I Can't Believe August is Almost Over!

Buck is becoming a true Gentle Giant

Yes, I can hardly believe how fast summer has gone. Our weather has become almost perfect, warm sunny days and cool nights which necessitate a blanket on the bed.  The lighting has changed in the woods as the sun moves to the south and the plants are turning yellow along the trails.  I have to admit l love the change of seasons, whichever it is. Even winter brings welcome changes for a while.  It has a habit of overstaying its welcome eventually however!

I had a surprise on Monday.  I returned from helping a friend take her sick goat to the vet and found our first cria of the season!  I have to admit, I have been a little behind in checking my records or I would have realized this girl was far enough along to deliver.  She was at 329 days, which is just shy of the 11 month mark.  Average gestation is about 11. 5 months and I have found over 12 years of birthing that fall deliveries seem to average a good 2 weeks shorter than spring deliveries.  So 329 days is not early and baby was up and nursing when I found her and good size at just over 16 pounds.  Oh, I did mention it was a SHE right?  

Here she is with mama on birth-day and at the top of this post is Buck on day 2 checking her out.  Hard to believe he is just 9 months old!  This cria is the second from our female Kadienne and the second female she has produced.  Kadi, as we call her, has the worst temperament on our farm, in my humble opinion, and does not spare the nasty green spit if you irritate her.  So, working with her cria is interesting!  This cria's sire is a male born here on our farm who is owned by a friend of mine.  His dam died birthing him and I did not want to bottle feed, so I offered him to my friend and she took him.  He has matured to a very nice male and this is his first cria.  She has the potential to be a very nice alpaca.
The sire's name is Glacier and I think I will call this cria Glacienne, Laci for short.

So I now have 3 more crias due in the next month.  I have my very first alpaca, Chiquita, who is at day 305 today.  She is bred to the new male we acquired last fall, Lightning.  This will be his first cria.  Elli is also at day 305 and is bred to Eclipse and we have Brooklynn, a black female at day 299 and she is bred to our black male Oscuro.  I would guess all 3 of these crias should be here by the end of September.  Stay tuned for announcements!

  This photo is Margarita (Chiquita's daughter) and her cria from June, who I have yet to name!  His sire is named Mr BoJangles and I think this cria is very nice and am looking forward to seeing him mature.  I just haven't come up with a name yet.  Sometimes they come to me right away, but other times it's a struggle.  

We got in the last of our hay.  We have over 600 bales in the barn now, which is a good 4 month supply in heavy usage times.  Dec, Jan, & Feb I can count on using 5 bales a day , but the alpacas will graze even in winter if there is no snow.    Here is the last little field we did raked into windrows awaiting the baler.  Rowdy always manages to get into the post somewhere, doesn't he?

This weekend, Labor Day weekend, is always a big weekend on our farm.  The first year we lived here, all my family came to check the new place out.  I think they were all wondering how bad it really was!  The house was in need of some work, but quite liveable.  Anyway, it kind of started a tradition and now we generally have 2 housefuls of family and friends  and dogs all weekend and a party on Saturday where we invite just about anyone we know to stop by and have a burger and a beer.  It's just a lot of fun and I'm exhausted when Monday comes and the last car leaves and the quiet settles on me.  And it is so quiet with them all gone.  So know if you are reading this, you are invited!

 This photo is of the weeds that are totally covering several sections of fencing around the boys' pasture.  I think it is beautiful.  The photo cannot do it justice.    It is covered with yellow and orange flowers.  I suppose I should find out what it is called.  Until then, it is just that pretty weed on the fence.

The chickens are doing great.  They are producing anywhere from 12 to 14 eggs a day now.  They seem to be happy chickens and make themselves at home, even on my porch railing.  

They did totally devastate the impatien bed I plant every year along the front of the porch.  I think there are about 4 plants left of the flat and a half I put in back in early June.  But, I like the chickens better than the flowers anyway.  I have to say I am looking forward to letting my niece and nephews collect their own eggs. 

Hay, Hops, Walnuts, It's Late Summer

Rowdy is enjoying his favorite wallow on our evening walk

Last week as I was writing, Sam was home raking and baling hay.  I had to leave here and go home to help put the hay up in the barn.  Of course, prior to putting it up in the barn, it needs to be picked up out of the field.  We use our truck and flat-bed trailer to do this.  This particular hayfield is about 4 acres and is long and narrow, bordered on one side by the road and on the other side by the creek. 

