Knitting in the peace and quiet

The other night, after a long day at work, I sat in the big leather chair and worked on my knitting.

No TV.

No iPod.

No radio.

 

It was wonderful.

 

We don’t get enough peace and quiet, I think. It’s good for the soul.

Fishing

I am hopelessly addicted to fishing.

This is entirely my husband’s fault.

He grew up in Saskatchewan, where there are lakes everywhere and lots and lots of fish. He’s been fishing for as long as he can remember. This summer, he taught me how to cast and … that was it.

Fishing is whole-body-mediation. You get ready to cast … you check that the space around you is clear, and you get into position. You put all your will into sending the lure out in a beautiful arc over the water, as far as it can reach. You hold the rod out in front of you, pointing at the spot you hope to hit and wait for the splash, then start to reel in the line - not too fast, not too slow - watching and waiting for a tug on the line.

Most of the time, that tug just means you snagged on some weeds. Reel in the line, shake the vegetables off the hook, and try again.

(I am an excellent vegetable fisherperson. I’ve done my share of cleaning out weeds from the lakes I’ve fished, believe me!)

Once in awhile, though, that tug is a fish, and then the excitement begins!

Now see, I even understand how this works. I do have a psychology degree after all, and I know that intermittent reinforcement (where the reward comes at random intervals, rather than every single time you do the ‘trick’) creates behavioural patterns that are extremely difficult to extinguish. Each time, you think “well, maybe this time is it!” so you keep going.

Yep, that’s how fishing works.

I’m okay with that.

You know, there are worse ways to spend your time. :)

Spreading the joy of ‘good work’

I enjoy the satisfaction of ‘making stuff’. I really like seeing the juice from the apples in the pantry, the fruit leather packed in kids’ lunches, the dried onions on the counter. It’s the feeling of having done good work.

Of course, I talk about this kind of stuff with my coworkers, who quite often look at me as though I’m a wee bit daft for having spent part of my weekend processing apple syrup, but still, they bring me their windfall apples and save assorted leftover bits for the chickens. :)

This week, one of the coworkers-with-the-apple-trees told me he had made applesauce from his apples, just the way I’d described it. It was a fair bit of work, he said, but I reassured him that it gets simpler with a bit of practice, and besides, the apples are free and they might as well be put to good use!

He wanted to know what to do with all the sauce he’d made (I suggested freezing it, in addition to baking with it – he brought in a batch of absolutely fabulous apple cinnamon muffins) and then I showed him some dehydrators online (I’d brought in some fruit leather earlier in the week). His next question was how to extract juice from the cooked apples, as cheesecloth wasn’t working.

I explained that the cheesecloth that you buy at the store is way too porous to use for draining fruits, especially cooked and mushed apples. An ancient tea towel that’s been around since the seventies would be about right, or an old well washed t-shirt. Laid in a colander over a bowl, you don’t even have to rig up the whole ‘sugar bag from a broomstick’ deal (yes, I am actually old enough to remember jelly juice being extracted that way).

Regardless, sure feels good to share the joy of ‘good work’ with someone else. It was cool to see the big grin on his face as he told me about what he’d done on the weekend.

He is darn proud of himself, and rightly so. :)

TRF’s cooking

The Reluctant Farmer does almost all the cooking around here, since he works from home, and I do the commute.

He’s gotten to be an amazing cook … which is really a significant accomplishment.

For example, way back when he was first experimenting with this whole cooking and baking thing, he baked a birthday cake for Dinosaur Boy … and didn’t have any idea that you are only supposed to fill cake pans halfway full, since the cake rises. After cake baking, he learned oven cleaning!

Since then, he’s come a long way. Dinner is always ready when I get home, and pretty much always delicious – very few of his experiments turn out to be something nobody likes.

Today’s wonderful crock pot supper consisted of lamb garlic sausage (oh boy is it good, the butcher did a fabulous job) in tomato sauce with potatoes and one clove of garlic.

However …

TRF didn’t realize that one clove of garlic is not the same as one whole garlic bulb. :)

Believe me, there will be no vampires in our house tonight, but boy, was it good!

