Repairing a Riparian Farm

Golly, it has finally arrived, Old Man Winter, that is. I have the wood furnace running, the wood cook stove running, and watching PBS.  For the past 2+ weeks I have been playing with dyes, natural & acid, and fleeces from sheep, goats, rabbits and some silk.  I have several lots of fleece to go to the mill I use for my roving and yarn.  Hope to get it all out in the next couple of days.

And today I pulled some wool and silk noils out of the dye pot that have been ‘steeping’ for about a week.  I started out with mature Blackberry canes cut into 2-4″ sections. I took these and soaked them for a day and then put them on the back of the stove to gently boil for a couple of days.  I added to the pot an old piece of cast iron for mordant.  Once this had cooked for 2-3 days, I poured off the liquid into another pot and added bunches of hot water to get enough room for the fleece and silk noils that I wanted to add. I then put the fiber in and let it simmer and steep for the next 2 days.  I wasn’t completely satisfied with the color I was getting so added some Black Walnut and Tobacco juices that I’ve had sitting around here (used for sheep wormer this past summer.) I let that sit on the back of the stove for the next 4 days.  This morning I pulled it out and washed it in the washing machine with soap, then rinsed it and laid it out to dry.  The color is AMAZING!!

The fleece turned out a pinkish color with a hint of gray in the background.  The silk noils came out completely gray. Both of these were white to start with.  It is just the most beautiful colors and I’m really thrilled with it.

 

 

It’s Labor Day, and I sit here thinking “How did it get to be September already?”  Cooler weather for a few days, leaves will be turning soon, the fall garden will be ready to pick in another 6-8 weeks, and it’s time to think about shearing those sheep and processing wool for the upcoming year’s festivals. “Won’t I be glad to complain about the cold” is what a friend said this past week.  Yup, so true!

Three days ago I had an “OMG” experience happen with one of my foundation ewes.  I was out doing evening chores, closing up the chicken houses and checking all the livestock.  I finished and took a trip through the garden just to look for cucumbers and tomatoes. I notice a commotion about 100 feet from the garden and see what looks like a ewe going into convulsions.  Two other ewes are looking a smelling her like ‘Hey, what’s wrong here?’    I run over to see one of my really great ewes on the ground and can’t breath.  I start pumping on her side thinking she has something lodged in her throat.  A bunch of nasty smelling gas comes out instead.   AH, I think, she is bloating.  Not have any implements with me to alleviate bloating, I quickly start slamming my knee into her side behind her ribs. Over and over I do this.  She is belching gas and belching gas. She finally get to the point that she wants to get upright on her belly, front feet straight out in front of her.  I then take off at a dead run (haven’t run in years.) I get to the house, grab a quart jar and fill it with water. Grab a cup of baking soda and dump it in, put a lid on it. Grab the drenching syringe on the way out the door, bookin’ as fast as I can. Get to the ewe, who is now standing up with her head practically between her front knees.  I fill the syringe (60 cc) and get it down her throat—she’s not too happy. I then refill and she greedily gulps the liquid down.  I fill it a third time and she takes it all. Then she is ‘Nope, no more let me go’ attitude. I turn her loose and she walks about 3 feet away and is panting but maintaining.  I stayed in the garden for another 45 minutes watching her until it was very dark.  I took out more baking soda (have a 50 lb bag of the stuff) a put it in a feed pan for her.  I’ve also put out another feed pan for everyone.  The next day she was fine and didn’t have a single problem.

Then yesterday evening, again when I was closing up and checking livestock, we had another incident.  I was in the old chicken house (sometimes a duck house) checking on the baby chicks.  I hear what I think is my herding puppy, Injun, crying.  I quickly go outside and listen and I hear nothing. Then a bird far away caws and so I think that’s what I’d heard. I continue on with the evening chores and about 10 minutes later I am once again in the garden checking to see what’s there that I can take in.  I hear Injun, definitely Injun crying. OMG, what’s happened.  And then it stops.  I call Missy and started running again down toward the house.  (I might get into better shape than I had planned.) I keep calling Injun “Injun, Come In”.  Nothing.  Again and Again. Nothing.  All the other dogs come out looking, Nothing. I am really starting to panic.  By now I’m close to the house and I know that Lucy was in the back, and I see her coming around from the back.  Lucy is the dominant dog here on the farm, except for Missy of course.  Lucy controls everyone except Missy.  And lately, Lucy has not been patient and I have had to separate her twice from Molly, another LGD. So I naturally thing Injun overstepped the line and Lucy has/is putting her in her place.  Missy and I head around the back. Nothing. So then I go around the front and down the road to the stacked hay which is where I saw some of the dogs playing earlier.