 Once the hay is picked up, it needs to be put UP into the loft and stacked in such a way as to get in as many bales as possible.  This year we had the help of an electric conveyor, but I was too busy stacking hay to get any pics.  Maybe on the next field.   I should mention our neighbors Judy and Charlie were a huge help.  Charlie is our farm-sitter when we are away as well.

Sam thought we would not get much hay this year, but we got approximately 450 bales!  Who's counting, right?  I am.  I figure that will cover December, January and February when 50 alpacas will go through about 5 bales per day.  We have another field to cut yet and also have an order in for 300 more bales from a local farmer.  Another hope is that I can downsize my alpaca herd somewhat!

 This loft is stuffed full. It is hard to tell from the photos how high this is actually stacked, but I think those white doors are about 15 feet high.  I do NOT like heights!

Now the field is all nicely mown and we can walk through it on our evening walks and take Rowdy to one of his favorite swimming holes in creek again.

I may have mentioned in past posts that Sam enjoys a good pint of beer and has been brewing his own for many years.  2 years ago he planted his own hops and last year planted more.  I think he is looking at having a nice HopCrop this year, though whether it will be enough for his needs I do not know!  Hops are a fruit that grow on a vine and they are what give beer its "bitter" taste.  Sam is a big fan of "Hoppy" beer.  I am not a big beer fan, but in general I do not care for the hoppier beers,  I prefer maltier beers. 

This is one of the vines he planted last year.  He had a hard time with these as something likes to eat the hop plants, so they are not very big this year, but this one is doing fairly well.

 Here is a close up of the hops.  They are about ready to pick and Sam will either use them right away or dehydrate them for use at a later time.  The hops are grown from a root, or rhizome, and will come back every year.

We have an abundance of black walnut trees on our property as well and this year, most are just loaded with nuts.  The black walnuts are not the same as the English walnuts you buy at the grocery store for baking.  They are a more bitter nut.  They are also exceedingly hard nuts to crack!  They have an outer hull, which needs to be removed, which is not as hard as it is messy.  I have heard of everything from hammers to running over the nuts with your car to hull them.  In the past, I have used a hammer to break the hulls and peel them off.  The hulls have a very oily dark stain in them which will stain everything it touches, so gloves are recommended.   You can even soak the hulls in a bucket of water and make a natural dye for wool.  However, I have never done this as it makes a rich brown dye and I already have alpacas that color. 

Anyway, when we get the first good frost, and then the sun comes up in the morning, you can hear the walnuts dropping from the trees.  This is when you collect them and hull them.  Once they are hulled, you spread the nuts, still in their shells, on a screen in a dry place and let them dry out for a couple weeks.  Then you can attempt to crack them.  Since the nuts are so plenitful this year, I will probably try this again.  I think I will use Sam's bench vise to crack them.  There are nut crackers out there that make claims of cracking black walnuts, but I have not found one yet!

For some reason this tree, which is down along the creek, has lost most of its leaves already.  But that makes it easy to see how many nuts are on it.

I have had little time for fibery pursuits other than the Spin-Off judging, though I did finish the rugs that were on my loom except for tying the fringes on the ends.  I will be dyeing like crazy here soon, but first I must get through Labor Day weekend.  I think I have 14 people staying on the farm with us!  Yikes!

Isn't this beautiful?  This was early morning one day this week.  I just love the clouds and the lighting.  Very dramatic.

And here is a picture of Ginger, doing what she does on our walks these days:  Bringing up the rear!

If I can drag myself up over our hills when I am her age, I will feel pretty darn good, even if I am bringing up the rear!

Dye Day & Makin' Hay

I planted my basil just outside the kitchen door this year so I don't have to go to the garden to get it.  It is growing very well.  I have a bundle of it hanging on the sunporch to dry.  I also have a bundle of the spearmint that grows wild all over the farm drying .  I had to pick it prior to mowing.  It always smells so good when you mow the mint.  It is quite prolific, however, and comes back in no time.

I have a lot going on right now.  How do I do this to myself?  I am working on judging a Spin-Off, but it is half the size of the one I did back in January and I have plenty of time. We also have a big fund-raiser for the local  Humane Society, with which I am very involved.  It is actually tomorrow, but we have some set up work to do today and Sam is making hay today!  After tomorrow night, I will be able to think more about other upcoming events, such as our annual Labor Day weekend party and the Wool Gathering, at which I will be a vendor.  So I need to dye roving and yarn (I am waiting for yarn to come back from the mill....they promise it will be done by Labor Day).

