May 2011 bring you peace, abundance, and bright new beginnings.
I am blessed to have the opportunity to work on healing all aspects of my life. I am grateful for my wonderful friends and family and their outpouring of support and love.
My doctor is no longer ruling out cancer, and has scheduled a review of my latest brain MRI with a neurologist. I am not worried, and am living with acceptance of all things and joy for each new day.
Namaste.
... paint them! Week two of art class.
This one was done with Daniel Smith pigments; I prefer them to the brand I used for the watermelon. Love watercolors!
It's been, what... five months? What's happened at Tuppinz Farm lately, you ask?
Ada Oberhasli Goat came into milk, without having been bred or having had any kids. Apparently this can sometimes happen in strong milking lines, and is caused by high levels of prolactin. It's called "witch's milk" or "precocious udder." (Do they have special classes for precocious udders?)
I duly milked the girl for a week, but in the end I decided to let her dry off (the vet having confirmed that she had no infection). We'd given all the milking equipment away when we decided not to breed or sell goats, so it was too much of a pain to milk without the little stainless steel milk pail - Ada kept kicking the bowls over. I do have enough frozen milk to make one serving of paneer (as long as Jeff still has a few cheffing days left...)
Our house is in a commercial for Wausau Homes! You can see it being built behind the president as he delivers his message; near the end you can even glimpse our historic dairy barn. I wish I could get a DVD of this - I can't download it from their site. :(
To see it, click here and then on "play video!"
The knitting didn't take long, but the marinating ate up almost an entire year! I present the "Dixie Shawl," finally complete:
The pattern is Garnstudio Drops 108-47. I wish they would name their patterns - I can never remember the number, and it's not exactly a catchy phrase that'll top the Ravelry charts.
I made it in Garnstudio Alpaca and Glitter yarns, purchased at Yellow Dog Knitting. Can't remember if it's their regular Alpaca, or the fine Alpaca - Dixie will know! I will definitely knit this pattern again because I love this alpaca yarn. I hear that it is processed correctly, so it will not "grow" to the same degree that other alpaca yarns can.
I missed the final mitten class at Yellow Dog Knitting because I thought I was coming down with something, and didn't want to spread it to the nice people there (it turned out to be nothing...)
I thought it would be a piece of cake to do the liners for Cindi's lined mitten pattern; she showed me her samples and gave me the gist of the procedure. So I was off and running this weekend with some apple green Garnstudio Alpaca, doubled.
Just pick up the first purl round after the cuff, and knit another mitten for the inside! No problem!
Fools rush in...
I turned the cuff the wrong way when I picked up the purl bumps (it should be folded to the OUTSIDE of the mitten; I'd turned the mitten inside-out first. Ack.)
The only way to get it to act as a lining was to turn the whole thing inside-out on itself through the thumb hole - and look what that does: makes the lining purl-side-out.
I am spatially challenged; that much is clear.
Let's get this straight. If you want to make a liner for your mitten, hold a mitten up, normal side out. Fold the cuff to the outside of the mitten. Pick up and knit the purl bumps, on the interior of the mitten, at the point where your cuff ends and the interior mitten hand begins. Knit a new mitten, away from the exterior mitten. When it is complete, tuck it inside the first mitten. The knit stitches of the liner will be against your palm. :)
Let's turn away and look at something else, shall we?
The house construction is moving along so quickly that I can't even get current photos posted before they're obsolete!
I posted on Facebook on Oct. 30th that Dixie mentioned that she couldn't believe how calm I was about the house project. I realized it was because Wausau Homes/Dick Hieb Homes have the process down. No worries. Everything on schedule. The contractors show up on time, right after the last ones have finished their work, and they're all polite and conscientious (they are even friendly to the goats!) We had a single, small concern with one tradesperson - but that was someone we'd insisted on using, who was not part of the usual Wausau crew. We just can't say enough good things about Wausau Homes/Dick Hieb Homes of Black River Falls. If you ever build, check them out if you want a hassle-free house project.
My father was a home builder when I was young, and I remember that there were always problems with the coordination of tradespeople, theft from construction sites, and arguments between contractors (when and if they bothered to show up). I was prepared to have to micro-manage this whole process, and really was not looking forward to it. I have never been so relieved to have my expectations proven wrong. I'm sure that having this house progress on-time and on-budget has saved my marriage and my sanity.
Chef Jeff and I love that this type of "panelized" construction (not modular) is better for the environment, as is the geothermal heating/cooling we chose. We like knowing that the structure didn't get wet or moldy since it was up and roofed in about three days. My good friend Denise sent me this link to share about construction of panelized (different from modular) homes - hope you find it interesting.
To get you up-to-speed, this was the status of the new house on October 2nd:
This was October 27th; the house was up, and they were trenching for the well and the electicity:
And this was yesterday. The interior drywall is almost finished! The UPS man, who is here almost every week, said, "Hey! When did you guys start building a house?!" He was shocked to see it appear suddenly, as if by magic.
