Life’s too short to spin nasty wool

I am ruthlessly sorting the wool in the fibre room.

Good bits are pulled off for washing, yukky bits are sent to the compost pile with no regrets. I used to try to wring every bit into something functional, but you know what? There’s plenty more wool where this stuff came from, and if I’m gonna spin, I’m gonna enjoy it.

It’d be different if I paid for the stuff, if there was a limited supply of fibre, or if every bit of wool was destined to clothe my family or something. However, given that none of those are true … only the best stuff gets to stay. Everything else goes outside!

Washing Fleece

I recently got Alden Amos’ Big Book of Handspinning from the library: it has great writing style, lots of information, and I am most definitely inspired.

See, it has finally occurred to me that I can store fleeces after they are washed, but not necessarily carded. Don’t ask me why this never made it into my thoughts before – I mean, there’s certainly no reason you have to card the stuff immediately after it dries, but I always thought of the two tasks being done together and if I wasn’t ready to do the whole job, I just didn’t do any of it. The result is that I have piles of dirty fleeces sitting in my fibre room, when it would be ever so much better to have piles of washed fleeces sitting in my fibre room.

The Big Book of Handspinning book actually recommends storing fleece in fabric bags hung from the ceiling, wrapped tightly at the top to keep bugs out and labeled with a tag – I’m thinking pillowcases from the thrift store would work perfectly. I’m really liking that idea, as it improves the accessibility of the fibre and keeps things up off the floor. I suspect a trip to the thrift store is in order, to acquire more pillow cases. :)

Now, I don’t wash Icelandic fleece. I tried to, really I did, but I ended up with lumpy piles of felt every single time. There is so little lanolin in it anyway that it’s really not difficult to work with in the unwashed state. I like to prepare it for spinning with combs, rather than carders, and since combs aren’t bothered by lanolin the way carders are, I have no reason to struggle with the esoteric art of washing Icelandic fleece.  Also, since we don’t use pour-on medications for the sheep, I know that the worst of what’s in their wool is at least non-toxic, although it is definitely dirty and germ-laden. I can deal with dirt and germs: I do live on a farm, after all.

However …

I have piles of non-Icelandic fleeces here. They have been sitting for awhile and if that goes on too much longer, the lanolin in them is going to turn into solid guck, which will make them even worse to clean when I finally get around to it. So, inspired by the book, I have started sorting and washing the fleece. It isn’t a complicated process: just put very hot water in buckets with some washing soda and dish detergent (the book recommends natural soap, but we have very hard water, so detergent is a better choice for us), add the fleece without agitating it at all, let it soak in the soapy water for a bit, then get it out without scalding your hands or squishing the wool (scooping it with a colander works fairly well). Let the worst of the wash water drain off, then gently transfer to a clean bucket of equally hot water, and let it soak there for a bit. Scoop it out again, then lay it out to dry. I have wool spread out on the older (somewhat rickety) drying rack, with fabric spread across the racks to keep the wool bits from falling through. It’ll dry in the next couple of days, and humidify the house nicely at the same time. :)

I think I’ll go see if I can find room to spread out one more fleece  … I’ve got lots to do, and I might as well do it while the humidity is low and I’m in the zone!

Farewell Duggan

I got an email today from Duggan’s new family … his kidneys finally failed, and they made the hard decision to let him go to sleep for the last time.

He had a good life, really, and a fairly long one for a beagle – he was ten years old. He came to live with us when The Boy was just in kindergarten, and Duggan was a year old then … he was a good companion when you needed a friend who loved you no matter what. He wasn’t really sure about the whole farm life thing – but after awhile, he got used to being here and spent his days snoozing in the sun with the cats curled up next to him (The Reluctant Farmer used to make fun of him for consorting with cats, no self-respecting dog would do that!). One day, he answered a call only he could hear, and wandered off west where he found Miss Ruby, who needed him so badly. After Miss Ruby’s passing, he found his retirement home where he was cared for and loved through his last illness, and today, our kind and gentle vet helped him into his final rest.

I miss his soft ears, and his happy wagging tail. He was a good dog, and I’m sure he has found Miss Ruby in heaven. No doubt she’s happy to see him.

Planning the garden

Oh my, I have a lot of seeds. And I’ve ordered more. And I don’t think my garden is quite big enough. :)

This is a good problem to have, really.

The past two years have seen the garden space slowly expanding … well, the fences haven’t moved, but the area within the fences has been gradually brought into shape for planting. The original two 16x4 foot raised beds are still there and serving well, and the strawberry bed that was added last year will hopefully start producing this summer. This past fall, the sheep were sent in to eat down the remaining grass (which grew to knee height over the summer), so with luck, the almost indestructible pasture grasses will finally be in a state that they can be controlled.

