Apple Jack Creek

So, what is this skinless sheepskin rug, anyway?

2009-07-01T21:30:00.007-07:00

I’ve mentioned the ‘skinless sheepskin rug’ project a few times, and now that it is complete, I can give you a full explanation - with pictures, even! Here is the finished product, on display at the Natural Fibres Competition at Fibre Week:
The objective was to make something that looked like a sheepskin rug without needing a tanner’s skills (or a dead sheep, for that matter). The secondary objective was to create something that could be entered in the Natural Fibres competition at Fibre Week, which meant all the materials had to be completely natural. I might have used a synthetic warp, for strength, but in keeping with the natural fibre theme, I used some cotton warp set fairly wide apart. The backing fabric used a double strand of thin wool rovings from Custom Woolen Mills, as I knew from past experience that those would felt into a nice solid fabric base after washing. Last but not least, fistfuls of raw fleece were pulled from the bags of wool that are currently blocking access to the rest of my fibre room. :)

The basic strategy is very straightforward: weave about an inch of plain weave with the thin wool, beating it well so it’ll make a solid base fabric. Then the fun begins: pull out locks of wool about as big around as your thumb from the pile of raw fleece, and wrap each lock around every third warp thread in such a way that they tuft up, much the same way thrums are made on mittens.

Choose locks of approximately equal size and look for ones that are fairly clean – dirt is okay as it’ll dissolve in the wash, but hay and straw will just felt in place, so it’s a good idea to pick those out as you go. When the row of fleece is finished, beat it down and continue with the plain weave for another inch, then repeat the tufting process, offset by one warp thread. The offset helps to distribute the locks more evenly across the surface of the fabric, it breaks up the columns you’d get otherwise.

The back of the fabric looks really interesting, you can see where each lock is looped around the warp threads.

When the whole thing is as long as it needs to be, the warp is cut, the ends knotted, and the whole thing gets thrown in the wash on warm/cold with a generous dose of laundry soap to clean the wool. It’s a long wash cycle, waiting to see if it turns out or becomes a solid felted lump of useless fibre … which is why I had done two test swatches first, just to be on the safe side. Front load washers do not give you the option to stop midcycle and peek! :)

The finished rug is not quite as dense as it was before washing, so it’s a good idea to err on the side of fleece overdose if you want a good thick mat when you’re finished. The completed piece would make a great floor rug for beside the bed (imagine sinking your cold toes into that first thing in the morning!), or a chair cover (I put it on the driver’s seat for the ride home from Olds, and wow, is it ever comfortable!), and would be ideal for a person suffering from bedsores or confined to a wheelchair (in fact, real and synthetic sheep skins are often used in those situations – washable real wool might be a welcome alternative for some).

Another use would be as a saddlepad for a rider who doesn’t use a close-contact saddle and has a bony horse: wool is the ideal material for a saddle blanket as it absorbs moisture and won’t chafe against the skin. This particular style would provide plenty of cushioning between saddle and horse, and reduce friction significantly: the wool locks will move against the horse’s body and the top of the blanket will move with the saddle.

I’m very pleased with the finished product, and have definite plans to make more. I’ve got a few horse people interested in serving as product testers, so I think I’d better get some more warp done up and get started on another one!

Reporting live from Olds Fibre Week!

2009-06-29T20:17:00.001-07:00

<beep ba beep ba beep beep beep>

This is Kermit the Frog, reporting live for Sesame Street News …

Actually, it’s me, reporting live from Olds Fibre Week!

I arrived today and got all set up in the parking lot (I do love having the motorhome, even if it drinks gasoline like water on a hot day, I still love it) and headed over to the registration desk. I lugged my skinless sheepskin rug, to enter it in the competition, and got stopped twice by people wanting to look at it on the way over. I got all registered and then wandered the merchant mall for awhile, where I tried needle felting for the first time (wow, is that ever easy! I can't believe I haven't tried that before!) and saw a lot of really pretty fibre (but of course with a room full of it at home, I'm not purchasing fibre right now!).

This evening was a llama spin-in - they brought llama fibre and had teams of people spin and create something. I was asked by a lady I'd never met to join a team, and so six of us (who’d never met before) joined creative forces to come up with something from raw fibre in two hours. I had taken my wheel over, thinking to spin while I watched, but as I'm not very good at spinning llama yet, I loaned my wheel to one of the other members and I coordinated the knitting. We knit up a little bag to hang on the wheel (to hold the gadgets you need). It was really fun, and I got to see how a lucet works (I very much want one of those now!) and I got to knit with slippery soft suri fibre spun in a wild loopy yarn.

Tomorrow morning is my class, and I have the evening to myself now - it's great, there is highspeed internet here and power, so I'm comfortable in my little space, with a full fridge, a laptop and a bunch of fibre to play with!

That’s it for tonight, folks, stay tuned for updates and further developments!

For two days, I will seem normal!

2009-06-28T19:32:00.001-07:00

I am heading to Olds College for Fibre Week tomorrow … well, not for the whole week, just for two days and one class, but still. Fibre Week!

For two days I will be surrounded by other fibre addicts, even people who make their living doing neat stuff with wool and other natural materials, and in that environment, my addiction to all things wooly will seem downright normal!

I am way more excited than I thought I’d be. The motorhome is packed up and ready to go (we did find out that the water heater tank ruptured over the winter, so I have no running water, but that’s not a show-stopper .. the toilet still works!), I completed the project I want to submit for the Natural Fibre competition, and my spinning wheel and knitting needles are packed up and ready for action.

I’ll head down on Monday, get registered and set up (motorhomes can park in the college parking lot, which is terrifically convenient and very cost-effective!). Next, I plan to get my skinless sheepskin rug entered for the competition and then check out the goings-on. Monday evening there is a llama spin-in that should be fun to watch:

You’ve heard of sheep to shawl competitions –this year’s Spin In presents the “llama to luxuries” contest. We will provide the fleeces –you bring your team and your creativity to make a small luxury item of your choice. Come join us for a relaxing (?) and fun evening. Everyone welcome!

