Fence Fixed.....Finally!

Jack Russel mama and puppies up for adoption at the Humane Society of Monroe County!

You gotta admit, they are cute!  Pure bred and puppies will be able to go to new homes in a couple weeks.  Mama is 6 years old.

Yes, I was finally able to get Sam to commit a couple hours to help me fix a stretch of fence that was in bad need of repair.  It is only one such stretch, but it has been needing repair for a long time and it seems every time I would tell him "ok we are doing this on" whatever day, it would rain or something would come up.  In order to replace fence, the old fence has to come off.  The biggest problem with this is that while we can close gates to keep alpacas where they need to be, there is good ol' Buck to deal with.  So before I could tear down fence, I had to "Buck-proof" all the gates where he would normally just squeeze through.  I used cattle panels and wired up old fencing to thwart him.  Boy, he was NOT happy when he realized he could not get over to where I was working! So now that this stretch is done, we need to purchase more fencing and start on other replacement.  This fence was 12 years old and we put up inexpensive fencing to start off with as our budget was limited.  Lesson learned, pay more up front or buy fencing twice.  


In addition to fencing repairs, one of the chores on my spring/summer list will be to re-oil all our buildings and board fences.  When Sam built our alpaca barn and 3-sided sheds, he used rough sawn poplar boards.  He saves all our used motor oil and we use that as a preservative on the buildings.  In the past, we have had our boys do this fun chore, but this time, I guess it will be me.  I have 1 barn and 3 sheds and a few hundred feet of board fence to do.  Need to start soon before it gets too hot!  I am sure I will add to my list before too long.


It has been cooler this week.  It rained all day Saturday and I went shopping.  It was one of those epic shopping days where I actually found everything I was looking for!  I won't bore you with the details.  So Sunday it was dry but cool, which was good for working outdoors.  Last night it started to rain and was still raining this morning.

Here are young wet alpacas who have just all been allowed together in the same pasture.  They have all crammed into one side of the shed to eat.  Silly things!  3 of these are the boys who were gelded (neutered/castrated) almost 2 weeks ago.  I deemed they were well-behaved enough to be put in with females.  They had not really been showing any signs of obnoxious male behavior prior to gelding or I would not have put them all together. 

As you can see, we have not started shearing yet and I am glad because the temps have been so up and down.  Of course pretty soon it will just get hot, I am sure.  I am busy planning whose fleece will go into yarn, etc already.  I need to get yarn fleeces shorn first once we start so I can drop those off at the Great Lakes Fiber Show Memorial Day weekend.

Meanwhile, I have been continuing with my yarn dyeing.  I got another batch done up this week and it came out gorgeous (new drying rack:  successful shopping trip Saturday!).  I love the blues and white together. 

 I finally got last week's batch re-skeined.  It just looks nicer in the skein if the colors are not left in patches.  It's hard to explain, but here's how it looks now

 The colors are actually darker and more saturated than they look in this photo.  I used outdoor lighting, but it was very bright out.  The colors are rich jewel tones.

And here is the colorwork hat I did up with the hand-spun alpaca/silk yarn I dyed a couple weeks back.  It came out really nice.  It 's a slouchy hat which is hard to tell from this photo but I did not have a model.  I love how it came out.  I wish I had more of that yarn to dye!!

I have started a knitting project to donate to the Country Store at our big Humane Society fund-raiser, which is a Longaberger Basket Bingo on June 23.  I saw this kit and thought it would be perfect for a HS fund-raiser:   

http://www.knitpicks.com/kits/Cats_Dogs_Satchel_Kit___D41056.html

PS, I have raffle tickets for Longaberger planters for sale!  $1 each or 6 for $5.  All proceeds will help the animals : )

Bees, Morels, Yarn, Heavy Equipment

Ginger in the upper hayfield

We are definitely into the busy season here on the farm.  The days are longer and warmer and we are spending many more hours outdoors, which makes all of us happy.  We are not really indoor folks.  Our weather has actually been dryer than we would like.  We are never happy are we?  But we have lettuce planted and we are waiting for the asparagus to produce more than just a few spears at a time.  We did have a nice gentle soaking rain on Saturday.  We could use that type of precipitation every 3rd day or so.


