Yarn Along (A Day Late) - Goodbye July

The drought continued on through the end of July and into the beginning of August.  We switched the sheep over to the pastures that lie to the south of the barn and let them have free range over it all to try and stretch their time outside.  We did finally get one day that gave us a half inch of rain and some misty conditions that lingered into the next morning.  It felt like a monsoon after such a length of days without rain.  As there was no lightning with the rain we locked the sheep out in the pasture so they'd get a decent bath.  It made a huge difference!

I usually carry beet pulp pellets in my pocket as treats and Peanut hung back hoping for another serving as everyone else trooped out to the field.  I told her I'd give her more later and she then followed the flock.

It's almost foggy enough to lose sight of them in the tall brown grass.

The mist also showed lots of spider webs in the flower bed.  These are sheet weaver spiders and they are quite abundant this year!

This one is a high achiever!

 I can imagine this web as the setting for some children's story about a spider, since it looks very home-y and inviting.  If you're a spider.....otherwise I guess it's more like a Brothers Grimm children's story.

The owl hasn't been hanging around much lately, at least not during daylight when the birds would alert us, but I did find a calling card in the grass.  I just love the tawny, rusty colors.

Andy completed a four day clean out of the lower barn.  It was quite overdue but first the skidsteer needed repair necessitating dismantling many components and installing new parts (which we were lucky to find considering how old it is), then the tractor needed some parts, and finally the manure spreader needed parts too!  And of course none of it was on a shelf somewhere - each thing had to be ordered and 'we can get it in tomorrow or Monday' which required extra trips to town.  Thankfully, the sheep were still on pasture during those 4 days so there wasn't any shuffling from pen to pen required.

But.

The rain we did get wasn't enough by any means to reverse the drought and so the flock was confined to the barn/barnyard/feedbunk complex and put on dry hay starting last weekend.  To say they weren't happy is to put it mildly.  The hay is leftover from last year - not unwholesome but tired and not as nutritious as it once was - but it will work as a maintenance diet since we aren't feeding lambs or moms needing to put condition back on.  Thank goodness we don't have a bunch of lambs to try and give really good nutrition to - we'd be buying something.  The sheep complained loud and long and ran to the gate anytime we went into the barn but after much grumbling and a few days time they settled into the new routine.  We hope it won't be more than a few weeks and that we don't have to dip into the new hay in August.  That is ALL needed for winter, especially since getting any second cutting is looking pretty iffy.

The old ewes get a separate pen where we can feed grain, alfalfa pellets and some of this year's hay on the ground so it's easy to eat.  They might have a couple of full mouths of teeth between them all.  :-/

We're using the 'picnic area' out in the feedbunk which gives more room for everyone.

And having more bodies outside and fewer inside keep the barn as airy and ventilated as possible when it's in the 90s as it is now.

While Andy did the grunt work in the lower barn I've kept plenty busy in the wool shop.  I've gotten out  over a dozen more reserved fleeces in the last few weeks as well as the occasional order for roving or a few pounds of raw Cotswold, and I've still managed to get fiber washed and dyed to send to the mill to be processed into roving.  This is going to be new batches of Wine Country, Blue Jeans and the black and white fiber is a combo of black alpaca and white Cotswold lamb which will give some pleasant shade of gray (I'm not real picky there - I'm sure it will be nice!).

There's been blessed little knitting going on here but I have been listening to books while I worked.  I've gotten through The Ridge which was interesting and had some plot twists I wasn't expecting.  Then I went to Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children and immediately followed it with the second book of the trilogy, Hollow City.  I'm loving this series!  The action is fast, the characters are interesting (besides the obvious peculiarities, like being invisible or having a swarm of bees live inside you) and the language is rich and satisfying.  I'm dying to listen to the third book but the library doesn't have it to download as an audio book yet.  Curses.   I'll have to see if it's available on CDs instead.  I must find out what happens!

Joining in with Ginny.....

Fall Work

Every season brings a different list of tasks, and like most other farm jobs they are time sensitive.  Last week was a good one - weather was sunny, dry and warm and the field corn was down to a moisture content that was safe to crib so Andy went at it.  He was able to get the 5 acres of field corn picked and put in the crib in three days without having to deal with either mud or breakdowns.  One for the record books.  ;-)

Our machinery is antiquated but he's comfortable with how it all functions and given our scale of production it suits us just fine.  The metal gravity wagon collects the ears the picker spits into it, then to unload it the trap door at the bottom is rolled up and they flow out - hence 'gravity' box.  Occasionally you have to climb in and kick some cobs out of the upper corners but once a few loads have slid out they all flow much better.



The ears travel up the elevator and tumble into the crib where Andy has lifted out a roof section.  Kernels that come off the ears in transit fall through a grid in the floor of the elevator, collect on a big tarp and we bag them at the end of the day.  Because they are packed so solidly in the bag there is risk of molding.  The corn is dry enough to go in the crib and continue to cure, not dry enough to be contained in a bag.  
We had just ground some corn (last year's) for the sheep so we had no immediate use for this.  Rather than see it go to waste we called a neighbor who raises boa constrictors and he was happy to take it for his livestock needs - the rats he raises for the boas.  You never know who is raising what a few doors away. He showed us a pair of babies a few years ago - gorgeous ones like these.  
Anyway, the corn is picked, stashed and equipment for that put away.  Whew!
Our old apple trees have really outdone themselves this year.  The Pound Sweets are living up to the name.