Then on Tuesday, I’ll be taking this class:

WORKING WITH ENERGETIC SPUN SINGLES

Students will spin S and Z singles and knit swatches to explore twist mechanics. Students will understand and apply knowledge of how twist and a variety of knitting stitches can be utilized in future knitting adventures. Participants should be able to spin consistent S and Z threads, plus have advanced beginner/intermediate knitting abilities.

The translation, for the non-spinners in the crowd, is that I’ll be learning how to work with yarn that is just one thread (think about most yarn you’ve seen, it is two or three threads twisted together, right? the single threads are called, strangely enough, singles). It’s one of those things you never see in a book, so it’ll be wonderful to take a class and learn about it live and in person. I’ve never taken a spinning class before!

Tuesday night there is a silent auction and a fashion show, so I’ll stay over Tuesday night as well then head home Wednesday morning so I can drive in daylight and not be rushed or tired.

A full report on the fibre festival will be posted when I return!

Independence Days update

2009-06-22T19:40:00.001-07:00

Our ongoing documentation of ‘what we have done around here’ … with the focus on accomplishments, no matter how lengthy the to-do list may be!

The concept is courtesy of Sharon Astyk.

Planted: I can’t even remember when I last posted! The garden currently has: peas, beans, kamut wheat, lots and lots of onions, a bed of strawberries, several squash plants, and quite a few potatoes. Oh, and beets and a few carrots, and a lot of weeds. The big accomplishment this week was to get the mattock out and hack down the knee-high grass so that I could actually see what is growing out there! The herb bed is still … questionable, some of these are plants I haven’t grown before so I’m not sure what the baby ones look like. I’m waiting to weed until I can be sure what is what.

Harvested: The first three radishes of the season, and two onion leaves to use as green onions. Nothing else is quite ready yet – oh, but I did learn what nettles are, and where I can go harvest them! Ouch!

Preserved: A friend gave me a huge pile of rhubarb, and I’ve got the dehydrator full of little pieces, and the rest cooking up on the stove into sauce.

Waste Not: Rescued a bunch of ‘lesser cuts’ of lamb from the freezer, cut the meat off and ran it through the grinder, cooked and seasoned it – this will become lambacos this week (that’s tacos made with lamb meat, for the uninitiated). Fed the less than perfect rhubarb trimmings to the chickens.

Want Not (Preparations): FINALLY got the fence around Pasture A in place, and the sheep moved to fresh grass. Pasture B is next, C is done, and the ‘back section’ has been fenced for the cows, who are now off in the trees being Jungle Cows and happily eating the underbrush.

Community Food Systems: Have regular customers purchasing eggs from me, from four to six dozen a week, so we need some more laying hens before winter, I think! Also have customers lined up for much of the lamb we’ll produce this year, which is encouraging. Found someone willing to house our dairy Dexter cow for a couple of months with a mini-Hereford for breeding, which will mean another beef-on-the-hoof here if all goes well.

Eat the Food: Made a baked apple dessert from some apples that were getting weary on the counter, tried a chicken casserole recipe from More with Less (that’s in the freezer to be tried later this week), made several batches of iced tea in the sunshine (a low cost, low sugar, high satisfaction beverage if ever there was one!).

In the garden

2009-06-21T19:20:00.001-07:00

Once again, I spent Sunday afternoon in the garden. A bird came to sing to me from the fencepost several times, so I did indeed have “the song of the birds for mirth”.

I didn’t get all of the mulch down when the garden was first set up, nor did I get all of the walkways and beds delineated … and it’s been several weeks since I spent any time in the garden. Suddenly, the grass is knee high in several places!

Today’s job was to get the grass under control. I attacked it with my mattock, and was amazed at how well the tool worked for the job. (I’ve never had a garden big enough to use a hoe or anything larger than hand tools … it’s hard work, but boy, does it go fast!) Once the forest of grass was cleared away, I could see several pea plants working their way upwards, a few squash plants with big broad leaves soaking up the sunshine, and lots of potato plants.

As I was working the soil near the potatoes, I saw that the partially-composted ‘stuff’ that was put down early in the spring is well on it’s way to becoming humus. I dug the pathway wider and moved the rich brown compost onto one of the raised beds, where I will plant .. umm … something. I’m not sure what yet. :)

The onions are tall and sturdy, the lettuce and spinach are suddenly leafing out, and the beans are starting to look like actual plants. The wheat is knee-high, and I’m really not sure if the green leafy thing I saw is the Jerusalem Artichoke or something else. I can’t remember where I planted it, and I’ve never grown it before, so I’m not sure what it is supposed to look like. :)

The first radishes were harvested today and served to The Reluctant Farmer for a Father’s Day treat (he likes radishes), and the dinner potatoes were seasoned with some green onion from the garden. Harvest time is nearly here!

Next, I need to plant some more radishes, weed the other raised bed, get some tomato plants out there, and put the peppers in. Maybe next weekend I’ll head down to the greenhouse and pick up some seedlings to replace the starts I had that didn’t make it.

I was thinking today that working in the garden feels like a reward – when the other urgent jobs, like fence repairs, are done, then it’s time to go play in the dirt. Ahh. I love my garden.

Fences for sheep

2009-06-21T07:08:00.001-07:00

It has taken us a very long time – four summers, basically – to get the hang of making sheep-resistant fences. I dare not say sheep-proof fences, as I doubt there actually is any such thing, but we have learned quite a lot of things through trial and error and the new fences seem to be holding up reasonably well.

I think all the instructions for building fences must’ve been written by people in Saskatchewan, as nothing I’ve read tells you how to deal with the dips and swells in the land. The slightest dip or bump leaves a gap which a determined sheep or guardian dog will manage to wriggle under, loosening the fence, and leaving a larger gap for the next escape attempt.

