Long Summer Days

Pretty cute aren't they?  They are getting big.  It's so nice that there are 2 of them.  All young animals need someone their own age to play with!

My week last week was kind of off kilter, so I didn't get around to posting.  My husband and his dad attend an auction together the second Tuesday of each month, which means I go in to our office on Tuesday instead of Thursday that week and it throws off my timing sometimes.  That's my excuse anyway.

The sky is light now until after 9 pm, even down here in the hollow and I love it.  Though I do get tired because we don't even sit down to eat dinner until at least 8 o'clock these days.  Sam likes to get in some time on tractor even after work and our dog walk doesn't usually occur until at least 6 pm, sometimes later (it's cooler then anyway).  There is so much mowing to do when you have 200 acres, even when most of it is trees.  If you don't keep it mowed, the fields and trails you do have open will become overgrown with weeds and sumac and multi-flora roses in no time.
 
On Wednesday, Rowdy went with me to the office and on the way back from getting him a laser treatment on his bad knee, we stopped at a local Amish farm and acquired some wonderful strawberries.








 
So that means on Thursday (since I wasn't at the office)  I spent most of the day canning 2 batches of jam and made 2 wonderful pies, one of which went with me to my spinning guild meeting that night.  Sam and I ate the other one.

Beets

I've been trying to be more diligent about my garden work.  We do not use round up or any other herbicides on our garden.  I just don't think it is healthy, so weeds occur and must be pulled or hoed by hand.  Last time I posted I said that I had had trouble with some of my seeds not coming up, so this week I acquired more seeds and replanted corn and squash and also planted some pumpkins.  My second row of lettuce is coming up, the beets are doing great, as are the tomatoes and I have some pepper plants, which something is eating.

tomatoes

 So for right now, I have the weeds about under control, but I am leaving on Thursday to go to Michigan with my mom and visit my aunt and my cousin, so I am sure I will have my work cut out for me when I return.

My bees seem to be doing well.  I was in the hive yesterday and while I did not see the queen, her handiwork was evident in lots of brood (little baby bee larvae in various stages).  The buckwheat is growing well and will hopefully provide a nectar flow for the bees in a few more weeks.  

 The flooring in the guest house kitchen is done!  I sealed the grout on Saturday.  We plan to go pick up some baseboard materials later today and once everything is trimmed out, it will be ready for cabinetry.  It is looking really good. 

Grover and I continue to enjoy agility classes and are into our second 8 week session.  The instructor complimented us on how well he is doing last week.  I guess our short practice sessions every day help.  Sometimes several times a day.  Here is what my yard looks like these days (until Sam mows).  I have 3 jumps I made and 4 poles for learning weaving.  Not the kind of weaving I usually do.

Remember the Sock Circle I was involved in?  I finally got my completed socks back!  Aren't they cool?  I love the colors.  So I knit the toes and then mailed them off and 6 other knitters each added about 2" of knitting to each sock and I knit on socks for them.  It was fun.  I think I would do it again.  

And then there was my hand-knit beaded  lace shawl that I finished in April.  It is so pretty and I  just love it, but I gave it away.  I gave it to my sister-in-law, Jill last weekend.  She and my brother and their 3 kids just moved to Phoenix AZ and I visited them just before they left.  I decided Jill would have more opportunity to wear the shawl like it should be worn than I will.  I have had a hard time with their leaving Ohio because now I have both my sons in Portland and my youngest niece and nephews in Arizona and I won't get to spend much time with any of them.  But sometimes change has to come and I know it was time for them to make a big change. 

 I did cast something on for myself on Mother's Day.  It is called the Hitofude Cardigan  and is an open front lace sweater in very fine yarn that will be great for cool summer evenings or air-conditioned places.  In purple of course.  I bought several skeins of this yarn last year and just keep using it.  This is going very slowly right now due to all the other knitting I have been trying to get done.

Must Be Summer, It's Hay Time

Grover actually posed very nicely for me in front of John's irises while they were in full bloom.  Handsome boy!