What I saw stopped my heart and scared me almost literally To Death.  Patty (LGD 1/2 Pyr, 1/2 Kom) is sitting up, backed up to the hay and there is so much blood I can’t imagine where it all came from expect that she had killed Injun and feasted on her.  It is dripping out of her mouth, there is blood all saturated in the fur under her chin and dripping. Her chest is covered and her legs appear to be covered.  Then I see Injun. She is laying on her belly, almost prostrate with her left foot in the air sticking out of Patty’s throat.  I’m confused. I get close enough to really see and get my hands on them and then it is so obvious and horrible that I just wanted to scream.  They had been playing and Injun got her foot through Patty’s dog collar, which was a chain collar. It was twisted up and around Injun’s foot so that she could not get out, and Patty was choking to death.  Patty and bit her tongue, her floppy lips, blood appeared to be coming up her throat and out the mouth.  I tried and tried to untwist the collar, but with 20 seconds it was obvious that I need fence cutter to cut the mess apart.  That meant going all the way back up to where I had been, close to the garden.  I took Injun and moved her so that she was right underneath Patty and told her to stay. Told them I would be back with big cutters that would get them out of this mess.

I jumped on the ATV, parked in front of the house and gunned it up to the tool barn. Inside I found the cutters, fairly quickly, thank heavens, and jumped back on the ATV and booked back to the hay stack.  I cut the first link. Nothing.  I cut the second link. Nothing. I cut the third link. FREEDOM.  The collar fell to the ground and Injun just laid there.  I knew she would be OK, worst case a broken foot. So I turned to Patty and she was breathing and stuck her nose out toward me.  I just grabbed her and held her telling her what a good girl she was and that she would be alright now and we just cried together.  I then grabbed Injun and told her she was a good girl and it was wonderful that her and Patty like to play so much.

I then looked in Patty’s mouth to see if she still had a tongue left….it will be fine. The bleeding stopped almost immediately, which leads me to believe that she did have blood coming from somewhere down her throat.  Her voice box doesn’t appear to be  crushed, but I’m still watching her.  Injun’s foot was not broken, just bruised a bit.  But today she is running and playing on it and doing simply fine.

So now, what kind of collar to get the dogs where this kind of thing won’t happen.  I’m looking into thick, woven collars.

Well, that was enough excitement for the week.  In retrospect, I was very lucky, both incidences, I was outside, close enough to know there was a problem and able to resolve it.  Maybe a tent pitched in the fields is up for consideration.

Happy Labor Day everyone.  Hope your day was mighty fine!

 

Thank heavens the cooler weather has set in. Nothing above 90′s, which means 95 at least up here on the ridge. We needed some of this relief.

The sheep will be rounded up and ‘suckered’ into the chute system tonight hopefully, getting ready to worm tomorrow morning. I’ll hopefully be able to gather all so I see what kind of damage the extreme heat caused to my herd.

Then it’s off next week to the eye doctor. My eyes have changed so much that I can’t even use my glasses. I’m going to try and go back to contacts. I used to wear them all the time, but stopped when I needed bifocals. Those glasses resting on my nose give me such headaches though that I’m going to talk this over with the Doc and see what she can offer.

I planted a fall garden about 2 weeks ago. More cucumbers are coming up, along with several types of beans. I also planted radicchio, broccoli, cauliflower, several types of winter squash, turnips and sweet potatoes. The cherry tomatoes are putting on like crazy still, so I’ve started canning the little ‘toes. I also planted some lettuce under the asparagus in an attempt to shade it and hopefully have some lettuce. OH, spinach is planted and carrots also. Oh and bell peppers. Geesh, I label everything outside in the garden, but I need to write it all down here in the house I guess. Once the tomatoes beans and potatoes are done, I’ll get the garlic planted. I have 3 gorgeous braids of garlic from this crop, not including the 13 bulbs I took over to my niece this past May to teach her how to braid garlic. I really love my garlic.

Started mushroom picking yesterday. Found about a dozen huge, lovely Boletes and only a couple of PuffBalls. I’ll be hunting mushrooms daily now for quite some time. I slice them up and lay them on paper towels inside shallow cardboard boxes. I put screen on top and put them out in the sun. My cheap way to solar dry veggies. Then I store them in glass jars sealed tightly. Works every time. Last night as I was coming in I looked over and saw 2 large boletes under the leaf cover, kinda peeking out. Picked them, brought them in and decided to have them with supper. Sliced, salted and sautéed with onions they were really good on top of the burgers I made.

