What Housework?

Sunday morning at the Lazy J

Nothing like having coffee on the porch on a sunny, late summer morning.

With poultry.

I'm glad I got these pictures, taken last week, since I lost a similar set last time around. We spent close to an hour out there, my husband working on a bid, me with my to-do list, Calvin the rooster strolling around, and one of my egg-farm rescue hens relaxing in a chair. Milo visited, too.

The thing about Calvin: he's a big rooster.

And even though he's always been very gentle around us...

...sometimes he gets really close and just looks at you. And you wonder if he's going to peck a chunk of skin off your leg.

Nope. He's just curious.

I'm definitely going to miss our mornings out there, now that we're heading into cold weather.

Speaking of fall, here on the homestead it's most definitely harvest season. Each year I get a little better at getting things done efficiently. I also get in a little further over my head. It never gets easier.

This year I smartened up, and only froze 7 dozen ears of corn, rather than the 13 dozen we did last year.

In addition to tons of garlic and a good supply of onions, I got some shallots (which I almost forgot about):

The tomatoes have been coming fast and furious. As of today, I've canned over 30 pints, plus put a few bags in the freezer. It's a bit of a drag, but I love having tomatoes for sauces and soups in the winter.

I love the variety of tomatoes I have growing (some I started from seed, four I bought, and some re-seeded themselves). I need a lot of tomatoes. And I'm getting a lot of tomatoes.

 

Good grief, am I getting a lot of tomatoes. (I swear I'm not complaining.)

 

What, no jar photos? Refer to last year. It's all the same coming around again...

Last year, I grew some beans to dry. They were so amazingly good, despite the small yield, I decided to do it again. Beans are good for the garden soil, but they take up a lot of room for not much in the way of results. Still, they're easy to grow. And for some reason, probably because they're not as old as the storebought ones, they are tastier than the dried beans you buy -- and they cook significantly faster. Plus you can get unusual varieties you might not otherwise find.

I grew four varieties of dried beans this year. My first was October beans. They're cute. I got just about 3 pounds, which is quite a bit more than last year. (Like the beans you grew? Save some and plant them the next year. It's the gift that keeps on giving.)

I also grew regular kidney beans. The process of growing them is pretty easy. I'm still working on streamlining the harvesting part, but it's getting better. Last year, I dried them on the vine and then peeled them one by one like shell peas. Because they pods are dry, they're fairly easy to shell, but it takes a while.

For the October beans this year, I put them in a bag and beat it with a board. That got the beans right out of the shells, but left all the vines and leaves to be sorted out. When I got ready to do the kidney beans, my husband offered a better idea. 

I picked them and let them dry as usual in my dye studio (lately more of a potting shed/brew house/canning supply store).

I took them outside to an empty trash can.

 

I took a handful of vines and banged them around inside the can.

Beans! Not a lot of them, but beans nonetheless.

It didn't take too long, although I still ended up with a lot of chaff.

To clean them up, I channeled my inner Laura Ingalls and tried my hand at winnowing: basically pouring the beans out in a stiff wind and letting all the lightweight stuff blow away. While holding a camera.

Two or three passes and that was that. It's not perfect, but it's pretty good.

I got slightly under three pounds of kidney beans, which was a good haul, in my opinion.

Today I did the same with some tiny white navy beans (a HUGE amount of plants for relatively few beans, so I know not to plant those next year). And I pulled the tall, vining Good Mother Stallard beans from the garden. I'll let them dry further inside and beat them in a trash can in a week or two.

So what are we talking here? Possibly 12 pounds of beans, all told. Let's see, at $1.00 per pound (or less) at the store, I've saved, hmm -- not much money. So why bother?

Because I get the satisfaction of eating something I grew myself on my own land. And I like being able to say I winnowed over the weekend. Beats watching TV.

I also picked our first half-bushel of apples this morning. I turned some into a pie, which is in the oven as I write this, and peeled, sliced and froze enough for another pie. And I washed six pounds,

quartered them, skin and all, and simmered them about 25 minutes. And then I tried out my brand-new jelly strainer and let them drain (while I went a-winnowing),

 .

They gave up just over 5 cups of lovely pink syrup, to which I added about 4 cups of sugar and a splash of lemon juice.

I simmered it for what seemed like hours until it hit 218 degrees and started to thicken. The result: five half-pint jars of pretty pink apple jelly:

Applesauce will have to wait for another day. I'm pooped.

In other news, one of our turkey hens showed up with babies a couple of weeks ago. Three of the original six are left, which is actually better than the usual average around here:

Looking from the kitchen window the other day, I saw Milo relaxing in front of the bird feeder, probably deciding what to have for snack.

The recent cold snap has made him quite affectionate. He likes hand-knit socks, apparently.

I wish I were better about updating the blog so it weren't so long every time. All I've got left today is (a) a new car and (b) a special project. The "new" car is a 1999 silver Honda Civic sedan to replace the leased 2008 Toyota Matrix I just returned. It comes without a remote keyless entry, without a 110-V outlet in the dash, without a rear wiper, without an outdoor thermometer, without any distinguishing characteristics of any kind. And without a car payment. 

Priceless.

The project I wanted to share today is how we got rid of this lame excuse for a dining room light

and replaced it with a refurbished chandelier. I did my part: I revamped the new light, an older piece a friend kindly allowed my husband to rip out of her ceiling. My husband, however, hasn't gotten around to hanging it. Apparently, just because he's worked both of the past two weekends (meaning it's been about 16 days since he's had a day off), he's too tired to put it up. So I can't do the Big Reveal yet. 

I will, however, give you this: the "before" of the chandelier. I cannot wait to show you the "after" (and all the steps in between).

It had better be hung before my next post.

