed black Bluefaced Leicester wool from last year's fleeces blended with colored mohair clipped recently from last year's kids.  Soooo soft and lovely.  I'd like something for myself out of this run I think.

Welcoming Committee

They are always so happy to see me.  Maybe it's the jumbo bag of kitty cookies I haul home with me every day.  I don't care, I know they love me.  They show me their love by keeping the nasty rats from chewing on wires and burning down my barn, and they keep me company.  Thank you Kitties.

Raining

It's been raining most of the day.  It was a hectic one for me, having overslept until 7:30, which gave me about 20 minutes to mix pig slop, feed/water chickens and ducks, feed the cats and walk the dogs.  Oh, and get myself clean and presentable for school.  Oh, and drink enough coffee to get the wheels in my head turning.  My cell phone alarm went off but I didn't hear it.  Spouse is coming home from the hospital today, after a four day stay during which time they operated on his infected foot and grew cultures to find out what antibiotics would prevent it from coming back.  I've been managing okay on the farm, but it helps to have an extra pair of hands.  This rainy weather certainly makes the grass grow.  The path we take up to the farm is grown over with a thick carpet of clover covered with various grasses and wild flowers.  The sheep have a lush salad available to them and I am thoroughly enjoying it.  Unfortunately, the thistle debacle has raised it's ugly head, and must be dealt with.  I'm hoping spouse will mow them down with his tractor, but I don't know if he can drive it with the foot.  I might have to do it myself.  I have to get those thistles cut before they flower and send seeds hither and yon.   I have two dye pots cooled down filled with Marcellus' (Markie-Mark's) lovely fleece.  His mother was my dearly departed Rambouillet ewe, Miss Mamie, and father, the amiable Zack, a Border Leicester ram.  The fleece is very soft and fills two giant pots, crammed full.  I'm using Jacquard's "Sunflower,"  my favorite yellow.  I'm going to have some lovely wool for fall shows.  All I need is time, plentiful water, my pots, a stove, a washing machine, a drying rack, and sun - lots of glorious sun.

Chicks - Interrupted

Lindsay Parkinson did a good job of ferreting out all the hidden nests in my big barn over the weekend.  I confess I was a bit taken back by the number of eggs she collected, including eggs from under sitting hens.  True, I don't need any more free range chickens - especially the rooster variety.  I will miss watching the moms parade around with their broods, but Lindsay did find something that gives me great delight - a mama duck sitting on a nest!!  With Sue Ellen and Scarlett marauding around the barn looking for eggs to eat I immediately began scheming to protect them.  Lindsay and I constructed a panel barricade in front of mama duck to block  any curious pigs.  If the pigs wanted those eggs nothing would stop them, so I closed the big barn doors.  Last summer was the Summer of Ducks, with yellow ducklings in the barnyard and a couple I hatched myself inside.  I adore my Jemima Puddleducks.  Sure hope this nest results in more fluffy darlings.

First Felt

We've been felting in some of my Studio Art classes.  It's very new and exciting with some apprehension due to complete bafflement over what felting is.   I told them the story of the "first felt" which occurred on Noah's Ark.  The sheep in their stall on the ark shed their wool, peed on it, then stamped on it and then they were standing on a rug.  The kids liked the story except for the pee part.  That was a tad disconcerting for them.  I've made that mistake before when I told them how poor people in the Middle Ages would sell their pee to artists who added it to their paints for more intense colors that stuck to the canvas.  If you didn't have a pot to collect your pee then you were so poor you "did not have a pot to pee in."    Isn't History fascinating?  Back to the wool felt... I showed them a picture of a yurt on the steppes of Asia and told them about the nomadic tribes who have to move when there is no more grass for their sheep to eat and how they make portable houses out of pieces of felted wool stretched over  wooden panels.  It's a bit more work than they are used to, with all the rubbing and more rubbing, but that demonstrates how hard people had to work for shelter.  We have a lot of fun and the soap/water gets our art tables nice and clean. 