My spinning guild had Dye Day at the farm of JoAnn Swank this past Saturday.  It is just a fun time to get together with the group and get dye pots going and eat and socialize.  Her farm is very nice.  She has such beautiful beds of perennials all over.  I should have taken more photos.

The small building in the rear of this photo is JoAnn's cabin/studio.  She has 2 floor looms in here and lots of other fibery stuff.  It is quite a nice building with a loft and a woodburner.  She also has this big picnic pavilion sort of like the one we have at the pond, which is where we did lots of dyeing.

 Here's a shot from another angle where you can see items we have dyed drying on a rack.  Some items dyed were T-shirts (tie-dye), a scarf, yarn and roving.  I mostly socialized, but I did dye about 8 ounces of some roving I had leftover.  It is a blend of 80 % alpaca and 20% wool.  I had dyed and knit a red-cabled sweater from some of the same roving 2 years ago.  I love how the colors came out.  

It kind of reminds me of Emerald Bay at Lake Tahoe, whadda ya think?  Can't wait to see the finished yarn.  I am envisioning mittens.

Speaking of hay, this morning before coming to the office, I spent some time cleaning out the empty side of the loft.  I forked all the loose hay I could into the little truck to take over and put in the girls' feeder.  I had to put Rowdy's herding skills to work because the silly creatures want to get their heads  into the feeder before I am finished forking in all the hay and I am so afraid I will injure one of them with the tines of the fork.  They are NOT the brightest creatures!  So, I just tell Rowdy to move them out of the area, which he is more than happy to do.  While not formally trained to herd, he and I can communicate in our own way and he is tuning in to me much more than he used to.  He does like to use his teeth, so I try to get him to go easy.  Most of the alpacas are wise to him, though and do not give him any trouble.  They are more than happy to get out of his way.  I think Rowdy lives to hear me tell him to herd.  Instinct is incredible.  

You can see the alpacas under the overhang just waiting for me to start pitching the hay into the feeder.   It's amazing how little hay was actually in the truck.  It looked like a lot, but probably was not more than a good-sized bale worth, if that.  But it will keep the critters busy for a while.

Our chickens are producing  maximum egg output now.  With 13 hens, we have been getting just about a dozen eggs a day.  That's a lot of eggs for 2 people!  But so far, I am having little trouble getting rid of them.  My chicken house, made by my father-in-law, has next boxes that can be accessed from a hinged top from the outside of the chicken house.  There are 6 nest boxes and usually the hens do not use them all.  There will be 3 or 4 eggs in 3 or 4 of the 6 boxes.  Here is a photo of the nest boxes early this morning with one of the hens making her deposit.  As you can see, there are already several other eggs present.

I have finished my bulky lace vest, made from handspun yarn from a roving that was damaged by the processor.  I actually like the looks of the yarn and love the vest.  Maybe i will enter it in the Ohio Alpacafest this fall.  My "dummy" is a good bit slenderer than I am, so the lace pattern does not show up on her too well.  I will fill it out a bit more.  I love the Celtic style pewter pin I bought for it.  

I also have sock #1 finished and have a good start on sock #2.  I have decided I just love hand-knit socks, even if I have to hand-wash them.  I have also learned it is very difficult to take  a decent photo of a sock on one's own foot.  But there you have it.  These socks are handspun Merino wool.  Yes, I bought some dyed roving from a fellow guild member a year or so ago because l loved the colors.  There is no law that requires me to only work with my own fiber!

 

August Already? Really?

 

I know, it doesn't look much like the farm does it?  Well we took the week off last week and traveled to Reno, NV and on to Lake Tahoe to spend some time with our two sons, Ian and Sam/Zac/Satchmo (who I will call Zac for the purpose of this post).  Tahoe is an incredibly beautiful area.  We had been there once before in 1999 with some friends on a ski trip, but never before in summer.  It has so much to offer. 

We got a 2 bedroom 2 bath condo through my mom's time share exchange.  Incredibly, it was within a mile of our sons' condo, up at the top of "the grade", which is a road which goes from the floor of the valley on the desert side up and over a mountain and down to the lake on the lake side.  Our view was of the desert valley.  Here is was at sunrise.