 

All is well

Vermont finally made national news, but not in a good way. Tropical storm Irene came through Sunday afternoon. The flood damage in the state is unprecedented and kind of hard to wrap your head around. Brandon, a town not far from here, lost several downtown buildings when the river overflowed. 

I am touched by all the people from far away, most of whom I've never met in person, who have emailed to see if we're OK up here. Actually, our town saw relatively little damage, and our property saw no damage at all. Roads outside of town are apparently washed out and causing major headaches for lots of people, like dairy farmers, whose milk has to be dumped because the milk trucks can't get through, not to mention the people in outlying towns who've been stranded. So, all is well at the Lazy J. But thanks for your concern.

The blog would have been updated two weeks ago, because I had the cutest pictures I've taken all year, including a series of my husband sitting out on the porch Sunday morning sharing a bowl of cereal with a hen who had made herself comfy on his lap.

But I deleted the whole set of pictures by accident. I'm just getting over the loss now.

There's not much farm news. It's late summer, I need to process the corn and tomatoes, pick the basil and green beans, and shell the dry beans. And brew another batch of beer. Same old, same old.

A few weeks ago, I picked the last of the shell peas.

The results, though always meager, are delicious.

I pulled the pea vines and they made some goats and a sheep quite happy.

Other veggies from a few weeks back:

We had a hailstorm, but as with Irene, it didn't do any damage.

Sunday, when Irene came and it rained and rained, was the day our meat birds were scheduled for slaughter. My husband and the two guys who came to do the work did despite the rain, in the barn. The day before, we had spent the morning trying to get 76 giant, not-too-bright chickens from their portable coop into a holding pen in the barn. Not exactly the running of the bulls at Pamplona, but eventually they got in there. Now they're all in freezers around the county.

Except one.

What we have in this photo are five young Araucana ("Easter-egger") laying hens. And one Cornish/White Rock cross meat bird. "The one that got away," I guess you'd say.

He was gimpy from the get-go, but never immobile. Still, while his coopmates ate and grew strong and healthy, he never left the coop. Each day we brought food and water to him and my husband kept saying, "I should get rid of that bird." But he never did. Slaughter day came and went and we were stuck with this undersized, limping bird not fit for eating. My husband, once an avid hunter, doesn't care to "get rid" of animals on the farm if he can help it. So this one got a stay of execution.

For the time being he's living with the other birds. The big chickens peck him hard whenever they get near him, but the young girls don't seem to mind him. Maybe he'll be rehabilitated, probably not. Maybe he was faking a limp so we wouldn't eat him. Whatever. He's staying for now.

My last batch of photos, the ones I deleted, dammit, had some pictures of the meat birds on pasture. I have not yet tasted one of these so I can't say if keeping them outdoors on grass made a huge difference in the finished product. However, contrary to what many people told us, they DID move around a lot outside compared to the ones we've kept in the barn in years past. They DID chase earwigs and other bugs, they DID peck in the dirt, they DID eat grass, and in general they acted a lot more like real chickens, not like lifeless eating machines. Just getting sun and fresh air had to make a difference in their health. I'll report back with a taste test soon.

The tomatoes are coming in fast and furious, and thanks to my friend Jenn, who came out and saved me with her gardening skills a couple of weeks ago, the weeds have been beaten into submission and the garden is once again thriving. Which may not be a good thing; it means more work for me.

So tonight I have a date with the Squeezo and a batch of tomatoes. But there's this other thing I've been wasting my time on lately:

Yeah, knitting. Remember that thing I used to always do? This is Vivian, a cabled, shaped cardigan by Isolde Teague. Winter is coming, after all, and fast.

So, wrapping up, life at the Lazy J is crazy, as always, but smooth and untroubled compared to the rest of the state. Thank you to all who have expressed concern as to my safety. We got lucky with this one. Just ask Roy and Trooper.

 

 

 

Scapes and strawberries and poultry, oh my

SCAPES

 It's a crazy time of year. I'm learning, as we head into our sixth summer on this property, that June and October are the craziest months of the year on the ol' homestead. Not much spinning or knitting because I don't sit down, except at work, from 5 a.m.-10 p.m. Tired. But in a good way.

I've got a ton of pictures.

For starters, we've got garlic scapes, perhaps the coolest looking item in the garden.

These are the stems that grow from garlic, at least the hardneck variety. I am obsessed with the look of them.

If you keep letting them grow, they will eventually flower, but that doesn't do your garlic bulb any favors, so when they loop around, you trim them off and eat them.

Last year I only had a few, so I cut them up small and used them in omelets and salads and soups and such. This year, I had more. Here are just a few:

I chopped them and then blended them with a hearty amount of olive oil and salt. I didn't have any pine nuts or even walnuts so I guess I can't really call it garlic scape pesto, but I created a fabulous fluorescent green paste that, combined with a pile of grated parmesan, turned a bowl of linguine into a night on the town. (And I sauteed broccoli with some tonight. Awesome.) I failed to take a picture. The flavor is sort of garlicky but not the same as a garlic flavor, maybe a bit more subtle and just plain new, different and delicious. Too bad it's in such limited seasonal supply. I got about a 12-ounce jar all told.

STRAWBERRIES
Our own strawberry beds have yielded approximately 110 strawberries so far (yes, still counting them individually), with another dozen or so left to pick. That's a lot more than I expected but not enough to keep us in smoothies and jam all winter. 

So we went to a local u-pick place, Douglas Orchards, and got these:

That haul, 26 pounds, was three of us picking for an hour (with the adolescent doing more sighing than picking). Then there were two hours I spent washing and trimming. The going rate is $1.75 per pound. I have no idea if that's a decent price, but the way our beds are exploding with new vines, this may be the last year we need to buy berries. I threw most of these in the freezer, ready for me whenever I get motivated enough to make the jam. The rest became really awesome strawberry shortcake.