The Great Laundry Race of 2009

On your marks ... get set ... go!

It's the Great Laundry Race of 2009. :)

What is the Great Laundry Race? It's your opportunity to help discover the true answer to this burning question:

How much time does a person actually spend getting the laundry dried and folded?

See, since we moved out to Apple Jack Creek, we have been using a high-technology solar powered clothes dryer, and have experimented with a number of different strategies for optimizing the whole drying-of-laundry-chore. Hang the socks next to each other, to save time later ... put all the t-shirts on the same part of the rack, so you can pile them as you fold ... take down one person's stuff at a time, so that the finished pile of folded laundry is organized for delivery to the different rooms ...

Anyway, we are always looking for new ideas, and so we want to compare our experience with yours: whether you use electricity, natural gas, or solar power to dry your clothes.

So, without further ado, here are the details of the Great Laundry Race of 2009:

Eligible participants:

• anyone who does laundry, by any method!

How to participate:

• Wash your laundry the way you normally do. This race pertains just to the drying cycle. :)

• Time yourself from the moment you open the washing machine and remove the clean, wet clothes until you get them to the place where they will finish drying. If you use a dryer, this is the time it takes to get clothes from
  washer to dryer; if you hang the clothes to dry, this is the time it takes to get everything set up in whatever drying arrangement you use.

• You are timing only the effort of the human being - so if the clothes stay on the line for half a day or are in the machine for an hour, that part doesn't count.

• Once the clothes are dry, start timing again: time from the moment you begin processing the clean clothes (i.e. removing them from the dryer or taking them off the line), until you have them all folded and ready to be put away (however you do that).

Recording your results:

• Add a comment to this blog entry, giving as much information as you can including….

• The size of the load you are timing with, as that will definitely affect the results. As a baseline, you can compare to our average size load: with our small front load washer, that'd be about four to six pair of socks, a pair of jeans, three or four grownup shirts, three or four kid size shirts, assorted underwear, and probably a sweatshirt.

• Tell us your method of drying: what equipment you use, if you have a particular strategy for efficiency (e.g. "I hang all the socks together on the line so I save time matching them later"), and any other relevant details. Enquiring minds want to know how you do what you do! :) And, if you alternate between methods, by all means, run a comparison and share your findings!

• Last but not least, tell us how much time your method requires.
  If you can average a few loads of wash, that'd be truly awesome.

And the prize!

• Yes, we have a prize! Everyone is a winner when the laundry is done, but we have a prize for participating in our great Laundry Race. :)
  All participants in the Great Laundry Race of 2009 (i.e. those who comment on the blog with their timed results before midnight August 15, 2009) will be entered in a draw for a sample size tin of Apple Jack Creek's Calendula and Mullein Ointment. This stuff is good for all sorts of cuts and scrapes and bruises, and is made with nothing but flowers (grown right here), beeswax (grown in Alberta), and olive oil (from a local grocery store!).
  It's not much, I know, but it's one of the few things I have to give away that will survive mailing. :)

So, get your stopwatches ready, find your dirty clothes, and let's see how much time we're spending on the dry cycle!

Progress, frustrations, and knitting

There's always a long list of things to do when you live on a farm, even a small one, and so it's really easy to make some kind of progress. Pick any of the jobs on the lengthy list and voila, you are further ahead than you were yesterday!

Last weekend, everyone in the whole family was away except me, through an odd combination of circumstances. I slept in, ate what I wanted when I felt hungry, and got a whole lot of productive work done without really feeling worn out at the end! I wandered outside Saturday morning to see which job I felt like doing, and I decided to start on the fenceline feeder for the sheep. The Boy has requested a change in feeding strategy, and since he does most of the feeding, it seems reasonable that he should get the infrastructure he wants. So, I took down the boundary fence from the piece of winter pasture that will become the feeder and cut and attached the hog panels to the posts. We'll add sheets of plywood on an angle along the back, and that'll hold the hay for the sheep to eat: they stick their noses through the hog panels, but can't get their whole heads through (we hope). A test run late in the spring looked promising, so here's hoping.