This past weekend was hay time.  First cutting hay, which we do not feed to the alpacas.  They eat second cutting, which is less stemmy and generally yields less hay per acre weight-wise, because it does not grow as tall.  But if you don't make first cutting hay, you do not get second cutting hay.  Since my horse is gone, we prefer to sell the first cutting and even better is if someone buys it out of the field, which  means they come with their truck and trailer and load it and haul it off without us ever having to stack it in the barn.  It's a good deal for everyone, since we sell it at a discounted price.  And this is what we did.  

Sam mowed the hay on Friday while I was at the office, so you don't get to see the big green tractor.  The hay needs to dry in the sunshine before baling.  Hay that does not get to dry enough prior to baling has a tendency to mold and is not suitable for feeding.  It can also ferment, which creates heat inside the tightly packed bales, and I understand this has been the cause of more than one barn fire.  So if any bales are not entirely dry, they need to be stored where air can get to them, not stacked tightly.    On Saturday, Sam "teds" the hay, which is a process using a machine behind that tractor that kind of stirs up and flips the hay over, allowing for more timely drying.  I don't have a photo of this either......

Then, prior to baling on Sunday, the rake goes onto the tractor and the hay is raked

into windrows, 





 




ready for the baler to come along and scoop it up and pack it into bales

You may notice that most of our equipment looks rather old and well-used.  The only new piece of equipment we have is that Kubota tractor, which was new 12 years or so ago.  Everything else has come from an auction.  Sam keeps it all in the best condition he can because new farm equipment is incredibly expensive.  Our baler makes square bales (which are actually more rectangular) as opposed to the huge round bales many farmers make.  We have discussed acquiring a round baler, and we may one of these days, but it is a minimum of about $3K.  Ya gotta make alotta hay to pay that sucker off!

My garden is not doing as well as I would like.  A) I have not had as much time to weed as I would like and we've had rain, so there ARE weeds, and B) I purchased seeds at a local feed store and a lot of it is simply not coming up.  I planted a whole row of Romaine lettuce and none of it came up.  I have planted 3 rows of corn and I am only finding a few lonely corn plants emerging.  I planted 5 hills of butternut squash (about 6 seeds to a hill) and I can find only 3 plants.  3.  Not 3 per hill.  3.  So I think I better go get some more seed and re-plant.  The seeds are dated for this year, so I don't know what the problem is.  They were marked as organic.  Who knows.  My beets are doing great and ready to be seriously thinned.  We have had salads from our Mesclun blend (with beet tops added in) and I have planted more of that.

 


On the other hand, I was delighted to find this morning that the buckwheat I sowed 9 days ago is coming up gloriously!  Hopefully this will be a nice nectar supply for the bees in just a few weeks.

I am also happy to report that the 2 crias are thriving and are a joy to watch romp around the pasture with each other.  In the photo below, the little black cria has just been spit at by Auntie Miracle for some alpaca infraction.  Kids of all species need to be taught their manners.

Sam has finished laying the tile in the guest house and it looks wonderful.  It has yet to be grouted, so I will wait and post a photo when the grouting is done.  He also installed a new side door, which was desperately needed.  I still need to get a second coat of paint on the trim, but hay making got in the way and then it rained.

Grover and I are having fun with our agility training.  I wish I had some photos to share, but I just can't take pictures while dog-handling.  My hands are busy with treats and giving direction.  Some day maybe I will get Sam to come to class with me and maybe he can get some photos.

All my knitting is still secret knitting that I don't want to post on here yet.  Soon.

Look how patiently my boys are waiting to go somewhere.  Anywhere.  This is how they always sit.  Grover has to be in the center and once we get moving he stands up and puts his front paws on the dashboard and does his best imitation of a hood ornament, or as Sam said, just like Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic:  He's the king of his world!

 
 

They're Here!

It's that time of year again, a time when a dog just needs a cool place to lay down for a few minutes.