POULTRY

So I woke up at 2 in the morning Saturday in a panic. I knew that my husband had ordered 40 or 50 day-old meat birds a month or two ago but in the craziness of spring we had forgotten when they would be coming (and he failed to mark the date on the calendar). This year we wanted a portable coop so they could go outside and have a chance to act like real chickens, rather than factory birds, sitting in a room in our barn next to a trough of feed, getting huge and immobile and pathetic.

In the morning, we found out that the birds had actually arrived that Friday (!) but the sighing adolescent had failed to take a message. So we picked them up and put them in temporary housing, a tub:

Considering that Cornish Rock crosses grow exponentially, this was not a long-term solution. So Mark set out to find one.

Sunday morning, he drew up his plan...

(The thing at the top is for a roof vent for better air flow to keep the birds cool.)

Then he got to work.

It was a gorgeous, breezy, low-humidity blue-sky day, which we haven't had many of this year. And I'm not going to lie: I think Mark is looking pretty hunky these days, and I enjoyed the view all day.

He worked for about 10 or 11 hours straight. Here he's laid out an 8 x 12 foot frame with pressure-treated 4 x 4s and 2 x 4s in between.

 

Then plywood:

A chick or two came to check on the progress.

Mixed in with the meat birds are five araucana chicks (the egg layers that lay blue eggs), extras that the feed store was trying to get rid of. They look like chipmunks at this age.

Anyway, work continued.

Uprights made from some random spare wood we had. (People driving by thought we were building a tee pee.)

Roy, Bo and Ed found the nail gun noises captivating.

The chickens offered their advice and encouragement.

Our quality-control hen:

Our OSHA hen:

So ended Sunday.

I went to work the next day, and when I came home, the thing was finished. Mark dragged it out back with the tractor, and the chicks got a new home.

The vent works amazingly well. Even when the sun is beating down on the tin, it's cooler inside than out. I don't know if that will continue if we get super-hot weather, but so far, so good.

The purplish tin was leftover from one of Mark's construction jobs.

 

Mark built them an 18" high chicken wire fence for their run but Lily immediately came by, thinking it was an all-you-can-eat buffet, so we've since upped it to 3 feet of plastic mesh over hog panels. It seems pretty cat proof. Netting over the top (not installed yet) might help with hawks.

I'm happy to report that these birds are loving life right now. We've never tried putting meat birds on pasture; we've been told, and it certainly appeared, that they are too lazy and too heavy to move around. In fact, many people have given us ideas to make them get bigger even faster (birth to slaughter in six weeks, just like Tyson does it!). But we're actually trying to slow them down, to try to minimize health problems, such as broken legs, which have happened in the past. It's very sad and not at all the way I want my food to be raised.

These chicks are out pecking at the dirt, eating bugs and running all over the place, more so every day. They are definitely programmed to eat all the time but we are throwing a lot of their food on the ground so they have to scratch for it, and we're not keeping so much on hand as we did last year.

They're a lot more fun to watch than last year's birds.

I'm interested to see how they end up, both in size and in flavor, not to mention in health. And I should mention that the feed store had more birds to get rid of, so Mark stopped by and bought 50 more, which means we need more housing... They are, however, all spoken for; we're only keeping 20 this year.

And finally, here's Sam. I know, I know, he's not poultry but I didn't think one picture was enough to earn him his own heading.

When did Halloween happen?

So I'm getting ready to put together a blog post before we leave for Massachusetts this weekend (wrestling tournament for my younger stepson) and I find this among the unposted photos:

And this:

And it occurs to me that I haven't been paying attention to the days flying by.

Here's the deal. There's work, there's a little writing, there were about 30 bushels of apples (that's 65 pounds per bushel), the animals, the house, the family, knitting (mostly for Christmas, not for sharing here, as the recipients read this thing) and so it goes.

The blog is the place where I make note of all the small but special parts of my life that I otherwise might not notice or appreciate, and the fact that I haven't photographed or posted much just shows that things are, as I suspected, slipping past me. I think I need to slow down a bit.

I have one photo that sort of sums up my daily routine:

Laundry and turkeys and autumn sun. Could be worse.

Oh, there are goats.

Don't be fooled by the innocent look. They hop the fence whenever they feel like it and raid the chicken coop feeder.

Speaking of chickens, meet the new girls.

It's hard to get good poultry group photos, as they jerk around a lot. These hens are egg farm rejects I intercepted just days before they were sent to the great cat food can in the sky. They've had one year of laying so they're probably about 18 months old, and technically they're "spent," meaning having molted once, they won't lay every single day. Two bucks each, and I've been averaging 1-2 eggs a day from them as a group. (Short days = few or no eggs.)

Anyway, institutionalized chickens aren't the healthiest looking things (which explains the pale-yolked, fragile-shelled qualities of supermarket eggs). They're scrawny, their combs are pale and floppy, their beaks have been trimmed (although these girls' don't look too bad), and they stink to high heaven.

The first couple of weeks, they didn't dare venture outside the coop. But now they're starting to, and you can't get a still picture.

(That's ice from the waterer there.)

Their combs are standing up now and they're acclimating to life on the outside.

They are very talkative, more so than my homegrown birds, and very curious. They have quickly come to associate me with food, and Flora, the lightest one above, runs right to my feet whenever she sees me. It does my heart good to see them peck the ground, run around, roost, and enjoy natural chicken behaviors, most or all of which are denied battery-farmed chickens. Of course, they could end up as fox food, too, but then again they'd already be dead if I hadn't snagged them.

The turkeys are growing, but once again will be spared from the Thanksgiving dinner table by my softie husband (a wild turkey hunter, wtf?). Next year, he swears.