So, here’s what we have learned so far:

First of all, you need wooden posts. You need to use *all* wooden posts. T-posts are great inventions, but they just don’t work well enough to qualify as permanent design elements in a sheep-fence.

Corners need to be braced (you will find instructions for that in any set of fence directions). We make H-shaped braces: basically, two fence posts pounded in about 2 feet apart with a brace screwed between the two about a foot down from the top of the posts. If you’re already making a braced corner, you can add a couple of extra cross bars and build a stile, for the humans to climb over. Stiles are an especially good idea on longer runs of fence where you’re not going to want to go all the way around to the gate every single time. We also build some stiles without wire across them, specifically so that the dogs (who will jump up and over and through a small square) can get from one place to another. The sheep don’t seem to go through those little square openings – although we do use them only on cross-fences, not perimeter fences, just to be on the safe side.

You also need page wire, or woven wire (four feet is good, five is better) and you need barbed wire. Oh, and you need a post pounder, a lot of staples, a hammer, a fence tightener, and something mobile and heavy to pull against (we use the bobcat, or a truck, but a quad would work well if you had one). If you haven’t got a ratcheting fence tightener you can use a comealong, but the fence tightener is really useful when it comes to the barbed wire, so it’s worth getting one.

Now that you have all the gear, how do you build the fence? Well, start off by putting in your posts. Wooden posts only, about 8-10 feet apart, always putting a post in the bottom of a dip and at the top of any rise or hillock that is in the path of your fence. You can get a straighter fence line if you put the corner posts in first then run a string from one to the other, using the string as a guide for where to place the posts. Eyeballing the alignment is rarely successful, trust me on this.

Posts can be very hard to pound into the ground: we pound in a sharp iron stake first (t-posts work for this too), then wiggle it to open the hole a bit, pull the stake out, and fill the hole with water. The wooden posts is then pounded into the dampened pre-started hole, and goes in much more smoothly than it does into unprepared ground.

Get your H braces built at each corner and at the side of each gate opening. It’s really hard to have too many gates, and you need more stiles than you think you do. If you use a bobcat or tractor or quad, make sure each pasture has a gate wide enough to get through with your equipment, and consider building some smaller ‘people gates’ for the places you’ll routinely pass. People-sized gates are easier to open and close, and much easier to get through without letting all the sheep out.

Once the posts are in place, you can pull the page wire across. Unroll the fencing all along the row of posts (it’s easiest to unroll it on the ground then stand it up afterwards) and staple it to the far end of one of the H corners. Position your bobcat/truck/quad at the other end of the fence line (or as far down as you can reasonably go in one pass) so that you are able to hook your fence tightener onto some part of the vehicle and have it be in line with the fence. The idea is to pull the fencing against the immoveable vehicle, rather than against the corner fence posts – we’ve learned through much unhappy experience that even well-braced corners just can’t sustain the pressure of having the fence ratcheted tight against them, although for some reason (which I probably learned in high school physics and have subsequently forgotten), the posts can withstand the pressure of a tightened fence being stapled to them.

Now, tightening the fence involves a bit of a trick: take a long post (a t-post will work, or a piece of heavy pipe) and thread it through the holes in the woven wire, in and out, top to bottom. Hook one end of your fence tightener to this post, the other end to your vehicle, and ratchet the fence until it is nice and tight. This vertical post ensures that you get tension on the whole fence, rather than just on the one wire that you grabbed with the fence tightener.

Once the wire is pulled tight, go back along the fence and staple the wire to the posts. You don’t need to do every single wire on every single post, but the sheep will pressure the fence most at the bottom, so staple the bottom several wires for sure, and then about every other wire the rest of the way up.

Technically, according to the books, anyway, if you pull the wire tight enough, the sheep won’t be able to push their way under it. I suppose on flat ground with wooden posts no more than 5 feet apart this might work, but we’ve not been able to accomplish this feat ourselves. What we do is put the bottom of the page wire about an inch or two off the ground. We’ll deal with that gap shortly.

Staple your fence to the posts all the way along, and then take off the tension (be careful when you release the fence tightener, sometimes things spring back and you can get whacked in the head). Move your vehicle down the line, unroll some more fence, and keep going.

Once the page wire is in place, you need to put the barbed wire on the bottom. This is the key to a sheep-resistant fence. The barbed wire is a lot easier to tighten, and it will fill in that gap between the bottom of the page wire and the ground. Wrap a strand of barbed wire around your corner post, staple it in place, and then stretch the wire along the line of fence posts. This time you can use the last post as a brace for your fence tightener – you are pulling right against the base of the post, so it will not lean over from the strain. Pull the wire tight, staple it in place, then cut, wrap, and staple the end in place. Now go along the fence line and look for any spots where the page wire seems to wiggle at the bottom. In those spots, take a short piece of wire and tie the page wire to the barbed wire: the taut barbed wire lends it's stability to the page wire, and attaching the two together leaves the sheep less wiggle room.

With the wire all in place, all that remains are gates. Gates you go through every day need to be hinged people-sized gates, but gates that keep one pasture separated from the next can be tied in place. We are now using hog panels cut to size for a lot of our gates: they are sturdy, easy to cut with bolt cutters, and can be ‘hinged’ with rope. We had built a lot of wooden panels to use for gates, but the hog panels are lighter, much faster to build, and tidier-looking. Getting a pile of them delivered along with the fence posts was a good idea.

If you will be going in and out of a particular spot during the winter, keep in mind that you’ll need snow clearance. A rope-hinged gate can float upwards as the snow piles up, whereas a gate with proper hinges has a fixed height and must be shoveled out all winter.

We are still working on infrastructure improvements, and redoing the fences is one of the biggest tasks. Taking loose fences down just so you can put them back up again later in the day is a lot of work, as is chasing escaped sheep! If you can get your fences right the first time, you’ll be glad of it.

A lot of people use electric fencing when dealing with sheep, and have had good success. With our small size, though, it’s not quite cost effective, and there are technical issues to be dealt with as well so for us, the payoff just isn’t there. It’s worth considering though, especially if you have a lot of determined escapees or if you already use electric fencing for other livestock.