As I wrote last week, I was awaiting the arrival of 2 alpaca crias, the arrival (or not) of which  would determine whether I would be able to attend the Great Lakes Fiber Show, since Sam was out of town.  I was planning to leave mid-day on Friday for the show and when I went out to the maternity pasture on Wednesday morning around 6:40 am, this is what I found.  Hooray!  An unassisted birth of a healthy female cria.  She was still flat on the ground with the fetal membranes intact when I discovered her, so I missed the event by only minutes.  Within 2 hours, she was up, nursing and running around and I was able to leave for the office by 10 am confident that all was well.......yet still hoping for cria #2.  My greatest hope at this point was that cria #2 would arrive by Thursday evening, or at the very latest early on Friday morning.  Alas, this was not to be.

Friday dawned and no cria.  I had left a message for my friend Tari on Thursday evening saying I was likely not going to make it to the show and for her to go ahead without me. She and I had discussed this on Tuesday.  Being a sheep and goat farmer herself, she was more than understanding.  So I did my normal chores and prepared to go to the office on Friday, all the while hoping for a cria to arrive and allow me to keep my plans to attend the festival.  It did not happen.  So I went to the office instead.

To make a long story short, after coming home from the office on Friday evening and seeing 3 adult alpacas and 1 cria in the pasture as usual, I began doing things around the house.  An hour or so after I arrived home, I chanced to look out to the pasture, and beheld a second cria!  Of course I dropped what I was doing and went to see what was going on.  The cria was up, dry and attempting to nurse.  The placenta was nearby and looked fairly fresh, so I determined the cria was probably about 2 hours old.  She had likely been laying flat in the long grass when I drove by and did a visual assessment of her mother an hour or so earlier.  So, both crias arrived, but not in time for me to go to the festival.  I had already cancelled my dog sitter and besides, there was a lot of work to do around the farm anyway.  

Here is Tempest's cria at 2 days old










 



And Dulci's cria at 6 days old

Both crias were sired by Opus One, or Opi, who is a rose grey color.  Neither one really takes after daddy, do they?  Grey is hard to breed for.

Opi

But I got 2 happy, Hoppy-Skippy crias and that's what matters.  They are enjoying each other, racing around the pasture, kicking up their heels.  Both mothers are wonderful, protective and patient.  There will be other fiber festivals.



So I spent a lot of time Saturday and also Sunday working in the garden. I weeded and got all my tomatoes and peppers and squash and herbs planted.  Then it rained this week and I must weed again.  On Sunday I also opened up the bee hive for an inspection and found a lot of capped brood in the bottom box and saw the queen in the top box.  This weekend I will put a third box on the hive as they seem to be using the space they have to its potential.  Another thing I did this week, speaking of bees, is sow some buckwheat in 2 plots Sam had tilled up for me for this purpose.  Buckwheat is a good ground cover that will bloom hopefully mid-summer and provide a nectar flow for the bees at that time.  They will make a dark honey from it.  I hope it works.

Sam arrived home very early Sunday morning and we now have a freezer full of pike and walleye.  I love fish, so that is wonderful.  We will be having some walleye tonight.  Sam spent the first couple days home at the office and then on Wednesday he worked on laying tile in the guest house kitchen.  I think about 75 to 80% of the tile is laid but as he said, he is down to where there is a lot of cutting involved, but he hopes to finish up this coming week.  I think it is looking great.

The weather forecast for this weekend is about as nice as one could wish for, especially when one needs to make hay, so that is what we will be doing.  Sam is home mowing today and we hope to get everything baled on Sunday.  The highs are supposed to be around 80 with plenty of sunshine and low humidity, which is about perfect.

I have no new knitting, spinning or weaving I can show off this week, so here are a couple photos from evening on the farm.

 

Running & Weaving & Dyeing & Waiting

My trusty running partner, Grover, and I ran the Rails to Trails 5K in Barnesville, Ohio this past Saturday in chilly 40 degree temperatures.  We did very well, in my opinion.  Though the official results have not yet been posted with times, we beat our last 5K run by over a minute and got 2nd in our age category.  The photographer actually got a lot of good shots of us.  It is much easier to find my photos among all the others if I just look for Grover.  He did NOT stop to poop this time!