Two of them insist on roosting outside (the white one is hard to see on the left, but the other is above the turkey house).

And of course, there is always Milo. The most affectionate killer cat ever.

We're heading into the holidays, not typically a mellow time and weatherwise not conducive to colorful  photographs. But picture me knitting away as time permits. I finished my handspun sweater but can't bring myself to photograph it until I rip out the cowl neck (itchy!) and the not-so-clever garter stitch raglan seams (stretchy!). If the weather had been colder, it would have been done by now.

I'm up for "Crock-Pot Friday" at work tomorrow, so I'll be up to my eyeballs in beef stew and dinner rolls tonight. 

Have a good weekend. Pet your cat.

Who wants a cat?

Just kidding, we're keeping him. But Milo, he is truly a possessed semi-feral animal.

The pictures above show him in the morning. He comes in for breakfast after a night spent terrorizing the local small animals. He expects affection done just right; pet him the wrong way and he eats your arm.

Each day, I go upstairs to shower and make the bed, and within seconds, he races up there, alternately running around under the sheets and then hiding under the bed, the better to attack my ankles. After a few minutes of making the bed with one hand, and using my other as a defensive shield on my legs, I get cranky. I wait for Milo to attack my forearm and then I walk out into the hallway, shake my arm vigorously until he lets go and drops off, and then race back into the bedroom and lock the door.

My hands look like I get a daily manicure from Edward Scissorhands.

Anyway. Life is busy. There are some things to report, such as that my older stepson proposed to his girlfriend last Sunday. (He bought the ring in July, but has been waiting to ask her father for her hand. Let's just say they do things a bit more formally in Oklahoma than in Vermont!) Both of them are still in college, but again, in OK this does not seem wildly impulsive. In Vermont, I knew exactly one person who got engaged while still a student. He also just started a full-time firefighting/EMT position at the Will Rogers Airport in Oklahoma City, even though he has half a semester to finish out at OSU. Should be interesting. He's a hard worker, and at worst he'll have to take one more class next semester, on his dime. The wedding will be in Oklahoma next summer (!) but he wants to have a huge second reception back in Vermont. At our house.

Okie-doke...

Back in the relatively uneventful life of Jessie, there has been some knitting.

I made some Fleece Stuffed Mittens for my daughter from the Robin Hansen book, using unspun wool/angora rabbit for the thrums and two strands of my Long Trail sock yarn for the mitten. Delicious.

You see two mittens but I actually knit four in total because I had to rip each one out once. I'm so tired of thrums. And, it turns out, my 10yo LOVES them, except not to actually wear in public, let alone school, because they are very bulky. Nice. See if I ever knit her four mittens again.

I also knit something more enjoyable: Ishbel. (Note the yucky incandescent-light photos; short days have come to Vermont.)

Ah, you say, "But Jessie, you are not a knitter of lace. You have a pathological fear of yarn-overs."

No, I'm not. And yes, I do. But this was far too easy and fun to be lace. I don't know what it was but I loved it. Knit with my bamboo blend sock yarn in the "Martha's Gown" colorway.

I didn't get a good picture of it, and you'll notice that my points on the edges ended up fading away and even curling a little. I'm not sure if it was the fiber content or my blocking procedure. (Note: If the only rug in your home is on the floor next to your husband's side of the bed, make sure you don't leave any stray pins around. Men can be so whiny.)

I still haven't done anything but the sleeves on my handspun sweater. The yarn, in case it's been too long for anyone to remember, is this:

I think I want a pullover, but I can't decide on the yoke. Round yoke? Raglan? Turtleneck? Hoodie? I just don't know. But it's so cold in my office, I need to make up my mind soon. There's a Downy commercial on TV these days where a woman steps off the elevator at work wrapped in a down comforter. That's what it looks like at my office; two people actually bundle up in blankets at their desks.

However, I'm already planning Christmas knitting (not for the 10yo, oddly enough). The bright side of our personal economic crisis (which is, I'm happy to say, easing up a bit, 10 months or so after it started) is that we've done quite a bit of Christmas shopping, as odd as it sounds. Rather than have the big all-out shop-a-thon in December, we're picking up one or two things a week as the grocery money allows. It's not going to be a normal over-the-top Christmas (which I hate anyway; my husband's the crazy one), but I'm thinking we may be able to avoid the mall altogether this year. One can only hope.

Okay, as I am going on and on, let me say there's been a lot of this:

Pumpkin pie made with the only little pumpkins I managed to get out of our garden. I had to buy more this week and today I'll make a pie and put the rest of the filling in the freezer for this winter. So delicious. We're still rocking the freezer full of our own meat and frozen veggies and fruits. Nothing beats the flavor.

Also, I had a shop update last night, which many of you already know from A Piece of Vermont Yarn & Fiber's mailing list. If you want to receive extremely infrequent updates, sign up here.

Bamboo Blend sock yarn, two skeins of each:

Late October:

Gingerbread:

Mountain Laurel:

Olive a Sudden:

Merino/Tussah silk 80/20 blend top. Remaining colorways are

Truth or Dare, 4 ounces:

 

Wildest Dreams, 8 ounces:

Okay, I think I've gone on long enough this morning. The house is a mess and the chickens want out of the coop.

Have a good weekend.

Foliage break

We're heading into a classic Vermont autumn weekend, and I'm taking a small getaway. Unfortunately, I'm not actually going anywhere. I'm just taking a weekend off from the February Lady Sweater (on Ravelry here):

I'm making steady progress and all that, but the weather is about to turn sharply colder, and a lacy sweater is not really at the top of my list right now. I promised my daughter some fingerless gloves (not fingerless mittens; she wants the individual finger holes) and I decided I would devote this weekend, starting tonight, to making her a pair. We'll see how I do...