Of course, now that I’ve written this, the sheep are probably all going to be out wandering the neighbourhood, just to put me in my place. I’d better go check. :)

Chickens and food security

2009-06-16T19:56:00.003-07:00

I just finished listening to a new audio book - One Second After, a story about what could happen if the United States was hit by an electro magnetic pulse weapon (a nuclear strike designed to knock out sensitive electronics). Communication goes out, vehicles that have electronic starters and components stop working, the power grid goes down. Fixing it takes months or years, not days.

Suddenly, people are not able to just go to the store to get what they need.

The book is a really interesting look at what could happen in a prolonged outage of 'normal services' - there are interesting characters and they find themselves in a difficult situation. The story has a fairly heavy focus on weaponry, but then, it is an American story after all, so that's understandable.

Still, one thing I noticed was that in this story, nobody had any chickens.

Chickens have to be one of the easiest routes to food security I can think of. If a household had say, one or two hens per person, and a rooster, that'd be a guaranteed supply of protein no matter how the rest of the world might go kablooie. Our chickens fend for themselves quite nicely most of the summer, eating bugs and weeds and such, and a little bit of grain or food scraps thrown their way rounds things out for them. A broody hen will give you chicks, some of which are bound to be roosters and therefore stew meat. With a very small investment of feed, you can ensure you've got eggs all year. If grain isn't available, well, chickens are omnivores - they'll eat mice (it's disgusting to watch, I admit), bits of dry bread, the crumbs from your dinner plate, and weeds you can gather in summer and hang to dry for a winter treat.

More and more cities are allowing urban chickens - no roosters, but a few hens can really make a big contribution to your household and with very little effort on your part.

Do you have a chicken in your yard? :)

The compost is steaming!

2009-06-08T19:06:00.003-07:00

Yes, you read that correctly.

Last evening, it was pretty chilly outside (around 5 degrees C) and I looked out to see steam coming off the compost heap. I put on my shoes and went outside to hold my hand over the steaming spot, and sure enough, it was very warm!

This is great news - the compost pile is cooking nicely! That means we'll have good quality dirt from our barnyard waste. Way cheaper than getting it in big bales from Canadian Tire, and obviously the mix is richer this year than last - I think the addition of the cow manure has optimized the mix.

We've also started feeding the chickens on the pile - a scoop of grain is scattered along the top of the pile, and they scratch through it adding their own manure while helping to turn the top layer of the pile. And, they get to keep their feet warm while they are doing it!

At last, Cherub’s lamb!

2009-06-05T18:41:00.001-07:00

Cherub was expected to lamb back in February, based on our observations of activity in the pasture last fall. Apparently, though, the activity we witnessed wasn’t as productive as one might’ve hoped and Cherub needed to let the ram have a few test runs before finally settling into pregnancy. February passed with no lambs … then March … then April and May. Cherub was clearly pregnant … but where were the lambs?

My dad always looks at the presents under the tree on Christmas day and says “Oh, they are too pretty to open! We should just put them away until next year.” (This elicits the predictable cries of protest from the rest of the family, but it makes me laugh every time!) Anyway, The Boy started saying that Cherub had obviously decided to just save her lambs for next year … either that or she was planning to deliver a market lamb, ready for the butcher from the get-go!

In the end, Cherub finally had enough of pregnancy, and a single ewe lamb was standing all alone out in the pasture when The Boy went out to top up the hay feeder the other night. Cherub wasn’t particularly interested in her offspring – the sight of a pitchfork full of hay was way more interesting than a bleating soggy newborn.

This is the first lamb we’ve had born with an orange fleece: she wasn’t actually orange, just stained orange from the birthing fluids. I suspect that is a sign of meconium staining, similar to what happens in humans, an indication of some stress just before birth, although I’m not quite sure and the quick research I’ve done hasn’t told me much. Regardless, we got the little girl dried off with a towel and convinced her mama to go into the barn by offering her alfalfa pellets (food is a very reliable bribe for Cherub!).

In the barn, Cherub still seemed to be in some pain, even two hours after lambing and passing the afterbirth, which is unusual … as is having a single in the second year, we were really expecting twins. We kept a close watch on them both: Cherub wasn’t really thrilled about letting the baby nurse, and we weren’t positive that there wasn’t a dead twin inside, but after another couple of hours went by the bleeding stopped and Cherub was letting the lamb nurse, and being her usual self.

We are keeping them in the barn for a bit longer than usual, as I’m not quite convinced that Cherub won’t abandon her baby nor am I completely sure that she has recovered entirely … I’ve read of other shepherds finding out several days later that a dead twin wasn’t delivered. That’s a situation I really don’t want to find myself in, but at least with her in the barn, if anything is wrong, we have a decent chance of noticing and of getting it dealt with properly.

I think we might need to name this little one Endurance – she was very persistent and was not at all put off by her mother’s kicking and fussing. She’d struggle up to her feet, stagger to her mama, and butt her nose against fleece, legs, sides, and udder until she found what she was after, and a kick or a shove from Cherub did nothing more than convince the lamb to try again. What a trooper.

Oh, she’s clearly Jack’s baby too – she has that adorable little Southdown grin, and the really long tail. We’ll dock that in the next few days (we don’t dock medium or short tails, but this one’s pretty much guaranteed to get mucky enough to be a risk for fly strike), and see how she does.

One more lamb, yay!

Potatoes!

2009-06-05T18:24:00.001-07:00

The potatoes are coming up!

This is very exciting because, well, growing stuff is always exciting, but you should realize that the new green plants are not from proper seed potatoes, nor are they in proper soil. So it’s even more exciting than usual.