Sam is off fishing in Canada and I am going crazy with so much stuff to do this time of year.  Why did I say he could go?  Saturday was the race and I also had a real estate appointment in the afternoon.  Sunday was gorgeous and I spent most of the day (after worming all the alpacas) working in the garden.  I weeded the lettuce and beets and I planted corn and lots of tomato plants.  I still have more to plant, tomatoes, peppers, squash and I have no idea when that will get done.  I also had to check on the bees Sunday afternoon and am happy to report that I saw lots of little bee larvae and saw the queen and the bees were very docile and busy bringing in pollen and nectar.  

I am at the office all week while Sam is away and I have some rugs about finished on the loom that I am working on between phone calls and appointments.  This is a new to me method where I use the warp to determine the color shading of the rug.  I am using all white alpaca yarn and the warp is brown and white and it is making a pattern, which will be reversed on the other side of the rug.  I did the first of the two rugs using brown yarn.  Warping challenged me, but I am enjoying the weaving and eager to see the final result.

Since I last wrote, I have also dyed 3 more batches of yarn.  I still have a couple batches worth to dye, but I am just not going to get to it this week.  Ain't happenin'.  I am pretty pleased with what I did. This is 100% alpaca and I have dyed this colorway before.  I call it John's Iris because the color is so reminiscent of the blooms on the irises that are actually in the background of these yarn photos, though they have yet to bloom this year.  The iris was given to me a few years ago by my brother's best friend, John, who died in a tragic accident about 3 months later.  Love this deep purple tonal.




Then I dyed some of my alpaca/wool blend.  I was going for kind of a camo look and I had to overdye it because I was not happy with the first result, so I tied a couple knots in each skein to prevent dye take-up (kind of like Tie-dyeing) and immersed the skeins in a dark green dye bath.  I am pleased with the final outcome.



And for the last batch I stepped out of my personal color comfort zone and went for bright and happy.  I think I got it.  It makes me think of spring crocuses and sunshine.  This is also 100% alpaca.

 And now for the waiting.......I am supposed to leave Friday for the Great Lakes Fiber Show with my friend Tari.  That is why I have been dyeing yarn like crazy.  B  U  T, I have 2 alpacas who are not being cooperative in giving birth to their first crias.  I know I do know better.  I know that spring crias in particular can take as long as a full year to arrive, but may arrive in only 11 months.  In other words, cria births cannot be predicted by any calendar.    I have been doing this for 15 years after all.  I have had a 370 day gestation and I have had a somewhat successful 302 day gestation (this did require intensive care at Ohio State's Veterinary Hospital). If these crias are not here and doing well by Friday morning, I will not be going to the fiber show.  I have someone coming to stay at the farm and take care of the dogs and feed everyone, but I cannot in good conscious expect her to attend to the (possible) births of crias.  I may stay home from the festival and the crias may not arrive for another week to ten days.  Fortunately Tari is a farmer who has sheep and dairy goats and she understands the unpredictability of birthing.  Cross your fingers for me that I will have babies on the ground in 48 hours.  I really wanna go have fun this weekend!

I finished the last 2" of the last pair of socks in the sock circle.  I mailed these off to the originating knitter last Friday and I expect I will get my own socks back shortly. I can hardly wait to see how they look (and fit!).

Ok, I will sign off with something that is so bizarre it is cool.  This is how they have been trimming trees on power right of ways around here.  

That is a helicopter with saw blades hanging underneath!  Kind of lends a new meaning to the term "chopper" doesn't it?  I wonder if you need to be good at video games to sit in a helicopter and cut tree branches?

 

 

Shearing & Bees & Beautiful Things......