The February Lady sweater is interesting. Assuming you have been under a rock, knittingwise, the deal is that the pattern was originally a lovely baby sweater designed by Elizabeth Zimmerman. In June, Flint Knits reworked it "to fit a grown ass woman" and posted it on Ravelry, where it took off. When I cast on for it a couple of weeks ago, 2,013 people had it listed as a project. Three days ago, that number was 2,254. Today it's 2,282. I'm a sheep, but a very trendy one.

Anyway, I was at the local farmer's market last weekend, and damned if I didn't see a woman wearing one. I practically tackled her. Yes, lots of people are knitting them, but in Middlebury, Vermont? Her husband rolled his eyes as soon as we started gabbing about lace repeats in the arms and such and said, "Here we go." He and my daughter chatted while we gushed.

It was a lovely week, weatherwise. Yesterday, I accompanied my daughter's class west across Lake Champlain (via ferry) to Mt. Defiance, a Revolutionary War site that looks down on Fort Ticonderoga and also Mt. Independence, which her class hiked last fall.

The view doesn't suck.

This is the view looking east at Lake Champlain and Vermont and the Green Mountains in the background.

Although you may not be able to tell from the picture, Fort Ti is that gray thing just to the left of the cannon tip. (Try clicking on the picture.) Mt. Independence is on the point of land off to the right.

Fort Ti was built by the French and was a pivotal place in the 1700s, because at the time the lake was surrounded by virgin forest and the lake was about the only way to travel. It's sited at the point where the LaChute River (which starts at Lake George) flows into the Champlain; the mouth of the LaChute is there in the left foreground. The fort changed hands a lot during the Revolution, but it may be best known for one early morning in 1775, when Benedict Arnold, Ethan Allen, and the Green Mountain Boys surprised the French garrison there, and scored the first American victory of the Revolutionary War.

Here is a view of Lake Champlain looking south from Mt. Defiance.

.

The very steep (now paved) road that we hiked up yesterday was originally cleared in 1777 by 700 of British General Burgoyne's men, in 36 hours. They wanted a place from which to rain cannon fire down on Fort Ti, and the oxen that hauled the cannon couldn't get through the dense forest. The move was a good one, apparently, as it allowed the British to retake the fort until the end of the war.

Thirty-six hours is pretty quick to clear a road using hand tools, considering how long it takes today's road crews to get paving done. But then, the British army probably didn't have to follow union rules...

It's not quite peak foliage here yet, but the views were still beautiful, both at long range and close up.

This also marked the second day in two weeks that I have spent with my daughter's class. Last week, we hiked through the woods behind the school--to our house! Farm field trip, don't you know.

Anyway, despite all the chaperone time I've been putting in, I did update the shop a couple of days ago. If you are on the mailing list, you've seen all this. For the rest of you, here goes. I posted my favorite decadent-luxury spinning fiber: bombyx silk and merino top. Delicous.

Sea Glass:

Crime of Passion:

Monet's Bridge:

Monet's Bridge is actually 7.5 ounces (or a little more), whereas the others are just over 4 ounces. I may end up keeping 3.5 ounces of it for myself, but first I'll offer it up to the spinner who wants a somewhat larger project. It's the same stuff I photographed in process in my last post.

I also have yet another non-yarn, non-fiber offering: silver-wire jewelry. You remember way back when I bragged about the bracelet my friend Amy surprised me with? I asked her to make more jewelry for me to sell, and she did. Like this:

And this necklace:

And this necklace:

Amy bends almost all the wire herself, so even the beads that go through the wires are her own, not factory-made. Each piece is unique, all are lovely, and you can get more details by clicking on the links.

Life continues on the farm. Here's a shot of the trout having breakfast. I should have brought my camera out last night. They must have been hungry because the water looked like there was a piranha attack going on; sometimes the fish flip right up, almost completely out of the water. When a dozen of them are doing it at once, it's pretty fun to watch.

Milo injured a baby rabbit that my husband and brother-in-law tried to nurse back to health.

It didn't work, or I'd have pictures.

Rotten cat.

That's all for now. I've got merino/silk yarn and BFL top to dye today. And bamboo-blend sock yarn. Have a wonderful weekend.

Catching up, part I

Help! I've fallen so far behind in blogging that I can't find a big enough chunk of time to update everything. Fall, it turns out, is a busy time. So I'll break things down into two parts and see if that helps.

KNITTING

A handspun hat for my husband, done:

 

It's the same Norwegian Star Earflap Hat I just made, only this time it's out of handspun BFL and, obviously, I skipped the colorwork. Who needs Fair Isle when you've got handspun?

  

He refused to try it on for the camera, which may have something to do with the Holly Hobbie thing, but that's fine.

I also got all crazy and pumped up with a desperate need for an Aran vest of my own design. Never mind that I don't know how to design knitwear. After days of taking notes, planning, swatching, and waking up in the middle of the night with a concern about armholes (what, this hasn't happened to you?), I decided to plunge in. I started, top-down, with this:

  

This is my kettle-dyed "Bristol" Real Vermonter yarn, held double for an Aran weight. I absolutely love it.

Then I woke up, again in the middle of the night, and realized I had intended some shoulder shaping so I don't look like a linebacker. I'm going to start again, this time from the bottom up. Don't know when I'll get a chance to work on this.

SPINNING

Good news: I finished my sweater spinning project! Two pounds of wool/alpaca, all local, and processed from raw fleece to finished yarn. I am so awesome!

Bad news: I spun it so densely (or the alpaca was dense, or I put in too much lead, or gravity is acting up) that two full pounds only yielded 750 YARDS!!! I suck!