I always have some potatoes in the bin that start growing eyes before I get around to using them. I’ve read that you’re not supposed to use store potatoes for planting because they’ve been treated with sprout inhibitors, but as I’ve rarely had aging potatoes refuse to put out eyes, maybe Canadian potato companies don’t use inhibitors. Maybe it’s a guerilla potato marketing tactic! You know, if we let the potatoes sprout, maybe folks will plant some of their own! The growing season here is short enough, we don’t have to worry about losing market share. A potato in every garden, that’s the way to increase our popularity! Spread the joy of potatoes!

Anyway, if it’s got eyes growing out of it, it’s a candidate for the garden in my opinion, even if it isn’t a Canadian Potato Growers conspiracy.

Now, about the soil. The edges of the garden are piled deep with not-really-composted waste hay, mostly. All the really loose and still-identifiable bits from the compost pile got heaped around the edge of the garden: it’ll break down eventually, and it might as well break down in the spot it’s intended to stay in once it turns into proper compost. Then, since it wasn’t gonna cost me anything if the experiment didn’t work, I stuck some sprouted potatoes into the piles of not-really-soil-but-definitely-organic-waste, sprayed some water in the general vicinity when I remembered, and pretty much just hoped for the best.

We’ve had a bit of rain over the last few days (finally!) and during a break in the showers The Reluctant Farmer and I took a meander around the garden. “What are these?” he asked, “Potatoes?” Yup! Potato plants, coming up along the edge of the garden, growing right through the yellowed stems of straw and hay!

I counted thirteen plants showing their leaves, which is an encouraging start. There are probably a few more to come up yet, and the moisture will definitely help. I also planted another fifteen or so in a much-closer-to-actual-soil row in the centre of the garden about a week ago, so with luck, we will see their lovely green heads soon as well.

Ah, fresh potatoes from the garden … I can’t wait!

Ah, there is an explanation!

2009-06-04T20:20:00.003-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

Daily humour from The Reluctant Farmer

2009-06-04T20:18:00.001-07:00

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

This was The Reluctant Farmer's suggestion:

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

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

4-H Achievement Day

2009-06-01T18:31:00.002-07:00

Today was the annual 4-H Achievement Day, but it was different than the previous years as we had no animals to go with us. All our sheep have been exposed to orf (contagious ecthymia, basically, cold sores on sheep) and pink eye (same as in humans) and although both are fairly mild illnesses, they are not ones you want to share with other flocks, so our critters are home under quarrantine.

The Boy, however, went along to help, and was in the show ring leading lambs for other kids who had mama sheep with babies, and one of the other members loaned him a sheep to use for the showmanship classes. He did an excellent job in showmanship - one of the best performances I've seen him give! - and took second in the two classes he competed in.

We are home now and enjoying the late sunshine - it's almost solstice, and it is very nice to have such warm sunlight so late in the day.

TRF is an EMR!

2009-05-25T19:22:00.002-07:00

The Reluctant Farmer just got the results back ...

He passed his Emergency Medical Responder certification exams!

This is a huge deal: he studied like mad for a month prior to a two week long crash course, then studied hard for another month and then took his written and practical exams.

He was told right away that he'd passed the practical exam, but the written part had to be sent away for marking and you get those results in the mail. He was sure he'd failed ... but the letter came today and he passed!

Yippee for The Reluctant Farmer! He worked hard to earn this.

At long last...

2009-05-22T18:58:00.002-07:00

Despreaux, our black mostly-Icelandic ewe, born here last year, finally delivered her lamb!

Despreaux is a small one-winter ewe, not quite fully grown but she did a great job and is doing really well as a mother. Her own mother, Natalie, is a fabulous mama, and this is a trait you can breed for so ... good to see that coming through! Her lamb was born this evening, and was up and looking for milk within about 30 minutes, with mama doing a great job of cleaning him up and taking care of him. For a first-timer, Despreaux did awesome.

We've been waiting a long time it seems for these last couple of lambs - Despreaux started showing signs about a week back, so we knew she was close, but we still have no idea if Cherub's ever gonna decide to deliver hers ... and I don't *think* the other two possibles are pregnant, but ... who knows?

Farming's definitely an adventure. :)

Independence Days

2009-05-18T18:22:00.002-07:00

Once again, Sharon is running the Independence Days Challenge: the idea is to give ourselves a list of things we can do that help to move us towards independece, and then to celebrate the accomplishments each week - no matter how small they might seem. By taking a moment to look at what we have done, it helps us see that we really are making progress - even when the to-do list doesn't seem to get any shorter.

I heartily recommend reading Sharon's post about the challenge - it'll explain better than I possibly could.

Jumping right in, then ... here's where I'm at:

Planted Yup, it's planting time! The frost-hardy things can go in already, so the potatoes are out (well mulched), peas, beets, carrots, turnips, wheat (kamut wheat, it's an experiment), onions, and some chives. Oh yes, lettuce and spinach are out there, too, and several herbs in a new bed. Inside are a bunch of seedlings waiting for the weather to turn, and those are given a dose of water every day and left to soak up indoor sunshine for a bit longer.

Harvested Eggs, like always. Not much else is ready for harvest just yet, unless you count mucking the barnyard as harvesting compost!

Preserved I discovered, when clearing out the pantry, that we somehow managed to acquire four ten-kilogram bags of flour. We do use a lot of flour, as we bake our own bread quite often, as well as enjoying pancakes and waffles on a regular basis, but wow, that's a lotta flour. I got one of the large food grade plastic buckets from downstairs and transferred the contents of two of the flour bags into the bucket for safe keeping. That's about all the preservation at this point in time. Oh, I did take some soup that was aging in the fridge and put it into the freezer - if nobody's in a soup mood now, might as well freeze it for when someone is in a soup mood later.

Reduced Waste We have the usual tasks: composting, feeding scraps to the critters, and using cloth bags for shopping. No 'special tasks' in this category this past while, though. Still, the day to day stuff counts too, and is worth noting. Oh, I did replace the zipper on The Boy's winter parka - it'll possibly fit him for one more winter, depending on the timing of growth spurts and such, but it's been a great jacket, so even if it doesn't fit him come winter, it can go into the bin downstairs and await the next person in line. :) I consider "fixing instead of discarding" as reducing waste - although this job could also have gone in the next category ...