 

Everyone has been enjoying the nice weather, including this guy, who Sam spotted sunning himself on a tree bark shelf just off the road up to the pond.  he's a pretty good sized black snake and harmless unless you are a rodent or slow-moving bird.  I like having these guys around.  






I traveled to the other side of the state on Monday to help out with my niece and nephews while my brother and his wife were out of the country.  My mother is staying with the kids, but they have soccer and baseball and need to be in too many places at once, so I thought I'd help out.  While I was away, our bees arrived and had to be picked up in Woodsfield (last year I traveled 3 hours each way to pick them up, this was better), so Sam picked them up for me and put them in his workshop until I returned home on Tuesday afternoon.  You should have heard the buzzing in that workshop!  Here is how the bees are packaged.

There are 3 pounds of bees in there.   In the center of the box there is a can of sugar water and a cage with the queen in it.  The queen has to be taken out and left in the cage and placed in the hive box before the rest of the bees are put in.  In this photo, the queen cage is suspended between two of the frames that the bees will build their comb on.  She has some attendant bees in the cage with her and you can see several bees on the outside of the cage.  All the bees will be drawn to her.  There is a candy plug in the bottom of the cage and over the next day or so the worker bees will eat through that plug and release the queen so she can begin to lay eggs and increase the population.

So here I am after placing the queen cage into the hive, dumping the rest of the bees in.  The bees are very non-aggressive at this point because they have nothing to defend.  Once they have drawn out comb and are taking care of brood (eggs, larvae) and storing away food, they will be much more likely to sting in defense of their home and family.  At this point you will notice there is only one small box for the hive.  I will be adding boxes to this as the number of bees grows and they require more room.  Eventually there will probably be 4 more boxes stacked on top of this one.  Hopefully one will be full of honey for me.






Unfortunately the noise you hear in the background of the video is caused by the heavy equipment that is preparing the drilling pad for the next batch of deep gas/oil wells that are going in just across the road.  The green at the bottom is our hayfield, then there is a creek and you can see the big track hoe flattening off the top of the hill.  The noise is going on pretty much all day.  It used to be so quiet here.   When they are done with this pad, they will start on one on the property to the southeast  of us.  It will be noisy for a while.  


Sam has been on his yearly spring search for morels.  It is either too early or else it is just not going to be a good year.  He has found quite a few, but they are few and far between.  

I have dyed 2 batches of my yarn.  I have 36 skeins, so I will be doing 6 batches of 6 skeins each.  The first one came out a little pinker than I planned.  Need to make my colors more saturated next time.  No worries, while it is not my favorite color scheme, someone will love it.

Batch number 2 is more to my liking colorwise.  I have not re-skeined it and it is still on the drying rack 5 days after dyeing.  I'll get to it soon, I hope.

















                                  I also finished the hat I was knitting from the yarns I dyed and posted about last week, but I forgot to photograph it, so I will be sure to do so for next week.  This post is getting rather long anyway.

 

Fiber, Fiber and more Fiber!!

Rowdy has graciously allowed me to sit on the swing with him after our hike Saturday

We have had some beautiful sunny weather this week, though it has been cooler, more like April should be.  

It has been pretty much all about fiber this week, though I did finish getting my bee boxes and frames ready for the arrival of my package of bees.  Good thing, too because I will be picking them up on Monday.   Here are the boxes with some of the frames in them so you can get an idea.  Of course there is also a bottom board and an inner and outer cover which are not on here.  These 2 boxes and 20 frames will be fine to start the bees out, but I (by this I mean Sam) need to get a couple more boxes built before too long because the hopeful idea is that the the 10,000 bees in my 3 pound package will multiply into 4 times that many in just a few months.  This hive will go up close to the existing top bar hive near our little orchard.  

I have been diligently working on fibery stuff most of the week.  The big news is I received 8+ pounds of lovely white 100% alpaca sport weight yarn  back from the processor on Thursday.