The current house is the white building on the right (sinking precariously, day by day, into the hill!)
Shepherd's Notebook posted about a new site that discusses treatment for CL in goats.
This will be of interest to goat keepers, particularly those on hobby farms who have come across their pet goats at auctions, from unscrupulous breeders, or as rescues (hint: if you anticipate having a meat or dairy herd, do buy the very best stock you can afford, from a qualified breeder with a proven history of maintaining a closed, healthy herd.)
The website mentioned, CLGoatCare.org, can be found here.
Yippee, something got fixed and my entry page is back to normal. Phew! Thanks to those of you who suggested WordPress - I did set a new blog up over there and it was indeed very easy to use. I'll keep it there, just in case Blogspot goes wonky on me again.
Summer on a farm - even a hobby farm - doesn't leave a lot of time for blogging, as you can imagine. Add to that new Facebook and Twitter accounts, and my life took a major detour as I caught up with friends old and new. Sorry - I have missed you and your wonderful comments!
We had many more hatchings of guinea keets than anticipated, the most recent being this week! We are inundated with guinea fowl. They really are the cutest babies - much more adorable than baby chickens. They're like little "scrubbing bubbles" that zip all over the place on their huge, bright orange feet.
We are still awaiting the shearer to clip the Icelandics and the Angoras, both of which must be shorn twice a year. We had snow this week, so I hope he gets a move-on, since I want the goats to get a decent growth on them before the truly cold weather sets in. At least they have a snug barn, and we have heat lamps should we need them.
Speaking of the snug barn, the Golden Laced Wyandotte chickens that Chef Jeff pasture-raised for the freezer are now having a lovely night's rest in the box stall, before their first (and only) car ride to the humane Mennonite butcher tomorrow. They had a week of feasting on cracked corn, carrots, and apples, as I spoiled them a bit. Perhaps I should have fed them garlic to pre-season them? Well, joking aside, they will receive a blessing from Chef Jeff before they make their journey. I hope we have treated them with the respect they deserved, and that they had very happy days here at Tuppinz Farm.
The livestock are all well. The dogs are all doing great.
Otter sleeps very soundly.
Molly stops chewing her cow ear to watch the big machinery pull up the driveway.
We did have to say good-bye to our wonderful kitty Max due to liver failure. He had never been a healthy cat since he first appeared here at the farm. The other four cats are all just fine. Despite our feelings about outdoor cats, we made the decision to move everyone but Abby out to the goat barn. There, they have two levels of room to run about; a large, heated bed; windows to let in sunlight; and no dogs to chase them. Boris and Otter were a little too interested in some of the cats, and the floorplan of the new house will not allow us to keep the cats and dogs separate any longer. Abby is older and keeps to herself - she will live in the studio and loft in the new house, in which the dogs will not be allowed.
The new house - ah, the new house. Did I mention the new house?
Suffice it to say, the old farmhouse in which we now reside is going to fall down soon. Literally. It will cost less to build a new one than to fix up this one, which in all likelihood isn't even possible. We also have five dogs living in this one - can you imagine trying to repair it? So... we have begun building a new house up on the hill and hope to move in in December.
The old farmhouse will be burned - not only to give students in the firefighter program at a local college experience, but also to get rid of all the awful karma, bad energies, and evil spirits which have clouded our lives for the past three years. I wish I could be excited about it, but the fact is, the experience of moving to a place where dishonest folk left so many very, very bad things really took a toll on me emotionally.
Thank goodness Chef Jeff has been up for the task of choosing counters, cabinets, flooring, and fireplace rocks! I never could have made a decision with so many choices, but he narrowed things down very quickly:
The interior will have a warm, Southwest feel to it. We will have geothermal heat, so the puppers will enjoy a heated floor in their rumpus room downstairs. I will have a larger studio in which I will be able to spread out my knitting, spinning, quilting, and painting, and I can hardly wait for that!
It has been a long and troublesome journey but I am confident that moving on up the hill will make all the bad mojo a thing of the past.
There are surprise babies at Tuppinz Farm!
A bunch of "scrubbing bubbles" appeared in the poultry food line yesterday:
"Help, I've fallen and I can't get up!"
We have 18 new guinea keets!
When the guinea fowl go broody, they do it in secret. We never know if a hawk or fox has made off with one of them (we wouldn't mind too much as we love the wildlife also), or if they're not coming home to roost at night because they're on a nest. Apparently this time it was the latter. I think I spy another hen on a nest out in the sheep pasture... we'll keep an eye on her to see if another clutch hatches out.
Our tick population is well under control, and guinea fowl are amazingly loud, so perhaps if all of these grow up to adulthood, we'll fatten a few for the freezer.
Our chicken coop was also home to another hatch of babies - barn swallows:
The parents kept the coop insect-free while feeding their young, so have been quite welcome. Chef Jeff tells me he would give the babies a little pat on their heads each day. Don't they look like they're smiling? Having barn swallows grace our farm with their presence is something we look forward to each spring. They zoom around like tiny fighter jets all summer long, catching bugs on the fly. Beautiful birds. We always sigh and know it's springtime when we see them return.