This spring, more compost will be hauled in, rows for planting peas and corn and beans and tomatoes will be marked out and piled high with fresh soil, and walkways will be mulched with straw. Three  new herb beds will be laid out (maybe with wooden borders, maybe with rocks, maybe just with marked off boundaries), and a grape arbour will be constructed (yes, I found  a grape that is supposed to be cold hardy … I just had to try it!). There is a spot set aside for the new raspberry bushes, and squash plants will be put in all around the border. Peas will be planted with sunflowers so that their supports grow along side the vines, and if I get really organized, some flowers might even get planted out by the driveway. The garden calendar has all the dates for putting seeds that need stratification into the freezer, when to start the various indoor seedlings, when the last frost date is supposed to be (and when it actually was last year, which was a whole month later than the schedule called for!), and a variety of possible planting dates, all, of course, subject to the weather.

It’s good to think about gardens when winter starts to get really long. It makes spring seem closer. :)

The Food Mill: a truly awesome kitchen gadget

For Christmas, my parents gifted me with a new food mill.

This is a truly awesome kitchen gadget!

Applesauce: Cook up a bunch of apples (just slice them, don’t bother peeling or coring) with a wee bit of water and a shot of cinnamon, then when they are soft, put them into the bowl of the food mill, crank the handle, and voila – you have smooth, seedless, peel-free apple sauce in the dish underneath.

Cream of vegetable soup: Cook up your vegetables until they are nice and soft – or take the leftovers from last night’s dinner. Fry up some onions in a generous helping of butter, add a bit of garlic or spices if you like, and when the onions are nice and golden, thicken the butter with flour and stir it to cook a little. Pour in some milk, heat it through, then dump the cooked veggies and their cooking liquid, into the mix. Ladle into the food mill and puree into the serving dish. Serve with grated cheese to sprinkle into the bowl … just beware of dangling cheesy bits!

Lentil soup: Heat your oil, then add onions and stir while they turn golden. Add curry and spices (the spices need to be absorbed by the oil, the flavour is much richer than if they are just added to the liquid), some chopped or mashed leftover potatoes, and maybe some diced or leftover carrots (or whatever other veggies are kicking around – peas would be good), then add your rinsed lentils and 4 times their volume in broth (or plain water with a generous shot of dried, blendered greens for flavouring). Cook until the lentils fall apart, potatoes are cooked through (if they weren’t already), then ladle into the food mill and puree into the serving dish.

I’ve used the food mill three times in the last few days. It’s great! I can’t wait for tomato paste season. :) Thanks, Mom and Dad!

Independence Days: January 2010

It’s about time we did another Independence Days update, I think. Having just obtained my very own copy of Sharon Astyk’s book of the same name, I am officially inspired. :)

So, although it seems like one would not do much in the way of ‘preparing’ in the winter, let’s see what’s been going on.

Planted: Okay, planting is out of the question – although, I am considering planting some catnip in a pot. Not for the cats, for me: I often have trouble sleeping and catnip is an amazingly effective sedative, and it tastes good as a tea! Yeah, I know: it makes cats all goofy and wound up, and it puts people to sleep. Now you know why you can’t assume veterinary medicine is the same as the stuff for people. 

Harvested: Well, not much. In fact, we had the Annual Winter Egg Drought over the holiday season, of course, in the dark time of the year. The hens were all recovering from moult, it was cold, it was dark, nobody was laying eggs. Then … on Saturday … the Egg Miracle occurred. An egg! Finally! And another the next day, and one more the next, and three this morning! You have no idea how happy this makes me. I love fresh eggs.

 Preserved: Now this, I have done! I found a bag of red, yellow and green peppers on sale at the grocery store, so I bought them, used some fresh, and then dehydrated the rest. We use the dehydrated peppers in our soups and stews to add a bit of colour and sweetness – and now that the kids have finally realized that just because it is called a pepper it doesn’t necessarily mean it is hot, we can use them in everything. I also grated some orange rind from the lovely oranges that came in the monthly food basket from WECAN, and put that in the dehydrator too, for my mom. She asked for some at Christmas time.

Waste Not: The aforementioned dehydrating probably counts, as does the ongoing creative use of leftovers. We had a few potatoes and carrots left from dinner, and I was making lentil soup … which needs to be thickened with potatoes, so in they went, along with the carrots. Being flexible with recipes is a great way to avoid waste.

Want Not (Preparations): The trip to the Thrift Store turned up some fun yarn for projects, as well as a $2.50 teapot that has a base to hold a tealight. I have tested it out and you can actually heat water to the right temperature to make a decent pot of tea, just by leaving it on the tealight. It’s slow, but it works. The pot also can sit on the woodstove, which was, in fact, the primary requirement for this new purchase.

Community Food Systems: Ordered more hay from my local hay farmer, and sold more lamb to some local customers.