 It is sitting in a bag waiting for me to dye it.  I am always kind of afraid to dye it at first because I am worried I will make it ugly.  I don't know why I worry.  Maybe it is because I have so much $$ invested in this yarn. It was processed at Flaggy Meadows in Kentucky because my usual processor was too busy to guarantee I would have it in time.  While it is lovely yarn (I sent lovely fiber) the cost was significantly more in the end than my usual processor, so I will likely go back to the other mill I have used in the past.


 

So, while I have not delved into the bag of yarn to dye, I did do up my last batch of 50/50 alpaca/cormo-corridaleX roving.  At first, I hated how it came out, but the more I look at it the more I like it.  I have 4 pounds of this roving dyed in 4 different colorways.  I still have many pounds of 100% alpaca roving I can dye as well as the yarn.  The festival is a little over 5 weeks away.


I got a book from the library which is full of hat patterns and I just loved one colorwork pattern.  I  happened to have some leftover skeins of alpaca/silk handspun yarn that I had spun for a sweater.  I had never dyed this yarn because I always spin more than I need.  So I split the yarn up Saturday into 5 small skeins and did a solar dyeing experiment.

  Unfortunately, it was not very warm on Saturday, though it was a brilliantly sunny day, so I ended up simmering the jars in a water bath on top of the stove later in the day.  I then hung them on my swing to dry (did you notice them in the top photo?)

And later I skeined them up.  I have to admit, I think the colors are wonderful and look especially vibrant in the sunshine.  I have started knitting the hat, but don't have it photographed yet.

 











I also finished knitting a shawlette using some yarn I had in my "stash".  It was a quick knit and turned out beautifully and is going to be gifted so I will tell you next week who gets it.  I can't mail it out til after I go to my spinning guild meeting tomorrow night and show it off.  I wish the photo showed the gorgeous colors off better.  I had to take it indoors this morning and the lighting was not good.  It has so many colors in it.  The yarn is wool and Seacell, which is similar to silk but from seaweed.  Really.  It is so shiny.  

Next week:  Bees.  Soon:  Shearing.  

 

So Much To Do!!

Yes, spring is surely here.  There is so much to do now.  I am still working on getting the new bee hive ready.  Sam has built the boxes and I need to paint them.  I ordered a wrong tool with which to finish up my frames, so I am waiting for the correct one to come in the mail so I can get that done.  I think tomorrow will be painting and frame finishing day.  Hopefully.  I want to be able to do the painting outside, so no rain.

Tuesday I spent some time over at the Humane Society Shelter (I have probably mentioned that I am a volunteer there) building a handrail up to the kennels.  Some genius put the kennels at the top of a hill making them all but inaccessible by two-leggers in the winter time.  So we put in some steps and then a hand rail.  

I am also working on preparing products for the Upper Valley Fiber Festival in a little over a month.  The really good news is that my yarn is done and should be on its way to me!  I sent it to a mill I have not used before as the one I normally use was too busy to get it to me in time.  The mill tells me the yarn is beautiful.  I sure hope so.  I will give them a plug next week if they are right.

So, I will have yarn to start dyeing very soon.  I dyed up another batch of my 50/50 alpaca/ wool roving this week.  Dyeing is not an exact science, at least for me.  And in this case I underestimated the power of green.  I was doing a combination pour on/kettle dye and I used TOO MUCH green with the first batch (my pot does not handle an entire pound of roving) and it came out a very intense green.  It was supposed to be more yellow with green areas.  So for the second batch, I really cut back on the green and it was still somewhat overpowering.  In the photo, the first batch is on the bottom of the dryer and the second is on the top.  

 

 This roving holds together very nicely so once it is fluffed up (the dyeing process compacts it), I am putting it into 2 oz braids that look nice and don't need to be bagged so potential buyers can feel the softness.  Here is last week's batch braided up.


I am also carding up batts of rose grey alpaca on my drum carder.  It is the same fiber I made my alpaca/bamboo yarn from, but it will not be dyed.  I will offer it in 1 oz batts.