Life has been busy this week, but not so busy as to make me ignore the beauty that spring brings.  I do find beauty in all seasons and I don't think I would be happy living where we did not see an obvious change.  Grover is posed on a moss covered rock and behind him is a rock wall and the face of it is covered with wild trillium.  

On the same walk, we waded through acres of these beautiful tiny blue and white wildflowers.  It almost looked like it had snowed.  Incredible.

On Saturday and Sunday, Sam and I got started shearing our 21 alpacas.  By end of day Sunday, we had only 6 to go.  We still have 6 to go.  Possibly tomorrow evening we will knock those 6 out and be done.    Saturday we sheared everyone I wanted to move to other fields.  We now have 4 older girls down the road across from the guest house.  Left to right we have Peg, who will be 15 in June and came to us as a weanling, Chiquita Margarita, who is 15 and also came to us as a weanling.  She was one of the first 3 alpacas we purchased.  And Tunita.  I believe she is 12 and we have had her about 10 years.  Peg and Chiquita are retired and will live out their lives here.  Tunita could still have a cria or two if someone would like to buy her.  We also moved 3 females to the garage pasture on Saturday.  Two of them are pregnant and showing signs of delivering soon.  Both are over 11 months along and they could deliver today or wait another 3 weeks.  Alpacas are so unpredictable in that respect.  I am hoping for happy hoppy skippy babies, as last fall's losses were devasting to me.

Here are our 4 males: Eclipse, Opi & Bodhi, (Lightning is hiding) in the barn awaiting their turn on the shearing table on Sunday.  I brought them down the road 1/4 mile from their pasture and shut them in and vacuumed them off.  

   


Here they are with me post shearing, preparing to go back down the road to their pasture.  On the left is Bodhi, who is now 15.  He has been with us since he was a yearling.  Eclipse was born here and has his butt to the camera, Opi is the youngest (grey) and Lightning is again hiding (behind me)

And here we go.  They don't seem too eager to leave the land of females for their bachelor digs down the road.    As you can see, we will need to be doing some mowing soon.  My horse used to keep all this grass pretty short.  He is missed.

 On Monday I picked up my 3 pound package of bees, but I waited until Tuesday to install them in the hive.  The weather was much warmer and nicer.  The box to the left is the package the bees come in.  It is screened on 2 sides and has a round hole in the top for a feeder can of sugar syrup.  You can see many bees on top of this box as it is difficult to make sure every bee gets shaken into the hive.  I leave the package box sitting next to the hive and the bees usually all move inside by the next morning.  I hope this hive thrives and we do not have as cold a winter as this past one.  I won't be getting much of a honey harvest this year, if I get any.  The bees need to build up their colony.

 Another beautiful thing:  asparagus!  What a treat.  Right from the asparagus patch to the steamer and the table.  I think I need to put in more plants.  My asparagus bed just does not seem to be spreading like I thought it would.  We eat it as fast as it grows.

I think this is pretty beautiful also.  This is a 5 skein batch of my alpaca/wool blend yarn that I dyed this week.  I am so happy with it.  I want to knit a sweater using this yarn, but I had already dyed some for that purpose.  I may have to change to this color.  I like it better.  We'll see.  Memorial Day weekend and the Great Lakes Fiber Show are going to be here before I know it and I still have a lot of yarn to dye.  I may not get it all done.  But that's ok.  There is A Wool Gathering to look forward to in September.

Here is round 6 of the Traveling Sock Round Robin.  I should be receiving round 7 in the mail any day now and that will be the last round.  I will finish those socks and mail them to their owner. The toes I knit in January and mailed out will come back to me with the rest of each sock completed by 7 knitters all over the US.  This has been so much fun.

One of my very favorite things  is being able to eat outside on our deck.  Sam and I manage to sit down to our evening meal together just about every day and have done so since we were first married.  It was always important to us to have that time as a family.  We still do it when we all get together and I treasure those times.  Even when it is just us two.

 

April's Showers Have Colored Everything Green!