Any drops with dings or bird pecks go to the rams.  Besides being very large this year the apples have no worms.  Not one.  I'm not complaining, but it's certainly remarkable.  The Wolf River is still laden with a lot of fruit.

Apples without blemishes have been collected in buckets and turned into yummy things for the winter.  I've lost track of how many containers of applesauce I've put in the freezer.  Last Sunday was a marathon of apple handling but I can't say what it was - a good bit of the work will reappear in Christmas baskets.  :-)

I've also been working in the wool shop.   I've been sold out of dyed Cotswold curls for a while and picked a fleece with good curl character and low VM and put some toward a colorway I'm working on and some I dyed solid colors for sale in my booth at the next fiber event - Christmas on the Farm in Phelps, NY.

The curls are nice for needle felting, tail spinning and general embellishment of fiber goods.  
So there was the first week of November.  Onward!

Oops, I Did It Again

Somehow the bulk of the month has slipped past without a blog post.  Sorry about that. Until recently the weather was so fine that it was easy to do outdoor work until dark, eat supper and then box up orders or answer emails or peel apples for applesauce or other things that ate up the evening.

Several fleeces were skirted and sent to eager spinners.  Odds and ends wool was sent to the mill to become quilt batts.  Two lots of wool went to Acorn Works to be made to roving.  I'm hoping this gray fleece which was dyed lilac will come back a smoky amethyst.

Typical of "October's bright blue weather" it's been sunny with low humidity during the day and in the low 40s at night.  The sky, the trees and the field corn all say we're deep into fall and winter is coming.

The sheep (waaaaay out in the far middle pasture) have been enjoying some really fine weather although a sudden cold wet weekend pulled off most of the colorful leaves.  

They've got a pretty sweet deal right now - cool enough to be comfy, no flies, still nice pasture.....  they spend the day moseying around at their own pace and then gathering at the back of the barn to come in before night.

Drambui is still looking good at 12 years old.  She's the oldest ewe in the flock now that Daffodil's gone.

Daisy, using the old rock pillow.

The Cotswold lambs were shorn last month and this little cutie is already showing some nice tight curls growing back.

We actually had wet snow over the weekend (shudder) and two hard freezes in the upper 20s, leaving heavy frost that lay on the grass even after the sun had touched it for awhile.

We were already well aware of the need, but this kind of weather really spurs firewood activity.  First Andy cleaned up some piles of limb wood that he had left in the field from the previous year.  This partly seasoned wood will go into the cellar first.

Then we head into the woods to drop trees.  Once they are down on the ground I'm not too fearful of him working by himself but I always go with him when he's actually felling trees.  Too many bad things can happen even when one is experienced and careful.  And Holly is always ready for a good woods walk!

We're still cutting dead and dying ash from one certain area.  Dead trees are particularly unpredictable and have a bad habit of shedding limbs as they fall but this one behaved properly.

I finished a major overhaul of the 'yarn' page on our website and now have current pictures of Cotswold yarn I've recently dyed, like this:

and this:

And even that Gosh Darn Big Yarn that I pictured earlier this summer.

The page was a lot of work and I'm happy that it's done and functional.

Holly says:

"Oh, good grief.  I don't know why you spend all that time at the computer when you could pet ME!"

Right!  Time for some "pet" therapy!

 

September in Pictures

And maybe a few words of explanation here and there.  The fact that I at least TOOK pictures throughout the month reaffirms that I intended to be blogging along, it just didn't happen.  :-/

The fall flowers bloomed, such as our purple coneflower.

Our vigorous honeybees swarmed for a third time - usually a bad move as the swarm can't hope to make enough honey to sustain themselves through the winter.  Luckily they went into a bush two feet off the ground and a beekeeper came and collected them so they'll be cared for and have a better chance of surviving.

Not sure what he's going to be, but this pretty caterpillar was hurrying over the hot concrete on our side porch one afternoon.

The sheep enjoyed about three weeks in the south pasture which had regrown nicely.  There were many days in the nineties and the flock would graze until mid morning and then come into the bunk and hang out under the big fans.

One day Peanut wasn't feeling well and was slow to go out with everyone else.  The heat likely gave her a touch of pneumonia.

Some of the oldest ewes kept calling to her to come along which was sweet and kind of remarkable since she's a bottle lamb with no real "family ties" but she must be everyone's friend.  A few days of antibiotics helped a lot and she's fine now.

We had enough dry weather that we could get our second cutting of hay.  Woot!  Now we have enough for winter.  Then we got some good rains which made these butterflies happy...

...and pushing along an awesome crop of apples off our old trees.  This is a Pound Sweet.  I've got applesauce in my future.

Stewart Little did some growing!

And got shorn along with all the other lambs.

Alexi....silly kitty. Sigh.

I had an order for six half fleeces going to Israel.  That's a first for me.  I managed to get them all in this box. (Cat not included).

I did a fair bit of dyeing for the Finger Lakes Fiber Festival.

Then it was the festival weekend and our spot (in a brand new building!) went from this.....

....to this.  I think it looked pretty good and nobody knows what we didn't get finished to put on the shelves except us.  ;-)

And now the month is almost over.  The woods are changing fast.

And tonight is both a super moon AND a lunar eclipse.  And we don't have clouds!  Whee!

The next big jobs will be cleaning out the barn before the sheep come off pasture (still several weeks away, I hope!) and of course firewood.  Oh, and picking corn.  And still skirting and dyeing wool. Yardwork, yeah. Someday I have to do dishes.........  well, a whole shiny new month is coming up and I have high hopes!