Sam has been working on getting things ready to do some planting.  I think today he is putting in some potatoes and lettuce.  He is also planning to put in some sorghum.  He got some seeds from some local people who squeeze it and cook it down into molasses.  They told him if he grows it and brings it over after harvesting when they are doing theirs we can run it through their evaporator.  So, why not?  We also have asparagus spears coming up.  This should be our first year for a good crop. 

 Here are our 2 fall crias that we weaned a couple weeks ago.  The black one is Inigo Montoya, a little male and the female is Glacienne, or Laci for short.  She has been sold and is going to a new home in Georgia later this month.  They are doing well with weaning.

Apache is enjoying the spring grass.  He lost some weight over the winter and actually looks great.  He is still on a joint supplement and I have not seen him having difficulty getting back on his feet when he lays down, so that is really good.  He is 27 now and has been with me 19 years!  Hard to believe.  

There are wild flowers springing up everywhere.  Last year I learned that the fragile-looking white flowers that were blooming back in the woods along the creek among the fallen trees are Trilliums.  I understand they are fairly rare, but there are many of them in one area where we walk almost daily.  So delicate and pretty.

 I named one of our crias from last spring after them.  I will have to post her picture next week if I remember to get one.

Here are some wild turkeys in the hayfield.  They had to make a hasty exit once Rowdy saw them.  He loves to chase large birds, and yet he walks amongst our chickens and hardly gives them a second look.  

Speaking of chickens, the hawk has been back, but last time I saw him he was being chased off by a crow.  YES!  Go Crows!

I finished up and blocked the shawl I was working on last week.  It came out very pretty I think.  I plan to re-block it though.  Many people have blocked it with much more curvature on the top and I like the photos of how it drapes better that way. Aren't the colors great?  LOVE that purple on the lace edging!

This weekend is Easter and we will be going to Sam's parents' house on Sunday.  None of the kids are coming.  They are all grown up and have their own lives.  Our younger son, Sam, has left the Grand Canyon and is back at Yosemite at the lodge where he has worked before

http://www.evergreenlodge.com/ 

he seems to really love it there (Yosemite) and I can't blame him, it's beautiful.  Older son, Ian, is still at the Grand Canyon for another 7 weeks or so and then he and his girlfriend are off to Portland Oregon.  Younger son's plan is to move there as well in the fall.  We'll see how things go.  That's all Sam and I can do.  And plan to visit!

This Chicken Hawk is No Laughing Matter

Snoozin' in the wood shop while mom builds bee frames

Things are moving right along here on the farm.  There is a lot to do now that spring is here.  Not so much with the alpacas yet, it is the standard feed them and clean up after them for now.  Though they are getting a little grass time in addition to their hay, which makes them very happy.  This past weekend was also worming time once again, so that is done until the end of April.  Wow, April!

We had a bit of a chicken crisis on Friday afternoon.  Our chickens are definitely  free range and are generally all over the farm, at least within sight of the barns.  They can be found scratching in the leaf litter in the ditches and on the hillsides and under the multiflora roses, or along the creek bank.  One generally hears them before seeing them.  Their scratching and scuffling is accompanied by a constant verbal "burble" as I call it.  It is just a soft noise they make as they forage and I think it helps them to keep in touch with each other.  

So, when the dogs and I arrived home around 4 pm from our walk on Friday afternoon  the first thing we noticed was a large hawk who flew from one of the big oaks across the road from the pasture and screamed at us as he circled back and landed in another tree not far from where he had been.  That worried me.  But not as much as the fact that as I got closer to the house, there was not a chicken in sight.  Nowhere.  I searched in the garage and looked in the chicken house and the horse barn and the alpaca building by the garage.  And even odder was I heard nothing.  No scratching, no burbling.  I did not want to call the chickens because the hawk was still in the tree and I did not want them to come out of hiding, so I went into the house and worked on making some noodles.  After an hour or so I went out and  4 of the chickens came out of hiding in the granary near the road and came running and flapping across the yard to me.  I went out to the horse barn again and called to the chickens and 5 more came out from under the hay baler in the poly-shelter and one came out of the horse barn.  Now I had looked in all these places and those chickens had been so quiet I could not even tell they were there.