Preparation and Storage We had a 'preparation and storage' payoff this week! Dinosaur Boy's feet have grown and his rubber boots weren't fitting anymore. A trip to the basement turned up a set just about his size, stored correctly in the box marked "boots" no less!

Build Community Food Systems We are small scale food producers with a few local clients, so we're a tiny part of the community food system. We purchased grass-fed beef from a farm nearby this week, and we are selling eggs weekly to customers in the city and in our rural community. Requests for lamb are coming in already ... which is great!

Eat the Food We ate some eggs, of course, as they are a staple food here. When my stomach was churning earlier in the week a cup of yarrow/mullein/calendula/rose hip/clover blossom tea (all gathered here, last summer) settled things quite nicely. We routinely cook out of the pantry - today The Reluctant Farmer dug out a can of tomatoes with nice spices to add to the pot of chili we made. The meat for the chili was ground from a rooster that was butchered yesterday - the nicest chunks of meat from said rooster were skewered between slices of onion and cooked on the barbecue at a neighbour's place yesterday night!

The Boy's latest art project

2009-05-18T18:10:00.002-07:00

The Boy is taking Art as one of his school options this year, and has done some neat projects so far.

The latest creation is a sculpture of a sheep:

Pretty cute, eh?

Planted: 125 trees

2009-05-10T18:38:00.005-07:00

On Saturday, my parents came and helped The Boy and I plant 125 trees. The Reluctant Farmer had commimtents already - it was Princess Girl's birthday party, and he couldn't miss that! Somehow, he doesn't seem all that disappointed that he didn't get to help with the treeplanting.

Anyway, the trees are your tax dollars at work: the Prairie Shelterbelt Tree Program is a Government of Canada Agroforestry project that provides seedlings free of charge (well, we paid $7 for shipping, but that's it) to individuals who hold more than 5 acres of rural land.

The seedlings provided are an incentive to producers adopting beneficial management practices and environmental stewardship. The aim of the Prairie Shelterbelt Program is to improve the performance and sustainability of the agricultural sector by helping to achieve the social, economic and environmental benefits of agroforestry.

Agroforestry systems such as shelterbelts conserve soil and water, manage snow and wind, improve air quality, protect yards and livestock, provide income for landowners, stabilize crops and enhance habitat for wildlife.

This year, we applied for and received 125 trees and shrubs to create a shelterbelt along the west border of our property. The winds howl through here from the west, and having a windbreak at that point should ease the force somewhat, as well as providing shade and shelter to the sheep in those pastures come summer. This is just the first step to properly protecting our little farm yard, but it's important to only order as many trees as you can plant and care for in a given year and one side seemed like more than enough work for starters. :)

The mix of trees we received is really quite interesting. Most of the shrubs have edible fruit, which provides food for birds and deer as well as fruit for our use. The tallest trees we received are green ash, which grow to 50 feet (15 metres). Of course, right now they are about twelve inches, but in time, they will provide a nice solid line of shelter along the west border. The ash trees are spaced out along the row with hedge plants in between: choke cherries (which make a lovely jelly), sea buckthorn (which is very thorny and has a strong tendency to sucker, so it should thicken up quickly), silver buffaloberry (also very thorny), and hawthorn (which has medicinal properties, apparently, it is used for high blood pressure and other cardiac ailments).

Many of the trees were planted with my sister's tree-planting shovel, a tool which walked with her through three summers of intensive silviculture work ... I'm still in absolute awe of my sister for taking this on as a summer job. She survived months of fascinating things like bears attacking her tent, daily mosquito and black fly barrages, trench foot (yes, the infections that soldiers got when their boots stayed wet too long), and nerve damage to her feet from slamming steel toed boots into shovels and dirt hundreds of times per day for months on end. She also managed to get a degree without any student loans. I am in awe.

So, of course, when planting my little Government of Canada seedlings, I used my sister's shovel. :) Dad used a spade, as there is only one Tree Planting Shovel, and some of the trees needed a fair bit of space so that their roots would not be squished.

Each tree was planted, watered, and mulched with almost-finished compost. They'll need to have water hauled out to them in the next day or two if we don't get a good soaking of rain (which we need very badly, and don't seem likely to receive), and we'll keep an eye on them and hope they grow up nice and strong.

Next year, we'll tackle the north fenceline!

The gift of The Four Season Harvest

2009-05-10T18:26:00.002-07:00

The ever-inspiring Theresa, of Pondering the Myraid Things, had a Blogiversary book give-away ... and I won a wonderful book on gardening!

It arrived in the mail on Friday, and I've been poring over it since then. The book is The Four Season Harvest, one that's been recommended to me several times, and now that I've perused it, I can see why! The author's approach to gardening makes so much sense ... don't bust your backside doing things the hard way, and implement what you do in such a way that you extend your harvest well beyond what you might expect.

I've been contemplating making a cold frame for awhile now, to get a jump start on spring ... but it hadn't occurred to me that it might be possible to grow cold-hardy things in a cold frame even in the winter! The author of the book is in Maine, where it's awfully cold in winter, but with a bit of a different flavour from what we get here ... still, it's worth a try. There's a bit of a warm microclimate in front of the house, where a straw bale base with a cover might just work.

I'm inspired!

Thanks, Theresa. :)

Compost ... before it's really compost

2009-05-03T18:46:00.002-07:00

The compost we create around here begins it's life in a rather inelegant fashion: it starts out as a big stinky pile of disgustingly mucky hay and straw.

We use deep bedding during the winter - sometimes on purpose (like in the barn and the shelter), and sometimes it just kinda happens (as hay piles up in the feeding areas and such). In the spring, once everything thaws out, we have to dig down through the layers of bedding and waste until we find the dirt beneath, moving the mixture of soaked hay, straw and manure into a big pile so that it can compost into something fit to put on the garden.