 My mom went with us as she had not seen the boys in quite some time.  Ian and Zac had a   busy week planned for us and Mom kept up quite well, even on some pretty severe up hill hikes!  I think the one back up from Skunk Harbor on Friday was the toughest, though.

We drove around the lake one day, we went wine tasting in El Dorado, hiked Emerald Cove to Vikingsholm, took a paddle wheel lake cruise, went swimming in Skunk Harbor and even got some culture at the Tahoe Shakespeare Festival.  Too cool sitting in a lakeside amphitheater with the sun going down sipping wine and enjoying the Bard.

  At right are Sam, Mom, Ian  & Zac on the trail to Vikingsholm, a beautiful Nordic styled estate on the shores of Emerald Bay.

 We also had the opportunity to see our sons' band, Those That Kill, perform live at RoJo's, a bar in South Lake Tahoe.  They got together with Ryan Evans, who is on the right in the photo, when they worked together at Evergreen Lodge in Yosemite and the band's name is actually the English translation of the Indian word "Yosemite".  The drummer is a guy they met once they all moved to Tahoe together last year.  We had seen them play at Evergreen, but had never seen them with a drummer.  They definitely have a good time!

I think Sam's favorite part of the trip was visiting the Mt Tallac brewery in South Lake Tahoe.  They sell pints of beer fresh from the tap between 5 and 7 pm and it is enjoyed on their loading dock in plastic chairs and on benches made of old snowboards.  They have cornhole games set up and it is kind of like a neighborhood party where everyone knows everyone else.  Not a tourist attraction.  I think you have to know someone local who knows about it.  I wish I had taken a photo, but I did not.  We visited twice. 

And like all good times, our trip eventually came to an end and we returned home very early Sunday morning (flight delays and a 2 hour drive from the airport) and now it is time to play catch-up!  The animals all seemed to do fine, despite the heat.  We did lose 2 chickens at some point while we were gone, which I was afraid would likely happen.  Our farm sitter was letting them out of the chicken enclosure and then shutting it again at night, but not shutting the door to the coop.  If he had shut the door to the coop, he would have needed to be there too early in the morning to let them out, so we went with the twice a day plan.  

I spent a good bit of time Monday on the tractor, doing weed-control.  

I am now working on the spin-off for the alpaca show in the mid-west in October.  I can't remember the name of the show off-hand, but I hope to finish it by the end of this month.  I also have to start dyeing roving and yarn for the Wool Gathering in Yellow Springs in September.  My friend Tari and I have a vendor's booth under the name of Ridge & Hollow Fiber Folk.  Here is a link to the show's site:  http://my.voyager.net/~nfisher/

This will be my first big fiber show and I need to make sure I have plenty of product to last the weekend!  

I took my sock project along on our trip and did not have a lot of time to knit.  But I did manage to get one sock done.  Now to do the other.  I forgot to photograph it, though.  Maybe next week.

This weekend our spinning guild is having another "Dye Day" which I hope to attend.  Here is a link to the post about last year's Dye Day:  http://straightforkfarm.blogspot.com/2010/08/dye-day-hay-2nd-cutting-more.html

 And that reminds me, we will also be doing hay in the next week or so!                                                 

The Heat Wave Continues

2 Goofy Dogs!

Yes, this is the usual sight that greets me each time I go to the barn.  Buck, the Pyr, is the one on the left and Star is on the right.    They have been very good about learning that the barn door is their boundary, although they will venture out, given the chance to do so.  Like Monday, when I was moving hay to the girls barn from the horse barn and decided to take a second load over.  I neglected to close the door after unloading and heading back across the creek for load #2 (the alpacas are behind an inner gate and cannot get out) and suddenly while loading the truck at the horse barn, I saw a large white dog come around the corner!  I chased them both back across the dry creekbed and into the barn and put the gate across.  They really did not give me any problem, just went back where they know they belong.  I worry that Buck will eventually get the desire to roam, as many Pyrs do, and start excavating routes of egress from the pastures.  He is 8 months old now and it is time for him to visit the vet to be neutered.  That might curb that urge a little, but it is in the Pyr's DNA to cover large areas, so I will have to be watchful of him as he is now hitting what I consider to be dog adolescence.  Star is now a year old and I am not too worried about her going off on her own.  She does not seem to have a lot of the independence that I so love in the Pyrs.  She is a much more timid dog and really not what I was expecting.  If she is representative of the Maremma breed, I would not be quick to advise anyone to get one.  I have been disappointed in her.  But, she does bark a lot and I think she is a good deterrent to local wildlife.  In fact, she barks so much that I don't believe I have ever heard Buck bark.  