Once I got that done, I realized that the winter pasture desperately needed to be cleared out, so I fired up the bobcat and practiced my digging and shovelling maneouvers. I'm no bobcat artist, but working on flat ground I did have a lot of opportunity to try different things, and managed to improve my skills a little, while making a big pile of compost-to-be.

The next question, obviously, was what to do with the pile I had just made.

I had read the Maple Corners blog that morning, and saw Annie's "Wall of Junk" - the very creatively decorated fence that hides her compost pile. Inspired, I put up some fence posts and cross boards, and made a mental note to be on the lookout for cool 'junk' to decorate it with! A bit more bobcat work and I had the existing compost pile moved into the new bin, and room for another bin. Sunday saw the creation of the second bin, and the compost-to-be from the winter pasture put into it's proper cooking spot. Monday night I actually saw the pile steaming again, which is really encouraging ... and it's shrinking, so it's defintely doing what it oughta do.

The two new compost bins are along the north border of the property, where we really do need a perimiter fence. This weekend, I started extending that fence with more posts and boards - it doesn't have to be absolutely sheep-proof, just sheep-resistant, so that we can turn them out into the area we euphemistically refer to as a 'lawn' on occasion to keep it mowed. Twelve posts later (put in all by myself - The Reluctant Farmer was busy doing other much-needed jobs like sealing the windows so they don't leak in the rain, and working on siding the house), we have a perimiter fence along most of the north border to the yard. The sheep were out there on Saturday and did make a dent in the grass, but since it's not properly fenced off everywhere, we had to chase them back in a few times and now they're safely behind proper fences and gates.

All this work doesn't come without frustrations ... the fence boards aren't level and have to be taken down and put back up ... the sheep get out and have to be chased back ... the sheep knock down one of the fence boards that is only up with temporary nails, until I can check that it is level ... a thunderstorm arrives while the sheep are all wandering around and I have to chase them back into a proper pasture while getting drenches ... I manage to give myself a nasty bruise while deconstructing a shade house to use as a trellis ... but all in all, it was still a productive couple of weekends.

Knitting continues: the vest I am working on is turning out very nicely, if I do say so myself, and I have been working on it diligently. Now I have to figure out what it needs for a collar.

I think I'll go knit some more.

Really cool birthday stuff

Boy, did I get really cool birthday stuff this year. :)

Dinosaur Boy and Princess Girl each picked out a package of brightly dyed wool top at the local fibre store - hers was shades of pink (of course) and his was ocean blues. Spun up and plyed together they make the lovliest bright yarn imaginable! I think it wants to be a purse or a bag of some kind. I'm still talking to it.

My wonderful husband picked out a stunning package of purple silk and merino fibre that definitely wants to be spun up into something light and then knitted into something drapey ... that's awaiting further inspiration. There's also a gift card to spend at the same fibre shop for ... whatever. Hmmmm ... an excuse to go fibre shopping!

The Boy and my parents got together and hunted down a new 5 gallon pickle crock for me - I have a lovely one inherited from my mom, actually, which got broken this winter (it doubles as a Christmas tree stand, and, well, it didn't quite survive the experience intact). Mom and Dad found it at an antique shop, and it's exactly like the other one - same maker, even! That was a great present! Pickles are on the agenda for fall, that's for sure.

The Boy also ordered one of the books from my wish list - the Encyclopedia of Country Living, by Carla Emery ... which looks utterly fascinating. It's got *everything* in there!

Oh, and my sister and her husband sent me a book from England: it got here awhile back and I couldn't wait to open it, so I already read it and enjoyed it thoroughly.

What a great birthday! Thanks, everyone!

Ah, there *is* an explanation!

Sharon Astyk has a wonderful post today that explains ... well, lots of things.

The message is for all those who find themselves somehow attached to a previously normal person who suddenly comes down with a serious case of 'farm dreaming' ... Sharon explains what's happening, and how to live with someone afflicted with / blessed by this chronic condition.

