Coming Up For Air

It's been a crazy few weeks, so today I took my camera outside to see if I could relax for a few minutes. In times of over-scheduled days, I miss the garden most. It's so peaceful out there, and fortunately also self-sufficient. Ripening fruits were waiting for me at every turn. As you can see, I worked on the tomatoes by putting them away as sauce. There is one more batch of sauce waiting to be put into jars. Let the fall eating commence! There may or may not be much of a Fall/Winter greens garden this year. Seeds I planted in August came up and went crazy while it was hot again this month. The rest of the seeds just went in today... Let's see if the weather holds.

Butternut squash

One of a dozen

Acorn squash

Ever bearing strawberries 

Mmm... Tomato sauce

Those of you waiting for knitting have to wait again... I ran out of yarn on my current project and am pondering the right way to finish. Till next time!

The Bountiful Garden

The summer is coming to a spectacular close. The mostly cool days have given way to an extra hot and muggy week, which the peppers and tomatoes enjoyed for the ripening process. I am also excited about the abundance of squash that suddenly appeared, especially since I did not put out seeds until the 2nd week of June. The rabbit eating my beans finally got a stomachache and left, giving me lots of beans to freeze for winter eating. And just in case I get a stomachache too, I will be making my own chamomile tea. Not pictured are massive amounts of cucumber, herbs, some buckwheat, new greens, broccoli and all of my finds at the farmers market. Here's to fresh eating... mmmmm!!!

Little salad peppers

Tomato heaven!

Chamomile for tea.

Butternut squash

Acorn squash

5 pounds of green beans

Life Happens, and It's All Good!

A ridiculous amount of life happened between early June and the present, and it has left me short of breath and unmotivated to talk about every little thing on the blog. So let's recap the big events, and move forward with important projects, like knitting, in greater depth later.

First of all, I celebrated a Landmark Birthday, for which my mother and I baked a total of nine cakes. There was a very random approach to invitations, but the turnout was good and about half of the cake was eaten. The rest lives in the freezer and we are slowly nibbling our way through it.

From right front, counterclockwise: Mulberry Jam Cake with pecans, Traditional Family Birthday Bundt Cake, Sachertorte, Streusel Cake, Waves of the Danube, English Cake, Egg-Heavy Cake, Mulberry Jam Cake w/o nuts, Hazelnut Macaroon Torte.

 Gardening has been late but steady. I did get a head start on potatoes and onions, and we have had several meals with our own potatoes. So delicious!

First potatoes, mid-June!

Young onions

Getting ready for harvesting

Spindly tomato starts...

Become this WALL of tomato plants. Note to self: don't plant so close together next time, no matter how tiny.

Bean explosion, but no edibles yet.

New project: Buckwheat!

In between feasting on sweet baked goods and putting in a garden, I spent an absurd number of vacation hours at school, cleaning out my room. The first impulse was due to the custodians threatening to throw everything not cleared off surfaces or still lying on the floor into the trash. Then I applied for a new job at a local high school. Then I got offered the job, and then the clean out became even more necessary. I did not realize how much stuff I took down there... It's time to toss some things in earnest. And move into my new office!

In the middle of job interviews, we went on a scheduled Landmark Birthday Trip to Lexington, VA, where we rented a cabin just outside of town and then enjoyed driving and hiking in the landscapes, sightseeing, local farms and breweries, and excellent restaurant dining.

We learned about polyface farming techniques at Broadview Ranch. The farmers fence their cows and pigs into really small fenced spaces, and move them almost daily. Then they bring in the chickens behind them. The chickens scratch the manure which spreads it for fertilizing, and also eat the bugs that inhabit the cow piles.

"Coop-estoga wagon" houses 175 chickens!

 Yarn stores were located, visited, and lightened of merchandise...

A delightful view from the Blue Ridge Parkway.

This is the bell tower of the Robert E. Lee chapel, which is on the campus of Washington & Lee University in Lexington. I had no idea that he was the president of this college for many years after the Civil War ended. His final resting place is in this chapel.

A must-eat location, The Red Hen prides itself on its locally sourced food. We ate here twice and it was well worth it. Everything was fresh and in season. We did chuckle about the "local" cheese plate. Its contents were purchased at a local shop, which basically got cheeses shipped to it from the entire world. I guess being a locavore has its limits.

We took the tour of Stonewall Jackson's house, but I was particularly enamored by his gardens. Someone took a great deal of time and effort to re-establish what was grown there and label everything in great detail.

The Jackson's had COLD FRAMES!!! These are newly built, of course.

 After our week in Lexington, we met my husband's family at Deep Creek Lake in Maryland, for our traditional family reunion vacation. Several nieces and nephews "took some lessons" with Auntie E on the violin. They performed the D-A-D song, the Ant Song, and Mississippi Hot Dog Rhythm with the bow at a very informal concert the night before we left. Nothing is more wonderful than sharing music with young family members!