Anyway, at dusk when I shut the chicks in the hen house, there were only 10.  The 11th was found early Saturday morning.  I had walked right by her several times, but had been scanning the sky for the hawk and not looking in the ditch for a hen.  The hawk had come back after dark and fed on her and scattered feathers everywhere, making it easy to find her. 

 Sunday morning, the hawk was back and but the chickens were still in hiding.  Did not see him again until yesterday morning.  The chicks are sticking close to shelter.  Hopefully the hawk will find easier feeding elsewhere.  

And speaking of birds, Sam turned the car around the other day on the way home from work and took a photo of this guy.  This is not a usual sight in Monroe County.  It would be cool if it were.

I have been working on getting my frames put together for my new bee hive.  I ordered 50 of them and need 20 to get started by the time the bees arrive in 2 weeks.  They have to be assembled from all these pieces

into these wooden frames that will hang in the bee boxes that Sam is building.  There will be 10 to a box

Once the wooden frames are glued and nailed together, wire is strung for added strength and then the beeswax foundation that the bees will draw out into comb is added and the frames are ready.  The first frame took forever, but I have 20 nailed together and 10 wired.  I will finish wiring this weekend and then put in the wax.  Hopefully I will have boxes to paint by then.

I dyed another pound of my alpaca/wool roving this week.  The color in this photo is not real good.  It is actually more blue than grey.  I need to dye at least a pound of roving or yarn every week for the next several weeks to get ready for the Upper Valley Fiber Festival in Troy Ohio in May.

http://www.uppervalleyfiberfest.org/ 


 

I have almost finished a  quick knit shawl out of some yarn I purchased because it was just so cool.  It is called Colorshift Yarn from a dyer on etsy.com   http://www.etsy.com/shop/colorshiftyarn  and no, it is not alpaca!  But I just had to have some.  The dyer sends you 8 skeins of yarn that shift from one color to a totally different color.  Wow!  My plan is to finish the shawl today and block it so you can see how gorgeous it is next week.  It is hard to see on the needles.  

March Heat Wave

This wallow is about 8/10ths of a mile from the house where we leave the road and cut back into the woods.  A perfect spot for a hot dog on a very warm March day.  And boy, has it been warm.  I think we have had several days of record temperatures this month.  It feels more like June than March.  The bad part is, the leaves are not out on the trees yet, so there is little shade.  I got new cushions for my deck swing and it is too hot to use it!  

I don't think the alpacas are enjoying the heat wave.  It is too early to start shearing because I just don't believe we won't have some more cold weather.  I could be wrong, but it's just too soon to think the hot weather is here to stay.  

Whether the hot weather is here to stay or not, the landscape is starting to look like spring.  Most of the flowering trees are in bloom and the undergrowth in the woods is all turning green.  There are lots of signs of life in the pond.  There are so many fish hanging out near the surface every time I go up there.  This is just a few.  I have seen  schools numbering a dozen or more.  


I have also started to see the little amphibians I call salamanders.  I am not sure if that is what they are.  They swim like tiny  crocodiles.  




Last year they feasted on clusters of eggs that were near the shore.  Not sure if they were frog or fish eggs, but they are not there yet this year.










 


And of course the hot weather means Rowdy is up for a swim in the pond.  His idea of a swim is fetching a stick.  You can see the stick out near the end of the dock as Rowdy launches himself off the bank.

 And here is the splashdown.   I think the water has got to be pretty cold.  Rowdy only fetches the stick 4 or 5 times and he is ready to head for home.


 Sam is working on a spring chore today.  He is spreading a year's worth of poop on the hayfields.  Having the second tractor he bought last year makes the job a lot easier.  

But it still requires several trips down the road and so will take most of the day.   And the alpacas are already making more.....  The chickens will certainly enjoy all the overturned dirt and poop.  Many bugs and worms today!


Yesterday on my way in to the office I got held up in a traffic jam.  It didn't make me too late.