[My husband's] advice to all of you, if you have a spouse with a serious case of the farm dream, is simply “let go, complain a lot (so that he/she appreciates properly how much you are suffering, and feels guilty enough to be accomodating of *your* dreams and pleasures), but go with it - it really isn’t that bad.” ...

And the funny thing is, it can be fun, and not just for the one with the dream. There’s something about learning new stuff, about building, making, growing and tending your own that is…well…neat. And neat not just to the person deeply infected by the crazy-agrarian-brain-parasite, but often, to the least likely people.

It's all so very familiar - and if you've read this blog, you'll see us in just about every paragraph. I mean, I'm married to The Reluctant Farmer himself!

Like all of Sharon's work, it's a great read, and I guarantee you'll find yourself laughing along the way.

Daily humour from The Reluctant Farmer

We had a broody hen hogging one of the nest boxes, and as a result chickens were laying eggs in other mysterious locations ... which we could not locate easily.

This was The Reluctant Farmer's suggestion:

I think we need to buy helmet cams for the chickens so we know where they're laying their eggs.

We'd need a pretty big screen to watch all the feeds simultaneously though.

The value of good shoes

This morning, I got in the truck and headed off to work.

About fifteen minutes down the highway, the truck sputtered and stopped.

The truck would not start again.

The truck was smoking and sizzling.

I looked for my cell phone.

I could not locate my cell phone.

I sipped my coffee.

I looked for my cell phone again.

I sighed.

I picked up my things and climbed out of the truck.

I walked.

I kept walking.

I realized that "about fifteen minutes down the highway" is a lot further than it sounds.

A truck with straw bales on the back drove by.

I remembered that straw bales were being delivered to our house this morning.

I waved.

The truck stopped.

I got a ride the rest of the way home.



I have decided that my father was right when he said "always wear good walking shoes, because you just never know."

And onward...

I am feeling very tired the last few days, although I am not sure why, particularly. Perhaps I'm just anxious for the winter to end and spring to really show up! The snow is starting to melt and the patches of brown dry grass are bigger each day, so it won't be long now.

We picked up two bottle lambs, as our lambing season hasn't been as successful as we had hoped, and we'll likely need the additional meat. One is doing well and out with everyone else, the other has acquired pneumonia and is in the bathroom receiving penicillin injections and regular bottles of milk. She's doing okay, not great, but okay, so with luck she'll pull through the sickness. She does seem reasonably perky, and she doesn't seem to mind being inside at all, which is good!

We're still waiting on Sasha and the calf ... I have absolutely no clue how long this may take, the signs are there, but it's so hard to tell. It's like with the sheep: some of them look ready to have their lambs for two weeks and then finally give birth, others look like they are barely pregnant and one morning you look outside and find them with twins at their sides!

The seedlings are coming along ... I'll post more about that soon.

Oh the biggest news: I peeled the bubble wrap off several of the windows! Now THAT is a sign of spring!

What is happening at your house in anticipation of spring?

Gettin' bigger every day

The Boy is nearly 13 (heavens, where did the time go? I am sure he was a tiny baby just a little while ago...), and Caleb is four and a half months old now. Both are growing fast, and very energetic but really quite well behaved, for an almost teenager and a puppy. :)

Modern Medicine

I just finished listening to an audio book set in medieval England, right around the time of the Black Death. The best cure for a sick person was to lie on a straw pallet near the front of the monastery hospital, near the altar, where the saint's bones could give you the most benefit while you recovered from the physician monk's "treatment" of bleeding the bad humours out of your veins.

I am remarkably thankful for modern medicine.

Thursday night I developed a bit of a stuffy head ... nothing really unusual or surprising, it's winter, and colds are common. I rinsed my nose with the neti pot and that brought considerable relief, as did the Advil I took to ease the discomfort at the back of my throat. Friday morning, during the drive to work, my left ear started to plug up. At the office, it felt like I had water stuck in my ear, like after swimming. I had body aches and a stubbornly plugged ear, but I was managing with lots of Advil, and finally a Tylenol Sinus tablet. By the time I got home, though, the ear pain was quite a bit worse. I lay on a Warm Thing (the family term for a barley bag heated in the microwave), and hoped for relief. Then the shivers started. I got into bed, and The Boy heated every warm thing we have and packed them around me. After about an hour of this, I decided perhaps I was actually sick.