This is my favorite hen, Pigeon Pie. She is a Quail Antwerp Belgian bantam.
When it's my turn to feed the poultry, she is first in line, and flies up onto my outstretched arm, or onto my head, or right into the feed scoop to fill her little beak and scatter food everywhere, creating a pile of chickens, ducks, guineas, and geese at my feet so that I can't take a step. Today, she thought I had something special for her in my egg basket, and flew up to take a peek. Sorry, Pidge, just my work gloves and camera in there...
Weather is perfect here today - sunny, not too hot, breezy. Baby kestrels are learning to fly and hunt. Dogs are napping. Sounds like a plan. Blogger just ate a complete post I had done with it's "autosave" feature (I hate that feature!) Perhaps they could nix that, and get the autopublish feature up and running again? Sigh.
Busy, busy week at Tuppinz Farm. Here are some of the highlights...
The sheep and goats were finally shorn! They are so relieved to be nekkid, as the days are starting to get very warm. That's "Fontina" (whom we call "Caribou" for obvious reasons) in the foreground. Need fleece? We have LOTS!
This year's Largest Fleece award goes again to our Jacob ewe Montana. Jeff tells me the Shetland fleeces are again very nice and soft. I'm looking forward to keeping the two badger-faced Icelandics' fleeces for my own use - they are identical in coloring so it will be nice to combine them and have enough matching wool for a big project.
I would have preferred that shearing not take place on the same day the farrier and vet were scheduled to attend to the donkeys, but on a farm, you have to roll with the punches. Farriers, farm vets, and sheep shearers are not as easy to coordinate as the business projects I was used to in my "former life". There simply is no option to have a "Type A" personality on a farm.
Poor Michelle had to have her shearing appointment on a day when she couldn't even be home! I hear her wether's fleece is really nice...
Potatoes are up and growing nicely. We're using this method.
My crazy junk garden is also doing well.
I tried to make raised beds using only materials I could scrounge up around here. I decorated with rusty bits of metal that were found on the property.
I'm growing lettuces, hot peppers, tomatoes, scallions, cucumbers, basil, cilantrol, parsley, three pumpkins, and sunflowers. We had lots and lots of rain this past week and the plants loved it.
We moved about 100 iris plants from the area that became the veggie garden, and popped them in the beds in front of the house. Several of them flowered despite this insult. We have planted echinacea I started from seed, as well as rudbeckia, in one bed, and roses in the other; next year it should be very pretty - all purple and yellow.
Little goats are growing like weeds, too. Here are sisters Elfine and Daisy May, almost all grown up (but still very tiny!)
The purchased Golden Laced Wyandotte chicks have their wing feathers now. Soon they will no longer need a heat lamp. They enjoy the thinnings from the veggie garden - feeding them teaches the chicks to eat greens (which they won't learn without parents to raise them) and it gets some good vitamins into them.
We had a lovely Wyandotte hen go broody. Unfortunately, before we realized she was nesting, we gathered the eggs she was laying each day for the refrigerator. We then noticed that she - and she alone - was hanging around with our single Golden Laced Wyandotte rooster... the two chickens we most hoped would reproduce. Hobby Farm Mistake #1027 - when the chickens you want to breed actually do, let the eggs turn into chicks!
So as not to waste her broodiness, we collected two days' worth of eggs which will hopefully become mixed-breed chicks, and stuck them under her. She accepted them readily. Hobby Farm Mistake #1028 - when you have a hen that is broody and you want to hatch out chicks, consider the fact that she is nesting in front of hay bales you will need to access in the next month - not the best choice of locations for anyone involved.
Last Saturday, we went to the farmers market in Eau Claire, at Phoenix Park. It was raining and quite cold, but we had a great time. On our walk back, I saw this Labyrinth in the park - what a neat thing!
On the way home, we stopped at a couple of places to fish for a little bit. Did I mention it was rainy and cold? The only trophy was an ugly thing I caught called a river chub, which went gently right back into the water. We gave up on a fish dinner and went to Tep's Drive-In in Augusta, for their amazing garlic fries. Got to love a place with carhops - especially in an Amish village.
I ended up the week with a meeting of my MaryJane's Farmgirls group yesterday. We met at Dee Dee's Diner in Northfield and had a great time chatting and knitting and sharing pictures.
Dianne, Kayley, Dawn, Michelle
We meet on the second Saturday of each month to just hang out and do whatever... we talk about animals, crafts, gardening, and end up laughing. One doesn't have to be a "real" farmgirl to join; as MaryJane Butters says, "'Farmgirl' is a condition of the heart." We're just a bunch of gals out to learn new things and meet new friends.
The weather has turned glorious. First hay cutting this week. Crickets, junebugs, and moths abound (one notices this when one takes up fly fishing...) Baby squirrels exploring their world. The glow of light as the sun begins to cross the horizon is more amazing each and every evening. What a wonderful time of year.