What an absolute horrid mess of way-too-hot weather we’ve had.  It has started to cool off here, but the effect our horrible heat has brought has been pretty much awful.  On one of the really hot days I lost 3 rabbits that just floored me.  I have 3 areas for my rabbitry.  One is an area of wooden hutches that stand about 3.5 feet off the ground, reaching 5 feet tall.  They have 2 pens each, with nesting boxes hanging off of each end.  Nice hutches, actually.  The other area is a 6′ tall dog kennel that I have a tented cover over and cages are hanging on 2 sides inside the kennel.  I also have a fan that blows in there.  Then there is a galley way between 2 buildings and I have cages hanging off of those 2 buildings and I can walk between the cages very easily.

All of this is under huge old trees that provide a ton of shade. It is at the highest point of the ridge, so there is plenty of breeze. And the ground stays wet up there because I have leaky hoses running through for watering needs. The area is really quite cool. I lost one rabbit from each of these 3 areas!  I lost 2 French Angora Does, and my only meat buck.  What a total bummer.

I lost 3 hens that were actually getting up in age, but still it was a hit I didn’t need.

For the sheep, I decided to open all the gates, set water troughs at points all over the areas and let them go where they could find the coolest spots.  I’ve still lost several. The final counts not in yet.

And who ever heard of Muscovy ducks not being able to survive this heat?   I had bought 5 ducklings; one died when it got out and the dogs got it.  But it’s been a few months and they are doing fine.   I’ve started letting them out of the duck house to roam around and eat the bugs and weeds and grass.  4 days out and none of them can walk the 5th morning.  I pick them up one at a time and discover that they are covered in seed ticks.   Millions of them.  I get the spray and spray them. I tried my best. Only 1 is left alive and I don’t know if it will make it.

It’s cooler now, and I hope it stays like this for a few weeks.

And oh boy, are we cooking in more ways than one.   First, when I came back from the Middle Tennessee Fiber Festival, it was all of a sudden HOT here.  And as most of you know, I only have 1 stove to cook on and that is a wood cook stove.  So for the past 2 summers, I have been closing up the cook stove and getting out the electric skillet, the electric 2-burner hot plate, and the crock pots, placing these on top of the cook stove and try to create a symphony of food from these, ummm tools.  Electric cooking is not my idea of how cooking should go.  The darn things are not like an electric stove, they only get so hot. This means that just as the skillet or hot plate is starting to fry, the electric turns off, cools down and then turns on.  It really Annoys me to no end.

My end goal is to have a summer kitchen, but that is a bit off in the future due to finances. A  BBQ grill just doesn’t cut it and so I was seriously considering other options.  Voila’, the Fire Pit idea came along and in 1 day I had it pretty much finished. I’ve cooked a few meals in it and so far it’s working just fine.  It is 6′ in diameter, making it large enough to move around inside, store wood that goes on the fire, and set up another fire for whatever needs I might have, such as canning all those tomatoes I plan on canning this year.

 

Of course, while I was out with the 4-wheeler collecting some of these rocks, it turned out that they are loaded with fossils!  How cool. And there is a good smattering of crystallized geode portions also.  The Ozarks are full of these kinds of rocks.  Plenty of them left over from the ice age.  This mountain range is the oldest on the continent and you can find any number of artifacts in your own backyard.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And about that cooking……Not only outside in a pit surrounded by fossils, but in the house as well.   I had thought that I would wait until later, when the temps hit in the 100′s before I turned on the air conditioner(s).  We were coping just fine.  However, last night while reading in bed, I was covered in a matter of less than 5 minutes by these little, itsy, bitty green flying insects.  No, No, No….I am not sharing my bed or anything else for that matter with these bugs at night. I even had to shut down my laptop because the screen was covered by green insects, and then little black insects.  This afternoon I started up the air conditioners.  Our power company announced that rates will go up next month, oh JOY!

 

Not any more, obviously. Yesterday I had several rugs pulled right out from under me, so to speak.

My lovely truck, that I dearly love, my husband graciously bought for me when I totaled my Trailblazer, has been in the shop for 2+ weeks now.  I just didn’t have the funds to get it fixed. Well, finally got enough $$$, I thought, to get it done and the darn thing is still out of whack, won’t run at all.  It is no longer under warranty, so I had it at the local shop–an EXCELLENT mechanic.  But the problems lie in the engine and since it’s a diesel, it has to go to a Ford shop.  Ouch, double Ouch.  The mechanic gets it started for me and I’m going to drive it to the closest sister-shop (a GM shop).  I almost get there and it dies, right on the freeway. I barely had the momentum and strength to get it to the side of the road, off the freeway.  They are towing it to the Ford dealer today.