Check it out:

  

That little ball, which fits nicely in the palm of my hand, weighs 4.7 ounces. Hmmm. It's bulky, but it's hardly super chunky. I'm afraid I'm not going to have enough for even the plainest sweater, which is breaking my heart. I have to swatch and see if I do it on big enough needles if it will look cool and artsy or just stupid. It's so heavy, I'm afraid it's going to knit up into chain mail.

VERMONT SHEEP & WOOL FESTIVAL

It seems like ages ago already, but I did attend VT S & W, without a camera. If you were expecting me to reveal the contents of a fiber-stuffed trunk, here's the deal: I don't need any more yarn or spinning fiber. I am not a mad stasher, and since my current projects are at overload, I couldn't see buying more raw materials at the festival. I bought a mug.

But I did get to meet lots of people. In no particular order (and certainly not a complete list; I didn't have a notebook): I met vtknitboy, the Ravelry-pin-sharing Mountain Fiber Folk, Norma, Sandy, Laurie and Laurie, Manise, Monica, Paula, Lee Ann (and her patient family), Gayle, a more-local Gayle, Lee, Marjorie, and a lot of other people who are slipping my mind but only for the moment. It really was cool to meet people in person and to see people I already knew.

I hear the festival is (a) going to be held in October next year and (b) going to be held at the Tunbridge fairgrounds. Thumbs up on both counts. My husband and I just spent a day at the Tunbridge World's Fair last Friday and it was wonderful. We spent most of our time on the "antiques hill" looking at antique farm and home stuff and watching demonstrations of 19th century activities such as hewing logs, making shingles, running a drag saw, etc. The place definitely has the feel for a wool festival. I ran into the same spinner who was running the great wheel at VT S & W (check out pictures in Gayle's post here) and this time I saw her spin flax also.

I must have a great wheel of my own.

Seriously.

APPLES

Apples. We got 'em. Not a huge amount, since our trees got pruned hard this winter. But enough. So far we've made a few batches of applesauce for the freezer, made one pie and put away enough for a few more, made apple dumplings, made applesauce bundt cake, and eaten a few.

Just another reason why fall is the best time of year.

I have also been baking lots of bread and processing an endless supply of tomatoes.

SHOP UPDATE

I almost forgot to mention that I updated the shop with more bamboo blend sock yarn in lots of yummy colors, such as this:

And this:

And, for a change of pace, some giant skeins of Long Trail sock yarn. Superwash wool/nylon in skeins running close to 700 yards and weighing almost 6 and a half ounces. Massive. If you want stockings or have a large-footed husband who wants socks for Christmas, check these out. Here's a teaser:

 

PIGS

I better quit with the update now as I'm already out of time and getting too wordy. I leave you with a happier-than-last-time series of pig photos. (At the moment we have 10 pigs, in case you were wondering. two of whom are presumed pregnant.)

The above pig is one of three we keep in one pen. Sassy and her six piglets are in a different pen. But the piglets made a hole between the pens.

Three of them can still squeeze through.

The other three are very upset that they can no longer get treats over here, and there is much squealing and gnashing of teeth.

Silly pigs.

NEXT TIME...

• My list of favorite blogs, since I got the "I love your blog" award and must pass it on
• Photos of Saturday's Great Pig Escape
• Sophie
• Neckwarmer in progress
• and much, much more...

Bzzzzzzz...

 

Hear that buzzing sound? My husband and I heard it all day yesterday and finally figured it out when we sat down on the porch for a beer before dinner.

Bees. There's one in the photo up there.

Big bumblebees, feasting on the nectar of black-locust blossoms.

Our yard is full of these trees, which it turns out are actually a nuisance species. But the short-lived blossoms make the whole yard smell delightful and attract orioles and, apparently, hordes of big, bumbling, buzzing, bumblebees. (Then 200 million petals drift down from the trees and settle several inches thick on your porch furniture. Day after day.)

Other things make a buzzing sound, too.

 

I had a few interruptions that didn't allow me to get the hummingbird photos until the good light had faded, but I did get this one perching for a moment on our clothesline:

We're all about the birds. This week, we have some sad bird news. First of all, Daisy is no longer with us. My light Brahma hen, she would have turned five years old this month. It's a little graphic to go into on the blog, but let's just say the three tom turkeys are murderers. Deviants, too.

On another sad note, we are down to just two turkey poults!

Trixie has finally started roosting in the turkey house again, instead of sleeping in the middle of the field. But poult #3 apparently fell off the roost and into the goats' sleeping quarters and got rolled on during the night.

Meanwhile, gray turkey Rose has disappeared, likely on a nest but possibly fox food. And the peahen is gone, too. We knew she was nesting in the woods, but she hasn't been home for her every-other-day afternoon snack in a few days. She might have hatched her babies and is busy helping them find food closer to the nest. Or she may have been eaten. I'll keep you posted.

We've been super busy in the garden. So far there's not much to show for our efforts, except the peas. I think pea vines are lovely.

  

These two are holding hands:

Cliche tractor photo:

The piglets are growing fast. I couldn't get good photos because of two electric fences between me and them but you get the idea.

Polly:

Chip, with something to say:

      

Now, this is supposed to be a knitting blog. Confession: I am still struggling with my handspun April socks, which are taking FOREVER. No pictures. Besides, I have plenty of other yarn and fiber stealing my attention, although nothing new on the wheel or the needles. I WILL finish those damn socks before our annual camping trip at the end of the month.

I forgot to mention in my last post a gift I received from Rainbow Yarns Northwest: Two bumps of incredibly decadent and luxurious spinning fiber. The first is called First Love and is a blend of 75 percent Pygora and 25 percent silk.