Today we used the bobcat to get most of the muck scraped up - the space in front of the barn is almost entirely cleared, and the sheep's winter feed pen is now a foot deeper along one side. There's still a bit more to move, but The Reluctant Farmer was otherwise occupied this afternoon: there was a grass fire in the next county over, and our district was called to help. He's so much better than I am with the bobcat, I'll let him get the remainder of the muck.

I did use the pitchfork to clear out the barn (it has to be done by hand), which was a bigger job than I anticipated. Still, it's better to take a couple of hours in the spring and get it all cleared out at once than try to chip away at frozen chunks of straw and manure every day during the winter.

The barn windows are open to air out the ammonia, and a fresh layer of straw is down in the two main stalls. We'll be keeping the doors closed to keep the chickens out now, as they liked to roost on the stall barriers and they made a mess of things. The two infrequently used stalls still have to be mucked out, but that can wait.

The compost pile is huge - one long windrow just north of the barn. It will sit there until fall, when we'll move it over to a spot nearer the garden to finish cooking. By the end of summer, the pile will be about half the size it is now, and in another year, it'll be ready to go on the garden. The pile gets "turned" when we move it from point A to point B, which helps the composting process along, and we can assess the progress and see how much longer it'll need. With our long winters, we often need a bit more than a year to get nicely finished compost, although this year the ingredients of our pile are a bit richer (thanks to the cows) so it may cook down a little quicker. It'll be interesting to see what it does.

The value of good shoes

2009-04-29T18:38:00.002-07:00

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

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

The truck would not start again.

The truck was smoking and sizzling.

I looked for my cell phone.

I could not locate my cell phone.

I sipped my coffee.

I looked for my cell phone again.

I sighed.

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

I walked.

I kept walking.

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

A truck with straw bales on the back drove by.

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

I waved.

The truck stopped.

I got a ride the rest of the way home.

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

Sheep, for elementary students

2009-04-19T08:09:00.004-07:00

Friday, The Boy and I volunteered to help the Alberta Lamb Producers show groups of elementary school students what the sheep industry is. There is a large exhibition with booths from the 'big producers' - canola, beef, dairy, poultry, pork - and room for some additional demonstrations as well - we were 'little critters', and the 'eat locally and think about your food miles' people from the Alberta Government had a really neat inflatable globe right in the center of everything and showed kids the difference between the honey you get from, say, Tofield, and the honey you get from Australia. Buying local makes sense!

My job was to convey to the kids a three point message: meet the farmer (so you can see who raises your food), explain what sheep need from us, and explain what products we receive from sheep.

Here's the blurb I ended up with (given about every fifteen minutes all day!):

Hello Grade Fives! (or whatever grade they are)
*You have to imagine me standing in a pen of about five sheep, emphatically gesturing and shouting to be heard over the general din.

I live on a farm about an hour west of Edmonton where we have about 15 sheep. The lady over there, who you'll go see in a bit, has over ONE HUNDRED sheep - and all their babies! And this boy lives with me 'cause he's my kid, and he actually does most of the chores at our house so he's a shepherd too - anybody who takes care of sheep is a shepherd!

I am here today to tell you that A HAPPY SHEEP IS A TASTY SHEEP! Did you know that? It's true! What do you think a sheep needs to be happy? (Lift up some hay) ... kids usually shout 'hay' or 'grass' ... yes, they need hay to eat, hay is just dried grass and they will eat it when there's no fresh stuff around, but in the summertime they like to go out and eat the fresh grass - so they are the lawnmowers! No mowing the grass, they do it for you! What else do sheep need? (point to the water bucket) "Water!" yup, they need fresh water and what else? Grain ... yes, some sheep eat grain, not all of them but some do. Some kids also mention pellets, and I usually pointed out the table where they could see the different kinds of feed sheep can eat. (Hold up the bucket of mineral). What's this? (usually nobody guesses) ... what do you put on your french-fries, besides ketchup? Salt! Right, sheep need salt and special minerals, it's like taking their vitamins every day.

Okay, now when it's time for the sheep to go to bed at night, do we need to tuck them into a nice warm bed and cover them up with a blanket? NO! Because sheep wear their blankets all the time! They have nice thick coats of wool (point to the unshorn sheep - or the plastic model of an unshorn sheep, late on Friday afternoon!). They can be outside all winter and be just fine wearing their nice big coats. But if we don't give them a haircut in the springtime, that'd be like sending you out to the playground in your snowsuit in July! Would you like that? No way, and neither do the sheep. They really need their wool taken off so they are not roasting all summer.

So we give the sheep food and water and haircuts, and in return they give us wool (The Boy would walk along the rail with a sample of wool, wearing fingerless gloves made from our wool) ... wool is a wonderfully useful renewable resource. Have you talked about renewable resources yet in class? (expanded on this for the older kids, sometimes mentioning that sheep can use marginal land that wouldn't be able to support grain or even cattle, so it's a good use of land that couldn't be used otherwise.) Some resources, like oil, aren't renewable - when it's gone, it's gone - but there's a new crop of wool every spring and the sheep are really happy for us to take it. Does it hurt to give them a haircut? Not really .. sometimes they get a little nick but it's just like a shaving cut and it doesn't sting for long (we had one return from the shearing demo with an obvious cut so had to mention this). What can we use wool for? We can make mittens (hold up my fingerless-gloved hands), or hats and scarves, blankets, sleeping bags, you can even insulate your house with wool, that's a good environmentally sound choice and much nicer than the itchy pink stuff! Over on the other side we have a place where you can see some more things you can do with wool. (The cowboy hat was a big hit, most had no idea felt was wool.) So using wool is a good choice, it's not wasteful - there's lots of it and there'll be lots more!

