I See Fiber.........

......everywhere.  Much better than seeing dead people, I'm sure.

Before the 2 inches of rain we got earlier this week, Andy had gone over this field again to crush down the big lumps left after plowing. 

The 1066 with duallies on, pulling the vibrashank

Then after the rain and a couple of days drying, I saw this from the upstairs window.

Waffle Weave!

Besides creating a neat pattern, this is a good illustration of soil compaction.  The dark stripes show up where the tractor tires have run and crushed the dirt more, the light areas only had the teeth of the vibrashank stirring the dirt so the rain soaked in more fully and the top layer has dried out faster (although the picture doesn't show the whole field is still too soft to work).  Fast forward just a few days and it's time to put in the crop - timothy overseeded with oats.  Notice how much more the trees have leaved out in about 5 days' time.

Andy sowing his wild domestic oats

We were going to go with straight timothy, but the field where we wanted oats still has standing water.  If we hope to get anything this year, it's going with Plan B here.  The die is cast, now we'll see what we get.

In other fiber news........ Yarn!

The Cotswold I sent to Stonehedge Mill in late winter came back very quickly, I just lacked time to work with it.  Right now I"m washing the 3-ply sport weight.

Cotswold yarn, drying in the sun

Click to biggify and see the shine

I have about 15 lbs of this, and alsto 15 lbs each of 3 other yarn weights.  An electric skein winder *may* be on my horizon.

And then we have fiber on the hoof.  This demonstrates why we walk the fenceline every night when we bring the sheep in.  Yes, he is stuck.  I'll be glad when the lambs get big enough that they can't get their pointy little heads through the fence squares.   Two nights ago there was one stuck in the very farthest corner of the pasture out of sight from the barn.  With so many lambs, we can't begin to do a head count when they come in, so it's easier to walk the line.  If they aren't out there, they must be in.  If we never checked what's out of sight, we'd lose animals either to dehydration or coyotes.

A little help, here?

And when everyone's in for the night, this lamb comes to get his fix of cat fur.  For some reason he's obsessed with smelling and nuzzling the cats while they eat.  The cats are tolerant or they and their toenails would have broken him of that behaviour pretty quickly.

Mmmm...........fu-u-u-u-u-r-r-r-rr.

Maybe he was a cat in a former life.