Last week I mentioned that Sam was off tractor shopping.  Well, he finally found what he was looking for.  It will arrive here this evening.  Lee, one of the neighbors I have mentioned before, is picking it up for us.  He lives closer to it than we do, but also has a farm right next to ours adjoining his grandfather's place.  Here is the big green machine.

 This one is much larger than our Kubota.  It is a Deutz Allis diesel and has all the features Sam wanted.  He tells me he doesn't think there is room for Rowdy to sit though, while I am operating the tractor.  That was the feature I wanted!  While this tractor is green, it is a different shade of green than those really expensive tractors, so didn't cost nearly as much.

I neglected to mention in last week's post the loss of a 4 -footed family member who had been with us a long time.  Our only house cat, Lucky, died at the age of almost 16.  She was diagnosed 15 months ago with chronic renal failure resulting in weight loss, vomiting, constant drinking and peeing and just general lethargy.  She stopped grooming herself and her coat became matted.  The vomiting got much worse in the last few weeks, despite the special diet she was on and I decided it was time to make the dreaded decision and I took her in to the vet.  She was the last of the animals who came with us from Indiana, except Apache, my horse who is also a senior, and so I buried her close to our 2 dogs, Shane and Max, who were with us when we got Lucky.  I do not plan to have any cats in the house again.  I love my barn cats, though.

Lucky in her healthier days

 We still have 4 or 5 cats.  There is BamBam (my son named her for a hockey player), also known as the Mamacat because she once had a litter of kittens, who has been with us since the first summer we were here.  She is now 13.  She has always attached herself to one of the other farm animals.  For a while we had a pot-bellied pig and the Mamacat would actually stay in the little pig hut with the pig.  I remember once an alpaca breeder visiting the farm and asking as we went over to the barn what lived in the little pen with the hut in it.  I replied that we had a pig who lived in there and as I said that, the Mamacat came out of the little building.  I was sure my visitor thought I was crazy!

BamBam or Mamacat

Once the pig was gone, she spent a short time with Apache, our horse and then she fell in love with Cheetah, the gentle giant Great Pyrenees and stayed with him, even eating out of his bowl until he died last fall.  I think she was kind of lost then for a while, but soon I noticed that she had moved from the alpaca barn to our front porch, where Ginger spends a lot of time.  So now she has become a porch cat and hangs around on the deck and porch and eats out of Ginger's food dish.  By the way, 13 is a very long life for a barn cat. 

We have another senior barn cat, a tabby named Stubby.  That became his name a few years ago when something grabbed him by the tail and I had to take him in and have part of his tail removed.  He was given to me at least 6 years ago by the friends I got Cheetah from and he was at least 5 years old then.  He came from the home of a person who died who had had 7 cats.  I took in 2, but we lost 1 after only a year or so.  Stubby is still with us.  

Then I have 2 big healthy, handsome young guys who came to live here when we just got overrun with cats at the shelter last summer.  There is Grayson, a solid gray, who knows he can outrun Rowdy any time he wants to and so lives somewhat dangerously.  Rowdy WILL chase a running cat.  He pays no attention to the Mamacat.  She doesn't run from him.   And there is Chuck, a black and white tuxedoed boy, who is not so good at outrunning Rowdy, so he stays a little closer to the safety of the horse barn.

Chuck

  I also found a starving stray female cart last spring, Cami, who I know lives in the barn loft part of the time, but I rarely see her.  She is friendly and likes to be petted, but very independent.  I was able to trap her a month or so ago and get her in and get her spayed so we will not be having kittens.  I believe very strongly in spaying and neutering.  There are way too many unwanted cats and dogs out there.  Did you know that 1 pair of cats can turn into 420,000 cats in a 7 year period if none of them are spayed/neutered?  That is a staggering number of cats!!


We had a cookout at the pond Saturday and invited the neighbors to it.  Wouldn't you know it actually rained?!  But we still had fun.  Food, drink and someone had a deck of cards.  