I love seeing my neighbor's cows up on this hilltop

Everything is incredibly, vibrantly green.  The woods are carpeted in green once again and the wildflowers are everywhere.  I am amazed when I walk at how green everything really is.  Now if it would just warm up a bit.....

Other signs of spring include asparagus coming up in the asparagus bed, millions of little tadpoles along the shore of the pond, hostas coming up in the flower beds and my tulips in full bloom.  In my garden, the lettuce and beets I planted a couple weeks ago are also popping up and I can hardly wait to have fresh salad greens.  I confess I have already tested a couple stalks of asparagus straight from the garden.  Can't let those first ones wait around for more to be ready to pick or they'll be beyond their prime!

Our plans of getting alpacas shorn early this year have not materialized.  The weather has been too rainy.  And wet alpacas simply cannot be shorn.  So we are waiting to start.  I did prepare the barn this morning for shearing.  Most of the dividers in our barn are moveable so we can rearrange space to suit whatever our needs may be, so I moved panels away from the built in shearing table so that we can walk around it, which we need to be able to do.  It gives the alpacas a bit less indoor space, but they really don't need it this time of year.  I hope to get started on that chore this weekend.  We have 21 to shear, 2 of which are due to have crias imminently.

 



I have gotten 3 batches of yarn dyed in the last week.  This is some of my 100% alpaca 2-ply sport weight yarn.

 These 3 are all "colorways" I have dyed previously and have sold well at festivals.  I keep good notes so I can come close to reproducing a color I like.  But there is always some variation.  Each one of these batches is 8 skeins of 300 yards each.  I still have 3 more batches of this yarn to dye and I am not sure what colors I will use.  I will likely try something new.  I also have about 20 skeins of an alpaca/wool blend to dye and I will probably do that in 5 skein batches.

Grover and I had a great time at our agility class this week.  We got to put a couple obstacles together and let him run it as fast as he could.  He really got into it and was quite revved up.  I think he likes it.  I have to put a couple jumps together here at home so we can practice.  Grover is not the only one who has things to learn.  

 Work continues on the kitchen down the road.  Sam has really been working hard.  He has jacked up the floor a bit and used some leveler  and has installed the backing board for the tile, which we picked up at Home Depot this week.  You can kind of see what it will look like.  I think it will look great.  We also purchased a new side entry door, as the one that is on the house has never been very functional.  A good wind would blow it open if it was not wedged shut with a screw in the jamb.  And Sam had a horse blanket in front of it all winter to keep out as much of the draft as possible.  I even got someone to come and pick up the old sink and haul it away and they gave me $30.  Pretty good deal if ya ask me!





 


Sam also put up new fence to replace the old fencing I tore down.  He is so handy to have around.  So whenever we get some of the older girls shorn, they will be moved down the road onto really lush pasture.  And I won't have to worry about them falling into the creek.

Meanwhile, the fracking (hydraulic fracturing) continues on the well site above our hayfield.  This shot is from our alpaca field at the main barn and shows our neighbor's house and the red beyond is the run in shed across the road from the guest house.  Amazingly, they seem to take Sundays off, but otherwise the noise reminds me of diesel engines idling in European train stations.  Rome. Constantly.  And that's how it sounds at my house, 1/2 a mile away.  I can't imagine what it sounds like up on the well site.








So I finished the shawl I have been working on.  It took me most of a week to do the bind-off (last row) alone, but it is SO worth it. It is spectacular.  I love it.  I need to get some photos of it being worn.  I don't think of myself as a girly-girl, but I sure do love lace and beads around my shoulders.  Now if only I had someplace to wear it.  

I have now started knitting some baby items.  I knit a baby blanket once about 8 years ago, but have not knit anything other than booties since then.  I have a couple babies to knit for right now and am making some fun things that I won't post about here, just in case.  But that will be the majority of my knitting for now.  Well I also have the last couple rounds of the traveling socks to work on and I will probably start a summer lacy sweater.  I'm also warping up my loom at the office for some rugs using a new to me pattern.  Time, I need more time........

This is Grand Design posing for me in the morning a few days ago.