Fiber Kitties

It was a perfect day for washing/dyeing/drying fiber.  What better way to keep busy when friends go home?  While looking for some wool I wanted to give to Kim I found even more lovely black mohair in my storage room.  I washed it dyed it, along with the first white fleece of this season.  What colors?  Teal Green and Pink Orchid Jacquard.  I'm still using dyes purchased least year.  I'm going to try to get away from green, chartreuse,gold, pink and orange but it will be tough.  In the meantime, the kitties don't care what color the fiber is.  They love to lie in the warmth and softness.  I don't mind as they never kick it off the rack, and they look so dreamy and beautiful.

Shearing Day Vittles

What to feed a gang of workers at shearing time?  I figured a giant lasagna would do the trick.  I selfishly added a salad with black olives, spring greens, red peppers, red onions and bleu cheese.  I never know what to feed Kim's kids, Jared and Lindsay, but Mom knows best.  She fed them goodies out of the back of her van all weekend.  Kim brought me goodies, too, as in cat and dog food.  She knows me best, too.

Nailed It!

Wednesday night while I was trying to tidy up here our living area my canning rack slid into the middle of the room.  I had served spouse his dinner as I always do and gone to work in the barn.  I did not know this until the next morning, but he had walked across the room to bring his plate back to the kitchen and stepped firmly on the canning rack.  I cannot quite picture this as it seem to me that it would hit his boot and skid away, but no such luck.  He stepped squarely on a blunt tipped prong sticking up from the circles where you secure the jars.  I had been putting up rhubarb the week before.  He went to work and came home, aching and limping.  By Friday his foot had swollen grotesquely and he was really in a lot of pain.  I knew something was seriously wrong and took him to Bassett Hospital in Cooperstown.  They took him right in and gave him oral meds.  They took an ex-ray to make sure no debris had pushed up into the foot.  He was sent home with prescriptions, no pain meds, just antiobiotics,  and a warning to come back if it got worse.  I was dealing with company and shearing, and had things to do.  Saturday night and the swelling was no better, even worse, and the pain was ridiculous.  He took himself back to the hospital where he is now admitted and the IV drugs they should have given him on Friday administered.  Not happy with Bassett Hospital in Cooperstown.

Piggies

I had to take down their pen yesterday for shearing the sheep.  Sue Ellen and Scarlett pretty much have the run of the farm anyway.  They go exactly where they want to go because they can.  No pen can keep them in at 400 pounds or so each.  Luckily, they love where they live and stick around the barnyard pretty much, except for walks to their wallows by the hawthorne grove halfway up the hill.  During the shearing, while we all had our duties and were working hard, the girls would show up and walk through the room.  They were very mellow, unless we tried to shoo them out.  We figured we'd be better off if we let them alone and go where they wanted to go.  Good girls, they found a cool spot next to the milk room door to lie down and take a long nap.  We let sleeping pigs lie.

Shearing Day 2014

I have 48 gorgeous fleeces in two giant piles in the barn, thanks to the kindness and generosity of my Canadian pals, the Parkinsons.  I've been anxious to get the wool off the sheep and goats for a few weeks now, but events, and weather, conspired against it.  I cancelled an earlier date due to the long, cold spring we've had this year.  It takes a minimum of six people to shear my flock.  Ahead of time I book the shearer then order in the vaccines, clippers and wormers.    I have to buy the bags and make sure I have food and accomodations for everyone helping me.  Weather report was perfect for this weekend.  If not I would have kept the sheep in to make sure they were dry for the shearer.   The Parkinsons arrived Friday night and slept in Hannah's Celebrity Trailer.  Early Saturday AM we secured the sheep waiting pen with panels and wire.  Kim and Darryl got ALL the sheep in.  I would have loved to do the remaining goats that I didn't get to, but the stealthy critters got away up the hill.  Kim managed to get two hairy goats in with the sheep.  Big Jim Baldwin arrived and we were underway.  Darryl and Jared caught the sheep, one by one and passed them through to Jim.  He sheared the animal then Willie, my student put a lead around it's neck and brought it to me.  Kim scooped up the fleece from the shearing platform and took it out to the skirting table while Lindsay swept off the dirt.  Willie held the sheep while I administered wormers, gave shots, trimmed each hoof, hauling each leg up between my legs and holding it still while I clipped away the excess.  The sheep does not always cooperate with any of this so we have to be on our toes.  It's very physical and very tiring but satisfying.  We worked from nine to three and sheared 48 animals.  Now I have lovely black fleeces to take to Bouckville and white wool to dye lovely colors.  The animals are cool and comfy and walking better with no creepy crawlies in their bellies.  With bare skin going into the summer they are less likely to be afflicted with fly-strike.  They'll have ample time to grow new wool for the coming winter.  I'm pleased with the condition my sheep are in.  90 % of them are FAT and happy.  A couple of old girls are withering like they do, with bones showing. I love the old girls.  Little Cinco, born last May 5, is the youngest and a lamb no longer.  I have some very handsome black wethers who gave me hefty black fleeces.  Shearing day is the culmination of a year's worth of hard work and money invested in the flock.  This very successful and smooth shearing day was not only fun with good friends helping, but very rewarding and gratifying.  I love what I do - it keeps me fit and young.   No sedentary life here.