The second is an undyed blend of 75 percent Pygora and 25 percent superfine Merino:

Pictures don't do this fiber justice. I have no idea what I will do with these, other than bury my face in them now and then. But when I find the right project, these will be fabulous.

Meanwhile, at A Piece of Vermont Yarn & Fiber, I have nothing  really new, but things will be coming soon. I just sent a small wholesale yarn order off to Kaleidoscope Yarns here in Vermont. And on Wednesday, my partner in crime Jenn and I made a return road trip to Green Mountain Spinnery to pick up my newest Real Vermonter yarn order. Ta-da!

  

I am in LOVE with this yarn! The folks at the Spinnery outdid themselves, as did the Vermont sheep and alpacas who contributed their fiber. It's a 2-ply sport weight and I have 37 pounds of it. As soon as I finalize the name, the price, and all that jazz, it will be available for sale. I have just dyed up the first few skeins and while they do look fantastic, I'm pretty partial to the undyed color, which has a touch of fawn-colored alpaca that gives it a golden tinge. It smells like real sheep, and while that may not appeal to everyone, to me it underscores the fact that this is 100 percent Vermont yarn. I've met the animals that produced the fiber and the people who spun it. And it's "Greenspun," the Spinnery's term for their special milling process that uses petroleum-free spinning oils. Heaven, I tell you. 

I know it's bad PR for my commercial yarns and fibers when I gush so about Vermont fiber and small-mill fibers and yarns with provenance and all that. But I can't help myself. This yarn is so yarn-y and unique and sheepy and textural and anything but mass-produced, I just have to sing it out. I'll have some ready for you (dyed and undyed) by next week. I wish you could smell this stuff. I've been huffing it all morning. I hope that's legal.

And, to wrap up this very long post, two more quick things.

1. Thank you for all your yarn name suggestions. I am still working on final names and I'll let you know when all is said and done. I am still taking entries, if you have more.

2. I'm about to expand beyond yarn and fiber. I have recently purchased a batch of hand-printed wood-block notecards by a local artist, which will be on sale next week. Here's a sneak preview of one of her 8 designs:

Love them.

Attrition

Well, didn't the overconfident little farmer wannabes take a fall this week! We had a turkey tragedy.

Last week, Trixie hatched out 5 poults and we gave her the 6 we had hatched in the incubator. She was frantic to get them outside and we stupidly let her. One disappeared. And then there were 10.

She was doing fine with them, but kept sleeping out in the woods rather than near the house (probably to avoid Milo!). But my husband and brother-in-law dug a couple dozen post holes for the new, improved goat yard they are building. Sunday morning, we found that 3 of them had fallen into the holes and, unable to get out, had died. And then there were 7.

Meanwhile, the survivors were standing around in the cold, wet grass while their mother tried to rescue the victims in the holes. One died. And then there were 6.

The boys brought the survivors into the house and we put them under a heat lamp while we set up proper housing for Trixie and the poults. One of them just couldn't warm up. And then there were 5.

We made Trixie a nice setup right in the turkey barn, with a board across the door to keep the poults from getting outside but allowing the other birds to come and go. We brought the babies back to their distraught mother and she stepped on one's head.

And now there are 4.

Well camouflaged, aren't they?

Everyone left seems to be doing fine at this point. We are sadder but wiser now and, as with so much around here, have learned from the experience. I feel responsible for the loss of most of the other poults, but such is life on the homestead. You can't dwell on it.

Spring is full of contrasts, especially that of birth and death. Although this week is cold and windy, the weekend was a lot nicer than the forecast predicted. Here's Dave under the cherry tree:

Tulips and grape hyacinths:

My younger stepson home for the summer (do all guys just love tractors?):

The new, fortified goat fence in progress (the permanent part, which will now be electrified so we won't have quite so many daring escapes):

I have been busy in the shop. I shipped off my order to yarn4socks.com and have been concentrating on fiber. Some of you asked about my new Pat Green Triple Picker and what it does. Oh, I'll tell you. Here we have a couple of pounds of scoured Romney fleece from a local farm:

There's some VM, and while it looks quite fluffy, those locks are a bit too intact to put through the drum carder. You put on your leather gloves, feed the locks into the Triple Picker, and within a few minutes you have this:

A lot of the VM has fallen out, and the volume of the fleece has more than quadrupled. It's like a cloud of Romney! Now we can card.

Someone mentioned that they'd like some local fiber pulled into roving instead of sold as batts. I thought that would be fun because it opens up the option of space dyeing and keeping the colors separate. The good news is I tried it. From batts to roving:

It's lovely. The bad news is I discovered that pulling batts into roving takes approximately FOREVER. I will dye this stuff up but the price is going to reflect the labor involved in handling a raw fleece at every stage, from scouring to drying to picking to carding, to re-carding, to pulling into roving, to dyeing, to rinsing, to drying, to packaging, photographing, and uploading. On the bright side, there are not very many sources for non-mill-processed fiber from known sources.

Speaking of mill-processed fiber from an unknown source (weren't we?), I have updated A Piece of Vermont Yarn and Fiber with bamboo/merino top. Before I shop you the new stuff, look what I did with mine. I had meant to spin enough for a Clapotis, but after one skein I realized the colorway was a bit too My Little Pony for me. My daughter loved it. So, here's how it went:

Finished in two days, it's the Shrug This from One Skein Wonders. Like others on Ravelry, I question how this could ever have been intended for an adult. My gauge is smaller than what is called for, but even so... Anyway, it was a quick knit and my daughter (don't you love the summer bob, even uncombed?) modeled it and then wore it to school today. Now she wants a poncho from the same merino/bamboo.

And so we come to the shop update. I posted the following 60/40 merino/bamboo bumps to A Piece of Vermont Yarn and Fiber today:

Spring Fling, Mist, Three-Day Weekend, Mossy Stones, and Farmer's Market:

ETA: FARMER'S MARKET IS SOLD. YOWZA THAT WAS FAST.