This week I decided I needed to get some travel knitting together, so I got out a sock I had knitted a few months back which I wanted to re-do on smaller needles since it came out too loose.  It is actually wool, not alpaca, but it is handspun.  I bought the roving from another guild member because I loved the colors.  I really, really like hand knit socks in the winter, so I make a couple pair a year.  So, I am actually unraveling one sock as I knit it again on smaller needles.  

The new sock is on the left and the original sock is on the right.  

Otherwise, I have not done much fibery stuff except weaving 2 rugs.  I have enough warp on the loom to weave one more.  It has been way too hot to be outside skirting fleeces, which I really need to get to.  I also got 58 spin-off entries in the mail last week that I need to work on in August.  That is something I can sit in air-conditioning and do!

hot, Hot, HOT!! Well, it IS July.

A smart dog hangs out at the pond in 90 degree heat!

The whole eastern half of the US is experiencing an incredible heat wave this week.  Our high temps are forecast in the mid-90's and our lows only in the upper 70's.  We can usually count on it cooling down at night here in our "hollow", but with this heat, we are running the A/C 24 hours a day.  The fans are on "high" in the alpaca barn and the 'pacas do not move around any more than necessary these days. This of course means more work for me since the barn becomes a giant toilet and I have to try to keep it clean.

 

On Saturday, Sam and I installed the "John Pacey Memorial Float" back in the pond.  John procured this trampoline float for us last year and then he died in a tragic accident this past December.  The float will always make me think of him.  Anyway, it had a leak in it last year and we had to disassemble it, which involved removing the heavy nylon cover from the inner tube, inflating the tube to find the leak and patching it.  That job done, into the pond it went.  So, we now have the diving board, zip-line and trampoline.  We would be really cool grandparents, wouldn't we?

It's kind of hard to see the zip line but it goes from the left hand corner of the pavilion across the pond between the dock and the float.  We really need to do something with the hill between the pavilion and pond.  It's bare of topsoil, so no weeds are even growing, but it is dry and rocky.  No good for bare feet.

 

 The chickens continue to be a source of amusement.  They have dug chicken sized holes at the base of a tree next to the creek and they spend lots of time in those holes rolling around and kicking the loose dirt up over their backs and under their wings.  I have to admit, I really did not know they would be so interesting.  Even Rowdy finds them worth watching.  Maybe he is dreaming of chicken dinners, I don't know.

 They are now producing 5 to 6 eggs a day, which is really plenty.  I am sure we will get to the point where we are getting closer to a dozen a day. 

As this photo shows, one whole side of the barn loft is empty.  In another month, it will be time to fill the lofts with second cutting.  Our neighbors purchased a new hay mower, so today Sam is out looking at tractors as the new mower really requires a tractor with more horsepower than either of us have right now.  Sam tried to give the guys half the cost of the mower and the hay elevator (which is the thing you see across the 2 lofts in the photo), but they agreed to just let us buy the tractor.  Sam has been wanting a bigger tractor anyway.  He's looking for one that is "just right", though.  We do not need the type of tractor they have for working 1000 acre places.  Maybe next week I will have a photo of a new-to-us tractor.

As hot as it is I have spent some time just sitting and knitting or spinning and yesterday I got a whole rug woven here at the office.  Will likely do another today.  I can answer phone calls and weave at the same time.  Last week I went to my spinning guild and I spun up a couple ounces of the Blue-face Leicester/alpaca roving I had processed.  So today when I came into the office I took a few minutes to ply it into a 2-ply yarn.  Most times, I have 2 bobbins of yarn and I ply the 2 together, but since this is a small amount and is on one bobbin, I wind it into a center pull ball, which means one end is coming from the center of the ball, and I ply from each end.  So I am using the end from the center and the other end which is on the outside of the ball.  

 I tried to get a good photo, but the yarn is in my right hand, so I have to operate the camera completely with my left hand and of course cannot use the view-finder at this angle.   Very awkward! I put my thumb through the center of the ball of yarn to keep it from collapsing (the ball not my thumb) and thereby hopefully preventing a huge yarn tangle.


 And here is the bobbin with the plied yarn

 
 Since I will be selling this roving at the Wool Gathering in September, it is nice to have a sample of the roving either spun or knitted up for people to feel.  Fiber festivals are very tactile. 