 

 

 

 

 

Then I am washing a load of clothes and the washing machine is squealing like a stuck pig.  Probably a belt, but does this have to happen at this time?   It’s my 2nd washing machine; the front loader has been offline and broken for about 8 months or so.

Then last night I am out in the pasture feeding the ewes.   I do this once the lambs are born because I want them to all come up around me so I can count the babies and the mommies and make sure everyone present.  Well, one mom shows up without her 2 lambs.  I go looking for them.  There they are over a rise, close to a fence and I just prayed that they were sleeping.  Nope, dead.  I don’t know what got them, what killed them, but it must have happened while I was gone most of the day with the damn truck. Not a mark on them, though it’s obvious that the vultures had been there because their eyes were gone.  I saw those babies the evening before, in the pouring rain.  They were under their mom, she was standing perfectly still sheltering them.  She’s a really good mom and these were gorgeous dark moorit lambs, a ewe & a ram.

 

I went in the house and had a few drinks.  Sometimes you just have to sit and cry for a minute, get up and start again.

Now I’m down to 25 lambs. What a bummer.

 

UPDATE

OK, so some of us think we know what happened to my two little lambs. The night before, there were really bad lightning/thunderstorms and  all around. I actually had the GFI receptacle blow twice that evening. One person mentioned that maybe the lightning struck close enough to the babies that the shock killed both at the same time. This kind of makes sense, right?

UPDATE #2

Well, the dealership thought it might be the IPM, nope, that was working. Discovered there is a high pressure oil leak in the engine. So, they took off the top of the engine, all is fine. They had to tear into the entire engine and it is the gasket or O-ring or whatever it is that the oil pump uses. Ouch.  Had to order the part and it might be ready Monday.  And it’s a toss-up whether I have enough $$$ to cover the darn thing.  Ah well. Such is life.

Last week was the week that produced a lot of finished efforts.  Shearing was top on the list, and it is accomplished.  On Friday my shearer arrived and we had all but 2 (Mel & Big Bad Brownie) sheared and bagged up to throw away–all within 3 hours.  Getting a hold of Mel can sometimes be impossible.  When rams have all the good, lush foliage and grass that they can possibly eat, they could care less that I rattle a bucket of grain in front of them.

I don’t know about other Icelandic Shepherds, but I find the Spring cut is generally a total waste of wool.  But we have to get it off so that the new growth through the Summer and into the Fall will be luscious and quite usable.

 

And those BABIES!!!!   This year, my ewes decided to breed an entire month early!  Golly this is great.  Those little critters are already starting to eat bits of grass and the grass is just starting to Volume in great proportions. And they are all so darn cute, each and every one of them.  I have 27 lambs this year, 28 live births but one little ewe just couldn’t make it after day 2.  They are bounding around and jumping all over the place.  And this year I actually have a lot of solid colors.  It has seemed for many years that all I had were grays and more grays.  There were some grays this year, but I also have solid blacks and solid moorits.  Ahhh, love those solid colors.

 

Have you ever noticed that cookie dough tastes better raw?  How did I come to this question?  Well, it actually started quite some time ago when I decided that I would try, once again, to make cookies.  See, it has been a life-long plague of mine that I simply can’t bake a cookie.  But life has changed a bit, after all I am a farmer now. So, me thinks that maybe I can bake a cookie.  I’ve actually made a few batches of chocolate chip and oatmeal raisin recently.  For the most part they all turned out pretty darn good. HOWEVER, it seems that one can never get the full number of cookies out of the batch because, yup that’s right, the cookie dough gets eaten.  And of course, on the day that we were shearing, I did have a bowl of cookie dough on the counter because I just figured I’d bake them cookies up after the shearing was over.  Nope, one of my friends actually came outside looking for me with this big bowl of cookie dough in her arm and a big spoon in her hand, no it was in her mouth, which was full of cookie dough.  Of course, others had already been eating the cookie dough, I admit I was eating it also.   So now I have to ponder the much bigger question.  Why for all these years did I fret over the fact that I couldn’t seem to bake a decent cookie?  Was it even necessary to bake the darn things in the first place?  Apparently not.

 

The past several weeks, those of us here in the Midwest have undergone horrid downpours of rain & hail. We have endured more tornadoes ripping havoc across our lands.  And on this Riparian Farm, what little is left of old outbuildings is taking a beating.  I have a ‘poor man’s'  fashioning of a rabbitry building, that is usually good enough to keep the water off my Angora bunnies.  Didn’t work these past 2 weeks. I have 2 bucks that had to be completely shaved because their wool matted up when it got wet.  Then when we finally had 2 days of sun in the middle of all this, we sheared the sheep.  Quite a few of them were matted up.  Oh dear, time to get a barn.  There is no barn, no building of any kind for any of the animals.  Everyone lives outside, in paddocks and fields, taking shelter under trees.  So I’ve started my savings account for a barn.  It will take a few years, but gotta start somewhere, sometime, and I guess that is now.