Eat the Food: The food basket this month contained a head of cauliflower (as well as a head of broccoli, some potatoes, and assorted other things). My More with Less cookbook had a recipe for an easy cream of cauliflower soup, and it turned out fabulous. (Stay tuned for more on that.)

Peace and Quiet for the New Year

I love peace and quiet.

I suppose that too much of it would get boring, but I can’t actually think of any set of circumstances in my life so far where that’s occurred, so I cherish peace and quiet when it shows up.

Early winter is always a good time to indulge in a little bit of restful quiet at home: sitting by the fire, reading, knitting, spinning, puttering about looking through boxes of stuff, reorganizing the book case. Things outside are in a routine – the entertaining antics of breeding season are past, lambing won’t happen until April, calving won’t be until late summer, and the chickens are on strike and not even laying one measly egg a day. Whatever outside work didn’t get done in the fall has to wait for spring, and since The Reluctant Farmer is in school, larger scale inside projects are on hold, too.

That means peace and quiet. :)

Ten years ago, I was part of the preparations for Y2K – I know there was a lot of hype and panic, but there really were things that could’ve gone wrong, and through the efforts of a lot of coders, testers, technicians and journeymen, trouble was, by and large, avoided. Oh, the whole world infrastructure was never at risk of collapse, but power plants could’ve stopped, phone systems gone nutty, and billing systems gone even nuttier … and it was worth it to put the effort in up front in order to avoid the potential problems.

I remember having a copy of one of the magazines popular among the survivalist types back then: I kept it in my office for entertainment purposes during some of the late-night work we had to do. The part that always made me laugh out loud was the big story about how to build your own bunker. That wasn’t the funny part: the funny part was the advertisement on the facing page for a years’ worth of food for six people, in which the primary meal was beans. Just imagine: six people squashed into an underground bunker eating beans … this is not gonna be a pleasant place to be in a few hours! I always figured those kinds of ‘eat for a year’ parcels ought include and annual supply of Beano and Gas-X, just on humanitarian grounds.

Ten years ago at the turn of the new century, I lived in a nice house in town, with a gas fireplace and electric heat, went grocery shopping every week, and didn’t really give it all much thought - even with all the hype and hoopla of Y2K. Now I live in the country in a not-quite-finished house … but one with enough power from solar to keep the water running and the dark at bay if the power goes out, a woodstove for heat and cooking if the natural gas goes out (or for when prices spike by 40% as they are scheduled to do next month), and a reasonably full pantry (nowhere near where I’d like it to be, but we are set up to weather a week of being snowed in with no real problems, at least).

Looking back on my 'old life’, I can’t imagine how I was ever comfortable being so reliant on “things being the way they are supposed to be”. Of course the store shelves would be full next week (but a forest fire that blocked the roads was all it took to make that untrue) … of course there would be heat all winter (but the furnace quit one very cold night and only the gas fireplace and the furnace repair man’s quick response time kept the house from freezing) … of course we’d always have enough money to buy whatever we needed (but a brain tumor took over my first husband’s mind and body, and suddenly everything fell apart, and there was no money, no house, no nothing).

Things can change, for any number of reasons, there is no ‘sure thing’. Oh, I don’t need to be prepared for every situation, I don’t even believe it’s possible. I tell people quite honestly that I gave up “planning” when my life fell apart way back when. I don’t believe in plans anymore. I believe in preparation, and it’s different. Plans are built on a set of assumptions about what is going to happen and how you’ll respond to the changes you predicted. Preparation is about having options and flexibility to meet whatever the Universe decides to throw at you.

Even with preparation, the Universe can still wing a fastball at you that you can’t hit, I know that. But boy, oh boy, is it a good feeling to know that you’ve at least managed to slightly increase your chance of having the bat meet the ball.

I think it’s time to start shopping for a second woodstove… :)

Bounty from the food cooperative

Today I picked up my first produce order from the local food purchasing cooperative. For only $8 we received:

• 5 onions
• 3 giant potatoes
• 5 big carrots (one 2 lb bag)
• 6 green apples
• 5 bananas
• 1 cantaloupe

All that for less than the cost of two Starbucks lattes. There was so much there I couldn’t quite fit everything into my shopping bag!

This is great. It’s convenient and it’s cost effective: I just stop by the pickup point (right near my office) to pick up my box of food, drop off $8 for next month’s order, and I’m done!

The cooperatives do appreciate volunteer help with pickup and packaging, but with this one, at least, it’s not mandatory (The Boy will probably go and spend a day now and then helping with the weighing and packaging). Even without my time, though, my membership increases the cooperative’s bulk buying power and so my contribution of dollars also helps everyone else.

If you have a food cooperative like this in your area, please consider joining, even – or maybe especially - if you can afford store prices on your groceries. The more people who participate, the better it works: and there are a lot of people who could use a discount on their grocery bill.