I asked The Reluctant Farmer to call the local health hotline and see what the nurses thought. This is a wonderful service provided by our health region: you can phone in 24 hours a day and reach a health nurse who will ask questions about the symptoms and let you know what you can do for at-home treatment, if you need to see a doctor right now, or if it can wait until morning. The very nice nurse on the other end of the line walked us through a list of questions, and recommended that we head up to the nearest emergency room rather than wait for morning. This wasn't really what I was hoping to hear, but as the pain kept ramping up and the tears started coming to my eyes, I figured it was probably the right thing to do.

In the emergency room they found my fever was up to 39C, and my ear drum close to rupturing. Okay, I suppose that's why I didn't feel so great. They shot me up with Demerol (mental note: never take Demerol without an antinauseant ...), gave me Tylenol 3s for when that wore off, and some heavy duty antibiotics. The remainder of Friday passed in a rather uncomfortable blur (mostly due to the queasiness), Saturday was spent passed out in bed while my mom and The Boy cleaned the house (The Reluctant Farmer was away at a course), and by this morning, I am able to eat some of the Jello and custard my mom made for me yesterday. I can actually stay upright for a few minutes at a time, which seems to be a significant improvement, but it's still easy to get exhausted.

So, it's back to bed for me, with more prayers of thanks that we no longer bleed people to get rid of the 'evil humours in the blood' ... and that we have drugs to control fever and infection.

Flu Season

It's flu season here. I did get my flu shot, but some virus or other seems to have knocked me on my backside, and I'm tired and achey and my stomach hurts, although it doesn't ever seem to object more loudly than a stubborn ache and a vague queasiness (for which I am grateful).

I have, however, finally come up with a herbal tea that seems to ease the stomach cramping and queasiness. I'm not a doctor, I don't play one on TV, and all I know about the herbs I'm using I have discovered from various books and other sources so ... this is just a description of what has worked for me. For heaven's sake, if you have food sensitivities, strong plant allergies (hay fever), or are pregnant or nursing, do not try any sort of unknown foods or herbal remedies - that's just plain common sense. Now, for the rest of us, who have had enough Pepto for the day and want to try something else, here's the recipe:

• 3 parts yarrow flowers
• 2 parts calendula blossoms
• 2 or 3 rose hips
• a generous sprinkling of powdered ginger, or a chunk of ginger root
• a very slight sprinkling of dill

Steep all that in boiling water, strain, and add as much honey as you need to make it taste okay (it's not bad, but it's not anything you'd drink just for the flavour), and drink about a cup of it. Yarrow needs to be used in moderation, so probably no more than 3 or 4 cups in a day, but I find that one in the morning, one at lunch and one at dinner seems to really help.

Yarrow grows wild here, as do wild roses, so we are able to harvest those ingredients quite readily from the land around us. The calendula that I grew last summer was an amazing success, so we have plenty of that now as well. Dill is on the list of things to grow this summer ... but ginger .. hmm, I don't think that even grows in this climate. I'll have to do some research, I do enjoy it and it'd be a great addition to the garden (if it's possible, that is!).

The Competence Project

Like it or not, there are some things you just have to learn how to do yourself.

Today, I learned how to change a tire.

As I pulled out of the parking lot at work, I noticed a very unpleasant thumping sound from the back of the vehicle. I pulled into the nearest safe driveway, the hospital entrance, and got out to take a look: sure enough, the back tire was squished totally flat.

There was no driving on it, not even the two blocks to the tire place. I phoned home and The Reluctant Farmer told me where to find the necessary equipment in the back of the car, and gave me the basic instructions. I made an attempt to undo the bolts, and there was no way they would budge. In frustration I phoned AMA to come rescue me, and went inside to use the hospital's public loo.