Humid

Summer is here.  I wanted to shuck my clothes and wade into the pond with the dogs.  Only someone with a powerful telescope could see me from across the valley.  But I didn't.  I didn't have anything to float on and the thought of mama snapper lying in the mud on the bottom of the pond was at the back of my mind.  Will have to find a truck tire tube for me and Izzy to recline on.  Heaven.  The spring fed pond is cool and clean until the worst dog days of August, and, even then, the pond is cleaner than most.  Oh, I do love the cool weather but we need the heat of summer to grow the hay that gets us through the winter and grows the lovely wool I adore.  Like this beautiful run of my Bluefaced Leicester, combined with some NY State Romney I picked up at Rhinebeck last fall, and my mohair.  The mohair lends strength to the soft wool and makes it perfect for sock yarn.  Don't you hate it when the heels wear out?  Not with this yarn.  I thought I would post it before I take it to Bouckville.  Available at www.bundaflicka.etsy.com.

Hot

Warm weather getting even more so.  88 when I left school today.  Rough day at the office.  I work with some really tough kids but I'm tougher.  What it does is really piss me off.   How do I deal with it?  I come home to my farm.  I had to lie down a few minutes when I got home and the doggies didn't mind.  They waited patiently for me to be ready for our walk up the hill to the pond.  It's our afternoon ritual and it really helps me deal with the stress of my job.  The dogs swim in the pond and cool off while I look for goldfish.  Fortunately the Blue Heron that visits us regularly left a few for me to enjoy.  I let the sheep out of the barn yard before we go up the hill and they spread out over the lower hillside.  The pigs head straight for one of their wallows.  Smart girls - they know the concrete floor of the barn is cooler so they head back inside, tip over one of the big hanging water containers (up high so the ducks don't dirty the water) and splash it all over the floor.  Then they mix up some mud from the dirt in the gutter and lie down in it.  I heard crying from the way back and found a yearling goat caught in the fence.  He was not cooperative but I got his horns freed from the wire and off he went.  Since I was back there I spent some time picking up the nylon baling loops from the square bales we used two years ago.  I'm happy to be free of those loops that get wrapped around the sheep and goat hooves so easily.  I saw a clutch of hatchlings following their mom around.  The chickens know just where to lay their eggs so I don't find them.  A month later the babies are hatched and I have a population explosion on my hands.  I have to say the chickens do a good job of keeping the fly population down along with ticks, snakes, etc.  Once dinner was served it was eight pm and time for chores.  By nine thirty or so it was time to go in when I spotted the goat I've been itching to clip.  Beautiful long black mohair - I love my black girls - and very hairy.  I called to spouse can we do one tonight - we've been doing a goat every night or so to make less work for Jim at shearing on Saturday and to give me fiber to work with.  He said oh, alright and I managed to catch her.  A half hour later I had the mohair off, wormed her, and trimmed her hooves.  Poor thing had a length of fencing wire tangled in her back side.  That must have been uncomfortable.  Now she can scratch where it itches and be cool and comfy.  I'm headed for beddie - bye and it will be positively divine to shut this machine down.