Farmer's Market (the last one, above) comes with a special quantity discount. There are four bumps of that colorway totalling over 16 ounces, and if you buy all four at once, each one is $1.50 off, plus you get automatic free shipping for orders $60 or over. I know how tough it is to buy bigger amounts of fiber or yarn without breaking the bank, but this stuff would make a fantastic summer sweater or shawl. Of course, the discount will only work as long as all four bumps are still available.

And I just have to share the surprise that came in the mail for me yesterday:

That's real Oklahoma alpaca blended with silk. Gorgeous and buttery and I can't wait to do something with it. It was part of a thank-you gift from Susan, a.k.a. Red Dirt Knitter, to whom I recently introduced the magic that is real maple syrup. (I think she likes it.) Thank you, Susan!!!!

So, I have a little time before my daughter gets home to go for a run. I'm up to four (slow) miles a couple of times a week and I can still walk and take the stairs, which is nice. Standing up after long periods of sitting requires a bit more time than it otherwise would, but I can do it without yelling almost every time.

We're throwing a big Memorial Day barbecue/potluck on Sunday night. If I don't get another post in by the weekend, have a good one.

Pigs, poults, and a yarn sale

Yes, more animal pictures. It's all I've got these days.

More spring excitement on the homefront. The piglets finally got to hang out with their dad:

who seemed quite comfortable with them:

In fact, he slept through most of the fun.

I wonder what this piglet's so happy about:

Here, two of them sample the trough:

This one likes rubber shoes:

This same afternoon, my husband and brother-in-law made a temporary fenced-in area for them all to go outside. One piglet contemplates the great world beyond the barn:

So tempted...

Mom?

Eventually, Sassy did take them all out to the wallow:

A mother who's been cooped up with six little ones for several weeks might understandably want a "Calgon-take-me-away" bath:

But any mom will tell you that once you have kids, privacy and quiet, reflective moments come rarely and briefly.

On the same day, we managed to get an asparagus bed and three blueberry bushes planted. And the peas are up... We also got our fire pit set up and had a cookout and an evening around the campfire after dinner. Life still doesn't suck around here.

Meanwhile, inside the house, a slightly unexpected thing happened. Saturday night, some of the turkey eggs we had been incubating started to peep. We really didn't think they'd hatch. By Sunday morning, there was one poult staggering around among the 7 remaining eggs. It wasn't easy to get pictures through the window, but I tried. Here's another egg about to hatch:

Minutes later, a very tired poult emerged:

Two poults:

Over the course of the day, all but 2 of the eggs hatched. The last (sixth) one to show signs of life struggled all day long to break through the shell. Although it had gaps all the way around the egg, the inner membrane started to dry and no matter how hard the poult wobbled and pushed, it couldn't break through.

Moral dilemma.

Some people say you should never help a bird hatch. If it can't do it on its own, it isn't meant to live. Others warn that if you do help, you risk hurting the chick or causing it to hemorrhage. Others say you should do what you can. My husband decided to snip some of the dried membrane and see what happened.

Within minutes, a very loud and lively poult popped out!

Here they are in the brooder box Sunday night:

If you recall, we incubated four eggs from each of our two hens. Three of each hatched out. Rose, like last year, did not sit on her nest so we knew she'd never hatch her own. Trixie, being less than a year old, was an unknown quantity. But she did set, and her poults hatched over the weekend. My husband caught sight of a couple of them peeking out from under her.

As of this morning, Trixie was still nesting up on a pile of lumber. We had to move her and the poults down to a safer, lower nest before they started wandering around and fallilng. We expected a beak thrashing from Trixie. Instead, when my husband reached under her, she stood aside. We found five happy little poults and several unhatched eggs. We moved them all down to a hay-lined dog crate on the floor and in minutes Trixie joined them, rearranged her eggs and settled in.

Since she only had five poults (the other eggs are not likely to hatch after all this time), we decided to give her the six poults we had in the house. This was a tough decision as, unlike baby chickens, the poults are much mellower and more curious and seem to like to be held. My daughter, rarely moved by small animals, has been cuddling them for two days.

We set them out in front of Trixie. It took about five minutes (I think the poults felt we were putting them up for adoption, because they kept turning to us and trying to get out of the crate!) but one by one they slipped under her. So now she's got her three indoor babies back, plus three of Rose's, plus her five, so 11 in all.  We will miss them, but it's easier for us and better for them this way.

My daughter came home from school, learned what we had done, burst into tears, and is no longer speaking to us. Still, Trixie will make a better mother than we will.

In celebration of all the new babies around here (and because I'm too busy to dye up more yarn this week), I've got a two-day sale going on at A Piece of Vermont Yarn and Fiber (like the new name?). Both the Panda Superwash and Colonial Superwash sock yarns are 10 percent off now through Thursday! Enter the coupon code SPRING at checkout to receive your discount. The sale has already been advertised to people on the mailing list so inventory is down a little bit. But there's still plenty there.

Spinners: I have bamboo/merino top cooling right now, and a freshly scoured pile of fluffy white Romney waiting for something, I don't know what yet.

I actually took a few minutes to spin today because I have desperately wanted to make a Clapotis out of handspun bamboo/merino. Knowing I wouldn't have the time to spin, I eventually decided I'd just dye up some yarn and knit it from that. But I didn't have any suitable yarn on hand. So yesterday, I confess, I went to the LYS and almost bought yarn for this project. At the last minute, I stopped myself, curbed my impulses, and remembered the original goal: Use my own handspun.

I will have a handspun Clapotis. Someday.

Remember, the coupon code at checkout is SPRING!!!!