Sitting in the car, waiting for the AMA guys to arrive, I thought "this is boring." So, I got out the tools again and gave the bolts another try ... this time, they moved! A few more attempts and everything was loosened. I got the lift under the frame in the spot marked by the little bites out of the metal (also helpfully indicated on the diagram on the jack itself), and little by little, up it went. The wheel came off, the car rolled off the jack, and at that point I remembered that I was supposed to have put the emergency brake on. Did that, put the jack back under, and got the spare tire attached.

I called AMA to cancel the call and the lady at the other end said "way to go, girl!" :)

I drove home slowly, knowing that the bolts were not necessarily on all that tight and that spare tires don't really appreciate highway speeds, and received the hearty congratulations of my family as well.

It seems a small thing, I am sure, to anyone who has done it before. Still, never having done this, it was a bit scary at first. Knowing the AMA guys would be there if I couldn't solve the problem myself helped give me the courage to make an attempt, and the boredom of the wait gave me incentive to succeed.

So, that's one more thing I can say I know how to do.

You know it's going to be a bad night when ...

... your cold is so bad that your own snoring wakes you up.

So, why does ribbon curl, anyway? (or, the wonders of internet search engines)

The Boy found a piece of ribbon today from a Christmas present and was playing with it, pulling it through his fingers and scraping one edge over his thumbnail to make it curl up.

"Why does it do that?", he asked.

Well, I have no idea, but I know how to find out.

I did several searches, and found a few answers ... but I wanted an answer from a reputable source ... I mean, I wouldn't want to be passing on inaccurate information, now, would I?

Well, fellow enquirers, we are in luck: Scientific American has an article posted about this very subject. (I admit that SciAm is not exactly a peer-reviewed journal, but for our present purposes, it'll do).

A Harvard physicist named Buddhapriya Chakrabarti actually did experiments on the optimal method for curling ribbon:

The popular belief is that pulling faster and with more pressure yields tighter
loops, Chakrabarti says, but their experiments proved that "if you hold the
tension constant and if you make it go slower, it curls even more." More
pressure, in the form of heavier weights, did not tighten the curls, he adds.
The researchers found that the pressure only had to exceed a certain threshold,
which they are set to report in March at the annual conference of the American
Physical Society in Denver.

Chakrabarti says the ribbon curls because its outer layer stretches and, therefore, expands, more than the inner layer that is pressed against the rod or scissors. "Even when you're doing it with a pair of scissors, it's not absolutely flat—you're not pulling it flat," he says. Putting the ribbon on a table, for example, and rubbing the scissors across it does not work very well, he says. (Not to mention the possibility of damaging the table.)

The ribbon must also be taut, Chakrabarti points out, possibly so the molecules in the plastic get pulled apart. He notes that whatever the microscopic details are, pulling slower allows the plastic to relax into a curly state, because it cannot easily snap back into its old, flat one. Do not try the scissors method on satin strands, he says, because it will not work. The reason: stretching does not break the material down in the same way, because satin is woven and not a continuous sheet.

There you go. Another mystery solved.

Life, little by little

Life just goes on by ... moment by moment, little by little.

And once in awhile, I stop to think about bigger things.

My little girl was born on Valentine's Day in 1995, and she lived for only half an hour after she was born. Thirty minutes was her whole life span. I have often wasted that much time watching some TV show I wasn't even really interested in, or wandering a shopping mall when I didn't need anything and didn't even want to be out.

Remembering the few minutes that made up her short life, I try to make the most of all the minutes I have been given. I don't always succeed, but I do try. The question of how to make the most of my life is one of those 'bigger things' that sometimes needs pondering.

I am forty years old, which means I am most likely about halfway through my own life span, although none of us know for sure how many days we will be given. What am I going to do with these days?

The simple answer is that I want to make the world a better place. The Jewish term is 'tikkun olam', the repair of the world, and it is something that I believe we are all called to do. Sometimes it seems that the repair that the world needs is just too large, there is too much to do, it is too big of a problem, and Someone Else will have to fix it. I mean, I can't solve world hunger by myself or wave my hands and say "We need world peace. Yes, right now. Great. Thank you for your cooperation."