And finally, today is a big day on the farm. Cassidy turns ONE already! She is a beautiful animal and so full of love and curiosity. Today she just followed me around the pen like a dog while I was taking pictures.

Happy Birthday Cassidy!

 A little while after I crouched down to her level, she just sat down next to me and let me pet her for a good 15 minutes. These were some of the resulting pictures:

Snuggle bug

Silly friends!

As I mentioned earlier, there is important knitting content in production. I will not clutter this post up any more, and leave you to wonder about it until I get another opportunity to post.

Till then, Happy Summer!

Fuzzy? Oh, WAS he!

For the third time already , it was shearing day at Shady Grove Alpacas, and high time for it. The temperature was in the 80's and all creatures were hot. These lyrics inspired the title of this blog post, and I often wondered if there might have been a shearing team involved with the product. Our adolescent Darkstar had such a giant, 21 month-old coat on, that it was a job and a half to extract him from it.

After spending 30 minutes cleaning his coat this morning, Darkstar proceeds to take another roll in the hay.

Last minute brush work gets most of hay off the top layer.

Lovely locks on the shearing mat.

Neck: so much fiber we can't remove it without shaving the rest of the area.

Neck is emerging.

Almost finished...

Truly a camel's neck, long and thin.

Post shave, Darkstar was having difficulty getting his show look back together, but his fiber is sooo lustrous and truly perfectly black!

Darkstar, left; 'Leven, right - two boys looking for some fun!

However, our other show hopeful, Cassidy, has the look perfected. She is also amazingly lustrous and I can't wait to see how her fiber re-grows.

Shorn Lady's Tea-time.

The Shady Grove Alpaca herd, ready for beach weather!

Knitting pattern available from The Fuzzy Mitten: http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/alpaca-with-bikini

And now the true work begins: fiber processing... Here are the numbers that need to be added to the 30 pounds of fiber already waiting on me. Our scale is not quite accurate. It measured the total at 32 pounds of fleece with all bags on the platform, but you will come up with a different sum when you add these numbers together:

The Eleven (at 8 months of growth): 3.6 pounds

'Greta: 4.1 pounds

Bella: 4.2 pounds

Cassidy (at 10 months of growth): 4.5 pounds

Moon Star, the perennial fiber queen: 7.3 pounds

Darkstar: 12 POUNDS!!! of fleece. We vowed NEVER to keep another alpaca in this much fuzz ever again. We'll just show in re-growth in the Spring if it is necessary and convenient.

Did you say you were coming to help? Your shift begins on June 1st. And Thank You in advance!

A Peck on a Chicken's Cheek

You may recall this event from a few years ago... 

This evening the grad students were raising money for charity once again. Students paid money to vote on which fellow student would kiss Heinrich the chicken.

A spectacle is developing....

Heinrich is following her long-legged master at warp speed!!!

The grad student is not so sure about this dubious opportunity...
Protective eyewear: CHECK
H7N9 protective mask: MISSING, slight oversight here...

Fastest peck of a kiss in history.
The shutter of my camera was NOT fast enough to capture the moment.
 Great relief floods all parties!

A good time was had by all! Heinrich loved every minute of the attention!

Alpaca Fiber Processing: Getting Started at Last

Yesterday The Farmer and I headed down to Hoosier Heartland Alpacas again for a fiber processing clinic.

It was a beautiful day, though chilly and a little windy. Everything was set up outside on a long table.

They had a new "toy," a fiber tumbler that gets out some of the dirt, dust and vegetable matter from a raw fleece. You run it for a half hour or so before starting the picking process.

The next step is the tedious one that I have been afraid of. On a hardware cloth rack, you can shake out the fleece a little more and let any other loose veggie matter and second cuts fall through the wire. It is suggested to have the shorn side facing up toward you. Then you separate the fibers enough to get the rest of the non-fleece items out of it. That's it.

Next, the cleaned fleece gets a little bath. Use warm water with some dish soap incorporated first, then add the fleece and make sure it doesn't just float on the top. Let it soak for a 15-30 minutes, then put it on top of the grate (looks like a cooling rack to me) and press the water out. The key is to not agitate the fleece in this step so that it does not felt. Repeat the washing one more time in the same temperature water.

Next is the rinse step. It needs to be rinsed twice as well in water that is the same temperature. Add a little vinegar to the second rinse to help get the soap suds out. Again, not agitating the fibers is key.

Next is the drying. They have these great racks with hardware cloth bottoms that they made for this step. It looks like a drying rack. Fluffing the fibers throughout the day helps dry them quicker.

Finally, the drum carder lines up all the fibers to create roving. Since Suri fiber is so long, it gets added to the top of the drum so it winds more easily around the larger wheel. This process is repeated three times to create a clean and smooth batt. You can blend different fibers at this point as well.

Now you are all ready to spin! It will take a while, but the processing no longer seems quite as daunting. Unless I think about the 30 pounds of fiber upstairs...