 On the fiber front, I am delighted to say I finally finished spinning the alpaca /bamboo blend I started back in January.  I am so pleased with how it turned out.  Out of 8 oz, I got 1740 yards of 2 ply yarn.  That is over 200 yards per ounce.  I also did the math and realized that I was only 20 yards short of one mile of 2 ply yarn!  That means I spun almost 2 miles of singles.  Now I need to come up with a pattern that is epic enough for this yarn I worked so long and hard to produce!  I think I will enter a small skein of it in a skein competition they are having at the fiber festival I am vending at in western Ohio in May.  

I took my latest weaving project off the loom, but I still have to hem the ends and I will post a photo after I finish it and after I have gifted it to the recipient.  I will hopefully be putting new warp for more rugs on the loom soon.

Spring is in the Air!

Isn't Buck Looking Regal?

Yes, it certainly feels and sounds like spring out there.  Last night the peeper frogs were incredibly loud as I was shutting the chickens in and feeding the alpacas just after dusk.  I do love that sound.  There are signs of spring all over.  My neighbor's daffodils are already in full bloom.  My tulips are up about 6".  Really too early for all this.  We have garlic and hops coming up.  Apache is shedding gobs of white hair.  I had to block off the water hydrant outside the alpaca barn because he uses it as a scratching post and I fear he will break off the water line one of these days and we will be out of water and wondering why.  Rowdy is also "blowing out" his undercoat and I spent some time using the undercoat rake on him outside on Sunday.  He looks smaller.  I am sure I should get the rake out for Buck and Star as well.  Buck will like that.  Star, I am not so sure about.   She is rather flighty and silly.  We shall see.

 We did our last 2 batches of syrup this week.  Sam did one last Thursday and I did a small one on Monday.  The temps are just too warm at night now and the sap is not running.  I pulled all the taps and brought most of the buckets down and now I have clean up to finish.  I will bleach and put everything away for next year.

I also got into the bee hive on Friday as it was a nice day.  I had made them some "candy" from a recipe I got at the last bee meeting and I put some of it in their hive to tide them over until the nectar and pollen starts.  They seem to be healthy and were not real happy with me bothering them.  But no stings.  I will likely check tomorrow to see if they have consumed all the candy and I have more to give them.  

I got my big order of bee supplies the other day for my second hive.  So I have frames to put together and Sam has boxes to build before the bees arrive on April 16th.  Hopefully I will get started on that project this week sometime.  It will be hard though, if the weather is nice.

I have been letting the alpacas out onto the pastures about every third day.  Our pastures are in bad shape and I don't want them to ruin them right away.  So this morning, this is how it looked when I let them out.  There is some green starting to show and they are quite happy to get out there.


And then there is Chiquita Margarita, who did not realize I was opening the pasture gate because she was cleaning up all the grain in the barn.

No one wants to be last to the grass!  Chiquita was one of the first 3 alpacas we acquired back in 1999.  She was less than a year old and has had many crias for us, one every year.  She will not be having a cria this year.  I don't know if that will bother her or if she is ok with it.  She will be 14 in the fall.  She is one of my favorites and will live out her days here.

On Monday, I actually finished spinning the alpaca/bamboo singles!!  I now have 2 bobbins ready to twist together into a 2-ply yarn.  Even though I weighed out the batts prior to spinning, it looks as though there is more on one bobbin than on the other.  I won't know for sure until I finish plying.  Plying won't take anywhere near as long as the spinning has taken.  I need some good TV time and that is getting scarce as the hours of evening daylight increase.  Who has time to sit down while the sun shines?

I also finished tying the fringes on my latest rug.  I love how it came out.   it is 25" X 37" without the fringe.  I think I will weave more similar to this in the future. 

That's about all for now.  Oh, Rowdy wanted me to mention that he enjoyed his first swim of the year in the pond last night.  I am sure the water was rather cold, but he is always hot anyway and it was quite warm here yesterday.  He made some spectacular jumps after a medium sized stick, but was ready to shake the water out of his coat and head for home after about 5 retrievals.  Here he has 2 of his favorite things:  a stick and his Flippy Flopper.  He is a happy dog.