What I can do is try to make a lasting impact where I am, to repair my little corner of the world.

I can improve the land that is under my stewardship, maintaining the native plants and grasses, putting the compost back into the garden to replenish what I take out as food, planting windbreaks and shelter trees for animals both domestic and wild. I can treat the animals in my care kindly, and ensure they have all they need and are given the opportunity to be what God made them to be - chickens free to scratch in the dirt, mother animals raising their own young, sheep and cows let out to graze in green pastures. I can make responsible choices about resource usage, ensuring that I use no more than my fair share of the world's limited resources ... less if I can manage it.

There is so much that needs doing, and sometimes, it seems like my efforts are too tiny, too small to matter. I am just one person, and I have only these few moments. Still, each moment well spent is not wasted, no matter how few of them there may be.

Each time someone

plants a tree
grows a tomato
saves a seed
puts peelings in the compost
drives a little less
mends a pair of jeans
gives away an old winter coat
harvests saskatoon berries for jam
hugs a child
scratches a dog's ears
kisses a donkey on the nose
lets a setting hen raise some chicks
knits a sock
smiles at someone
or does any of a thousand other tiny acts of purposeful kindness and responsibility

the world is repaired, little by little.

Today's jobs...

Today was 'clean out the barn' day. On the weekends I try to give the barn stalls a good thorough mucking out - The Boy does the quick-and-dirty cleanup daily (there's probably a pun in there somewhere), and then on the weekend I try to get the big cleanup done.

The Reluctant Farmer was off doing errands in town this afternoon, so I fired up the bobcat and managed to move a bale of straw to a more convenient location. I took one of the windows out of the barn (they are held in place by moveable latches so that it's easy to get them out if need be), then unrolled part of the bale and forked it into the already-mucked-out barn through the window opening. From there, it was easy to distribute the straw to the previously cleared out stalls, and now everyone has lots of nice clean bedding to lie on at night. One of the sheep stalls is ready for use, and the other is serving as temporary straw storage. If we had to put someone in that stall in a hurry, it'd be a simple matter to remove the excess, but having it right there means it's easy to freshen up the cow's stalls with clean straw on a day to day basis. Lambing is still a ways off, so this seems workable.

I also noticed that we had gotten down to the last bit of the hay bale, so while the bobcat was running, I managed to pick up a new bale and position it in the hay feeding area. This was not as easy as it sounds: I had to use the new 'baby bobcat' (we sold the great big one, as it was more machine than we needed, and I'm not used to the new one yet). We have a set of forks that attach to the bobcat bucket, and it was a bit of a challenge to get everything set up and ready to go. Still, I managed. The Reluctant Farmer is way better at bobcat work than I am, but I try to be at least basically competent with all the machinery and tools we use, just in case I have to do things when he is not around. If he's here, I let him do it ... but it's good to be able to take care of things yourself, too.

I must say that our feeding strategy seems to be working quite well: having the sheep locked out while we lay the hay on the ground keeps them at least mostly clean, and they aren't wasting as much as I feared they might. Putting one bale at a time into the 'storage area' makes feeding everyone a matter of forking hay from bale to feed area (for both sheep and cows), with very few steps required. Efficiency is a good thing! Of course this past week the sheep managed to work around the previous fencing that surrounded the bale storage area ... so The Reluctant Farmer built a solid panel that has been highly effective at keeping the sheep away from the bale.

Other jobs today included relocating "chickenville" (the three chicken tractor houses) to a new location that is more level, brushing Mackenzie (who had some really nasty matted fur that had to be cut off, and very long dew claws that had to be trimmed), and scraping the feed pen clean with the bobcat.

Just another Saturday at Apple Jack Creek.

almost winter

Winter is getting closer every day - when I go out to milk the cow in the mornings, I see a skiff of snow on the ground, and in the shadowy areas of the yard, sometimes there's a trace of white on the grass even late in the morning.

It is a relief to have most of the 'must be done before winter' tasks completed. There is still more to do, of course, there always is, but we have a lot accomplished already, and it is good to stop and take note of what we have managed to get done.