What else do sheep give us? A happy sheep is a TASTY sheep right? So they give us meat. Who eats lamb meat at their house? (We had at least one in every group!) It's pretty good, eh? Not a whole lot different than cow - if you eat cow, you'd probably also eat lamb. (And to the occasional objection "but they're cute!" my reply is "so are baby cows, but I bet you eat at McDonald's, eh?") (And to the very occasional comment about slaughter, I mentioned that it's actually against the law to hurt them at the end, it has to be quick and not hurt, and so we honour the sheep by taking good care of them through their lives, and then by being grateful for the life they share with us at the table.)

Now there are THREE products we can get from sheep - anyone know what the third one is? (some could guess - although occasionally I got 'lanolin' which was an awesome surprise) Milk! Yes, you can milk a sheep (at which point The Boy often said "yup, I milked that one!" which was true, his ewe lamb was in the pen and we had milked her when her baby was born and wouldn't nurse!). It's a bit harder than milking a cow (some had seen the cow and the milking demo so miming grabbing big cow teats with my whole fist vs using two fingers to milk out a little teeny sheep teat was quickly understood). There are dairy sheep, just like there are dairy cows, and they are bred for milking ... none of these are dairy sheep. There are some traditional cheeses made from sheep's milk, like feta (lots of nods from the teachers there).

So for our sheep to be happy we need to give them good food, clean water, and regular haircuts ... and in return, they give us wool and meat and milk. Now if you go over to the green carpet, we will show you some of the neat things we can do with wool! (over at the green carpet we had a master spinner working with a wheel, and a table with different fibre things out for them to look at ... plus a dressmaker's form with a wool jacket and shawl, and of course, the cowboy hat!)

It was a really long, exhausting day but it was fun. It was really encouraging to see how many people do eat lamb and enjoy it. For the hesitant ones, I usually tell them that it's about as different from beef as turkey is from chicken - you know it's not the same stuff, but it doesn't leap out at you.

And, although I didn't mention this explicitly to the little kids, there were some grownups who came by at the end of the day who knew the actual reason why a happy sheep is a tasty sheep: if you stress an animal, particularly close to slaughter time, the meat doesn't taste as good. Handling our animals gently and treating them kindly, right up until the last moment, is not only the right thing to do - it's the way to get the best product, too. Nice how that works out, eh?

Settling into spring

2009-04-19T08:06:00.003-07:00

There is only a patch of snow here and there, and the pasture is starting to turn green. The lambs are getting big, and the new calf (who has been christened Ewan MacDeepFreeze) is soft and shiny and, at the moment, sleeping contentedly in a heap of straw in the barn.

The raised beds have been dug and the encroaching grass burned away or pulled up, and the kamut wheat, the onions, and some peas have been planted.

Yes, it's definitely spring.

Sasha's calf arrived!

2009-04-15T20:28:00.003-07:00

Finally, after a long, long wait, Sasha's calf arrived!

The Boy went out to do afternoon chores and found Sasha pawing the ground and, in his words "looking like a zombie cow". By the time he got back outside with the camera, the calf was on his way to the world and bingo, it was all done! Fortunately The Reluctant Farmer had picked up the kids early and everyone (except me) was home for the big event and everything went smoothly. Sasha didn't want anyone too near her, and bellowed loud objections to everyone ... but by the time I got home, she'd calmed down quite a bit. And, maybe all the time I spent brushing her and talking to her while she was pregnant helped, too, you never know.

So with my shepherd's crook in case I needed self-protection (mother cows can be very irritable), we got Darth out of the way (he's the yearling who's headed for freezer camp this fall) and Sasha and her baby settled into the barn where it is relatively peaceful (I say relatively peaceful because Cherub the Incredible Escaping Sheep is still penned up in there, and she bellows periodically to ensure that we don't overlook her).

Poor Sasha had an absolutely huge udder: it was so full of milk it looked like it must hurt, and her teats were more than double their usual size, poor girl. The calf could barely get a grip on one of the teats to get a drink, but once in the barn, where Sasha felt calmer, he got a good long drink, with cream running down the side of his face and everything.

Sasha seemed much calmer once the calf settled to nurse, so I figured it was the perfect opportunity to ease her poor swollen udder and get a bit of that excess milk for our bottle lambs. I put a rope around Sasha's neck to keep her from turning around and bashing me with her horns in case she disagreed with my brilliant idea, and bravely climbed into the stall with my metal bucket. Sasha just put her head down and ate some hay, had a drink of water, and gave a half hearted swipe or two of her back hoof when I first gripped that swollen teat ... but in no time at all the milk was flowing into the bucket and her udder was returning to a more reasonable and much less engorged appearance.

I got about half a bucket of rich milk while the calf drank his fill, and when he finished, I quit too. Sasha was not bothered by the whole procedure, although once her calf wandered off she insisted on being let loose!

The precious first milk went into bottles for the two bottle lambs who guzzled it down like it was the best thing they'd ever tasted! I'm so glad to have fresh milk for them ... that was the plan all along, but of course, we needed Sasha's cooperation in the matter!

We'll be very careful in taking milk from her at this stage of the game - the calf gets top priority, but it's better to relieve the excess than leave her in discomfort (and risk mastitis). I checked with a very helpful lady who runs a Dexter Dairy in New York and am following her advice about taking care of Sasha and the calf in these early days: we can take a little from Sasha so long as it's not so much as to leave the calf hungry. Shared milking is a great strategy for us!

So we have a lovely purebred Dexter bull calf here ... now he just needs a name!

I hear bellowing outside, so I'd best go check that all is well. I think Darth is trying to figure out why Cherub is in his spot in the barn and he's locked outside.

Trees!

2009-04-13T19:03:00.002-07:00

I spoke today with our local horticulturalist, and she confirmed that our preferred site for an orchard would likely work well.

Now we just need to find some trees! My mom sent me a link to a place not far from here that has hardy trees raised in our climate, and I definitely plan to check them out.

I knew we could grow apple trees, and some types of cherry, but plums ... grapes, even ... and apricots! I never would've guessed.

I think I just found the next thing to go on my birthday wish list. :)