 

Read the rest of this entry »

So here it is, the end of the week.  What exactly did I (we) accomplish?

Well, got the blog started, that’s something.

Jerry (hubby) was home this week, off the road to spend time with me and to get some needed items accomplished.  The big item was his expiring passport. Since Jerry drives OTR and frequently into Canada, this had to be renewed.  It’s a big fiasco trying to find out where to get things done in a very rural community.  I called around, I searched on the internet and found forms, etc.  But where to get the required photo???  Who Knew!  WALMART!  Immediately!  What a trip.  So off we go to WalMart and get the photo, then to the post office in that rather large town and get the forms (nicer and in one piece compared to what I downloaded), then back home to do everything in the quiet of our little country shack.  Oh and let’s not forget the whopping $140.00 smackers for the darn thing!  DONE, FINIS, ACCOMPLISHED.

And then there’s the F350 Truck going belly up.   I had to have it towed to the local mechanic and it will have to just sit there until I come up with the cash to get it fixed.  Problem???  Batteries are part of the problem, but there’s more to go around.  Hopefully I get it out of hock next weekend.

And finally, I’m selling my baby.  Yes, there were times she was ridden hard and put up wet, but always she was well taken care of and loved dearly by me.   My BMW R1200 CM  motorcycle has to go.   I’ve not ridden her since March 2003, and she sits getting older but not wiser.  So I’ve posted her on Craigs List and I will look around for more places to post her. The battery is dead, but that’s her only problem. Here’s the link if any of you out there want a really sweet ride.

http://springfield.craigslist.org/mcy/2338752710.html

 

Now we are live with this blog.   I hope you all enjoy this as much as I have looked forward to it.

Yesterday was an exciting day.  I went and picked up my first ever loom.  My daughter bought this loom from a good friend of mine, for my birthday!!!  (a month away)  It is a Newcomb Studio Floor Loom, 4 harness, 6 treadle in really good shape, all parts working and have been working for many years.

See, I have wanted to weave for years.  I have had my Icelandic Sheep since 2007.  My expectations weren’t too high, I just wanted to weave rugs.  Nice wool rugs that have a design, a picture, whatever………     Then during a festival in Marshfield, MO, I watched a woman weave a rug on a Navaho loom.  Oh my I was in love.  I simply had to be able to do that.  AND why not?!  I have sheep that produce some of the best wool for warping that there is.  AND I can also use the wool for the weft.  AND it comes in so many colors or I can dye it if I need to.   A Dream Come True!

Well, I’ve not made the Navaho Loom yet, but I have several different plans (different sizes mostly) for building my own.  Which is  how I got this Newcomb Loom.  My lovely daughter calls and asks what I’m doing.  “I’m downloading plans so I can build myself a Navaho Loom.”  Why? she asks.  “Because I can’t afford to buy a loom. My girlfriend has a floor loom for sale and I can’t even afford that.”  Can you weave clothes on the floor loom? she asks.  “Yes, I would first weave cloth and then cut out the patterns and sew them together” I said.  Your birthday is next month Mom. And it was then that I realized I had said way too much already and there was no graceful, or believable, way to back out.  “Jess, you cannot spend that much money on my birthday!  Don’t even thing about it!”  Well, if the environment goes south and I need clothes, guess who’s going to have to make them? Hmmmm, like I said, no way out that she would accept.

So, here’s a pic of the loom, Oh boy oh Boy.  Sometime, in my copious free time, I’ll have to teach myself how to use this beauty.

And it looks like the last of my ewes has lambed, and now it’s off to growing those beauties out, deciding which to keep for breeding stock, mine or others, and which to cull and send to the butcher. One thing that I do want to do this year is to take a ram and have him fixed so that I can use him as a teaser. I think that will ensure that I have these ewes lamb earlier, like they did this year. Here’s a few photos of the ewes with lambs late in the evening when it’s feeding time.

 

And the last exciting thing that has happened, albeit a few days ago, is the birth of a new filly.  Our friend, Ira, has draft animals.  One of his mares, who is getting up in the years, gave birth to a filly that is simply gorgeous. She is 3/4 draft and 1/4 saddle.  Her name is Ash and we think she is really cute.  Here’s one photo, hopefully I’ll get some more to upload.

 

Well, that’s it for tonight.  It’s time to plan out my day tomorrow.  G’nite.