Speaking of that, I also sent off almost 10 pounds more of prime white alpaca to be made into roving.  August is going to be a dyeing month!

I have almost completed my bulky lace vest.  I think maybe I said that last week as well.  I am going to finish off the armholes a little more and then it will be done.  I will post a photo of me wearing it when it is all done, but here it is for now.

 

Summer Fun on the Farm

Star, Buck & Rowdy

Don't they look like they are in prison?  I left Rowdy shut in the barn with the big dogs while I went to fetch the camera from the house.   He is not usually left in the barn without human supervision.  You will see why soon.

Summer is in full swing.  We continue to have some rain, though it is now coming in the form of somewhat severe storms which move through quickly in late afternoon and have the nice effect of cooling things off, but as we experienced this past Monday, they can also turn off the power.  For 44 hours.  Fortunately we have a whole house generator which runs off the natural gas from our wells and it kicks on automatically when the power has been out for more than 30 seconds or so.  We don't have the whole house on it, but it runs most things, like the refrigerator, chest freezer, water pump, etc.  Our a/c and furnace are not on it, however.  I think we got the generator before we added on the mud room and installed the furnace and a/c. If the power is out in winter, we use the woodstove and a gas heater in the dining room.  We don't use our a/c every day in summer anyway, and it would be a big drain on the generator.  But we can take showers and there is water for the animals and we don't run the risk of our food thawing.  I think our longest power outage here was 9 days and that was the week we moved into our house.  July 1998.  Our first purchase was a gasoline generator!

I got to try out the zip line!  It is great fun.  We need to tweak the pulley system a bit to get it to go faster, but other than that it works pretty well.  It goes from the corner of the pavilion to a tree on the far side of the pond...right across the center.  

The line pretty much stops about dead center of the pond, so you can't go too far.  The worst part is going from the dock, where you get out of the water, back up to the pavilion.  If you come to visit and want to zip-line, I recommend water shoes.  $7 at that mega store we all can't seem to live without......







                                                                                 

The rain has kept the pastures looking fairly nice, which of course means more mowing.  I am still having to feed hay to the girls since their fields are just not big enough for the number of animals on them.  Need to downsize!








I alluded to Rowdy's not being trusted in the barn without human supervision. I really don't think he would do anything except sit by the door and wait   *hope*  for me to return to let him out.  But I shot a series of photos of him attacking poor "little" Buck the other day and wanted to share a couple of the pics which show a typical herding dog move.  As you will see,  Rowdy has lost the size advantage to Buck, but he is still much more agile.  Poor Buck looks like he doesn't know what hit him.

Rowdy going for the leg

All you can see of Rowdy's eye in this photo is the white.

Leg chomp

Buck tries to avoid

Notice how the whole time this is happening, which was only a couple of seconds, Star just sat out of the way a watched.  

This is typical herding dog play behavior.  I have noticed that dogs which are not herding dogs generally do not  appreciate this type of play and it will sometimes result in a fight.  This is not aggression on the herding dog's part, it is his instinct.  Unless trained, he will even treat children this way if he has a high desire to herd.  It is similar to how a retriever wants to do little more than retrieve.  It is in their DNA.  This is why it is so important for people to do some research before getting a dog.  Or get a mixed breed which may have a little bit of this and a little bit of that mixed in.  And yes, Rowdy will do this to the alpacas if he gets a chance.  

 The chickens are doing well.  We are up to about 5 eggs a day now.  Still have 16 hens.  I did hear a commotion from the chickens yesterday afternoon (they are usually pretty quiet) and went out to find a strange dog in the fenced area!  In 13 years, I have seen very few unknown dogs in our yard and so this was a surprise.  The dog has a pit-bull type look to it and did not look hungry.  I hope it was not dumped off and I also hope I do not see it again.  I had to chase it off 3 times.  It did not get any of the chickens, but it scared them all off into the thick underbrush and up the hill.  But once it was gone, they all eventually came back.  


I have slowly been working on warping my loom for more rugs.  Almost finished with my bulky lace vest I am knitting, so should have a photo of that for next week.  I have spinning guild tonight, so I will actually get to do some spinning.  I don't usually sit down in the evening until well after 9 pm these days, so unless I take some time during the day, I just don't get much spinning time (or knitting time) in.  And if I DO take time during the day, I feel guilty that I am not doing housework or something outside that needs to be done.  Have I ever mentioned that I hate housework?