We have fencing in place to hold everyone for the winter. This was a big job, and it's taken some time to figure out the best layout that keeps the animals close enough to manage in the cold weather and yet still gives them access to the shelter and the space they need to be comfortable. The sheep feeding pen is in place, and working well so far (there's a fair bit of wasted hay, but we're working on that), and the cows have a big hay feeder and a comfy barn. The gates are sturdier than they've ever been, and we have moveable panels that we can configure in a variety of ways, giving us more flexibility.

The addition of the cows did require some careful planning: the cows move in and out of the barn every day, but the sheep only need to get in the barn if there is a problem. This meant we needed easy barn access for cows and reasonably easy barn access for sheep. We ended up dividing the winter pasture into two sections, with the one directly in front of the barn doors designated for the cows, and putting a small gate from the sheep feed pen into the barn 'courtyard', which we can use to move a sheep into the barn if the need arises.

Winter also means worrying about frozen water troughs and plugging in tank heaters. To simplify our chores and ease our electrical bill, we made an opening under the fence between the sheep and cow pastures that is sized to hold a water trough. The trough slides under the fence and the sheep drink from one side and the cows drink from the other. This way we need only one tank heater in play, and we have only one trough to fill. It's a bit of a hassle to pull it out to empty it, but the animals don't seem to mind sharing, so that's good at least. While the weather is cold but not downright freezing we have been using two heavy duty bubblers (sort of like the kind you put in an aquarium) to keep the water moving. So far, this has kept the water from icing over. It won't work in the deep cold of full winter, but the bubblers use much less energy than a heater, so we'll use them for as long as we can.

The Reluctant Farmer got the chimney swept (a messy dirty job, but one we very much appreciate), and we have had fires going the last few nights. Tonight we'll burn a special chemical log that helps keep the creosote on the chimney to a minimum. We have a good bit of wood cut and stacked, although The Reluctant Farmer plans to go cut some more, as it's hard to have too much stocked up.

This morning we woke up to find the grid power was out - the Boy and The Reluctant Farmer got laptops fired up in the 'original house' (which runs on solar power) and with a fire going in the wood stove they were comfortable and able to work. During the winter they'll probably work near the fire more often, so it'll be even more important to have a good store of wood set by. The wood is nearly free (this stuff costs time, of course, and the fuel for the chainsaw, but the trees are ones that had to be cut down anyway to bring the power lines through), so it makes sense to heat with wood when we can.

Oh, and the cement is in place for the base of the wind tower: it's had time to cure now, and we should be raising the tower and hooking up the wind generator in another few days. We had a huge windstorm on the weekend that knocked down trees and caused some substantial damage around us (none here, thankfully - an old tree did come down but it didn't hit anything on the way to the ground) ... capturing all that energy would be a good thing, but we'll certainly want plenty of guy wires in place to stabilize the tower!

I'm so glad we are able to have power and heat even when the grid is down. Mornings like today make me realize just how good it is that we have alternatives to the 'usual way'. Then again, mornings like today also make me realize that if I didn't have to follow the artificial schedule set by the office workday schedule, I could follow the schedule set by nature and not even try to get started until the sun comes up!

My birthday present came!

The Boy had wanted to get me some new work gloves for a birthday present, but he and The Reluctant Farmer could not find any (I wear fingerless carpetners' gloves, in a size small ... they're hard to come by). He asked me for suggestions of a good alternative, and so I sent him to etsy.com to find some pretty rovings. It's so nice to have dyed commercially prepared rovings sometimes for a treat.

So ... these arrived today:

One is Merino, one is Ramboulliet. I've spun a little bit of Merino before, and it was buttery soft, and I've heard nice things about Ramboulliet. They look like fun!

I'll let you know what they turn into.

Quote of the day

Today's bit of wisdom from The Reluctant Farmer:

"You should write a book or two. Then I could quit my job and live off the royalties!"

I laughed.

"You might still have to work, but I'm okay with that."


Apparently he is sensing some resistance to his brilliant plan. :S