Rhubarb!

I've been lucky to receive a good bit of rhubarb from friends at school.  I've also picked up a good bit from the little old lady on the roadside, on the way to work. Last Wednesday I spent the better part of  the day washing, chopping and cooking it for canning.  I filled seven quart jars.  I will give most of it to him, as we still have some left from last year.  I used to put strawberries in it but he likes it better plain.  That's the Swede in him coming out.  Every Scandie family in Brooklyn had a little plot of rhubarb in the back yard.
That's where my father grew up after emigrating from Sweden on 50th Street between 7th and 8th Avenue.

Lush

The sheep and goats have so much to eat they don't know what to do with themselves.  I'm trying to keep them off the top field so we can turn that into hay.  It gives us a good excuse to hike up there and chase them back down to where they have plenty to eat.  Reba has taken over for Izzy as the main sheep dog.  I say "get them up" and Reba knows what to do.  Their long fleeces undulate as they head down the hill.  I am hopeful for a good hay harvest this year.  Julia, my dairy farmer friend, is on deck with a new tractor and baler.  With all this rain and heat we're looking good.  I figure I need 60 or so round bales to make it through.  Fingers crossed.  My grandmother used to say farmers are the biggest gamblers in the world.  Yes, we are.

Sirens

These lovely ladies laid themselves down on the lawn behind my tent yesterday at the farmer's market.  It was such a beautiful, delightful, warm, sunny day and I almost joined them.  The market started slow but got quite busy, with several school friends stopping by to visit.  I love when they do that.  Everybody goes home with a bag of soap.  I was able to visit with my market friends Candace and Susanne Farrington, who makes the fabulous shaving cups for me.  One man stopped by to tell me he bought one for his daughter when he brought her to school at Colgate University four years ago and he's STILL shaving with it.  He bought another one to get him through the next few years as he doesn't expect to be back to Hamilton.  Very, very cool indeed.

Dye Jag

I've been shearing the angora goats, one every day or two, for a couple of weeks now.  I didn't shear earlier due to a long, cold , wet spring.  I am the Jewish/Italian mother of the animal world you know.  God forbid they should be chilled.  I did not want to deprive them of their coats.  Big Jim Baldwin is coming next weekend to shear the sheep and I will be thrilled.  The warm weather is upon us and the sheep are panting already, even lying on the cool hay pack on the floor of the barn.  I've been working on the "undesirable" fleeces from last year - the ones that were felted together due to sun and rain - and getting them washed and dyed.  It's no easy task as each lock as to be pulled away from the rug.  Once separated and washed the wool is soft as buttah.  I can get lost in a fleece - it's very meditative to gaze into the locks as I tease open the curls.  I'm doing something so ancient and fundamental - working with my own fiber from the animals I've raised from birth.  The feel, the aroma, the warm sun on my back, the ducks splashing in the water tub, the dogs sleeping around me, the sheep and goats grazing on the hillside next to me, is all so intoxicating.   I'm also trying to use up my supply of dyes.  I had a giant jar of teal green Jacquard dye from Dharma so we are going to have a huge teal run.  Okay with me, I adore the color.  No purple, no pink, just teal...for now.  You never know what I'm going to throw in at the last minute.  Spouse caught Monkey for me and held on to her while I clipped her long locks last night.  She was not happy about it at all, but was clearly enjoying the ability to scratch where it itches.  We did little Comet,.Luke's goat, today.  His coat was the worst, like two solid patches of curls hanging off each side of him, but I managed to pull the locks apart and have it soaking in the wash tub now.  I have more fleeces in the barn to work on, but, with the annual Mother Lode coming in next week, they might have to wait a little longer.  I've found that wool left open to the air does not attract bugs, luckily.  It's the raw wool that is bagged and stored in a dark place that is eaten by the little buggers.  I learned that the hard way.  Soooo, you see piles of raw wool lying everywhere around here.  So much wool, so little time.